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How do you hard counter Remote Slicing?


Loadsamonie

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Or really, how do you mitigate any kind of ability that disables your engine and leaves you a sitting duck for a goodbye Proton? How do you prevent it in the first place, and how do you survive and escape once you've already been sliced?

 

That's the one thing I still consistently die to, getting sliced and being helpless against a follow-up missile.

Edited by Loadsamonie
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Pay attention to line of sight and stay close to it. Try not to let your engine energy dip below half at any time during the match. Stay close to your teammates. It’s hard to keep a protorp lock under pressure, and your team can help with that.
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Not everything has, or should have, a hard counter.

Remote slicing technically has three "hard counters"- things that turn it off completely or make it meaningless. The first is, amusingly, remote slicing. You can slice an enemy slicer if he is playing offensively, especially if he is diving for a kill instead of holding back and peeling. The second is EMP field (and to a very small extent EMP missile). EMP field comes with a strong conditional however- if the enemy is gunning for YOU, slicing outranges EMP field and he will slice you on your way in. But for peeling for others, it works great. EMP missile can turn it off from out of range, but only on aoe cleave- an early change for EMP damage had the unintended effect of removing the system-disable debuff from the primary target, so EMP missile is not a great way to deal with slicers.

The final and actually hardest counter is booster recharge, which has a huge uptime and can keep your bar full. Obviously if you go up to them with no engines planning to use it after, that won't help, so you use it beforehand, and the engine stripping gets blown away pretty fast by the extra recharge.

 

Ultimately though, none of these are used to counter slicing. The only ones that show up are EMP field (because you have it for other reasons) and slicing (because you have it for other reasons). The way you deal with slicers is by being near walls and keeping a generous pool of engine power so you can boost away when needed. While this definitely prevents you from being robbed of engine or locked into a proton, you are still being controlled to a lesser degree by having to monitor your engine pool in such a way as to play around the control. This is much easier post-nerf, by the way, but it's still a thing.

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Not everything has, or should have, a hard counter.

Remote slicing technically has three "hard counters"- things that turn it off completely or make it meaningless. The first is, amusingly, remote slicing. You can slice an enemy slicer if he is playing offensively, especially if he is diving for a kill instead of holding back and peeling. The second is EMP field (and to a very small extent EMP missile). EMP field comes with a strong conditional however- if the enemy is gunning for YOU, slicing outranges EMP field and he will slice you on your way in. But for peeling for others, it works great. EMP missile can turn it off from out of range, but only on aoe cleave- an early change for EMP damage had the unintended effect of removing the system-disable debuff from the primary target, so EMP missile is not a great way to deal with slicers.

The final and actually hardest counter is booster recharge, which has a huge uptime and can keep your bar full. Obviously if you go up to them with no engines planning to use it after, that won't help, so you use it beforehand, and the engine stripping gets blown away pretty fast by the extra recharge.

 

Ultimately though, none of these are used to counter slicing. The only ones that show up are EMP field (because you have it for other reasons) and slicing (because you have it for other reasons). The way you deal with slicers is by being near walls and keeping a generous pool of engine power so you can boost away when needed. While this definitely prevents you from being robbed of engine or locked into a proton, you are still being controlled to a lesser degree by having to monitor your engine pool in such a way as to play around the control. This is much easier post-nerf, by the way, but it's still a thing.

 

I'm trying to get in the habit of not foolishly expending all my Engine Power to close the distance on my target (likely a Gunship). It's a tough habit to unlearn, flying so aggressively, but my new rule is not to engage an enemy without at least 50% Engine Power. Moreso if my target has support and can start returning fire at me. I no longer chase my victims into enemy nests now, which has helped with my Engine management to some degree (and helped me to stop feeding kills to the enemy team unnecessarily).

 

How open or close the environment is, is a large factor in deciding my ship for that match. Generally, if there's a lot of walls, Mesas for example, then I fly my T2 Scout with Double Turning. Slicing hasn't been quite as devastating to me on that particular map, precisely because of all the cover, but in open maps with little cover, it's not lack of Engine Power that kills me in the end, it's having my Engine Maneuver outright disabled regardless of my Engine Power, and not being able to break a missile lock. I can still boost away, but with a Protons range, unless there's immediate cover, it's not enough to get out of the firing line, and once that missile is airborne I'm effectively brown bread.

 

Anyway, frustrating though they are, Slicing deaths, while consistent, don't happen often at least. These days the thing that gets me killed most is simply not retreating when I should, or engaging in a battle I have no business engaging in head-on. That and being disliked by most Gunship players. Scouts just can't make any friends man.

 

The one habit I really need to stop feeding into is talking to people. Best case it's a distraction, worst case it frustrates me, and both of them affect my flying negatively. I need to just close the chat from now on, not look at it, and focus on the game.

Edited by Loadsamonie
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  • 1 month later...

So what I'm getting from these replies is that there isn't really a hard counter to slicing once it's done. You would have to know who is currently flying a ship that has slicing (or emp field which is very similar to an AOE slice), and basically avoid them or charge at them after preparing accordingly. But if they catch you off guard, you are SOL and dead in the water.

 

Slicing and EMP field have always been overpowered abilities, even after the slicing nerf. Especially when slicing is most often paired with a proton torpedo with a 10000 meter range and dealing direct damage to your hull.

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So what I'm getting from these replies is that there isn't really a hard counter to slicing once it's done. You would have to know who is currently flying a ship that has slicing (or emp field which is very similar to an AOE slice), and basically avoid them or charge at them after preparing accordingly. But if they catch you off guard, you are SOL and dead in the water.

 

Slicing and EMP field have always been overpowered abilities, even after the slicing nerf. Especially when slicing is most often paired with a proton torpedo with a 10000 meter range and dealing direct damage to your hull.

 

Not SOL but it can feel like that.

 

while theres no hard counter to getting sliced besides now breaking LOS as slicing requires LOS to hit. once sliced its a pretty potent effect

 

so what to do,

1: Break Line of sight. use corners walls use debris anything you can to get to cover till the slice wheres off. This can include getting tight on top of the slicer glueing yourself to their hull practically, this makes hitting with a protorp or blasters much harder if theyre twisitng trying to keep you in their target recticle

 

2: maintina high engine power. Slicing really does a nasty number on a pilot draining shields and engines while your burning those to escape. having high engine power means you can get to cover easier or break LOS as needed to get those precious seconds needed either to remove the slice debuff or get help from a teamate

 

3: The Best Defense is a good offense. Aka Find the slicer and kill them first and often. Make use of your minimap and tab targeting as well as the team roster screen accesssed by hitting M if i recall and find out whose flying an iumperium or the Clarion once you have said indifvudual in sight target them immediately and destroy them this gives you some room while they respawn to get more points or take a sat depedning on the match

 

Slicings a pain no doubt but it can be beaten despite how frustrating it can be.

Edited by catsi
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  • 5 months later...

There are two things you can do about it.

First thing was said already, it's engine power management.

The second, which is much more important, is to train map awareness. Remote Slicing is very dangerous when you're in a middle of a fight and someone targets you with slicing. Well, the actual thing is, in this situation you can be shot with many options besides slicing, really. You need to understand what surrounds you during the match. Even if it wasn't slicing, you still put yourself in 1vX situation, which you're going to lose if you stay here and play on the same terms.

Actually, slicing isn't that great in 1v1 - you see the distance between you and your enemy, you can calculate your chances of evading the missile, for example, if you're running right to slicer's face. You can use cover (which you should always consider when you're playing, even if it's Lost Shipyards TDM). You can do many things to evade until RS is over. And you need also to stay close to your team, so someone will pay attention to the closest target. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

This is mostly a TLDR recap of what others have said, plus a few gaps filled in.

Hard counters, the T3F is unable to use slicing on you even if it wants to:

  • Fly a ship that is not: a gunship, a bomber, or a T3F, and stay at least 5001 meters away from the T3F with slicing.  *May require wise engine pool management and countering them picking up an engine power up by picking up an engine power up of your own.
  • Keep at least one LOS blocking terrain object between you and the T3F if the range between you and the T3F is 5001 meters or less.
  • Use a weapon with a range of more than 5000 meters to kill the T3F before it gets within 5000 meters of you.
  • Slice the T3F with slicing before it slices you
  • Use EMP field on the T3F before it slices you
  • Use EMP missile AOE on the T3F before it slices you

Semi-soft counters, didn't quite fit the hard counter or soft counter criteria:

  • Ion railgun the snot out of the T3F so it can't ever boost anywhere  *It will probably start devoting all it's attention to trying to slice you if you do this

Soft counters, the T3F sliced you successfully, but you're  not going to let them, or anyone else, profit from that:

  • Break LOS with a terrain object before anyone completes locking a missile/torp on you.
  • Stay out of the firing arcs of any ships that are trying to lock missiles/torps on you.  They can't start locking if you're not in front of their ship's nose. *May be impractical if multiple opponents are targeting you.
  • Have enough engine reserve to boost out of range before a lock can be completed on you.
  • Kill whatever is trying to lock a missile/torp on you before it can finish the lock.
  • Heal through a hit with hydrospanner, repair drone, or repair probes.  *Requires adequate pre-hit hull health, unlikely to work for multiple hits.

 

All of the options require some degree of skill.  They're also generally preventative rather than reactionary, so it helps a great deal to be able to identify which ships can carry engine disabling components: Remote Slicing, EMP Field, EMP Missile.  Observe the match board at start of match to see who has or is flying those ships, and then after the match starts observe them to see if they appear to be using builds with disables or not.   If they appear to be using disables, then defend accordingly.  

 

There's a lot you can do, but you mostly have to do it before they've sliced you and launched a torpedo into your ship.

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  • 4 weeks later...

In a TDM, if you have a known slicer, purple power ups are the way to go.  Keep up a steady diet of them.  If you get sliced, your engine regen is high with the purples, and you can easily fly away, faster and longer than the enemy.  Make sure you evade as you fly away, they can still get you with protorp. if you fly straight away with no cover.

In a DOM, LOS is a thing to utilize.  Use cover, evade with starts and stops of your ship if you can and turn using hard angles.  Turning fast, and close to the enemy can break missile lock on, so they have to start over again.

Hope this helps.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 9 months later...

how i handle slicers....since they are always targeting me....is retro right before they get into slice range and i piledrive them back to hell....at the very least they have to disengage because they cant finish locking on their protons......while the entire time im blasting them with quad/heavy piledrives and double volley clusters

 

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type 1 scout with max evasion and max speed.  Zoom zoom.  Your mileage may vary.  But that's my counter for everything.  :)

Seriously though - like others have said the only thing you can really do about remote slicing is be cognizant of positioning and power management.

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