jedimessiah Posted February 4, 2014 Share Posted February 4, 2014 (edited) I wanted to switch things up a bit and start flying the Sting. I flew the Blackbolt in beta and did really well with it but am having difficulties with the Sting. I've been flying the Mangler exclusively on live but am getting bored with it. Any tips on my loadout and tactics would be greatly appreciated. Components: Primary - Burst Secondary - Cluster Systems - Blaster Overcharge Shield - Distortion Engines - Retro Armor - Light Capacitor - Damage Reactor - Turbo Thrusters - Turning Most of those are upgraded about half way. Crew: Co-Pilot - Skadge Offense - Skadge Defense - Torian Tactical - Treek Engineering - 2V-R8 So far my tactics have been to go where the action is and just start dog fighting around the satellite. Doesn't seem to be working and I feel like I'm doing it wrong so any advice is much appreciated. Edited February 4, 2014 by jedimessiah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dancezwithnubz Posted February 4, 2014 Share Posted February 4, 2014 (edited) imho: replace Turning thrusters with Regeneration or Power. speed/turning thrusters on a scout are, imho, only really viable if you're also using Booster Recharge. swap Retro Thrusters engines for Barrel Roll (get extra Turning at T3 if that's what you want). the manoeuvering possibilities of barrel roll are very, very overpowered. personally, i prefer rocket pods to clusters, but I warn you, they're very tricky to use. Crew: Speed Is Life in a scout, I'd experiment with swapping 2V-R8 for Blizz for the extra engine capacity and just be a little more cautious when shooting. When you get a bit more used to the ship and the gameplay, swap back and see how you go. 2V-R8 is a very good choice, don't get me wrong I use him myself when I go Laser Cannon inslead of Light Laser Cannon on my Blackbolt, but until you get used to scouts Blizz is probably a bit more useful. as for tactics: shooting people who are chasing someone else is always good advice. Edited February 4, 2014 by dancezwithnubz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Armonddd Posted February 4, 2014 Share Posted February 4, 2014 (edited) I wanted to switch things up a bit and start flying the Sting. I flew the Blackbolt in beta and did really well with it but am having difficulties with the Sting. I've been flying the Mangler exclusively on live but am getting bored with it. Any tips on my loadout and tactics would be greatly appreciated. Components: Primary - Burst Secondary - Cluster Systems - Blaster Overcharge Shield - Distortion Engines - Retro Armor - Light Capacitor - Damage Reactor - Turbo Thrusters - Turning Most of those are upgraded about half way. Crew: Co-Pilot - Skadge Offense - Skadge Defense - Torian Tactical - Treek Engineering - 2V-R8 So far my tactics have been to go where the action is and just start dog fighting around the satellite. Doesn't seem to be working and I feel like I'm doing it wrong so any advice is much appreciated. Your setup is overall very strong for a specific purpose: holding a satellite against all comers, and never leaving until you die. If that's what you want to do, trade turbo reactor for large reactor and trade the crew around a bit (Khem Val and Vector over Skadge and Torian, keeping Khem as your copilot) and you're in business. If you want to dogfight more or move out to cap other satellites, though, you'll want to make some changes. More generally, your build largely depends on what you want to do. If you want to fight at close quarters and hold the satellite against a half dozen opponents, you're going to want bursts, turning thrusters, and clusters or maybe rocket pods. If you're more about midrange dogfighting, sab probe and light lasers can make a powerful combination. If you're looking to burst down stationary-ish targets (largely gunships and bombers) from long range, quads'n'pods will take you far. As of tomorrow, targeting telemetry is largely inferior to blaster overcharge (unless you're good at winning lotteries). Booster recharge is excellent for getting across the map in a hurry, which I do often when my team is doing well but rarely in a close match. Retro and barrel roll are the two good engine abilities. I generally take retro (especially if I'm fighting around sats) for the killing power via finishing a lock and/or just getting off a lucky shot, but switch to barrel roll if I don't have booster recharge (exception: if I don't plan to leave a point until I die, barrel roll's mobility is less useful and its movement forces me off the point I'm trying to defend). It's definitely worth playing around with both. Regeneration reactor is pretty much strictly inferior to turbo reactor, which provides an insane amount of regen over the course of a match. On the other hand, large reactor makes it significantly harder to surprise blow you up. I favor large reactor (scouts have survivability problems), but would recommend you play with both. I highly recommend turning thrusters for close-range fighters. The benefits are obvious: the sharper your turn, the faster you can get the guy in your sights (and the faster you can whip around a satellite or asteroid). On long-range fighters, I tend to favor regeneration thrusters. Power thrusters seem a bit of a trap; they do nothing regeneration thrusters don't do better unless you're having trouble reaching the satellite from spawn, in which case you should really finish upgrading regeneration thrusters and/or barrel roll and/or