Last Stand Tyranid Hive Tyrant

Overview

A guide for melee and ranged Tyranid Hive Tyrants for both maps on Last Stand

Introduction

*This is a work in progress, I will be updating over the next week until it is complete*
Last Updated 02FEB2013

The Tyranid Hive Tyrant is one of the best characters for Last Stand, effective balancing of his wargear can make for a heavy hitting tank or a high damage ranged killer. Depending on your playstyle you can really customize how the Nid (as I call it) plays out. This guide will show the two most effective nid builds that work for me, but there are tons of other builds out there. I’ve also considered non-DLC builds since I know alot of players out there don’t have it yet. Not to worry I have you covered. I invite other nid users to submit their favorite builds and I will include them in this guide as well. I recently elited my nid (something I’ve been avoiding for a long time since I didn’t really see the point of eliting), and am working through the levels again to try and get some effective lower level builds. Again if any readers have low level builds send em in and I’ll include them.

I know this is still a work in progress, but if you like what you see here please don’t forget to give it a thumbs up! Thanks for reading I hope this guide helps.

*wargear pics and accessory information credit goes to the team at [link]

Melee Tyranid Hive Tyrant

Bottom line my favorite playstyle. Melee really allows you to carry your team and with smart tactics you can solo all of the dopplegangers on Wave 16 in Bloodied Collesium (I’ll post a youtube vid shortly) or kill all superheavies in anvil. So here is my favortie melee build:

Level 20 Build with DLC

• Behemoth Claw
  Unlocked by achievement “Heavy Hitter” (Kill 25 superheavy units as the Tyranid Hive Tyrant).

  Two-handed melee weapon, 30.0 dps, +50 Armor Rating. Grants Trait: Armor Piercing.

• Poison Cysts
  Starting equipment

  Armor Rating: 160, -14% Movement Speed, +50 Health. Grants Ability: Toxic Miasma (25: Emit a toxic cloud that poisons a large area. Enemies in the area suffer damage over time equal to half of the Hive Tyrant’s maximum health over 20 seconds.) Grants Traits: Fearless (Immune to suppression), Unshakable (Makes the wearer immune to knockback.)

• Genestealer Nest
  Starting equipment

  Accessory. Grants Ability: Call Genestealer (10: Call Genestealer minion creatures whose rending claws reduce the effectiveness of enemy armor.) Can only have one active Genestealer squad at a time.

• Bio-Feedback
  Unlocks at level 12

  Accessory. +25 Health. Grants Trait: Feedback Invulnerability (The death of any minion creature briefly makes the Hive Tyrant invulnerable.)

• Explosive Decomposition
  Unlocks at level 16

  Accessory. +20 Minion Creature Health, +50 Health. Grants minion trait: Death Throes (A toxic cloud erupts upon death of any minion creature, damaging enemies in a large area. The higher the minion creature’s maximum Health, the greater the damage done.)

• Synapse
  Unlocks at level 15

  Commander Item. -50% Ability Energy Costs.

Gameplay Basics
This build relies heavily on a combination of Toxic Miasma (Emit a toxic cloud that poisons a large area. Enemies in the area suffer damage over time equal to half of the Hive Tyrant’s maximum health over 20 seconds) and Feedback Invulnerability (The death of any minion creature briefly makes the Hive Tyrant invulnerable).

Toxic Miasma Usage:
The basic concept is to boost your maximum health so that Toxic Miasma has the most effectiveness. This is good since Toxic Miasma has the ability to be stacked and this can lead to a very effective area of effect attack with a great range. I read in another guide the author described it as “In short? This is your Orbital Strike. This is your Roks. This is your Eldritch Storm. This is your Let The Galaxy Burn!. This is your drill that will pierce—ahem.” I have to agree.

Making the Hive Tyrant Invulnerable:
Another added bonus of the build is the ability to make yourself temporarily Invulnerable. You can do this by casting “Call Genestealer” and creating the genestealer squad then recasting “Call Genestealer” which will kill the first squad and make you invulnerable for a short time. You can do this continiously until you run out of energy to make yourself nearly invulnerable. I say nearly because your invulnerability shield will expire just before you can recast “Call Genestealer” so there will be a very short period of time where you will be exposed to damage. Practicing getting the timing right can shorten this period dramatically.

