Evolve Stage 2: Hunters and You, an introductory guide.

This is a guide for new and returning players that handles roles, role overviews, tips and tricks, matchups, and more in-depth information intended to benefit the Hunter. Information will be handled from a pro-Hunter standpoint, and will feature basic tips against Monsters, and what to do during a match-up.

A note to you.

Hey, I'm ShortFuẞe.

I really hope this guide helps any new or returning players. If you like this guide, then check out my other guide, http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=593085606&tscn=1468384379
If you want to learn about being a Monster, read another guide by me:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=725091982

If you like this guide, leave a positive rating so others can see it, and if you have something to share or suggest, leave comments. If you really like this guide, comment about it and I'll make one for Monster players.

The Hunters, and finding the Monster.

The Hunters are a team of 4 humans (or mostly-humans. Or robots). Scratch that. 4 players who run around to track down and (hopefully) kill the enemy Monster.

The Hunters win by killing the enemy Monster, or if time runs out. In Evolve Stage 2, Monsters have INSANE armor regen outside of combat, so you need to stay aggressive in the Dome. Keep in mind that ALL monsters have a combat mode. In combat, some abilties of Monsters regenerate faster. Do NOT shoot a fleeing Wraith, Meteor Goliath, or Goliath. Shoot everyone else. Or better yet, if you see a Monster, PING IT. (Default Q). This will tell your team where it is.

Another thing to keep in mind is that 4 Hunters are a match for one Monster. 3 Hunters can survive a Monster. 2 Hunters can flee a Monster. 1 hunter will die. Stay with your team. If you run off because you know where the Monster is, tell your team. Use pings (default q) to tell your team where to go. Never show up to a fight against a Monster alone. This includes not throwing a Dome if you're the only one in it. It doesn't do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ if you caught the Monster, if he brings you down without a fight.

And one last message that can make the difference between finding the Monster and playing running simulator. The Monster moves a hell of a lot faster than you do. Use your map (default "tab") to predict the Monsters movements.



Imagine you are following Monster tracks. The tracks are located on the very right side of the top half, moving North. The Monster cannot go back the way he came without running into you, meaning that the Monster will have to head South-West. You should move North-west to cut the Monster off and find him. If you just follow the tracks, however, you'll never find him. In times like this where you want to cut the Monster off, the Planet Scanner is a valuable tool. It will give you the Monster's current direction, which will help you determine what angle you should move at.

Combat with the Monster

The Monster is big and powerful, but isn't as strong as you might think. Here I will break down the roles of each class during combat.

Assault. You have the simplest and one of the most important jobs. You should ALWAYS be doing damage to the Monster. During reload times, switch weapons to keep up DPS. You should be in the Monster's face, trying to draw it's fire. You should block attacks for your Medic and Support, and they can keep you alive. If you are being focused, or are about to block a heavy attack, pop the Defense Matrix.

Trapper. You do ♥♥♥♥ for damage, so don't bother unless there is nothing else to do. All Trappers have some way to keep the Monster in place, or slowed down. During a dome fight, you should be alternating between damage, and slowing the Monster so the Assault can do his job. For the Planet Scanner, only when you are completely lost to where the Monster is, you know where he is and absolutely need the speed boost and direction. Don't use it every time it's off cooldown. Save it for critical moments.

Medic. You have the most important job. Also you don't do damage. You should spend every single moment healing. Save your jetpack, also. Walk around and use your Jetpack Boosts to flee the Monster. If you fall, your team will follow. If your team is fully healthy, then you can switch to doing damage, but it's really just better to constantly heal. Use the Healing burst to save someone from death, or more importantly to keep yourself alive.

Support. It's your job to, well, support the team. The support does the 2nd most amount of damage, so while you aren't using your support utilities, you should be firing on the Monster. The Shield Burst can be used to help save a Medic, or to let an Assault chump block a powerful attack for his team without taking damage. It's on a fairly short CD so don't be afraid to use it.

As a team, stick together. It's important for everyone to be doing their job, and to be aggressive. Each Monster plays differently, so coordinate with your team around your foe. If you are new to Evolve, you will find that playing Hunter is hard. It's a tough job. It's difficult to wrangle 4 people, vs playing by yourself. But remember that with good teamwork and communication, you can do wonders. Hunt Together, or Die Alone. (see it's funny because when Evolve launched it was Hunt Together or Kill Alone. I said die because if you split up you'll GET ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DESTROYED).

KNOW WHEN TO FLEE.
As a team of four, you should be fighting. Once you drop to 3 people alive, think about an exit plan. If that drops again to 2, look at the living classes. If you have Medic + Assault, and the Monster is low on HP with no armor, you can keep fighting. If the Monster still has armor, both of you need to run away in THE OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS and wait for the dropship. Once the dropship returns, run to the drop location and meet up with your comrades.

