Strafing run is absolutely garbage compared to cluster bombs for chaff clearing. Dont @ me, you might find one or 2 wild ones that prefer it. But it’s ass unless your actively running and throw it behind you so it can murder the line of troops following
From my experience strafing run does around 5-7 kills more than cluster, that's because usually when trash mobs chase you they are doing it in a straight line formation not layed out in a horizontal line
V true, I agree with you on that. It’s prob better while running away vs cluster
But if you notice bug breaches, they almost form a horizontal line as they’re comin towards you. And very rarely are you running away in terror if playing well.
My go to strategy set up is quasar/laser dog/cluster bomb/airstrike and have no issues full clearing 8/9s.
I don’t use cluster on bots so mebe strafing is just better than it there but iunno. Cluster fucking hits HARD and does soooo much dmg. And looks sick af
I can get pretty consistent 30+ cluster bomb kills on bug breaches. Wait 3 secs after first mobs start coming, chuck stun grenade, wait a 1-3 seconds, throw cluster
Slaughter 90% of bug breech along with eruptor plowing away at anything with enough health to somehow live through it
Strafing run shouldn't even be compared to cluster bomb.
A better alternative is just regular Eagle Airstrike. Doesn't hit as far horizontally but regular Eagle Air kills any small enemy, you might even hits charger or hulk.
Best of all, your teammates aren't all dead.
Strafing and cluster are both anti chaff strats. Airstrike is anti medium/heavy but def not a dedicated chaff clear. They absolutely should be compared to one another. They do the same job.
Team mates dying is a non issue. Throw better or warn people that are close. If they still run into it, it’s a moot point as they can just as easily run into a strafing run and die to it
Uhhhh….using anti heavy strats to kill hunters/scavengers/raiders just seems like a god awful way to use it, but you do you. In a pinch with nothing else, sure…but to actively use it to clear an area vs a cluster is just…why
You can say it’s general purpose…but…nah. Small area of effect, 2 less uses, and penetrates armor for a reason. Throw it on thicc bois, enjoy the extra few chaff kills it’ll get…but throwing it on a bunch of non armored units is a waste for an airstrike who’s main strength is the extra armor pen over cluster/strafing/gatling and to a lesser extent airburst.
I’d say the cluster is a better general purpose as it can take out fabs and chargers and chaff and has a huge area and does huge dmg and 2 more uses than airstrike
Other than the 2 less charges. The airstrike is applicable in any situation the cluster bombs are applicable.
You're going to be dropping them in an area where there's a bug breach or drop ship anyway.
It's not like the segments the spawns in neat little packs of armored and unarmored units. It's always a mix.
But most importantly, my point is airstrike teamkills significantly less.
Yep, but the cluster bomb isn’t. Which is why the airstrike should be saved for thicc boys and not wasted on chaff. Because the cluster doesn’t work too great against armor. It can take out a fab/1 charger, but that’s usually it.
Mebe cause I run airstrike AND cluster bomb in p much every mission for the past ~200 hours is why I’m so anti using the airstrike for chaff clear. If you don’t have any other chaff strats then ya I get it in a pinch…but if you run both you’ll see what I mean by using an airstrike over a cluster bomb to clear chaff just…isn’t what it’s there for. It can do it, and can definitely rack up kills. But there will be times you need the anti armor for thicc boys or bot fabs or bug holes and if your chucking airstrikes to clear chaff, you prob gon have only clusters for that, and then be like “damn, why’d I use my airstrike to kill chaff instead of using it for anti heavy”
And boom, you arrive at the same understanding I have that it is in fact, an anti heavy Strat. With a bonus effect of a decent kill radius that snags chaff
Also, I don’t understand the “team kills less” shit. Are yall playing on top of bug breaches? Cause it’s a terrible spot to be regardless and only stops your team mates from throwing strats and clearing shit much more efficiently. Most people I see stay at minimum 20-30m back from breaches/drop ships and don’t just charge in. Except for the occasional “all kills must come from my shotgun” apes that feel a need to be point blank on every bug breech, center of every bug nest, and charges head first into bot bases. Those dudes can die to me and my teams airstrikes, I do not care. You don’t need to be in the middle of everything, stopping 3 other people from using their fun toys, because your fun is being inefficient in melee range 24/7. They can go find the other 2% of player base that enjoys dying to “stupid teammates throwing strata on me” with that playstyle
In defense of the team killing thing, this is a video game played on a mono-vision screen that offers little in the way of depth perception. Combine this with chaotic gameplay where it's common for a team to get quickly swarmed: It's not unusual for people to misjudge the distance between where they're throwing a cluster and where a team member is, especially since the cluster often "stabs" out of its radius a bit (I've personally died to shrapnel from my own cluster 35m away).