booster recharge. Speed thrusters seem unnecessary given the scout's excellent engine efficiency (i.e. power drain per second while boosting). Any target you can't catch without speed thrusters is probably a target the gunships should be taking care of anyway. Your t3 engine upgrade should complement your choice of thrusters. If you're planning to hug satellites, it's a good idea to pick up double bonus turning. If you're going more for an interceptor/light dogfighter playstyle, extra engine power or speed might be more your thing. Damage capacitor works great with burst cannons (since most of the time you're taking advantage of tiny firing opportunities). Other weapons want frequency capacitors because they give the biggest DPS increase despite a slight increase in power drain, which is worth it if you're a half decent shot. Long-range fighters with quads want to consider a range capacitor to better get the jump on gunships and whatnot (and also to match the range of their quads to the range of their pods, letting them open up burst damage earlier). Lightweight armor is the obvious choice. Scouts don't have enough hull to benefit much from reinforced armor, and armor penetration is too common for deflection armor to be a great choice (especially in the case of slug railguns, which are one of the scout's harder counters). Directional shield is not my thing because of the way it works. In order to shove shields around, you push the shield button - which means shields go in a cycle instead of instantly supporting the arc you need them to. This can leave you with a half second of no shields to the front, which can result in lasers in your face. Quick-charge shield, on the other hand, can regen a lot of shield power over the course of the match... if there isn't a whole lot of shield penetration going around. Distortion field, even after tomorrow's patch, is the best option for surviving a bunch of damage over a long period of time. As for crew members... Rapid Reload is bad. The 8% recharge rate comes out to less than a quarter of a second, which will not make a difference ever. Pinpointing, on the other hand, is amazing - +6% accuracy is probably the best passive in the game right now. Improved kill zone is also great, but not strictly necessary - you can drop it if it means getting a better copilot ability or something. Extra ammo is situationally amazing - it will almost certainly come up in any match where you use pods (if you don't run out, you need to use them more), and it comes up fairly often with clusters. Responsive Turning and Power to Shields are the best defensive passives. Shield regeneration means less if you're not alive to enjoy it, and damage reduction is simply worse than evading the hit entirely. For pubs, this means you get Nadia, who is excellent. Tactical crew member is really a toss-up. Get someone without dampening (you'll be in the guy's face anyway) and you'll be fine. Efficiency is always better than pool size when it comes to engines and weapons. 2V-R8 and Yuun are the obvious choices here, unless you're for some reason never running out of weapon power (in which case I'd suggest shooting more) or engine power (in which case I'd suggest boosting more). For copilot abilities, you probably want bypass. It's simply the best offensive cooldown of the lot. Concentrated fire is cute, but its duration is so short that you can easily waste it if the target goes evasive. Lingering effect is often not useful because things die before it deals all of its damage. Hydro spanner is a good choice for inexperienced pilots, but an experienced pilot will simply avoid taking hull damage. Nullify is a poor choice for similar reasons, except the novice pilot won't be able to predict incoming damage well enough to use it effectively. There's no reason for a scout to need Lockdown, Servo Jammer, or Slicer's Loop unless you need to catch a particularly evasive gunship, and even then, keeping them on the run is as good as keeping them dead and bypass serves you better against other targets. The abilities that affect accuracy and evasion are cute, but for the most part unnecessary -- if you're missing, there's often something you the player can do to change the situation (get closer for more accuracy, run away from distortion field, etc). Hope you found the rambling helpful. Edited February 4, 2014 by Armonddd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zoom_VI Posted February 4, 2014 Share Posted February 4, 2014 Responding to above, which I am not going to quote. Why did you recommend Quads and pods for close quarters dogfighting? That seems extremely counter-intuitive since the tracking penalties for both are severe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Armonddd Posted February 4, 2014 Share Posted February 4, 2014 Responding to above, which I am not going to quote. Why did you recommend Quads and pods for close quarters dogfighting? That seems extremely counter-intuitive since the tracking penalties for both are severe. Because I am amazing at getting words from my brain onto the internet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jedimessiah Posted February 6, 2014 Author Share Posted February 6, 2014 Hey guys thanks for the tips and tricks. I'll definitely be making some of the changes you all recommended. I've been doing much better on my Sting the past two days especially in the new Death match mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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