Thoughts on Vigilant?

[Orso]

Seems to be a bit too gimicky to pick honestly. Definitely seems like a suit you only pick if you're in a 5 man pre-made group where people actually have their roles solidified and are working cohesively. I've never seen a Vigilant do well except at the very end of maps where you're both in the same dimension fighting over the same objective area, and even then she's entirely dependent on your team's synergy.

Hope she gets buffs or a rework soon to make her more useful/playable. Could very easily just be a skill issue on my part, I admit, but it's a very weird suit compared to everyone else. For context I'm predominately used to playing Deadeye or Skywave but have no issues playing any tank, Barrage, or the other supports.

In short: a nightmare to play solo/PUG in my humble opinion. What do you all think?

[Phishfood]

I've had a lot of success. My most levelled assault at 60, others are around 20-30. Though I won't play Vigilant if there isn't also a Barrage/Murasame on the team, there is almost always a Barrage.

There are circumstances where vigilant just doesn't make sense like big open areas where dinos spawn all other the place.

[ODevil]

Honestly, sounds like a skill issue.
Vigilant can easily clear an entire swarm by herself, offer CC by freezing and dish out tons of damage against large dinos and other players.
Personally I always pick her unless the team needs a healer.

[Kill'o'gor]

Originally posted by Orso:

Seems to be a bit too gimicky to pick honestly. Definitely seems like a suit you only pick if you're in a 5 man pre-made group where people actually have their roles solidified and are working cohesively. I've never seen a Vigilant do well except at the very end of maps where you're both in the same dimension fighting over the same objective area, and even then she's entirely dependent on your team's synergy.

Hope she gets buffs or a rework soon to make her more useful/playable. Could very easily just be a skill issue on my part, I admit, but it's a very weird suit compared to everyone else. For context I'm predominately used to playing Deadeye or Skywave but have no issues playing any tank, Barrage, or the other supports.

In short: a nightmare to play solo/PUG in my humble opinion. What do you all think?

it requires a decent aiming, it is pure trash unlike.

[Orso]

Originally posted by ODevil:

Honestly, sounds like a skill issue.
Vigilant can easily clear an entire swarm by herself, offer CC by freezing and dish out tons of damage against large dinos and other players.
Personally I always pick her unless the team needs a healer.

That's fair, and I admit that it probably was a skill issue on my part. How do you typically approach her on playstyle? I was trying to get up high and be a bit further back during dino swarms. is it better to be closer and use her normal firing mode for general swarms?

[Power_Bert]

Vigilant has great mass clearing options as well as being able to quickly kill the big "boss" dinosaurs. her damage output on raid bosses is ridiculous as well.

[Oro]

I just use her pvp modules and switch in the final mission depending on the objective. I would use her a lot more if you could change modules in-game, but charge enhancer is garbo for PVE, and I would rather have reload over Frost Vault, unless I'm going to get rushed by a Zephyr. Stinger cooldown reduction is also a lot of fun in pve, especially on carnage module finales where you kill like 50 raptors at once and get your cooldown reduced to nothing over and over.

But yeah, she's one or the other and you can't change mid-match, so pvp it is.

[GravePC]

Learn how to play.

[Phishfood]

Originally posted by Orso:

That's fair, and I admit that it probably was a skill issue on my part. How do you typically approach her on playstyle? I was trying to get up high and be a bit further back during dino swarms. is it better to be closer and use her normal firing mode for general swarms?

The stinger shot has infinite piercing and a hitbox that is much larger than what is visible, so in PvE sections you're best positioned on the ground where you'll get maximum value on it to clear a whole line of dinos.

A fully charged primary fire can pierce up to 5-6 dinos, so once again, position yourself closer to the ground.

Your frost lock ability is also very useful. 1 will instantly freeze any medium dino, 2 for big dinos, 3 for t-rex. I normally run with the frostbite mod to give me 2 charges. It can freeze a lot of small dinos if aimed right so I'll normally use my super jump to make sure it lands.

I'll try to position myself far back whenever I can so that my support doesn't need to worry about me.

Targets in order of highest priority to lowest, whatever is harassing my support, sniper neosaurs, anything that flies, medium/big dinos, small dinos. This can change sometimes depending on the situation.

In any area where you don't think you can be safely positioned for good value on your abilities you're better off switching to dead eye.

[MagpieOAO]

I don't have Vigilant but playing only in pugs, I do see her utility from the perspective of observing others. Picking off key targets, harassing the enemy team are her strengths. But she still has waveclear abilities as well.

She requires more aiming ability and situational awareness than the other assaults for sure.

[Orso]

Originally posted by GravePC:

Learn how to play.

Wow, it's almost like I openly stated that it's probably a skill issue on my part in the initial posting.

Maybe you should learn to read?

[Orso]

Originally posted by Phishfood:

Originally posted by Orso:

That's fair, and I admit that it probably was a skill issue on my part. How do you typically approach her on playstyle? I was trying to get up high and be a bit further back during dino swarms. is it better to be closer and use her normal firing mode for general swarms?

The stinger shot has infinite piercing and a hitbox that is much larger than what is visible, so in PvE sections you're best positioned on the ground where you'll get maximum value on it to clear a whole line of dinos.

A fully charged primary fire can pierce up to 5-6 dinos, so once again, position yourself closer to the ground.

Your frost lock ability is also very useful. 1 will instantly freeze any medium dino, 2 for big dinos, 3 for t-rex. I normally run with the frostbite mod to give me 2 charges. It can freeze a lot of small dinos if aimed right so I'll normally use my super jump to make sure it lands.

I'll try to position myself far back whenever I can so that my support doesn't need to worry about me.

Targets in order of highest priority to lowest, whatever is harassing my support, sniper neosaurs, anything that flies, medium/big dinos, small dinos. This can change sometimes depending on the situation.

In any area where you don't think you can be safely positioned for good value on your abilities you're better off switching to dead eye.

Appreciate it, I'll give this a try. Currently I don't have any modules specifically for her unlocked so that extra charge will probably help a ton

[Fraggoth]

Something I only just learned about Vigilant: you can use her Frost Lock as a "remote-detonated" "mine." If it looks like you're going to get rushed down by the swarm, you can cast it at the ground - which will plant the ice blob there - and then you can shoot it at your leisure, which will detonate it. Can freeze a larger crowd of small dinos this way (since usually it pops on the first thing it impacts, meaning you at best only freeze in a semicircle from the point of impact if you're using it on the ground), or can be used to plan ahead or hedge your bets if you're unsure you can hit a larger dino outright. Can be pretty handy to plop it then Vault/High-Jump, shooting it while you're above it, giving you some extra breathing room.

It does fade after a short while though; maybe 10 seconds? So you can't just leave it there forever. Also works on walls (though that's generally trickier to take advantage of in my experience, but I'm not all that good).

[0wnz0r]

i dont feel like i can talk about vigi from a good standpoint since i dont main her, but from wat lil i played, she seems good for wat her gameplan is.

[CascadeHush]

Well I just wrote this guide, but as usual steam won't let me publish it, giving a vague error... so anyway, here it is.

# Vigilant tips and build guide for the average gamer
The following is written from my perspective as an average gamer. I'm not a 360 no-scoper so if you are a DPS god this probably isn't for you. If you like action adventure games or action MMOs then this might help you pick up this hero. The TL;DR is that she's situational and team dependent. If your tank isn't controlling the field, your healer isn't watching health bars for all party members, and the other DPS are not pulling their weight, you won't have much fun with her. But with a half-decent team she can clear out trash enemies quickly and do decent DPS to larger enemies. Remember you can switch suits in-game, so if you aren't having a good run, switch and try again with a fresh team.

## What is she for?
Even though she is a 'sniper' her strength is really clearing out trash mobs. Her rail gun goes through smaller enemies and her 300 damage standard hit hit can damage several enemies at once if they are grouped together. But it only hits large enemies once per bullet. If you have a roadblock that is using taunt and shield properly, the smaller enemies will be grouped and you can do a ton of damage, but if the enemies are running all over the place, she's almost useless.

She's also good (almost essential) for flying enemies.

## Game settings
Make sure you set up your sensitivity properly. IMHO the default sensitivities are pretty trash and you need to make sure your scoped-in sensitivity is lower than your regular sensitivity. This is the only game I've ever played where this was not the default setup. The scope sensitivity is per suit so make sure you look at her settings. I recommend the same sensitivity setting for both 2x and 3x zoom, which is a bit counter-intuitive. For controller, I recommend lowering the dead zone (no idea why developers set such large dead zones these days) and changing the response curve to linear (although as far as I can tell it's not actually linear at all, not with my controller anyway.)

## Main attack - Charge shots
It may not be immediatly obvious, but her real attack is her scoped in charged shot. She's basically Widow from Overwatch. You can shoot single bullets, but it's mostly pretty pointless. There is a rhythm to this which you get with practice. Charged shots use 5 ammo of your 30, so really your magazine size is 6 for all practical purposes.

## Pitfalls
Her biggest problem is when she gets surrounded by trash enemies. If they are too close you can't effectively use your charged shots and trying to pick of single enemies is a real pain. Even if you get a good vantage point this can happen if the tank isn't controlling the field or other DPS aren't pulling their weight. My preferred healer suit is Nimbus and if there is a Vigilant in the party, I hang back with her (moving in and out of the action when needed). I can pick off the odd trash enemy that sneaks past the main line, so Vigilant can stay scoped in. If you can party with a friendly healer it will make a world of difference. As stated already, ideally you'd also have a Roadblock who can effectively group enemies so you can take them all out with one or two hits.

## Build
My build is Catapult, Recovery Module, V-Frostbite and Reload Efficiency Module.

### Rig Slot - Catapult
I prefer it to Vault as a movement option. I hardly ever use Vault, mostly just as panic button or on a rare occasion to reach a snipers nest (Seriously, Capcom, a little more attention to detail here on the level design). Cannon and Blade will probably do less damage than your attack so it isn't worth your time to scope out and use them. Bonus tip - I think Cannon is just pretty bad for any character because by the time it winds up and fires you have probably done less damage that whatever your normal main attack is, assuming the enemies are still there to be hit.