Combining all abilities and attributes for standard melee gameplay:
As you progress through each wave in either map you will not be very mobile, this is due to the armor giving you the “-14% Movement Speed” attribute. So it is important to find a place whether it be in a spawn corner or a place on the map you can easily defend.

Make sure you always have a genestealer squad active, that way whenever you start to feel pressure from the wave you can recast the genestealer squad and make yourself invulnerable. If you get swamped by enemy units in range of miasma, cast it several times to deal a significant amount of damage and finish them off with the claws. The genestealers also work well in conjuction with the build for several reasons. First, they have rending claws that lower an enemy unit’s armor, this is important as your behometh claws are armor piercing so the combination makes for quick kills. Secondly, when you recast the genestealers squad they explode due to “Death Throes (A toxic cloud erupts upon death of any minion creature, damaging enemies in a large area. The higher the minion creature’s maximum Health, the greater the damage done.)” Even though their overall health isn’t high there are three of them, and this makes up for their relatively low health and deals damage over a wider area. Lastly, they’re cheap to cast and with Synapse they will not drain your energy significantly which is important because even with Synapse, toxic miasma can get expensive energy wise with continuos casting.

Bottom line, basic gameplay should include healthy usage of toxic miasma and continous (spamming) of genestealers. You will notice how quickly the combination of miasma and the constant explosions of genestealers will kill enemy units. Also the added invulnerability will allow you to have a large portion of the wave focus on you without being able to damage you. Make sure to watch your energy level and if you start to get low, start thinking about where you have to move to take some of the pressure off you. Even with your high armor rating, the Tyranid is slow which makes him vulnerable to being overwhelmed as most units can outrun and overtake him.

I like to circle around large groups of units and attack at the edges. I focus on killing ranged units first then focus on melee. I will walk to ranged units attack them, cast miasma, and let the melee follow me into the miasma effect area. You must deal with ranged threats as this build is can be weak against mobs of ranged attacks (raveners in particular).

Ranged Tyranid Hive Tyrant

Ranged can be very fun and is a great way to rack up 600+ kills in a round. The equipment you need for an effective ranged nid requires you are level 20 to fully realize the ranged capabilities but lower level ranged nids are possible just less effective. Basic concept of the ranged nid is to have beefy pets and a fast ranged weapon. I use the searing wargear which we will cover later, but a ranged nid built around searing needs a high damage per second meaning the ranged cooldown needs to be right around 1. What’s also nice is you don’t need the DLC for this build. And here it is:

• Venom Cannon
  Unlocks at level 4

  Two-handed ranged weapon, 13.0 dps. Grants Trait: Armor Piercing (Melee or Ranged attacks ignore up to 240 armor value.)

• Bonded Exoskeleton
  Unlocks at level 6

  Armor Rating: 134, -14% Movement Speed, +75 Health, +50 Minion Creature Health, +2 Minion Creature Health Regeneration. Grants Traits: Fearless (Immune to suppression), Unshakable (Makes the wearer immune to knockback.)

• Toxin Sacs
  Unlocks at level 2

  Accessory. +20 Minion Creature Health. Grants Trait: Searing (The Hive Tyrant’s Melee and Ranged attacks deal additional damage over time. Damage scales with the Hive Tyrant’s maximum health. Multiple searing attacks stack.) Grants Minion Trait: Searing (All minion creatures’ Melee and Ranged attacks deal additional damage over time. Damage scales with the attacker’s maximum Health. Multiple searing attacks stack.)

• Tyrant Guard Nest
  Unlocks at level 3

  Accessory. Grants Ability: Call Tyrant Guard (20: Call a Tyrant Guard minion creature. Highly resilient, the Tyrant Guard can also taunt enemies.) Can only have one active Tyrant Guard at a time.

