Halo Reach: A Multiplayer Guide

Games Other Halo
1

Halo Reach Multiplayer Guide:

I’ll start by saying what this guide is and isn’t about. This guide will not be covering what each and every weapon does, where they spawn, the different maps, armor abilities, what to do in each game type, etc. etc. While those are things you need to know, they aren’t really about ways to improve your actual game play . I must clarify this point as I don’t want people to think they don’t need to know maps or how to use weapons properly, or that I’m saying these aren’t important. The maps and weapons are a vital part of playing well, but it won’t actually change the way you play the game, it’s just adding on knowledge to what you already know. That being said, I’ll try to talk about things you can do and things that will improve your game play and skill.

STAYING CALM

For starters, it’s extremely important to keep a calm, clear head while playing ; this will help you to think quicker and make better judgement calls on different situations you find yourself put in, giving you an overall better game performance over time. Getting mad at a situation or a particular player (on either team) will not help your performance at all, it will greatly affect it for the worse.

Some of the more common things you’ll find yourself and other players doing when in situations where you “lose your cool” are: charging a particular enemy constantly to try to revenge your death or a hotspot where a weapon is that you want. Don’t be mistaken on what you’re actually doing in situations such as those. You aren’t proving to anyone that you’re better than they are, that a certain weapon is yours, that you own a certain area of the map and no one else is allowed there, etc. You are only proving that you are careless and aren’t thinking about the overall goal of the match (winning).

If you find yourself in a situation like this, try to remind yourself that all you’re doing is supplying the other team with ammo, guns, grenades and, more importantly, points (assuming it’s a slayer game). Does this mean that you’ll die every single time doing something like this and that it should be eliminated from all possible battle plans? Not in the least. While it isn’t a guarantee that you will die, the odds are favorably stacked against you as the enemy will probably have better cover, whatever weapon you were after, it might be that a few of their teammates decided to spawn next to them and so on and so on.

As mentioned earlier, if you find that you are doing something similar to these things, try to remind yourself the bad you are doing, try taking a few deep breaths and clearing your head. Maybe it’s time to take a break for a few minutes and get some fresh air. This might all sound corny, but having a cool, calculating head will net you extremely better results than an angry, reckless one will ever.

BEING HONEST

This one reflects upon the above idea, except when you find yourself being overrun with a calm head instead of with a vendetta. What I mean is when you get killed by three enemies when you’re out there all alone and say or think stuff similar to: “They got lucky”, or “If I had this gun” or ""If they didn’t have that one. “If I was here instead of there”, and my personal favorite “WTF; that was BS”. Did they really get lucky that they had a better weapon or that they had teammates next to them? Maybe, you might have killed them one on one or if you both had the same gun, but this isn’t lone wolves so you have to stop thinking in that way.
Those are all “What ifs”, the fact is that YOU ran into a situation where it was three versus one, YOU charged someone who had a DMR while you only had an assault rifle, YOU are responsible for your own death because you judged a situation poorly (if you even judged it at all). Don’t blame your death on factors you can’t control; instead be able to admit that you fouled up and rushed someone who had a better weapon or who had two teammates by them so that you can prevent yourself from doing this again and improve your style of play.

THEATER

I won’t be saying much on this subject (though that doesn’t mean it is of little value), because I’m sure you know what it does and this thing is long enough as is. Theater is truly one of the best things that has been given to the Halo community.

To stew on the above topic a bit more (theater can be used for most of the topics in here), if you find yourself in a particular game where you’re dying often and can’t explain why, save the film in theater when the game is over for a later viewing, or check it out then. When you are viewing the game, try to stay off your camera as much as you can (you already know what you did in the game, so try to check out what enemies and teammates were doing, especially around the times of your deaths). This should clarify how you died most of the time, as well as offer insight into different peoples playing styles, what they like to do in a certain type of game and so on. This information will help you to prevent future deaths. For example, if you’re seeing people visit a tunnel often that you didn’t think was that popular, you would start checking it for enemies instead of brushing past it unaware and getting killed.

USING THE FORUMS

As you probably already know (seeing as you’re here reading this), the forums are another massive tool that has been given to the players. You should check them often and browse your way around as many of the different forum sections as you can, don’t limit yourself to just one. Knowledge is power (for real) and you can gain much of that knowledge by combining what you already know with what other players have figured out and are sharing via these forums. Just make sure to check back in on them often and to keep tabs on certain subjects or posts that you find interesting and worthy of note.

