Last Stand - Essential Knowledge and Strategies

An attempt to go beyond the basics into less known but crucial strategies for survival, kiting, beating high waves, and not lagging so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ much. Bring your big boy reading glasses: as you can see from the picture, this guide is serious business.

Introduction

Most of the stuff I've seen written about The Last Stand is either a discussion of wargear and builds that the author likes/has found to be effective, a brief overview of the basic game mechanics that stops short of anything really useful, or the occasional achievement guide. In most cases, the author will frame the guide as his experiences, take them for what they're worth, but he's not telling you how to play. Well, I am going to tell you how to play, both because I have a lot of experience with what does and doesn't work, and because I know that if you don't like what I say you'll just ignore me and no harm done (well, more likely post a rant in the comments section and no harm done, but close enough).

The goal of this document will be to go beyond the basics and talk about the sorts of knowledge and techniques that will take you to the higher waves and eventually to wins. I consider the basics to be learning about the commands, stances, use of hotkeys, capture points, the wave structure, and the like. My focus will be on the more esoteric, nonobvious aspects of the game. In the course of being thorough, I might go over things that some will consider common knowledge, but hopefully there will also be a few things mixed in that you didn't know.

Now, I'm going to start by mentioning two things that can't really be taught or conveyed in a guide, but you can really only learn yourself by playing the game. I mention them not to be useless, but because they're probably the two most crucial ingredients to being successful at this sort of game, and because being aware of them and keeping them in mind when you're playing can help you to develop them quicker.

1. An intuitive sense of how powerful each unit is.
As you play, you'll become more and more familiar with all the wargear and the abilities they confer, as well as what each unit can do and how it stacks up in battle against other units. More to the point, you'll develop a sense of when you can win an encounter and when you're going to get creamed. You'll also be able to tell when your allies are about to run into trouble and whether you have the ability to save them. This sense of how dangerous each unit is will inform all sorts of other decisions, like when to run away, when to get into cover, when to stay and fight, and which units need to be killed first.

2. Battlefield awareness.
It's much easier to deal with threats if you can see them coming well in advance. It's also easier to rescue your allies if you notice they're in trouble before they die, because after they die...well, it's too late. As you get more experienced, the use of your weapons and abilities will start to become routine, meaning it requires less mental effort, which you can then use to pay more attention to what's going on around you. You should always be keeping an eye out for what's happening elsewhere on the map, because while it might not be affecting you right now, things could change quickly. Ideally, you should see that group of Warriors coming across the map well before they knock down your Lord General and start biting him. Even if you don't really have anything to stop them with, you can still run.

Acquiring these two abilities will allow you to start taking proactive action against approaching enemies instead of just reacting to their attacks, which will help you start avoiding the most dangerous attacks and dying less. You won't get the most out of the rest of the advice I'm going to give unless you actually have time to act before they're on top of you.

Getting Your Options Settings Right

From the title screen, go into the options menu and do the following. Once you're in game, you only have access to a small subset of the options menu and won't be able to do these things.

1) Turn on grid hotkeys.
It's been awhile since I've used the default hotkey configuration, but from what I remember, it was completely ridiculous. Shortcuts like backslash to change stance and 'J' to jump aren't shortcuts when you have to look at the keyboard to make sure you're hitting the right key. Grid hotkeys puts all your abilities in the QWERTY row, and all the normal commands in the ASDF row. 'D' is melee attack, 'F' changes stance, and 'G' attacks ground. Although this sometimes means that your Shield Drone will be 'E' one game and 'W' in another, depending on what else you have equipped, it's far better than the alternative.

2) Run the performance test under the graphics tab to make sure your settings aren't too high.
Given that everyone just plays zoomed all the way out, this game uses a whole lot of unnecessary detail and you might be surprised to find that your graphics card balks a bit when too many units and effects are the on the screen at once. The tell-tale sign that your graphic settings are up too high is normal gamespeed in the lull between waves, and a slowdown once units start spawning and firing their weapons. I'm not entirely sure, but I think effects density is the culprit here, which is one of the few things you actually can adjust in game. So, if you find yourself in slow match, you can always try setting effects density to low as a last resort.

3) Set your terrain detail to low no matter what the performance test tells you.
Certain attacks and weapons leave behind craters or scorch marks on the terrain (The Lord General's Rocket Run and Executioner Turret, and the Mekboy's Roks are the most notorious offenders). These scarring effects stay there for the entire round and can eventually cause slowdown for even good/new graphics cards. The performance test doesn't come anywhere close to the amount of terrain scarring you'll see with an Executioner Turret making dozens of craters each wave for 20 waves. Low terrain detail disables scarring and eliminates the problem on your end.

Scoring and Experience

Despite what the manual says, you do not get experience based on your team score, you get experience from completing waves. Only the amount of waves completed matters, which is why you always get 5000 experience from beating Bloody Colloseum no matter what score you have.

As for how scoring works, your total score multiplier is the product of three multiplier subcategories: time multiplier, survival multiplier, and control multiplier. Control multiplier is 3 for each capture point, 6 total. The survival multiplier increases by 1 for each wave you've completed without anyone dying. So, if someone dies, you can pretty much forget about getting a good multiplier for awhile. The time multiplier is set to a fixed value depending on the wave number (it starts at 3 and increases from there), and a little clock counts down the time this multiplier has left. When it reaches 0, the time multiplier is decreased by .5 and the clock begins counting down again. If you take too long, this will eventually reach 0 and you will be unable to get any more points until the next wave.

The salient points here are:
1. The capture points don't have anything to do with experience, so don't go nuts over them unless you need an achievement or are going for score.
2. Once someone dies, you can pretty much forget about score and the achievements, so from here on only use the capture points as decoys.

Cover

Cover reduces the accuracy and damage of enemies that are firing on you. Yellow cover is 20% reduced accuracy and 47% reduced damage, green cover is 40% reduced accuracy and 58% reduced damage. It's common for inexperienced players (and some experienced ones too) to rush the Tactical Marines on wave 10 of Bloody Colloseum and die in one volley. It's also common for my Chaos Sorcerer with 4 armor to stand behind some green cover and draw their fire for quite awhile while my doppel gets into place. In a game mode where mobility is king, it's easy to forget about cover, but sometimes you're better off just staying put in cover instead of running away, especially when there are no good places to run to.

Counters to cover

1. Weapons/abilities that ignore cover or always hit.
The Warp Spiders' weapons, all flamers, the Tau's Airbursting Fragmentation Projector, the Hive Tyrant's Rending Stranglethorn, the Lord General's High-Powered Shot. Pay special attention to flamers, which actually do increased damage to units in cover.

2. Area of effect attacks.
Grenades, rockets, the Captain's Plasma Cannon, most Chaos Sorcerer spells, Eldritch Bolt, Eldritch Storm, Roks, Orbital Bombardment, Rocket Run, among others.

