Solo for PvP practice?

Battleborn Battleborn Competitive Multiplayer Discussion
#5

No, no, I love it! Rant on!

I dig OM for clearing out minions with extreme prejudice. He’s crazy. So, in that one little solo attempt at Incursion on Overgrowth, I played OM. Took some cues from a Twitch streamer I watched last week. One thing was, we managed to push down close to the perch near the enemy’s sentry, and held up pretty well in that area. I liked going into the corner structure, where there was a turret (usually set up by the enemy whenever I came back) and a clear view out to the enemy sentry (and another turret, and their base-side health station). Liked to drop an airstrike on the enemy sentry from there, and back out of the doorway, and harass with direct fire pokes until the turret was ready to build (20 second reset on those, IIRC). Then build it and bail. If the enemy players weren’t watching too closely, I could wreck minion waves from there, too. But I didn’t like to camp the spot too much, because I had a Kleese that kept getting himself into trouble with enemy Thrall, and I wanted to keep our Shayne&Aurox freed up to rip into their Phoebe and Montana (who apparently likes, as a bot, to get up close & personal, where being on-fire is NOT in his best interests :wink: ).

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the sentry voice the same guy who did the bearded D-bag exec in TFTB, and the pilot/aviator dude in that one Skylanders game, etc.?

Nope, but he was Sledge in the first Borderlands. My bad.

#6

Not entirely sure on that. Sorry. :confused: I do think I heard somewhere that the Sentry shares a voice actor with one of the male Battleborn? Could be wrong. Maybe check IMDB or try to search these forums?

It sounds like you have a great grasp of the game so far. If you stay positive and try to learn from both your wins and losses, then you’ll definitely be a great PvPer in no time. Promise. (:

This community is great and not at all as toxic as most other MOBAs I’ve played.

Yes, the game isn’t perfect, but both the community and Gearbox are quite vocal and proactive about fixing its faults and making it a truly great game.

Stick around. You are such a nice person. I’m actually new to the forums. Been playing since Launch. Been reading the forums like an addict. Finally decided to contribute a little bit. Enjoying the experience as a whole thus far!

Hope you have a good day.

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#7

Thanks!

Yeah, this is a pretty good overall community. I’ve been around the forums, on and off, for a few years (BL2/TPS, before Battleborn). Every game’s players are convinced that the game is dying, and the only way to save it is to do “exactly as I say”. Well, like 2% of the players, but the VOCAL 2%.

So, having good, helpful people? It’s a BIG bonus. And The GBX forums are FULL of those! For instance, you’ve been very positive and helpful! :grin:

4 Likes
#8

For map knowledge and basic function, yes. Knowing where shards and buildables are is important.

Learning how to score kills against PVP Private bots and developing habits toward that end will be detrimental when you face real players.

Even targeting minions/clearing lanes is different, because the computer will not put half the pressure on you while doing so that you’d be subjected to by players.

I think Solo/Private Incursion runs would be especially useful for guys who really need to know the map, like finding all the shooting nests or Benedict finding perches. It also could help you develop those sixth-sense skills of complete map understanding in the busiest zones, basically the spaces between the two lead sentries where most of the shooting takes place.

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#9

Good to know all of the above, but ESPECIALLY the quoted text. Thanks for sharing that.

So, your advice is to use it only as necessary to learn the maps, with an eye on buildable locations, shard farming, sniper roosts, perches (for Benedict, and I assume also in some cases, Caldarius), cover, routes of ingress/egress, and so on? And that it may actually be detrimental in learning even where/how to fight the minion waves?

Cool. Good info, and I thank you for a very helpful/constructive post!

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#10

I’ve found private bots in overgrowth to be useless after you down the first sentry… the 4 bots on my team will not under any circumstances move up to the second one for me

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#11

Bummer.

Now, the one private Incursion I’ve played so far, we killed the first sentry, and took little damage to our own. 96-50, I think. Teammates wouldn’t generally move up past the health station (Overgrowth), though. Shame. I really wanted to get the turrets around the enemy’s first sentry’s position set up for us, and just OWN that area.

#12

Yeah, the bots do tend to derp out sometimes. It does add a slight challenge at least. Silver linings. :x

If they get stuck by shards or a buildable–you can try picking up the shards, destroying/building the buildable or leashing an enemy bot towards them. Sometimes that de-derpifies the bots.

They really aren’t that reliable, but then again, neither are all PvP players. So! You could always look at it as a twisted preparation for encountering said players. :open_mouth:

Just get acquainted with the maps and move onto the more fun, actual PvP imo. You’ll learn more playing there anywho. Heh.

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#13

If I were to condense everything so far into just a couple lines:

“Use solo to learn the maps, then GTFO before it ruins you.”

Sound about right?

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#14

Kind of. It still serves some purpose. Getting acquainted with the Battleborn on a PvP map. Or just to break up the tedium of playing Story or actual PvP to level Command/Character rank.

Granted, it is definitely not the most efficient way to gather xp or credits, but it is still an option.

And for the stress-bunnies out there. It could be a more relaxing alternative?

Just play how you want to play. If you are confident, I say take the plunge into real PvP. You might make friends and you can then help each other learn the ropes.

#15

Yeah, went ahead and put the feelers out just now on r/BattlebornLFT , to see if there are a few other PC players out there willing to deal with my new-to-this-game-ness. And because I have to unlock one more lore challenge with Oscar Mike, because I have to know the rest of the story!

#16

Specifically on this, basically anything combat-oriented is gonna change a LOT when you face players as opposed to bots.

Learning WHERE to engage minion waves in solo is cool. Find the spots that have good terrain to fall back behind, etc. Find where you like to have firing lines. Learn how many ways you have to get out of dodge when you’re clearing a wave and 3 opponents come up to push the wave.

Learning HOW to engage minion waves in solo will lead to bad habits. One example, leading with big skills.

It makes sense to lead with big, whomping skills because you want to clear that wave ASAP. But in doing so, those skills are on cooldown when the players come to get you. It’s especially relevant because so many of the “initiator skills” like Boldur’s Boldurdash or Kelvin’s Sublimate need to be used as escapes much more often than initiations.

Point is, if a savvy player sees you go careening into a swarm of minions with Monty’s Lumberjack Dash, they know you won’t have it back for X seconds, so they’re gonna jump on your head. Probably with friends.

Similarly, if you Frag Grenade with Oscar Mike as Step 1 on a minion wave, you won’t have it left to chase down an escaping opponent who you or an ally have emptied a lot of rounds into. It comes down to spacing, really. If the minion wave is about to push on your Sentry, then YES, frag those suckers so they can’t work his shield over. If the wave is earlier in the lane, probably best to just work with the rifle to begin with, and save the frag for when it’s needed.

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#17

Kinda figured that with regard to skills, but it’s good to hear it from someone who’s confident in PvP. So I’m thinking on the right track. I tend to do that even in solo story mode; that is, I don’t just drop the skill bomb when I know there’s something else coming that’ll be even harder to deal with without the skill.

So, noted. And AGAIN, thanks for the continuing stream of helpful/constructive responses, all of you!

#18

Yes do it. I always pay a couple games when I start a new guy to try and reduce the suck factor. You can practice, get used to the helix. That way when you start you aren’t spending your time reading the helix tree. It’s practical worthless as far as lore challenges and HP, but worth the practice.

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#19

Yeah, that’s something I’ve been doing with toons in story mode–memorizing my preferred helix choices per level, so it’s a QUICK two button presses to get through it and move on with the mission.

Fairly sure there are some different routes I’d want to take with the helix for PvP, so it’d be good to read up on the community’s best advice in that regard and start getting those patterns committed to memory.

THANKS for that, @Masterblizak!

#20

You bet. PvP is a pretty cut throat place. If you aren’t producing, you know there is at least one person on the other end pulling their hair out. It’s especially bad when your team is losing and you are at the top of your group with 4 kills and 7 deaths.

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#21

I know that feels, bro. Team gets cut down in MWO, down to your last teammate up against 3-4 enemies, and it’s a LRM boat with fresh armor and NO short-range weapons. Enemy’s ECM-equipped ACH tears its throat out, and the poor LRM boat gets farmed for damage stats. And you’re like, “Yeah, no bigs, just a freakin ASSAULT MECH sitting in the back all LOX PLZ, contributing, let’s see, OH NICE, a whopping 88 damage and 1 assist in the match. Yeah. Another Atlas on the push wouldn’t have helped anyhow. You’re right. TOTALLY our fault for not getting missile locks for you. GGClose.”

Just a LITTLE salty.

See, I know there’s a shortage of GOOD Miko players out there. I know there’s a general shortage of good HEALERS out there, and various other types of survivability/mobility support. EVERYONE plays Oscar Mike well enough. Not everyone plays Miko well enough, though.

So eventually I’d like to be able to offer that up to a team, to be able to do that and do it RIGHT and WELL. I’m already under no illusion that this is a TDM situation. This isn’t. (“You think this is a GAME?! This isn’t a ******* game!” -ISIC ) But first, I just need to learn the mode and get best practices drilled into my head.

That’s where y’all’s valuable feedback comes in! :wink:

#22

I play solo meltdown a fair bit to try out new characters and builds. The Meltdown AI is not great, but it’s still better than Incursion.

First thing to make sure you do is change the map display styles in options>gameplay to “minimap only”. That will let you see the whole map at a glance.

As already noted, real players will often be much more aggressive than bots. If you get remotely close to death against the bots, think of that as a death vs players.

Also, you should outlevel bots quite easily, so don’t get too overconfident in what you can do against various characters under real conditions.

#23

Good info! THANKS!

#24

U on PC? PS? XBOX? All? :dukejk: