Overview
The Fade is harder to master than the skulk, but if you can learn to keep yours alive, you will be very fast and deadly. So for today’s lesson we are going to arm you with the knowledge you need to come out swinging, literally.
Video
Introduction
The Fade is harder to master than the skulk, but if you can learn to keep yours alive, you will be very fast and deadly. So for today’s lesson we are going to arm you with the knowledge you need to come out swinging, literally.
Fade Stats – As of Build 254
Health: 250
Armor: 80 (93/107/120) with Carapace
Energy: 100 (+10% Max Energy and Regen per Adrenaline)
Resource Cost: 40 (+5 Per each passive Evolution)
Gestation Time: 25 seconds (+2 seconds per each Evolution)
Crouch Speed: 3.1
Run Speed: 6.2 (+ 0.5 per Celerity level)
Slot Abilities
1 – Swipe
Range: Melee
Energy Cost: 7
Damage: 37.5(75)
Fire Rate: 0.65
Type: Puncture
Secondary Ability – Blink
Energy Cost: 13 (Start) – 32 (Channeled)
Cooldown: 0.4 Seconds
Gradually tints your vision blue when active.
Propels you forward at a speed of around 15.
SHIFT – Shadowstep
Biomass Level: 2
Energy Cost: 15
Cooldown: 0.73
Accelerates faster than Blink but doesn’t add momentum.
Can be used in conjunction with movement keys to dodge in any direction.
Great for instantly teleporting upwards after engaging an enemy to confuse him.
2 – Vortex
Biomass Level: 5
Energy Cost: 20
Duration: 20 Seconds
Vortex when fired, places a portal at your location. You will teleport back to the portal immediately after your attack goes through regardless if you hit or miss.
It can be used defensively to harass and chip away at groups of enemies and offensively as I will demonstrate later in this video.
3 – Stab
Biomass Level: 8
Range: Slightly longer range than swipe.
Energy Cost: 30
Damage: 160
Type: Normal
Cast Time: 2 Seconds
Fire Rate: 3 Seconds
Stab burst of damage makes it excellent as an opening or finishing attack.
During the stab animation, you will walk slower and cannot jump, which can make it difficult to hit a moving target.
You can use Shadow Step during Stab’s attack animation to overcome the speed penalty.
Note: Shadow Step, Vortex and Stab are researched as a group
Resource Cost: 35
Research Time: 120 Seconds
Researched at: Shade
Evolution Choices
My preferred Evolution choices change from early to late game.
In early game, I feel that celerity is more useful to me as I can maneuver easier and that the marines are are their weakest.
I tend switch to Adrenaline mid to late game for more ability usage if any of the following occurs:
– Marine’s begin to use Shotguns or Exosuits
– Marine’s begin taking more than 3 hits to kill.
– Carapace, or advanced fade abilities become available.
I almost always choose Carapace over Regeneration as I can quickly retreat back to get healed.
And Finally Aura gives me the added benefit of knowing enemy locations, avoiding ambushes and prioritizing weakened enemies. While having phantom is nice, your strength is in speed not stealth.
Jump Queuing and Maintaining Speed
Jump Queuing is a mechanic in the game that allows the player to hold down the jump key to prepare one extra jump before hitting the ground. As soon as your feet touch the ground, that extra jump is consumed and you will bounce upward.
Holding space the entire game will not work, you only need to hold space at any point before you land again. This mechanic is in place to lessen the accuracy required to jump continuously and it works on all players except for lerk and exosuit.
Doing this will help conserve your energy and allow you to retain some speed for a few seconds. You should think about blinking again after a few jumps as your speed will degrade by 1 per second from top speed of 15
Also, holding down crouch reduces air friction and allows you to easily fit into crawl spaces but it does not reduce your hitbox while in flight.
Don’t forget that you should stop crouching when you are swiping near a marine otherwise the marine will outrun you.
Cautiously Assassinate
For a rookie fade player, it is best for you to take out marines who wander off on their own. Your speed and strength should give you the upper hand on a single equally skilled marine.
However, beware of skilled marines with a shotguns, they can be bad news for you. If you have full health, you cannot be instantly killed by a single shotgun blast at any level. It is safer to retreat than to risk getting hit again. You can always gradually chip away at him forcing him to retreat.
Safer than Sorry
It is better to be Safer than Sorry. Focus on doing hit and run tactics against the same target. In difficult battles, you may have to be content with just landing a single attack. Each time you escape danger, evaluate the status of your health, armor and energy.
If you lost too much health you should fall back get healed up. Personally, I tend to retreat if I lose my armor.
If you are low on energy, wait a moment to recover energy for future escape.
In mid to late game, you will find that the marines will require more hits to take down and they pack more firepower. You will need to adjust for this by dodging more often and take advantage of reloading weapons.
You can also use misdirection by attacking once then faking an early retreat to save health. Most Marine players may drop their guard. This is when you might catch them switching targets or in a reload cycle.
It is important to remember that, any damage you do to the target or any ammo wasted can be considered a small victory, as it stalls the marines from advancing. You staying alive after each engagement is a huge win. Remember that the Fade fairly expensive, any greed for just one last kill or a misstep in judgement will get your Fade killed more often than not.
Energy Management
Once you gain powerful abilities like Stab, Vortex and Shadow Step, your ability to pick off a marine traveling in a group becomes a bit easier.
However, you may run out of energy faster as a result. Obviously evolving the Adrenaline Trait will give you more energy useage, but this is a problem that lessened with simple energy management. Even if the battle is in your favour, it is a smarter move back off to recover some energy.
While fighting, glance down at your energy meter every few seconds to see your energy reserves. It helps to visually familiarize yourself with how much energy each ability consumes so that you can avoid going empty.
Close Quarter Hazard
I’ve seen many new Fade players fall into what I call the Close Quarters Hazard. This is when you are trying to chase a marine player who is aggressively dodging, during this time you may be walking on the ground leaving yourself vulnerable to attack.
Fast and Smooth
A good way to help manage that Close Quarters Hazard is to perform Fast and Smooth. maneuvers, which will help keep you alive longer in a pinch.
The easiest maneuver to perform depends on if there is enough height clearance in the room. Plan on blinking or shadow stepping above your target even if your first attack doesn’t land. This gives you a few advantages:
– It throws off the aim of all enemies firing at you.
– You can see where your target is looking so you can try to land out of sight.
– Provides a strategic overview of your surrounding area.
– Can be used to transition to an escape if badly injured.
As previously mentioned, if you decide to use Vortex offensively, you can place a vortex portal at the apex above your target, this allows you to drop down and attack your target twice. This can be very deadly but beware of the increased energy consumption.
Finally the last maneuver doesn’t require as much vertical space, provides strong evasion early game, but it is hard to master. The key to this maneuver is to not blink into your target and to swipe at your target as you pass by. It looks simple here, but when the target is moving erratically you will need try to maintain this method as long as you are not taking too much damage.
Conclusion – Practise Required
It will take time to achieve a high level of proficiency with the Fade, I encourage that you practise often, and constantly adjust the amount of aggression and cautiousness you feel comfortable with.
Keep in mind that your experience will not be the same in all games. Your team may be outmatched, Fade abilities may be researched too late, etc. It will affect how easy of a time you have as a Fade., so don’t see those games in a negative light, but instead see them as a challenge to see how long you can survive.
Final Words
Thanks for joining me on this episode of Tactical Operations, I hope to see some more good Fade players out there.
Don’t forget to Rate and share this video with your friends and if you got a request for the next video let me know in the comments below.
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