Gotham City Impostors Countering OP Tactics Guide

Gotham City Impostors Countering OP Tactics Guide by kxizm

This post will aim to be a friendly help to those of you who are just stumped on a certain tactic, loadout, or strategy. I’ll keep this updated as the meta in the game changes and we get new weapons/gadgets from DLC.

You shouldn’t plan on playing a game like this with the mindset of simply reacting to everyone. This game is all about having fun. Play your own style. Once in a while, or maybe even often, a certain playstyle will cause you some major problems. If it becomes too much of an issue, than I suggest having a loadout designed to counter them so you can switch midgame if it becomes a problem.
Now obviously, you won’t be able to include all the counters into one loadout, I’m just listing options here. Go with as many as you can, or as many as you feel comfortable with.
Make sure you’re comfortable with the changes you plan on making. Changing your own playstyle to one you’re not familiar with, especially mid-game, will not likely result in your doing better in a game where you were having trouble when you were playing your preferred playstyle.

Contents

Mighty + Glider Rig
Ninja Smoke Bomb
Skater + Shotgun
Campers
Loadout Decisions

1. Mighty + Glider Rig

I think the biggest QQ for nerfs right now is about Mighties running the Glider Rig with Armor.
This is what 90% of those are going to be running:
Build Name: Mighty Rig

• Ready Weapon: Jackhammer
• -Mod: Extended Magazines
• Backup Weapon: Dawn Patrol
• -Mod: Reflex Sight
• Support Item: Body Armor
• Gadget: Glider Rig
• Body Type: Mighty
• Fun Fact #1: Horse Healthy
• Fun Fact #2: Hard Target
• Rampage: Kill Crazy

There are a few things you can to do to counter these guys. The first few of which don’t require you to switch loadouts.
–Stay Alert
–Stay Aloft
–Stay Away
–Aim for the head
–Group up[from Hitzel]
These first three only require you to change your playstyle and approach a little bit.

By ‘Stay Alert,’ I mean you need to have situational awareness. This can be in the form of seeing the shadows on the ground, hearing the noise as they dive-bomb you or someone close, or even just seeing them flying around the map at a distance. Obviously the farther away you notice them, the more time you’ll have to react, but even if you just hear them as they dive for your face, you should have enough time to start reacting. Start bringing your gun up to fire or throw your pipebomb. If you’re not caught completely unawares, you’ll have a much better chance at bringing this guy down.

‘Stay Aloft.’ By staying high you remove some of their advantage. They have less vertical space with which to work with. You’ll (hopefully) be able to see them coming a bit farther off allowing you to easily increase your situational awareness, giving you the upper hand. On the other hand, staying elevated can turn you into a bigger target, but with experience, you’ll be able to decide when you need to be on the roof looking for your bullets to hit this guy in the face or down on the ground in cover.

I’m not even necessarily a fan of the ‘Stay Away’ option under most circumstances. I think that in general most people don’t run away when they really should. Most people don’t even consider this an option. There is only one option for these people – Fire more bullets until I respawn so I can fire more bullets..
By running and staying away, you can give yourself the advantage here. The more space between you and him, the more chances you have to stay alive. This option is helped if you or one on your team has the Targeting Goggles giving you his location virtually all the time. Don’t underestimate the value of living to fight another day.

I was sad to break my alliteration here, but just aiming for the head is very effective against the Mighty. As he’s flying toward you, his head is most of the target there. It sux if he’s running Hard Target, but then he’s not running Kinda Bulletproof, so normal bullet hits will do more damage than the usual Mighty Rig loadout (that uses Kinda Bulletproof instead of Hard Target). If you notice a Mighty is running Hard Target, it’s worth it to try to remember which ones are running Hard Target and not try for headshots on those Mighties.