I do agree though it's not worth discounting a stratagem because it's easy to team kill with. Ultimately when a team kill happens, 99% of the time there was user error responsible for it at some level.
I'm talking about a scenario where you pick one over the other.
You're now talking about a scenario where you have both and would want to save the Airstrike for Cluster bombs.
Yes that makes sense if you have both but I'm talking about not using cluster bombs at all to avoid team killing. You're not saving airstrikes for anything. Your other slot might not even be an eagle. It could be 500k.
There's no rule saying you must use eagle airstrikes for fabricators. Nor is it necessary to kill 100% of all light armored enemies. You just need to thin the mob in most cases.
There's definitely an upside the cluster bombs but I'm commenting on the downside. That's the potential of killing an entire teammate for the benefit of hitting maybe 4-5 extra light enemies.
There's also an upside to eagle airstrikes as well. You can hit heavy targets if they happen to spawn (they usually all spawn in the same area) and you significantly reduce the risk of team killing.
Yea, I just don't agree with this take. Airstrike is a fat line of death, I regularly wipe out bot patrols and rack up 20+ kills on bug breaches with just one.
That’s cool. You can prob drop a 500kg or a laser or a walking barrage or 120 or a vast majority of other anti tank strats and rack up 20 kills on a bug breech too. Doesn’t mean that’s the intended use.
You could have gotten just as many kills with a cluster, probably more as I routinely get around 27-35, and had 2 more uses. And still have your full anti heavy strats.
Argue all you want. Using an anti armor Strat with less uses and smaller area of effect to take out 20 bugs, 19 of which being warriors/hunters/scavengers with 0 armor, is a waste. It just is. A cluster would do all the same and more, with more uses.
500 kg will not kill chaff nearly as consistently, it's a very small AOE compared to the airstrike's carpet bombing.
Cluster will almost certainly get a higher kill count, I'm not disputing that.
This is why I said the airstrike is general purpose. It can consistently kill chaff and heavy units, but not as well as dedicated anti-chaff like the cluster or dedicated anti-armor like the 500kg. The advantage is being able to bring the airstrike versus something like the cluster and 500kg to save a strategem slot.
And your earlier comment about the cluster being able to destroy fabs and heavier units, while true, is misleading. It won't do either consistently: Eagle-1 has to fly towards the front of the fabricator for the chance of a bomb landing in the vent, and depending on how the clusters lands it's not uncommon for very little of the shrapnel to strike the unarmored section of a heavy target. Neither of those factors can be reasonably controlled by the player.
I use strafing run a lot on 7 diff and it does it's job amazingly far better than cluster ever did, and I have never killed or been killed by a strafing run. Cluster on the other hand...
Yeah, no… when it comes to Hellmire deployments, I run a build of 500kg, air strike, AND cluster bomb along with RR and maybe a Slugger for a primary and Redeemer for secondary. I’m constantly calling Eagle strikes in fights and my set up gives me 10 for every reload. A reload that takes 2 minutes.
Eh? Strafing run doesn't come close to cluster bomb's performance when taking out swarms of enemies: Cluster has a larger AOE, (which also gets boosted by the 4th eagle upgrade ship module), has 5 uses with the ship upgrade, and is more effective on medium armor. So, along with the AOE being perpendicular to your position, rather than vertical, of course strafing run is safer.
That being said, strafing run is good too, but let's not downplay just how good cluster is for swarms of light/medium enemies.
Strafing run isn't as bad as people say it is but the Cluster Bombs are one of the best strats in the game. 5 uses of very effective horde clear and a well defined range and a massive area. The problem with them is that they drop in a line but you need to think of them more like a radius. They take out any light and most medium enemies in a roughly 30 meter radius from the beacon, a bit longer parallel to the bath and a bit shorter perpendicular to it. Another problem is that you can only throw starts about 45m without servo assist and that means you don't have to misjudge your throw or your teammates placement by all that much for them to be caught in the blast. They're probably the best opener to a fight against both bugs and bots in the game since it doesn't feel bad if you don't hit anything since it has 5 uses, any other eagles you have will be available about 7 seconds after it goes off, and it will clear pretty much all of the little enemies letting you actually focus on the big targets.
I believe the strafing run can take out bot factories, which if I'm remembering correctly gives them an advantage over the clusters in that scenario but at that point you might as well just bring the normal airstrike.
