I wanted to do a quick review of the Battlefield Heroes beta and what I got from it. Turns out that I got a bit more addicted to the game than I first realized. Most of us in our group have played BFH and it seems a lot of you are all starting to play a little more. So I wanted to give some tactics advice and maybe a couple tips on a few of the maps. But first I want to get into a little bit of detail on the classes that you can play.

Leveling up is pretty standard the better you do the more experience you get. In this field kills don't help you as much as capping flags or just doing massive amounts of damage to people. I find myself doing a ton of damage but not getting the kills because someone else happens to get that last shot. I'm Ok with that because I just got the experience from all of the damage I just did. Though they get the fame of having the kill, at least I'm advancing. You get a HP (Hero Point its not extra health) every other level. These points you can use towards your skills to improve them. Another good thing about HP is you can distribute them as you like and if you messed up you can just click the redistribute button so you can fix it. As you level up more and more items become available in Store as well.

During battle you get points Called VP or Valor Points. You can use them buy weapons and different clothing. Weapons and Clothing purchases with VP can only be rented for either 7 days or a month. Battlefunds on the other hand you can use to permanently buy clothing and rent out bonuses to VP and Experience.

There's 3 Different Classes.

Soldier:
The Soldier is my favorite class to play mainly because, if you know me at all you know I love to heal in games. So this class fits me quite well. I have a couple of setups that I like to run with, but one of them only works really well with others with the same build.

That build is the Grenade Spam build. With this build I put as many points as I can into Grenade Spam, while still putting 1 point into the 6th sense ability and at least 2-3 points in healing. This build is a good build with at least 1-2 other Grenade Spam builds with it. The goal of this team is to pretty much spam the heck out of the Grenade Spam Ability while using 6th sense to see the enemies around corners. Its pretty much unstoppable.

The problem is this is more of a solo game most of the time. I have a build just for that as well, which is the Burning Bullets build. With this one I tend to put at least 2-3 points into burning bullets at least 3 into first aid and if i have the extra points i toss in 1 in 6th sense. With this build just like the one above you use 6th sense to look around corners time your use of Burning Bullets and strafe a lot and there's a lot of toasty enemies on the ground waiting to re-spawn.

When I play this class I really like to play the Second one best. I love to keep close to the gunners and keep them healed while they blast away at all of the enemies while I lite them all on fire!

Healing Troops

Commando:
With the commando there's a few different play styles that most people use and that I use myself. There's the normal sniper, stick back behind your troops and snipe the enemies from a distance using any cover you can. With this type of build I like the take the Elixir skill which allows you to dash away while most people are too busy trying to see past the dust cloud to even shoot you. Also its nice to take a heavy gun for long distance shooting with the Piercing Shot skill to boost damage while sniping. I often see people with Mark Target with this build as well to randomly mark key places where most people stand in Stealth.

The second one I tend to see is the short range sniper. These guys stick really close to the soldiers and the Gunners throwing out a barrage of sniper shots. A lot of the people who play this style also love the up close and personal approach and take the Poison Blade ability so they can do extra damage over time with their Knife. With this build its important to put a lot of points into the stealth ability. Its also nice to grab the Troop Trap ability and set up traps behind you so when you need to flee people chasing you get a little surprise while chasing you.

Of the two I prefer the second build thats more up and in the enemy's face type of play. There's nothing like sending out a ton of fast sniper shots right into the face of the enemy.


Troop Trap, Tank coming at full speed. Yeah I'm about to get owned.

Gunner:
This class has to be my least favorite class of the three. With the gunner there's a few weapons that seem pretty useless. As an example I would not suggest the really fast rate of fire gun. It seems to do a minute amount of damage and can't seem to keep up with the Soldiers damage. The advantage of being the Gunner seems to be its survivability. A good gunner can do some amazing damage with a well placed Explosive Keg while spamming the Leg It ability to out maneuver their opponent. The advantage to having a Gunner surrounded with Soldiers or other Gunners on the same team is the Leg It ability gives an AOE bonus so everyone around can suddenly go amazingly fast for quite a long period of time.

Often times You'll notice that even though you have your gun right on the enemy that the mini-guns tend to have such a bad spred that you miss a lot. The Frenzy Fire ability seems to help in this but it does not seem to help enough. Hero Shield is very important and is what helps gunners really out last the enemy. Having a gunner around with I Eats Grenades is a really good defense to the Grenade Spam team but unless they have a couple Gunners with this skill the other team is likely to still get mobbed by grenades.

When I do use the Gunner, I tend to be the more up close and personal type and take a lot in Hero Shield, as well as Leg It with I Eats Grenades ability. Nothing like ruining a soldiers day while gobbling up all of his grenades.


4 vs Me. Seeing a pattern here? (Look out for the "Smooth Criminal" Look-Alikes!)


There are 4 Different maps for Battlefield Heroes. Though it seems that most Servers only have Coastal Clash and Buccaneer Bay going as they are the most popular. My official favorite has to be Victory Village.

Victory Village is a very up close and personal map something that I really like. Its very good for close and long range sniping, if you know the village well enough. Its really handy to have 6th sense equiped to duck around a buildings and see where the enemy are coming from. This place is an intricate village of buildings. It has a couple area's that are really high volume of players like to hang out where Grenade Spam works wonders.

Coastal Clash is another one of my favorites. Though I've only been playing this map a few days I'm really starting to love the duck and move tactics that the map presents you with. There's also some really nice sniper area's where people just don't notice you in time to do anything about it. I really do like going for the middle part in this map be it the upper side or the bottom side. There's an advantage to holding each of these. This one I still need to explore some more myself to get it down a bit better.

Seaside Skirmish is probably my least favorite map. This map is a really huge vehicle oriented map. I love to be a soldier and thats likely the reason though. Soldiers are pretty much worthless vs tanks and this map has a ton of tanks and planes. Though if you really like to play with vehicles this is your map. I find that the main street where the two Cap's are in the center of the map are the funest part to play around in. There's a tower on that main street where snipers like to set up troop traps that blow people off the ladder and into the deep ravine. Its a good tactic the first time, after that though most people seem to watch out for it. There's a few places where they put the anti plane gun turrets that are really useless because of so many trees in the way.

Buccaneer Bay is a mixture of everything. This is the map that has just about everything someone might want, from tanks, planes, up close combat, ranged combat and some really nice close up action in the middle of the map in the broken boat. My favorite is to see people on the many hills sniping or seeing someone come out from behind a hill path that you didn't think anyone would ever use.

Each map has its use and purpose, love them or hate them they are a great set of maps to explore and use your own tactics on the fly.

In general this game is really fun and only has more to come in its development.

Hope to see all of you in game!

~Kate

Game Website: Battlefield Heroes
Player Name: Seriene
Most Played: Earthie, Level 15, Nationals