Grouping up
Firing Squad tactics wreck Mighty Gliders. Simply put, just get some kind of trap ready and coordinate with your team to skeet shoot the Mighties before they get to you. If there’s more than one, spread out and let the remainder(s) get caught in your traps and become easy clean ups for your team. Remember, you know where they are going to land, so get your stun traps placed accordingly. IMO, Bear Traps actually work the best, because they stay there forever and you get two of them per player. (credit to Hitzel)

Now there are some more options, but are going to be loadout-specific. Meaning that you either need to already have these in your loadout or switch to them if the Mighty-Rig setup becomes too much of a problem.
–Hatchet
–Air Space Denier
–Thick-Headed
–Boomerang
–Weapon Counters

Using the Hatchet isn’t going to be for everyone. Yes, the Mighty is going to be mighty hard to miss compared to the other body types, but it’s still going to be a problem for a lot of ppl to use. It has a strange arc when throwing it, so it can take a while to get used to. But one-hit kills are nice for all kinds of Mighty types, not just the Glider Rig setup. Throw while they’re diving at you or right after they land (if you can take the hit) for an easy kill.

Air Space Denier may seem like a simple, easy to use, straightforward device, but its use can be surprisingly deep. When and where to place the ASD can depend on quite a lot of things. Placement will depend on playstyle, map, game mode, where firefights are currently happening, and typical enemy movement (which can depend on the player)

You basically want to put these in high traffic areas, bottlenecks, and by objectives. Mighty Rigs are sitting ducks if they come across one of these. You can bait a Mighty Rig by placing the ASD in an open space and wait near it. As the Mighty Rig dives at you, take a few pot shots at his face and when he gets zapped, finish him off. Just remember to try to keep the ASD between the two of you. There have been a few times I’ve been sitting inside the ‘safe zone’ and still gotten hit even though he still gets zapped. Esp if you’re running Speedy or Nimble you’ll want to make sure you can survive a hit if you plan on baiting the dive. Which brings us to our next option….

Thick-Headed will reduce the damage taken by the Mighty Rig dive. I’ve ever been running this and eaten a dive (as a Speedy) by a Mighty who was so sure he killed me he started running off for another vent.
I certainly wouldn’t count on this simply giving you the upper hand, but its sometimes worth it to supplement the other options you have when facing the gliders.

My all-time favorite. The Boomerang. I use this in my primary loadout, so I rarely have to change my loadout to deal with Mighty Rigs. Knocking them out of the air and them being stunned when they land gives you the opportunity to unload and mop up while they stagger around. Don’t forget you can target multiple enemies with this. I use this whenever I see Gliders no matter the range. Knocking them out of the air helps your team. I’ve gotten countless assists from FAR distance Boomerangs.

As far as weapons go, there’s not really a single weapon that counters this build. Rifles do very well against Mighties, but those can be difficult to use for a lot of players. A nice trick as a sniper might be to deploy a gnome around high traffic area on your way to a roost where you can see it. As the Mighty comes around for a dive, shoot him in the head while he’s dangling in mid-air.

2. Ninja Smoke Bomb

Here’s an example of a ninja loadout
Build Name: Gaiden

• Ready Weapon: Gatekeeper
• -Mod: Silencer
• Backup Weapon: Bear-stalker
• -Mod: 4x Scope Lens
• Support Item: Boomerang
• Gadget: Ninja Smoke Bomb
• Body Type: Speedy
• Fun Fact #1: Wallflower
• Fun Fact #2: Marksman

View Build #1829

My personal primary loadout is very similar to this except I use the Desperado (Ext Mags) with Gatekeeper (Pen Amm).
This loadout is very versatile, the ninja can sub in heavy weapons with very little penalty as he is not slowed by the weapon while invisible. He may also take Wooden Legs instead of Marksman to mitigate Bear Trap and Trap-in-the-box. Many also run a Shotgun instead of or in addition to Gatekeeper (but almost all will have the Gatekeeper). A smart Gaiden will go around behind your team and attack you from behind, picking off one or two of your teammates before going invis again.
Here are a few options with which you should find it easier to deal with a Gaiden.