And whilst I'm talking about Vault, Capcom please give us a mod that changes the movement to horizontal and shortens the cooldown. Then I could use this slot for something else.

### Module Slot 1 - Recovery Module
Recovery Module - because in open queue you probably won't get many heals and a live character does more damage than a dead one.

Alternatives for this slot are Charge Linker or Charge Enhancer.

Charge Linker would be good for anybody who can reliably land head shots but that's not me. Also trash enemies don't trigger critical hits so you only get this on larger enemies. It doesn't chain together you can only get 2 charged shots in quick succession, then you need to charge normally before you can potentially get another proc. It completely breaks your rhythm, most of the time it won't proc and it doesn't work on the majority of enemies.

Charge Enhancer. The naive maths on this is that you get 2 shots instead of 6, each doing twice the damage half as often (roughly) but with more reloads. I don't know what the devs where thinking here, at best it's a zero sum gain except in extremely niche circumstances and is definitely not worth a mod slot. Potentially you could fire 5 regular charged shots and then a double charge shot if you want to count your shots. This is because if you have less than 20 'bullets' remaining it just uses whatever you have left to do the double-charge. The other use case would be double charging before an encounter when you are standing around anyway. Both of these are way too niche for a mod slot IMHO, but I'm sure somebody will argue that it's fantastic.

### Module Slot 2 - Frostbite
Frostbite is really the only choice here. I have no idea what 'base explosion damage' is, but having twice as much of something that seems to be irrelevant is, what, half as irrelevant, maybe? But having 2 charges is good because you need both to make it worth scoping out and using the ability. It's mostly pointless against smaller enemies except in the rare case you manage to hit more that a couple, or if it's your panic button. Against larger enemies it can be quite good but they seem to have resistances and you typically need to hit them a couple of times before they get frozen anyway. In other words, Capcom made the base ability garbage just so they could give us a mod that makes it only barely okay, but there you go.

The other options would be Finishing Streak. If I could put this in slot 1 I might equip both, but you can only have 1 blue mod. However it seems to be mostly irrelevant. Singer shot is best used on groups of trash ground enemies, where it has a wider area of effect than your railgun. Trash ground enemies don't get critical hits anyway so adding critical damage does nothing. But in theory this would be offset but the shorter cooldown from the enemies it kills, but this never seemed to make any practical difference. I don't know what 'greatly reduced cooldown means' exactly, but It's imperceptible. And getting critical damage on larger enemies is irrelevant because it does less damage to those enemies than your normal headshots so it's isn't worth scoping out and waiting for the wind-up time to complete.


### Module Slot 3 - Reload Efficiency Module
Reload Efficiency Module - yes, another grey mod. Since it increases both her reload speed and the speed of her charged shot this is a double benefit to her and will result in significantly more DPS. Alternatives for this slot are Floating Vault or Freezing Vault.

Floating Vault 'temporarily increases attack power when used' and 'increases hang time'. This is about as vague as it gets. How long is temporary, how much does it increase attack power, and how long is the extra hang time? From my experience the answers are - not long enough, not by much, and almost none at all. I'm sure there are some ex-Widow (Overwatch) players out there that is having a ball with this

Freezing Vault - I didn't even bother unlocking this. I could see somebody building a play style around this, using catapult to jump in and using this to freeze a group of enemies, but that seems like a meme, not a playstyle consistent with the rest of the character design. Also, if you want this as a panic button, well by all means, but then I think you are building around a failure state and either you or your team or both are just playing wrong. If you are having survival issues because you aren't getting heals, you'd be better off putting the Regeneration Module in this slot and it would compliment the Recovery Module in slot 1.

## Other random tips
You could try using the craftable platforms, if you have them. I find they are just raptor bait and get destroyed as soon as I get up on one. Taking time out to place them, and then jump on top of them, is usually wasted time in my experience.

The wind-up time on her ultimate makes it useless half the time. It breaks your concentration and seems to just insta-attract enemies. Apparently dinosaurs from an ancient time somehow know what that a sniper spinning her rifle around is something requiring their immediate attention.

If it's a defence mission with a small rectangle or in a tight corridor, you should probably switch to another DPS or even a second tank if you only have one in your team. Just do it before the mission actually starts, you have time if you are paying attention.

## Finally
Sometimes it's easy to find a good spot that is relatively safe with sight-lines where you can do good damage. Sometimes there is no battle field control (hello tank?), enemies are everywhere (is nobody else doing damage?) and no matter where you try to position yourself, you die (is the healer actually healing?). Learn to deal with it without getting mad; it's just a game. If this or any other game is routinely getting you upset, reduce your carbs and get more sleep.

[Oro]

Originally posted by CascadeHush:

Well I just wrote this guide, but as usual steam won't let me publish it, giving a vague error... so anyway, here it is.

Maybe Steam wouldn't let you publish that because it's almost completely wrong and/or terrible advice.