chip away or one big bang

**WhiskeySix** · 12-28-2008, 07:48 PM

As infected, I've seen both styles played:

1) Hit as soon as you can with as much as you can

2) Wait for survivors to reach "perfect" ambush point

which is better?

I think the first in my experience. For example, in the No Mercy finale, I think it's a bad idea to wait for them to make it to the ladder leading to the roof. Instead, I suggest there's plenty of time to have everyone hit them right at the start and then respawn in time to hit at the ladder!

With all the medpacks around, it seems to be a war of attrition, so the more attacks you can get in per round, the better.

**Razcsak** · 12-28-2008, 11:11 PM

Definitely the first, though if there's an amazing place coming up, don't hesitate to wait a few seconds. This doesn't mean "charge in as soon as you spawn", though. At least wait for your team or an opening to form.

vypher · 12-28-2008, 11:19 PM

#1 everytime. It's more fun though like Razcsak said, I usually wait for an opening.

**DrBeat** · 12-28-2008, 11:25 PM

Best to whittle away, but often you can do so more effectively in pairs. It's extremely easy to kill a lone hunter.

**sparhawkxx** · 12-29-2008, 01:31 AM

#1 but you have to know when to pull off. As a team of infected you have to know when the surviviors have everything under control so you can stay alive and keep them from running till respawns. Ex. Whole team dies and you have just a smoker that unless he can incap in one pull hes just wasting his life. So wait for more and try to keep the infected onslaught slow and steady.

Also with this the infected have to know their job. For instance say your whole team is dead yet their is a lonewolf. Well your on.

Also you can use the hordes to slash attack to do much more damage in dark places with hunters. So in my long sentences I guess I'm agreeing that you should chip

Dam I should delete this. Some of it doesnt belong here.

**Pokerface** · 12-29-2008, 02:26 AM

Is "Both" an option here?

Sooner is always better than later, but there are times that are FAR better than others, current number of special infected notwithstanding.

NM finale? I'm hard-pressed to think up a good set of circumstances that would make me want my infected team to attack before the survivors made it into the elevator shaft. A long thin corridor (with advanced weapons at that point too!) is just a Horde Grinder; better to save up and hit them in the shaft or at the top of the ladder than to waste a boomer in a spot where no damage will get done.

Morganan · 12-29-2008, 04:16 AM

Defintely both.

Each map has at least 4 great infected ambush points, you simply cannot miss those points.

Having said that you don't want to ever miss an opportunity to deal some serious damage, especially when the survivors get low on health.

**Razcsak** · 12-29-2008, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morganan

Each map has at least 4 great infected ambush points, you simply cannot miss those points.

With the problem obviously being that the survivors know this too.

Spyder · 12-29-2008, 06:18 PM

First is a good option for when the survivors are moving fast. They're more likely to get a bit strung out, and a single person can get a sudden good jump and do some serious damage and slow down. It doesn't work well against slow moving players because you get concentrated fire really early, or you get bashed before doing damage due to player being on top of things.

Second is great for survivors that move slowly and stay tight. Can't break them with individuals so you start hitting them in waves of **** hit the fan moments. It doesn't work well against a fast group because they will be pushing out ahead of you so fast you'll spend an entire spawn circle just trying to get everybody ahead of them.

In an ideal game, you'll do both. Pick them off individually when they move and group huddle when they're hunkering down.

There are a few exceptions, such as the boomer almost always working ambushes and the Hunter always going in whenever he can get assured pounce damage IMO.

**WhiskeySix** · 12-29-2008, 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spyder

First is a good option for when the survivors are moving fast. They're more likely to get a bit strung out, and a single person can get a sudden good jump and do some serious damage and slow down. It doesn't work well against slow moving players because you get concentrated fire really early, or you get bashed before doing damage due to player being on top of things.

Second is great for survivors that move slowly and stay tight. Can't break them with individuals so you start hitting them in waves of **** hit the fan moments. It doesn't work well against a fast group because they will be pushing out ahead of you so fast you'll spend an entire spawn circle just trying to get everybody ahead of them.

In an ideal game, you'll do both. Pick them off individually when they move and group huddle when they're hunkering down.

There are a few exceptions, such as the boomer almost always working ambushes and the Hunter always going in whenever he can get assured pounce damage IMO.

see i figured it'd be opposite... for a fast group, you setup a good ambush. for slow movers, you've got time to hit them for 10hp here and there and respawn in time to bend em over good at the choke points.

**CingularDuality** · 12-29-2008, 07:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WhiskeySix

see i figured it'd be opposite... for a fast group, you setup a good ambush. for slow movers, you've got time to hit them for 10hp here and there and respawn in time to bend em over good at the choke points.

Absolutely. I don't see how you can chip away at a fast moving group.

Morganan · 12-29-2008, 10:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WhiskeySix

see i figured it'd be opposite... for a fast group, you setup a good ambush. for slow movers, you've got time to hit them for 10hp here and there and respawn in time to bend em over good at the choke points.

Nah, a fast group misses pick-up items as they are to concerned with getting to the end. A slow group might be fully loaded with pipes/molotovs/pills/medpacks. There is zero point in wasting a spawn to do 10 damage when the entire group has medpacks and pills with green health and they are sticking together. You can nickel and dime a fast group however to death because they don't want to stop and heal until a member is moving slow and cant keep up. Also a fast moving group is far and away easier to split up then a slow moving group.

A slow group on the other hand using a smoker or hunter is worthless (other then dragging a survivor off something, or getting in 25 damage pounces) against them without your entire team to back you up. Typically these groups keep up the melee spam so even the quick swipes aren't very effective. Against these groups you want to make sure you do damage to them before you die, so you hit in unison.

