Evolve Meteor Goliath and General Monster Play Guide

Evolve Meteor Goliath and General Monster Play Guide by Evolve_Straps

Hey guys! Let me start off with stating that I love this game, and have extremely high hopes that it will be successful in the coming years. I started off by playing this game when it first came out and have logged over 100 hours into the game since then (I know that may not sound like a lot but that’s almost all exclusively Monster play) and fell victim to soon to be 20/30/45 minute wait times and stopped playing. Anyways, I’ve seen quite a few guides on here recently and thought the idea sounded pretty helpful for some of the newer players to this game. Especially a Monster guide since I see a lot of posts on here describing peoples distaste with playing the Monster.

Briefly getting into why you should take my advice at all, I consider myself a pretty decent Monster player. I currently sit at 66 and 0 as my record for being Meteor Goliath and I attribute a lot of that to my play style. So below you’ll find the best information that I feel I can provide at the moment relating to overall Monster play and as well as direct advice towards playing the amazing and hulking Meteor Goliath.

Before Matchmaking:

There are bots and custom games available for a reason, use them to your advantage. Before I started playing Meteor Goliath as well as any Monster I’ve tried using in matchmaking I play several custom games. I play these games and make them increasingly harder as I go through games. I start off by just seeing where I’m at and playing a normal set game under all its normal rules, once I do this and gauge where I’m at I proceed to the next game, at this point I’m changing the settings to favor the hunters, that’s it. So now this round they do more damage and are overall just better. The next step is to remove strikes for them completely, going into each fight and them having no reduced health or being able to kill them completely if they have two strikes. Then I play against the hardest Hunter combo for the particular Monster. Once I’ve won a few of these rounds in a row, I concentrate on only winning at Stage 2, and then I only win at Stage 1. This normally takes about 12 or more games with the same monster under these conditions to feel comfortable going into matchmaking against real players.

Overall Monster Advice:

1) There are currently only four maps. If you play a decent amount or even below that each week you should know by now what the general lay out of these maps are, if you don’t the first thing you should do is play matches for awhile with the map open (tab key) to learn. Know the best pathway to go (for you) that will provide you with food and with the ability to take quick cuts across the map for incoming Hunters. I tend to 100% stick to the outer rim of all the maps until I see the Hunters getting close to me (you need to be constantly refreshing smell) at which I turn around and quickly cut to the other side using all moves and traversal at my disposal and rinse/wash/repeat, until I’m Stage 3.

2) The game time is incredibly long, don’t ever get caught up worrying about the timer, don’t take your time by any means, but use this as an advantage to keep away from the Hunters and keep a good pace of moving. Don’t ever go out of your way for food, know your path based off of the knowledge of the maps and know which food to stop for and when to move on. If a creature/food is in front of you but it veers to the right and starts running in a different direction, you need to move on and keep going forward. Every second counts when it comes to high level play and taking 3/4 seconds to now use a traversal/move to kill and eat this thing the Hunter is just that closer to you.

3) When evolving you need to always make sure that you find an area in your current direction that provides good terrain and cover for you to evolve. Generally in good cases of Hunter play they can catch up to you in the 7/8 second of down time, or at least surround your area and prepare to doom you. Due to this area selection should always be on your mind (prior to Stage 3 because they camp the relay at that point) for fighting or evolving because it does make a huge difference. For example cave areas because certain Hunters cannot use their aerial strike move or wide open areas that provide the Hunters with little cover and structures they can hover on.

4) When finding yourself in the dome and depending on your area it’s a good strategy to try to push the battle to one side of the dome and have the ability to quickly traversal to the other side for armor gain on near by food and then rinse/wash/repeat. I would recommend doing this when you have about a bar or two left of armor as to not dip into your health.

5) Know where the buffs are in each map and which ones fit the current situation. For example a damage/cool down buff when entering a stage 3 fight, at this point the entire map is yours to roam except for the power relay area, take 30 seconds to go get the buff. If the Hunters you’re playing against are particularly good at straddling the structures and moving up and down them quickly make sure you use the 60% climb buff to counteract their movement. If you simply are having a hard time keeping on them I suggest getting the melee hit buff that slows the Hunters. This all of course depends on your monster selection and what their abilities/character build are to the current situation.

6) Borderline situational awareness when domed. Your goal should be to always hit Stage 3, so when you find yourself in an early dome your first action should be to down a Hunter as quickly as possible and be using point #4 on this list to keep them away from your health and then getting the hell out of there when the dome goes down due to you downing a Hunter. Never stay to try and get that extra strike that you think you can get really quick especially with the way the drop timer works now and letting Hunters return to the fight so quickly.

