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Troy, NY, United States
A blog to talk about my random gaming thoughts.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Tribes: Ascend - The Raider

The Raider is the class that I currently play most often and has two main goals: destroying base assets and disrupting the flag stand.  The raider is equipped with numerous weapons and packs to help him achieve these goals.

Primary Weapons:
  • ARX Buster - A sticky grenade launcher and the default primary weapon for the Raider.  Three shots before you have to reload, each shot deals about 600 damage.  The arc on the shots makes it a fantastic weapon for dishing out long range damage.  There are however, two major flaws with the ARX Buster.  First, the shots are blatantly obvious to see.  The ARX Buster fires big red balls that are quite easy to see and combined with their pitiful explosion radius, it can make landing hits with the weapon quite difficult.  The second flaw is that the shots stick.  While this might seem like an advantage, in some cases, such as the small corridors of the bases, being unable to fire around corners or down an elevator can have a huge impact.
  • Grenade Launcher - 42k experience to unlock, the grenade launcher is a fairly standard affair and does exactly as expected.  It shoots grenades.  Each grenade only does 550 damage on a solid hit compared to the 600 of the ARX Buster, but the GL has a five round magazine, allowing for more shots before reloading is necessary.  The GL is overall, a better weapon than the ARX Buster, with a large explosion radius, larger knock back, and the ability to bounce shots.
  • Plasma Gun - 100k experience to unlock, the recently added Plasma Gun is a dueling powerhouse that is incredibly devastating, if not completely overpowered, in the proper hands.  Dealing 500 damage on a direct hit, the Plasma Gun features a fast rate of fire, ten round magazine, and a large projectile.  When first introduced, the hi tbox for the Plasma Gun's projectile was absolutely enormous and has since been nerfed to a still quite easy to hit with, but not elephant sized, hit box.  While a great weapon for dueling and pissing people off, I personally prefer to stick with the grenade launcher.  The Plasma Gun has very little knock back on its hits, and when your flag capper is coming in fast, you need that heavy off the flag now, not in five seconds when the plasma gun might kill him.
Secondary Weapons:
  • NJ4 Sub Machine Gun - The NJ4 is the default secondary weapon for the Raider.  Featuring a very high rate of fire, a 36 round magazine, and 80 damage a hit, it's probably one of the best default secondary weapons 
  •  NJ5-B Sub Machine Gun- 75000 experience to unlock, the newly added NJ5-B SMG is a nicely balanced side grade to the NJ4.  The NJ5-B features an increase in accuracy, a scope, and a damage bump to 140 a hit, at the cost of rate of fire.  Neither weapon is particularly better and the choice is yours as to which you prefer.  I personally use the NJ5-B as I like the scope and higher damage while shooting at flag carriers or coming in on the flag stand.  A great example of how the unlockable equipment should be balanced and not a pure upgrade over the default.
Packs:
  • Shield Pack - My personal preference, activated at the click of a button, the shield pack activates a shield that absorbs damage at the cost of your jet pack energy.  The shield pack adds quite a bit of meat to the Raider, allowing him to take a few hits as he flies face first into the enemy flag stand attempting to clear the area.  An interesting trade off of gaining immediate protection when you know you're going to be hit  while losing the jet pack mobility that might help you dodge the next shot.

  • Jammer Pack - Haven't unlocked it myself, but I've seen other Raiders use it and it doesn't impress me.  Pseudo cloaks your character, making you invisible to radar and base defenses, but still quite visible to the naked eye.  Useful for getting in if the other team is stacking technicians, but otherwise leaves you vulnerable to simply being shot without a shield to boost your health.
Grenades:
  • EMP Grenades - Only grenade I have unlocked at the moment.  Quite powerful if it hits, 1100 damage or so, going up to over 2000 against base defenses, the EMP's main flaw is the Raider's sissy throwing arm.  Poor guy is spoiled by grenade launchers for guns and can't throw a grenade to save his life.  Combined with a short detonation timer, you have to be quite close to attempt to hit anything with these.
  • Whiteout Grenades - Essentially flash bangs, the Whiteout grenade blinds anyone who gets hit by it for a few seconds.  A couple of these on the flag stand will leave the defense in disarray and unable to prepare for the incoming flag grab.  The next item on my "to buy" list.
  • Cluster Grenades - The final item added in the most recent "Raid and Pillage" patch, the cluster grenades explode into many tinier grenades which explode again.  Used as an area denial tool, the cluster grenades can force someone to move off the flag stand for a few seconds.  Not that great of grenades though, as they take a long time to work, having to explode twice, and are un predictable in their spread.
Perks:
  • Not much to say here as I only have a few perks unlocked, none of which are really any good for Raider.  Check out survivalist to gain health back on ammo packs, strikes me as the most useful one.

Whew that was a lot of typing.  Hope everyone enjoys the write up.  Expect a similar post for the Doombringer class for some "Heavy on Flag" goodness in the near future.
 

8 comments:

  1. Looks like a wide variety of weapons to choose from!

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    1. Each of the classes has different weapons, though many of them over lap. Like, the Pathfinder gets a Light Spinfusor, the Soldier gets the regular Spinfusor, Brute has the Heavy Spinfusor, etc.

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  2. I prefer to use the Plasma Gun and the NJ5-B Sub Machine Gun- 75000 combined with the Shield Pack. Good post tough

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    1. The Plasma Gun is great for killing people, it's just not as great for disruption which is really what the raider is all about though. I agree though, when I get into a game that's super team stacked with a bunch of silver/golds vs a team of bronze, I rock the plasma gun and lawl my way through the match.

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  3. Ever notice grenade launchers are popular in every game

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  4. Ugh, I started playing this game and it's really addicting. I have finals to study for!! I've mostly played soldier and juggernaut with a little bit of raider. I used your referral link btw.

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    1. I saw that, glad to see you're enjoying it though. I've hardly had time to play at all lately, having my last round of exams and then finals in a week and a half, the graduating, woohoo

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