2

COMMUNICATION

While this doesn’t apply to all games (you might not need it if the team you’re fighting is no good at all, or your team is extremely good without it), it can and will be a deciding factor in many, many of your team based games. The first rule of team communication is POSITIVE team communication. If it’s striking up a casual conversation or calling out enemy positions, it will, majority of the time, better the team by lessening the tension and/or helping to get kills. The main goal of communications with your team will be: enemy positions, weapon spawns and positions, vehicles incoming or spawning and things such as, “Look out, one of them is sniping from their roof”.

But what about trash talking? While it can be fun to poke a little harmless fun at your teammates (I know I’ve done it and will again), it will generally hurt your overall team moral and be a distraction from the game. If you find it impossible to restrain yourself, try to wait till the game is secured before you start having at it.

Knowing the maps and where the weapons spawn will help with this type of communication immensely, so try to learn them in a solo custom game, theater or forge before going online. The other thing is knowing what to call certain points on the map, such as calling an area “Red Cave” instead of “They’re in that thing over there, you know what I mean?”. You can look these nicknames up and try to learn them, but remember that they will only help if your other teammates know what you mean by “Red Cave” as well. Sometimes saying something such as “By their sniper” will work much better than giving the actual nickname of the area.

It should also be said that, while the nicknames are short and typically easy to learn and remember, it is MUCH better to say a decently named, fast call out location rather than a slow, well named one (meaning it will be better to say “Their sniper spawn” fast than it would be to say “Red Base Roof” slow); so don’t try to rack your brain if the nickname doesn’t come to mind first.

Finally on the subject, when you die (and it will happen) don’t just stare at your dead corpse or spawn at the first location given, toggle through your choices and try to see if you can’t spot enemy locations, weapons, vehicles and pick a spawn location where you and your team will gain the most benefit from.

SETTINGS

It’s important to find a set of controls that you’re most comfortable with and that matches your play style the most. In the heat of a battle, over aiming from having to much sensitivity or pushing the wrong button because you didn’t remember your controls is often all it takes to get you killed. That being said, don’t use a particular control setting just because it’s the default (unless that’s what you’re use to and like the most) or because someone you know uses it and they play so much better; this will only hurt you if you can’t adjust to them properly. You should look at all of the different options for button layouts, stick layouts, etc. etc. before deciding upon a setting that you’re going to be using.

A few other miscellaneous settings that you can change based on how you enjoy playing are: screen settings, rumble settings, sound settings, headset settings, what players you hear (your team, other team, none) and so on. Try to look at them all and set them on things that you enjoy the most. Once you have a setup that you are most comfortable with, practice it and test it out in campaign, social match making, firefight or even a custom game by yourself or with friends.

PRACTICE

Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, you can never get enough of it. While this one should be obvious, I thought I should say a bit about it either way (as if this couldn’t get any longer).

Curious about a map? Go to theater or a solo custom game and check it out till you’re satisfied. How about a particular weapons’ abilities? Campaign and firefight are decent if you don’t have anyone online at the time, but if you do, ask them if they’ll help you test a few things out with it (you could also do a custom game with two controllers setup if you were just curious about simple things like a weapons damage). How about the armor abilities? Same answer as the question before. Don’t be ashamed to test things out or to ask a friend, or anyone in general, for advice/tips or help with something.

Try to practice as much as you can with as wide a variety of weapons as you can; meaning, don’t put all of your time and effort into learning everything about the DMR and the DMR only. While this will make you strong in that gun, it will overall limit your capabilities as you start to play game types where the particular weapon you “specialize” in won’t be available to everyone (if it’s available at all), or someone else beats you to the spawn point of that particular weapon and now you can’t do anything till it respawns (if you even get that one). Your overall score will improve if you are good with a handful of weapons rather than being great with one (and after all, aren’t Spartans masters of all weapons?).

You might think learning about default starting weapons is next to worthless as you’re just going to be replacing them, but think of the “butterfly effect” that this can have on a game. Let’s say you get out played in a magnum versus magnum fight over the Needle Rifle, the other team now has an advantage and they use this while pushing for the Spartan Laser spawn. With the extra firepower from the Needle Rifle they’re able to win the Spartan Laser and can now run their vehicles without major threat of dying, and can also shut down any vehicles your team uses. This would give them a great advantage and severely cripple your teams game all because of a simple death over an earlier weapon (this won’t have a HUGE impact on every single game, but you’ll notice it more and more if you watch for it).

