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Tip For New Players Regarding Defense Mission


BlueWhistler
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Heya New Pipples!

 

One day you will find yourself in a static defense mission fending off wave after wave of Grineer, Corpus, or Infested. Your job or goal is to keep the Core or Tenno Pod from being destroyed.

 

The Core/Pod starts off at 100% health. When it reaches zero you lose. Keep the Core/Pod above 0% health until an opportunity for extraction (every 5 waves) arises then you can win.

 

Sometimes the Core/Pod takes a very bad beating & near the end of an enemy wave it may be low in health. What you should do & what most vets try to do is keep one or two bad guys alive so the next wave of baddies isn't triggered. The Core/Pod will then regenerate its health back to 100%. THEN you can kill off the remaining baddies and your Core/Pod will be all good to go for the next wave.

 

Why is this very important? In the recent patch, if you fail a mission all your loot...the mods...the resources...all of it is forfeited. So imagine going 14 waves with all that loot...only to lose the mission in the 15th wave. All that loot is gone. All those resources you collected are gone. The only thing you keep is your XP (and I think affinity gains).

 

So put the odds in your favor and let the Core/Pod heal. Be AWARE of your situation and try not to be so trigger happy near the end of a wave without checking the status of the Core/Pod.

 

Cheers!

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Read that if you used Saryn Moult while jumping infested would go for it but not be able to reach it - gives you time.

Not certain but if you get into a game with lokis & saryns moult and decoy could possibly block some passages if placed together.

Considder standing on the side of stairs hitting downwards with jump attacks (aoe hits targets below you)

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This...seems like a nice thread.  Mind if I chip in with one or two of my own--edited in place of this if it's alright?  Don't want to hijack your thread into a general-tips one if you were going for this specific one.

Hijack away :) As long as it is constructive & gives newer folks like myself a heads up on things it is most welcome.

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Thankee kindly! I'll just put this here then. I've two pieces of advice for newer defense players--relatively common sense things once you think about them. It got a bit wall-of-texty (blame it on the low-sleep and high-caffeine), but the first point is about distributing the workload in a team with lots of AoE. The second is about when to let yourself leak and when not to pick people up. Feel free to condense if you want.

1) Don't waste resources killing stuff that's already dead.

A large % of Warframes in this game have massive Area of Effect clearing abilities (Saryn, Ember, Mag, Volt, Nyx, Banshee, etc...) and your group will usually have several on your team. On smaller maps that have densely-packed enemies, natural killing fields emerge. This AoE WILL kill fodder units that walk into the area. This advice is especially relevant against Infested. And Corpus, to a lesser extent. These units are dead. They just don't know it yet. Even moderately geared AoE Warframes can clear huge chunks of the map at a time and then pick up enough energy from the corpses to do it again. And again. And again. I Saryn ult 5+ times in a wave with alarming regularity and I'm nowhere near the top. What AoErs can't accidentally kill, however, are the meatier units--like Ancients.

What does this mean? It means that every resource non-AoErs (or even inferior AoErs if you've got one in the group with bigger range) spend on an already-dead unit instead of an actual threat is wasted. Every bullet, every second, every bit of energy, and every bit of health. Especially that last one. Killing the easy units is a trap. I see a lot of newer players focus heavily on Chargers, Runners, and Leapers because those are the easy targets. You get to feel powerful because you down the charger in one hit. It adds to your score. But that's a false sense of accomplishment; if you got those great, high numbers on something that would've just died anyways no matter what...then it's meaningless. By all means, kill it in self defense if it's actively threatening you. But killing something that someone else will kill without even noticing its existence is...not efficient. It's a lot less satisfying shooting an Ancient in the knee and seeing a bunch of fives pop up...but it does much, much more than longsword-swiping a Charger and seeing 800 pop up. This goes double if Nyx has a bunch of enemies attacking each other.

99% of Infested Defense losses I see are due to the big units overrunning. 99% of Corpus Defense losses I see are due to stuff getting stuck in inconvenient positions, forcing the AoErs to move or take shots. If you're not an AoEr in the group, then you're a troubleshooter. It's your job to deal with things that won't naturally get dealt with--and you don't want your other people having to worry about. And if there are multiple AoErs, it's the job of the one with weaker AoEs or low energy to deal with that stuff. You want your nuker nuking and not wading in to get disrupted.

2) Retreat if you're losing ground

The #1 reason people lose a Defense is that one person goes down and the rest try to pick him up. Hell, this is the case in most co-op games I've played.

