control turret - just tried doing this remotely and it does work, this makes it more useful, you can also control an enemy turret if you hack it.
Worthwhile skills?: Operative
FoFifth
(FoFifth)
#22
[QUOTE=A.i;328335]here is the most fun thing that happened to me with stickies - I planted one somewhere on the ground and then planted another one, and a single enemy got 2 of them on him at the same time 
many times Ive had 2-3 kills with 1 sticky when enemies are clustering 
same with cortex - 3-4 killes makes your death worth it…[/QUOTE]
You can have more than 1 sticky down at a time?
A.i
(A.i)
#24
yes, either when its recharged (not sure) or when you have respawned - the old one stays
Sinner
(Sinner)
#25
In my opinion:
Must have abilities
Caltrop Grenades - Great for softening up the enemy entering an area, or as an early warning system since no one ever slows down to cross them safely.
Sticky Bomb - The true mine of Brink. Pretty much undetectable unless the enemy knows where you threw it and is looking for it. Or use it as a grenade to take at least one person out of the fight(either the person with the bomb runs off, or a buddy stops to remove it).
EMP Grenades - I didn’t get much chance to use this before selling a level to respec, but I’ve seen it used to great effect. Disables enemy turrets, hack objectives, and possibly the escort bot.
Decent abilities
Firewall Command Post - Doesn’t take long at all to use(faster than upgrading) and hinders the enemy. The more time they spend taking command posts, the less time they’re shooting at you.
Comms Hack - Good on defense maps so you can spot which direction they’re coming from. Kinda useless if your team doesn’t pay attention to radar. Also breaks Combat Intuition, if you care about that.
Hack Turret - Doesn’t take long, and gives the enemy a nasty surprise.
Cortex Bomb - Show those teabaggers who’s boss.
Useless abilities
Homing Beacon - Best tactic with this seems to be to disguise, then get behind enemy lines to mark enemies. But what’s the point?
Control Turret - Haven’t actually used this one, but I’m just guessing based on turret behavior and how bad the mounted machine guns are.
A.i
(A.i)
#26
Control turret is great when you have gatling turret - you hide somewhere close behind a wall and take control over it - was killing enemies without exposing myself
EMP was a match saver when I disabled some mines and turrets by the last objective…
Smokeskin
(Smokeskin)
#27
Caltrops are great. Don’t just throw them where people run through, they do too little damage for that, throw them where enemies will have to fight from. Strafing back and forth on caltrops is bad, crouch strafing is bad, it is lose-lose for them.
Sticky bombs were great fun to start with, these days people just remove them. It causes a bit of distraction among the enemy.
Hack turret was fun to begin with, but thesw days people use turrets near them and spycheck so you can’t get to them.
EMP nades can be a life saver, but highly situational.
Everything else is rather crappy. Comms hack bears special mention, it nullifies combat intuition for your entire team, you should NEVER use this.
The operative is highly dependant on low enemy skill, and he by far has the lowest team utility of all classes, and as such I can’t recommend it as a primary class. Luckily he only have a few worthwhile abilities, I like to have some for him and almost always play him for hack objectives, and hacking the resort door. For non-hack objectives, your team should never have more than 1 operativr, and mostly 0 would be better.
NthLegion
(NthLegion)
#28
I hadn’t even considered that. Makes an ability I already didn’t find very useful actually harmful to the team. That’s unfortunate.
peteXnasty
(peteXnasty)
#29
How is comm hack useless? It nullifies CI because…it let’s you see the entire enemy team. Gee wow
Sticky grenade is tough to use well but devestating.
Homing beacon is amazingly useful. You see the operative should not be doing direct combat…that’s why disguise is your default ability. Disguise, hang behind enemy team, and mark medics and objective classes for focus fire. Drop caltrops in the middle of a firefight or chokepoint and run. Sticky bomb their spawn door. Comm hack everyone so the enemy is unable to sneak anywhere. Disguise behind enemy lines, time the spawn wave, and bounce from turret to turret hacking them all to really ruin their day…dual purpose, now they’re getting shot in the back from multiple spots, AND you just took out the defensive back line.
The ONLY operative ability that has no use is control turret. A good operative is an active and mobile one making full use of his many versitile abilities …not camping in a corner using a turret. MAYBE if turrets were capable of more, with more HP…but othrwise there’s way better for you to do, anbbsides…you’ll kill more with your gun anyway.
Smokeskin
(Smokeskin)
#31
CI only works for enemies that are not on the radar. I notice CI, it has saved me myriads of times. Radar, hardly ever.
Homing beacon is amazingly useful. You see the operative should not be doing direct combat…that’s why disguise is your default ability. Disguise, hang behind enemy team, and mark medics and objective classes for focus fire. Drop caltrops in the middle of a firefight or chokepoint and run. Sticky bomb their spawn door. Comm hack everyone so the enemy is unable to sneak anywhere. Disguise behind enemy lines, time the spawn wave, and bounce from turret to turret hacking them all to really ruin their day…dual purpose, now they’re getting shot in the back from multiple spots, AND you just took out the defensive back line.
Marking enemies with homing beacon is only marginally useful in reality, and you have to be careful to be on the target’s radar, or you’ll trigger CI.