3

WEAKNESS AND STRENGTHS

While this might seem like another corny thing to say, knowing your limits and capabilities is another vital aspect of all things, Halo included. Perhaps you aren’t particularly good with the sniper, but one of your teammates is, let them get it instead of trying to prove you can get more kills than they could with it. No good on the chain gun? Take the wheel or ride shotgun. Does this mean stop using that weapon all together and don’t bother with it at all? Not in the least. You should still be practicing with it and trying to improve yourself with it, but at the same time need to acknowledge that there is someone else on your team who is better with it than you are, and that you and the team altogether would benefit for the better if you let someone else get it that time around and put your skills to better use on a weapon that you are good with.

I’m going to address what I said above a little more in this next paragraph, as I don’t want it coming across like me saying “If you suck with a weapon, don’t use it”. If you aren’t any good with a weapon, by all means you should be trying to improve yourself with it. What I’m meaning is that if you know you aren’t good with the sniper and someone on your team “requests” the sniper, then it probably isn’t the best idea to try to rush to it and beat him there. This not only creates tension and “drama” between teammates, it often leads to people betraying and just generally playing terrible afterwards just to grief you. To sum it up, just choose the times you decide to get a certain weapon that you want to improve yourself with, pick your spots.

As a note (remembering your communication here) make sure to let the team know you aren’t grabbing a particular weapon, they may assume since you’re closest to it or in front of everyone else on the way to the weapon, that you’re going to get it. Just inform your teammates that the particular weapon is still there and that you won’t be getting it at the time, so that it remains in the control of your team instead of the other. This also does not mean you can just leave the weapon there since you called it out, there may be no one close to it on your team and you will need to grab it to prevent an enemy from picking it up (you can organize a drop off point where you can give the gun to a teammate who would like it).

TEAMWORK

So far on the subject we’ve talked about communication and weapon sharing, now well talk about a few other ways to be a good team player. The first thing you’ll want to remember is that this is about teamwork, it isn’t free for all, so don’t try to be the “Big Bad Wolf” in the game.

Sometimes you and your team will benefit more from you acting as support instead of the big dog with the top kills. Maybe one of your team members is having an extremely good game with the sniper, instead of you trying to go solo in their base and take them all out, you would probably benefit more from acting as a shield of sorts for them by drawing fire away and keeping people from picking at them (shooting and unzooming them). Maybe instead of focus firing on a single enemy when there two shooting at a friend, put fire on both of them to unzoom/draw their attention and try to make at least one retreat back for cover. Ride in the turret on the tank and let someone else get in the cannon so you can help prevent a jacking and keep the tank in the possession of your team.

Some of this may seem like you drew the short stick (and it can be sometimes), but it typically will help the team out for the better and is almost always worth it. Sometimes you’ll die from acting as a distraction for that sniper so that the two enemies stop shooting at them and start shooting you. Sure you died, but you bought the sniper enough time to kill both of them, giving your team two points versus the one point the other team made (assuming you’re playing slayer and that the sniper can finish them both off), and you kept your friendly sniper up and running, with the sniper still in the possession of your team.

This doesn’t mean that you should look for every opportunity that you can possibly get to be a martyr and “help” the team, or that you can do horrible in a can and say that this is why, just that you shouldn’t disregard the idea before you even consider doing it, pick your spots accordingly. If this doesn’t seem appealing to you or it doesn’t really make sense because it was put in a slayer based way, think of something such as CTF. It will help the team more if you rush in and pick the flag up, even if only for a second so it doesn’t reset, instead of you staying back and trying not to die.

Don’t be stingy with your ammo either, if you see an enemy, take a shot at them (obviously won’t apply to all situations, such as when you’re sneaking around and haven’t been detected yet). It might not seem like much, shooting an enemy only once or twice before they’re hidden, but it will do a few things for you and your team. If they’re running away from one of your teammates that you can’t see at the moment, this will stop them from regenerating their shields and keep the battle leaning towards your teammate. Maybe it will do nothing but weaken their shields by one shot, which may not sound like much, but if you or an ally can engage them before their shields start to recover, they’ll be one shot weaker and you’ll already be winning the fight.

