Hello, wheelmen and the residual ggn community; I’m just doing a little survey to see what the most popular specialization of choice is. Based off of last week’s results, it seems that it was a draw between 3 of the abilities closely tied for second ; First being situational usage of abilities only . This week we will see what the most popular specialization of choice is. Will it be the ordnance hunter , the vehicular specialist , Stalking Mr. vengeance, the dmr duelist , the terminating gunner, the map controlling engineer, that sneaky ninja or the leveler? "Those stalker players must not like getting killed very much to make their depicted slayer a secondary objective, lol" Stay tuned and find out, the poll will last for a duration of 7 days. So get in here and represent your opinion!

From what I've seen the thing that will make the biggest difference in most of gampelay will end up being the guy who flinches less when he's in a DMR fight.

It was a bit of a surprise for me to come to that conclusion, but it becomes even more important when one of the people in the DMR fight doesn't use a DMR and instead uses a sniper rifle or something similar. I've allowed myself to get very frustrated by snipers who manage to put me down even though I'm one pull of the trigger away from spreading their brains out for all to see with my DMR.

Previously when you were taking shots and had a sniper weapon you either whipped out some amazing and took the guys out IMMEDIATELY or you got smart and got your head down. There are plenty of times in Halo when "fighting through it" so to speak is the tactic your enemy won't expect and thus it wins you the day, but you lose a certain type of fight enough times you learn to avoid it.

This is the first time in Halo when I watch snipers take my multiple shots and risk my headshotting them just so they can make their 1 shot. It's unsettling, because unless I get the drop on someone I don't feel like I can suppress them anymore. If they know where you are they stand their ground and often that's worse for you because you were hoping they'd just duck for cover. Plenty of people still have the same instincts I do and take cover when they think they're risking a fair fight, but the percentage has decreased I think. It used to be very rare for a sniper to stand their ground when you were pinging them with a BR or DMR. Plenty of idiots tried it and died (Myself included plenty of times I'm sure), and was pretty rare for someone to actually win that fight.

Now although the people who stand their ground are probably still in the minority, it's probably like a 25% minority instead of a 6% minority. More and more it seems like people are willing to risk death to put just one sniper shot through you, and it's just the right combination of rare and common that it's unpredictable. When it's unpredictable it makes me uncomfortable because I both lose more fights and doubt my own decisions more often. The really annoying thing is you don't know when your enemy is using it, so you don't know if you won/lost that fight because of this upgrade or not. Not knowing makes me feel paranoid.

I think the Stability upgrade is going to make a difference in a lot of fights in this game, more than any other upgrade. I don't even have it yet, but I know what it does, and I know how confident I am in my ability to win long-range DMR fights already. I jump up top in Solace with gusto. I take shots in BTB and stay exposed to show my opponent what a mistake they've made. The idea of having an upgrade that makes me better at that keeps me from objectively examining whether I should even do it in the first place. It feels like a trap, like many things about Halo 4, it feels like it's designed to get you killed. I can't figure out whether I'll get better at Halo 4 by going against the grain or with it. I'm tempted by the idea of gaining an edge, but tempered by years of punishing people who stood their ground as well as suffering the same.

Take it or leave it, it feels like that choice will make a bigger difference with Stability than with the other specialization upgrades.

If you are already confident in your DMR skills then why use that ability?

Lots of reasons, I always try to improve. I'm not really that good, just good at long-range because most people don't seem to try to control the flinch. Also confidence doesn't mean competence. I know what the weapon will do and I know what I can do with it, so I'm confident with my DMR that whatever happens with it is supposed to happen. I HAVE become pretty confident about my own competence at long range with it, especially when people are fighting back, because aside from a few situations (one of which I'll detail below) I just tend to win long range fights with it. People seem to think that their landing shots is a way of keeping you from doing the same, that's a mistake.

In one game on Complex I kept losing straight up long range fights against this one specific guy. That's OK, I know there are tons of people who are better than me at this game, but you can feel it when someone is just that much better than you. This guy didn't play especially intelligently or interestingly, he just wanted to snipe while we played the objective. On multiple occasions I got the drop on this guy at range and he'd just turn and pop my shields with a sniper rifle with minimal effort. When we saw each other at the same time and just straight-up DMRed each other he won every time. Nothing fancy going on, no cool strafes, no higher ground, no evidence whatsoever that he was doing anything to dodge my shots since they kept hitting. His just hit faster and I lost all those fights. The only conclusion I could draw is that he was just much better at controlling his flinch than I was (I'm not great at it, I just do it when most people don't) OR he was running Stability. If it was the latter than the difference was incredible.

To control flinch you just pull down on your stick, simple as that. Stability halves flinch, so your reticule has half as far to travel as everyone else's in order to return to target. Your sensitivity will affect how fast you can move your reticule. The DMR kills at the same speed no matter what your range to the target, the only thing that slows it down are misses, adjusting to the target's new position (They're strafing), and flinch because it has to pull back down to target before it's ready to fire (same effect as a strafe, just your problem not your enemy's). There is no bullet travel time, so you either slow it down by how you aim or you get hit and have to adjust. Stability decreases the amount you must adjust, thereby shaving a tiny fraction of a second off, and lets you get the 5th shot in before the bad guy.

I have no problem admitting when someone is better than me, most of the time you can't actually judge a player's overall skill by their performance in one game though. The answer to that question isn't actually important. He and I were mostly playing the same way though, especially when it came to DMRing each other. The consistency of his victories made me think he must have had an edge, because even if you're worse than someone you'll get them every once in awhile.

The reason I suspect Stability will be big is because the DMR is big and marksman rifles are big and sniper rifles are big. They don't scope out when hit anymore, so people are adapting to that and fighting scoped more often. It's one of those things unique to Halo 4, so the thing that affects it is going to be popular. Even if people weren't scoped as often, whatever the marksman rifle is in a Halo game is the top tool of destruction for most players. Something that affects those fights, which are common, will become common. Just like the DMR only kills a moment faster than a BR though, people are going to use the thing that shaves that blink of an eye off their kill time.

Ok, that is a great point for playing by yourself or in smaller playlists than BTB. What about when playing BTB or Dominion where more often than not you should have a team shot going? Maybe there is something else that you would rather run instead since you aren't looking to out DMR everyone 1v1. I wish I could look up what the abilities do and what slots they occupy, but I'm posting this from my blackberry at my grandma's house where the concept of internet is still foreign.

And I'm not trying to argue with you, just offering up food for thought.

hel monkey wrote:

Ok, that is a great point for playing by yourself or in smaller playlists than BTB. What about when playing BTB or Dominion where more often than not you should have a team shot going? Maybe there is something else that you would rather run instead since you aren't looking to out DMR everyone 1v1. I wish I could look up what the abilities do and what slots they occupy, but I'm posting this from my blackberry at my grandma's house where the concept of internet is still foreign.

And I'm not trying to argue with you, just offering up food for thought.

Good teamshot is awesome when you can get it going but not always available on every map. It's hard to get good teamshot on Exile, for example, or actually most of the Halo 4 maps. Maps used to have two ends, now they tend to be much more swirly in design, a lot of elements strewn around a center.

As for viewing them, this guy did all the specializations:


He doesn't always say which slot it takes, you can find that easily enough elsewhere online though.



I fixed the embed link, but in the future you only put the video ID in the youtube code. The video ID is the string of letters, numbers, and occasional underscore after "v=" in the youtube link.

~Sarge

Thanks, I'll look at that when I have internet on a computer. My blackberry won't stream video.

You are right about the maps though, a lot of the time I don't know which way I should be looking to find enemies. Big team isn't too bad, but it took me forever to kind of get a hang of the spawns for SWAT.

I've actually taken to just turning around a lot. Sounds silly, but especially in the little SWAT I played it seems like EVERY time I hear footsteps behind me I turn around to see some guy swinging and missing his melee. It's slapstick, but I still prefer it to the longer melee lunge. I wonder why people keep going for it? Assassinations are cool, but not THAT cool.

I've also noticed, with some dismay, that I was exactly right about the way the maps were designed. It was like the first impression I had was how the maps basically encourage you to get swarmed. Many times lately I've been in an intense firefight and just as we're cleaning the guys in front of us out I see a dot right behind me. Sometimes I turn and take him out and sometimes I don't, but it's non-stop zombie horde action. Too bad it's in every playlist but Flood.