7) You need to be constantly moving in dome fights, with the area you’re fighting in, hopefully on a side of the dome to make getting armor quicker when you jump to the other side, like mentioned at point #4.

8) Try to discern early on which Hunter in the party of four is the weakest link. You’re going to notice someone that doesn’t move fast enough, has poor use of the jet pack, generally stays on the floor, and/or constantly moves towards and gets on top of other Hunters. Target these people first every dome, every fight and take them out of the game (eat the body if you can, Laz can be an annoyance). 3 versus 1 is going to be much easier no matter what combo of Hunters is left.

9) Change the field of view of the monster to the full 120 degrees available in the settings. You’re gonna wonder why this isn’t mentioned more regularly.

10) Use Sneak Attack as much as you can, if you’re able to get a Hunter on his own, instead of trying to hit him with moves you need to pounce on him for continuous damage and then use your abilities right when another Hunter breaks them out of it to down that Hunter.

Meteor Goliath Advice:

1) Abilities – I use the same abilities every game and get them in the same order. You’ll see this is probably where I deviate a lot from other Goliath players. I start off by putting 1 point into Rock Throw, 2 points into Leap Smash, and 1 point into Charge. At Stage 2 I max out both Rock Throw and Leap Smash, so that means 2 points into Rock Throw and 1 point into Leap Smash. When I hit Stage 3 I max out Charge by putting the remaining two points into the ability. I never use Fire Breath, I tried using it early on and found that it’s a wasted slot for Meteor Goliath and I think Goliath as well, but the main point of not using for Meteor Goliath is that each of his moves apply a burn effect so there’s no point to be using Fire Breath to apply it and it doesn’t do enough up front damage to be worth it. One of your moves should almost always be available and taking time to use Fire Breath just slows down your burst. On top of this Hunters at high level play are pretty good at keeping separated so that you aren’t hitting more than one of them with a move anyways. I’ll get into their individual use later on.

2) Perks – I cannot tell you enough how much these matter and how much their selection helps. I play with the same three perks every single game. Now I would have mentioned this in the overall Monster advice but I felt I didn’t have enough knowledge of other Monsters to say this is the end all be all of perks. For tier 1 I select Brawler for its 18% speed increase to climb speed, 6% traversal cool down reduction, and the 5% damage reduction. Tier 2 I get Mutated Recovery for the 15% ability cool down reduction. Tier 3 I select Evolved Recovery for the 20% ability cool down reduction. Overall the main point here is stacking the ability cool down perks to make the ability selection pointed out #1 on this list to make sense. With the constant 35% boost to cool down reduction its going to make sure you always have some ability available.

3) Movement & Use of Abilities – To stay out of dome range use Charge and Leap Smash regularly to get away from the Hunters. These moves go farther and faster then the moves of the regular Goliath. In fights I mainly use Charge to push a Hunter away from others and then quickly use Rock Throw to hit them out of the air when they start using jet pack and finish with Leap Smash and by this point Charge is available again and you should be able to use it to burst down your first Hunter. At this point it’s a rinse/wash/repeat kinda method. The idea is to keep constant damage on as many hunters as you can when as you try to down your first Hunter if you can’t manage to pull him away. If you’re having a hard time getting a single Hunter down you need to start applying damage everywhere. For example you could Rock Throw the Trapper, and then Leap Smash the Support and then Charge the Medic/Assault or attack the Trapper again. Eventually this will catch up with the Medic and you’ll find yourself looking at two Hunters with half health and you’ve got two abilities available.

3a) Charge – I use Charge as a move to keep away from the Hunters as to not be domed, to push the weakest Hunter away from the group in an attempt to burst someone down, or to simply apply heavy damage when Rock Throw and Leap Smash are not available. I don’t know if many of you are aware but you can stop the charge motion by hitting the S key to go backwards at any time during the ability.

3b) Rock Throw – I use Rock Throw to down elite wildlife, great for knocking hunters out of the air (try to aim where they’re going to be, not where they are), and deal splash damage to multiple Hunters.

3c) Leap Smash – Leap Smash is used as my main damage dealer, it’s perfect to get to Hunters that have distanced themselves from you that you’re trying to single focus down or its great to use it to quickly switch to another Hunter after Charging a hunter into an away direction. It’s also great at immediately doing more damage to someone you’ve just charged.

4) Try to keep Hunters on the ground. Them going up and down structures slowly is definitely a huge annoyance and it’s going to make it difficult to burst anyone down. Rock Throw is obviously a good move for this, then charge them away from the structure and continue to lay into them.