The best part about this type of play is that you don’t need to be particularly good to do it, you can do it if you’re having a bad game, or even if you’re just starting out in the Halo world and are still learning the ropes, either way it offers you a way to still contribute and help your team overall in a different way than just racking up your kill count. Lastly, if you’re doing extremely good in a game where you have a teammate helping you out, remember not to be over confident and cocky, they’re contributing to the team just as much as you are.

I also highly recommend finding a decent amount of players that are around your skill level and add them to your friends list. The most often you can play with the same people, the better you will work together and the faster your skill will grow.

4

FIGHT OR FLIGHT

Easily the most important tool to your survival, this basic instinct that all creatures feel when a fight is started, should be the first question you ask yourself when you see an enemy, and it should be answered as quickly as you thought it: “Will I win this or do I need to run?”. This instinct will form greatly the more you practice, so don’t expect to be able to know this the second you pick the controller up.

Nearly everything factors into knowing if you’ll win a fight or not, this includes (but isn’t limited to) obvious things like: you and your enemies gun(s), both of your grenades, armor abilities, where they’re standing and what they can take cover behind (same goes for you); to other things such as: a weapon/vehicle/grenade/player that might spawn near you or them. Any of these things can change and decide who wins and losses a battle in the smallest or the largest way (getting pummeled with a sword is a pretty large way, missing one shot and dying because you didn’t remember the elevation change in the terrain behind you and didn’t compensate your aim for it would be a small way).

Here’s an example of what this means. You’re on Asylum by the sword spawn (called Ring1, or R1). You’re on one end of the tunnel and the enemy on the other, you both have DMRs for this example. You can retreat to the left or right on the outside of the building, you could go up the ramp on the left, you could hold your ground and shoot it out, charge the sword and go for a pummel and so on.

After seeing each of these options, you have to think about what happens after you start to pursue one of them. If you charge the sword: what if they start to grenade it? What if they get there first? What if they have a shotgun? So we looked ahead to where this choice would go and it led to you into an even worse situation than before, so let’s try some of the others.You could go to the left or right and either look for another enemy or try to assault them from a different approach, but this lets the enemy get the weapons in the building and take control of it, giving them better ground, cover and weapons to defend themselves with. If you decide to go up the ramp on your left, you’ll be in a very open, vulnerable spot for a few seconds until you’re out of their line of site. This will give you the better ground, weapons and cover if you can make it, but you will also need to be laying fire down on the enemy to suppress them long enough so that you can push forward, sounds risky but viable.

What if you decide to shoot it out where you stand? Then you need to think about the next step of what can happen in that situation. Factor in that you can grenade each other, factor in who’s better with the DMR (if you know they are you’ll need to take extra care to use your armor ability, cover and grenades to keep the battle even).

In time all of this will be a thought that you’ll have (probably without even knowing it) in the blink of an eye, and hopefully your instincts, knowledge and gut feelings will make you the winner of the fight. Also, don’t think just because the first few ideas were more dangerous that they won’t work at all, it just means they have a lower success rate than the other ones. Even the safer options can sometimes be the more dangerous because players begin to predict what each other will do, so sometimes doing the more dangerous thing in special circumstances will surprise the enemy and catch them off guard, giving you the advantage.

Now if you choose to fight, in any situation, don’t completely disregard the option of fleeing. A situation can change in a split second and you need to be ready to adapt as fast as the situation changed. Always try to know the quickest escape routes based on where you’re at at all times.

Don’t be ashamed to run away during a fight (no matter how many times you need to do it) surviving is the main goal of almost all firefights, so don’t feel the need to chase someone down in a panic or when you’re low on shields to try and finish them off before they can come back. This style of play often angers many people and it often causes them to trash talk to you about how often you run away and how much of a chicken you are. Don’t be bothered with them, if you’re -Yoink!- someone off that much it probably means you’re doing something right (this is a good opportunity to have some fun messing with someone).

Not forgetting the option to flee while you’re on the attack also works the same way around; fighting while fleeing (probably my favorite part of Halo) is a key part to mastering any escape route. Don’t only be bothered with running as fast and as far away as you can, leaving your enemy open to do what they please; try to set up an offensive strike to turn the tables around and put your enemy on their heels or, in the least, keep them at bay so you can make your escape or regenerate your shields. This is usually done with a well placed grenade, so make sure to practice with them as much as you can, they are the bread and butter of your defense.

A few other less common but not less effective things you can do include, but are not limited to: setting someone up with one of your armor abilities (drop a bubble shield and switch to a weapon like the shotgun). Perhaps you round a corner and start crouching around trying to get yourself in a good position to pummel/beat down/assassinate the enemy when they round the corner thinking you ran away.

If you and your team are using good communication and teamwork you can call out where you are and where the enemy is and ask a teammate for an assist (don’t expect this from most of the random players that are on your team via matchmaking, you typically only get this with a team of people you know).

This all may seem like a lot and way to much to learn, but it usually isn’t and can be developed quite easily by just assessing any given situation. A HUGE way to build on this is to watch a game in theater, this time you will be watching yourself though. How you can do this is by watching for battles that you know you lost, and pause it right before the battle takes place. Then you want to see what you did and what other choices you could have made, what would have happened in each of those situations if you had gone that way and so on and so forth. You’ll start to develop a natural way of thinking (you’ll start seeing that hiding in one certain area will get you killed by grenades often or that hiding in another leaves your back open to attacks from people spawning in a certain spot) and this will be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, factors in improving your game play.

5

ATTACKING

So we’ve gone over quite a bit and yet there’s more, a good amount more I might add, hopefully it isn’t a big bore, though I doubt that. You now know, or at least are starting to know, about when to fight and when to run, so now well talk about a few things that you should work on to improve yourself when you do decide to attack.

Accuracy

A very basic and easy to understand concept, you can’t kill what you can’t hit. You can have the best gun in the game, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t hit people with it, and hit them with it enough that you’re a threat, not just someone spraying and praying (oh the good old salt and pepper days). Assuming your controls are set up to your liking, it becomes a matter of practicing your shots and weapons.

Instead of just holding the trigger down, or pulling it as fast as you can, you will do better most of the time if you burst fire the gun or allow the weapons sights to shrink back in size, giving you a more accurate shot (depending on the gun, how far away the enemy is, if you need to get a head shot, etc). If I had to give you a rough estimate at what your shooting accuracy should be, I would say that about 65% accuracy will make your offensive strikes a much bigger threat and obviously, the more you improve on this rough number, the better your attacks will become.

Weapons

Knowing the weapons will give you a much needed edge in combat to give you an even more effective assault. But what is there to learn? Well first off start with: damage, fire rate (try to find a good firing rate for weapons that recoil, how fast versus keeping the aiming reticule at a good size), ammo per clip, does it track players, how fast the sights expand and recede (commonly called “bloom”), reload time, starting ammo, respawn times, zoom distance and range. Then work on other, less common things such as : how does it work with different armor abilities, how does it work against vehicles, bullet travel time, if it bounces when fired at angles and so on. You can learn most of those things about weapons with a friend in custom games trying out different scenarios, in campaign or through trial and error in matchmaking.

Now, while you should still expand your capabilities with all weapons, you’ll often find yourself using a DMR or Needle Rifle. With a DMR it takes five shots to kill someone, the first four to drop shields and the fifth being a head shot. The Needle Rifle requires seven shots, six to drop shields and one for the head shot after shields are gone. However, the Needle Rifle requires three body shots (anywhere on the body to cause a super combine explosion) on a player after their shields are dropped versus the DMR requiring three in the chest. But the differences between them don’t stop there, the Needle Rifle is given: a faster firing rate, less bloom, more accuracy, is fully automatic and has a larger magazine size (as well as killing unshielded enemies easier, it destroys brutes in campaign/firefight). The DMR gets: a better zoom (x3 for the DMR, x2 for the Needle Rifle), faster projectile travel time, more bullet damage and extra damage against vehicles (and the differences don’t stop there either). In my opinion, the DMR is overall a better weapon, but the NR has a specific range where it will dominate the DMR. Learn to use both accordingly.

Since you only need to be concerned where your shots are hitting when your enemy has no shields (shields take the same amount of damage no matter where you’re getting shot with any gun, besides the sniper of course), you can aim for their chest when you’re opening up on them instead of going for the head. That being said, you’ll probably want to start taking aim on their head when they have enough shields left to absorb one or two more shots; try to avoid waiting till they have no shields to aim for their head as this will waste time and leave you vulnerable, even if it’s only for a split second.

Melee

Getting in close enough for a melee nowadays seems to be more trouble than it’s worth. What with the changes to shields making it so that they can absorb an entire melee attack even if there’s even just a tiny sliver of them left, and how you and your opponent can pummel each other at the same time (even though it’s quite obvious to you or them who hit the melee button first), it makes going for a pummel seem next to suicide. Unfortunately though, we often find ourselves in situations where duking it out with the enemy is unavoidable, so I’ll discuss a few things that may help you survive these dangerous encounters.

For starters, try to crouch as you’re melee. The timing on this has to be perfect or you’ll crouch to soon and your enemy may lunge down/aim down at you; but if you crouch to late it may not make any difference at all. Try crouch jumping, this has the same timing challenges as crouching does, but it’s a bit easier to master, and a bit more effective in my opinion. This won’t always work as your enemy may be aiming towards the direction you’re planning on going, they might try the same thing, or their lunge might just connect either way. You might also be near an edge and can’t risk a jump or have a low ceiling and be unable to jump.

By timing your melee right with the melee of your enemy, you can “clash” against each other and take less damage than you normally would have. You can also do this if your enemy has a sword to avoid being instantly killed, but the next time they lunge at you, you will die even if you time your melee right

6

DEFENSE

Now well move onto defense, something that should be apart of of everything you do. This is one of my favorite things about Halo, doing everything you can to survive a situation that should have killed you. You can probably see why fighting while on the run is my favorite part of Halo, being put on your heels and fighting just to live tests your skills and is quite exhilarating. I’m a very firm believer in that old saying “The best offense is a good defense and the best defense is a good offense”, meaning your offense will be good if you can be hard to kill and resilient, and your defense will be good if you can put pressure on the enemy and keep then on their heels.

Shields and Health

A key factor to your overall defense is your shields and health. You need to know at all times how much you have left, how much damage you can take with what you have left, how long it takes to regenerate, where there are health packs on the map and so on. Do some tests to see how much damage different weapons do to your shields and to your health when your shields are gone and you’ll know what you can and can’t live through; for example, getting shot while your shields are still up will cause the same amount of damage no matter where you get hit on your body (expect for with the sniper) or that the Needle Rifles bullets only explode if you don’t have shields and hit them with three shots in a short amount of time, etc etc.

Taking Effective Cover

If you don’t know your environment and how to use it as a cover, you will more than likely be the person going negative every game. When you’re in cover, you have to be aware of what can happen to you from all sides. Will a grenade get thrown on my left? Will someone jump over the top side of my cover? Will someone appear on the right side and start to shoot at me from a distance? You should be thinking about these things and other factors as you try to discover the spot of your cover that offers the most protection.

A few ways to avoid being predictable and hiding in the exact same spot everyone else does is knowing where your enemies are at, don’t just sit in one spot, crouch and move around to a better, more secluded spot. Try not to be predictable and your enemy will have a much harder time hitting you with grenades and won’t be aiming at the right spot when you decide to pop back out and go on the offensive (this would give you a damage lead as you would get the first and maybe second shot in the fight before taking fire back, more than likely putting them on the defensive now).

Although it’s often best to get behind cover that fully covers your body (you’ll probably want to do this when you have little to no shields), it isn’t always necessary (or possible). What I mean is that you won’t always have the luxury of getting to sit behind full cover and take pop shots at enemies, sometimes they’ll be out of your range or line of sight from behind your cover and you’ll need to advance/retreat to some other form of cover (probably somewhere where full cover isn’t available). Just because something doesn’t fully cover your body doesn’t mean its completely unusable; you’ll do much better behind a tree or crouched behind a small crate than you would out in the open, with no cover. Often small things that cover almost no part of your body can save you, something like a handrail might be shot when you’re being aimed at or that crate might take a full bullets instead of you, try to get creative with your cover and remember that some cover is almost always better than none.

When you’re behind cover that you can fit most or all of your body behind, you don’t want to run out and shoot till you have no shields, then run behind the cover, wait for them to recharge, and do it all again; you want to keep as much of your body hidden behind the cover as possible, this will make what your enemy has to aim at as small as possible. Think of this style as guerrilla warfare, shooting and hiding, popping in and out of cover

7

Strafing

A very strong, very close second most important defensive ability is called strafing. The art of bullet dodging can be one of the hardest, if not the hardest, Halo skill to learn, master and actually remember in the heat of a fight, but the benefits of mastering this will be next to limitless and will be used in most, if not every, game. If you are unfamiliar with strafing or maybe you know it by another name, it’s what you do/see other people doing when they move around while being shot at (typically going left to right and repeating this).