As before, I’ll go over non-loadout specific options before listing the loadout-specific options.
–Stay Alert
–Stay Moving
–Stay Together
–Look Around

Staying Alert is one of your biggest tools in GCI. And you’re going to need it bigtime with an NSB user. NSB will not turn the enemy invisible. You will see their outline almost like seeing heat on pavement on hot days. Learn to spot this. The Gaiden is NOTHING while cloaked. It takes 2.1 seconds after releasing his NSB for him to be able to fire. This gives you at least 2.1 seconds to place your bullets into his little head. Now a smart Gaiden, as I said earlier will try to go around the long way to sneak up behind you to minimize the chances of someone seeing the haze (but even more terrible Gaidens are going to charge straight in thinking they are completely invisible. Please teach them to not use NSB. Teach them using bullets). Be aware that this will be their tactic. Turn around more often. Check behind you. Shoot if you’re not sure. Heck, shoot if you are sure. If a Gaiden sees you shooting at ghosts, he knows you’re watching for him. There’s a good chance he’ll turn tail for a little bit until he thinks you’re preoccupied. Stay on your toes. Shoot at ghosts. It’s in your best interest to scare this ninja as much as possible. A scared ninja is a useless ninja. Make him useless.

Credit to striderhoang for this one:
Also, you forgot to mention the audible tells of a NSB. I use it a lot (or even exclusively sometimes), and have learned to spot my own kind simply from sound. Good ninjas use the chaos of combat to mask their sound. Both active cloak and deactivating cloak have very loud sounds that give players with headphones a distinct advantage against ninjas.

Another counter to this playstyle is to simply Stay Moving. If a Gaiden is going to take all the time to go around the long way (the careful ones will) make them work to get to you. Always stay on the move. A Gaiden is unsafe out in the open. The longer it takes for him to get to you, the more of a chance he’ll be spotted or makes a mistake and decloaks in front of a Mighty on your team to eat a face full of lead.

The strength of a Gaiden is his hit-and-run guerilla style fight. This means that there is strength in numbers, so Stay Together. The more of you there are, the less likely he’s going to decloak and start shooting. I’d say under normal circumstances, if there are more than 2 of you, his odds are 50/50. And that’s if he gets the jump on you. Gaidens look for the loners. The weak ones who backed out of the fight to heal. Groups are usually more than this guy can handle.

This is basically just reiterating the first point. Looking Around more than usual will help increase your awareness, but it also makes the Gaiden nervous. He doesn’t want you to be looking at him. He wants your back to him so he can safely decloak and have time to throw his Boomerang/Hatchet/Shuriken and start shooting. I don’t care where you are or who. If you’re facing an enemy who’s using NSB, turn 360 degrees every few seconds and he’ll immediately become less effective.

Now for the loadout specific options
–Trap-in-the-box
–Bear Trap
–Motion Sensor
–Targeting Goggles
–B.O. Sniffers
–Poison Gas
–Weapon Counters

Its unfortunate, but a lot of these loadout specific counters can themselves be countered by the Gaiden.
Wooden Legs beats Trap-in-the-box and Bear Trap. Wallflower beats Motion Sensors and Targeting Goggles and B.O. Sniffers. A lot of NSB users I know don’t take Wooden Legs. They’d rather take Marksman or Kinda Bulletproof. So maybe those (Bear Trap/ Trap-in-the-box) would be better options.

Trap-in-the-box will take out a Speedy Gaiden in one hit if he’s not wearing Flak Jacket or Wooden Legs. Placing these behind you as you and your team (you did group up together as per our ‘Stay Moving’ option, didn’t you?) move through the map can pick up the kill if the Gaiden is unlucky enough to happen across it. Bear Trap is going to work similarly, but you’ll probably want to be around to finish him off.
With Wooden Legs, you’re pretty much sunk with either of these options. [I’d like someone to correct me if I’m wrong here or confirm the following, if possible] I don’t know how much damage is reduced for Trap-in-the-box and Bear Trap when Wooden Legs are used. I don’t know how much damage is added to Trap-in-the-box with Mad Bomber (although now that I think about it, I think Mad Bomber says it adds no damage to Trap-in-the-box..)

