The Most Misunderstood Operator in R6:Siege

A guide to an operator - Alibi. In-depth, or so I'd say.

Preface

Yo! An actual guide! Yeah actually, I haven’t made one of these in a long long time, but I’m having extra free time this start of the year and I’ve been itching to talk about this specific operator for a while now, so here we go.

To kick things off, here's a little appetizer, which by the way, is on my actual youtube so you can check it out if you’re curious, I just use it to archive clips and stuff like that for the most part.

1. Introduction

Alibi is, in my opinion, the most misunderstood operator in the game since her release back in Year 3. She’s generally seen as a pretty good 3 speed flex operator, with a low recoil - high rate of fire weapon, impact grenades, whatever; a general use roamer. And her gadget is commonly used as a “set it and forget it” kinda deal where you place it in front of commonly held windows, or commonly vaulted windows, to discourage enemies from getting pinged.

There’s a whole concept of the prisma holograms acting as distractions, sometimes drawing the eye of attackers as you peek, or as they peek into a room slowly combing through for defenders, and having a little instant of hesitation as they see the hologram. However, they are rarely used in the “intended” manner, that is to mix the enemy up when trying to find the original Alibi. This actually, is where I think the potential of the operator resides. I mean, there's a reason Ubisoft classified Alibi, as simple as she is to play, as a 3 difficulty operator.

Alibi has the unique ability of being able to hide in rooms where normally there are no spots for defenders to hide; and that’s what the guide and the operator are all about. But, first let’s go over some fundamentals.

2. Loadout

Alibi has quite an interesting choice of guns and equipment, and there’s more than one way to run the loadout so let’s talk about it:

Mx4 Storm:

Alibi’s primary SMG has overall good stats, the most prominent ones being the low recoil and high rate of fire. It only features 1x scopes, so you should pick the one you’re most used to, personally I go for holographic, but if you’re more of a reflex person you can do that too. Holographic specifically gives you some extra side to side vision inside the housing, which I prefer, but it’s not a vital difference.

After that, for the barrel, I run flash hider, for a general reduction of both types of recoil. And for the grip, both options are good, angled and vertical. The Mx4 Storm already has very mild vertical recoil, so having an angled grip seems like the alternative. However, with some of the gunfight habits we’ll go over in particular later on Alibi, you’ll find often you’re already ADS’d before engaging, making vertical a little more valuable to help your long range accuracy.

We’ll go back to some details on the Mx4 Storm later on this section.

ACS 12:

The ACS 12 is just a bonkers weapon, its full auto, but with an awful capped rate of fire, and has high destruction with a single projectile shot (slugs), a collosal mag for what it is, and can equip a 1.5x scope (Maestro has the 2x which is even more insane lol).

Now, I’m not saying the ACS is garbage, but I will say that it shouldn’t be the gun you run when playing Alibi. As a 3 speed, you take engagements at many ranges, sometimes very up-close and often against more than one operator at a time; the ACS is very much not for any of these situations, and because of this it ends up extremely unwieldy and awkward to use.

If you enjoy fast guns that feel natural to use and can spray heads on any range, you’ll hate this weapon; and if you enjoy more strategic guns that reward accuracy and shot placement, like DMRs or the TCSG on Kaid and Goyo; you’ll also hate this weapon, because it has a uniquely capped rate of fire, meaning it can’t be spammed as it was actually semi-auto like those mentioned. It has all the disadvantages of semi-auto and none of the advantages.

To top it all off, in this guide we’ll see how Alibi can use her holograms to hide (something you already saw in the video at the start if you watched it); which is something you can’t do if you’re running the ACS, since the holograms always appear to be using the Mx4.

Anyway, the point is if you want to experiment with the ACS, Maestro is a better choice, you can take better advantage of its high destruction, and you’ll have a 2x scope, which is kinda remarkable on its own.

Keratos:

Alibi’s first secondary is the Keratos, a high damage revolver-thing. The Keratos is an awesome handgun, one of the best in my opinion. Its weakness of course is that it only has 6 shots per reload, so you can’t miss much and you definitely can’t engage with more than one person at a time. But, for its damage, it doesn’t have any significant recoil even when you empty the whole thing; so in total it does dish out some serious DPS. This is your choice for a combat secondary. Muzzle brake included.

Bailiff:

The Bailiff is the alternative, a gun that, in combat, is actually poopoo; but, since it technically shoots shells like a shotgun, it has minor destruction and is able to open hatches. This comes in handy when you decide to run the deployable shield, or if you want to save your impacts for something else or if you have already spent them.