To begin, strafing isn’t just moving the joystick left to right, left to right when you’re being shot at, it’s countering your enemies movements with your own movements and moving around the direction of their fire. There are many different factors involved with a strafe such as: how far do I move back and forth, jumping, crouching etc. For this section we’ll assume you and your enemy both have a DMR.

Most people use a simple, right left right left strafe when being shot at. While this is better than nothing, it isn’t very random and makes you predictable to the enemy. Try to mix it up from time to time; instead of going right left right left, try going right then left, fake going right but go left again, then right, try a crouch for a second while backpedaling and going left. The goal is to make the enemy miss you as much as possible and have to spend more time aiming instead of doing their strafe, making them easier to hit. The typical distance of a strafe in any direction is about how long it takes for your enemy to shoot once (meaning you strafe right, they shoot, then you strafe left, they shoot again and you strafe back to the right and so on). So we can add in crouches and mix our strafe up a bit to keep the enemy guessing, but what about jumping?

Ah, jumping. You might think that jumping would make you even harder to kill because you’ll be harder to hit while flying around like that right? Well you would be wrong for the most part. Remember earlier when we mentioned that getting shot anywhere in the body while you still have shields will do the same flat rate damage? Well that still applies here too. But what does that mean?

Well, think about the nature of jumping, it’s slow, its predictable, and if you went up, you’re obviously going to be coming down. This means that you’re an easier target to shoot (not necessarily in the head, but it doesn’t matter where you get shot while you still have shields). So when you jump up to try and avoid taking damage while you still have your shields up, you usually end up just taking MORE damage than you would have on the ground.

Does that mean jumping should be avoided at all costs? Not at all. It’s a doubled edged sword that you have to learn to use very carefully.

Jumping at the right times can save your life. If you’re in a strafe battle with someone else and they drop your last bit of shields and are about to kill you with a head shot, that’s an appropriate time to jump. The way this works to help you live is that they’re aiming at your head, so when you jump their sights are now pointing at your chest by the time they can fire again, causing you only to take some health damage rather than die. This might not seem like much but you just bought yourself another second to finish them off before they can shoot again (and it could go on with them missing yet again as you start to fall back down).

Another example of using your jumps properly is when you’re rounding a corner and know an enemy is waiting for you. This will start you off with a height advantage, as well as throw his aim off since he will more than likely be aiming at about your neck area. This can easily give you a 1-2 shot lead in many cases. Practice using it, it’s rather easy to pick up and will benefit you greatly.

The second advantage to jumping during a battle is the height advantage it offers you. When you jump up your enemies head is easier to shoot as it becomes slightly bigger (you can see more because you have an aerial view) and it becomes placed more towards the center of their mass rather than at the top of it. This makes it much easier and quicker to dispatch an enemy and move on to the next.

So when SHOULD I jump then? Jumping while you have no shields left to avoid getting head shot and jumping to make getting a head shot on your enemy easier when THEY have no shields are the few times that jumping will work FOR you instead of against you (this all of course only applies to when you’re getting into a battle against an opponent with a precision based weapon such as a DMR or a pistol, it won’t matter about protecting your head if they have a weapon incapable of head shots).

Now that you’ve learned some of the basics of strafing, it’s time to practice using it. A few different ways to do this is to get a friend and play a custom game with settings such as: DMRs on spawns, infinite ammo, maybe put on high damage resistance and more shields if you want the strafe battles to last as long as possible (good to start out with, but you’ll want to get use to regular settings as soon as you can), quick respawn timers and choose a small map that has a nice spot to practice this (the Octagon game type and map are highly recommended). The overall goal of the practice isn’t to get one strafe routine down and just keep doing that over and over, but to be able to adapt to where your enemy is positioned, where they’re shooting and how they’re strafing.

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Avoiding sniper fire

Always being behind cover when the enemy has a sniper isn’t possible, but there are a few ways you can avoid being an easy target (just remember that you could be the best bullet dodger there is and still get sniped).