Disguises often don’t work well as people are becoming better at spychecking on FF off servers and when people travel in groups, often you’ll face the guy you’re disguised as, and on top many have begun reporting “spy as me” when they see an op moving in to disguise. In Team Fortress, it became recognized that disguises only bought you a few seconds of indecision from the enemy (and you could run by sentries) - in Classic you could play dead, in TF2 you got the much more powerful cloaking devices, which was needed for the spy to work, and the TF2 spy doesn’t even have the limitation of only being able to disguise at a corpse.
Sticky bombing their spawn door will most of the time just get the bomb removed for no effect. I get mine off most of the time, and most enemies I hit with it get it off too. Using it at spawn is just silly. What you want is for it to stick to an enemy in the middle of combat, where distracted players might not notice their team mate in trouble, and at least you’ll buy your team a few seconds of an upper hand when the stickied guy is running in front of teammates for removal.
Comms hack is as I said counterproductive, it breaks CI. And at least so far, radar use isn’t wide spread.
Turret hacking, it seriously isn’t that useful. I had great fun with it in the beginning, but these days, turrets are either placed at choke points where you’ll get gunned down trying, or they’re placed hidden with narrow fields of fire to the objective, where they generally aren’t able to hit enemies (I am so hoping for a turret I hacked to kill the engy trying to remove my hackbox one day, but so far no luck).
I really liked the operative in the beginning, but the problem is he needs the enemy to make mistakes to work, and people are getting smarter to his tricks. All his undercover stuff, all the “he shouldn’t be in direct combat” as you put it, in the end it helps your team FAR less than a warm gun and buffs and revives and ammo and mines that other classes bring to the table would. I still like and use the operative, but I wouldn’t play him unless there’s a hack objective, he is just pretty weak.
jazevec
(jazevec)
#33
[QUOTE=Smokeskin;328398]
The operative is highly dependant on low enemy skill, [/QUOTE]
And relying on your opponents being bad is never a good idea. Not only your tactics will fail against competent players - bad players will be dragging you down to their level. If you want to get better - play with people better than yourself. This isn’t just about gaming - int works in many other areas of life, like playing an instrument or programming.
[quote=peteXnasty;328420]
Homing beacon is amazingly useful. You see the operative should not be doing direct combat…that’s why disguise is your default ability. [/quote]
I have an issue with this. When you start disguising, you stop shooting people. Shooting people contributes in a small way to the victory of your team. Shooting people near objective contributes much more. When you disguise yourself, you have to justify that with effectiveness. An operative playing that way will be more useful than no player in this slot. But will he be more useful than an average (movement, map knowledge, aim) player who just goes to objective area and shoots all enemies in the way ? Not likely, I think.
Disguise makes it harder to be effective. If you remain undetected for the entire match, and kill someone every 2 minutes, that still doesn’t mean you’re more useful than a generic player. At least in ET:QW I could backstab contructors in the process of disarming an explosive charge.
Kalbuth
(Kalbuth)
#34
A good disguise can just lead to usefull backrape that will let your team through. I don’t play op, but I see disguise as one more way to flank ennemy
As for the rest, talking from the PoV of the guy on the receiving end of Ops :
- I hate Caltrops. Simply because there’s no removing them. Nothing. You pass slow or you suffer pain, but you are going to be affected no matter what. Very good tool
- I love Ops showing mines to me
- Cortex Bomb makes me very angry when I fall for it : very good psycho weapon
Other Op abilities didn’t strike me that much as “usefull” or “annoying”
Kurushi
(Kurushi)
#35
I think homing beacon is good on public servers where people need telling
and backrape ftw
jazevec
(jazevec)
#36
Brand Damage removed one class (Field Op) between ET:QW and Brink. -1 class. I’m baffled they left the less useful class. Operatives struggle to benefit their team, they border on uselessness. -1 class. Moral of the story ? Serious cats have 3 classes to choose from: Medic, Engineer, Soldier. Support, ???, Damage Dealer. It’s almost like in a MMORPG, although borders are less clear cut. Sad.
Speaking of backraping - correct me if I’m wrong, but W:ET had lower damage if you attacked people from behind ? Something like no headshots ?
Iramaj
(Iramaj)
#38
[quote=nthlegion;328225]i have a 20th level, fully-specced operative. Here’s what i think of the abilities:
Firewall command post is not very useful. It only gives about 30 xp and has never, to my knowledge, prevented the enemy team from taking a command post.
because it takes longer it gives people the opportunity to shoot them while they are trying to take it over
homing beacon is nice when the target moves behind a wall, or you get flash-banged.
Sticky bomb is nice when you can actually get it to stick.i like to throw them in the hallways or on a separate path for someone trying to flank me. I know when it is picked up and if they are alone, boom.
caltrop grenade is probably my favorite operative ability. Decent damage and duration. Good on defense.
Hack turret is great when you can actually get to an enemy turret and hack it.
Control turret is good, but when playing with strangers you run the risk of pissing off the engineer who placed the turret. Also, my operative stands directly behind the turret like a moron. I can’t even get him to crouch. The hints and tips section says you can control the turret from anywhere on the map, but if so, i haven’t figured out how to do it.
Cortex bomb is a must have.
The emp grenade is nice, but your team really needs to be aware of when you use it in order to take advantage of it. It’s especially good when the enemy team has a bunch of turrets set up on defense in a small area.[/quote]
jelly kelly melly beans
A.i
(A.i)
#39
But, if you are at enemies back and close - then why use iron sights
I found myself not using them at all unless I’m sniping with a rifle or revolver