I’ve heard differing reports about wether Motion Sensor will pick up Gaidens using Wallflower. If anyone knows for sure please let me know. The more people who agree, the better. If Gaiden is using Wallflower, you may find you need another way to deal with him.

Targeting Goggles are just a good idea. Period. Whether the enemy team includes a Gaiden, a Mighty Rig or Speedy Skater or just a group of Mighties rockin’ the Motivators; Targeting Goggles are going to help. It completely nullifies NSB….providing he’s not using Wallflower. Which is unlikely. But love me some Goggles for sure. Never useless.

Which won’t be the B.O. Sniffer mod! Wallflower will hide Gaiden from someone using the Sniffer as well. But he’s not using Wallflower, you’ll still see the stink lines coming from him. It can still be hard to track him since the lines don’t continuously follow him, but he’ll be a lot easier to get a bead on, no doubt.

Poison Gas may be the way to go. This will be post-DLC and as I’m on PS3 I don’t have it yet, but I’ve heard the gas seems to be quite useful in dealing with NSB. I don’t know if it simply stops him in his tracks or decloaks him or what. If anyone knows, please post so I can update this.

Now for some weapon counters to the Gaiden. The Gaiden is almost positively squishy. A good splash damage weapon will be phenomenal. Try using the Thunder Dragon (or the Bombardier if it ever gets any love) for some exploding ninja soup. Shotguns are a pretty good way to go as well. Most Gaidens will want to get relatively close to you (otherwise they wouldn’t really need NSB in the first place..) so try bringing a Chaperone to the party. Or try to Persuade him to change his mind about killing you. Or….. (I could go on with the lame jokes, but my wife just poked me in the ribs which is the sign to stop with the terribad humor). If you damage him while he’s invisible, you’ll see the numbers above his head making it a bit easier to track him. If you have a weapon with a big magazine, don’t feel bad about spraying it a bit to make sure he’s not around or to give yourself or your team an idea about where he is.

3. Skater + Shotgun

Build Name: Shoddy Shotty Skaterz

• Ready Weapon: Persuader
• -Mod: Expanded Magazines
• Backup Weapon: Gatekeeper
• -Mod: Muzzle Break
• Support Item: Body Armor
• Gadget: Rollerskates
• Body Type: Nimble
• Fun Fact #1: Fleet-footed
• Fun Fact #2: Wooden Legs
• Rampage: Kill Crazy

View Build #1861

I haven’t run across nearly enough of these guys to go as in depth as the others, but I’ll do my best.
A lot of the ones I see are running Body Armor, and most of the others run Shuriken or Energy Drink. The key to this loadout is going to be mobility. They’ll run up to close enough for their Shotgun to be effective and strafe fire till you’re dead. Or they’re dead.

Once again, loadout non-specifics before loadout specific options.

–Stay Aloft
–Stay Together
–Know the map
–Keep Distance
–Turtle

So the first thing to do here is to Stay Aloft. This isn’t the best idea since it will usually leave you in close quarters, which is where the Shotgun is most useful. However, you’ll be at the advantage since you know he’s coming. Set some traps, heal up, or draw a bead on him while he’s on the ground. There’s always a few things you can do to prepare for him.

Staying Together The shotgun won’t be able to bring down lots of people really fast, so having more than one person around will help even the odds.

