How to Fletcher?

(Resine) #1

Well i was thinking about getting an engineer and i liked the idea behind the sticky bombs.
But as far as i know, he has some exclusive shotgun is it any good?
How do you play him in general?

(LifeupOmega) #2

I generally run with the Ahnuld and Empire-9 (or the Blishlok if I’m not feeling the first loadout that day), the former being his (semi) exclusive shotgun and the latter being a machine pistol. I never use the ability keys to use my stickies, always pressing 4 instead - easier to aim them, and then I can quick switch to the detonator or hit E when needed. Also I tend to run with my sticky bombs selected and not my melee.

The Empire is my go to weapon for engaging at range, as the Ahnuld is typically the weakest shotgun in terms of raw damage, but has better range too (if I recall correctly), so I’ll only use that for finishing off weaker opponents for the most part. Your stickies however are your best damage source, learn to aim them, learn their range, find sneaky spots to place them where you know the enemy team will be, and keep in mind they one-shot two of the three medics in the game - make sure you take them out.

Try to flank a lot, if you can get a sticky or two on an unaware enemy who then walks into the rest of his team you’ll have a field day, but any advantage from flanking is a great one when you take into consideration the time it takes to throw, and detonate, a bomb. Try not to throw stickies when you’re being shot at unless you know you can get away with it - as it stands the enemy can hit your bombs as they leave your hand, letting them detonate in your face and potentially killing you.

Obviously, as an engineer, you’ll be on objective duty too, what this means is you can also utilise your bombs to cover C4 and movable objectives. Hide them on walls or ceilings and keep your finger on the detonator, it’s typically more work than to use than a Proxy Mine but if you stay aware it shouldn’t hinder you. Outside of this you also have a semi-reliable way to destroy generators and the EV if no one else can do it better, with an 8 second cooldown on your bombs you can usually keep up pressure and whittle down the health of both of these if need be.

Obviously most of this is practice, and others may do it differently, but I tend to have fantastic results when flanking all game if I’m not objective focusing. Also keep in mind there’s currently an annoying bug where your bombs will straight up disappear after being thrown - so if your bomb doesn’t do anything, chances are it just voided.

(Szakalot) #3

protip: pull out stickies with ‘4’; never ‘q’

(cornJester) #4

I actually rebound pulling out my stickies to scroll down and detonate to scroll up. Works well. Told Q to go F itself.

(Para) #5

I’ll re-post this from a reddit thread I commented on:

Fletcher is one of the ultimate “peekaboo” type mercs.

Peek out of corners and poke people with your shotty, or throw a sticky. Try to keep your crosshair at about shoulder/upper chest level, that way you can take most advantage of the “star” spread pattern without missing trying to go strictly for headshots. Try to avoid long range combat. always look to flank your opponents instead of trying to take them head on.

Learn the arc of the stickies: keep throwing them over and over and over until you have the arc down to an instinct. You can also throw them further by transferring your momentum (I think) with a long jump. It’s also possible to sticky jump if you time the jump just right, and you can get some good height off of a perfectly timed jump. Haven’t really used this in a real game though.

Use your secondary for longer range engagements, but like I said before, you should try to avoid those.

Overall, use your stickies offensively. You can set defensive traps, but the radius of the stickies is pretty poor, so more than likely the enemy will just run past it. If you’re going to place a defensive trap near C4, try to place it in a blind spot (on ceilings and other blind corners). Another tactic I like to use is to place stickies in a corner where I know an enemy will seek cover.I will start shooting them, and they run to the corner for cover, and you can guess what happens next.

(Resine) #6

Thanks a lot for tips.

(Jojack) #7

I play Fletcher almost exclusively, aside from the past few days where I’ve been play testing Phantom almost exclusively.

I have to say, using Q or rebinding it to something you can handle is far better than hitting 4, hitting LMB to throw then hitting ‘1’ or ‘2’ to switch back to your gun. It’s pretty simple math. One button push is better than pushing 3 for the exact same utility in such a fast paced game.

Personally, I run with stickies in my hand instead of the normal melee weapon all other mercs run with. If I get into an engagement with them out, that’s fine. However, I’ve gotten good at using Q for bombs in mid gun fight. I can strafe both ways and aim perfectly and it’s just SO MUCH FASTER than pushing 3 buttons in order to throw nades (detonate) and then get back to getting bullets on target.