3. Anything that knocks back or can destroy cover.
A lot of overlap here with the previous category, but basically assume that anything explosive will knock you out of cover and do damage to it if it's not unbreakable. Tau's Kinetic Pulse and the Seer Council's ranged attack also belong in this category.

4. Attacks from the same side of the cover.
Cover SHOULD only provide defense if it's between you and your attacker, so if they circle around to the same side as you they can attack normally. In practice, the game seems to forget this rule a lot, although you shouldn't bet your life on it. Rather, keep it in mind when you're trying to break enemies out of cover: you might have to get more aggressive if this doesn't work.

5. Melee.

Remember that enemies use cover too, and it should be obvious now that simply continuing to shoot them won't cut it.

Buildings

Buildings provide 40% accuracy reduction, and 70% damage reduction, but you'll be extremely vulnerable to grenades, and melee attackers do heavy damage to the building. Attacks that ignore cover will also do full damage to you in a building. While it's more effective damage reduction than regular cover, you won't be able to use abilities, especially escape abilities when things get too hot. If you're running from a big group and you enter a building, that's the last place you're going to be able to run to: you've committed to either killing them or them killing you. I recommend entering buildings sparingly and for a short time only. They're much better used to block line of sight.

Line of Sight

Certain bits of terrain can shut down the enemy's ability to target you with ranged attacks. On Colloseum, these are the buildings as well as the columns and breakable walls around the capture points and in the middle of the arena, and on Anvil they're the broken down tanks as well as the breakable rocks in the middle. Line of sight is also required for most abilities, so putting one of these objects between you and an attacker will force them to circle around it until they can see you again. Interrupting line of sight is by far the most effective way to escape from danger, which makes the buildings on Colloseum and the tanks on Anvil your best bet for safe spots to retreat to or set up camp.

Counters to line of sight defense

1. Movement abilities that allow attackers to bypass the obstacle.
Raveners' burrow attack, Stormboyz/Assault Marines/Captain/Tau jump attack, Warp Spider/Bloodletter/Mekboy/Chaos Sorcerer/Farseer teleport.

2. Weapons/abilities that don't require line of sight targetting
The Rokkit Launchaz attack that is fired up into the air, grenades, Terminator Marine's missiles, Chaos Lord's fireballs (sometimes), Lord General's/Heretics' grenade launcher, Tau's Airbursting Fragmentation Projector, Hive Tyrant's Rending Stranglethorn, Eldritch Storm, Roks, Orbital Bombardment, Rocket Run.

Enemies won't deliberately use line of sight against you, but be aware that if you try to attack or use an ability on an enemy, your hero will run around trying to get line of sight if it needs to, often getting itself killed.

Melee Locking

When a ranged squadron is enganged in melee, it is forced to respond by attacking in melee. Because strong ranged squadrons tend to have weak or nonexistant melee attacks, tying them up in melee is a great way to shut down their damage for awhile without taking much damage yourself. It's especially effective on setup squadrons, who have to teardown to hit you back and then set up again before they can start being dangerous. Even a Chaos Sorcerer with 4 armor can save the day by teleporting onto a Shuriken Cannon and stopping it from suppressing. You can also teleport onto a squad of Tactical Marines and keep them from using their plasma guns long enough for the warp fire to kill them. Best of all, you can occasionally turn the tide of wave 16 by preventing a dangerous ranged clone from hosing everyone.

But of course, this can also be used against you. While the enemy won't be quite so clever about it, you should always be aware when you're playing a ranged hero that melee attackers can completely stop your damage if you let them. Tau players should be especially careful because the Tau has no melee attack and will just stand there getting hit.

Crowd Control

1. Stun

Stun slows your movement speed to practically nothing and prevents you from using most abilities. Exceptions are jump and teleport, although sometimes a glitch will prevent you from using these. When your character twitches like it's trying to move in two directions and can't decide which way to go, you'll know you're boned. There is no way to break stun, you just have to wait it out.
Abilities/Attacks that stun: Tau's Heavy Jet, Hive Tyrant's Seismic Roar, Captain's Blind Grenade, Lord General's Stun Grenade, Mekboy's Mega-Rumblah, melee Dreadnought's groundsmash attack, Terminator Marine also has a close range stun attack.

2. Knockback/Knockdown

When you're knocked down, you can't do anything at all until your "get back up" animation completes. Unshakeable protects you from most knockdown effects, although the Tau's unshakeable is only about 90% effective. Occasionally, you will get knocked back a few paces and be frozen for as long as it would take a "get up" animation to play out. The Seer Council's ranged attacks ignore unshakeable. The Lord General's turret/troop drops and the Dreadnought drop pod also have a chance to knock anyone back through unshakeable. If you are in the middle of a long attack/ability animation or a melee special when you suffer a knockback, there is a chance you'll remain standing and take severly reduced damage from the attack (the reduced damage can occur even if it wasn't a knockback attack).
Abilities/Attacks that knock down: All jump attacks, all explosives (grenades, rockets, bombs, mines), any charge attack (Captain, Hive Tyrant, Warriors), any melee charge (Mekboy/Lord General with melee weapons equipped, Stormboyz, Assault Marines), certain melee specials, Tau's Kinetic Pulse, Mekboy's Bouncy Shield, Captain's Thunder Hammer, Lord General's Grenade Launcher, High-Powered Shot, Solid Slug, Farseer/Seer Council's Laughing Stave, Hive Tyrant's Heavy Talons, Behemoth Claw, Rending Stranglethorn melee attack, anything inside a Chaos Sorcerer's Orb of Unholy Might, Raveners' burrow attack, Lord General's turret/troop drops, Dreadnought drop pod, Eldritch Storm, Roks, Orbital Bombardment, Rocket Run, Icon of Change explosion, Marker Drone explosion.
Unshakeable gear: all Tau armor (sort of ), all Hive Tyrant armor, Captain's Armor of Resilience, Farseer's Armor of Idranel, Singing Spear, Laughing Stave, Mekboy's Sturdy Bitz, Chaos Sorcerer's Armor of Might Undivided, Lord General's Artificer Carapace Armor.

3. Suppression

Certain attacks inflict morale damage in addition to health damage. When your morale reaches zero, you become suppressed. Suppressed units move very slowly and cannot fire most ranged weapons (the Captain's plasma gun is a noteable exception). You will recover morale over time if you stop taking morale damage and eventually break suppression. Using a jump ability immediately breaks suppression, and the fearless trait gives you suppression immunity.
Abilities/Attacks that suppress: Tau's Burst Cannon, Lord General's Heavy Bolter Turret, Mekboy's Dakka Deffgun, Hive Tyrant's Rending Stranglethorn, Shuriken Cannon, Devastator Marines, Heavy Weapons Team.
Fearless gear: Tau's Command armor, all Hive Tyrant Armor, Farseer's Armor of Vaul, Mekboy's Boss Pole, Chaos Sorcerer's Armor of Might Undivided, Lord General's Master-Crafted Carapace Armor.

