Best Specialist Debate 2025

General Discussion
21

Hands down…

Pryo - S: like no joke, Pryo is these hands down best over all bang for your buck spec. i not going to say they are the best at Each roll specs can fill but they can do just about every thing you would want out of spec.

Xeno fear stalling? Pryos got that in abundance, a good pryo not only denies areas with its greenfire but also just the threat of the push getting hit with flame wall can stall things out. I know as a Rav player (Hog strain for the most part) i fear the pryo, because i just know they going to get me killed by stalling aid.

Body recovery? yup Pryo are also pretty good at that too, just make a sea of greenfire extinguish a path to the body (also the body as well, never forget to do that.) and drag that poor lad back to the medics. Now i not going to say there the best but hot damn can make good work of it.

Fragging T3? again yes if they are on point with their Blue fire and got good extinguishing game ( or are good at using there firewalking ability), Yes they are not about to kill the queen or ravs but for every thing else they can do fine work. Again not the best but still quite good.

Clearing Ground? also yes, sort of. No were as good as the GL but depending on what you are dealing with good old sea of greenfire can do wonders. Got Node or sticky resin spam? then pryo is your man! also firing up to the door and slapping the xenos when they dare open the doors with bit of Greenfire can make pushing up the line into the resin walls much safer.

Again pyros are not the best in each trade but they can make things work with liberal application of greenfire! That’s really what makes Pryos the best they are a good all rounder while still having a area of excellence!

Edit: also never heard more true words

1 Like
22

just learn to shoot?

23

Its lot harder then it seem to hit the rockits, they fly kind of slow so hard to lead the shit right.

24

I love the demo kit, but picking it is always nerve wracking. You gotta keep an eye on T3s, sight lines, and pray there’s not a warrior hiding behind a wall about to pull you into a dark alley never to be seen again.
When you hear Queen steps you drop everything else, it’s a 1v1. If you fuck up your shot on her then the screech will be devastating; and if you’re near the front of the marines it will almost certainly spell your demise.
But when you DO hit that shot on her? Or when you DO land that OT max cap rocket into 3+ xenos?
Pure bliss. It makes the entire effort all worth it.
Luv me SADAR simple as

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25

when you accept sadar is easiest spec to play cause you gotta just be there and hit xeno once, maybe draw an m39 and help finish it off and not die makes you play a lot better because its less nerve racking

26

S tier:
Sadar - only spec that can reliably kill the queen. If some kind of god was playing it, they would clear out any and all T3s. I swear half my deaths as crusher are from sadar. Just them holding a tube up is enough to stop xeno pushes. In high pop they are a great contributor, and in low pop they can determine a match. Even a bad sadar can get a T3 or 2 at the cost of gib’d allies. out of ALL the specs, if sadar was the missing spec in a single round, there would be an uproar.

A tier:
Grenade GLer - the potential to juggle stunlock xenos is high. They cannot stun every single xeno like sadar, but those stuns on defender/warrior/any other T1/2 that decides to frontline is brutal. Even if the xeno escapes, they will think twice before attacking, making them another effective paper tiger.

Pyro - They do well to lock down the front. They can also chase in flames and get kills when the xenos retreat and resist. The counterplay of ravs, queen, and long range acid, along with cases of FF and warrior lunges stops pyro from S tier. That and most xenos do not get hit with bullets as they fight pyro (marines stop shooting around pyro, pyro himself doesnt fire), so often times the xeno escapes in the frontline battles.

AMR sniper - Just barely in A tier, they do two things well: deny T3s AND the queen from getting a proper attack in, and securing those low health kills. Even a novice can go pew pew pew and just soften up the xeno frontline. With a team of sweaty spec players, I would expect the sniper to get the least kills, but their impact to the battle flow is constant and relentless.

Scout - They can hive dive to free caps and kill core. They can kill almost any xeno alone, including a rav, in the xenos backline. They can simply frontline and still kill that rav. When xenos fight in open areas, they can assassinate the almost dead and healing xenos. Probably the best boiler killer of all marine options: I bet scout could trade his life in most cases for a boiler kill. They would be S tier but they require the most knowledge and skill to reach their peak. A crap scout can be just another MK1 AP user in terms of battlefield effectiveness. Knowing positioning, what they can get away with, burst fire only, 1st shot incend chambered, bayo for godly melee, pre-meds… I wonder myself what tricks the veteran scouts are withholding.

B tier:
normal sniper - the tricks that the sniper can do COULD make it better than AMR, but most often than not they are not effectively used. The flak slow is painful, but there might be only one time I have ever attributed flak as the reason I died. Maybe not even one. The incends are good but often used as another annoyance tactic. The normal shots do less damage than AMR. Honestly I just willingly accept the shots from sniper, especially when they try to spam multiple incends and flaks when I am safe. On paper they can use these abilities to secure kills, but in reality it just doesnt work that way.

C tier:
dart GLer - Their impact to the game turns out to be similar to the annoyance of sniper, without the kill secure capabilities. Any xeno worth their salt will see a dart went in them and will retreat while it explodes. Landmines are often either purposely early triggered, seen and avoided, or triggered with marines nearby for FF. Cool concept, but EVERY other spec does well to secure those kills, and the darts just don’t even come close.

edit: seems like the only thing we can reliably agree on is normal sniper and SHARP are mid

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27

I would agree if warriors/praes/ravagers/queens weren’t so good at fucking you over as a frontlining pyro.

The thing is, when any other player frontlines and pushes and gets warrior/prae grabbed or queen screeched or something, they don’t have a giant wall of fire blocking marines from helping out.

So until the situation is such that xenos won’t/can’t run into the fire to drag you through it to their own safety and kill you, there is no good reason to be frontlining as pyro. I would even bet pyro is the most perma’d spec overall just because it’s so easy to frontline and immediately perma.

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28

yes, but mostly to queen not so much praes, warriors, rav, most the time the issue is they are too spearing with the flames.

29

I actually prefer the regular sniper - the DPS output is similar between the two of them, with the AMR’s main advantage not being DPS, but rather high alpha-strike damage that makes securing a kill a little bit easier (not enough to matter to me).

What I find is that the regular sniper does the finishing-off good enough, but then can also swap to incendiary and flak for specialty cases.

For flak that tends to be killing crit xenos that are being protected, killing marines who are being capped (splash damage kills/suppresses the huggers), putting slows on queens/ravs during screech overextensions, and suppressing larger groups of gathered xenos (with splash damage).

For incendiary, it’s setting T1’s/T2’s on fire while they’re in the middle of fighting marines, and suppressing large-scale xeno pushes and flanks in the open by forcing every flammable xeno to run far away back into cover (I’ve prevented full routs from being overrun thanks to this).

The AMR just doesn’t come close to the effectiveness - the wallbang might as well not exist for how little it does, and the extra damage per hit isn’t enough to matter the vast majority of the time. If you get a kill with the AMR you’d have probably (at least 60%, if not 80-90% of the time) got the same kill with the regular sniper, too. For that difference in direct last-hit kills, you lose out all the utility usage that I actually find does most of the killing* for the regular sniper.

*it’s often you deal some damage but a marine you’re helping gets the actual kill, not you

I think ultimately it comes down to a matter of player skill. Knowing when/where/how to use the regular sniper is more difficult than the AMR (and you have to often rely on your own aim, not the middle click ability). The AMR on its face is going to (should…) look better in kill stats because the gun and user are scoring it while the regular sniper is more of an assistance weapon.

They only need to land it once. Warriors can and will grab you while you are standing in the fire, and often when you’re flaming a push forward there’s only 1-3 fire tiles between you and a warrior corner camping. Not even blue fire will stop it as the good warrior players know they can actually tank grabbing and dragging through that many blue-fire tiles without dying. Of the three, it’s ravs that tend to leave you recoverable instead of perma (but with 3 broken bones).

You are way, way, way better off on the sidelines dealing with lurkers/runners or suppressing push directions. Also better off with light/no armor instead of pyro armor so you can quickly run around and put fires out on the flanks while avoiding ravs and queens (as soon as you hear stomps you need to gtfo)

Another case where the armor design doesn’t jive with the actual job requirements (IO XM4 is the same, though the motion tracker buff helped - there should be a light-armor-speed variant IO armor, because heavy armor doesn’t help you against stuns and pounces and being chased down, which are what actually kill you as an IO)

2 Likes
30

Then they are pyro wrong, you got firewalking for reason, yes there are times when their is very little room that’s when you take step back or better yet carry a MD. I almost never get warrior grabbed as pryo like its REALLY rare even more so to get permed from a warrior grab. I say this as front liner pryo.

you can quite readily out range warriors with your fire and with a MD in your belt you going to have a good heads up if they may be around. The issue is lads think its good idea to flame right up to door and you know not a good more tiles out, greenfire got real long range after all.

What i am saying is that you can pyro front line just fine with out issue just got to be smart thats all.

31

Huuuuuge agree on the XM4. If it didn’t stop you from using webbing, I’d use it to save space, but it’s just not fucking worth it. All the greatest I/O’s use JACKET because you have NVG’s and a motion detector, and that’s all you need to avoid entire quadrants with xenos in themS

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32

Everyone says GL’s utility is clearing chokes, but like…

Just get a breaching shotgun kit. You do not need to be a spec to reliably clear out chokes and walls, and it does not require a spec slot + the ammo comes in ASRS for free regularly.

Meanwhile you struggle as GL due to the fact that HEDP availability has been gimped for the longest time; once your vendable ammo + the big HEDP box req has is gone, good luck getting req to shell out 10k for a HEDP box (hint: they won’t).

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33

Rifleman with IMP rack full of flare boxes is the best specialist imo.

7 Likes
34

Honestly I find the AMR does the job better than the regular sniper. An AMR has the ability to literally choose when to decimate a queen or any T3s health by HALVING it, basically either instantly forcing a disengage or cause sudden death, not to mention the slowdown from AMR, which makes it do half the work flak does.

The ministun also makes AMR peak, acting as an instant IFF slug to cuck any warrior from lungecapping.

In terms of securing kills, AMR wins again by having wallhacks and piercing through tanking xenos to murder their paincrit buddy.

Imo AMR is more versatile and dangerous to xenos overall, M42A is more of a debuff weapon.

1 Like
35

the explosions are what fuck xenos up after a scree swag.
Queen scree > attack > hide behind wall to recover > GL blows up wall > get caught off guard and stunned from explosion
no one capitalizes a lot from that

36

Yeah but most people just FF with the HEDP or marines do not push after HEDP fearing getting HEDP’d which lets stunned xenos run off, meanwhile breacher clears sightlines for normal marines just the same and FF is laughable.

At peak skill and with req supplying you, yes, GL is good but like at peak skill you don’t need a GL to get kills, you can frag with 1-2 good breachers wiping all walls and a wall of fraggers with m39 or mk2’s wiping out anything trying to approach.

37

I can see where you are going for sniper, but on average I just get fucked over by AMR way more than sniper. Just like all specs though, milage can vary on user.

Swagile, the GLer shines from having low timer stun explosions. That’s it, that’s their only shining advantage that marines cannot replicate. Everything else is fluff a normal rifleman could do. Versus the godly GLers though, as a warrior it feels I have no choice but to be juggled to oblivion. It is almost always death if they get the 2 hits on me.

38

I am here in defense of GL
GL does not work at all on queens and crushers, they will fuck you up

he is so hated because there are basically no very good GL players, its almost always new people

GL is the third best way to clear resin structures after OB, CAS/mortar, also usefull to clear hives, very funny when you use wall bounces to your advantage and dont FF the front (please make them better i beg)

praetorians and boilers are just free kills after you blow up all of their cover in a push

ravagers are „hard” to deal with as GL and everyone sleeps on the fact that crushers cant be stunned by a HEDP but there is this magic thing called a COMBO, wait for a ravager to push, launch a HIDP on his way back, granade him to push closer to marines (it also slows him down) wait a second for it to run into the greens and granade the cover he is trying to get to, assuming people shoot at him he is below 30% a few tiles from a door and probably in the green flames from a HIDP

good at recovering bodies, no points talking about T2s and T1s at this point

GL is a sleeper pick AND you are very safe in a push, take a MK1 load it with more HEDPs and you can finish the job yourself
running out of HEDPs is the worst though, if the marines are good and you are good its GG for the xenos you just need to get all the HEDP you can get
GL is the most versitile frontline specialist, scout but for the front not backline also great at initialising a push from a capture they tried to get

2 Likes
39

A Marine with a grenade belt does the same thing as the GL, that’s why he sucks.

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40

you can even fire faster than the GL spec with manual reload with single use GL if you are fast enough IIRC.

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