• Ravener Nest
  Unlocks at level 18

  Accessory. Grants ability: Call Ravener.

• Evolution
  Unlocks at level 20

  Commander Item. +2.0 Health Regeneration. Grants minion traits: Resilient (+50 Health and +2 Health Regeneration), Swift (+25% Movement Speed), Combat Expert (+25% melee and ranged damage)

Basic Gameplay and Concept:

It goes without saying that you should always have both your pets spawned and nearby. You need the tyrant guard to take pressure off the nid if he starts to get swarmed. The Tyrant Guard has the taunt ability, which is the ability to target a specific squad and make it attack the guard. Even though you can’t control this ability he seems to do this to squads that are closeby to him, so as long as you keep him near you or you stay near him he will take squads away from you allowing you to attack them with your venom cannon.
The best part of this build is the toxic sacs, I won’t list the whole summary here (it’s at the beginning of this section) but this is the most important part, “Multiple searing attacks stack”. What this means is the effect of searing will stack on top of each other with each consecutive attack. So the inital attack does not need to deal that much damage, but each subsequent attack must come in rapid succession thereby “stacking” each attack and dealing a massive amount of damage over time. The Tyrant Guard won’t benefit much from this, however the Ravener and your Venom Cannon will. I don’t have the numbers on it, but if you watch a unit’s health during a ravener’s attack who has searing you can see how effective this build is. With the added bonuses of your armor and with Evolution you get a ravener who is incredibly fast and has a crazy high DPS, and a Tyrant Guard who has very high health and the ability to taunt. You use the guard to tank for you, the ravener to kill for you, and the venom cannon to eliminate large squads quickly oh yea it also is Armor Piercing so those tanks on Anvil or Chaos Lord on Bloodied are significantly easier with multiple attacks. And because the Venom Cannon has a ranged cooldown of 1, it fires every second so the DPS is high and you can stack the attacks very quickly.
The ranged nid is much weaker than the melee nid, you need to focus on steering clear of mobs of melee units. Let your pets handle the close quarter melee attacks, the nid needs distance and lots of it. The venom cannon has incredible range and has a decent accuracy of 75%. Stay near the guard and let him handle melee when it comes up, just make sure you target the units attacking the Tyrant Guard and they should be handled very quickly.
Find a nice corner of the map and set up shop. You will not be spending much time in the center of the map, but most likely moving around the outer edges or holing up with your allies in a corner. Either way your nid will be a force to reckon with once you employ these very basic tactics. What’s also nice is this build is relatively easy to play since it doesn’t require much action on the players part. Manage the amount of enemies attacking the nid and you will be able to be the player that kills the enemy units with the rest of your team backing you up.

Other Great Wargear To Consider

Don’t forget these gems. For some players this set of wargear can sometimes go unnoticed, and they serve as great supplements to builds. Even though some are starting equipment or low level unlocks take another look at them and see if they better suit your specific playstyle.

Psychic Scream
Unlocks at level 11

Accessory. Grants Ability: Psychic Scream (10: Reduce damage output and defenses of all enemy units within the area of effect of the ability.)

Thornback Carapace
Unlocked via paid DLC pack

Armor Rating: 190. Grants Traits: Barbed Armor (Enemies that attack the Hive Tyrant in melee take 20 damage for every attack), Fearless (Immune to suppression), Unshakable (Makes the wearer immune to knockback.)

Crushing Talons
Unlocks at level 14

Two-handed melee weapon, 14.6 dps. +1 Minion Creature Health Regeneration. Grants Trait: Feedback Zeal (The Hive Tyrant regains 3 Health every time one of his minion creatures attacks.)

Enlarged Scything Talons
Starting equipment

Two-handed melee weapon, 16.0 dps. Grants Minion Traits: Armor Piercing (All minion creature attacks ignore up to 100 armor value), Combat Expert (+30% melee and ranged damage.)

Soloing the Doppleganagers on Wave 16

**More to come, I’ll add a youtube video of this unless theres a dopple Space Marine with claws this should almost always work**

Last Thoughts

**More to come**