Wildlife

Wildlife appears all across the map. Your enemy, the Monster, wants to eat these wildlife to level up. Most wildlife is incredibly weak, but you should watch out for these. Carnivorous Plants, Crowbill Sloths, Megamouths, and Tyrants (will be added back to the game in future). The Sloth hits like a truck, and the rest are trap wildlife, meaning they act much like a Monster's sneak pounce. If you get trapped in a trap wildlife and your team isn't around, it will kill you and digest the body. If it digests the body, Lazarus can't revive you.

When Wildlife or players die, after 15 seconds they start to decompose. Every 15 seconds, they lose a single meat. That means if you kill even the biggest wildlife, it will take one minute before there is nothing left for the monster. However, if you kill a Reaver, it's only 30 seconds. It can be worth it to kill wildlife so the monster doesn't get it, but coordinate with your team before you start firing. You don't want to try and kill a Megamouth by yourself and then get swallowed when you're left behind.

Occasionally you'll see a wildlife that is differently colored. These are Albinos. Albinos are stronger, and when they die, can provide a buff. If the Monster even eats one meat of it, he will gain a buff. If you press "E" while touching the corpse, you will gain a buff. Each Albino gives a certain buff so learn them, as they can be potentially game changing.

Perks

Perks can be a little bit confusing, so bear with me.

When you select your valiant Hunter, you also get to select up to three perks. The perks have three different levels of strength, and you may pick one from each level.

PLEASE NOTE!!! YOU MAY PURCHASE PERKS, YOU BUY UPGRADES TO YOUR PERKS, AND YOU EARN PERKS FOR LEVELING UP CHARACTERS AND YOUR ACCOUNT. My suggestion is do not buy perks until you've leveled up your characters, and then that way you won't waste keys.

Perks do not stack with buffs, but they stack with gear.

Buffs come from wildlife. In the case of Buff vs. Perk, Only the biggest one will take effect. This means if you have 30% reload from Buffs, and 20% from Perks, you only get 30%.

Gear is from abilities, such as Caira's Accel Field, Daisy the Trapjaw, and Bucket's Mechanized Recharge. Perks DO stack with Gear.

Perks also stack with Perks.

If you have a Perk that is 10% Speed, 5% Speed, and 2% Speed (You won't get that, but take this for instance) then you will get 17% Speed. It stacks additively. You add up the number for each effect.

Perks are shared between Hunters. If you level up a Hunter and earn a Perk, then every Hunter can use it.

You can also rank up Perks, up to rank 3. If you level up your account and earn a perk that is already rank 3, then you will receive between 200 and 600 Keys. Since you save more money by leveling up characters, just wait until you've leveled up your characters and account before you purchase and upgrade perks.

Generally, different Hunters wan't different perks. At the end of the day, Perks are based on preference and playstyle, but if you're having trouble figuring out what is solid on which class, here is some recommendations.

Assault generally can take most perks. He usually wants Damage/Reload/Capacity/Swap Speed, as I tend to find that does a lot better than movement or misc perks. Remember, the Assault doesn't just do damage. He also plays a critical role in distracting the Monster and protecting his team. As such, the ability to be attacking constantly with your most distracting ability is critical. You can also pick Damage Reduction, although it is mostly wasted because of your Defense Matrix.

For Assault, there is a battle of Damage Increase vs Capacity. Capacity lets you do more theoretical damage per second, especially for Blitz Markov. However, the current mets has a lot of highly mobile Monsters, and as a "Falcon" in the comments section mentioned, you don't know how often you'll be able to keep hitting a monster, so it would be more effective to take Damage. So for the moment, while the meta favors mobile Monsters, take damage over capacity (except for Hyde or Blitz. Hyde can do damage to most monsters constantly, and if the Monster is too mobile for blitz, the damage increase would be tiny and thus it would be negligible.)

Medic needs to be alive. That's why I prefer Damage Reduction and HP regen. If the Medic goes down, his team will die out too, and that's why you need to stay alive. If you're a Medic like Caira or EMET who can easily heal themselves, then I take Perks like Movement Speed, and Jetpack Recharge, so I can dodge Monster attacks and move around faster to help my team.

Trapper likes to move fast to keep up with the Monster, so Movement Speed, Jetpack Recharge, Jetpack Flight Efficiency etc is the best. Trapper in Stage 2 isn't vital to stay alive, so I don't bother with protection Perks or damage Perks. However, if you want to do more damage, you can pick Poisonous/Acidic Rounds, although I do not recommend.

Support has a lot of viable options. I currently tend to prefer Reload Speed, Class Ability Recharge, and Capacity. Support realistically can do well with most perks, which makes them flexible. Bucket's Sentry Guns proc Acidic/Poisonous rounds, so that can be viable. Beam supports (Hank, Sgt. Hank, Cabot, Sunny, Kala. (Basically everyone except Bucket)) benefit really well from Capacity. Reload Speed is also effective across the board. In Stage 2, the new Support ability is the Shield Burst, which has a short cooldown. Class Ability Recharge can make a support like Hank very very strong, seeing as they can pop a shield whenever they need one for their team, or pop one at long range for a specific ally.

