Today we have some fun little Easter Tips to give those of you who like to play Scientist, but just can't seem to find survivability in maps due to focus firing! I'll also give some pointers on the Hover-Goat 3,000.
~ Scientist Basics ~
The Scientist is very squishy. With only 100 health and a knack for being targeted first the Scientist isn't really one of those "Pick up and play" types as other players who know just how dangerous this particular class can be will do their very best to ensure you don't make it to the front lines, much less the friends you may or may not want to heal.
Knowing where to stand so that enemy fire does not reach you is a very important thing. If enemies are watching your cover and you know it, this is a great chance to warp to a different covering spot or warp to make a break for it. If multiple enemies are firing upon your cover and you are relatively safe, it can also be a sound tactic allow them to continue drawing attention to themselves. Though I try not to rely too heavily on my team for my own survival I have found myself saved more than once by just a random roaming zombie on my team who noticed an unaware target who was too busy trying to vanquish a Scientist to dodge gunfire.
Serpentining is a very good tactic as a Scientist. When trying to take down a Scientist, many players will attempt to lead you. Random and erratic moving patterns are very important to picking up. Jumping and generally spazzing out is a good idea so long as it does not interfere with getting from point A to point B. Or in other words, move randomly without slowing yourself down. Now let's get down to scoring highest in the "I healed my team" sector.
~ Healing at its best ~
If you intend to reach higher than the 400-700 area on healing you have to remember one thing:
IF YOU DECIDE TO HEAL SOMEBODY, HEAL THEM TO FULL. IF THEY GET HIT, CONTINUE TO HEAL THEM. USE GOOD JUDGEMENT ON WHEN YOU SHOULD STOP HEALING SOMEONE.
Healing one individual is called pocketing. If they aren't hurt and you are healing them, you're losing out on healing points. Healing an All-Star from low health to full health will get you around 100-150-175 healing points total if they take no additional damage. Getting them to full and finding another target to heal is where you will shine.
While this seems pretty basic, I see a lot of Scientists seem to have a difficult time understanding this concept... I can understand why as healing someone to full health can take upwards 10-20 seconds. But here's an example anyway as all too often I see Scientists doing this mistake:
Seeing a near-dead Foot Soldier, you warp to him and begin healing him. You see an even more near-death All-Star nearby and go to heal that All-Star instead. ..... Oops! You just not only lost out on maintaining heal points by neglecting the aforementioned Foot Soldier, but you also left that Foot Soldier half-dead, who will now run off and probably get smoked in no time flat. Not only this, but I have seen these Scientists do this, then stop healing the All-Star and move on to engage an enemy in a fire fight!!!! .... !!!<_>!!!! WHAAAAAT?!
Stick by that Foot Soldier and get him to full health!!!! It's worth way more points, most especially so if that All-Star you're just dying to heal sticks around! Then you get credit for fully healing the Foot Soldier AND that All-Star. :o Foot Soldiers aren't patient and will run off if you stop healing them. And if that All-Star DIES because you didn't run off to heal him, you can warp to and revive said All-Star to full health anyway, enemy fire permitting.
If you seriously want more than 700 healing, heck... if you want more than 2,000 healing which is so easy to pull off, you need fully top off the players you begin to heal. pick a target and heal them to full before picking a new heal buddy. Do this enough and people will actually come looking for you to heal them because they find that you show up and help them and disappear when they are fully healed as to not get in their way. (Try to find them before they have to go looking for you.)
You must be like a Shadow Warrior - Sneaky and silent, healing in the dark. Your weapons are excellent for defense, and if your heal target is rushed by the plant he is engaging, you can usually sweep them out in one well placed shot most especially so if they didn't realize the Zombie they were rushing had a healer with them. Other than that, you should get your buddy to full health and resume looking for patients to heal, often times using one of your two reserve warps to "Zoop" out of visibility of any offending plants who may have noticed you from far away. (Though I tend to heal out of line of sight, and if I see someone who may be aiming at me, I try to position my heal buddy in between them and I :P lol)
Most importantly, don't get in the way of your heal buddy. Don't stand in front of them. Don't stand close to them. Don't jump on their heads as I do lol they really hate that. Once you establish the heal beam, you will see that it has quite the range. Being able to keep yourself distanced from your heal buddy can keep you alive, as enemies will be forced to focus on them. It is easier to revive your body through backwards Swoocing than it is to have to dodge fire to the point of having to leave your buddy behind. Especially if it's only because someone noticed you.
