#34

I got my Master of Benedict the other day, and there are very few of us (it was still 0% globally when I got it) so I’ve got a lot of flyboy time under my belt.
Tips from my perspective.
He’s an excellent shard collector, because he can run the map very easily, and he’s a very weak hero early game, so it’s important to focus on shard collection, Thralls, and building and destroying buildables until you’re at least level 3 and get the reload speed or rocket speed.
Avoid fighting early unless you outnumber the enemy, and if you see melee heroes with stuns coming at you, E and GTFO.
Benedict operates on surprise and terrain advantage, and basically any melee with a stun and/or silence will delete you before you can do much back to them, and you’ll just end up feeding.
My helix preference is:

+1 second homing
Push back
+25% rocket speed
Q full reload
+25% glide speed
+20% homing rocket damage
+18% damage (reduced radius rockets)
Lift Off cooldown
+50% Hawkeye Radius
Napalm on ult.

A big tip for landing homing rockets is do not aim at the target aim higher so the rockets will go over most terrain and hit them from above for more crits.
The simple explanation of deliverying damage is take to the air, unload all your rockets on your intended target, Q load and drop towards them, fire the Q on impact then E and AA them out of existence.

My current loadout for kills is the “Air Mail” loader (Lore unlock), and a +9.36 attack speed with +5.38 attack speed on taking damage, and a +8.55% damage with +4.88% damage on taking damage.

I don’t take the triple-shot Q helix because it locks you out of your E for longer, and you’re locked into the 30% reload helix which you don’t need if your Q gives a full reload, and Air Mail is ~20% anyway.

Whether Benedict needs overall buffs, I’m not sure. At the moment he really struggles against an aggressive Miko/Gal combo, but they are OP and getting nerfed.

Dive Bomb definitely needs improvement, at the moment it disables Benedict longer than it disables his targets, it gets caught on terrain all the time, and the path drops too quickly so you almost always end up landing somewhere other than where you aim it so it’s not very useful even as an escape.
Do not ever take it unless they buff it dramatically.

Also, always remember your quick melee can push people back from you to buy you a little time when you’re silenced.
Quick melee + pushback E also knocks thralls off the edge in Overgrowth incursion for fast caps.

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#35

The extra AoE on rockets is only really good for clearing minions, you want the rocket damage so it counts more on heroes and buildables.
The Hawkeye AoE is important because you really don’t want to waste your Q by not getting a mark on a target.

#36

Thanks for the read, I love getting those tips and bits of advice. Currently at 13 (almost 14) character rank, so ill be with the masters soon! I’ll defiently give your build a try once I finish off the lore, all I need is to be 15 of course and about 2,000 seconds of fly time. Also I assume your Q is your way L1 for this PS4 plebeian haha

#37

You can get the flytime in story mode.
The algorithm is good because the first half you can fly nearly non-stop

#38

That’s exactly what I’ve been doing since bribing my buddies to play as peacekeepers for the tour lore

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#39

Giving it some thought, a couple of things that annoy me about Benedict that I believe could do with some scrutiny:

When you Hawkeye someone and they stealth, the rockets stop homing in - even though the Hawkeye marker is clearly visible. I don’t know whether this is intended, but it seems incredibly backwards to have an “escape counter” that’s countered by escapes.

Silences turning off glide is crippling, especially with the epic height that a lot of “ground based” silences can reach. Also, activating Hawkeye being a self silence until launched is a bit over the top (and the interaction between silence and glide is why it grounds him).

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#40

Great break down ol great bird guru.

Excuse my ignorance but could you translate for me, I don’t speak PC. What is this Q,E, AA, you speak of? Specifically what abilities are you activating. Great tip about aiming up though. I usually hit the wall with the homing.

#41

Also " tripple shot locks you out of E longer" . are you saying the shooting the extra rockets don’t allow you to use homing. I guess my probelm not using the tripple shot is that it gives me more chances to land the rocket for lock on. That’s probly more lack of skill on my part but that’s my reasoning.

#42

OK, sorry.
I’m very used to talking about abilities in moba style games based on the key they are assigned to (on PC).

Q is Hawkeye.
E is Liftoff.

AA is Auto Attack, or just your primary attack.

When I say “triple shot locks you out of E longer”, it’s because when you activate Hawkeye, you get silenced until you either launch all the Hawkeye rockets, or cancel with secondary fire.
When you take the helix that makes Hawkeye fire three rockets, you can’t use Liftoff until all three rockets have been launched.
It doesn’t take a long time, but it’s a good half second more than firing the single rocket where you’re vulnerable to stuns and silences which are a death sentence to a grounded Benedict.

#43

If you’re used to doing a triple jump while hawkeye shooting, it becomes a lot safer to use the triple shot hawkeye because there’s already no room to melee kill you if you mainatain your position in the air.

===

Right now, it is possible to reach level 4 in Overgrowth in just 3 minutes with a bit of team communication or good shard path. When a char only has 3 minutes where he’s weak, he might actually be a bit too strong but it’s more of a “Map need to be tweaked” case in this one.

#44

Thanks for the explanation. I never really took that delay into consideration. I still have a lot to learn.

#45

Speaking of stage design echelon sucks for Benedict. There is really no pearch where you can get breathing room(at least that I can find).

#46

Echelon is actually one of the few ranged char who can be played in Echelon because of his anti-melee kit.

I rarely ever stay still and shoot rocket. If I’m standing still, it means I’m not doing one of the next objective that is left open.

But sadly, Echeleon has minimal shard control too and that the solo camp is a brute thrall with annoying hitbox for rocket so you are forced to play with early weak over finding another way to level.

#47

Yea, I guess I need to get better at being in the air. I get killed by gally the “melee” character all of the time, especially on that stage.

#48

Gal kills everyone everywhere.

#49

What do you think of phoebe out of curiosity

#50

Upper B tier assassin at best.

One of the highest damage character in the game after you unlock her rank 5 mutation.

You get +150% damage and the “add AoE sweep to true strike” and you can do 500 damage on true strike alone.

Add in her teleport with later, teleport reset mutator and she’s one of the stronger melee damagers atm. If Rath is the skill-wipe type, Phoebe is the option for a normal attack type who can do more than just pubstomp.

#51

Yea, I like her quite a bit more than rath. Rath just seems so boring. I just need to find someone I can actually help the team with. It really bugs me how they do the scoring system. I can destroy 20 turrets, deploy 10 thralls and build 8 tiurrets and still get a low score BC I’m not getting direct kills.

#52

So I’ve been putting some time in Phoebe and I finally found a character that really fits my play style. Don’t get me wrong, I’m getting my ass beat and probably costing my team the win but I see exactly where I went wrong. I guess you have to find you niche…

…or play with Gal and play every niche

#53

I can see where you’re coming from, and see how the triple jump could synergise with the triple shot Hawkeye.
I prefer the 25% glide speed for the map presence and chase it gives you, and I prefer to “divebomb” my Hawkeye to make it a more certain hit, and to follow it immediately with the Liftoff pushback because it generally buys an guaranteed two hits with homing rockets before they can even start to run.

And I agree with the shard run on overgrowth, it’s ridiculous how well Benedict can run it.