4. Slow

Slow reduces movement speed to a crawl but leaves all other abilites unaffected. There is no defense, you just have to wait it out.
Abilities/Attacks that slow: Farseer's Entangle, Mekboy's Booby Traps, Tau's Snare Mines

5. Miscellaneous

• The Captain's taunt ability forces the target to attack him. The Hive Tyrant's Tyrant Guard also has this ability.
  
• The Captain's Terror of Xenos forces all the enemies within a certain radius to turn and retreat back to their spawn gates.
  
• The Captain's Thunder Hammer inflicts a unique variety of stun on vehicles which has a different animation and completely halts movement. Carnifexes and Wraithlords count as vehicles.
  
• The Farseer and Tau Commander can confuse enemies. Confused units stop what they're doing and choose a new nearby target, usually from among their allies. Confused units also become viable targets for their allies.
  
• The Farseer's Warp Spear can yank enemies towards you.
  
• The Tau's Advanced Drone Controller used with the Shield Drone can lock down all enemies in the drone's radius, preventing them from moving or attacking, but also preventing them from taking any damage.

Survival

Aggro

There are three ways to draw aggro from an enemy unit:
1. Be the first target they see after being spawned.
2. Attack them or use an ability on them when they don't have a target (Taunt will make them target you no matter what).
3. Be the nearest available target when they switch from their old target.

Note that not having aggro doesn't necessarily make you safe from taking damage. Sometimes enemy units will throw out their abilities at random targets. A Nob might be busy with an ally and then suddenly decide to chuck a grenade at you. The Terminator Marine might turn and fire his missiles at someone halfway across the screen. Most of the danger from the Chaos Lord lies in the randomness of his fireballs: there's just no predicting who they'll be fired at so you have to be watching for them at all times.

Avoiding Aggro

For the most part, though, no aggro means no damage. If you are very careful, you can avoid getting aggro in the first place (to a point). The key is to avoid being seen.

1. Use line of sight to keep from being a viable target.
In short, hide behind buildings. Freshly spawned enemies won't see you, and neither will enemies looking for a new target.

2. Keep your distance from enemies that are looking for a target.
This means both not standing still while three gates' worth of enemies are bearing down on you, and making yourself scarce when whatever ally or minion was drawing fire away from you is about to die.

To avoid aggro, you need good battlefield awareness as mentioned earlier. You need to be able to see the enemies coming beforehand and position yourself so they pass you by, or target your allies/minions first.

Dealing with Enemies that have Aggro'd You

Of course, it's almost impossible to completely avoid becoming a target. So, once you've got a bunch of enemies on you, here's what you can do to get rid of them. If you're running a tank build, of course, you might not want to get rid of them, but for this part I'll assume that you do (and that the options of dying or killing them have already occurred to you).

1. Use one of the following ways to force them to switch targets.

• Enter and then exit a building.
  
• Confuse them with the Farseer or Tau abilities.
  
• On Bloody Colloseum, teleport or jump deep into a spawn point (will not work on units that are close to you).
  
• Interrupting line of sight by ducking behind a building will OCCASIONALLY drop aggro, but don't rely too much on this one.

All of these techniques will only really work if there are other targets that enemies can switch to. If you're the only one around, doing these things will only buy you a few seconds before the enemies retarget you and start attacking again. I see a lot of Farseers in particular use confuse to try to escape from an overbearing melee squad (like Warriors) only to have the squad hesitate and then continue attacking because there were no other targets for them to switch to.

2. Kite them (run away).
I have a lot to say about kiting, so it's going to get its own section. For now, I'll just say that if you have a movement ability, by all means use it, but simply running can sometimes be enough. If you're dealing with slow moving enemies, running will take you out of melee range and force ranged enemies to interrupt their firing to chase you.

Kiting (Part 1)

(Ran into the character limit here, so this section is split into two parts)
Unless you have a juggernaut team that can face everything head on, kiting is going to be the key to making it to high waves and winning. Here, I'd like to draw a distinction between buying time kiting and survival kiting.

Kiting to Buy Time

The buying time variety will usually occur very early in a wave when things are still spawning and you're running from a dangerous spawn, or very late in a wave when you're running from the tough enemies that you've saved for last. In these situations, your team is able to handle the wave but parts of it are giving you a little bit of trouble and need to be avoided temporarily. You don't necessarily need a jump or teleport to successfully kite in these situations: you just need to be able to keep the group of enemies from overtaking you long enough for either the rest of your team to rescue you or to recover enough health and energy yourself to deal with the attackers. The keys are to

1. Put distance between yourself and melee atackers.
Jumping or teleporting behind a closed gate is a great way to buy yourself some melee-free time.

2. Reduce incoming ranged damage by running behind anything that blocks line of sight.

3. Try to have an idea of where you're going.
This is not as easy as it sounds. Often times you need to make a quick decision to escape an attacker, such as left or right, and find yourself locked into a course that will eventually lead you to your death. When things are still spawning and spread out across the arena, it can be very difficult to identify safe spots at a glance. Open areas free of enemies, anything that blocks line of sight, and areas where your allies have set up camp are all good things to keep track of ahead of time so when it comes time to run, you know where to run to (battlefield awareness once more).

Of course, if the enemies have any movement enhancement or teleport/jump/burrow abilities, you might be boned, but in these cases, the stakes are usually low enough that it doesn't matter if you die.

Kiting to Survive

With survival kiting, your team is not able to handle the wave and is about to die or already dead. (I'm going to be talking mostly about Colloseum here: although the principles are the same for Anvil, the reality is that kiting is much less effective due to the map being smaller, the spawn points offering less protection, the lack of unbreakable cover on the edges of the map, and high damage ranged units with massive attack range.) Here, running will almost never be enough, as you will not be able to survive the entire wave focus firing you long enough to go between safe spots, and there are likely several enemies with movement enhancement that could overtake you. You will absolutely need some way of boosting your movement speed: jump and teleport are the most common, but I've seen the Farseer's Fleet of Foot ability used to good effect also. Good armor and health regeneration are also helpful assets, but not strictly necessary.

So, for survival kiting, here are some additional pointers:

4) Bide your time until everything has spawned.
Since the typical kiting route takes you around the edges of the map through or near to the spawn points, you can't really start until the spawn points are done spitting out enemies. This is the most dangerous time of the wave: the enemies are spread out enough that they can pretty much cover the entire arena. Before long you'll be under attack from multiple directions, but it's best to avoid moving until you can be sure you're moving to a safer location or unless you absolutely have to, as moving too much will make it harder to bunch up the wave later.

