Welcome to my guide, skip to the class or loadout for instruction.

Key to victory in this game is the proper usage of the Squad element.

Squad Leader Bonus
The Squad Leader provides a bonus depending on that players' choice of Battle Standard (the default one all players have is 10% damage mitigation to both melee and ranged) to all squad-mates nearby. I'm not sure of the exact radius, someone can inform me and I will update.

Tactically speaking, not only is it beneficial to get this Leader bonus, but if you move as one unit and stick together (simple, if you see where blue arrows are on your maps, and the star is your squad Leader) you can focus heavy damage into a specific location. If you just run one at a time into a place, you're gonna have a bad day.

Squad Tactics
Stick with your squad and your squad leader, join a squad that is larger until the squad is full so that you have more people assault a place at the same time. As soon as you join a match, the game automatically cuts squads off at 5 players, so a 20-player team wiill be auitomatically split into four squads. this is sub-optimal. It is best to condense those squads into two, maybe three if one is doing something special (based on coordination between players - if nobody is talking to each other, just join the next biggest squad until they're all full). Doing this lets your team use your available rhino transports more efficiently, using only two rhinos for the entire team at a time, instead of four (if the map can even support that). Additionally, this method could allow one player to remain in the drivers seat to keep it out of the reach of enemy meltaguns and powerfists/klaws.


Squad Leader-
If you are a squad leader, either own up to that responsibility and hold Q to place down objective markers for your team and choose your own loadouts and play style based on the needs of the squad (not running out in front to get killed instantly, thus depriving the squad of the leader bonus, for instance). If you are not going to use this responsibility - when you join a match, look at your squad, if you are the top spot, hit Escape, click Change Squads, click another players name in your squad, and click Promote. This will give them leadership.


In summary - Join a bigger squad, follow your squad/leader, utilize the squad rhino, and own up to or give away your squad leader responsibilities.

Thank you for being a Tactical. You are, simply put, the most important class.

As a tactical, your job, beyond anything else, is to Capture Points.

You can do decent damage from afar. You can sometimes acquit yourself in melee, given surprise or help or luck. But above all other things, if you choose a Tactical loadout, your job is the put captures on points (with the use key).

If you have invaded an enemy-held point and you take a quick 360 spin of your head and don't see any enemies, start capturing the point. Doing so prevents the enemy from spawning in on top of it, and gives your team time to put up a defense of the capture. I would usually not recommend trying to put on a capture (or de-capturing/interrupting/de-capping) while your team is busy fighting over it, but if you havew the opportunity, give it a shot.

As you interact with a control point, you can stil move your camera around. Do so. Keep your head on a swivel watching for anyone who may attack you from behind. As you play, you'll learn the timing of things, so if you think an enemy will get to you to interrupt your attempt to cap/de-cap before you can finish, immediately stop and defend yourself. There's no point in letting yourself die. Focus on the immediate threat, and then capture the point. On the other hand, if you have a lot of teammates and you desperately need to de-cap or cap to instantly win or gain extra overtime, definitely try to cap and hope a teammate intercepts the enemy before they get to you.



Weapons -

The Standard bolter is vaguely decent, but as of Oct 3 it will probably take at least half possibly a full magazine to kill any given player (unless you get mostly headshots). Adding the accessories to the base gun (or Master-Crafted) helps.

Stalker Bolter or Stalker Mag - Powerful. Very powerful. Hard to aim well, but can be incredibly devastating to infantry.

Quicksilver Bolter - Very accurate, fast firing, slightly larger magazine, and just plain looks cool. a solid weapon.

Stormbolter - Up close and personal. Don't use this from mid or long range.

Plasma - Not terribly amazing at the moment, but not bad. Personally I like the Bolter better.


Lastly - Do not shoot into melee combat between a friendly and enemy unless you are 100% sure of hitting only the enemy. ESPECIALLY if you have a plasmagun - DEFINITELY do not fire the charged shot at a group of melee that your allies are in.

You are anti-vehicle and anti-quad-cannon (stationary turrets).

Nothing else.
Even capturing points is a secondary, nay, tertiary objective for you. You are the one the team is relying on to destroy the enemy vehicles as quickly as possible. Without you, the enemy floods into the points.

I highly recommend all players save up and spend the measly 10,000 requisition points to pick this up, and dedicate one loadout slot to it. Make it tough, because its focus is quickly and safely getting to enemy vehicles and kiling them.

Heal.

Okay okay, I know you know that.

But seriously - don't use E or your USE key to revive a fallen teammate. Use F or whatever your ITEM button is - whatever you use to heal yourself or give ammo, use that button, and that button ONLY when you are an apothecary.