The general idea is that you should only run the Keratos if you’re running impacts, run the Bailiff any other time, despite its lack of combat usefulness, just out of utility necessity. You don’t want to run the Keratos along the Deployable shield and then have no way to open a hatch or a hole; you’ll feel extremely stupid in that situation knowing you’re playing an operator with more than one choice for that task and you chose neither.

Equipment:

Between the deployable shield and impacts, both are great and equally valuable options. Deployable shields of course are very much favored for many strategies, and in some extent helps justify an Alibi pick instead of a more utility capable operator. Impact grenades are, in my opinion, the strongest independent character secondary gadget, letting you rotate mid-roam, finish off low hp and injured enemies, play vertically on some cases, open hatches, run out, bait or distract, etc; they’re extremely flexible.

My suggestion would be to run the impacts as default, and then change to the deployable shield for sites that you feel could use a deployable shield for either your team’s setup, or to combine in use with a hologram, as we’ll see later when we talk a little about Alibi’s primary gadget.

3. Appearance

As we’ll see, Alibi’s appearance actually breaks the operator. If you want to properly play Alibi to her utility’s potential, it is vital that you unequip any headgears, uniforms, and gunskins, as they’ll be visible and easy ways to the player to determine, before even coming across your holograms, that they do not look like the operator, and then they become instantly less valuable.

If you look exactly like your holograms, even if you don’t go for a mixup play, enemies will see you early on the round, say, during prep-phase, and then, since you look like the holos; its far more likely they do double takes when coming across them later on the round, If you look flashy and full of skins, they’ll remember that and then just glance over the holos without worrying or staring much.

The bonus little edge you get when playing Alibi looking exactly like your holograms is that Alibi’s appearance with the red beret and green uniform is so ingrained into players’ brain as “that’s something I avoid shooting” that it throws people off when you’re the real operator looking bone stock with no skins of any kind.

The extra step you can opt for when playing if you’ve already un-equiped everything is to prevent the enemy from seeing you, so that they don’t know if a hologram could or couldn’t be you beforehand. Better yet, they normally assume you aren’t a hologram, and if they don’t know you could be, you gain all the advantages from them when first surprising them in the round.

Many players go to the extremes and even unequip attachments from their weapons, this isn’t necessary, really. The Mx4 Storm’s iron sights aren’t bad, but any extra clear view will be of help when playing for baits with the holograms; and with that having a barrel and grip does help a little longer range.



Generally, not only do attackers barely check or realize such small differences, but the game doesn’t even properly draw a small object like a sight at a distance. Try it if you want on a custom game: No matter how hard you squint, the screen just doesn’t let you see if a real or fake Alibi 10+ meters away. The sight, which looks like the bigger non-cosmetic difference between a real or fake is reduced to like a few pixels at a distance. So trust me, you can confidently stand in front of enemies, faking, and even with all the attachments on your gun, and they won’t be able to tell what they’re looking at, it just gets too pixelated at a distance.

Little tip: Equip the brown or gray color attachment skin to kinda blend in the sights with the body of the Mx4 when looked at from the side. It doesn't actually match the color exactly but it does reduce the overall contrast on the gun vs attachments.

4. Prisma Usage

Alibi has 3 Prismas total, which, in case you’ve never played her, are throwable equipment that stops on the floor and deploys a hologram looking in the direction it was thrown towards. The hologram displays a default-appearance Alibi holding the Mx4 Storm in an ADS (aiming down sights) pose.

The prisma itself when deployed extends as a wide metal bar that meets the hologram at each feet along the floor. Enemies that shoot, come in contact with (that includes equipment such as throwable grenades, not only the operator body) or drive a drone through the hologram projection will get red-pinged multiple times over a short interval of time. In order to destroy the hologram they must shoot at the metal part at the bottom, or otherwise damage it with an explosive or using a twitch shock drone. Additionally, Nokk can shoot or come in contact with Alibi’s holograms without getting spotted, while using her Hel presence gadget.

Hologram placements are very flexible, even as the round progresses it is encouraged you pick up and redeploy them just to update where attackers might be coming into contact with them and maximize their effect, and also to further create confusion after they may have droned out some positions. However, here’s some general concepts to keep in mind when laying them out:

Don’t place them all on different windows.

While placing holograms next to window sills is a viable option to discourage enemies from vaulting in, doing this with all your holograms gives away to the enemy that they won’t be encountering any holograms further inside the building, meaning they’ll shoot the original Alibi on sight and without hesitation.

Hold on to one of your prismas for the round.

