A guide to playing Speeder

At the start of each match, whenever your team is spamming "Together", feel free to go ahead and spam "Negative" because chances are you wont be seeing much of them. The speeder is a very unique role in the sense that if you are playing it correctly, you will be off on your own, usually the opposite side of the map as your team. It can be really tricky to get things right, but when you do, it makes for a really easy game for everyone else on your team. I will start by going over the main objectives a speeder should be aiming to accomplish throughout the match.

Scouting

This isn't a main objective by any stretch, but it is valuable. At the start of each match a speeder can race out onto the map and get eyes on the enemy teams location. If you do this correctly you will be able to reveal the entire enemy teams location, while only revealing your own location to the enemy. This will allow your team to have valuable information about their location before the enemy ever has eyes on your team.

Distraction

In my opinion this is the most vital role of a speeder. Damage is not your primary objective. If you can get in behind the enemy and pull the attention of a few of them away from the rest of your team that means that your team can focus their shots on less targets at once. That also means that you are drawing the fire away from your team. What this looks like in practice is after you have flanked the enemy and taken a couple shots to draw their attention 2-3 of them will usually turn to start focusing on taking out the wimpy ship that has lower hp than everyone else. Well jokes on them because if you play your cards right they wont even touch you and your team will have taken out 1 or 2 of them before they realized what was going on. It is very important that whenever you are playing this role that you take as little damage as absolutely possible. Your goal is not to eat enemy shots, but to get them to waste shots and force them to wait on cool down while your team hunts sitting ducks. The map terrain is very much your friend. If you can bob and weave between rocks and buildings the enemy will likely never hit you. NEVER approach enemy's head on. You don't have the hp, or the firepower to keep up. Always keep perpendicular movement between you and the unfriends. If you notice that an enemy or two have decided to chase you (and believe me they will try) this is where you really get to shine. Let them think they can catch you, but run like the wind before they ever get the chance. A lot of times I notice a ship or two heading my direction while im on the other side of a boulder or something, and I will just let them come. Then as soon as they are getting close I use my nitro and overboost and get the hell out of there.

Cleanup

At this point your team should have taken out a few of the other team, and the remaining enemy's will likely be scattered. This is when you will get to do the majority of your damage. At this point you can speed around and get directly behind enemy's to start laying fire into their backside while they focus their attention on one of your beefier teammates. If you see their turret start turning towards you try to stay on the back side of the turret and keep laying shots into them. Once they are finished you can speed off to find your next straggler victim.

Forcing a draw

There will be games where the other team just get the better of yours and you end up as the last person in a 1v2 or 1v3. Don't fret because you still have the chance to mitigate the damage done to your infamy by forcing a draw. If the enemy still has a speeder or enforcer alive at this point you are likely going to die, but if not you stand a good chance in ending in a draw. If you get the chance to pick off a low hp enemy then that's great as it will make this process easier, but ideally you should be trying to get them to unsuccessfully chase you around the map and waste time. Usually people will wise up to this and get to the objective. And thats ok. Let them. Now you know exactly where they are. Let the capture percentage go up quite a bit and the speed by from time to time hitting them from max range knocking their capture percentages back down. Keep this up until time runs out and feel good knowing that you just made someone smash their phone into the ground when they thought they had an easy win.

Weapons and Items

This is where you get to try things out and make the role your own. There are several different strategies and schools of thought. You will see speeders running speed items, tesla bolts and tesla shields, torps, carronades, sniper rifles. You have to test this out and find what works for you. I personally use a standard cannon and a blast cannon. I find the high DPS to be extremely valuable. Chipping 400 hp off someone with a drive by blast cannon feels really good, and it tends to get the enemys attention. Longer range weapons lack the fire power to really draw the enemys eye, and you will be so far away that they are less likely to lay chase. That can be a positive thing, but it's personally not how I thing the speeder is best used. I also use overboost, nitro, and turbo. Once I get to MK IV I will probably use my epic bandage so I have to take less pitstops with our teams fixer.

I hope this guide is helpful.

 

I love how people post the exact same thing on this forum and on reddit. No offense and yes this is a well written guide!

 

Well these are two separate communities. I realize there may be some overlap, but I'm sure it's useful to some people. And thank you!

 

Question: As a speeder when you do your first lap and you take a few shots... do you usually focus on the healer or just whoever is available at that moment? Also, if there is no fixer on your team do you have a different strategy?

 

There are 3 main targets during that first lap. First is if I notice an enemy speeder terrorizing my team and they are having difficulty, I will attempt to take them out. A decent speeder is a massive threat to your team and I don't want my efforts thwarted by the opposing speeder. Second would be the enemy fixer. A helpful tip for people who didn't think of it is that at the top of the screen each person's name is next to their ship. You can use this as a guide to figure out which person is their fixer and which is yours. The last objective I have is taking out low hp enemies. I will usually prioritize this over a fixer so that he doesn't have the opportunity to be healed.

And if there is no fixer on my team my role just becomes that much more important. And it becomes much more important to not take damage if possible. This is still a very winnable scenario if you can properly disrupt the enemies focus. When I played as a shooter I dreaded the other team having a fixer when I didn't. Now it doesn't seem like such an impossible task to win against.

 

Thank you very much for posting this guide. I was trying to find a play style that would be different than the "hide behind others and shoot" strategy. I followed your guidance and found it to be very fun! Becoming a distraction and breaking up an otherwise tight group has led to some easy victories.

I need to save a little more gold to get MK4, at which time I will use a standard cannon and napalm to really cause a distraction.

 

In theory this style is good but when it comes to the open water I rarely find a team good enough that I can just be a "distraction" speeder, most of the time it's fair to say I have to do more than my share of the work, which is where it breaks down. I would advise you wait for battle to begin and ensure that the people your team is focusing die rather than getting to cover or being healed, use your speed to ensure their death and zip out, dealing damage from long range or short based on weapon preference

 

Well I don't mean that you shouldn't be shooting people. You definitely need to do your fair share of damage. And focusing on targets that are low health is a huge role for the speeder.