As for choice of weapon, this is largely up to you and the sub-faction you're playing - If you are a Space Wolf, you can ONLY use a special-looking Power Maul (thanks to Archiiv); for everyone else, are you good at melee? grab the chainsword and follow the assaults. Do you prefer bolters or perhaps focusing just on heals? get a few shots in when you can and then focus on keeping people healed.


SImilar to the tactical while capturing, keep your head on a swivel at all times, except this time you need to focus on flancing at every single health bar. Nothing irks me more than an apothecary clearly not watching around him and running right by a downed teammate waiting for a revive or a near-dead ally who is literally calling for help (with V - 1 - 1).


Lastly - Don't be the vanguard. You are a support class. Get behind the bruisers and the shooters and support them. Melee if you can or if you must, but focus on getting those heals where they need to get.

Your entire life is killing enemy from afar. Set up in tunnels, bridges, coordioors, behind doorways, anywhere that forces the enemy to go through one spot so you can hose it down with fire.

I'd recommend you always click middle-mouse button, or CTRL, or whatever your zoom/set-up button is before firing, even if you're not up against a wall. And crouch, too. Hit C, hit the zoom, and now you're a relatively decent, stable defensive position. Try to get yourself backed up by a medic or assault or even a tactical with a scoped weapon.

Plasma has two modes, but honestly I'm not terrible proficient with either; just know that the charged forward shot (instead of the mortar) arcs upward from your crosshairs a bit - use the top chrosshair bar as an indication of where to aim, rather than the center of it.

Just like the tactical Meltagun, your entire life is hunting and destroying vehicles and quad cannons. Focus on Rhinos first (or quad cannons on certain maps).

For instance - You've joined a Harkus or Agnathio Fortress match. You have Lascannon as a loadout. The firs tthing you will do in that game is spawn as a lascannon, and spend your time as one until all of those quad cannons are destroyed. Then stop being a lascannon.


Let me be clear.

Once the threat from vehicles or quad cannons is eliminated, Pick a Different Class.

This role is useless against anything but vehicles and quad cannons. Oh, sure, you can often snipe a guy or two from afar.... if he's busy shooting someone or not paying attention to the giant red laser pointing at him, or the giant molten bar of heat you're trying to hit him with as a Multimelta.


Multimelta even more than Lascannon is useless at anything other than vehicle killing - it has no heat buildup on the target like the Meltagun, so there is no damage over time against infantry. It is purely something to grab to deal with a vehicle threat and either redeploy as a more helpful anti-infantry class, or if you're Defending on a Fortress map, to find a nice safe space to hide until the vehicle threat re-emerges and not waste a life.

Just as a word of advice - Devastators walk a little wonky, so trying to get into the perfect position where the enemy can't hit you with their tank or quad cannon but you can still target them with the laser is tricky - my advice? Crouch. that way you can inch in a direction and immediately stop instead of sliding a bit like normal. Also, don't prop yourself up on a wall if you can help it. Enemies LOVE lascannoning or plasma splattering you right back while you're nice and propped up on a wall hurting their vehicles.

Pop up, charge laser, fire, crouch back down under cover until the next shot.

And Now, everyone's favorite toy. The Jump Assault.


I hope you like dying. A lot.


Melee is finicky and a highly debated issue in EC, and Jump Assault is easily the most hotly debated, and has been since I began playing.

Firstly, you have jet packs. Your entire style of play is getting to where others can't go, zooming away from danger, circling your foes like a bird of prey and striking for the kill when the opportunity presents itself.

To that end, before you engage combat, ask yourself this question,

"Does my enemy have friends?"

If the answer is yes, think again. Maybe you'll kill them all. Maybe you'll land and get instantly one-shotted from behind by your main target's friend who began a power attack once he determined where you were going to land. I know I do that, all the time, against Chaos Raptors (their jump assaults) and Ork Stormboys.


You wil learn how to use the air slam, but basic advice - don't always just target the enemy themself. More than likely, they'll roll out of the way and begin shooting/hitting at the exact location you're landing in. No Bueno. Instead, try to estimate which direction he's likely to roll/run, and slam there, instead. Or anywhere in a 3 meter circle around the enemy but not directly on him. that way, you may stun him, or you may be far enough away from his counter-attack.


But most importantly - USE YOUR JUMP PACK. You are a swift fighter. Dash in, swipe swipe swipe, dash out. If you clang even once, jump the hell away, find another target.



Bottom Line For Jump Assaults - You are a combination of death from above, and a distraction. You stop the enemy in their tracks to deal with a sudden melee, while your tacticals take the point. You find their devastators and you kill them before they can ruin your team. You seek out the healers, the point-capturers, in short your JOB as a Jumnp Assault is to be the single most annoying player ever, and strike them where it will most hurt, because by the God Emperor, you have WINGS, and in his name you will fly in the face of your foe and tear out his throat.

