So I saw this video the other day, and felt like it was the finest piece of enfo gameplay I've ever seen.
VIDEO
Like any player who plays this type of enforcer, I was inspired. I wanted to be like
@Gnu (aka Xyrn). This was insane!
Well, I started analyzing the battle closely. I noticed a few things. First off, he plays exactly like I do. Same kind of accuracy, same moveset. And here I found the major revealation.
Xyrn chains moves very differently from the rest of us. See, we react. He thinks before he moves. You see those delays in the critical moments where an average speedforcer would've choked. He didn't.
So I dug deeper. I saw the way he arranges his guns, his gear.
Another breakthrough.
Almost every speedforcer I see on YT or on chat has this layout in this order:
(Combo)+(Initiator)+(Combo)+TS+OB+Nitro
Or
(Combo)+(Initiator)+(Combo)+TS+Nitro+OB
Now, many of us may do this just involuntarily, but the real reason why we do it is because
TS, the bread and butter of any enfo, should not get pressed accidentally . There's only a 1/3 probability that such a misstep will happen if we use these loadouts. Setup 1 is optimal to me because one is more likely to make a mistake while nitro'ing than while OB'ing.
And this is where
@Gnu differs.
(Combo)+(Initiator)+(Combo)+OB+TS+Nitro
He places his TS
DEAD CENTER . There's a 66% probability of a misstep for crying out loud! How does he do 1v5s with this?
With this in mind, I tried his build. I took those exact pieces of gear, with that exact arrangement. And I played 25-30 matches. Guess what?
I lost 2. Just 2.
Why does his setup work that well? The answer to that is simple. He can deal with speeders with his two guns. He can deal burst to tanks and fixers with all three. He xan shoot over waves with his nade. And he can inflict healblock. Neat!
Why does his ARRANGEMENT work so well?
That answer is a little tougher. I played his setup, and realized that
I had been wasting my gear. I had been nitro'ing where a simple OB would've sufficed. I'd be shielding up where nitro would've saved me. I'd been missing shots while thinking of evasion, and I'd been messing up evades where I was thinking of shooting.
See,
Xyrn's arrangement forces you think of ONE thing and one thing only, at a time . The risk for messing up is too high to waste time thinking of other things. Which is why his build works so well!
I started paying much more attention to the yellows I had taken for granted. I rediscovered vagaries about each yellow that I had noted but had never put into practice. The tiny burst from an OB trigger can protect you from a snipe from afar. The nitro can be used to get you into position and shoot before an opponent's shield-stun wears off. TS can be used for a lot of stuff. Mine proximity measurement, flash-shielding, all of that.
I started implementing these little things into battles I played, because I stopped thinking of my yellows as combos and started thinking of them as individual items . Prefiring a TS before nitroing out. Using the OB as a completely individual element rather than chaining it with nitro. Interrupting a firing cycle to smoothly nitro out of the way of a bullet I couldn't afford to take.
And I ended up being a better enfo than I was!
To conclude. I think every speedforcer needs to give his arrangement of equips a try. It is INSANE. Click to expand...