I actually have more trouble with detonate being E because that means I can’t strafe right at the same time as detonating which leaves me out of cover for a split second and has resulted in death more times than I like.

(Szakalot) #8

[quote=“Jojack;43274”]I play Fletcher almost exclusively, aside from the past few days where I’ve been play testing Phantom almost exclusively.

I have to say, using Q or rebinding it to something you can handle is far better than hitting 4, hitting LMB to throw then hitting ‘1’ or ‘2’ to switch back to your gun. It’s pretty simple math. One button push is better than pushing 3 for the exact same utility in such a fast paced game.

Personally, I run with stickies in my hand instead of the normal melee weapon all other mercs run with. If I get into an engagement with them out, that’s fine. However, I’ve gotten good at using Q for bombs in mid gun fight. I can strafe both ways and aim perfectly and it’s just SO MUCH FASTER than pushing 3 buttons in order to throw nades (detonate) and then get back to getting bullets on target.

I actually have more trouble with detonate being E because that means I can’t strafe right at the same time as detonating which leaves me out of cover for a split second and has resulted in death more times than I like.[/quote]

Imo its all about lvl of control, with ‘4,lmb’ you can achieve more than ‘q’:

  • one button push away is barely a noticeable difference,
  • one button push makes your throw much more difficult: cause now you need a rhythm ‘press a button some time before you want a sticky thrown AND aim ahead of enemy’s movement’
    I would highly recommend anyone to try it with ‘4’, anyone I heard of improved A LOT in Fletcher play

Protip: Jump (and walljump) around with stickies, while-mid air its:

  • easier to throw sticky at enemies (just like high ground is easier to throw from)
  • harder to shoot you down
  • you’ll need to do it to run away from phantom : P
  • very nice tactic is long jump+walljump to peek a corner and throw a sticky super fast (bombs fly faster if you move faster)
(Jojack) #9

[quote=“Szakalot;43276”][quote=“Jojack;43274”]I play Fletcher almost exclusively, aside from the past few days where I’ve been play testing Phantom almost exclusively.

I have to say, using Q or rebinding it to something you can handle is far better than hitting 4, hitting LMB to throw then hitting ‘1’ or ‘2’ to switch back to your gun. It’s pretty simple math. One button push is better than pushing 3 for the exact same utility in such a fast paced game.

Personally, I run with stickies in my hand instead of the normal melee weapon all other mercs run with. If I get into an engagement with them out, that’s fine. However, I’ve gotten good at using Q for bombs in mid gun fight. I can strafe both ways and aim perfectly and it’s just SO MUCH FASTER than pushing 3 buttons in order to throw nades (detonate) and then get back to getting bullets on target.

I actually have more trouble with detonate being E because that means I can’t strafe right at the same time as detonating which leaves me out of cover for a split second and has resulted in death more times than I like.[/quote]

Imo its all about lvl of control, with ‘4,lmb’ you can achieve more than ‘q’:

  • one button push away is barely a noticeable difference,
  • one button push makes your throw much more difficult: cause now you need a rhythm ‘press a button some time before you want a sticky thrown AND aim ahead of enemy’s movement’
    I would highly recommend anyone to try it with ‘4’, anyone I heard of improved A LOT in Fletcher play

Protip: Jump (and walljump) around with stickies, while-mid air its:

  • easier to throw sticky at enemies (just like high ground is easier to throw from)
  • harder to shoot you down
  • you’ll need to do it to run away from phantom : P
  • very nice tactic is long jump+walljump to peek a corner and throw a sticky super fast (bombs fly faster if you move faster)[/quote]

It’s preference for sure. I’m just saying that if you get comfortable with the one button push while not sacrificing control, it’s objectively better. However, like I said, since I run around with bombs out for speed it’s only mid firefight that I use Q. I tried doing the 4 for stickies but Fletcher is such a mass button pushing type of merc that reducing that where ever possible has increased my combat effectiveness greatly.

(Para) #10

Middle mouse to throw, mouse 5 to detonate, scroll up for primary weapon, scroll down for knife.

My left hand is only for movement and the “use” key.

(Jojack) #11

[quote=“Para;43357”]Middle mouse to throw, mouse 5 to detonate, scroll up for primary weapon, scroll down for knife.

My left hand is only for movement and the “use” key.[/quote]

Is this how you play all your mercs or do you have to switch your bindings every time you play Fletcher?