Placing only 2 holograms and having one ready in your inventory is helpful in many ways. First of all, it will guarantee that you’re never without holos; since even if the enemy takes the bombsite, they will have destroyed the 2 deployed prismas and you’ll have the last one at hand to use later.

Second, it makes it so the enemy is never 100% sure they’ve cleared all the holos. If the enemy is coordinated and on calls, they will notify each other when they’ve destroyed all the 3 prismas, so that everyone is aware that if they see an Alibi at any point it must be the real one. By holding the last prisma, they’ll always have to keep in mind the possibility that there’s a last hologram somewhere in the map and they can’t be certain Alibi is real or fake until they destroy the last one.

Third, deploying holograms mid gunfight is decently helpful. Not like you’re going to be confusing enemies, but when disengaging in gunfights, you can throw out your hologram at the common prefire position or behind the main angle; and then you yourself pre-fire through the hologram, have the enemy spray and get spotted (which you can use to know for sure if the enemy is taking cover or standing wide). You can even place the holo behind walls and catch enemies trying to wallbang you after you’re “fleeing” and flank them as they get spotted.

Hide their feet.

Holograms can only be shot and destroyed when their base is exposed, so you should always try to keep the hologram behind cover, whether it is furniture or a deployable shield.

When hiding as a hologram, it's especially helpful to keep the hologram feet covered. That way enemies will ignore the step of clearing the hologram and instead continue to clear the room. If you hide inside a hologram with visible feet, enemies will destroy it out of just general principle and it will make your jump on them much less likely to be successful.

In some rarer occasions you can even “hide” without a deployed hologram, if your feet are 100% hidden from the line of sight, all you have to do is stand still at ADS at head height and you’re already indistinguishable from a hologram. As long as they can’t check your feet, they can’t know for sure.

There are many locations in maps where there is a ton of clutter and obstacles that make hiding hologram’s feet easy, and so, these are generally strong places to be playing Alibi at. Bank’s Open Area and Theme Park’s Cafe come to mind.

4.1. Hiding in Holos

Hiding inside holograms is one of Alibi’s more wacky but effective tools. In order to do this, it's actually quite easy, just step close to the hologram so it turns off, and use the vanishing blue hologram to place your head inside where the hologram head was. After that, make sure you ADS and place your crosshair exactly at head height.

If the hologram’s feet are hidden, you don’t need to match the hologram base exactly, so you can rotate yourself as you see fit, just be conscious of what information the enemies have of the hologram placements, as you’ll have to correctly match it in order to not get shot immediately.

Furthermore, when placing holograms you’ll be hiding in and when you hide in them, make sure you don’t aim exactly at the point you’re watching. Whether it is a door or window you want to be covering with your hologram, aim it so it's looking in that direction but like an extra 20 to 30 degrees off of it, not directly at it. The reasoning here is that, if you’re going to be hiding inside holograms, you don’t want to trigger an enemy shooting it because they got spooked. If the hologram is aiming slightly away, enemies are less likely to shoot it out of a quick reaction, and then you have a good window of opportunity to land your shoot.

The concept is that the holograms have to look as idle as possible, so that when you hide in them, it's more believable that you’re a hologram and not the original Alibi. You’ll see me do this in the clips above, by aiming way out of the way of enemies, so they keep clearing the room and when I’m sure they’re not aiming over me (“the hologram”) I can flick onto them and have a huge damage advantage in whilst they react, at which point I’ve already moved out of the hologram base so it springs back up.

You also have to consider how likely the enemy is to expect for you to hide inside holograms. This is one of the reasons I normally save this “gimmick” for end of the round situations, making sure they haven’t seen me try it before, that way it's as unexpected as possible.

Your "believability" goes way up if enemies have shot at that same hologram before and gotten spotted, at which point you have the perfect opportunity to take the hologram’s place and enemies will believe for sure its a fake, as they just saw it, and they won’t shoot it out of reaction cause they already did so once.

Your "believability" goes down if they’ve already seen you, the real Alibi, stand idle before, via drone for example. When playing against twitch, I’ll often be playing hidden inside a holo, and the shock drone will approach to break the prisma, at that point I quickly flick to it to prevent it from breaking my gadget and pick the gadget up and relocate, the issue is that Twitch now has the idea that I may be attempting that later on the round, and may also communicate it to their teammates.

