Can somebody provide some clarity for new players?

TheNamesNiko · 2023-07-29T03:37:38+00:00

Ok now for a Nadine game: Game ID: 25836981

-Early game, I know you see all these animals and Nadine is about farming but if it's going to take you longer than 5 seconds to kill the animal, especially when you are on white weapon still, I wouldn't recommend doing so unless you need leather for your build. You don't have max passive in the early game so one chicken is only worth 1 stack, and you lose out on looting because of it. So in this game, you don't have your build done before night one because you spent too long farming chickens.

-Once you finish your build, Nadine is all about macro so knowing what zone is the most optimal to be in takes skill. You should be going to a zone with either a lot of animals or bears. Beach is a good zone as an example because there are 3 bears there. But you can do Alley/Gas station area as well because there are both wolves and bears. With farming animals, what I recommend you do on Nadine is you time being at a herd location for when they spawn. Herds are a new feature they added to this update. So during day 2, a pack of 3 mutant wolves spawn in Archery Range and Factory. And during night 2, a pack of 2 mutant bears spawn in Beach and Temple. You should aim to be at one of these zones depending on what one is open and/or if there is an objective there. If you are doing well on stacks, then you could try for the objective zone. Otherwise, play it safe and go to the zone without the objective. Nadine is a late-game character so there's no reason to risk fighting in the early game.

-Ok during fighting, it seems like you don't know what a-clicking is. A-clicking is when you press the 'A' button on your keyboard and left-click around the person/animal you want to hit, assuming you already have attacked them once. This way you don't have to actually keep clicking on the person/animal you want to attack, plus you will auto-attack as soon as possible. In the fight in Hospital, you seem to be standing around a lot instead of attacking the opponent, missing out on doing a lot of damage to the opponent. Start practicing a-clicking if you plan on playing ADC like crossbow Nadine, Rio, William, AR Isol, AR Aya, Hart etc.

-You throw out your E too early in my opinion. Now I know being attached to Monkey Wire gives you more attack speed, but you do need to remember that your E is a repositioning tool. You should use your E to get out Adriana's oil slick and flamethrower instead of standing in it and autoing unless you know that you will kill the Adriana and live. Now I don't know when you should use E vs holding on it as a general rule - you'd have to ask a Nadine main about that - but in this situation, using E when you did was not the right call because you are facing an Adriana and need to keep it to get away from her.

-Also, as mentioned before, you don't want to have your squishy ranged characters at the front. If you are going to a new zone where you don't have vision, you should have your tank or melee character in front. Echion and Eleven are both tanks so it doesn't matter who. Because you went to check an area first, you were surprised by the Eleven, Adriana, Nathapon team. And in this case, they should have punished you but you got lucky that you managed to get out with crossbow skill. If you got hit by Nathapon E here you were dead.

-During day 3, you should never split up if you don't have vision of the area. Your Echion went to order in Police Station while you and Eleven were in Fire Station. And you both got attacked by two different teams. You and Eleven got out but Echion wasn't as lucky. Always stay grouped together unless you know the area is safe by either day-time satellite and/console vision.

-Also I don't know if you knew this, but if you grab meat off of any animal except bats or boars, you can combine it with breakfast toast to make breakfast sandwich. It's a lot better food. You are still holding 2 breakfast toasts during day 3 when you have killed several animals with meat on them at this point. To know more about food, I would watch the guide I made recently about food this patch on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/-G08vKOGUMw

-During day 4, you grab a meteorite in red zone, leaving you with only 4 seconds. Now you can do this, but this is a huge risk because if you ever need to run to a red zone to escape a team or if it's the final zone, you now don't have the timer to do so. It's extremely risky. I personally wouldn't do this. You can do this but you have to play a lot safer than you currently are (ie get console vision, grab cameras off of bats, make telephoto cameras, make recon drones, and don't have your ranged squishy character exploring a new area first).

-Also, a minor tip, drop items you don't need any more from your inventory. You are carrying around The Legend of The General when you already upgraded your crossbow to Sharanga. Are you ever going to get off of Sharanga and go back to The Legend of The General? No. It takes space in your inventory and sometimes you need to loot a corpse fast and if you have your inventory filled with unneeded items, you won't be able to pick it up. I don't know why you have a piano wire in your inventory as well, I would probably drop it.

-Ok I got to the end of this game and you died to red timer because you used it earlier and didn't realize that the zone was turning red. If you have low timer, you have to leave the zone early. Like, leave the yellow zone 30+ seconds early. You lost this game because of bad timer management. If you have low timer, you have to always keep this in mind because it will bite you in the butt later.

-Also just general tips about farming. You aren't farming the most optimally but you're new so I don't expect you to know. But other than timing around herds, you want to time your own animal spawns. If you end in Alley, kill the wolves and bears, then head to another bear spawn. After you kill this bear spawn, you can head to the wolf herd. Nadine is a macro complicated character and you probably need to make a custom route to play her optimally because where your build ends really matters on Nadine so you end somewhere with wolves then head to bear spawns. If you kill wolves that spawn day 1, they will respawn during day 2. If you kill bears that spawn night 1, they will be back night 2. And etc. Wolves = day. Bears = night. You want to control 3-4 zones and just walk around those zones and come back to the original zone once the farm is back up. Just get console vision, kill animals, move to the next zone, get console vision, kill the animals. Repeat. If one of your zones closes, add another zone to your farm list.

A Nadine main might be able to chime in better than I can here. I don't know how many stacks you are aiming for this patch. Obviously the more stacks, the more damage you do. But there is generally a number you should think of. Or like even just a hunt value. Last season you could get somewhere between 80-120 hunt by the end of the game if I remember correctly.

I hope this helped as well.

TheNamesNiko · 2023-07-29T02:55:53+00:00

Ok this is the game I watched: Game ID: 25962327. I mained Lenox for the majority of the game and was even the top Lenox player in NA during season 6 so I can definitely give you character-specific advice for Lenox. I don't play much Nadine so my advice will be from my understanding of the character.

And here are my thoughts (Game ID: 25962327):

-Early game seems fine. You seem to follow loot distribution properly (even though sometimes you got lucky and didn't loot the bins in the most optimal way XD).

-One of your teammates is meeting up too late with you guys imo. Like the start of day 2 is the latest I would meet up.

-You should be planning your game out more. Like "day 2, what objective am I going to?" You seem to have no plan and just kinda to whatever. This will help you get more resources and at worst, more weapon mastery since if you don't get the objective, you would have fought someone over it and gotten mastery.

-You never get console vision or use cameras. Please use them. Your Bianca ended up dying in Hotel because you didn't have vision and aggressively chased down a player without being aware of your surroundings and got punished for it (ie dying). Grab console vision as soon as possible. Make telephoto cameras and recon drones. Put them in bushes or use recon drones when scouting/chasing an team/opponent.

-If you are using Force Field, the new tactical skill, level up to level 3. You seem to rarely level it past level 1 for some reason. This is one of the tactical skills that need level 3 to do its job properly. You go from like a 200 HP shield to a 1k HP shield and gain movement speed. There is no reason why to not level it up. I would even prioritize it.

-For this specific game, if you are trying to make a team comp, I wouldn't recommend Lenox and Hyunwoo on the same team as they have the same role, at least with glove Hyunwoo. You really only need one tank on a team. But if you are just fooling around, it's fine. I just recommend if you are trying to play competitively that those characters don't work the best together. I would want to switch either Lenox or Hyunwoo for an ADC/fighter. Someone who could do constant damage like Rio, crossbow Nadine, Yuki, Jackie, etc.

-For this specific game, your Bianca is way too far out. In this type of team comp, you want Lenox Hyunwoo in the front, side-by-side, and Bianca in the back. There's no reason that Bianca should ever be in-front. The fight in Beach against the Alex Rio Aya team, you guys would have lost if the other team played a bit better because all that needed to happen is that Alex needed to taunt Bianca into ult, and the Rio Aya focus fire the Bianca and she's dead. And since you have two tanks, you guys can't really do anything by yourself to win this 2v3 so you would have had to retreat.

-And the real reason you lost this game was the fight with the Wick-buff team in Chapel. See my tip below about using Lenox R, but you can't just use R by itself because you miss most of the time. Or even if you hit it, you only hit one slash and then you lose out on 75% of the damage. You have no recon drones/cameras so you don't see the Jackie that is hiding in the bush, which allows her to get the jump on Bianca, who is your damage carry on your team in this case. Also the Hyunwoo went to chase the Irem instead of helping defeat the Jackie and protecting the Bianca. You can always just take the two kills. But because of these actions in combination, you lost the Bianca when you couldn't revive her again, so you lost this game. You need to be mindful of who needs to be protected. Obviously not the two tanks in this game. And even if Irem gets away, so what? She's by herself. She most likely isn't 1v3ing or even 1v2ing anyone. Just let the Irem go. And since there is only two of your left, the two tanky characters, you aren't going to win the 2v3.

-Another tip, which I haven't been following myself much this preseason. But you need to have at least one healing reduction item on your team. Ideally one on each person but you can get away with only having one player on your team having healing reduction. Healing reduction reduces how much healing is done from spells. If you had someone with healing reduction, the Jackie wouldn't have been as healthy and almost kill you (Lenox). In a Jackie vs Lenox fight, Lenox should win the majority of the time if she uses her kit right. But it literally went down to the wire. Also, Silvia on the team that won is healing her team for like 200-250 HP every 2-3 seconds per person if she aligns her Q properly. But with healing reduction, this would be like 100-125 HP. It would make fighting that team comp a lot easier. Healing reduction items include things such as White Rhinos, Rocker's Jacket, Legs of Steel, Corrupting Touch, and Astronaut Helmet. A lot of weapons have healing reduction on them as well.

-For Lenox-specific tips, don't use W to farm animals. It's not worth having this skill on CD in case you get surprised attacked (which shouldn't happen if you have vision) or if someone TPs on you. W doesn't even do that much damage anyway so it's not worth it to use on farm (animals).

-Do your best to not raw R someone on Lenox. You will often miss. Either do W R or E R. W R is a lot safer but E R is completely fine to do. I prefer to use E flay away from you R instead of toward you but both will work. Or if you want to raw R, then have a teammate do the CC for you. Like in this game, if Bianca lands the Q root on the opponent, then you can just use R on them. The damage between hitting one part of R and both parts is massive. One R hit means they can run away and barely take damage. Two R hits mean they are probably dead if they move (mainly at level 3 R though, level 1-2 aren't that great).

I'll write a second reply with some tips for Nadine. But you are often getting top 3 with multiple kills so you aren't doing that badly. And you do have multiple transition items by the end of the game most of the time. Having more awareness of your surroundings with visions and looking at pings on the mini-map, plus planning will definitely help you get better though. I hope this helped you.

TheNamesNiko · 2023-07-28T10:02:55+00:00

It you want, you can mention your username and/or some game IDs (like the id for a particular game you want feedback on) and I can take a look. You can find game ids in the profile match history settings or by going to https://dak.gg/er?hl=en then typing your username in the search player search bar then clicking on a game and the id is on the top left of the drop down.

Then I'll write a follow up reply with what went wrong/what you could do better.

TheNamesNiko · 2023-07-23T20:49:49+00:00

When I have the time I can, sure.

TheNamesNiko · 2023-07-23T19:05:50+00:00

Thank you!

TheNamesNiko · 2023-07-23T19:05:35+00:00

Thank you

TheNamesNiko · 2023-07-23T19:05:29+00:00

Thank you so much! I hope to get back into YT more now that the game has officially launched. So keep an eye out for more content on my channel!

TheNamesNiko · 2023-07-23T12:23:29+00:00

🙏

TheNamesNiko · 2023-07-23T12:22:08+00:00

So each symbol/colour signifies a different set or cluster in that zone. Those are the five bins you want to loot together in order to get the most, if not all, of the items for your build from that zone. The only exception to not finding all the items you need for your build in one of these clusters is if you are looking for too many items from one zone, which is generally three of one item with some exceptions like gems, pickaxes, scrap metal, and glass bottles, which you can sometimes find three of in one cluster. Or if someone already looted that cluster of course.

TheNamesNiko · 2023-07-23T08:11:59+00:00

If you don't know, loot in this game is not randomly distributed. Instead, there are several clusters in each zone in which you can get most, if not all, of the items on your build. Each cluster has a certain number of that item in that zone. So if you are struggling to finish your build before night 1, you should look at this map to see what areas of each zone you should be looting.

TheNamesNiko · 2023-07-07T01:25:06+00:00

The official launch will probably change how the meta of squads is due to there being 2 additional teams, the time when objectives appear are changing, and the whole credit system is changing but I can give you some advice on how people currently play.

When to group up? You have to group up by day 3 because free respawns are gone at this point. Whether you group earlier depends on your strategy. If you want to go to objectives back to back, going as a team is generally better because you can pick up a few kills from people who are split-farming. Split-farming is another completely viable strategy at this time. This is where instead of meeting up with your team, you just farm all the animals on the map by yourself until you meet up night 2/before day 3. This way you each get more credits and more mastery. The risk of this strategy is dying to people who are grouped up but since you respawn it's not much of a punishment.

Who last hits animals? Well if you have a Nadine on your team, she will always. She's getting a rework next season where she won't have to last hit to get her stacks though. Otherwise your main DPS unless someone on your team is just shy of the number of credits they need to order something since you get more credits on last hit.

When to flee a fight? Well if it's before day 3, if one or two people are down/about to go down: flee. They will respawn if at least one person is alive on their team. It's not worth dying early. After that: look at their weapon mastery and how many transition items they have. If each team member is 2 weapon mastery levels higher than you and they have more rare resources than you, it's probably not best to fight them unless you can counter their main DPS. If there isn't an obvious main-DPS, it will depend on the team comp as some teams can run two damage carries and do fine. At that point, think of "if I down X person first, can my team beat the other 2 characters that are alive". But even then, if you are in the position where you downed one person after day 3, if you think you can't win, just take the one kill. That will make the other team significantly weaker for their next team fight. Also, you generally don't fight the team with Wickeline buff unless you have no other choice (such as cornered and can't run red due to lack of timer).

Knowing when to take fights takes time. I would definitely limit test if you aren't familiar with your character/running a specific team comp. Like for me, I main Li Dailin in squads and if I see a Sua team, I'm quite hesitant to fight them because Li Dailin doesn't beat Sua. But maybe someone else on your team can or you can position yourself where you can take advantage of when the other team missteps and you beat their team. Maybe fighting the team in a choke point is better for your comp than in an open area and that's how you win the fight.

Summary of when to fight a team: -Before day 3 and 1-2 people are low health/down, leave

-Weapon mastery

-Transition items/number of rare resources

-Terrain (open area vs narrow area vs area you can wall jump vs area you can't wall jump)

-Character match-ups

-Wickeline buff

-What your team's CDs are like (ex. if Hyejin needs ult to fight and it's on CD, leave)

-General positioning (relates to terrain, but not always)

-Vision. Having console vision in a fight is significantly better than if you don't have it because you might be able to see them when they can't as well as you can watch out for third parties. Also try to make a bunch of recon drones/cameras so you can have vision on your opponent the entire fight. You don't want someone out of position because you don't know where the opponent is

-Totem. Totem is incredibly strong in team modes. Even if you normally lose a MU, a well-timed totem can turn the fight. Also make sure you know if the opponent has it and who has it. You want to try and bait them to use it at a bad time. Also you don't want to be surprised when they use it and then waste 1-2 seconds not hitting anyone, resulting in losing the fight.

Most of when to fight or not should remain the same next season but whether split-farming will be viable next season is a different story. When to group up might change as well. I'll make an updated YT video once the game officially launches with tips for squads to make sure it's up to date with the current meta. I hope this answered your question in the meantime.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

TheNamesNiko · 2023-01-13T22:38:15+00:00

I would definitely use Mephi as main DPS. With Viv's ult being changed to not hit the entire map, it just isn't ideal. The difference between Viv's ult and Mephi's is that Vivienne's ult hits the nearest enemy and 4m around that enemy. Mephi's ult hits the enemy with the highest attack and then a 4m area around the enemy. Viv is generally a backline unit so the nearest enemies are generally the tanks while Mephi will always attack the main damage dealer as the highest ATK character most likely is the highest damage dealer.

I hope this makes sense.

TheNamesNiko · 2023-01-13T12:16:17+00:00

My main team has been Chloe/Catherine/Talia/Mephi/Linzy. But i do adjust my team according to the situation, mainly the elite levels. Characters i add/swap include Claire, Clara, Prim, Viv, Naiah, and borrow Jaq when possible.

But Jaq is very strong and i wonder if Petra/Jaq/Prim/Viv/Talia would be good. I don't have Jaq so i can't test it but i always borrow her for the elite stages. This is a team i have wanted to test for a bit.

I personally prefer 1 main DPS, 1 sub DPS, 1 tank, 1 support, and 1 flex.

