I’ve been playing for a while and got lucky enough to do the spec roles. I mainly do grenadier and use it to blow up resin walls and doors to clear the way for the others. However there are some spec roles that I’ve seen not get played that much. Namely the Pyro, now I’ve played pyro and burnt down a hive core on my first try of it and found it fun. But I wanna know what y’all think the most useful spec roles are.
3 Likes
I good and easy spec role I usually go with is pyro it is easy to learn and can be extremally helpful.
worst spec role is sadar
Hello!
This is just from my perspective after countless times playing each unique spec role. Going from top to bottom, best to worst.
Sniper - I think Sniper spec is probably the best role to get not because of the night vision but how unique their kit is. You get a buddy with specific binocs which boosts damage of your targeted opponent (I think) and you literally get a buddy for the whole round who can watch your back, that’s a huge perk to have. Aimed shot, awesome, does increased damage, same with the incendiary magazine but the best is Flak. Aimed shot with Flak slows xenomorphs down, you can screw over a Queen or Crusher once they push too close and with their slowdown, Marines can easily outrun and gun them down and you don’t have to risk your life at all, just sit back, click, 5 seconds or something for aimed shot and nail your target.
Demolitionist - I was going to put this one at the top but decided against it because they’re the most targeted specialist due to how amazing they are. How I usually play sadar is using HE/ High explosive rockets for path clearing/removing resin walls. WP/ White Phosphorus is deadly to all xenomorphs (except Queen and Ravagers) because they create blue flames. Only other way to create blue flames is Pyro or an upgraded plasma turret. What makes WP rockets special is the explosion that occurs AND nailing an xenomorph forces them to walk through 3 tiles of blue flames, big damage every step. AP/Armor Piercing rockets, people love em Xenos hate em. This rocket can easily stun any Queen or T3 Xenomorph unlucky enough to be shot DIRECTLY with the rocket. The downside is you need to be close and if the Queen gets ya with her screech, she’s coming for you. High risk high reward specialist that’s why I’m listing them as 2nd best.
Good example how its highly rewarding but it doesn’t always work out.
Pyrotechnician - I think the majority of the players who play Pyro don’t use it “correctly”. Usually I see people in dchat whining “Fucking pyro flaming the front” so instead of doing that, I do area control. Using green flames closes off flank routes the above average xeno player uses and green flame slows ONLY IF they are stepping on the green flame tiles. As mentioned in the sadar rant, WP/Blue flames, amazing, use it when a spitter, warrior, hell even a runner is heading to you in a straight line. They’re stepping through the tiles towards you AND back (usually) and punishes them. The normal orange flames, eh, I just use it as weed killer and the armor makes you slow. Sure it comes with fire protection but if a Praetorian sees you, it’ll grapple and it’s over for you.
Scout - One of the worst roles people pick because “funny invisible” only to go die in some dark alley way. Especially annoying when Scout is invisible and runs between the front, of course I’m going to shoot you because you look like a Lurker or a Predator. I don’t run into the problem because I play this role as a backline defender, killing Lurkers or runners which is highly risky. Same as sadar if played right, high risk high reward. What makes this closer to the bottom is the invisible sprite is easy to spot on light colored tiles (sandy beaches of LV, Kutjevo/Solaris bright orange sand) and unfortunately it also shows when Xenomorphs stand behind walls.
Do a bit of bullying 
Grenadier - This is on the bottom of my list solely because of the cost to maintain this specialist. I only use HEDPs and because resin walls, doors, and xenos need to be blown up, the amount of grenades you burn through is a lot. One round as GL, Shivas, burnt through all my Hedps from the satchels, webbing, belt harness, all of them but luckily we won the round. Fragbursts are pretty useless, same with the flame spreader since it needs to be shot a correct way or you end up griefing fellow marines. The hidps are ok but you can’t put out the flames right after and it takes too long to go away so only hedps for me.
You can stun Praetorians, Ravagers and Boilers but you can’t kill them yourself, you need to rely on other Marines helping you secure kills.
I took WAAAY too much time explaining my thoughts on each specialist but I hope it helps you get a better understanding on how to utilize them properly. 
3 Likes
All specs are really good, so I’m ordering this from how much I like to dislike each one, but if you held a gun to my head and asked me the worst and best I’d say GL best(tied with sadar) scout worst.
GL is amazing, you can stunlock pretty much every xeno in the game mindlessly w/ hedp, and essentially kill pretty much everything if you add an M15 into your combo(I personally use HEDP-HEDP-M15-HEDP-HEDP-M15 to allow a stun, knock torwards me, then an M15 on the escape route that they step on, causing massive damage), and grenades aren’t an issue if req prioritizes.
Sniper is good overall, doesn’t take much skill to be decent with it, and once you are good with it, it becomes absolutely amazing via comboing rifle fire and inc bullets to chase.
Scout is like sniper except comboing is your only option and you can get absolutely destroyed if a xeno player has eyes and sees you cloaked. Has much greater potential but it is much harder than sniper.
Pyro is really hard, and if you aren’t good at it you are actively griefing marines. But, good pyros can essentially lock down xeno pushes or make backliners want to die, but does not have the full on killing power of other specs, usually needing teammates around to actually secure kills. Easy to learn though as you can just go PFC and use normal flamer. Pyros should always be using blue flames or green flames only when blocking pushes.
SADAR is incredibly strong but you get ultra-giga-targeted by every xeno in existence, as well rockets can be somewhat difficult to use due to the small range(I still can’t shoot for shit as sadar because I’m still too used to pre-limited range sadar). Good SADARs win rounds solo.
3 Likes
Honestly, I think that sniper feels the weakest of every spec. By all means they’re my favorite, but lack the same flare as all the others. It’s satisfying to stun a set of Xenos as Scout/Grenadier, drown them in fire with Sadar/Pyro, and to generally cause a bunch of mayhem. Sniper . . . usually fails at the ranges where marines get kills, which is close-quarters chase downs. A lot of the time, you’re sending Xenos around a corner and out of sight.
There are no good or bad specialist roles, it depends solely on the player playing it - I’ve seen good and bad snipers/pyros/demo/grenadiers etc.
How good you are with a specialist role is entirely based on your own skill levels.
While they all have niches, once you expand into that and fully understand how to use the role, being a specialist becomes a breeze - but practice always makes perfect.
Here’s my Tier list:
S+ tier: Grenadier (B18)
Summary
Absolute unit, the king of specs. This man only fears getting disarm spammed to hell. That’s it. The grenade launcher is a beast to xenos, held back only because grenades have gotten nerfed to kingdom back and you can’t really spam stun xenos anymore. But the B18 really shone with a rifle, just an unstoppable marine that couldn’t get stopped unless you got ganked or something, but that’s anything in this game. It’s so good it got locked away. Imagine the b18 with a shotgun and M2C.
A tier: Demo Man and Pyro
Summary
You get a low skill boom tube that can stun the queen and cause xeno mald. You might disagree, and that’s fine, but a few lucky hits with the bazooka will turn the tide on the hive. Held back by explosion nerfs and the fact you can’t carry a spare gun anymore. But, you can pass your backpack to a lackey, which is the reason you have a spare helmet (you can have them reload your gun too).
Pyro is nice. The mag harness snaps your gun onto the backpack, by the way. You also get fire proof abilities for a short second, and the changes to the way you switch ammunition around is beautiful. Held back because the blue fire… fire in general is sort of… negligible right now. Keeping an eye on it right now though. It’d be S if that got fixed and if pyro wasn’t so griefworthy as a frontlineman. Hell, I don’t know why this isn’t the case, but the flamethrower should have a special interaction with the fireball attachment, make a fireball shot through it actually be a larger fire ball, then it’d be S+ tier.
B tier: Scout and Sniper.
Summary
Scout is cool, but the gimmick only works if you’re with the hoard. I don’t know why, maybe it’s new, but xenos can see you walking around cloaked through thermals, you just look slightly translucent. Truly garbage, and I guarantee it’s a new nerf to avoid the scout lazing the hive, or C4ing the queen. Which, sadly, doesn’t gib her anymore. Not only that, scout got a recent nerf to the gun, I think firerate lowered, due to extreme xeno mald at two shot burst M4RA, so you don’t have that anymore. Overall, a terrible fate for this specialist, the only benefit you have is that you can use the abundant M4RA ammunition on burst. Lowered damage of course, but the burst is still… 50% more powerful than the normal M4RA so do with that what you will.
Sniper is between A and B for me because of the map. They’re good, but not that good. The big numbers from aiming are nice, but that’s all it is, a big number. Landing an aimed shot on a xeno is like landing a burst or two of M41A, they just walk away and heal. There is no actual kill pressure on none baldo xenos. That’s why the map matters, by the way. You won’t get that much pressure in the Solaris caves. There’s a wall every step of the way. The most pressure I ever got was when we had the lifeboat hold with c4d walls and a spotter that dedicated themselves to spotting. Even then, actually SECURING kills was difficult.