(If you want to practice Swoocing, star a solo game of Gnome Bomb. Set it to Easy, set the teams to 101st Peashooter Division vs For Science! zombie team. This will ensure Peashooters bean bomb your computer scientist buddies and allow you to practice swooce-revivals while taking minimal damage. If you can successfully revive your team without dying over and over, the scientists will beat the peashooters... sometimes :P)
~ Revivals ~
Reviving is incredibly powerful. Many players aren't used to receiving a revival and will respawn in the middle of your revival of you show up too late. Performing several successful revivals (Around 10 or so I've noticed) will have you seeing downed players waiting a bit longer before respawning. I have had quite a few games where heavy revival will lead to a build up of your team as more and more players end up roaming to the location you are maintaining the health of your team at.
An example of this is at a teleporter location which is under heavy fire. So long as you are reviving your zombuddies who don't stray too far away, you're only going to get more reinforcements to bolster the pals you're keeping alive, eventually resulting in an overwhelming wave of zombies. It all comes down to you being able to stay alive to keep them alive, so to say.
-USE YOUR JUDGEMENT-
Reviving can get you busted, and hard. Many times someone stops to revive, it will get you killed. Swooce revivals are very powerful game changes, most so if you can back up and do it. But Swoocing won't save the surly Scientist who thinks he can Warp in front of 4 plants and pull off a magnificent revival. This will not only likely get you vanquished, but if you successfully pull off that revival, what do you expect the buddy you brought back to life to do? <_< Lol He's gonna get mobbed. Discretion is key. And remember, if you didn't get there in time, the player might even just respawn before he gets revived, causing you to eat a vanquish. Making you bitter towards the player you wanted to revive. And worse more, that player in specific will never know why! So if you got vanquished trying to revive, you weren't using your best judgement!
If you intend to play a heavy reviver, then you must keep your Warps close, and keep the Mega Heal Bomb ability even closer. Maintaining a pool of 2 warps is almost neccesary for those death-defying impossible revivals. So long as the coast is semi-clear (You're gonna be targeted by someone no matter what as soon as you click that warp button) it is possible to warp onto a corpse, revive it, then warp the heck outta there!!!! Not being noticed but being aware of someone who is about to be vanquished is the key to all of this.
If you see that Foot Soldier with half health is taking damage while in the close proximity to you (Close to me is being able to see their health bar), stay out of sight and wait for him to be vanquished. If you are afraid he is going to respawn quickly but are unsure of your revival speed, do not risk it. If you have practiced Swoocing, or just reviving at all (Placement of your warp on top of his body as well) then it's fine to give it a go, especially if they don't know it's coming. Reaction speeds play a heavy part in this. After the revival is done, it's time to go. If he gets vanquished again, that's on him. You gave him a second chance and if he didn't run, you can try for a third without your warps.
Know when to revive and when not to. Try to see how many enemy icons are around multiple revivals. One of the hardest things I had to learn was when not to try and revive someone. Sometimes players who are waiting for revival put their controller down and aren't even there, so if you expect some help because you have no warp to run away it could very well turn sour as the one you were able to revive is just standing there and the plant took you down with 3% health left. :P ALL YOUR BUDDY HAD TO DO WAS POKE 'EM ONCE AND YOU'D HAVE BOTH BEEN OKAY! lol
(During these times you may have already decided to fight and were ready to get vanquished anyway. Simply because you're that bad to the bone zombie revival hero and the goo blaster hits insanely hard.)
~ Warp and Heal beam tricks and tactics ~
Warp is great for fighting. It's great for getting away. Not everybody has the same play style, and what works for you is all based on your adaption style. Some are quick. Some are burly. But everyone can benefit from this little tidbit of info:
You can change your warp direction, essentially faking out a player because of the Warp Audio Cue and the inability to see which way the scientist is facing relative to the actual direction he is facing. Activate that warp, jump and change directions in the small window of time you have to fake warping straight when you'll actually warp to the left. Being aware of where cover is when you intend to warp onto a revival target is a very powerful tool when you successfully revive, come under fire, jump and activate warp, but have turned to land on a hill or over a wall. Not only will the players try to aim in the direction you were facing at the moment they saw your scientist look down to press his wearp button, but they'll have look for where you went as often this will throw you off their screen if they aimed too far opposite the way you were going.
Heal beam can be established through obstacles such as walls, floors and even rooftops. This is tough to explain and it's so situational that it may not even be worth a mention, but if the situation is safe enough, it's possible to heal your buddies who camp on top of a roof if you can jump and establish the beam. It's possible to establish a heal beam through a wall to heal someone behind it, even if you can't see them.
Essentially, if they're close enough but they're on the floor above you, it could be worth it to jump a couple of times while looking at their health bar through the wall and tapping that heal button. Sometimes it hits. And if it does, I tend to stand still, because they'll either run away, or they'll notice and stand still too. Sometimes also, they will notice and run back to whit you must re-establish the beam if they got too far.