Another thing that will help you in almost any situation, but this one specifically is Knowing the map. Knowing the map is a bigger topic than I want to deal with here, but I’ll go through a few of them here.
Know where the high traffic areas are in general for each map.
Know where the skaters are going to go. A lot of times the Skater will have a sort of track. The skater will want to keep his speed up at all times, so having a loop or pattern around the map as he dodges in and out of combat with his shotgun. The more you know about this track, or the more you can predict the track, the more you can anticipate his movements and be ready for him.
There’s a lot more than just this that goes with knowing a map. I want to do a more in-depth write up about this later. There’s a lot that can be said about knowing a map and what you can do with that knowledge. But for the sake of this already ridiculously long post, I’ll save that for another thread.

If you Keep Your Distance, you’ll have the advantage here. Do your best to keep your distance and his Shotgun will be useless.

Playing the Turtle. Play defensively if the Skater is giving you trouble. There are defensible areas in all of the maps. If you have enough of your team in your party, you can do so as a team and Turtle up near a Health Station or by a Care Package or with Motivators. But playing defensively doesn’t necessarily mean that you should Turtle up in a room for the whole game. Playing defensively means mitigating your risks (another topic I could devote another entire thread to). Put simply, you want to be careful.
Don’t venture into territory where you know 2 or 3 enemies will zero in on you as soon as you turn the corner.
Minimize you’re sprinting. Too many players sprint from spawn to where they died last only to die before they get there because they couldn’t bring their gun up in time to defend themselves.
Check the corners. If you blindly rush around corners, you’re going to die more often than not. Check your corners and you’ll more often than not find enemies with their pants down.
And before I ramble on, I’ll go on..

..to loadout specific counters to the Shotty Skater.
–Pipe Bomb
–Impact Grenade
–Boomerang
–Shuriken
–Trap-in-the-box
–Bear Trap
–Body Armor
–Grapple Gun
–Inflatable Insoles
–Spring Boots
–Glider Rig
–Body Type
–Horse Healthy
–Hard Target
–Weapon Counters

oooookay so a lot to go over here. I’m going to try to group them up a little bit to not take up too much room.

Pipe Bomb and Impact Grenade both can be used to soften up or finish off a Skater. The Pipe Bomb is going to be the harder of these two to use effectively against the speed the Skater is trying to abuse, but does more damage than the Impact Grenade. The Pipe Bomb will be able to OHK a Speedy Skater.

The Boomerang is going to take away the Skaters most valuable tool – mobility. Take away the mobility of a skater and they fall very quickly. The Shuriken and the Boomerang can lock on to a fleeing Skater and finish him off. It can be hard to get away from a Shurken or Boomerang once locked on. The Shuriken does 50 damage and can be thrown up to 3 times in a row at the same target quickly. That’s a possible 150 damage before he gets into range with his shotgun. One hit from the Shuriken will leave a Speedy at 50% health. That’s a big advantage for you.

A Skater is probably going to take Wooden Legs rendering Trap-in-the-box and Bear Trap all but moot. I’m not sure the exact numbers of how this affects damage and stun. If anyone has done any sort of testing and knows the numbers, let me know and I’ll post them here.
However, if you know or think the Skater doesn’t have Wooden Legs, these are going to be big assets to your fight against him. Place the Boxes in high traffic areas where you know they’ll be. Try to place them in a place where it’s hard to see or just around a corner where they wont have time to react. The Bear Traps are going to be all but useless unless you can kill them while they fight to get out. Try placing them to the side or behind you in a firefight and keep an eye out for the Skater to come around.

I’ll talk a bit more about Body Armor in a bit. Along with a heavier body type and Horse Healthy, Body Armor can help keep you alive just a bit longer against the massive damage you’ll receive from the end of his boom-stick. …I guess I’ll just talk about them now. A heavier body type will give you more health against the shotgun, but it also makes you a significantly bigger target. There’s a balance there that will be different on your playstyle you should find. Horse Healthy can be pretty amazing. It definitely benefits the Burly and Mighty SIGNIFICANTLY more than the other body types. Healing faster at the Health Stations is just icing on the cake. A Mighty with Horse Healthy and Body Armor can take one or two more hits from the shoddy shotty before biting the dust. That gives you quite the advantage here.
Hard Target can kind of be thrown in here. It kinda sux to get a headshot from a shotgun. No one likes getting one-shotted. If you want to try to make sure you don’t, this could be useful.

