With the advent of the new SHARPS Operator on the horizon as testmerges begin once more, what is the best (read: your subjectively useful favorite) Specialist loadout to pick and why is it Demolitionist (read: my objectively perfect favorite)?
Demo’s simply the greatest swing playmaker in the entire game. In one lowpop round I contributed six personal final blows and according to a ghost counting, seven assists. AP rockets have the ability to literally decide the outcome of the game if the user is not unlucky, entirely unskilled, or braindead.
I’m convinced that even though Grenadier can help wipe swathes of low-tier Xenos, when you’re fighting a decent Hive the T3’s don’t die unless you have the bodies to PUSH PUSH PUSH until they run out of ground to give or fuck up. This puts it in B-tier because Grenadier CANNOT CONFIRM T3 kills except Boilers and that’s a goddamn travesty since you’ll have fearrp forever.
Scout fulfills a similar niche where ultimately it does not have the T3-murder capability of the almighty Demolitionist unless played by an expert of the trade who has the perfect window to swoop in from behind the Xeno frontline to pick off a wounded T3. Maybe A tier. Barely.
Pyro actually gets an easy admittance to A tier for crowd control/area denial ability and resin breaking prowess but let’s be real— you cannot overcome Marine fearrp because there’s no signal to surge forward like a wave like the glorious report of an M5 RPG hitting a bug.
Snipers are both memes. Are they effective in their niches? Yeah, super great for helping punish overextending xenos and even picking off long pathing backliners. But can they step the fuck up and make plays on the bugs that matter on the frontline? I’m of the opinion that the answer is no, because oftentimes the bugs that matter are smart enough to avoid their playing field. Fucking C-tier.
I don’t have enough experience with SHARPS to judge it much, but it looks like it can fulfill a similar niche to both Pyro and Grenadier in different ways. Certainly inferior in both fields, but maybe the combination creat the utility to make it S? I dunno.
Anyway love letter to Demo Spec I’m kissing the rocket launcher mwah mwah mwah I’m going to BED now have good replies when I wake up please bye bye
AMR is S tier because they die the least and therefore on average, have the most round impact. Demo can nuke queen sure, but a bald demo will gib only marines and die while a bald AMR will still do something and probably live.
AMR is also not used to it’s fullest potential by a lot of players. Similar to how half of pyros lack the brain cells to extinguish their fires proactively with their 500u UBE, half of AMRs don’t even realise focus as a mechanic exists, and end up aim shotting random xenos for 50% damage.
A good AMR can absolutely cuck any xeno if they full focus aim shot a xeno at the opportune moment with minimal counterplay available to xenos, whereas any other spec can simply be morbed by you and the boys (7 Prime Warriors)
Pyro - you can basically stop all xenos from pushing from a direction you choose to spam with green fire. A lot of people actually sleep on spamming green fire in front of queen rushing to screech. Blue fire is nice for securing kills and you can solo t3 if you run good secondary weapon.
GL - stun spam, its quite easy to secure kills while nading xenos (if marines around you actually care to shoot stunned xenos), when i play GL i just wait till a xeno pushes out of a choke and nade behind them as they start to retreat - easy kills.
Amr - basically upgrade to sniper (without incen bullets), you can choose one xeno and make sure he has to retreat as soon as you shoot your aimed shot due to losing 50% hp - in addition you apply slowdown plus stun. You can also secure kills on crit xenos behind other xenos.
Scout - anything below t3 fragger plus boiler and can finish healing xenos. Incen bullet into stunlock lets you solo a lot of xenos.
Sadar - most of sadar players have poopo aim so they do very little. Has capability to stun queen but i dont find it that of a gamechanger since as i said most players cant hit with AP. I would rate sadar higher if we still had OP OT rockets insta killing anything in a screen radius - without those i dont see sadar having that much of an impact.
Normal sniper - downgrade to amr, in my opinion incen bullets and a little stronger slowdown from flak is not worth it.