The above is a suggestion if you don't know where to start, but at the end of the day it's preference. The choice is yours and yours alone. Choose wisely.

Your hated foe.

Ah, the shadowy Monsters. After ravaging the Factor colony (and God knows how many others), the Monsters turned their sights to the colony of Shear. Your job is to hunt and kill Monsters before they wreak too much havoc, and slaughter the colony. Unfortunately for you, you don't get to know who you're fighting until you've locked in. If any Legacy player tells you to pick X to counter X Monster, then just ignore them. Here I will cover each Monster, their playstyle, basic countering tips, and what to do if you get lucky enough to pick one of their counters.

Goliath.
A big, bad, beefy brawler who specializes in big AOE damage and long ranged movements. When facing a Goliath, don't bunch up. Fire Breath + Charge on a bunched up team can spell disaster. Goliath does a lot of damage, but all of his abilties (except Fire Breath) have long animations. As such, you should save Jetpack to evade his stronger attacks (Rock Throw and Leap Smash). His powerful attacks can keep you juggled, so avoid getting into corners against him. You want areas that have walls and pillars to hide behind and trip him up on. If you have platforms you can abuse them against Goliath really hard with a technique called roaching. Say Goliath is on top of the platform. His abilities can't hit you. If he jumps off, jet pack up the wall to the platform. If he climbs the wall, walk off the platform as soon as he gets up. Rinse and repeat. As with all Monsters, NO CAVES!

He has some strong counters in the way of Griffin, Jack, and Sunny. (In my opinion).

As Jack, use your Repulsor. It can Negate his traversals, his Leap Smash, and his Charge, and keep him at bay if he uses Fire Breath.

As Griffin, use your sound spikes. Goliath is loud and lumbering, so they should be able to pick him up often. Also, your Harpoon Gun does wonders against him. You can keep him in place for Charge, Leap Smash, and his traversals. Goliath's mobility is what allows him to focus fire Hunters so well. As Griffin, use the 'poon Gun to keep Goliath off your Medic.

As Sunny, your Jetpack Booster can do wonders for your team. Use it on a teammate that's being focused so they can get away, or use it to keep a Medic out of harm's way. If you have a premade team, you can Boost your Assault so he can chump block a Rock and save a teammate. Your Shield Drone can also neuter his burst damage, so keep one up and on high ground.

For Meteor Goliath, Rogue Val's Medigun both negates his DOT and is negated by his DOT. Keep this in mind. Meaty Goliath is very strong against Lazarus, seeing as Laz can't heal easily, so if you're Laz, keep your distance and save your cloak for Rezzing.

Kraken is a long range nuker with plenty of time delayed, AOE, deathbombs. As with Goliath (and all Monsters) don't group up. It is important to save some Jetpack Boosts to avoid Lightning Strike and Aftershock. You can and should shoot the Banshee Mines to keep them away from you. You should always stay moving against Kraken. When he is flying, keep doing damage to him. You don't want a cave, but you do want a place that has roofs. He is countered by Jack, Torvald, and Lazarus.

Jack. Boost straight up into the air when Kraken is flying. Kraken excels at long range and suffers close up. You can use the Repulsor on Kraken's head to force him to the ground.

Torvald. Throw a Shrapnel 'Nade at Krakky, then shoot him full of holes. When he takes flight, Mortar him EZPZ death. You were almost made for this guy.

Laz. Kraken has no DOTs and no fire. He can't reveal you when cloaked, so that makes aiming from far away difficult for him. The delays on his abilities make for easy rezzes on downed and dead allies. Since Kraken is so squishy, shoot him full of weak points for great team damage. If Kraken does combo kill a teammate, just rez them and laugh in Cthulu's face.

Elder Kraken. As a Melee version of Kraken, you want to keep him away from you. Especially don't bunch up around him, and don't walk into corners. Keep a lot of sky and open space. Jack is wonderful for keeping him away. Caira can heal teammates from long range and can keep them mobile. Since E. Kraken has slow moving projectiles and low mobility, the increasing damage per time aspect of Lennox and Blitz Markov are VERY GOOD. I prefer Lennox since she performs well regardless of whether he takes flight or not. Since E. Kraken isn't great at long range damage, Slim is useful. A low HP ally far away? Bug. Allies taking massive damage all around you? Spore Krakky, Start shooting him, and spam them Burst Heals. God I love Slim.