I want to talk about Grapple Gun, Inflatable Insoles, Glider Rig and Spring Shoes all together here. These will try to allow you to outmaneuver the Skater. As mobile as he is, his biggest weakness is vertical space. A good Skater can control horizontal space pretty well. To keep distance between you and his shotgun, employ any one of these gadgets to get the most out of the vertical space.

Ok. Weapons to use against the Shoddy Shotty Skaters: The Thunder Dragon with Missiles is probably going to be the most effective. The splash damage will be helpful with all his running and jumping around you while he gets his sights straightened on you. Oh, and until they feel the need to fix it, the smoke from the explosions can give you a nice smokescreen as well.
4. Campers

Wooohoo. I was hoping this wouldn’t be so much of a problem in this game. The map designs seem to suppress this tactic to some degree, but no one’s perfect (certainly not Monolith). I apologize in advance for how long this is going to be. If you don’t want to read the wall of text, I won’t take offense if you jump down and look at the bullet points. Lets look at what we’re up against here.

First lets define what we mean by camping. For now, we’ll assume that any kind of camping is included here (I’m looking at you, snipers!) Now, before you start jumping up and down on your keyboards, let me just say – I’m certainly not against sniping. I’m not even against camping while sniping.
“What?”, you say! “If you say you’re ok with camping while sniping, that means you’re ok with camping!”
I’d tell you that is correct. I certainly am ok with camping. Some forms of camping, anyway. Usually when I snipe, I’ll grab one or two kills and move on. It’s good to stay moving in any FPS in general, and sniping is no exception, contrary to popular belief.
Unfortunately, popular belief is that to snipe, you need to hole up in a corner or up on a ledge somewhere. Spend as much time as possible up there picking people off.

So before I really just ramble off to an eternity (too late!) I’ll continue on with all this.
Ok, so camping (sniping or otherwise) is simply a person placing themselves in an easily defensible position with optimal lines of sight of the map. These are usually corners or ledges with a good view of heavy traffic areas or bottlenecks or objectives.

Here’s an all too common example of what happens when someone is confronted with a camper.

Newb1: La lala I’m running down the middle of Crime Alley looking for someone to shoot with my shiny new Falcon Blade. Well… I guess when I find someone I won’t shoot them with it, but I’ll certainly cut a ninja!

Camper2: Well look at that. A guy just waltzing down the middle of my favorite street. I think I’ll take his head off now

POW!!!!! and the camper gets the kill. Now the interesting thing here is the response.

Newb1: Ouch! That hurt. I’m so gonna get that guy! Where was he? Ok… I was right around….

Camper2: Again? Again!

POW!!!!

The number of times this cycle can repeat is pretty astounding (I admit myself, I’m a bit ashamed to admit how often I’m blinded by my rage and fall into this pattern).

So here, FINALLY, are some things you can do to combat campers.

–Use different routes
–Counter snipe
–Work the angle
–Draw him out

Use different routes to get to a camper. A camper is going to position himself so there are minimal routes to his location. What you want to do is make sure he’s either focused on action down another route, or take a lesser used route to get to him. And under no circumstances should you take the same route 2x in a row when he kills you. He’ll be looking for you.

Attack him at range by counter sniping him. This doesn’t necessarily mean you must use a rifle, just attack at range without getting too close. This option doesn’t give you that much of the advantage. If you’re shooting at him, he’s most likely shooting at you. This is probably the least safe option, so if you must do this, and sometimes you must, at least try to time it so he’s firing at someone else.

Another option you have is very similar to the previous one. Engage him on an angle. Find an angle on him where he’s not looking at you straight down the lane. Its hard to give a good example of this without having a picture of a map I can use. I’ll look around for one to give a clear example of what I mean.