Use cover or hide behind a building, and pay very close attention to enemy movement and any safe spots that open up. If you can, try to take out any enemies that will give you trouble later, such as tactical marines or raveners, and help out your allies a bit if they're in trouble. Your main focus should be to watch and wait, however, letting enemies pass you by if you can't take them out safely, and letting your allies die if you can't save them without dying too.

5) Use the buildings to bunch the wave up and as safe spots to regenerate.
In the beginning you're going to have to take whatever relatively safe spots you can find, but you should be working towards a cycle where you hide behind one building, allow the wave to bunch up as it comes towards you, then telport/jump away along the edges of the map to the other building. Stay behind each building as long as you safely can. An all too common mistake is to leave early or to not even stop at all, but the waiting behind a building is the most important part of your kiting circuit. It gives you precious time to regenerate, it can help the enemies bunch up more, and it gives you a chance to pick off any enemies that arrive ahead of the pack.

Now, there are risks to letting the enemies get so close: if you are vulnerable to knockdown, you have to pay very special attention to what's being fired at you, since a knockdown is probably a death. Watch out for Raveners' burrow attack, Warriors' leap attack, rockets, grenades, the Terminator's missiles, and ranged Dreadnoughts' strafe attack. If you're a Tau, remember that your unshakeable is of the bargain bin variety and don't cut it too close.

6) Get the wave to follow you around the edges of the map.
The most important thing about waiting until the group is on top of you is that it draws the slow moving walkers away from the center of the map. If you are always on the move, they will only take a few steps towards your location before you move again which will make them adjust towards your new location. The result is that they will just make a smaller circle in the center of the map shadowing yours and never be too far out of range of shooting you, and more importantly, always too close for you to raise your allies (unless they died in the spawn points). When you make them walk right up to the building, you force them to use your circle around the edge of the map which creates the distance you need to revive.

Cycling between the buildings should eventually accomplish this, but you can speed up the process by finding other spots to stand still in that will coax the wave towards the edge of the map, such as spawn points and behind the unbreakable cover on the right and left edges of the map. Leaving the shelter of the buildings means you'll probably end up taking more fire this way, so use cover if you can. You'll have to use your judgement as to when you can afford to take a little damage and when taking a detour will actually be useful.

7) Conserve energy by running when you can.
If you're not taking damage right this moment, you don't really lose too much by running those last few steps to the shelter of the building, since you have to wait there anyway until the wave gets to you. I usually don't chain jump or chain teleport anymore unless I need to get out of range of something quickly. I use jump/teleport to bypass obstacles in the terrain and run when there's open ground. Even when you're chain teleporting, you should be running while the cooldown is ticking off. If you do it right, you should never run out of energy entirely, even with the Captain, whose jump costs 15 energy.

Kiting (Part 2)

(continued)
8) Live to raise another day.
By this point, you should be relatively safe and it's time to start thinking about doing damage and reviving your allies. Don't forget, though, that you're the only thing keeping the game going at the moment: it ends if you die. I touched on this a little earlier in point 4 when I said not to help your allies or attack if you couldn't do it safely. Abandon an attack if you're about to be overwhelmed, even if it means letting your target regenerate to full health. Leave your allies to rot on the ground if you're just going to die before/while you raise them. Ignore them crying for a raise and pinging the map and take as much time as you need to do it right.

It's important that you make a clean escape because your allies will probably be dying again pretty soon. In this stage, it's likely that you'll be repeatedly reviving an ally so he can dump a bunch of damage and then die again. This can sometimes split up the group of enemies in the process which can mess with your rhythm and force you take some unexpected damage, damage you won't be able to deal with if you cut it too close with the raises.

Kiting on 16 and 20

One more thing about kiting: Waves 16 and 20 of colloseum bear special mention because the clones change the game. You'll frequently want to move well before the clones reach you if they're capable of jumping or teleporting. Jumpy clones in particular really like to jump right on your head and some of them have a very large range on their abilities. If you get stunned by the Tau clone's Heavy Jet, you should still be able to jump/teleport, but sometimes you get locked into that twitching motion and can't do anything except die. It's best not to get jumped on, but it requires a lot of foresight and good reflexes.

There are also a lot of knockdown hazards, the most dangerous (besides jumps) being the Lord General's grenade launcher, the Captain's Thunder Hammer, the Hive Tyrant's Heavy Talons, and the Farseer's Laughing Stave because they can keep you perpetually knocked down. Another thing to consider is the Farseer's group teleport, which can dump all the clones and a fistfull of bloodletters right into your face out of nowhere. Finally, the chaos lord's fireballs should be avoided at all costs: they have a very large range, they're fired randomly at any unfriendly target within range, they knock you down, and do enough damage that you'll probably be dead before you get up if you get hit by more than one. Watch these problem units closely and keep a finger on your movement ability. You need to be able to react at the first sign of trouble to avoid most of these.

Bad Wargear

I could say quite a bit more about wargear, since I've either used or seen other people use almost everything, but I'm going to stick to the theme here, which is stuff that isn't obvious or widely known. Like everyone else, I have my favorites, but if I don't mention a piece of gear, assume that I'm saying that there's nothing special or hidden about it, but there's nothing inherently wrong with using it.

Wargear that is seless

Farseer
Singing Spear - Entirely eclipsed by Laughing Stave. Even if Laughing Stave isn't available, witchblade/pistol is still better.
Debilitating Witchblade - Terrible damage. You won't get any energy from killing things if you don't ever kill anything. Sap reduces melee damage, but you could easily end up taking more damage in the long run from taking more than twice as long to kill.

Mekboy
Electric Armor - The range of the aura requires you to be in melee range, but you don't have enough armor to survive in melee.

Captain
Bolter - Terrible damage. Stun grenade is fine, but in most cases you'll end up wishing it did damage, and that you had a weapon that did damage.

Chaos Sorcerer
Icon of Change - Explosions rarely hit anything at all, and almost never what you want them to.
Cataclysmic Hellblade, Oracle Stave - Only doomblast with the master sigil can make melee viable for the sorcerer, and that takes up the weapon slot.

Lord General
Bolter - Not enough damage for the healing to be worth anything.

Wargear that seems like it might be good but turns out not to be

This stuff is not entirely beyond redemption, but for the most part is not worth your time.

Farseer
Rune Armor, Ghosthelm - Armor value is too low. While you do regenerate energy while dead, you can't use any of it.

Mekboy
Mad Teleporta Pack - Effects are triggered by getting hit, but doesn't provide enough armor by itself to support getting hit.
Dakka Deffgun - Not enough damage to justify the hassle of a setup time and the loss of mobility.
Zzap Knife - The evasion bonus applied to you when you trigger Proactive Escape is also triggered on enemies that are Proactively Teleported. Teleporting enemies away can be annoying when you want to keep hitting them or to lock a ranged enemy in melee, although it can be handy for interrupting an unshakeable clone when it's trying to raise something.