You bring up an interesting argument but one that isn’t necessarily true to the argument. When evaluating what is the best specialist, I think we should look at each kit at peak performance. Any specialist played poorly is useless or detrimental, hence why I don’t think evaluating the negative should affect the judgement we make on the positive.
SADAR is, without a doubt, the best specialist for round impact. Played perfectly, the Demo can kill every xeno in the game in a defensive scenario, and others as well in an offensive one given proper positioning on behalf of the spec and marines.
The scout and sniper, while good in their own right at capitalizing on opportunities cannot create those opportunities like the SADAR can, and hence can oftentimes be sidelined when conditions aren’t right.
The Pyro and GL easily lose out on one big point in that they effectively cannot harm the Queen or Ravager. Played perfectly, the GL has a high skill-ceiling which can do a great job at killing retreating xenos, but is very weak on the defensive, contrasting the Pyro which is very weak on the offensive for one primary reason - every offensive flame the Pyro makes leaves them vulnerable to Warriors.
Undoubtedly in certain situations every spec can outperform eachother, but I feel that the impact SADAR has on killing T3s in situations the others couldn’t cannot be understated, nor deflected by claiming that ‘most SADARs are bad’.
grenadier no doubt anyone who says otherwise is on hardcore drugs bro you get to spam grenades… even spam m15s if you bring a m79 so you can have double the grenade launchers
your issue is assuming Pyro spec is even for pushing
Pyro spec is for area denial, being able to fill 20 square miles of ground full of green flames is basically indispensable and can kill queen screech pushes in the right context
Tier list of who would I gib as the Queen (I realized too late that this is not what this thread is about, so I’m posting it anyway):
Scout — has high potential, paranoia inducing. Custom M4RA is OP, can kill even T3s with ease. Most scouts are not that great though, but it’s better to gib them anyway, unless they died God knows where (which is not rare at all).
SADAR — AP rocket is the sword of Damocles that hangs over every Queen’s head. Gib SADAR and you will always stay in control.
AMR — not as scary as SADAR, but very annoying. Basically with zero to none risks involved can deny you from landing screeches, since losing 50% of your HP will force you to retreat and rest. If you are so lucky to have AMR exposed to gib, would be foolish to miss such an opportunity.
Pyro — can become a big nuisance with green flame, slowing you down. Your fellow xenos will also want him gone for sure, as they generally don’t have fire immunity.
Normal sniper — flak is really powerful and in right hands can lead to your demise, though, marines rarely capitalize on flak for some reason. Thus, pretty passable.
GL — who cares. No, really. GL doesn’t have any specific skills and his spec weapon is worse than m79. Gib only if you hold metagrudge against the player.
Here’s the objective list that cannot be disputed as someone who frags on both sides
Pyro - S tier: has some of the best fragging potential, the extinguisher is the spec tool not the flames, can single handedly shut down entire pushes regardless of resistances considering a hive will not follow a queen through green fire
Scout - S tier: can walk around and do whatever he wants realistically, one of the only specs that is pay to win (some monitors cant even see him LMAO) but can be killed if caught off guard, realistically if you know where xenos can see you and where to operate though you probably won’t die ever
Sadar - A tier: the only thing that can consistently land kills on t3s even without help or the queen with help, at this point its underrated because everyone turns their screens off then takes a shot… and THEN shoots the RPG
Sniper - B tier: falls short compared to others, still good, if you wanna backline with a friend though theen this is probably the choice
GL - D tier: objectively the worst spec, it relies entirely on the xeno making 2 mistakes, that being over extending, then walking a line back the way they came directly into a grenade, you can pretty consistently avoid any “good” GL by taking your hands off your keyboard for 2 seconds and waiting for them to shoot their “god tier prediction nade” behind you and then just walking back in complete safety, they would have been better off with an actual gun, actually shooting at you
AMR/Sharps - F tier: fake spec kits, neither are real nor do I acknowledge them, both are abysmal dogshit not considering why original kits were designed as X so did their own quirky thing by dismantling CM gameplay and making it slop garbage.
In terms of utility, AMR and Scout are the most OP specialist kits.
AMR because of NVG (so HUGE situational awareness) and its ability to make any T3 or even Queen think twice about pushing while also realistically never putting yourself at risk if you know what your doing so you survive the longest (hence have the most round impact in longer rounds).
Scout because of its T1 and T2 nuking potential, ability to full scout the entire map (and hence predict / call out flanks, help IO’s, etc) and general versatility due to cloak + NVG allowing a number of different strategies, such as paradrop from behind.
Demo is a no brainer and I play if I want to make all T3’s sweat, GL sucks due to its ammo restrictions, SHARP no comment (never played it), and Pyro has insane utility but if your facing the wrong matchup (multiple ravs and Prime empress) your useless and since most hives take Ravager since its the most overtuned caste, half the time your useless outside of spamming green fire.
Ignoring the average skill of people using these specialists, the criteria is:
Can a regular Marine do what this Specialist does?
Game Impact (Kills, Pushes, Supporting Utility)
S
Pyro:
Blue Flame is really good, kills bugs and keeps them out of action for the longest.
Marines otherwise completely replace him, and walking into your own flames is a noob trap to cap yourself. Without blue-flame he’d be down in F.
A
Scout:
Impact rounds stunlock most benos, thermal bag rocks for recovery but wandering in the backline is a noob trap the game lures you into so you get capped.
Demo:
Can stunlock any Xeno to get them killed, can use rockets to blow open cover or deny areas. Completely irreplaceable but the rocket launcher means you need to expose yourself for any hits.
B
AMR:
Can pin Xenos down, can remove cover. Worse than the other Specialists.
C
Regular Sniper:
Can’t pin Xenos down, fire is mediocre.
D
GL: Grenades are nice, but he is completely replaced by a regular Marine, but still nice because you won’t always have grenade-loaded Marines.
F
SHARP: Haven’t seen them too often, so I’m not sure but as far as I see it’s just extremely situational. Mines FF Marines, or don’t have impact (either not triggered or triggered too far from Marines).
pyro is the best specialist
you get to run up and secure kills VERY easily by finding a xeno that catches one round too many, blueflame them, and watch them melt. even if the hive does have nothing but rav T3s and a prime empress, greenflame will completely cuck them out of a push if you do it right, because while greenflame may not slow a xeno anymore, it will still strip it of almost all it’s armor and leave it vulnerable to John HPR that can now obliterate them in 2 seconds from full health.
X-Fuel is peak and I love it. Another thing that’s really fucking good about it is that it doesn’t stop when it hits a xeno, if the entire hive is bodyblocking your shots from a crit crusher or something, if you directly hit them with the flame arc they’re /Probably/ dead, no matter how many sisters try to save them.
just take 3 canisters of X-Fuel as your spare point buy because in 99/100 rounds i play i never run out of B-Gel and use X-Fuel in almost every case
everything is good but if we are talking about gamechanging then pyro, RPG and GL is where its at.
As daniel said no one always takes advantage of the green flame. I’ve barely seen any pyro cockblock the queen by green flaming her before she screeches and if she does screech and tries to drag you she’ll get gunned down because shes slowed + armor penetration multiplier on top of being green flame.
GL is good at pushing after screeches if theres a lot of xeno wall chokepoints.
RPG nothing can be said here. If theres no one going RPG specs are griefing. 1 rocket = 1 xeno dead is still a lot even if its a drone. People dont realize how good drones fuck up marines when you follow up with weed after scree
Haven’t played spec a ton but I’ll say this, first round as SADAR not a single kill, first round with the normal sniper i got six kills and survived till the end. SADAR is the king of FF, and you’ll probably end up gibbing more privates then killing xenos, but it is better against T3s.