Drawing the camper out is a pretty good strategy. Just be careful to avoid his lanes for long enough and he’ll have to come down and face you on your terms. This requires a bit of teamwork since just one person avoiding his lanes isn’t going to keep the camper from getting kills off your other teammates. But on the other hand, it keeps you free and clear of his crosshairs. Give it a try tho.

Ok so in Crime Alley, you have a rooftop behind the spawn point (Jokerz spawn, I think). Someone up there has few routes to his location he needs to cover to keep himself safe. This isn’t the place place for him to be, really, since the lanes he has control over aren’t particularly high trafficked. But as an example, I think it works (there’s a better example on Gotham Power, but would be a bit harder to explain, methinks).
Now a different route to get to him might be to go around the back alley and grapple up right next to him. Avoiding his lane will be key. Working the angle on this location is simply finding a spot where you have line of sight on him from a spot where its hard to see you or from a place where he wont be looking very often. Closer to the center of map, you can get onto the storefront awnings and get a shot at him from there.

Here’s some loadout specific options to use against a camper.
–Targeting Goggles
–Pipe Bomb/Impact Grenade
–Shuriken
–Trap-in-the-box
–Inflatable Insoles
–Spring Boots
–Grapple Gun
–Glider Rig
–Weapons Counters

This section will be shorter than the list makes it seem.
Knowing where the camper is will make it that much easier to avoid or take him down. Targeting Goggles will be the easiest way to keep tabs on him as often as possible. Knowing his exact location like this will make it easy to avoid or confront as you see fit.

I’ll talk about Pipe Bomb, Impace Grenade, and Thunder Dragon together as their properties are very similar for this situation. The Camper is most likely in a corner and the more walls around an enemy, the more effective explosive weapons will be. Even if you aim for above/behind/to the side of him, you’ll most likely hit him with splash damage. The Thunder Dragon will probably be the most useful here since you can all but spam the Missiles.

The Shuriken will let you engage the Camper at quite a distance. Use this to your advantage. You can throw 3 quickly in succession for 50 damage each. That’ll easily kill the smaller body types, and soften up the bigger ones.

If you know a Camper keeps going back to the same place, that’s your cue to leave a present behind. The perfect idea for a Trap-in-the-box. This really only works if the Camper actually goes back there, doesn’t see the Trap, and either dies from the initial explosion or you’re there to clean up after the bOOm (so it works best if he’s a Speedy type or you’re waiting for him). If you know the spawns well enough to know where he’ll probably be coming from, you can even surprise him on his way back.

The Camper has placed himself in such a way that he wants to have more advantageous situations than the enemy. Use the tools you have to disrupt his plans. That’s where Inflatable Insoles, Spring Boots, Grapple Gun, and Glider Rig comes in. You can use these tools to get around him or surprise him from a direction he’s not suspecting. Use the Spring Boots or Inflatable Insoles to jump from a direction where normally you wouldn’t be able to jump up. Use the Grapple Gun to get in behind him quickly. The Glider Rig will enable you to get close to him without him knowing what hit him.

5. Loadout Decisions

This is a different guide than the ones I’ve posted so far. Instead of giving tips on how to combat certain tactics, strategies and other specific loadouts, I’m going to try to write a guide aimed towards new players, but that more veteran players can come away with something as well.

This guide will help give you the basic reasons how and why you will build your loadout. I’m aiming for this to be short and sweet to get you back into the chaos as fast as possible. First we’ll talk about the decisions you’ll need to make before making your primary loadout. Next, well go over effectively utilizing all of your loadouts (even if you haven’t unlocked a lot, or even any, custom loadouts yet, this should still be helpful). Then we’ll begin the real meat of this post: synergy. After that I’ll a few more brief things to say and we’ll call it a day.

Decisions, decisions
-What kind of player are you? Do you run for objectives? Do you hang back and attack at a distance? Do you like to flank the enemy without them being any the wiser? Do you wade into battle bathing in the blood, gore, and glory? Do you hand out sandwiches to your teammates and tell them they look nice in their banana hammock?