Captain
Thunder Hammer - Being able to lockdown a vehicle is good, but the damage is lackluster and the knockback on hit means you have to chase down your target after every swing.
Plasma Cannon - Good damage, but survival in The Last Stand is all about mobility. Setup weapons don't work well without support, and you won't always have it from your allies.

Hive Tyrant
Heavy Talons - As with the Captain's hammer, chasing down your target after every swing is annoying.
Reinforced Chitin - Reactive armor doesn't actually work.

Chaos Sorcerer
Sword of Fate - Curse of Tzeentch costs too much energy for its niche use.

Lord General
Inspiring Power Sword, Protective Power Sword, Duelist Honors - You don't have the survival abilities for melee.
Repair, Reinforce - Better to just resummon the squad/turret and use the accessory slot for something else.

Tau Commander
Fusion Blaster - Compared to the Plasma Rifle, this has more DPS and ignores 50 more armor, so why is it worse? Because while the plasma does less damage per hit but attacks faster, that damage is enough to one hit kill small units. The Fusion gets no points for overkill and suffers from a lower attack speed and a lower attack radius.
Photon Grenades - Confusion is great, but these grenades tend to confuse entire groups of enemies at a time, groups that will not attack each other but either run off in search of their nonconfused allies, or just continue to attack you. The clones on 16 and 20 can also use these against you.
Targetting Cluster used with anything except the Plasma Rifle or the Fusion Blaster - The 25% accuracy is 25% of whatever your accuracy was before, so 20% on the Burst Cannon doesn't become 45%, it becomes 25%. Flamer and Airbursting Fragmentation Projector already have 100% accuracy and ignore cover so the targetting cluster does nothing at all for them.

Misunderstood/Hidden Effect Wargear

Farseer
Runes of Deception - Entering the Conceal area of effect doesn't automatically hide you from enemies. If you're blinking red, it means you're still visible. You're only safe when you're glowing blue. When you first enter, it takes a second or two for you to change to blue. If you're taking ranged damage, it can further delay the concealment, or prevent it entirely if there's no break in the damage to allow conceal to take effect. If you're too close to an enemy unit, or too close to a piece of cover or part of the terrain, you will also be revealed. You'll need to move away to get concealed again. Once you're concealed, attacking or using an ability briefly reveals you.
Runes of Wrath - Second Strike does the same damage no matter what weapon you have equipped and ignores armor.
Laughing Stave - Does as much melee DPS as Singing Spear and also makes you unshakeable.
Mantle of Malan'tai - Adds 10% to your melee special chance (e.g. 5% becomes 15%).

Captain
Lightning Claw - When you hit one member of a squadron, the lightning damage is applied to the whole squadron. Lightning damage stacks and ignores armor.
Litanies of Zeal - You can use the force melee attack command to attack certain pieces of cover and terrain and trigger the healing for you and your allies when there are no enemies around.
Jump Pack - Jumping breaks suppression.

Hive Tyrant
Toxin Sacs - Because searing ignores armor, if you're choosing between Toxin Sacs and Implant Attacks, Toxin Sacs will always be better damage. Because multiple searing attacks stack, this is especially effective when the Ravener uses it.
Psychic Scream - Reduces enemy damage by 75% and increases the damage they take by 25%.
Venom Cannon - Melee attacks do an uncommonly large amount of base damage and inherit the armor piercing.
Behemoth Claw - Adds 50 armor and has a chance to knock down.
Rending Stranglethorm - Melee attacks knock down, like with the Heavy Talons.
Devourer Cannon - Hitting one member of a squadron applies Gestate to the whole squadron. Gestate ignores armor. Melee attacks heal your minions.

Chaos Sorcerer
Tome of Doom - The spread on the doombolts is reduced to near nothing and the damage concentrated in one place if you cast them at your feet.
Daemonic Gift of Retaliation/Sigil of Master Sorcery - The armor effect that the Master Sigil gives to the reactive Doomblasts is huge (around 300 if I recall correctly) and can give a clone that has native health regeneration better survivability than the Daemonic Gift of Sustenance in certain conditions (under heavy fire, and attacking sparsely).

Lord General
Cadia Pattern Carapace Armor - Actually gives 0.3 energy regeneration.
Storm Troopers - If you use Tactical Withdrawal multiple times within a short period of time (back to back, for instance), you won't make it all the way to your destination before dropping to normal speed. Often, you'll only go a few steps.

Tau Commander
Flamer - The Tau version of the flamer ignores a little bit of armor (20), making it especially effective on lightly armored anemies, and not entirely useless on heavily armored enemies.
Advanced Drone Controller/Marker Drone - The Advanced Drone Controller gives you a different ability depending which drone you have equipped. The one most commonly used is the Marker Drone Self-Destruct, which does massive damage in a large radius and blows enemies halfway across the map. It does friendly damage, however, so when you see a Tau using this wargear, you should give any drones he drops a wide berth. Most Tau who use this will try to use a certain trick to kill the wave 16 clones that involves jumping in to stun them, dropping a Marker Drone, waiting for the Tau clone to drop his Marker Drone, and then blowing both drones up. Any clone hit by both explosions should be dead if the original had less than 200 HP, so if the placement is right, the wave is ended in about 5 seconds. If you're hanging around inside the gate when 16 starts, you'll either ruin the trick (it only works because the clones are clustered together), or get killed in the blast.
Markerlight - Sky Ray Barrage calls down missile strikes on ALL marked targets, including your allies (or you) if they were marked by your wave 16/20 clone on Bloody Colloseum.
Repulser Shield - Kinetic Pulse can be used while raising/capturing a point without interrupting the raise/capture.

Winning - General

I am constantly surprised to see people who have levelled multiple heroes to 20 and logged hundreds of hours on this game still not playing to win. In the course of eliting my heroes and relevelling them, I've seen plenty of wins where no one was level 20, and some where no one was above level 10. If you've read the rest of this guide, you already have more than I did when I started getting wins. Once you have access to your class's teleport/jump ability and you know which wargear sucks and which will make your clone too powerful, you have all the tools you need to beat wave 20. From there, it's just a matter of practice and finding a team that won't screw it up for you. By the end of the next section, it should be clear that it's not some elusive endgame that requires the best builds and the perfect strategies, but something that can be well within your grasp with a bit more experience and a little luck.