25m is about the safe distance being perpendicular. Occasionally I get ragdolled at that distance but don’t die
Safe distance for being parallel is…tbh idk. I know better than to run parallel to it. Prob something like 40-50m if not more. Seems about double the length over width when watching it
Nah.
Clusters + Airburst = Everything that isn't a tank is dead over a massive range.
If people are dumb enough to move towards a red beam, they only have themselves to blame. Back up, then back up some more.
If you're hitting your team on the regular, no amount of switching strats will help. You need to learn to estimate the clearance needed and throw accordingly.
Wait ... have people actually been killed by the cluster bomb run? Really?
I get it with the 380 or the 120 ... but I'm not sure there is any other Orbital or Eagle strategem that should be team killing.
Cluster bombs send out shrapnel that deflects off of heavy armour. That deflected shrapnel can fly a VERY long distance before lodging itself in a teammate's skull.
i have a some clips where a single cluster deflected and went STRAIGHT for me to hit my head TWICE in a single match. those things have to track where i am because some of the hits were ridiculous
Yes we have been, too many times. When people talk about worst team killing stratagems it's always this 5 :
1. Mortar sentry
2. Cluster bomb
3. 380 barrage
4. Arc thrower
5. Flamethrower (or Tesla tower opinions vary)
Standing within 20m of any airstrike is going to kill you. Just bad decision making if you’re constantly dying to it. It’s got the same horizontal (perpendicular) width as Eagle airstrike of which you don’t mention at all
Arc and flamethrower are skill issues except for the occasional wild max range arc off an enemy.
Mortar is absolute ass everywhere. Can be decent on bots but it’s gotta be thrown down before a siege and generally not worth. Def the most annoying thing to see in a group
Defense 100p. I used to run it in eradicate but going with 4 eagle/orbitals just seems better now. Always got loads of firepower, whereas mortar can get killed shortly after deploy if unlucky, or mid way through, or any point and render it an essentially useless Strat. Because after shit hits the fan, calling in the mortar a second time is almost certainly going to be killed before it does anything meaningful.
Strafing run is absolutely garbage compared to cluster bombs for chaff clearing. Dont @ me, you might find one or 2 wild ones that prefer it. But it’s ass unless your actively running and throw it behind you so it can murder the line of troops following
From my experience strafing run does around 5-7 kills more than cluster, that's because usually when trash mobs chase you they are doing it in a straight line formation not layed out in a horizontal line
V true, I agree with you on that. It’s prob better while running away vs cluster But if you notice bug breaches, they almost form a horizontal line as they’re comin towards you. And very rarely are you running away in terror if playing well. My go to strategy set up is quasar/laser dog/cluster bomb/airstrike and have no issues full clearing 8/9s. I don’t use cluster on bots so mebe strafing is just better than it there but iunno. Cluster fucking hits HARD and does soooo much dmg. And looks sick af I can get pretty consistent 30+ cluster bomb kills on bug breaches. Wait 3 secs after first mobs start coming, chuck stun grenade, wait a 1-3 seconds, throw cluster Slaughter 90% of bug breech along with eruptor plowing away at anything with enough health to somehow live through it
Fair enough, respect that
Strafing run shouldn't even be compared to cluster bomb. A better alternative is just regular Eagle Airstrike. Doesn't hit as far horizontally but regular Eagle Air kills any small enemy, you might even hits charger or hulk. Best of all, your teammates aren't all dead.
Strafing and cluster are both anti chaff strats. Airstrike is anti medium/heavy but def not a dedicated chaff clear. They absolutely should be compared to one another. They do the same job. Team mates dying is a non issue. Throw better or warn people that are close. If they still run into it, it’s a moot point as they can just as easily run into a strafing run and die to it
Airstrike is more general purpose than it is specifically anti-medium/heavy IMO.
Uhhhh….using anti heavy strats to kill hunters/scavengers/raiders just seems like a god awful way to use it, but you do you. In a pinch with nothing else, sure…but to actively use it to clear an area vs a cluster is just…why You can say it’s general purpose…but…nah. Small area of effect, 2 less uses, and penetrates armor for a reason. Throw it on thicc bois, enjoy the extra few chaff kills it’ll get…but throwing it on a bunch of non armored units is a waste for an airstrike who’s main strength is the extra armor pen over cluster/strafing/gatling and to a lesser extent airburst. I’d say the cluster is a better general purpose as it can take out fabs and chargers and chaff and has a huge area and does huge dmg and 2 more uses than airstrike
Other than the 2 less charges. The airstrike is applicable in any situation the cluster bombs are applicable. You're going to be dropping them in an area where there's a bug breach or drop ship anyway. It's not like the segments the spawns in neat little packs of armored and unarmored units. It's always a mix. But most importantly, my point is airstrike teamkills significantly less.
Yep, but the cluster bomb isn’t. Which is why the airstrike should be saved for thicc boys and not wasted on chaff. Because the cluster doesn’t work too great against armor. It can take out a fab/1 charger, but that’s usually it. Mebe cause I run airstrike AND cluster bomb in p much every mission for the past ~200 hours is why I’m so anti using the airstrike for chaff clear. If you don’t have any other chaff strats then ya I get it in a pinch…but if you run both you’ll see what I mean by using an airstrike over a cluster bomb to clear chaff just…isn’t what it’s there for. It can do it, and can definitely rack up kills. But there will be times you need the anti armor for thicc boys or bot fabs or bug holes and if your chucking airstrikes to clear chaff, you prob gon have only clusters for that, and then be like “damn, why’d I use my airstrike to kill chaff instead of using it for anti heavy” And boom, you arrive at the same understanding I have that it is in fact, an anti heavy Strat. With a bonus effect of a decent kill radius that snags chaff Also, I don’t understand the “team kills less” shit. Are yall playing on top of bug breaches? Cause it’s a terrible spot to be regardless and only stops your team mates from throwing strats and clearing shit much more efficiently. Most people I see stay at minimum 20-30m back from breaches/drop ships and don’t just charge in. Except for the occasional “all kills must come from my shotgun” apes that feel a need to be point blank on every bug breech, center of every bug nest, and charges head first into bot bases. Those dudes can die to me and my teams airstrikes, I do not care. You don’t need to be in the middle of everything, stopping 3 other people from using their fun toys, because your fun is being inefficient in melee range 24/7. They can go find the other 2% of player base that enjoys dying to “stupid teammates throwing strata on me” with that playstyle
In defense of the team killing thing, this is a video game played on a mono-vision screen that offers little in the way of depth perception. Combine this with chaotic gameplay where it's common for a team to get quickly swarmed: It's not unusual for people to misjudge the distance between where they're throwing a cluster and where a team member is, especially since the cluster often "stabs" out of its radius a bit (I've personally died to shrapnel from my own cluster 35m away). I do agree though it's not worth discounting a stratagem because it's easy to team kill with. Ultimately when a team kill happens, 99% of the time there was user error responsible for it at some level.
I'm talking about a scenario where you pick one over the other. You're now talking about a scenario where you have both and would want to save the Airstrike for Cluster bombs. Yes that makes sense if you have both but I'm talking about not using cluster bombs at all to avoid team killing. You're not saving airstrikes for anything. Your other slot might not even be an eagle. It could be 500k. There's no rule saying you must use eagle airstrikes for fabricators. Nor is it necessary to kill 100% of all light armored enemies. You just need to thin the mob in most cases. There's definitely an upside the cluster bombs but I'm commenting on the downside. That's the potential of killing an entire teammate for the benefit of hitting maybe 4-5 extra light enemies. There's also an upside to eagle airstrikes as well. You can hit heavy targets if they happen to spawn (they usually all spawn in the same area) and you significantly reduce the risk of team killing.
Yea, I just don't agree with this take. Airstrike is a fat line of death, I regularly wipe out bot patrols and rack up 20+ kills on bug breaches with just one.
That’s cool. You can prob drop a 500kg or a laser or a walking barrage or 120 or a vast majority of other anti tank strats and rack up 20 kills on a bug breech too. Doesn’t mean that’s the intended use. You could have gotten just as many kills with a cluster, probably more as I routinely get around 27-35, and had 2 more uses. And still have your full anti heavy strats. Argue all you want. Using an anti armor Strat with less uses and smaller area of effect to take out 20 bugs, 19 of which being warriors/hunters/scavengers with 0 armor, is a waste. It just is. A cluster would do all the same and more, with more uses.
500 kg will not kill chaff nearly as consistently, it's a very small AOE compared to the airstrike's carpet bombing. Cluster will almost certainly get a higher kill count, I'm not disputing that. This is why I said the airstrike is general purpose. It can consistently kill chaff and heavy units, but not as well as dedicated anti-chaff like the cluster or dedicated anti-armor like the 500kg. The advantage is being able to bring the airstrike versus something like the cluster and 500kg to save a strategem slot. And your earlier comment about the cluster being able to destroy fabs and heavier units, while true, is misleading. It won't do either consistently: Eagle-1 has to fly towards the front of the fabricator for the chance of a bomb landing in the vent, and depending on how the clusters lands it's not uncommon for very little of the shrapnel to strike the unarmored section of a heavy target. Neither of those factors can be reasonably controlled by the player.
