I unlocked Pathfinder last night. I now have both Operator and Pathfinder. I have yet to try out the combo in a Mantis.

Operator alone makes vehicles hard to take down. I've had numerous ocassions where people timed their stickies for 4 second EMP delay, only to see me scoot off after two seconds. Quite a few close calls.
I had a game where 95% of the time I was in a Mantis on Ragnarock. There were multiple attempts by the opposition to take me out. They managed to take me out once. But when I got back in a fresh mantis I got rolling.

Yardbird92 wrote:

Combining a single laser shot with ab effective team shot or vehicle push can knock out a mantis in a fraction of the time! in the cases where i play with a party we generally take out a mantis in a few seconds after it comes into view as long as we open with a laser to the face! having your laser shooter use the ammo.perk grants six shots as opposed to the usual four as long as he is the FIRST player to touch the weapon.

WOW, useful to know man! I just thought the laser got perked down when I Changed my loadout!

All my BTB loadouts that expect to spend time on foot have the Ammo perk. I can't imagine a BTB loadout without it unless the loadout is designed for vehicles.

Banshee vs. Mantis is a loosing battle. I was playing a game by myself the other day, and I jacked the enemy banshee while my team mate attacked it in his banshee. He managed to get it half shield before dying (wasn't a very good pilot), but what I really want to say is I got him down to no shield with the main guns, then banshee bombed him a direct hit right on the cock pit. Guess what, it didn't blow up and it and a sniper killed me immediately after.

The mantis is as tough as a tank it seems. That is probably why its main gun is a little weak and overheats quickly.

hel monkey wrote:

The mantis is as tough as a tank it seems. That is probably why its main gun is a little weak and overheats quickly.

It's also very slow with less offensive power and therefore relies much more on its team. Thus it stays on its side of the map and by hanging back frequenly lacks targets. That purple flying thing quickly becomes its primary focus.

I think Mantis vs. Banshee SHOULD go for banshee, but all the other elements of the battlefield conspire to bring the banshee down first. The airborne vehicle has a harder time hiding and everyone's guns all turn upward. The Mantis just has a bigger gun.

Never leave one rocket in the cannon. Never know when you need to crap out multiple rockets, espeically if 1v1'ing another Mantis. I've won a few 1v1 Mantis fights because I managed to pepper the opposing mantis with multiple rockets.


Pathfinder also doesn't seem to affect the mantis gun at all. I used the Mantis, then a turret and noticed the heat was considerably slower on the turret, and apparently Pathfinder has no effect on the Mantis.
Only Operator helps the EMP situations. Maybe the Radar AA would help awareness in the Mantis.

The Mantis's rockets don't behave any differently with Pathfinder, but the chaingun does:



Mantis demo starts around 2:40 I think. Youtube embedding wasn't working when I made this post.

I think the problem with observing it is that the Mantis's chaingun just overheats super fast anyway, so a 30% increase or whatever pathfinder grants becomes less noticeable on a smaller time limit.

Also +6 on the rocket mention. I started just firing my last rockets every time I thought I wouldn't need them in the next 5 seconds. It lets everyone know where you are, but at least you won't be caught without rockets.

In my onion, the rockets are the mantis' main wepon. I mostly use the machinegun as suppressing fire while my rockets are reloading. The one exception being long distance banshees, where the rockets will most likely miss. Cross-map on ragnarok, you also need to lead your machinegun if you're trying to hit a banshee or other fast moving vehicle. The machinegun is quite useless long distance however, since the spread is huge, but against vehicles any damage you do helps.

Time to brag a little:

I've gotten 6 perfections so far, all of them in the Mantis. And many more games with no deaths but 14 or less kills. Just today, I played meltdown twice, and Ragnarok 3 times. I got 2 perfections on Meltdown, and 14 or less kills on ragnarok with 0 deaths in those 3 games. I think all 5 of those games, I ended the game with my mantis in perfect condition. I saved the 2 meltdown games if anyone wants to see them. One of the meltdown games in which i got a rampage, we ended up losing, so its not like we were playing really bad players.

The most important thing to remember is that the Mantis has its own shield. As long as you get behind cover for a few seconds to let your shield recharge, you will take no damage. I feel like a lot of people oversit this. Some people even get out of the mantis when its on fire. You don't need to. Just be a little more careful.

I use the wheelman perk and the big motion sensor. On meltdown, the sensor can basically cover the whole map, so you will never be surprised by a ghost or hog trying to get behind you. On ragnarok, the big sensor is super useful because it tells you where the enemy mantis is. You can see vehicles on it that are just behind the hill while you are behind the rock in front of your base. Also if you're fighting the enemy mantis at water cave, you will be able to see it from your respective defensive position. So with a bit of luck and good timing, you can charge up some rockets and hit the enemy mantis as soon as it steps out of cover.

Like bloody said, the stomp attack is mostly a waste of time. Maybe its because i'm not very good with it, but i prefer to shoot rockets at targets down at my feet. The advantage to this is that you can still move around. I've tried to stomp ghosts only to miss, and not being able to do anything else for 3 or 4 seconds. Also the damage behaves strangely around hills. Twice i've tried to stomp a ghost that was right in front of me, only to see it drive away unscathed because the ghost was a tiny bit higher than i was. However the forward range of damage is quite large, if rather narrow. I once flipped a hog that was directly in front of me by stomping. Right as i pressed the button i thought i made a big mistake because it was too far, but it turned out better than expected as the hog flipped straight back. As far as I could tell the stomp did no actual damage, but afterwards it was relatively straight forward to mop up the 2 foot soldiers.

umm, thats all i can think of right now.

(i'm glad i copy pasta'd this text, because when i pressed submit i had to log in again. Apparently it took me a long time to type this)

Just an update on the Mantis Stomp. I realized that while you are stomping you can still shoot both rockets and chaingun. And you can still aim all the way around, so don't wait for the stomp to finish before aiming and shooting at other targets. I don't know why I never realized this before. Probably because I usually only use the stomp while the machinegun is overheated and the rockets are reloading.

While playing in shatter today I noticed a potential trick. I think you might be able to shorten your emp stun by stomping right before it hits you. I saw I was about to get EMPed by someone close range so I stomped, got EMPed but got carried by shatter's goofiness to a successful stomp. If I remember right I stood up just fine afterward. It needs more thorough testing to be sure, but this could be a very handy trick in the Mantis if it works. I WAS using wheelman at the time.