> Much Appreciated. While i’m gathering resources with my ghost, would you say it was a good idea to push that towards the enemy base ad scout that out?
When you start the game, make sure that you’re going out to the neutral (center-ish) part of the map where resources are between you and your opponent’s base. Do this because you want to quickly take the money that your opponent would otherwise be collecting and do it to allow your leader to pick up more on his way out. NEVER gather the crates right next to your base with your scout as the Covi because you need to be out further and it’s easiest for your leader to grab those right away. It’s really for efficiency’s sake.
If you’re on offense, always scout before you get there, since they might have a turret/units on defense waiting for you. Sometimes, you’ll find that they’ll be playing offense too, so scouting is a must in the early game in order to be prepared. A Ghost is a great way to scout the enemy, just don’t spend too much time on their side or you might lose your Ghost since he’s pretty weak (no Ghost = no extra money + :’( ). Also, make sure not to go out of your way with your Arby to pick up resources while you’re heading over to their base. I find that it costs somewhere around 7 seconds to pick up one pack of resources with your leader if it’s not already right in front of you.
If you’re playing offense and the other team is too, then it’s a race to the other person’s base and you need all the time you can get. However, if they’re playing super defense, beating around the bush isn’t a bad idea. If they’re already too heavily defended by the time you make it to their base, running around near their base/hooks is a great way to distract them and force them to decide how to handle you while you’re building up.
> So from what I can gather should by build order be;
>
> 1 - Warehouse
> 2 - Temple (Send Arby To Enemy Base)
> 3 - Warehouse
> 4 - Warehouse
>
> Upgrade Base?
>
> 5 - Warehouse
> 6 - Summit/Warehouse (Mass Produce Banshees/Vampires)
> 7 - Summit/Warehouse (Mass Produce Banshees/Vampires)
In general, going single Summit with the Arby is best in Teams. Sometimes double Summit works, but only in 2s (depending on hooks) or if you have another Arby teammate in 3s who’s going either all-Arby or single Summit. Arby will always get out-aired by a Chief or a PoR because of this, but you need the extra money to Rage. Only go double Summit if you aren’t going to commit to Raging.
Your build is a good build for offense in Teams, but not for defense (I’ll only be talking about Party Teams in case you didn’t already get that). Just try to never go T1st with Arby, ever (there’s a couple of exceptions, but save those for when you really know how to play Arby).
If you’re on defense, which is the most common situation for a Teams Arby, then you’re going to want to go T3rd and build a back turret. Make sure that your turret is defending the last building pad on your Keep and upgrade Fiendish Return so that you don’t have to waste as much money Raging (this is the T1 blades upgrade, not the Rage upgrade). Assuming that your opponent actually knows how to play the game, you’ll always play defense against a Brute because the Brute plays the hardest offense. You can’t hope to out-offend a Brute, so pushing him off quickly with defense is your best hope. Another thing you can do in addition to these things is to build Suicide Grunts and throw them into the enemy’s leader. This is especially important to do against a Brute and an Arby, but it doesn’t usually work as well against a Prophet (if you can actually hit the PoR, it works like magic, but it’s usually hard to hit him in the first place).
Also, I find that it’s usually better to upgrade to Citadel before you’ve upgraded all of your base pads. My reasoning is because, by the time you’ve upgraded all of your Keep pads, the mid-game will be right around the corner and you’ll need to start Raging the other team’s Tanks, which is far more expensive than Raging Warthogs in the early-game. If you don’t have Citadel by the time you start to see Tanks, you’re not likely to get T2 for a long time.
> Possibly Expand to a second base using suicide grunts to quickly remove outpost buildings, once that main base is built and fill it with Warehouses?
Your Suie idea is a great tool that a lot of HL players already use in Teams games. However, they don’t use it for themselves, they Suie a base out for their UNSC teammate. In Teams, you’re UNSC should always expand first. As the Arbiter, your job is to get all of your T2 upgrades sometime in the mid-game and at least help out in the air war (always get Spiteful before Vicious unless you’re up against Gauss, then go Vicious 1st). Expanding will actually slow you down for this. In a HL game, you’ll have spent too much money early on to expand efficiently as the Arbiter. Later on, the expo will pay off very nicely, but try to do this after you have your T2 Arby, since it’s so costly to do this and you need it as quickly as possible (without screwing your single base economy).
I hope this helps you out. I’m really just skimming some of the deeper topics here, but if you can get accustomed to the basics in here and implement a few of these more advanced tactics, you’ll be well on your way to being a good Arby player.