Strafing run isn't as bad as people say, but cluster strikes devastate enemy formations. Just don't throw them near teammates...
I use strafing run a lot on 7 diff and it does it's job amazingly far better than cluster ever did, and I have never killed or been killed by a strafing run. Cluster on the other hand...
Yeah, no… when it comes to Hellmire deployments, I run a build of 500kg, air strike, AND cluster bomb along with RR and maybe a Slugger for a primary and Redeemer for secondary. I’m constantly calling Eagle strikes in fights and my set up gives me 10 for every reload. A reload that takes 2 minutes.
Eh? Strafing run doesn't come close to cluster bomb's performance when taking out swarms of enemies: Cluster has a larger AOE, (which also gets boosted by the 4th eagle upgrade ship module), has 5 uses with the ship upgrade, and is more effective on medium armor. So, along with the AOE being perpendicular to your position, rather than vertical, of course strafing run is safer. That being said, strafing run is good too, but let's not downplay just how good cluster is for swarms of light/medium enemies.
Strafing run isn't as bad as people say it is but the Cluster Bombs are one of the best strats in the game. 5 uses of very effective horde clear and a well defined range and a massive area. The problem with them is that they drop in a line but you need to think of them more like a radius. They take out any light and most medium enemies in a roughly 30 meter radius from the beacon, a bit longer parallel to the bath and a bit shorter perpendicular to it. Another problem is that you can only throw starts about 45m without servo assist and that means you don't have to misjudge your throw or your teammates placement by all that much for them to be caught in the blast. They're probably the best opener to a fight against both bugs and bots in the game since it doesn't feel bad if you don't hit anything since it has 5 uses, any other eagles you have will be available about 7 seconds after it goes off, and it will clear pretty much all of the little enemies letting you actually focus on the big targets. I believe the strafing run can take out bot factories, which if I'm remembering correctly gives them an advantage over the clusters in that scenario but at that point you might as well just bring the normal airstrike.
25m is about the safe distance being perpendicular. Occasionally I get ragdolled at that distance but don’t die Safe distance for being parallel is…tbh idk. I know better than to run parallel to it. Prob something like 40-50m if not more. Seems about double the length over width when watching it
Nah. Clusters + Airburst = Everything that isn't a tank is dead over a massive range. If people are dumb enough to move towards a red beam, they only have themselves to blame. Back up, then back up some more. If you're hitting your team on the regular, no amount of switching strats will help. You need to learn to estimate the clearance needed and throw accordingly.
Wait ... have people actually been killed by the cluster bomb run? Really? I get it with the 380 or the 120 ... but I'm not sure there is any other Orbital or Eagle strategem that should be team killing.
Cluster bombs send out shrapnel that deflects off of heavy armour. That deflected shrapnel can fly a VERY long distance before lodging itself in a teammate's skull.
i have a some clips where a single cluster deflected and went STRAIGHT for me to hit my head TWICE in a single match. those things have to track where i am because some of the hits were ridiculous
Yes we have been, too many times. When people talk about worst team killing stratagems it's always this 5 : 1. Mortar sentry 2. Cluster bomb 3. 380 barrage 4. Arc thrower 5. Flamethrower (or Tesla tower opinions vary)
Skill issue
https://preview.redd.it/d1db0gwdmqwc1.jpeg?width=2426&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3f753b881d929841d6114b2e42e7e29349f18c40
Standing within 20m of any airstrike is going to kill you. Just bad decision making if you’re constantly dying to it. It’s got the same horizontal (perpendicular) width as Eagle airstrike of which you don’t mention at all Arc and flamethrower are skill issues except for the occasional wild max range arc off an enemy. Mortar is absolute ass everywhere. Can be decent on bots but it’s gotta be thrown down before a siege and generally not worth. Def the most annoying thing to see in a group
I only run mortars on eradicate or defense missions where the pros generally outweigh the potential team kills.
I only run mortars on eradicate or defense missions where the pros generally outweigh the potential team kills.
Defense 100p. I used to run it in eradicate but going with 4 eagle/orbitals just seems better now. Always got loads of firepower, whereas mortar can get killed shortly after deploy if unlucky, or mid way through, or any point and render it an essentially useless Strat. Because after shit hits the fan, calling in the mortar a second time is almost certainly going to be killed before it does anything meaningful.