Any Tips for Lore Airborne Player Kills?

Battleborn Benedict
#1

Started playing Benedict the other day and am finding him pretty fun, especially being able to experience maps from a completely different perspective. Obviously a big lore buff, and Benedict is the second character I have done after Thorn with a challenging Player kill requirement. (We shall not speak of Toby…)

I play Incursion as it seems the best for getting kills (my one and only 25 kill run with ISIC can attest to that) and use every opportunity to stay airborne by jumping off high places like Buzz Lightyear and falling with style. After a whole evening of trying full on to get airborne kills, I ended up at about 10/50.

Assists don’t count and Benedict generally isn’t capable of KOing a player with full health while staying airborne so I was wondering what tactics veteran Benedict players used to knock this one out. Given I did 1/5 in a single evening I don’t see it as impossible, but I literally fired over 2000 rockets (unlocked 4/5 425 rockets in a single game) and had several frustrated moments to get to this point.

I found focusing on large targets was easier but more often than not something like Attikus would make a last second lunge getaway just as I was about to finish him off or I would end up with an assist. I can see unlocking certain helix nodes could increase my damage output quite a bit, but it can take a while to level up high enough to really reap the benefits and by then everyone else is all beefed up too.

As for gear, I’m currently trying a mix of +Attack Damage, +ShardGen and Reload Speed. Does anyone know if Attack Speed improves the fire rate of his rocket launcher? Missing shots due to the slow fire rate has been the biggest setback to completing this as I’ve had many moments where I can see a player on low health but I’ve missed the shot multiple times because they move too erratically to keep up with, even when trying to predict their movements.

Any suggestions on ways I could speed up my completion rate other than “git gud” and ideally not resort to being that guy that steals other people’s kills?

#2

Not a very useful tip and you probably are using it already, but whenever you do catch someone at low health and go for the finishing shot, jump before shooting.

I’d also say that there really isn’t kill stealing in the game. Unless it’s a WFvsOM or GAL/ALANIvsAMBRA, it really shouldn’t matter to people. If you see someone at low health, finish them off.

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#3

im also currently playing him amongst others and heres a couple things I noticed. I stay airborne like you as much as possible. I have been watching for someone who is being sidetracked by another BB and is lower in health. I try to get right on top of them and fire down, almost straight down. That way I’m above them and they don’t realize the damage is coming from above them. I use 2 firing speed boosts and a reload. I also found that when I took the missile speed boost, my kills got better. Also, I’m not super great at Ben, but I have seen some that have been very good. They get kills wherever they are. So I fully suspect they got good with use. I wouldn’t stress too much about the kill volume.

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#4

Yeah he’s definitely not a character for getting kills. Nothing is more fun than launching a boomsday rocket from way back and trying to hit something from a mile away though. I managed to get a surprise Ghalt kill while taking a potshot at their Sentry last night, he must have walked right into my rocket XD

We had several games last night where it really was an effort to hold back the enemies from advancing. In our last match of the night, the score was like 100-97 until literally the last 40 seconds when their cocky melee runners both died at the same time and then we went and absolutely smashed their sentry down to like 20% health. I didn’t get a single kill but I kept using my airborne attacks to basically prevent them from advancing because they either had to stop and shoot at me or run away / dart around to avoid getting hit with rockets. I also have a fantastic video of getting chased by 3 enemies at once into the middle Outcast Thrall spawn point and managing to escape back up into our side with 7 HP left, was epic XD

@reliikki I try not to be grounded with Benedict at all because he (being a bird) has a very small amount of health and shield and can get wreaked super easily if someone gets a stun in. Been a couple of times though where because I’m going into the fight airborne, i land the kill just as I’m about to hit the ground which so far has always counted. As for kill stealing, we had this one match where a Caldarius would literally wait until someone was low on health and come in out of nowhere to finish them off. At the end of 30 minutes he had 23 kills and 17 minion kills, and neither myself or my very ticked off mate I was playing with were impressed with the kind of tactics he used to get kills. Totally fine I suppose if as a team you are pushing, but skulking around looking for easy pickings is just a crappy way to fight especially when the main objective isn’t getting kills (also why kill lore challenges are a bit meh).