I really hope they implement merc specific key binds soon. I might try your setup. I have sprint set to mouse 5 currently but since I’ve gone to sprint toggle it doesn’t matter where I bind that. My main problem with binding stuff to middle mouse button is I often scroll the wheel a little in the heat of the moment. Maybe I can mess with the scroll sensitivity somewhere. I think I would rather have scroll down be secondary because I’m already so use to hitting 3 for melee for sprinting purposes.

Actually I’m going to try RMB to throw (Q) and MB5 for detonate (E). This could work for all mercs except vasilli.

(Para) #12

Every merc, works out pretty well for me.

(wittyChicken) #13

How are them stickies damage wise? If I stuck one on the pillar at underground’s first objective, would it be enough for the defusing enemy to go boom?

(Yak) #14

Stickies do 100 damage if they’re directly on a target.

(Para) #15

You’ll probably want to place two stickies as a trap to guarantee the defuser dies. On the first objective in underground I like to place the stickies kind of high up on the pillar , like 1.5 body lengths high. I don’t think anyone has every spotted my stickies up there. There’s always a chance that some random explosive spam could take the stickies out, but there’s not much you can do about that.

(Resine) #16

I bought him today, i never had so much fun playing DB.
The best thing that happened to me, was when i placed 2 sticky bombs to 2 different proxies, then blew them up at once.

(Szakalot) #17

@Jojack Met a random fletcher on a server, good player ; but didn’t know how to use sticky bombs offensively (would only use them as traps).

Told him to use ‘4’ instead of ‘q’ and within one stopwatch game he went from a shotgun character with traps to an all-out fletcher killing machine.

The difference between aiming with the sticky while its already armed or by pressing ‘q’ is huge. By pre-arming you minimize the time from the moment you throw to the moment you want to detonate.

I suppose you could hold ‘q’ to achieve the same effect; provided holding one extra button (as opposed to LMB with ‘4’) does not impede your movement.

The key point here is that throwing an accurate bomb is better than throwing a bomb fast. A bomb that is stuck = 100 damage, random splashdamage could be like 40 or sth.

(tinyHouse) #18

What do you guys mean by 4 and q? I switched up my controls. Are you saying to throw out stickies with the quick skill key?

(Jojack) #19

Yes. When I’m in the middle of a firefight and the guy ducks behind a corner to reload or something, I push Q to throw a bomb around the corner and so I don’t have to worry about switching to bombs, throw, then switch back to gun I just have to push q real quick. Other players switch to Bombs by pushing 4 and then push LMB to throw them.

I’m just as accurate with Q as I am with LMB so there is no drop off there. If I’m running around the map I have my Bombs out instead of melee weapon anyway so I us LMB in those situations.

@Szakalot

I’m not sure what you mean by this

The difference between aiming with the sticky while its already armed or by pressing ‘q’ is huge. By pre-arming you minimize the time from the moment you throw to the moment you want to detonate.

I can aim just fine and then tap Q. But I’m not sure what you mean about minimizing the time to detonate by having bombs armed. Could you explain that?

(Szakalot) #20

The difference between aiming with the sticky while its already armed or by pressing ‘q’ is huge. By pre-arming you minimize the time from the moment you throw to the moment you want to detonate.

I can aim just fine and then tap Q. But I’m not sure what you mean about minimizing the time to detonate by having bombs armed. Could you explain that?[/quote]

The best (most accurate) way to throw the bomb:

  • pre-arm
  • aim
  • throw

as opposed to:

  • aim
  • quick-throw (switch weapon + plus throw)

If you prearm the bomb (fletcher puts his left hand forward, and right hand with sticky goes off screen), the time from the moment you aim to when you detonate is shorter, than the time to ‘switch to sticky, make the pre-arm animation, make the throw animation, let the sticky go where it may’

Whenever dealing with slow moving projectiles, esp. in a game as fast as this; you want to minimize the time from the moment you throw (read: aim) to the moment the sticky bomb reaches its target.

Prearming itself isn’t faster, but you can decide the moment to throw the bomb more precisely, since you don’t have to account for the throwing animation.

@Jojack Take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ChKVHoDoHE

Not a fragmovie, just a video i did to test recording, and the opposing team isnt very challenging.

Still; all the throws were done using ‘4’ instead of ‘q’