Builds

Now, that's not to say that just any old build will do. You should always be trying to choose wargear that complement each other, or that stick to a theme. It's usually better to do one thing well than three things poorly. The best builds can often do two things well, but you don't need to have one of these as long as you team as a whole has

1. Area damage for crowds of small units.
2. High single target damage for heavily armored units (armor-piercing damage preferred).
3. A survival mechanism.
This can be crowd control abilities, minions to absorb damage, healing, or mobility abilities for kiting. Kiting is most effective on Bloody Colloseum, while the others are more important on Anvil of Khorne.

A lopsided group with too much of one of these and not enough of the others will fail. If you have multiple heroes levelled, you should consider switching to one that fills the gaps in the team when you find yourself in these situations.

How to Prioritize your Killing

What is actually dangerous (in no particular order):

• Warriors, Raveners, Tyrant Guards, Lictors, Swarmlord
  
• Assault Marines, Tactical Marines, Scouts, Melee Dreadnoughts, Predators, Land Raider, Gabriel Angelos and his Terminators
  
• Bloodletters, Bloodcrushers, Chaos Predators, Chaos Lord's fireballs
  
• Banshees, Wraithguards, Warp Spiders, Seer Council
  
• Ogryns, Catachan, Leman Russ
  
• Nobs, Stikk Bombas, Stormboyz

If you're a ranged hero, melee units are going to be especially dangerous to you. If you're a kiter, the ranged, mobile units are going to be more trouble. In general, though, if all the above units are dead, the rest of the wave shouldn't be much trouble.

What seems dangerous but really isn't:

• Carnifexes, Zoanthropes
  
• Devastator Marines, Ranged Dreadnoughts, Force Commander, Terminator Marine (the wave 19 hero)
  
• Chaos Dreadnought, Great Unclean One, Chaos Lord's non-fireball attacks
  
• Fire Prisms, Shuriken Cannons, Wraithlords, Avatar
  
• Heavy Weapons Teams, Stormtroopers, Sentinels, Baneblade
  
• Deff Dreads, Warboss, Battlewagon

Obviously, anything can be dangerous if there are enough of them, or if you just stand there and let them hit you. Some of you might disagree with me about Zoanthropes, which is fine. The reason I don't consider them to be dangerous is that they move very slowly so you can easily get out of range if you know you're being targetted.

Winning - Bloody Colloseum (part 1)

Make sure your clones won't destroy you

The paradox of this map is that better wargear makes it both easier and harder to win because it buffs up your clones. Here's a list of wargear that you might want to consider leaving behind in order to increase your chances of winning. The story for most of these is that they either prevent kiting or the clones make much better use of it than you will on 16 and 20. I won't tell you never to bring this gear to Colloseum since you will usually get more out of it than the clones will. The Ravener and Revive are the exceptions: if you choose these, you should expect to lose and be very, very surprised if you don't.

Mekboy
Boss Pole - Double HP for all the heroes and bloodletters.
Big Shoota - High ranged damage.

Captain
Rite of the Tireless Crusader (Revive) - The clones will use it far more effectively than you will.
Plasma Gun - High armor-piercing ranged damage.

Hive Tyrant
Venom Cannon - High armor-piercing damage.
Devourer Cannon - Gestate ignores armor.
Ravener Nest - High ranged damage with ridiculous attack radius, high movement speed, and a movment ability.

Lord General
Deadly Sniper Rifle - High ranged damage with large attack radius. Your clone is just shy of unkiteable with this.
All turrets - Interfere with kiting in various ways.

Tau Commander
Plasma Rifle, Fusion Blaster - High armor-piercing ranged damage.
Burst Cannon - Suppressive ranged damage with large attack radius.
Twin linking any of the above naturally makes it worse.
Anti-Armor Missiles - The clone won't use these too often, but when it does it's pretty much a guaranteed kill.
Photon Grenades - Unlike the Farseer's abilities, this confuse can be used against players.

Waves to pay attention to

Wave 4: If there's a Chaos Sorcerer in your group, try to leave the Force Commander alive long enough for him to clone it.

Wave 9: One of the gates will have a wave of 3 Banshee squadrons followed shortly by 6 Banshee squadrons

Wave 10: Tactical Marines have armor-piercing plasma guns. Scouts are only slightly less dangerous and can throw grenades.

Wave 11: Two of the gates will have swarms of Stormboyz than can easily blindside you if you're not watching for them.

Wave 12: Wraithlords are very slow and can be kited easily. Kill the Shuriken Cannons, Banshees, and Warp Spiders first.

Wave 14: Your first Ravener wave.

Wave 16: Don't rush the clones, let them come to you. If you or any of your allies brought any of the problem wargear I mention above, be very careful not to let that clone hit you. Also watch out for armor piercing melee weapons, like the Captain's Axe and Lightning Claw, and the Hive Tyrant's Behemoth Claw. Most losses can be chalked up to someone underestimating just how much damage these weapons can do. To be clear: you CANNOT go toe to toe with one of these armor piercing or armor ignoring weapons. You will always die one on one with your clone because it does more damage than you, and you will almost always fail if you make this wave about trading auto-attacks: you need to outsmart them and outmaneuver them.

Melee locking a ranged threat can be very useful here, as can knockdown locking a succeptible clone with one of the perpetual knockdown weapons (Heavy Talons, Thunder Hammer, Laughing Stave, Grenade Launcher). Just be careful you don't get melee or knockdown locked yourself. Try to isolate one of them through the use of crowd control abilities or kiting and assasinate it before the others can come to its aid. Once you down one of them, try to guard its corpse and use knockdown, Taunt, Confuse, the Mekboy's Proactive Teleport, or stun to prevent the others from raising it. From there, divide and conquer again. Above all, try not to take on a fight you can't handle and die in a bad spot. If things go bad, refer to my advice about kiting clones.

Wave 17: From here on, each wave has a hero unit. This wave has the Lictor Alpha which is easily the most dangerous of the three. It has high melee damage, high movement speed, can knock you down, and can infiltrate and strike out of nowhere. Even so, the Raveners are the main threat on this wave. You should try very hard to eliminate them as soon as they spawn, because they can make kiting very difficult (almost impossible if you can be knocked down). Carnifexes should be saved for later unless you literally have nothing else to attack.

Wave 18: The hero for this wave is the Warboss, who is dangerous in melee and has a lot of knockback attacks, but will often stay in ranged stance where he's mostly harmless. The danger this wave is the sheer numbers: neither the Shoota Boyz, the Rokkit Launchaz, or the Deff Dreads do much damage on their own, but together they pack quite a punch and it's unlikely you'll be able to kill enough of them before they and the Nobs surround you. Expect to either kite or die on this wave.

Wave 19: The hero here is the Terminator Marine, who is mostly harmless except for his missile attack. The further away he is when they're fired, the more spread out they are, but if you're close by you could end up taking a lot of damage and being knocked down several times. While the melee Dreadnoughts can do massive damage with their ground punch attack, the main threats on this wave are the Tactical Marines and the Scouts. Taking a volley from either group can shut down your kiting before it even begins. Try to have the nonkiters sacrifice kill as many of them as possible before dying.