Thanks for the input guys, I’ll keep ploughing through and see where I end up by the end of the week.

#5

I COMPLETELY disagree on that first sentence. I have about 750 kills and 230 deaths with him in 19 hours of gameplay. He should be getting the MOST kills EVERY time. His role is more so focusing on enemies and pestering them, killing squishy characters, and killing minions while changing lanes. This was probably his easiest lore challenge, really the only tip is to just jump around while getting kills. Yes, you can’t lock on while airborne, but you should be at close range and flying around and jumping around the entire match, Thorns was fairly easy too with the high jump, just bounce up and down all game and you’ll get all 20 in under 10 games with ease. (I got it in 5 or 6) Toby’s on the other hand is near impossible.

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#6

Toby’s lore is getting patched to be only 1 double kill in the near future (thank god).

Thorn’s wasn’t too bad (also significantly less kills than Benedict). I would definitely only recommend doing hers in Incursion though because enemy players will more likely group up in the same place ripe for a Blight.

I’m sure I’ll get better with Benedict, but I’m only 1-2 days in so I’m still chicken tier skill level (BA-BAAAWWWK!!). I don’t doubt that there are players out there that have mastered him and can really deal out the damage (I have been killed by several of them), but my first impressions of him is that he can be very weak early into the match until you get those extra helix damage upgrades unlocked, especially against characters who are really agile, can take hits or deal ranged damage (ie Marquis, Thorn, Caldarius) really quickly.

Characters like Ghalt, ISIC, Attikus, Alani, Oscar Mike, Montana and Kleese, on some of the ones I found were more easy to hit and knock down health, but if they have a reliable Miko and/or Reyna on their team it can be very hard to kill them. Most of the matches I had last night had really solid team makeups with good healer/defenders making any attempt at his lore challenge kinda hard.

Near the end of a match once most of his upgrades are unlocked, I found he was actually able to damage someone quicker than Miko could health them, but again it was a matter of the right conditions for it to happen.

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#7

I haven’t mastered Benedict yet, but unlocked all lore. And yes, killing enemy players took some time. At first I played Incursion maps too, but couldn’t get a lot of kills per match. So I switched to Capture and the number of kills per match really increased (since Capture maps have no minions, no lanes, it’s basically a deathmatch mode with 3 points on map where enemies usually hang around either capturing or defending there).

Outback map is much more favorable than Temple because of open sky. Plenty of space to fly around. I was surprised how much my gameplay improved on this map. Word of caution though, if at first players are disoriented and are an easy kill from above, later in the match they finally become cautious and look up much more often, prioritizing their fire on Benedict.

Hope that helps. Cheers!

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#8

i concur. I think He’s one of the highest learning curve players. You can’t just pick him up and be awesome.

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#9

okay so im one kill away, 500 seconds(all legit), but i need 5 tour lores. any word on this lore ?

#10

Argh…Capture is more like having 3+ players chasing you down and ganging up on you, while the rest of your team is AFK. I can see how it could be easier to get kills, but I’d rather not be fighting hunter teams, they ruin multiplayer for me.

[edit]

Also, Multiloader is terrible because it locks the fire button until you release it and wait until the fire animation finishes. I can get a whole mag out in the time it takes to use that skill, it should just be full auto but obviously 2 rockets per shot.

#11

It will happen in time, no need to force it.

You can get plenty of kills with Bene while gliding, especially if you can get directly above enemies in mid.

Some ways to make it faster would be to take extra homing time on hawkeye rockets, 3x hawkeye rockets and extra rocket damage for smaller blast radius helixes.