“Oh but you’re supposed to support and help the hoard get kills by punishing over extension”
Get real, I kill more boilers with an m41a scoped rifle than a sniper rifle. Sniper is just a glorified m41a burst with incindiaries. And that’s with aiming. Without aim you do what… 60-70 damage? That’s a whole two AP rifle bullets, wow. This kit peaked with the anti tank rifle.
C tier: Spotter and Grenadier
Summary
Just a private with nightvision. Has their moments, I consider them spec, technically the sniper’s gimp, but whatever. Still better than the grenadier, can camouflage.
Grenadier. Babby’s grenadier from empresss maldmother. G-launcher had its nades nerfed, only serves to be a t1/t2 snapper, sometimes you’ll get lucky on the rav or smack a queen around, but it’s not even worth it to waste your nades like that. Just go back to Marine griefing, because I remember people would drop the grenade launcher just to go machine gunning in the B18, so… I guess if they allowed the M7 grenadier nades on this it’d be nicer (which is weird why you don’t have them in the first place, probably to avoid slug nade spam).
4 Likes
Sniper is hands down the best spec at the moment. If you have a good spotter that’s willing to stick with you and not be a PFC+, it’s unbelievably good. You can reliably do amazing work at practically any range, and you can single handedly prevent marine routs and wipes and stop queen screech pushes in their tracks. Your ammo types offer diverse tactical options, and if req is good to you, you can stay in the fight for a loooong time. My most recent sniper game for reference:
That said, I think the other specs are about equal, and it comes down to player skill. I may give RPG spec the lowest rating simply due to the fact that it’s far more noticeable when he misses or whiffs it that he fucked up and accomplished nothing, but… due to the nature of specs and their reliance on player skill, there’s not really a ‘bad’ spec.
2 Likes
GL, he carry’s the marines on his shoulders. Without him, prepare for a 2 hour round if they got good builders.
Very much agree. Have seen Bobby utterly wreck the xenos.
people that say SADAR is the best spec are wrong. Its PFC+ with the ability to sometimes shoot a CAS rocket. GL spec and SADAR heavily rely on a good OT and if they don’t have one, they are near useless. At least GL spec has the hugger proof helmet and the almost B18 level armor. In my opinion scout is that spec everyone roles because its cool but only 2% of people who use it actually know what their doing and don’t die/get facehuggered and dragged to hive 2 minutes into the OP. Flamer spec gets a lot of guff for being PFC+ literally, but I feel like the ability to use blue fire and 3x1 wide flames is pretty unbeatable. As long as people dont walk into your fire and you bring a lot of fuel and extinguishers, you can clear the entire front line by yourself and keep the heat on (haha) the xeno front pushing most castes back. People who argue that because pyro spec cannot damage queen and ravager forget that it can stop the ravager and queens healing and the flamer doesn’t take any additional space wasted - because its entirely self contained. You CAN bring a gun with just like any other marine. Sniper spec is agreeably one of the best and easiest specs to play but you wont be getting a lot of kills unless you bring a spotter that knows what they are doing like what Nod said.
However this being said, GL beats SADAR when it comes to having a good OT because you can fire 6 explosive back-to-back unlike SADAR who can only fire one big rocket. If there’s a lot of xenos, GL spec is far superior in armor and weaponry. I mean, SADAR at most can hold like 10 rockets sacrificing every other inventory slot vs GL spec who can hold at least 30 something M15 sized grenades and near instantly resupply.
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SADAR is absolute dogwater and anyone who thinks otherwise is objectively wrong.
Rocket Man might’ve been a lot stronger once upon a time, but the overwhelming, and I mean OVERWHELMING, majority of marines lack the ability to make use of him in the present day.
Sure you can stun a T3 or the Queen instantly with an armor piercing rocket, letting your buddies follow up for a kill.
If you can hit it. Which most people cannot. And even if you do get a lucky shot off if the marines don’t follow up immediately your victim will get up and scurry off.
Sniper is by far the strongest right now, disregarding flak shenanigans or incendiary, and I’ve both been killed and seen many T3s/Queens get killed by snipers getting off a shot on a badly injured and fleeing xeno.
see that’s the thing just because most people cannot use them correctly does not mean the spec is bad. What would make a spec bad is that even if your skilled with it you still are sub par or only average. But saying a spec class suck because the player using it sucks is very unfair.
Pretty much all of the specs are ass in the wrong hands, but they can (mostly) all still do work.
Scout
Main gimmick sucks shit right now, the cloak is a massive noob trap, and while it can still be occasionally useful, you basically glow in the dark behind walls, just begging to get killed. Good for body recovery and the rifle does some serious work if you aint stupid, great utility with a U7 underbarrel and machete damage with a bayonet. Funny queen C4 remains funny.
Sniper
Holy shit does this one do work if you know what you’re doing and have a good spotter. I’ve seen Redder consistently drop 13, 15, and even more bugs with me or another spotter who realizes they have one of the easiest to use and most powerful tools in the game.
Demo
Undoubtedly the single most valuable in good hands. People still thank SADAR is ass because they see a lot of whiffs or dumbasses using the wrong ammo, clicking tiles instead of sprites, etc. But a Demo who knows what they’re doing with even a handful of support marines can easily shut down just about anything. Pack a shitton of AP rockets, a good spotter, and a sweatlord MK2 build, and you will do work.
GL
Miss your shots and you’re dogshit and got the marine push wiped. Hit your shots and you are a fucking T2/Low T3 meat grinder. Pack HEDP, only HEDP, all the HEDP. You aren’t here to get the fancy kills or epic fragss, you’re here to give the xenos a taste of funny stun gameplay.
Pyro
Probably my favorite spec, and the only one I ever made a playlist specifically for. As it stands right now flames do nothing against xenos and a ton of damage to marines. Green flames is literally just free kills for woyers. Harass the little bugs with blue flame, cover the flanks, and keep away from the frontline.
Then crank this:
1 Like
We measure things in output. It doesn’t matter if an expert player can be a menace with the SADAR. An expert player will absolutely demolish with whatever tool they decide to use, even if it’s something generally considered to be a shitty weapon.
If it takes one of those players that can solo the hive with a medkit to make the SADAR useful, then the SADAR is a bad spec weapon.
hooo boy, it’s time for me to flex with my 200 hrs as specialist alright, are you ready for this? Good.
Personally, I don’t think there are ‘worst’ and ‘best’ spec roles.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are certain situations where certain roles absolutely shine and DOMINATE the battlefield, and there are other times where they are absolutely dog-water.
in no particular order
Scout:
Ohhh, my beloved, most favorite specialist role. How far it has fallen.
Here’s the trick to scout: If you aren’t moving, they can’t see you unless they look at you through a wall or have already seen you. If you ARE moving, make sure you stop as soon as you see a xeno, or get to a tile that disrupts your profile and then stop.
Scouts are INSANELY good at recovering people.
There was one round where, I kid you not, I saved 23 marines from becoming perma, 3 of those saves being specialists (one of them twice) and that in and of itself probably turned the round from a loss to a victory.
DO NOT attempt to infiltrate the hive
DO NOT ambush xenos behind their own lines
DO NOT DE-CLOAK.
If you want someone to save you, I would want no one else than a good scout spec who knows how to keep a low profile.
If you’re a scout specialist, I would highly suggest taking 3 PDT battle-buddy kits. Labelling them alpha through delta (skipping you of course), and giving them to each squad’s specialists so you can go rescue them if they go down.
…
Sniper:
Ah, my second favorite spec. Reliable, consistent, and subject to ganking.
Sniper, as long as you have a clear line-of-sight. Quite literally LOCKS DOWN an entire vision / push area. Refer to the sniper guide I have written myself for advice.
If you want to feel the power of slowing down a queen after a bad screech or push.
If you want to feel the power of keep the xeno push at bay.
Sniper is for you.
…
Pyro:
Ah, the misunderstood psychopath.
Only use green flames for clearing large areas. Clear and then immediately extinguish.
If you enjoy blocking off access routes and ganks.
If you want to RP pyro from TF2.
Pyro is for you
…
SADAR / M5 RPG:
“MOM, DON’T PUSH THEY HAVE A-” BOOOOOOM [A sudden tremor ripples through the hive, the queen has been slain, Vengeance!]
The RPG spec is, without a doubt, the most powerful in terms of fire-power.
With that firepower comes INCREDIBLE responsibility and stress to use it properly and effectively.
One well placed shot can, quite literally, win the game.
… on the other hand, if you don’t use it effectively, and to Quote TheRussianBadger from Insurgency:Sandstorm “YOUR ENTIRE TEAM WILL NOTICE”
If you love high-risk, high-reward, performance-under-pressure, and clutch situations/kills.
M5 RPG / SADAR is for you.
…
Grenadier:
thinks to self “Alright, I got this guy, pounce, slash, empower, slash, retreat, rinse, repeat.”
The Grenadier would like to say “STOP, YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE LAW!!!” and force you into a stun-lock while his friends pepper you with bullets.
If you like to support your team, and actually encourage team-play.
If you want to remove the entire T1 and T2 list from the chess-board.
GL spec is for you.
2 Likes