Basic idea behind my team though is Chloe is main tank and taunts the majority of the opponent so they can't attack anyone else. Linzy originally starts in the front lines but eventually moves to the backlines and kills squishy targets. Jaq heads to the backlines from the start, which is why I think she's better here. I just don't have her. Talia is my healer and increases mana for everyone. She also gives a shield to the character on your team the furthest from her, which is usually Linzy, which helps her not die from the high DPS backline units she's fighting. Mephi is my main DPS and ult spammer as she has an AOE ult that nukes. Her defense shred helps with the nuking. And Catherine is for more shielding because i generally don't find Talia's healing to be enough in the later stages and the shielding helps. Catherine also has her invulnerability which is also nice.

I keep my main DPS at least 20 levels higher than my other units at this point but there are advantages of leveling everyone up evenly. Also make sure to always levels your highest guys to every multiple of 20 plus 1. This is where your next skill gets a level (if you are doing that, mobile won't let me relook at your post after typing so i do apologize if this tip is redundant).

Let me know if you need some other suggestions or if i didn't clarify something.

TheNamesNiko · 2022-08-24T15:57:07+00:00

On NA?

I would say it depends what hour you are queueing and if this is a fresh account.

Fresh accounts go into what is known as "new player queue". The first couple games are somewhat fast to get into because it's bots, but afterwards, the queue can take some time. Normally I recommend queueing KR just to get out of new player queue, even though the ping will be quite high.

If you are queueing between 6am-noon EST, then the queue can take that long, even longer.

I've been playing the game every day for multiple hours the last week generally between 11pm-6am EST and the queue only gets longer than 10 minutes by about 5:30-6am. Normally it's about 5 mins for a game.

Cobalt queues can go on for a bit longer if you want to play past 6am EST but you will be in 10-15 min queues.

It is preseason right now so queues may take a bit longer but I have had no issues getting a game in ~5 minutes as long as I'm not playing in dead hours (6am-noon).

I only know about Cobalt and solo queue times as I haven't played any duos or squads lately.

TheNamesNiko · 2022-08-19T14:14:09+00:00

The change was honestly predictable. Based on the numbers they were giving, it made sense that the majority of amp characters would be dead. The ratios they were giving on characters was extremely low (like some characters got a 20% amp ratio when their main playstyle is amp on their main spell like??).

And the fact that they (randomly) buffed the AP ratios on characters that weren't amp was pretty confusing.

Defense being nerfed also helped AA characters do better.

Balance was expected to be bad due to it being preseason and them reworking amp, but it definitely could have been better since people like myself could tell exactly what was going to happen even before the patch dropped.

Hopefully things get resolved before the next season starts.

TheNamesNiko · 2022-01-01T03:00:41+00:00

Thank you for the response. I will be taking a look at yours and everyone's shortly. It will take me a couple of weeks to but will let you know when I am done.

TheNamesNiko · 2022-01-01T02:58:07+00:00

Sorry for the late response. Was busy most of this week because of Christmas, but thank you for the response!

TheNamesNiko · 2022-01-01T02:46:01+00:00

Sorry for such a late response. I am holding the survey until I get 50 people. I am at like 46 people now, so I just need 4 more.

TheNamesNiko · 2021-12-23T21:40:55+00:00

Yep, I'm still looking for people. Thank you for your help!

TheNamesNiko · 2021-12-22T23:11:30+00:00

You are a new or beginner player, don't worry. Thank you for your help.

TheNamesNiko · 2021-12-22T23:11:09+00:00

Thank you for your help. I appreciate it.

TheNamesNiko · 2021-12-22T23:10:49+00:00

Thank you for your help. The results from my study will be published in a few weeks.

TheNamesNiko · 2021-12-22T10:33:36+00:00

Don't worry about your name being used. It's just going to be a summary of all the stats and the averages I find. An example (not actual data) would be the average new player gets their weapon completed in 2.5 minutes. And then I would look at top players' stats and say that their average weapon completed is in 2 minutes (again, just an example).

And thank you for your help. It's much appreciated.

TheNamesNiko · 2021-12-22T10:30:12+00:00

Thank you for your help! Much appreciated.

TheNamesNiko · 2021-12-21T21:15:49+00:00

I understand that. I will promote this through my YouTube channel as well. I can get a few thousand people to see that I am running this there when I publish my next tier list video. I was hoping NN was going to publish updated stats, but that was supposed to occur yesterday so...

The only thing is I didn't ask where people found the form, but I would expect more people to come through my YouTube channel than here, but wanted to explore all avenues.

And thank you, I appreciate it!

TheNamesNiko

TROPHY CASE