Essentially fire your hawkeye rockets, take to the sky before they hit target, spam rockets while flying (and aiming ABOVE the enemy for crit damage when the rockets home downward) and you’ll get plenty of kills.

Also jumping, double jumping and triple jumping around while shooting is pretty staple for Bene and will help you net kills.

Attack speed DOES buff the ROF of the rocket launcher, but you should only hold fire after hawkeye rockets. For normal rocket spam it’s better/faster to shoot > reload > shoot, especially with reload gear and the helix, this makes his DPS better and keeps you from having to reload the full clip (which takes forever).

I normally run with +reload speed +attack speed + attack damage items.

Fortunately I have his legendary and talon of the hawk which are both amazing on him albeit expensive.

Anyways, if you play him enough you’ll get to 50 before too long, my kills just racked up naturally in the end.

2 Likes
#12

This right here is some solid well written Benedict knowledge!! I would double like it if
I could. Completely different to how I have been playing Benedict, and kinda advanced since you have a very small window between firing hawkeye and getting airborne (players like ghalt or cc users tend to like trapping me during this time too), but enemies are actually sweating from the damage they are taking!

[edit]

I am also finding the controls lock up if you try to jump from Hawkeye to Liftoff too quickly (making getting homing rockets while airborne even harder to do). I had the same issue while playing as Mellka…

#13

Thanks :slight_smile:

Close range you’ll have a hard time getting liftoff active after hawkeye, but double jumping and shooting into glide is similar.

Mid range is when you’ll get the best opportunities to fly after a lock on, but it’s not always practical.

As a general note it is advantageous to aim your lock-on rockets up anyway as it gets the double benefit of crits and avoiding the packs.

#14

41 matches (15 which were wins and the majority were quick surrenders…so many god damn surrenders…) and 14 hours of straight PvP and those 50 airborne kills are done!!

I was largely at the mercy of matchmaking as there were just so many unbalanced teams or players that would call it quits, go afk and all manner bad sportsmanship. Some games I’d get nothing, others I got as high as 6 lore kills as my team wasn’t constantly dying and actually working as a team giving me an actual chance to level up. I still reckon 50 is a bit high compared to other PvP kill lores, but definitely not impossible (but can be extremely frustrating at times). I think in the end I ended up doing a mix of my “getting airborne first then shooting the ants” strat, and the Hawkeye homing rockets strat depending on the way the other team played. Heavy CC users made it very hard to combine both skills together, but when I didn’t just get spammed by attacks, damn could it deal some damage (i also had a +attack damage loadout too). Getting up in the air first is great for picking off those that fall back a little in an Incursion match but don’t go back to heal, especially when they go hide behind something. Benedict just rains down rockets on them :sunglasses:

Time to switch characters and start on Whiskey Foxtrot.

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#15

Gooooooood luck with whiskey. Phew glad I’m done with him.

#16

Oh I am totally going to be out for blood with Whiskey Foxtrot. Oscar Mikes were not kind to my Benedict (not the only culprit, and certainly not the worst, but enough to make my Tea Ceremony list).

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#17

Liftoff is somewhat underrated as a damage dealer, but once You get the unlock for it to do damage it makes for a nice finisher in PvP, that then sets You up to deliver even more damage.

I find that Benedict performs well in a fire support role in Meltdown and Incursion, particularly in the early levels; which also set You up for those elusive air-kills. Find an elevated point behind your team mates and just pepper the enemy with rocket-fire. This will help keep the enemy from recharging their shields, and provide general harassment. Destroying Minions with said bombardment helps to level You, and if You see an enemy that is on the ropes You can take to the air, give chase, and keep up the pressure.

Once You hit mid-levels and have access to quick reloads and multiple Hawkeye rockets, this becomes even easier. :smiley:

Don’t underestimate the value of aerial melee strikes either. Benedict’s claw swipes do decent damage, and can even knock enemy players into hazards. I like Divebomb on most maps as well, the enemy never sees it coming! :wink: