All push maps have their quirks: you have to work out how your flank and combo will move through different routes in a bunch of different areas to make a push work. Even though you can apply the same generic sort of push rules to every map, until you decide on good paths for your combo and whatnot, you won’t be playing the map well. Viaduct, on the other hand, and in fact koth is general, is simple. The maps are small, and on via, the terrain is rather unimportant in that you can make a push from any direction -- cliff, main, stairs, it really doesn’t matter much (as long as you’re aware of the sniper lines). However, when you play push maps all the time and don’t embrace the koth mindset, you may find yourself confused when playing viaduct, losing your medic between pushes, not having advantages when you attack, overcommitting to your defense... all bad plays which can be avoided to give you more time on the clock. So, for the newer players, this is my overview of how to play viaduct optimally.
The most important to know about koth is how the spawn timers work. These vary between koth maps but the general idea is the same -- the team that holds the point has long spawns, the team attacking has short spawns. On the version of viaduct used by esea, base spawn for attack is 4s with a 4s wave, while defense has 8s base and a 5s wave. Factoring in a 6s freeze time, this gives attacking spawns of 10-14s and defending spawns of 14-19s. As a result of this, trading players is always advantageous for the team without the point -- a 4-man suicide that kills only an enemy soldier is a success, because it gives you a 5-10s window to commit to a 6v5 push after the spawns.
The flow of the game is based around the spawn timers. When you do not own the point and do not have uber, you should always do a 4-man suicide to try to force the enemy uber/kill the medic/kill a heavy class. You should usually avoid focusing scouts during these suicides -- while killing a scout is better than nothing, a spawning scout coming in 5s after the fight can take a crit buff and cleanup, while a spawning soldier/demo 5s after the fight has to jump from spawn and thus can’t cleanup as well (or he can choose to walk from spawn and arrive 10s after the fight -- a good situation for the pushing team). During this time, your medic should build uber with a scout or pocket after buffing the suiciders -- after you force the uber or kill players and your players die, you get your spawns and push on the advantage. If you can’t force the pop or kill someone, either your focus is bad or you’re being out-deathmatched by too large of a margin.
When you have uber, usually you should also have an advantage from your previous suicide, and can confidently go exchange ubers, kill them with your uber, or intimidate them away from point with the threat of uber (saving charge for your defense). If you don’t have any advantage, you can choose to hold uber and suicide again to increase the chances of success on your push -- I don’t like this option, but if you’re in this situation, you either had a bad previous exchange or you’re being outplayed and can’t win. The other option (my preference) is to just go exchange ubers, which lets you set up a 1-2 push style -- use your uber to force their pop, then trade a few players while your medic backs up. Play passive in the resulting 4v4-ish situation (unless you have a health/numbers advantage after the exchange, in which case you just win), then wait for your medic to buff your quicker spawns and crush them in the 6v4(ish).
All push maps have their quirks: you have to work out how your flank and combo will move through different routes in a bunch of different areas to make a push work. Even though you can apply the same generic sort of push rules to every map, until you decide on good paths for your combo and whatnot, you won’t be playing the map well. Viaduct, on the other hand, and in fact koth is general, is simple. The maps are small, and on via, the terrain is rather unimportant in that you can make a push from any direction -- cliff, main, stairs, it really doesn’t matter much (as long as you’re aware of the sniper lines). However, when you play push maps all the time and don’t embrace the koth mindset, you may find yourself confused when playing viaduct, losing your medic between pushes, not having advantages when you attack, overcommitting to your defense... all bad plays which can be avoided to give you more time on the clock. So, for the newer players, this is my overview of how to play viaduct optimally.
The most important to know about koth is how the spawn timers work. These vary between koth maps but the general idea is the same -- the team that holds the point has long spawns, the team attacking has short spawns. On the version of viaduct used by esea, base spawn for attack is 4s with a 4s wave, while defense has 8s base and a 5s wave. Factoring in a 6s freeze time, this gives attacking spawns of 10-14s and defending spawns of 14-19s. As a result of this, trading players is always advantageous for the team without the point -- a 4-man suicide that kills only an enemy soldier is a success, because it gives you a 5-10s window to commit to a 6v5 push after the spawns.
The flow of the game is based around the spawn timers. When you do not own the point and do not have uber, you should always do a 4-man suicide to try to force the enemy uber/kill the medic/kill a heavy class. You should usually avoid focusing scouts during these suicides -- while killing a scout is better than nothing, a spawning scout coming in 5s after the fight can take a crit buff and cleanup, while a spawning soldier/demo 5s after the fight has to jump from spawn and thus can’t cleanup as well (or he can choose to walk from spawn and arrive 10s after the fight -- a good situation for the pushing team). During this time, your medic should build uber with a scout or pocket after buffing the suiciders -- after you force the uber or kill players and your players die, you get your spawns and push on the advantage. If you can’t force the pop or kill someone, either your focus is bad or you’re being out-deathmatched by too large of a margin.
When you have uber, usually you should also have an advantage from your previous suicide, and can confidently go exchange ubers, kill them with your uber, or intimidate them away from point with the threat of uber (saving charge for your defense). If you don’t have any advantage, you can choose to hold uber and suicide again to increase the chances of success on your push -- I don’t like this option, but if you’re in this situation, you either had a bad previous exchange or you’re being outplayed and can’t win. The other option (my preference) is to just go exchange ubers, which lets you set up a 1-2 push style -- use your uber to force their pop, then trade a few players while your medic backs up. Play passive in the resulting 4v4-ish situation (unless you have a health/numbers advantage after the exchange, in which case you just win), then wait for your medic to buff your quicker spawns and crush them in the 6v4(ish).
On the flip side, while holding the point, you want to use entry spam and your 6v4 advantage to deflect suicides as well as possible. Stopping the suicide without losing a player or having to pop your uber is unlikely, but you want to get as close to that as possible. In particular, holding uber is of great value while you own the point -- if you trade 1-2 players for their 4 and still have uber, you can buy yourself a more reasonable exchange by stalling with your uber until your spawns arrive. At the same time, dropping 3 players means you will lose the point and be in a bad situation to suicide on their medic as they’re capping, so using uber and keeping 6 up would be preferable to losing 3 players. An additional consideration is the threat of a half-push (will go into detail on this next) -- if you lose 1-2 players, their medic may just commit to the push and take the point from you immediately, not waiting for their spawns/repush.
Half-pushing is the style I use to attack the point. It’s more effective than keeping your medic in spawn and building uber, but also more risky -- your medic needs to back up at the correct time or he’ll die and you lose a minute of time in a suicide that accomplishes nothing. I would recommend trying the safer stay-in-spawn/4 man suicide if you’re inexperienced on viaduct, but you can view this as the next step.
The execution of a half-push is as follows -- your combo partially commits (walking on/below cliff, out to stairs) against a team who is holding on the point area (if they use an aggressive stairs/cliff hold on your side, you don’t leave the spawn with your combo). You try to draw some spam and throw some safety rockets, and your scouts/roamer/demo do a 4-man suicide. Since your medic moved farther out of spawn, your team has more health to work with on the jump, and has the additional distraction of your combo. Furthermore, you can more fluidly commit to point if you get an extremely effective suicide (forced their pop in a bad spot, got numbers advantage, etc.). Also, you have the freedom to suicide your pocket to follow up (medic <50hp, for example) and let your medic run back to spawn, essentially trading a bit of uber-building and slightly increasing the risk to your medic in order to increase your chances of forcing/killing the enemy. As long as your medic doesn’t get punished for how far he moves up, which is entirely possible if you’re reading the game state correctly, your play is much stronger.
On the flip side, while holding the point, you want to use entry spam and your 6v4 advantage to deflect suicides as well as possible. Stopping the suicide without losing a player or having to pop your uber is unlikely, but you want to get as close to that as possible. In particular, holding uber is of great value while you own the point -- if you trade 1-2 players for their 4 and still have uber, you can buy yourself a more reasonable exchange by stalling with your uber until your spawns arrive. At the same time, dropping 3 players means you will lose the point and be in a bad situation to suicide on their medic as they’re capping, so using uber and keeping 6 up would be preferable to losing 3 players. An additional consideration is the threat of a half-push (will go into detail on this next) -- if you lose 1-2 players, their medic may just commit to the push and take the point from you immediately, not waiting for their spawns/repush.
Half-pushing is the style I use to attack the point. It’s more effective than keeping your medic in spawn and building uber, but also more risky -- your medic needs to back up at the correct time or he’ll die and you lose a minute of time in a suicide that accomplishes nothing. I would recommend trying the safer stay-in-spawn/4 man suicide if you’re inexperienced on viaduct, but you can view this as the next step.
The execution of a half-push is as follows -- your combo partially commits (walking on/below cliff, out to stairs) against a team who is holding on the point area (if they use an aggressive stairs/cliff hold on your side, you don’t leave the spawn with your combo). You try to draw some spam and throw some safety rockets, and your scouts/roamer/demo do a 4-man suicide. Since your medic moved farther out of spawn, your team has more health to work with on the jump, and has the additional distraction of your combo. Furthermore, you can more fluidly commit to point if you get an extremely effective suicide (forced their pop in a bad spot, got numbers advantage, etc.). Also, you have the freedom to suicide your pocket to follow up (medic <50hp, for example) and let your medic run back to spawn, essentially trading a bit of uber-building and slightly increasing the risk to your medic in order to increase your chances of forcing/killing the enemy. As long as your medic doesn’t get punished for how far he moves up, which is entirely possible if you’re reading the game state correctly, your play is much stronger.
Additional notes:
On push map mid fights, it’s generally better to lose your medic and win the fight than keep your medic up and lose the fight. On viaduct, this is less true, and since your choice from the beginning of the round is just a dice roll (play more aggressive for a better chance but no guarantee of winning mid), it’s generally better to play passive as a medic on viaduct mid and keep your uber for a quicker re-push.
Based on numbers/uber situation, you can generally predict who is going to win the next fight -- in other words, you know when you’re at a disadvantage holding the point and will probably lose it. Treat this fight as if you’re attacking -- try to trade as many players as you can with them/suicide to force their pop -- even consider holding your uber and bombing their team while your medic retreats (sometimes just exchanging on point is better, but if your spawns won’t make it by the end of the uber, holding can be a better choice). When the point caps, the spawns switch immediately even for dead players (team that capped will have their currently-in-progress spawns increased, team that lost the cap will have in-progress spawns decreased).
Another manipulation you can do off of the currently-in-progress spawn changes (though it’s only really worth it for your medic) is to stop capping the point until your players spawn, then finish the cap (this can be a difference of 10-20% uber, in exchange for a few seconds on the clock, which is almost always worth it). Note that doing this for an unowned point doesn’t help, but doing it for a re-take makes a difference.
I made this point before, but I’ll reiterate since it’s important, and applicable in many circumstances -- you can intimidate the enemy combo into not fighting you if you have uber and they don’t. Make a distinction between pushes where you move fast and aggressive with your combo to capitalize on uber advantages by popping and trying to kill them, and pushes where you move slowly with your combo, relying on the fact that the enemy is afraid of your pop and can’t safely stay in a position to aggressively spam you/likely will just try to suicide players to force the pop, who you can then kill (hopefully without popping, since you’ve been moving slow and staying in a safe position).
For all of this information in video form (and perhaps more detail), see the vod of sephy and I casting viaduct: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYrfqD-VtkI
Condensed after-cast discussion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyFtByiAt4g&t=18m
If you want to see my application of all this, check out my stream while I'm scrimming this week. There's already a few vods of viaduct up there. Link: http://www.twitch.tv/sigmasin
I’ll probably write one of these for gpit week as well, if people think it will be helpful. Maybe I’ll go into detail on some push maps too.
Additional notes:
On push map mid fights, it’s generally better to lose your medic and win the fight than keep your medic up and lose the fight. On viaduct, this is less true, and since your choice from the beginning of the round is just a dice roll (play more aggressive for a better chance but no guarantee of winning mid), it’s generally better to play passive as a medic on viaduct mid and keep your uber for a quicker re-push.
Based on numbers/uber situation, you can generally predict who is going to win the next fight -- in other words, you know when you’re at a disadvantage holding the point and will probably lose it. Treat this fight as if you’re attacking -- try to trade as many players as you can with them/suicide to force their pop -- even consider holding your uber and bombing their team while your medic retreats (sometimes just exchanging on point is better, but if your spawns won’t make it by the end of the uber, holding can be a better choice). When the point caps, the spawns switch immediately even for dead players (team that capped will have their currently-in-progress spawns increased, team that lost the cap will have in-progress spawns decreased).
Another manipulation you can do off of the currently-in-progress spawn changes (though it’s only really worth it for your medic) is to stop capping the point until your players spawn, then finish the cap (this can be a difference of 10-20% uber, in exchange for a few seconds on the clock, which is almost always worth it). Note that doing this for an unowned point doesn’t help, but doing it for a re-take makes a difference.
I made this point before, but I’ll reiterate since it’s important, and applicable in many circumstances -- you can intimidate the enemy combo into not fighting you if you have uber and they don’t. Make a distinction between pushes where you move fast and aggressive with your combo to capitalize on uber advantages by popping and trying to kill them, and pushes where you move slowly with your combo, relying on the fact that the enemy is afraid of your pop and can’t safely stay in a position to aggressively spam you/likely will just try to suicide players to force the pop, who you can then kill (hopefully without popping, since you’ve been moving slow and staying in a safe position).
For all of this information in video form (and perhaps more detail), see the vod of sephy and I casting viaduct: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYrfqD-VtkI
Condensed after-cast discussion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyFtByiAt4g&t=18m
If you want to see my application of all this, check out my stream while I'm scrimming this week. There's already a few vods of viaduct up there. Link: http://www.twitch.tv/sigmasin
I’ll probably write one of these for gpit week as well, if people think it will be helpful. Maybe I’ll go into detail on some push maps too.
I kinda wish this had its own article instead of just a post in the Map forums. Still, I'm betting a great read.
I kinda wish this had its own article instead of just a post in the Map forums. Still, I'm betting a great read.
I knew each bit of information in this guide individually, but this still helped a ton in my understanding of viaduct to read in one consolidated place. I hope you do this for each map for the rest of the season, since it does such a good job of focusing you, at least for me.
EDIT: wording
I knew each bit of information in this guide individually, but this still helped a ton in my understanding of viaduct to read in one consolidated place. I hope you do this for each map for the rest of the season, since it does such a good job of focusing you, at least for me.
EDIT: wording
submit it as an article nerd
submit it as an article nerd
really good read
spawn times entirely dictating the flow of a map is such an obscure notion for a lot of people that they never really learn the map super well, I'm hoping this article does a bit to combat that
really good read
spawn times entirely dictating the flow of a map is such an obscure notion for a lot of people that they never really learn the map super well, I'm hoping this article does a bit to combat that
http://youtu.be/eFdvp7U510w
dont stay here as medic for too long or you're dead!
http://i.imgur.com/HTA0K.jpg
dont stay here as medic for too long or you're dead!
http://i.imgur.com/HTA0K.jpg
Would of also liked to seen you go over rollouts, aggressive style plays when defending and positioning (forward, cliff, rock ect).
Would of also liked to seen you go over rollouts, aggressive style plays when defending and positioning (forward, cliff, rock ect).
when you have more health attack them
when you have more health attack them
majid_bump
If you shoot them better than they shoot you, you win. Have fun!
[quote=majid_]bump[/quote]
If you shoot them better than they shoot you, you win. Have fun!
Also if you have to run double soldiers, just dont cause it's shit
Also if you have to run double soldiers, just dont cause it's shit
Whats the alternative Olgha
Whats the alternative Olgha