Soar and Strike, Brothers.

Defend your brothers.

Your job, as a Ground Assault, is to be the shield behind which your brothers can safely perform their duties. Eitrher by literally using your Storm Shield to block enemy fire while they capture a point or heal an ally, or by running ahead of your team just a bit to engage the enemy in close combat and force them to pay attention to you rather than your team's doings.

Melee is kind of finicky and hotly debated, so I'm afraid I will have to tell you to simply experiment and play the class to learn how to fight in melee.

Just remember - your job is to protect. Killing is all well and good, but your express purpose is to be a holding action to prevent the enemy from stopping your team in doing what they wanna do. Kills are secondary to buying time.

This game’s melee is a really bad version of Rock-paper-scissors-shotgun
(Light-Heavy-Kick-Ranged)


Heavy - The bread-and-butter of your melee experience most likely. This attack is characterized by a glowing power effect around the weapon, regardless if that weapon is a power weapon or not, when swung. A unique trait of this attack is that, if you and your enemy at the same time throw a heavy, it will “clang”, throwing both weapons away and using durability instead as the “HP” of the hit.Some weapons’ heavies will disable vehicles, such as the Power fist and, although nowhere near as strong, the power maul and power axe, for Chaos and loyalist. Eldar’s heavies are a joke, they come out faster than most every other heavy, deal way more damage and can stop you from charging your own heavy to counter it. Don’t know about Ork’s, cause I can’t get matches.

Light - oftentimes the fastest attack, but least damaging if you don’t count the kick’s 10-or-so damage. This is the basic attack, countered by the kick. If you’re LSM, and starting, you should really try to get a Power Sword or the Chainsword with barbed teeth/durability regen. Same goes for Chaos. Eldar can pick whatever they want because ofttimes, their lights come out way way way faster than yours do. Orks, prioritize burny choppa and i think poleaxe. I don’t know, I can’t get ork matches. This attack can also clang but it is not recommending to attempt

Kick - The (supposed) way to stop repeated light attacks, but not heavy attacks. This attack is characterized by the animation of sparta-ing your enemy in the chest (as lsm/csm), kicking them in the jaw(Eldar), or a headbutt(Ork). This attack is what you should do when faced with a lone combatant, most likely an Eldar Banshee, who just won't let up on those damned light atacks, as it will stun and guarantee at least one hit on the enemy(depending on weapon). BEWARE, IF you do this and the enemy throws a heavy you will get stunned and they will be able to get another heavy in, regardless of race.

Ranged - just run. Don’t engage a ranged opponent if you either A: don’t have a shield or B: Have no support.

To put it into a formulae since those are easy to understand?

If light more than 2x, kick
If heavy more than 2x (and you survive) light attack or use your own heavy to “clang”
If enemy opens with a kick(I have seen this done, but it is rare. It is also funny to witness) you can try and kick back, or use a heavy attack to stop AND stun.

There are some things i didnt cover, so i am sorry, but i hope this is a good base

[Again, thanks to Cynemaer for this section of the guide!]

Please, PLEASE, just USE the things! when you dioe and are choosing a new spawn location, use your squad rhino! It's a simple, effective means to focus manpower into a single point, by having the entire squad spawn on it and take it to the objective.


If you are on a map where there is a control point that can spawn vehicles, if the enemy is suddenly capturing the point, that means that if you spawn on the point itself, you will actually spawn far away and have to run. However, if you can draw a rhino from the point... you've just provided your whole squad with a much closer spawn point, often right inside the point.


Protect your rhinos. What I find effective is to choose the Jump Assault class if you're going to be a dedicated driver of a vehicle. If you see a Fire Dragon (Eldar bright orange guys with fiery lasers that kill vehicles) or a Tactical Chaos Marine running towards your vehicle, hop out and kill him. As a jump assault, you have an incredible advantage over any anti-vehicle class, since their main weapon is largely useless against you and you can zip to them quickly.

Alternatively, you could simply keep driving the vehicle away from any approaching infantry.

Use, and protect your squad rhinos.


.... And for the love of god, be a team player - don't just take a rhino that your squad has moved into position and decide for yourself that you're going to use it as a joyride to got attack another point all by your lonesome. If you see on your map that your squad mates are in a nearby point to the rhino... go help them. Or TELL THEM that you think the squad should hit Point C not B, and that you're moving the rhino to make them do this. At least that way they know what's happening.

If you have corrections for me or better or additional quiick and dirty tips to help new players, or if there's an entire section I haven't written about, please let me know and I'll add it and credit you! For instance, if you had a goodn idea about a Predator section, or a How To Deal With Eldar OTher Than Crying section, write it up or tell me all about it and I'll add it!

Thanks for reading, and I hope this helped!