It’s been a solid four months since I last played Halo 4 (before the patch), but lately I’ve been batting around the idea of giving it another shot. However, since 343i made the decision to incorporate loadouts as an integral gameplay mechanic, it’s more difficult to simply “pick up and play” Halo 4 than previous Halo games. Instead you must be prepared and have a carefully planned loadout in order to maximize your success in Matchmaking, which is why I’m here. I’m the type of player who prefers to have one well-balanced loadout that will be reasonably effective in any given situation rather than having to constantly switch between five loadouts with more specialized functions. With that in mind, I managed to develop what was the most effective overall loadout before the recent patch, at least for someone with my playstyle:
Primary Weapon: DMR
This choice should be obvious to anyone who played Halo 4 before the update. The DMR was the most effective weapon in essentially every possible scenario, and there was next to no legitimate reason to ever use one of the other three precision weapons.
Secondary Weapon: Magnum
This may seem like an odd choice, considering that the vast majority of players would have selected the Boltshot. However, I personally thought the Boltshot was highly overrated and never found it to be all that effective. Very rarely did other players kill me with it, and very rarely did I kill other players with it. Since I chose not to include the Boltshot in my primary loadout, I settled on the Magnum because it fulfilled a small but crucial role: backup precision weapon. You see, I’m the type of Halo player who prefers to acquire the vast majority of his kills with precision weapons (I would often completely ignore personal Ordnance in favor of continuing to use my trusty DMR), and the Magnum can be a life-saver when you empty your DMR clip and need to quickly finish a kill. On top of that, the Magnum is powerful enough that it can function as a temporary substitute when you run out of DMR ammo. It’s not ideal, but it certainly beats nothing.
Grenade: Frag Grenade
This should also be obvious. Pulse Grenades are useless, and Frag Grenades have been a staple of Halo since Combat Evolved.
Armor Ability: Promethean Vision
Most players would agree that Promethean Vision and Active Camouflage are the two most effective Armor Abilities, and deciding between the two ultimately boils down to personal preference. To be frank, Halo 4’s version of Active Camouflage is only truly effective for campers, which doesn’t suit my playstyle. Contrarily, I’ve found Promethean Vision to be relatively useful with regard to everything from setting up a grenade/DMR headshot combo to simply gathering a bit more intel on what the enemy is doing, so the choice was fairly easy for me.
Tactical Package: Mobility
I’m sure everyone has his favorite Tactical Package, and with good reason: there are plenty from which to choose. However, Mobility stood out to me as a clear winner from the start. Having infinite sprint can not only help you reach key map locations (e.g. power weapon spawn points and objectives) more quickly, but it can also save your life in a pinch. In my opinion, there’s no other Tactical Package that is as consistently useful as Mobility.
Support Upgrade: Stability
When designing my loadout, choosing a Support Upgrade was the most difficult of all, primarily because there were two in particular that were especially useful: Stability and Dexterity. I know many players swear by Dexterity, but I eventually went with Stability because I feel that it’s more consistently useful. In other words, while it’s true that Dexterity could save your life in certain close call situations by enabling you to reload or switch weapons more quickly than your opponents, therefore giving you an invaluable upper hand, Stability gives you a slight edge in every DMR/DMR battle you find yourself getting into. Considering that these battles will happen quite frequently with my playstyle and with the playstyles of many Halo 4 players, Stability gets the very slight edge.
I should make a small note that on vehicle-centric maps, I usually switched the Magnum and Frag Grenade for a Plasma Pistol and Plasma Grenade, receptively, for obvious reasons. But other than that one exception, I almost never changed the loadout described above.
So there you have it: a description of the loadout that I used with reasonable success in almost every game of Halo 4 I ever played, along with my rationale for the selections. However, there’s one problem. As I mentioned, I haven’t played Halo 4 since April, and from what I’ve read, the recent patch drastically changed the mechanics of the gameplay, which means that some of the reasoning I outlined in this post is now not only outdated but also ineffective. This is where you come in. I need help modifying my loadout to maximize its effectiveness in post-patch Halo 4 before I return to the game.
Any and all suggestions for improvement are appreciated, but based on what I’ve read about the update, my Primary Weapon is what will most likely need to change. Apparently the DMR is nowhere near as dominant as it once was, but since I’ve yet to play the game since the update, I’m not familiar with the specifics of how the four precision rifles have been rebalanced and therefore don’t know which one to choose. Is one of them still the obvious best choice, or is it now worth it to sacrifice Mobility for Firepower in order to carry two of them? In fact, the Champions Bundle is right around the corner, and the addition of even more perks will complicate this issue, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, I’m primarily interested in getting more information about the rebalancing of the four precision rifles and which one is now the most useful, as well as advice on how I should modify my loadout to succeed in Halo 4 after the patch.
In summary:
- I haven’t played Halo 4 since April (before the patch).
- I had designed a loadout that perfectly fit my playstyle and was useful in essentially any situation.
- I’m not very familiar with the changes made by the patch, so I need advice on how to modify this loadout in order to make it as effective as possible in light of the recent changes to the gameplay. I imagine that this advice will be primarily related to the modifications made to the four precision rifles.
Thanks for your help.