Wave 20: On this wave, Your heroes are each teleported behind a separate gate (Chaos Sorcerers are never teleported if they have a clone out, and usually not teleported even if they don't). The Chaos Lord spawns and teleport/resurrects all of your clones from wave 16. Then you regain control, the gates lower and the wave begins. The clones will attempt to revive the heroes from waves 17-19. Shortly after that, Bloodletters will begin spawning. Bloodletters are far more dangerous than the wave 17-19 heroes and often more dangerous than your clones. They have a very high damage melee attack, they're very hard to kill, and they can teleport a short distance. While technically they're vulnerable to knockdown, in practice they won't get knocked down if you hit them while they're in the middle of their long attack animation, or in other words it won't work when you really need it to.

Winning - Bloody Colloseum (part 2)

Beating 20

The key to beating 20 is the knowledge that only the player clones can revive. If you can kill the three of them, they will stop reviving the Chaos Lord, each other, and the wave 17-19 heroes, and you will have a chance to win. As such, there are two main ways to achieve victory:

1) Take advantage of the initial lull while the clones are busy trying to raise and before the Bloodletters have started to spawn to quickly assassinate your clones. This requires a lot of single target damage, some crowd control/good aggro management to prevent them from killing you first, and above all it requires that all three players be on the same page and waste no time in getting out of the gate and dishing out the damage.

From there, take out the Bloodletters as they spawn, giving the Chaos Lord a wide berth to avoid his fireballs. You might have to kite a little bit if you can't keep pace or if some of your team got downed in the attack on the clones, but Bloodletters are relatively easy to kite as long as you keep in mind that they can teleport a short distance.

2) Hide from/kite your clones during the initial lull (or simply fail to completely execute strategy 1 and leave one or more clones alive). Have a kiter clump the wave together and slowly pick off the Bloodletters via zombie tactics. When kiting, beware the Terminator's missiles if you're vulnerable to knockdown and (as I've mentioned before) watch very closely for the Chaos Lord's fireballs. If you're been out of his range for awhile, he likes to lead off with them, as for instance when you've kited him to one part of the map and zipped across to the other side to attempt a raise. You should abandon the raise as soon as you see him start to spit fire unless you're heavily armored and at high HP (and obviously, unshakeable). Also, as mentioned earlier, take your clones' jump/teleport abilities into account when deciding how soon you need to move.

From there, take targets of opportunity, trying always to eliminate the player clones and to prevent raises if possible. A good way to get the dominoes falling is to draw a clone or hero deep into one of the spawn points and kill it there. Any clone that wants to raise it will have to break off from the main group and expose itself to the same treatment. Your success at this stage will be heavily reliant on luck in being able to separate and kill the clones. A Chaos Sorcerer who clones the Chaos Lord can be a tremendous help here in that the cloned Chaos Lord will draw fire away from the players, and periodically take out Bloodletters/clones/heroes with its fireballs.

If you can manage to take down the player clones, it's downhill from there. Of course, that doesn't mean you should let your guard down: the Chaos Lord can still wipe your entire team with one well-placed fireball attack. I've seen games lost because people got cocky at the end and took unnecessary risks. But in general, if you made it this far, you should have no problem continuing until your team can pick off the remains, one by one.

Identifying the "hot gate"

Most people are aware that you can figure out which gate your clones will emerge from on wave 16 by watching which wave the Banshee swarm comes out of on wave 9. This is the easiest way, but it's also useful to know where the Banshees will come from ahead of time. If you're running a build that camps out by a single gate and attacks things as they spawn, like a Warp stacking Sorcerer, a Rocket Run General, or an exploding teleport Mekboy, this is also a great gate to camp out by as early as wave 3. There will occasionally be better options, but if you choose just one gate and stick with it, this is the one to choose. Just make sure you steer clear on wave 17, as the Lictor and a Carnifex spawn there.

There are many signs that you can use to tell which gate is the hot gate, but here is the earliest way. On wave 1, watch which gates open and which stay closed. The two that opened and had Shoota Boyz are out of consideration: pay attention to the two that did not open. One of these will have 2 squads of Hormagaunts (melee) and one will have Termagaunts (ranged). The gate with the Hormagaunts is the hot gate. A third gate will open on this wave with 2 Hormagaunt and 1 Termagaunt, so be careful not to confuse them. The gate that did not open on wave 1 and has 2 Hormagaunts only on wave 2 is the correct gate.

Special bonus section about what to doppel as the Chaos Sorcerer

(For this section, I'll use "clone" to refer to the three enemies you face on wave 16, and "copy" to refer to the Daemonic Doppelganger you create as your minion)
Doppelling your wave 16 clones is one of the most interesting things about playing as a Chaos Sorcerer, but too often I see people make awful decisions on what to copy. First off, don't copy yourself. Even in the ideal situation where the other two clones are both powerful and have no minions, your copy still will most likely just sit there using its ranged attack. You're much more likely to be in a situation where one of the other two clones is much better than the other and there will often be minions that could end up getting copied instead. Most often, though, the outcome will be that your copy doesn't copy anything at all and you would have been much better off if you had just copied the good clone directly.

The thing to remember about your copy is that most of the time it's just going to stand still and use its default weapon attack. If something attacks it in melee, it's not going to run or teleport or jump away, it's going to stand there and melee back (or for Tau copies, just stand there getting hit). Don't count on them using abilities anywhere near as effectively as players use them. In fact, some abilities like Kinetic Pulse and the Marker Drone self destruct won't be used at all. Others, like Eldritch Storm, Rocket Run, and Orbital Bombardment, will be as harmful to your team as they are to the enemy.

So, with these things in mind, you will in general get the best mileage out of copies that have the armor/healing to take a few hits in melee, and have powerful armor piercing weapons. Copies that are too reliant on abilties will fail because there is too much for the AI to screw up. Minions and passives, on the other hand, like the Captain's healing aura, are great because they can't be screwed up. In addition, all the problem wargear I mentioned above can now be turned to your advantage if you copy the right clone. You just have to make sure that your counterpart doesn't do the same and neutralize your advantage.

For this reason, you should always wait to copy until your counterpart has already chosen a copy for itself. If you can, identify the hot gate ahead of time, copy a Nob at the end of wave 15, and lead it into the gate (the easiest way to do this is to wait inside the gate and copy the Nob right as it spawns). You will have to stay put here right up until the end of the wave or your Nob might wander away, but if you're successful, your wave 16 counterpart will copy your harmless Nob and leave you free to copy a more powerful clone. On wave 20, you will want to get a Chaos Lord copy if you can, but again, wait until your counterpart copies first, or you might end up with 2 Chaos Lords on the other side.