If you must go out in the open where you know you’ll be exposed to a sniper, make sure you ALWAYS have a destination that you’re trying to reach; make sure your destination has enough cover to protect you from the sniper fire and the closer it is to your current position, the better. On the way to your cover, strafe left and right a bit (assuming they’re in front or behind you), backpedal for a second to throw their aim off (assuming they’re on your left or right, and don’t overdue this one, remember your goal is to go forward, only use this to throw their aim off for a second). If they’re close enough to shoot (close enough to hit them at least once out of two shots), try shooting them once to cause their sniper to be unzoomed and have to re-aim, giving you some extra time to get to cover.

Don’t run in a straight line to your cover, this makes you an easy shot that requires only a second to line up. Don’t jump as much as you possibly can, when you jump it makes you so easily predictable since you can’t change your path mid air, and you’re obviously going to come down and in the direction you jumped (the only time it’s good to jump when taking sniper fire is when you know the sniper is about to shoot, this will throw their aim off and maybe cause a miss, or at least cause them to not hit you in the head). You’ll want to avoid charging straight at them and shooting, trying to unzoom them, they’ll probably have a good amount of distance between you two, cover, and they have a longer ranged, more accurate weapon so the odds are overwhelmingly against you.

Tuck Your Head

When you’re on the run taking fire, and need every little thing you can to survive, try looking down at the ground while running away. This will make your characters head look down and it will appear to be “tucked” behind their back and shoulders, making it harder to shoot from behind. You won’t be able to see where you’re going though, so knowing the maps is a key part of doing this (running into a corner with your head tucked is only going to put you in a worse position than you were before).

FIN

I’m sorry for how long this was (and I’m sure that I’ll be adding more), but I hope some of this information is put to use and that it made sense. A few overall notes: everything in and anything not in this guide is subject to change at anytime, so make sure you stay on top of everything and adjust to changes. All combat mentioned in here is assuming a Spartan versus Spartan game mode and not all things mentioned will apply to games with elites (though most still will).

In summary, if you had to describe your play style in any one word, It should be water; it’s calm, cool, adaptive, fitting to any given situation it’s placed in. “Improvise, Adapt and Overcome” is a saying common with the marine corps (and one that I find to be most fitting here). Well I guess that concludes this for now. I’ll check back in often to answer questions and to update things if people point errors out (I’m sure there are plenty, or it might just be me having worded something in a confusing way) or ask me to add something that’s informative (informational on the whole, not stuff such as how long the medic bubble lasts or the ammo count of a needler). Good luck and have fun gaming

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Resv.8

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Resv.11 Hopefully won’t need more.

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That’s everything for now. I’ll more than likely be adding more as time goes on. I may also be adding “example” videos at the end to show some of the things I talked about. I would appreciate some feedback on what I have up and anything that I might have missed that you believe is important. Happy gaming.

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A Halo Veterans Guide to Reach:

Use crutch off of spawn, get a power weapon, use crutch, run away, use power weapon, use crutch, camp for awhile, use crutch, get into a DMR fight, run away, use crutch, spam nades, use crutch. Rinse and repeat.

NOTICE- WARNING:
Instructions remain valid only when playing ‘Halo: Reach’. The use of this guide in any other Halo title will get you laughed at and T-bagged.

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my eyes!

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lmao you described everything about the players I hate on this game. Your guide summed up.

  1. Run if you don’t get the first shot
  2. Move very seldomly
  3. Lure People into your camp zone and through a nade at the corner of the wall when they charge.
  4. If the other team has a sniper camp until you get one
  5. Never ever initiate a fight
  6. Find a place with a wall with the right height and camp there until your enemy gets bored
  7. Make sure you dominate power weapons and camp when you get them so you don’t waste ammo
  8. Never get into a 1v1 fight
  9. If you know you are bad camping does wonders for making you appear to have skill
  10. Practice, Practice, Practice even though you can only be so good with the DMR. Bloom makes it where all decent players are of equal skill with the DMR.

Summed Up…Play Like a coward and abuse the flawed game mechanics. I don’t like your guide. I should make a guide called play halo reach like it is past halos even though it is a terrible game. I play like I did in halo 2 and 3 even though that isn’t the best tactic for the game. Run and Gun will always be who I am as a player. I don’t see hiding behind a wall as skill. A team that collectively camps is not skillful. A team that can rush and keep organized, effective, and dominating is what I call skill.

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In come the extremely long posts after I braved to make mine.

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how do I make my reply any braver? Do you want me to reply by making my own thread?