Other bad situations to be caught out by are getting spotted by a drone (of course drones can’t spot holograms so right away they’ll know you’re real) (when spotted break away to prevent getting wallbanged), getting called by Dokkaebi, getting tracked by Jackal, getting the prisma you’re standing on broken via Twitch drone or shot from below or something like that, or turned off by an EMP, and finally, meeting a Nokk (Nokk can’t get spotted if she has her gadget on, so she loses nothing by shooting all the holograms in the head, make sure you’re not standing on one if she does so), or a Glaz (Glaz’s thermal scope will mark you yellow, and not the holograms, of course). Also sometimes people are more likely to shoot at holograms during a Lion scan because 1) they’re looking for stationary targets and 2) getting spotted by Alibi’s hologram isn’t that bad during a scan because if a defender tries to capitalize on the hologram ping they’ll get pinged right back by the Lion scan.

4.2. Hologram Tech

Other than hiding and mindgame usage, there’s a few little extra tips to keep in mind when placing holograms to maximize effectiveness, most of them really simple, so here we go:

Sticking them close to walls.

Prismas always open diagonally, with the left foot of the hologram projecting forwards and the right one backwards, meaning the metal bar is always tilted around 40 degrees clockwise from a horizontal position. As you know, holograms can’t be deployed if the Prisma finds an obstacle as it unfolds on the floor, so, if you want to stick holograms closer to walls, you have to angle yourself around like 40 degrees to the right, that way the metal bar is parallel to the wall.

This causes the hologram to be looking slightly to the left, but it doesn’t really matter, because the situations where you’d be doing this are generally to place it next to window vaults, and the hologram’s appearance isn’t as important as sticking the metal bar as close to the wall as possible, to prevent the enemy from breaking it from outside (sometimes even if they rappel upside down), forcing them to use utility or trigger the hologram when vaulting in. These holos aren't meant to fool anybody, they're just obstacles.

Wait for the prep-phase to end to set up in-bomb holograms.

Holograms are most often used inside the objective room, and of course, the objective room is generally the most heavily droned out area of the map. You wanna make sure that enemies don’t ignore hologram placements because they’ve already seen them set up beforehand, even if its something as simple as moving it a few meters in the same room, changing up the hologram placements will do a lot to at least slow down rushing enemies coming into the obj guns blazing.

Because of this I generally don’t place my holograms inside the objective room until the prep-phase is over or drones have been destroyed, or if I do I try to change them, even if it's just one of them, before enemies start clearing obj utility. If you’re planning to roam very far from obj then sure you should place them as you’re leaving site, but consider how much utility you and your team are getting from those pre-placed holograms and see if maybe it's worth it to just leave 1 behind and carry 2 in your inventory instead of leaving them all to get spotted and cleared by the attackers.

Enemies always expect holograms to be in groups.

This is a general way to improve your chances of getting away with any kind of hologram gimmick. If you're looking to hide inside a holo, its better to have at least one more hologram nearby, looking at different angles to sell the idea that you just happened to set up holograms in some random way and that it is at least unlikely you'd try something sketchy. If you're not droned or pushed out with utility, having multiple holograms is always a good idea when going for mindgame kinda things.

Much Needed Summary

I know my guides are a little much for the average read of 12 seconds, so here's the cliff notes:

• Equip the Mx4 and secondary of your choice, use impacts with the Keratos to always have a way of destruction. Use the Bailiff with the deployable shield if you decide to run that.
  
  
• Don't use headgears, uniforms, or gun skins. You can use attachments since at a distance they're not visible as a way to differentiate you and holograms.
  
  
• Don't place all your holograms at once, because if they're destroyed, they won't be any use anymore. A hologram in your pocket is more valuable than 1 more hologram in the bombsite, because it will allow you to use it later in the round and enemies will never have the peace of mind of having cleared all 3 holograms.
  
  
• When hiding inside holograms, don't aim directly at where enemies might come from. Aim close enough so you can see the enemy inside your sights, and flick to them; but not close enough so that enemies might shoot you out of a quick reaction.
  
  
• When using holograms to block windows, place them at an angle to stick the metal part closest to the wall, making it harder or impossible to shoot from outside.

That's it.

Here's a silly hologram vs hologram thing to close off the guide. That's the end! Comment or whatever, just don't spam that stuff goes to my inbox. Cheers.

[♫ AoiShizuka ♫]

well the last picture is pretty good btw nice guide

[Sorodon]

Reads Guide. Thinks thats reasonable. Is motivated. Starts game. Totally carries with newly learned Alibi tactics. Realizes Team is uncarriable. Ragequit.

Your guide is really really good though!

[TwisterCat]

As a hardcore Alibi main, I'm glad to see someone that understands the operator the way it's intended

[PanTsuChan]

so when ubi fix holo's headgears, uniforms, or gun skins like Iana.

[playboi carti]

good guide

[RequiemUK]

oh nice mate, i will share this with my friends

[Kobeni]

guess ill play Alibi now