Firefall Meld Thumping Strategy Guide

Firefall Meld Thumping Strategy Guide by Flying Scorpion

Okay, so a week or two ago I posted asking if anyone had any suggestions for advanced meld thumping. Here are some pictures that illustrate my theory/strategy.

Enemies

Large Melded Hissers are melee attackers. They can sometimes fly/jump forward. They can also burrow/travel underground.
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Melded Scavengers are flying mosquitoes with tentacles that use ranged attacks. They don’t have as much health as most ground units. They can shoot projectiles that slow your speed dramatically – this is especially bad for dreadnaughts.
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Explosive Melded Aranhas are a THE #1 priority enemy to take out. They have a bit more health than regular explosive aranhas and they seem to do more damage too. One of the biggest advantages to killing these enemies before any others is that the explosion will kill other nearby enemies within the blast radius.
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Grunt Raiders sound like pigs. They have long claws on their hands and a spike coming out of their back. They use melee attacks. They are kinda glitchy because they can melee attack you from far away and I’ve had one melee attack me even after he died.
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Grunt Cannoneers will stay at range and attack with slow rate of fire, high burst damage rockets. You can easily identify them by the rocket launchers on their backs.
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Grunt Roaster – looks exactly like cannoner, but run close and spit flame.
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Assault fires 3-round bursts. They are effective at even the most extreme ranges due to their impeccable accuracy for hitting stationary targets. Pretty much everyone knows what these guys look like.
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Juggernaughts have a lot of health and basically look like big Assaults. They fire mortar shells which are low rate of fire, high damage AOE attacks. Ranged attacker.
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Seigbreakers are large chosen enemies. They have pretty simple and predictable AI. When they shoot, they first charge up their shot and their gun glows red. Then they fire a burst of 3 large orbs, which travel fairly slowly but do large amounts of damage. They also crouch down and then can jumpjet towards a target, knocking the target back.
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Flying Scorpion’s 10-man strategy:

1. Aggro the mobs, don’t kill them 1 at a time.

2. Divide and conquer. I suggest to divide the area into “zones” and put players into dedicated roles for defending their zone. This cuts back on issues where enemies can “backdoor” to the thumper and dish out damage. Zones can be defined by using the natural landscape. You can also use the thumper as the center of a clock, with the meld wall being 12:00, and call out areas such as 6:00 (opposite of the meld wall), etc.

This strategy is similar to how to play league of legends. Players in league of legends defend their base. There are certain routes enemies can take to approach their base, and these are called “lanes”. Players will commit themselves to defending/patrolling a certain lane, killing all mobs that approach them. If a player abandons their lane, it becomes vulnerable to attack. Now with Firefall, there aren’t lanes but the enemies will consistently come from certain directions, depending upon where you place the thumper, and the landscape. Use the AI to your advantage, because spawns approach the thumper in STRAIGHT LINES. The AI is predictable, so this is why I suggest picking a “zone”.

Some of the players should be dedicated to staying AT THE THUMPER. These players are the last defense against any enemies that find a “backdoor”. These players should have powerful close-range weapons, AOE abilities, and shields that they can use to defend the thumper from ranged attacks. Engineers and Dreads are ideal for this role.

General Notes

I believe that a Bio should not use poison clouds of any kind in advanced meld thumping. It obscures teammates vision and being able to see the enemies is important.

RegardingRecons….this class is something I used to be iffy about. After the recent buff to recons I can see them being a viable addition to a team again – however I’m not sure if it would work well in a 5 man team. Recons can ALMOST one-shot kill a chosen assault with a perfectly lined up headshot. They can also do the same to a jugger or seigbreaker, which helps teammates big time with taking these enemies out fast. A recon can do one thing exceptionally well though – take out exploders and fliers. This is the main idea – stay up high with a good view of the area, and take out high priority targets that your teammates miss or that are far away.

More Enemy Information To Come

If you have any screenshots of enemies that I haven’t upload yet, or better ones, please post them here and I’ll use them in the main post. If you have any information or suggestions, please feel free to share as well. I’m still learning how to do this and I have YET to get an advanced thumper to 100% capacity near the meld, but I will someday! (without zerging it with like 40 players).

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