Advice for Frontier Defense

[Kc]

Hello friends, I'm curious if any of you have any general tips or advice for playing hard+ frontier defense games? I very rarely am able to complete one without having to use at least one wave retry and I'm sure there's ways I could be better utilizing myself and my titan.

I had a few questions, if anyone had the answer to them that would be great.

1. Arc Traps; what are they good for? I see that they fry infantry and specters and that's great enough but what are their effects on Titans? I see 'Arc Titans are Immune', so what does it do to normal titans?

2. Sentries; What is the best positioning for them? Whenever I place sentries they either have 9 or 90 kills by the end. They appear extremely useful for heavy drone waves (especially on that water facility map). How's best to use them?

and finally 3. Titans; I almost exclusively play with Monarch due to her shield heal ability for allies and her ability to be played close-range and long-range when the time needs. Does the charge-time of the energy siphon affect the shield gain at all for myself and allies? Also, is the shield heal actually worth it or is it best to just go full-combat focused?


Thanks a bunch for any help!

[The Flying Lemon]

Arc Traps are great for denying lanes of enemies. It of course stuns enemies so it usually just slows down enemies from reaching the harvester but they are great.

Sentries should be up on high points facing lanes. Try and get some cover for them if you can if drones are in a wave.

And I don't play Monarch so I can't really help you lol

[ZealousAbsurd]

no more than 3 or 4 sentries facing backwards towards the harvester to take care of grunts and drones.

The rest of the money should go almost entirely into arc traps.

Pay attention to the map.

Play your role.

That's about it. Other than learning how to fight and deal damage to enemies without taking damage yourself, you can't do anything about a matchmaking group of randos who are morons who've never played an fps before in their life.

To answer your questions more directly:

1. Arc traps are good for everything. Literally. They stun and stagger enemies.I mean obviously drones and arc titans are an exception but you can never have too many arc traps.

If you learn the spawns and positions for mortar titans, you can throw arc traps where they position to start mortaring to stop them from mortaring, buying you valuable time to grapple launch across the map or roam with your titan and take care of them.



2. The best positionings for sentries will vary from map to map but the general gist is facing backwards towards the harvester with their back to the wall/a piece of cover. Any sentry that is simply out in the open will be immediately destroyed.
They're meant to take care of stragglers of drones and other small dudes.



3. Monarch in general is not useful in the same way that supports in video games are not useful. If the team the support is supporting is bad, there's no point of the support supporting.
As far as I can tell, charging the shield siphon does not affect it's effectiveness or gain. You are probably better off going for full damage but if you're wondering what the "solo meta" is for monarch, it's basically spamming enhanced electric smokes on enemies in funnels or chokepoints.
Monarch isn't really an enemy melter, but she can slow, keep allies shields topped off, and kill titans one at a time pretty effectively.
Actually regarding her giving shields to teammates, it's extremely useful as even a skilled player is going to take some nicks and ticks of damage from the enemies, but not much more, so being able to have a shield which absorbs the damage that does come through adds a lot of longevity to your teammate's titan lifetime.

Edit: Monarch can solo hold funnels and choke points with electric smoke spams, even on insane difficulty. Other than that strat, she's meh.

The best titan classes are ronin and scorch. Monarch if the rest of the team is good. It used to be that 1 ronin and 3 scorch was a pretty common setup.

Legion sucks horrible balls, oh my god you reload more than you shoot. He legit needs to have 3x mag size and then he might be viable, but otherwise he is only good for super heavy drone waves using his ult but even scorch can just stand still and flame shield them all to death.

Ion is just. Ion. He's very good, especially his ult that can last for literal minutes at a time, but often feels a bit too squishy. His vortex shield does have the capability to "return to sender" tons of damage going towards you and your team, but you have to still be exposed to the enemy, using up your energy, and not attacking using other parts of your loadout. Splitter rifle is good damage but falls off with distance.

Edit: Ion is trash. No damage, ult is ok but takes too long to build up.


Northstar is actually pretty good for. sniping. Especially in lanes with the pierce. His cluster missile(s) are very good for both titan damage and small units, the tether can stop an enemy or two, but in the hairy situations, he falls a bit short. His ult is also a joke. I literally use it to kill pilots in pvp.

Tone is good but only really on maps that have a good vantage point to hit enemies well. He outperforms northstar when it comes to wide open areas and long range but northstar wins when it comes to lanes. Assuming you have pierce. His ult is good for killing basically one enemy instantly and that's it but scorch can do that with his normal kit anyway.

These are just my opinions of course. While there is a chinese player on youtube doing solo insane difficulty perfect no harvester damage runs, the harder difficulties is about people playing their roles and watching the map, and knowing how to play effectively and efficiently.

[Kc]

Thanks a bunch for both of your replies. I'll have to keep experimenting with trap/sentry placements but I think I'm getting it down after a while.

Do you think Legion is good after he gets his Aegis Ranks? (Including the one where he gets all of his kits at once). Doubt I'd want to grind it but I'm curious.

[Spec]

Originally posted by Kc:

Thanks a bunch for both of your replies. I'll have to keep experimenting with trap/sentry placements but I think I'm getting it down after a while.

Do you think Legion is good after he gets his Aegis Ranks? (Including the one where he gets all of his kits at once). Doubt I'd want to grind it but I'm curious.

Personally, unless you have a serious love for Legion, I'd skip him. He's only great when he is nearly maxed out in Aegis, but that will take what... many many many hours straight to do it? Of all titans, Legion is probably bottom of the barrel, but that doesn't make him a "Bad" titan to use. Just far more situational than say, Ion or Monarch.
Saying Legion is good with all Aegis ranks is kinda pointless, as all titans are good, if not better, than Legion max rank. But that's just me of course ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ZealousAbsurd]

Originally posted by Kc:

Thanks a bunch for both of your replies. I'll have to keep experimenting with trap/sentry placements but I think I'm getting it down after a while.

Do you think Legion is good after he gets his Aegis Ranks? (Including the one where he gets all of his kits at once). Doubt I'd want to grind it but I'm curious.

Unfortunately, no. None of his aegis upgrades triple his mag size so unfortunately, you're still reloading more than anything. It's insane that he gets all his kits and he's still mediocre. His damage is *decent* but he has almost nothing else going for him, aside from some survivability due to gaining an hp shield whenever his gun shield takes damage, but that's only because he has to be exposed anyway to shoot.

Scorch doesn't have to be exposed for more than 1 second to completely annihilate a group of enemies.

[spooky]

lots said already.

arc traps: they "confuse" the enemy, e.g. they are not reloading and not shooting
and not marching.
since the frontier defense is a bit of a "tick-tock" game, what the team wants
is for the enemy to "waste time".
by tick-tock, i mean that timing is important.
if one times it right then everything just clicks, that is: aim, fire,
reload, maybe empty core, enemy xplode, rinse repeat ... if not then the enemy is just still
barely standing and your pants are down, e.g. magazine empty and no secondary but the enemy just walked into a arc trap and gave you 2 seconds more to reload.
arc traps are also premium tick killers *YEAH!*

turrets: they do damage but they also "attract attention", that is the enemy tends to
target the turrets ... and is thus not shooting at you.
repairing a turret takes less time then to respawn from dropship and re-earn a titan drop.
'tis also a good idea, methinks, to place them "behind cover" so it takes longer for
enemy fire to take them out (and keeping 'em busy ... not shooting at you).
hint: maybe it's cheating (or not?) but turrets can be placed "outside the map".
you will have 5 or so seconds to place the turret before the game kills you.
"outside the map" doesn't mean that enemy titans cannot target them.
they ARE visible to the enemy but sometimes these "off map" locations provide
superior cover from enemy fire ... mostly high to very high up and recessed a bit.

for hard mode: please? prioritize? reapers? some reapers spawn and hop to a
pre-designated location and just keep emitting ticks. like. endless.
and we all love 'em ticks don't we: *♥♥♥ here, gimme a hug ..err.. BOOM*
so if you hear that reaper pushing-out-ticks-sound: "ERRRrrmmm" look on mini
map and take it out FAST! and ... no ... scorch is really difficult to use to
take out those reaper tick-baby factories at elevated location; so not a scorch job.

for hard and insane: it all team work. really.
distribute damage whenever and wherever you can.
nevemind if you cant finish a titan. your buddy will do it and do it faster because of it.
just find cover, stay alive, reload and find the next titan to pound.
be aware. if your ninja-ing at titan spawn point with a ronin do keep an eye on the monarch guarding the harvester, 'cause there's but barely a slim chance the lonely monarch can deal with 4 nuke titans approaching, alone.

monarch is fun on "easy" and "regular". methinks monarch doesn't have
enough "Oomph" on hard and insane, unless the team is "good", in which case monarch
can contribute with shield heals and smoke heals.
however monarch gun is better then ion gun.
maybe monarch is a misnomer and it should be called "vampire" ^_^; the finisher with
battery steal is awesome.
'cause of the "tick-tock" nature of the game, sometimes a *shock* from monarch to a ronin or legion is what gives the team just enough health to make it to the end and win ... even if everyone is riding in a smoking heap of junk by then but having thus avoided a
time-costly re-spawn and re-earn of a titan drop.

seems easy enough: distribute damage wherever and whenever you can and if in monarch,
distribute health/shield whenever you can. e-smoke is AOE methinks, so gather around ^_^