Winning - Anvil of Khorne

No gimmicks to prevent you from using your full strength here, but as I mentioned earlier, kiting is much less effective. Using the tanks for line of sight shenanigans is your main form of defense here. As a result, the later waves will mostly be damage checks, where if you fail to kill fast enough you'll be overwhelmed and die. Wave 19 is usually the watershed point where a team with good but not great damage will fall behind and get buried. Overall, it's easier to win on Anvil than on Colloseum, so long as you're geared for a straight up brawl. Anvil is about meeting force with force, while Colloseum is about kiting, whittling away large mobs, and building weakness into your gear so your clones are manageable. If, on a difficulty scale of 1-10, Colloseum begins at 1 and ends at 10, Anvil begins at 5 and ends at 9. You'll be in the thick of it right from the start, but just keep in mind what is and isn't really dangerous and you should be fine, as long as you remember to bring damage and leave the weird experimental builds at home.

There is one Anvil specific trick that can bring kiting back into play in very specific circumstances. The tank in the top left of the map is situated right above one of the fissures in the terrain. Between the tank and the fissure is a narrow passage that small units like heroes can fit through, but large units cannot. So, if you have a unit like a Bloodcrusher chasing you, you can lead it to this passage and slip through. To keep following you, it will have to go all the way around to the other side, at which point you slip back through and force it to go back around, ad nauseum. While this can keep a few slow units tied up indefinitely, you're open to ranged fire from almost every angle, so this trick has limited use.

Waves to pay attention to

Wave 8: Tactical Marines with plasma.

Wave 9: Catachan have an 80% chance to huck a grenade at you.

Wave 11: The Seer Council does a lot of melee damage and their ranged attack has a chance to knock down that ignores unshakeable.

Wave 12: Pay attention to which spawn point the Predator comes out of at the end of the wave because...

Wave 13: ...the Swarmlord is going to spawn here. The Swarmlord should be killed immediately because it increases the movement speed of all nearby Tyranids. It's not the end of the world if you don't, as long as you can handle the Warriors, but it can dish out a lot of melee damage in the meantime.

Wave 16: The beginning of the superunit waves. Prioritize the Stormboyz and Nobs and don't worry too much about the Battlewagon.

Wave 17: Avatar is easily kited with the trick I mentioned above.

Wave 18: Even with a high damage group, you might find yourselves losing ground and wanting to fall back on kite mode. If you attempt to kite, make sure you take out the Predators first because they can shut you down pretty fast. Great Unclean One can be kited like the Avatar.

Wave 19: Damage check time. Pretty much everything in this wave is ranged damage. Hide behind the tanks to stem the tide a little, but if you can't take down the Ogryns fast enough, you'll eventually go down. The Baneblade looks mean and makes a lot of noise but it's not really all that dangerous.

Wave 20: All three of you are teleported (again, except for Chaos Sorcerers) into the bottom right spawn point. A drop pod delivers Gabriel Angelos and an escort of Terminators. Control is returned and the wave begins. Gabriel can end your game very quickly if you let him close to melee range. You need to down him right away and don't let the Terminators be far behind. Stuff will then start to pour in from other gates, but the pace is much slower than the previous wave. The Landraider can be a problem if it spawns right under you. Its melta gun makes short work of Hive Tyrants and Taus (like, one shot short), so you should go out of your way to take it out immediately. Most people consider wave 20 to be easier than 19 because of the pace of the spawns, so if you got through 19 ok you should be fine here, as long as you prioritize taking down Gabriel and the Landraider before they can do too much damage.

The End

This is the end.

[Fake Gamer]

Excellent point. However, I will continue to use garbage loadouts and nobody can stop me.

[crazy ginger! bird man]

an in depth view at gaming for retribution, i personally would have loved this, when the game came out. but for the new people that are coming. this is grate. this will save you a lot of game hours you read this and you will be able to play the game a lot! easier thank you for posting this work of art up. now we could do with some pictures in it too. we all love art

[Clockwork]

Space Marine Bolter is highly dependent on with whom you're going to play. If the team lacks too much firepower, it's a bad idea.
There was this one game I picked it when the team had lots of firepower and only needed better chance at surviving. I kept spamming the grenade to save the two other players. Even though I nearly killed nothing, that allowed the others to safely kill everything, resulting in a deathless victory.

[Eranak]

It's a shame that the guy only made this guide and nothing else and it's 10 years old. Still cool though.

[DJSatane]

#1 ITEM SHOULD BE
- RUN GAME WITH SOUND FX OFF
OR
- run with command line -nosound

[ImABotKiller]

can you add necron?

[oea]

Great guide! Have been playing last stand since the start with only the farseer, mekboy and sm and teamplay is the key in 16 and 20 as you mentioned. I consider the best "weapon" in the game to be the scenery itself, which should be left standing as long as possible, leave some walls up for wave 10. Even consider not dropping your dreadnaught until this wave.

What I have never understood is why the following tactic is rarely used. To mess with the reviving at the start of wave 20, the team should have killed the 17-19 bosses in the same spot, far away from the spawn-pillar, behind a house or in a gate. The house in the bottom of the map is best and at least two gates are closeby.
Also, I guess it's a bug, right after beating wave 19, if you click like crazy on some far away spot on the map (behind the bottom house..!) there is a chance you won't teleport to a gate but keep walking during the cutscene giving you a possible advantage, or even an earlier death if messed up.

[Noble Turkey Stance]

Can we file that under "Required reading" for anyone who attempts Last Stand at all? It's a damn shame people who'd really need that won't read it, because it's as comprehensive as it gets.
One nitpick: Add Psychic Scream for Tyrant as one of the abilities that screw you over on 16 BC. If that motherfucker goes off you basically are forced to kite until it wears off and CD equals duration.
Otherwise, amazing job.

[-GK- Paladin]

Great guide! I' ve seen sooo many new players take the lame wargear you point out and make mistakes you' ve mentioned. Thumbs up. Mandatory reading for new players as someone already said in comments. Someone from last stand said I was talking garbage when I said DLC Devourer cannon heals Tyrant minions, yet he bragged about having 2600 hours in the game =) ... Special thanks for pointing that out in guide and making an even bigger fool of him.

[AnaLoGMunKy]

This is easily the most in depth must know guide for any last stand players. I have played this game a long time now and found myself smiling all the way thru thinking "this guy fnarkin knows his stuff!" Im well impressed. I even learned some things I didnt know.

I would love for you to expand on the Dangerous Enemies section and maybe give a bit of an order as to why its dangerous and especially to whom, ranged, melee etc and some nice tips and tricks for killing them. This could bleed into the section regarding enemies that are not dangerous but seem like they are because when you know how to deal with them they become easy (like the zoanthrope).

Anyway, bravo! bravo I say!!