**sparhawkxx** · 12-30-2008, 03:04 AM

Chipping remember when one of their players are red you can watch them try to heal and slash them. Watch other survivors try to revive and slash hem down again. Doing all this while you wait for your full team to respawn without dying is key. I think thats all chipping. At all times using coms of what your doing so when you die your team is still nagging at that one hurt player. ou start to bring down one like this and the rest will fall with succesful booms

Spyder · 12-30-2008, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WhiskeySix

see i figured it'd be opposite... for a fast group, you setup a good ambush. for slow movers, you've got time to hit them for 10hp here and there and respawn in time to bend em over good at the choke points.

A good slow group won't let you nickel and dime them. You won't get in 10hp hunter pounces because half the time you'll be punted before you land, and the other half you'll be punted before you swing. You have to go in as groups in order to cause enough chaos to nickel and dime them.

A fast group on the other hand often will have plenty of moments where there isn't a teammate ready to punt you immediately after a pounce. Which means you're more likely to nickel and dime with each spawn. You're also denying them what they're trying to do. You're hitting people to slow them down or make them backtrack because they want to move.

Good fast groups are harder to play against than good slow groups, IMO. There's always a chance of a perfect storm against a good slow group. Those moments where everybody is boomered and you get 1 pull and 2 pounces and suddenly start racking up the damage. The slower survivors are going, the more chances you're going to have.

A Good fast group will limit the number of good/big ambushes to the chokes, meaning that you have to try and nickel and dime somebody to even the odds. Once they're down to 3 survivors the advantage swings heavily to the infected because at any point you can affect a Total Party Kill.

**Avs** · 12-30-2008, 06:36 PM

I think everyone's already pointed out that taking advantage of the situation is the best tactic for infected to win on versus.

Simply put, on one hand, attacking as often as possible guarantees the best efficiency of utilizing maximum spawns to deal the minimum amount of damage. That being said, also taking advantage of specific choke points where the environment benefits the infected is important so that those opportunities don't go to waste.

It seems everyone already tries to practice these kinds of strategies. Just note how each time the survivors are "held up" (see Safe Room, Crescendo events, Ladders, Chokes), the infected instinctively group there and formulate something (ideally anyways).

Other times, they are trying to buy time for other infected to spawn, or deal straight up damage, or plan a combo attack (typically boomer + others).

The specifics are vastly too scenario based to really discuss, but in general, only the hunter is suited to "hit and run" tactics using swipes. Unlike other infected, this allows the hunter to attack and occasionally survive, without "locking on" like a boomer or smoker would.

Now, regarding slow and fast groups (lets pretend both of them are decently skilled, and by that I mean, they respond to people getting pounced within 1-2 seconds, keep close, and stick in formation when hit by the boomer, etc). Note that this is far from being great, and more along the lines of being able to put all the basic survivor strategies together.

A Fast group is usually a group that is trying to keep a step ahead of the infected. The only problems is that, a smoker can easily slow the group down by grabbing a straggler (say he got hit by a normal infected), or hunters that are hitting the rear or front to stop the group. Generally a fast group relies on their ability to react to special infected while on the run, and can group up when boomed, otherwise clearing anything that engages them while staying relatively close (front guy clears, back guy killing stuff engaging, middle guys covering either).

Surely their success depends on the map they are on, but generally both tactics mentioned above works. The first one, hit and runs, are effective because they pick off people who are somewhat separated, and if not separated, have less cover because people are moving forward thus lessening their reaction time behind (as skill level goes up, this is becomes less of an issue). Hunters run fast enough to be able to get a swipe or two in (basically enough per spawn) or pounce one of them to slow them up (dependent on scenario). Boomers only job is really to slow them up, and hopefully other infected can follow through. The problem with hit and run is that if hits are not being scored, then the survivors are probably not being slowed down. This leads to the second tactic where you have to ambush all at the same time. Since there will always be a mix of the two strategies, the ambush point will probably not be at the ideal place (witches, car alarms, ladders), but instead in an area where you have a reasonable chance of slowing down the survivors, and then respawning again to attempt to lock them into a place. This should always be more successful than hit and runs (unless you are a really good infected and can survive while dealing damage, boom multiple times, etc).

Now in regards to that fast group above, a slow group isnt all that much different. So lets say the group is going in a square formation, slowly everywhere checking every room. All this means is that hit and runs will be more effective because you are getting more spawns in, and its harder to predict where the infected will be attacking since they are attacking pretty much almost everywhere due to the slower speed. The slow group will however, be almost impervious to smoker pulls and hunter pounces. This means a boomer is needed to blind the survivors to utilize those types of attacks, but those attacks are not necessarily needed. But this means combo attacks, strat #2, again (like fast groups), becomes a good option to use, but with a different style. In a fast group you want all 4 people to participate because you want to make up damage for the distance traveled. In a slow group, any 2 man infected team is good enough for ambushing, as the little damage will accumulate over time (lets say since special infected is of similar decent skill). So then, single infected will probably deal a maximum of 10 damage per spawn (for hunters), and 0 for anything (not counting boomer normal infected damage).

But what I am getting at is that lets say we have a real group of survivors, not a slow or fast group.

They move fast when they need to, slow when they are being more careful. Therefore both strategies are necessary because survivor teams are both fast and slow as they adapt to their needs (searching for items, trying to get to the next safe point, such as a train or room). What is most important about infected, is predicting what the survivors are going to do, and try to stay a step ahead of them while planning what you are going to do.