~~~~~~~~ Hover Goat 3000 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ah the Hover-Goat. Gosh he's spunky - I would have given anything to be able to customize his hair and shades. He's probably my most favorite character ever, but his lack of customization makes him rather bland, as I very much like having my shiny gem-style characters. (Gem Iamironhead is the best hat on the planet) When playing the Hovergoat, you're going to notice a large amount of Focus Fire on you. That's because the Goat is exotic, stylish and misunderstood. He has great fire rate, he has moderate speed that can be underestimated by the way he jumps and how he bobs around, but somehow when playing as the Goat I find that I can be vanquished really REALLY quickly.
You don't have to hang your head out long before someone spots you, somehow the Goat has a magnetic appeal to other players that literally draws their fire to you, and the sooner I realized that, the sooner I realized I had to play the Goat like he was on an endless sugar rush. Fortunately for me, EA gave the goat a low-gravity mechanic on his jump that allows him to reach places in almost the same manner as the imp, it just requires more finesse. Let's begin:
----- The Hovergoat is Tony Hawk's pet (Evasive Play)-----
When you jump, hold down the jump button. By doing so, you will slow your fall after you reach the maximum height of your jump. Using this to your advantage you can actually jump to and from fences, posts and obstacles in a Tony-Hawk (Nintendo 64 version people) style play, essentially "grinding" around a level. Using your speed boost will sometimes allow you to make roof to roof jumps, though I would not recommend using your speed boost unless you're absolutely sure you won't need it again until it's ready.
Jumping around in order to play evasively works to a degree. Using erratic patterns and switching from falling slowly to falling normally can help. Oftentimes trying to focus on playing evasive will make it tough to aim (Aiming while slow falling is considerably easier for me somehow and I'm sure others will disagree). It will also make it hard to see one of those silent bean bombs that just roll around a corner. Worst so, if you're too busy trying to jump around and avoid fire, you really won't have time to fire back or assist your teammates as the longer you remain in visibility jumping around like a crazy goat on a hoverboard, the more you're gonna draw attention to yourself. Like I said, the Goat just seems to get focused on before anything else.
(Though there is a certain degree of helpfulness to dodging enemy fire, most so if you're able to fully avoid damage doing so, this exposes enemy location and allows your buddies to lay down the hurt. If your buddies don't help though, you're gonna get vanquished because you can only be lucky for so long)
Evasive hover-jumping is good tactic for taking on 1v1 enemies as landing a bead on a goat who can jump twice your height can be pretty tough, most so if their speed boost is going, and they can shoot you while you're doing so. It sort of causes a panic.
~~~~~~~ Your Laser and you ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Hovergoats laser is incredible. Not only does it do a large amount of damage, hit in a wider beam than the visual indicates (seemingly so anyway), but it seems to stick to an enemy, hitting them extra times even when they walk out of it. Visually it looks like the beam will curve at the end to follow them if it was hitting them as they move. Check it out! It's kinda weird! There's more however,
Knowing when to open up with your laser can be a fine tactic, but also knowing when it will finish the job your clip started can save your life. If you've landed enough shots with your radical raygun to know that the target is finished, it can be preferable to load up the laser rather than reload the raygun. Though it diminishes your speed, the laser will activate faster than you can reload and by holding down the fire button, it will begin firing as soon as its ready essentially granting you a speed clip with far more ammo that deals more damage. Managing your cover and being aware of when to shut down the laser so you aren't taken by surprised are important factors too, s your laser will draw attention if it's going on for too long.
---KEEP IN MIND THAT WHEN YOU DEACTIVATE YOUR LASER, YOU ARE STILL GONNA NEED TO RELOAD YOUR RADICAL RAYGUN---
The tactic of using your laser as your backup clip can also save you in mid range one on one firefights. This is debateable however as many Hovergoats can do just fine jumping around with the Radical Raygun. I have found however against Sunflower and Rose, my radical raygun just doesn't do the trick without more than one clip. And if I try to get too close to either of them, I end up vanquished because I belittle the damage of the Sunflower (Which is actually pretty hard hitting) and totally underestimate the value of rose (Who can jump around and has a hit box like a stick). However, I can activate my backup laser clip in under a second and have it firing on them when they think I'm gonna start jumping around to play evasively so I can reload in safety.
Having to reload has a large impact on the goat for me, as I must remove my crosshair from the enemy in order to hop around. When activating the laser, I usually maintain my aim, accepting that if I don't land the shots with the laser, I'm gonna get vanquished anyway.
~~~~ Closing statement ~~~~~
As always, enjoy the rambling of how I play but remember to play through your own example. Adopting technique to your own playstyle is how you become a unique Plant/Zombie of justice who will remain unmatched until we face off on the field. Hope to see you all out there, Happy Easter everybody!