All these questions and more are simply trying to find out one thing – What’s your playstyle? It’s different for each person, and it’s different for each game. Heck, it can be different between game modes on the same game. You’ll need to find a playstyle you’re comfortable with. And because of this, I suggest playing each of the default loadouts a number of times each and figuring out what you liked or didn’t like about each of them. Try to piece together a loadout you think you’d really enjoy playing. For the first 30-40 levels, I’d say you’re still finding your playstyle. By that time you’ll have plenty of unlocks, probably set up 2 or 3 very different loadouts that intrigue you. Maybe you unlocked the Deep Freezer and found it wanting. Maybe you grabbed the Spring Boots and absolutely loved them. Find the things that make you enjoy playing this game and use them. They will determine your playstyle.

Utilizing your Loadouts
This is how I view loadouts: I have one loadout (we’ll call this the Primary Loadout) that I use EVERY game. At least to start. The rest of my loadouts are support. Not that they all have the motivator/Care Package deal, but that they all address a specific need that my team might have or are an answer to a problem my team might run into. All the loadouts play quite similarly except for minor differences.
On one, I have Wallflower in case the other team is Tagging me often enough with the Goggles. On the same one, I run the Boomerang for the Speedy Skater Shotgun combo. Another has the Air Space Denier for Mighty Gliders (Boomerang also works wonders for this!). I have another loadout with Goggles that I use mostly on the objective modes for defending objectives and such.
The point here is not to copy me or to have the answer to everything in one single loadout. In fact, I rarely ever switch to those loadouts. Only switch to them if your team is suffering because of a problem.

Find out which loadouts give you the most problems to play against consistently (again, this’ll take some time) and build a solution for them into one of your supporting loadouts. You don’t have to have one solution per loadout, either. I use the same supporting loadout to answer more than one problem routinely.

Synergy
Ah..the meat and potatoes. What I want to talk about here (wow this is already longer than I wanted it) is synthesis. Complementing. Your loadout, I mean.
You want your loadout to complement itself. Items you place in your loadout need to work together with other things in your loadout. This is why you see so many Mighties rocking’ the Horse Healthy Fun Fact 1. It complements them so well. They gain the most benefit from it.
Now what you need to do first, before you build your Primary loadout, is to define yourself as a player in this game in this game mode (if there’s a difference in the way you play between modes). As I talked about in the Decisions, Decisions section, this will give you your playstyle. Pick items that complement that playstyle and cover your shortcomings. Play to your strength more than your weakness though. You want to build a loadout where you will win if you have the advantage and support your loadout with items that will allow you somehow gain the advantage, whether that be flanking or soaking damage or attacking at range.

If you like to flank, it would make more sense for you to take the Skates or Ninja Smoke Bomb than it would for you to take Targeting Goggles or Glider Rig. If you like to wade into the action, you’ll probably want something like the Body armor rather than Motion Sensor.
If you feel like your taking just a little too much damage for your liking, tweak your loadout with the Fun Facts, or flat out change an Item or Gadget. Dying too often to Trap-in-the-box? Wooden Legs is for you, my friend.

Weapons are just as much a part of this decision making process as the rest of the items in your loadout should be. More than almost anything, I think weapons will help you define (or even find) your playstyle. You’re not going to bring a Sniper Rifle like the Buccaneer into the middle of the action. And you’re not going to try to snipe with a submachine gun. ……..well, at least not with the Desperado…..

Closing:

It’s hard to overestimate how much situational awareness will help you to overcome enemies. This is anything from knowing what an enemy teams loadouts are to knowing when spawns swap (on TDM) to something as simple as knowing where the firefights are going on. Know your enemy. Knowledge is the key to victory. This is as true for wars as it is for games.

Play smart, and these ‘OP’ loadouts will be free kills and XP for you.