Would you say it's worse to leak units or to die? I see a lot of players putting up valiant defenses trying to hold back a swarm. It feels like you're biting a bullet to help your team. The right answer is almost always to leak. Run away. Let them get to the cryopod.

Leaking is really scary. But far more often, the real reason is that people do risky things to prevent leaking. Moving up to melee Toxic Ancients, getting chainstaggered by Shockwave Moa, etc... Let me put it this way. If you leak, then a bunch of units get through and it's up to other people to pick up your slack. It's not as bad as it sounds. A lot of the time, the "leaked" units get in collateral-damage range of your AoErs. It gives your people time to deal with stuff. If you go down, then you STILL leak and you essentially CC 2+ members of your team. It almost always takes two people to get someone up. And they usually either blow everything or risk death. And if it's infested, they're almost guaranteed to get disrupted.

If you go down, you leak, prevent most of your team from acting for 10+ seconds, and drain the rest of the energy/health from all your teammates, making them unable to deal with your leak and unable to deal with their own side. Far, far, far worse than just letting an irrelevant amount of fodder and 1-2 Ancients by.

Just as bad is dropping everything to rez someone. It they died a fluke death and it's wave 11, then sure. But if it's wave 15 and things start collapsing, you can't drop everything to help them unless you can guarantee safety. Most of the time, 3 people can clutch a final wave. Sure, it might be dirty and they'll blow all their energy reserves...but they'll make it. Then you can all opt out and get your rewards. If you absolutely won't make it without the person, then it sucks to be you and good luck. Disregard this last paragraph if you're Loki--or someone who can do similar things in a pinch. Some characters are just made for heroic rescues that they have no right surviving.

Edited by Shinnyshin
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Another good tip would be try to hold the enemy away from the core, if you can keep the fighting on the fringes the likelihood of the core being hurt would greatly lessen.

Lemme agree and add one thing.  Focus your CC abilities away from the core.  I see a lot of Nyxes wait until the last second to Chaos, for example.  The usual result is 10 Ancients standing around the core hitting it, you, and everything...putting you in situations where you HAVE to stand your ground against Toxics and Disruptors.  Which is how people start dying.

 

So when you have the luxury, stall them further away.  But always fall back step by step and redeploy stalling abilities rather than die on the ramps.  One person shouting "HOLD THE LINE" with their melee weapon is how everyone gets screwed over.

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I usually play Infest defense mission and these are my tips.

1. Choose your ground.

Choosing where you want to fight is the best strategy no matter what game you're playing. Warframe is no different. Two Warframes are capable of this feat, Saryn and Loki. Both of them can use decoy and moult to draw the battle away from the cryopod.

2. Where to put my decoy?

If you're playing Loki and Saryn, where you put your 'lure' is extremely important. Placing it in he middle of the field is not a good idea since your lure will be gone in second. Placing it somewhere inaccessible and the Infest will ignore it.

Place it somewhere accessible but only to one Infest at a time. There're a lot of places for this kind of placement. The AI will try to reach the lure but unable to since there's not enough space to fill al of them but one charger/leaper.

3. Use everything but ultimate to kill them, reserve your power.

Many players spam AOE ultimate when they don't really have to. When the AI is lured, player wil be relatively safe to wade through the mobs with AOE melee and ability. Rhino swinging Scindo while the AI concentrating on the lure is quite effective. Some powers serve better than other in this situation - slash dash is more cost efficient than radial javelin. Saryn's venom can kill an entire group if you know what you're doing and that's 25 energy.

4. Switch your weapon regularly.

Your best bet is to switch between long gun and pistol every wave and add melee into the mix. Make sure that you won't run out of ammo.

5. Take the toxic ancient out of the fight.

Kill them first. They are the most annoying creature of the faction and number one cause of death of Tenno in Infest defense. Concentrate your firepower when you see one. If you're playing Loki, you can take them 'out' by switch teleport one into somewhere inaccessible.

6. Learn about your ultimate.

Each ultimate is different. If you're playing Excalibur and Ash, don't spam ulti until late defense where high level ancient starting to violate your cryopod and relatively mook-free. Both ultis have one powerful quality - ignore armor. Perfect for high armor/high health infest ancients. Let Mag/Frost/Ember/Saryn kill the mook for you.

7. Use jump smash.

It can incapacitate an entire group of Ancient in one attack, allowing you to use ground finisher and pick them one by one while they're trying to get up.

Mostly it's about playing smart and gauge the ability of your teammates. Know when to quit is the most important skill.

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