Wraith. A lot of new players will complain that Wraith is OP. She can be hard to balance, but she isn't OP. She has a very assassin oriented play style. Avoid doming in Areas with corners and cubbies that she can abuse. She can juggle you in corners and she can abduct you to cubbies. You want REALLY open, flat areas to fight her, so that you always have a bead on her. When she Decoys, work with your team to take the Decoy down quickly, so that it isn't a threat. Don't bunch up or she can warp blast for big damage, and/or Abduct someone so far away that you won't be able to reach them until she's dead. Save jetpack to go after abducted teammates. Since she returns to Abduction's cast point, keep an idea as to where it is, and aim your guns for that location. When she uses Supernova GET OUT OF THE WHITE DOME. IF YOU STAY THERE, YOU DIE!!. GET OUT. REALLY. She is countered by Hyde, Crow, and Kala.

Crow's Stasis gun is brutal against her. Also, for both Kala and Crow, Wraith's extremely low HP means their ability to bypass armor is lethal against her. As a Kala or Crow, if you're pitted against a Wraith, make sure you pierce that armor.

For Hyde, you have a field day with her. Your fire DOT does great damage. You do amazing close range damage so when she comes to fight you, fight back. If she Supernovas, Toxic 'Nade the area, and STAY INSIDE AND POP YOUR DEFENSE MATRIX. The average wraith will attempt to fight you inside there, while she slowly dies. Your Nades also really help with fighting her Decoy.

Behemoth. Man is this guy huge. You want places with walls, but not too big. Absolutely no caves, Keep jetpack to stay in the air. If he Tongue Grabs you, he'll wall you in, Fissure you, Lava Bomb you, and wail on you. He has a noticeable windup animation, so save a boost to dodge his Tongue Grab and you're set. He's huge, so just keep hitting him. He's bad at running away unless he has open ground, so make sure that there are lots of twists, turns, and obstacles in the pathways. He's really easy to play but is countered by a couple people. Cabot, Bucket, Val. Val can tranq him, fill him with holes, and heal off his damage. Cabot can shoot through his wall, tear away his armor easily, and locate him if he tries to hide. Bucket can do good damage and his sentries can punish him for staying in the open.

And finally, Gorgon. She's one badass ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. She is an assassin that can punish teams for about anything. As always, keep jetpack during battle. Don't bunch up, and don't take places with lots of blind spots. Nice, open spaces with AS FEW WALLS AS POSSIBLE. Her Acid Spit + Web Snare + Spider Trap spells sure defeat. Stay away from walls if she's on one. Stay alert and have your sound on to hear for a Spider's shriek. Shoot the Mimic before it reaches you. She is countered by Hyde, Cabot, and Blitz Markov. Blitz can easily shred her Spider Trap, and a gold mine will melt her already low HP and armor. Hyde does great damage, can shoot her while she's on a wall, and his Toxic Grenades punish her grossly long animations, while killing her Spider Trap. Cabot can Damage Amp her and kill her EZPZ, or her Mimic. If someone on your team get's Spidered, free them ASAP or you will lose.

Conclusion

Hey thanks for reading! It means a lot. If you liked this and want to see more like it, leave a rating and a comment. Suggestions or corrections? Leave 'em in the comments. I update stuff usually as soon as I read it. I made this guide to help new players and returning players.

Thank you, and happy hunting.

-ShortFuẞe

[[TP]Heri]

(thanks for the guide)

[[TP]Heri]

ITS BACK BABY

[ShortFuze]

Interesting, I'll give it a look

[TheRubberTurkey]

I've heard good things about that. unfortunate spacemen has more people but it's worth checking out..

[ShortFuze]

@TheRubberTurkey same, but if you want a good asymmetrical game, Dead By Daylight is fun.

[TheRubberTurkey]

Same.... nothing can fill that hole in my heart!

[ShortFuze]

@TheRubberTurkey yeah, no kidding. I still miss this game.

[TheRubberTurkey]

R.I.P. a game ahead of it's time.

[ShortFuze]

@Viss. Yeah, that's a solid build. To each his own. I might try yours, and if I like it, I'll put it in the guide with a mention your way

[Vilmachr]

really helpful guide even for advance player. this is my oversight and suggestions for perks as EMET or VAL (maybe someone find it helpful):

EMET - regen, leadership, command - its very strong combo keeping whole group alive and keep yourself alive. u should stand to your feet from being incap in few secs if u have 1 buoy with u and monster ignores u. keepin whole group alive is just about runing in circles, jumping and CONSISTENTLY throwing buoys on places where monster is landing his attacks and constistently pulling your 4. i have 100% success with this "build" vs behemoth which is most played monster by now (from my pov)

VAL - bionic legs, energy, command - val is opposite of EMET in positioning. i prefer her vs monsters which has strong AOEs so group must be splitted, take her vs goliath 1, kraken 1, gorgon. u need to find elev pos and spam your 4 and med gun. if monster is focusing u, run away just by going up and down. dont stay with monster on the ground bc he kill u.