I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about Arty, and while there are a lot of informed opinions, there are a lot of uninformed ones as well.
So, me being me, I’m going to try to play arty nearly exlusivly for one week and see what I can find out, different loadouts, different maps…one merc
Have fun. I want to like Arty and try to force myself to play him, but I don’t like how ineffective I feel in comparison to Skyhammer.
Oddly enough, I always get 6k points as Arty with a negative KD, and around 4k for Skyhammer with a pretty good KD. Ammo packs must be worth a fair bit…
First night impressions arty is great for ranged suppression of open points.
c4 locations on underground. Building at end of railway.
Went 24-6 on underground mostly from defending c4 at end
Only OK at chapel, skyhammer is better for ev and end.
Try treating arty like semiautomatic sniper and works out better, cqc it is skill based, you must be MUCH better or they must be hurt.
So far he feels much much more situational than skyhammer. Buff currently recommended
I found the Dreiss AR better than most rifle, i win at any range vs a skyhammer w/e his weapon. Only fragger is hard to kill due to his HP if i miss too much HeadShot.
The Dreiss AR is potentialy the best DPS riffle of the game in good hands, the damage output is insane (25) so 50 in the head combined with a very good fire rate.
Kira has this riffle too, but has only 90hp make her a worst duelist.
The arty strike is fine outdoor but limited indoor, it’s more a map issue.
new loadout last was the burst rifle, (not stark) took your advice, and running the Driess ar with unshakable. was consistently near the top of my team, often leading it, I’ve better learned to anticipate when enemy team will be rushing thru a certain area.
thing I’ve learned, watch the respawntimer and count from then, when the enemy spawns go thru a point, plant artillery just b4 that time. it has caused a few ragers, and cries of “HACKER”
Driess ar treat it like a battle rifle, and it will do you wonders, I’ve been able to consistently beat shottynubs that try to flank. undergrount, (apparently one off my better maps)
28-2 earned my first godlike achievement.
terminal, one of my poorer maps.
19-7 rampage.
still think that the artillery needs a buff, its way too picky about placement, But a good on the fly way of killing someone who ducks behind cover on an open map.
Trick with arty I’ve come to enjoy- sniper at the end of map, pop a few rounds into him and make him duck into cover, drop artillery behind that cover…splattered sniper
You seem to be pretty good. 28-2 as Arty, standing ovation from me to be honest. I top the scoreboard, but it is with points not kills 
I will definitely start looking at respawn timers though, never even considered that.
I always said it : the Dreiss is a beast ! 
No worries if you can’t kill things with the Artillery : the main goal is to scare people or deny areas. And with two Arties that reloads every 20 seconds, you can deny and scare a lot of times. Of course if you also kill things, it’s even better !
Just dropping by dishing out some likes and such. And saying keep it up, I enjoy reading your findings.
I’m actually having a good time playing Arty too these days, always managing to be at least third overall.
Keep it up, you’re not alone on your quest 
He’s really strong at generating points. Any map with an ev
is guaranteed top scoreboard for me. I just can’t secure 1v1
fights like I can with other mercs.
I can put up with his weapons, my biggest complaint is the arty
designator. It’s really finicky,and often leaves me exposed far
longer than needed to get the correct shot.
So tonight’s thing I want to mention is artys nightmare. Tears that don’t MOVE. Arty is designed to be a medium range suppression agent. However if your team isn’t moving up for some reason. It might be a good idea to change mercs.
Hehe to be fair every Merc suffers, if your team doesn’t push. But Yeah if you are standing behind Arty and your name isn’t Vassili you are doing it wrong.
I had a game on Chapel yesterday where my team pushed up so far Proxy forgot to repair the EV. I had the laborious task of doing it as Arty.
So it turns out as I actually get good… so does Arty.
The Dreiss AR is incredibly hard to use, and you will lose all close range engagments, and a lot of long range ones because of the M4 being kinda OP.
But apart from that I really like Arty now.
ok midweek-ish impressions
Arty- Suppression specialist, his job is sneaky. His Artillery is hard to spot and unfortunately, hard to aim due to bugs, However if you need to prevent c4 from being planted/defused, he can drop artillery right on that spot from the other side of the map.
Low speed and higher hp, hes a medium range duelist as well with the driess. Snipers cant 1v1 him, and cant hide behind cover without artillery spattering them all over the place. Experienced players will stay out of the limelight, sneaking around the edges and stopping any rushes dead in their tracks.
With a good team covering the flanks, Arty is a force to be reckoned with. You cant group behind cover, and staying in the open is dangerous . You go to plant plant/defuse,either you get head shot from a distance or artillery turns you into a red stain.
Artys not on the front lines, his best placement is between vasilli and the team. he’s not really going for kills, he’s laser focused on keeping that team moving, and his laser designater is focused on choke-points and the obj.
[quote=“metallicCandle;38831”]ok midweek-ish impressions
Arty- Suppression specialist, his job is sneaky. His Artillery is hard to spot and unfortunately, hard to aim due to bugs, However if you need to prevent c4 from being planted/defused, he can drop artillery right on that spot from the other side of the map.
Low speed and higher hp, hes a medium range duelist as well with the driess. Snipers cant 1v1 him, and cant hide behind cover without artillery spattering them all over the place. Experienced players will stay out of the limelight, sneaking around the edges and stopping any rushes dead in their tracks.
With a good team covering the flanks, Arty is a force to be reckoned with. You cant group behind cover, and staying in the open is dangerous . You go to plant plant/defuse,either you get head shot from a distance or artillery turns you into a red stain.
Artys not on the front lines, his best placement is between vasilli and the team. he’s not really going for kills, he’s laser focused on keeping that team moving, and his laser designater is focused on choke-points and the obj. [/quote]
Are you sure you’re running into bugs? One thing you have to remember about Arty is that you can activate your laser designator even when an artillery strike isn’t ready. This ends with you accidentally designating targets before your ability is off cooldown. Also, it doesn’t like you moving your mouse around too much while designating a target. The thing about artillery being very quick and hard to spot is that the area of effect is very small and the damage is quite minimal. The offset of that being that you can call down strikes further than Skyhammer can throw his marker. Also, just in case you’re unaware, you can manually equip your designator by pressing 4 and then zoom in with right mouse. This makes calling in artillery far more precise.
[quote=“Fuze;38836”][quote=“metallicCandle;38831”]
Are you sure you’re running into bugs? One thing you have to remember about Arty is that you can activate your laser designator even when an artillery strike isn’t ready. This ends with you accidentally designating targets before your ability is off cooldown. Also, it doesn’t like you moving your mouse around too much while designating a target. The thing about artillery being very quick and hard to spot is that the area of effect is very small and the damage is quite minimal. The offset of that being that you can call down strikes further than Skyhammer can throw his marker. Also, just in case you’re unaware, you can manually equip your designator by pressing 4 and then zoom in with right mouse. This makes calling in artillery far more precise.[/quote]
oh yes, the problem with artys designator is that many places you have clear LOS to simply show as red circles, A bump, and irregularity and the designater simply wont work.
this includes using 4 and manually aiming. To tes this me and a friend went ino chapel on a match vs each other, he threw his marker, and after the airstrike landed, I tried to place a desgnator in the same areas his airstrike had hit.
Even when moving and trying from new angles most of the places that the airstrike landed (and would have killed someone) were red circles for me.