I've had several battles recently with 2+ fixers per side. I find these some of the more interesting matches in the bay, and considering they usually go the full 5 minutes, strategies have to be different than the typical battle. Unfortunately I don't think most players grasp how to play these battles for the win.
1 Fixer Strategy: This commonly involves going for the Fixer for obvious reasons. However it doesn't always apply to 2+ Fixer teams.
2-Fixer Strategies:
First of all, you aren't going to win unless you kill someone, so who is it going to be?
a) Find the weak link. Let's face it, you aren't going to have enough firepower on your own to kill a strong Defender or Shooter with 2 Fixers healing it, and similarly attempting to kill a Fixer with another Fixer healing it can be a fools' game. The next best thing is to pick off the weakest member of the opposing team... the ones you can kill in, say 4 shots. If there are none of those, go to (b)
b) Pick off a Fixer. Like (a), if they have a weak Fixer it's reasonable to go after them as well, again in the 4 shot range would give you the possibility to 1v1 even with heals.
c) Wear 'em down. This is the usual battle, keep blasting until you find a hole and exploit it. If my team is doing a good job keeping the other team engaged and I start seeing health dropping, and I have reasonable health I will end-around, and push in, zeroing in on a weak opponent, and causing enough distraction for the rest of my team to also take advantage. It's too risky to do early on but at some point it's necessary, particularly at the end of the match and you are a man down, you either need to get that 1 kill, or you are going to lose.
2 vs 3 Fixer Strategy: I had one of these matches today, being on the 2-Fixer side I considered my team as having the advantage with extra guns on my side and odds are one Fixers will be lower health on theirs. In this case my idea was to go after one of the two gun boats, which if accomplished would limit the opponent to a single gun boat, and thus significantly out-gunned. This is also a time where it would be nice to have a better communication system. What happend to me is I had isolated a 1vs2 match with a weak Shooter and a Fixer support, which can be challenging but should have been easy if I had any sort of Fixer support. Being busily engaged, and almost getting it done, I realized too late both Fixers followed one Shooter to the other side of the battle area, and I had zero healing support (I was getting shot by more than the 1 Shooter). Lost opportunities.
That brings me to the 2 Fixer strategy of splitting up: one fixer following the strongest boat for protection, and another fixer with 2 support boats. If each team was on opposite sides of the enemy, even just 90 degrees, it should be game over, causing too much distraction. Unfortunately I have yet to see that happen, and I have yet to figure out how to coerce the situation. They tend to stick together, and it causes the gun boats to a situation of very restrictive movement being all huddled, as the right heavy AoE weapons can cause massive destruction in the huddle.
What do you think?
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