Tactical Cruiser 101 Part 1

TLDR: Don’t get tunnel vision, know everyones position, if there is a Koschei on your team don’t go Aion if you want better than 2000+ score. (unless its a screw around/combat Aion)

I’ve been meaning to write this series for a while as someone who primarily heals, hopefully it helps those who are looking to up their game as healers.

Some quick pointers/rules to follow. #1 Know the position of every ship on your team, and the enemies general location. #2 Power management is a skill to be mastered, don’t be complacent. #3 Following pointer #1 don’t get tunnel vision and only focus on one ship. #4 Don’t hold the LMB down all the time, when your target is full let off LMB take stock of your teammates and heal the lowest one(s). #5 Do NOT, repeat, NOT try and heal cloaked ships, you're just making them an easier target.  #6 Use your secondary, once you can get the Light Machine Guns, to mow complacent corvette players down. #7 Play EVERY class

Let's get into specifics some now.

#1, it is very important that you know where the enemy is so you can seek shelter and not become a liability to your team. What is more important is knowing where EACH member of your team is, watch the minimap, look around, DO NOT GET tunnel vision. This is probably the most difficult thing to become good at, it separates the good healers from the adequate or bad ones. Knowing you can stop healing the Monarch when it is at 25% health, heal up an Athos to full health and get back to healing the Monarch before it dies comes with practice, but knowing the Athos is getting low and can be saved while you are healing the Monarch is where the skill comes in. When you play with a team on comms, some of the work of healing should be done for you. Call outs of “I need heals” or “QUICK heal me” do you no good if you don’t know who it is saying they need heals or where they are, so get people to say their name and position relative to you will lessen the work you do, but again complacency will be the death of your teammates. You should know by now, if you don’t get it play something else PLEASE!

#2 Power management is the second skill that should be mastered as a healing Tac Cruiser, lucky for you you can do it while mastering knowing where everyone is. Power management for a healing Tac is different than power management for most other people, most other ships use it all then wait for regen. The way you want to use your power is when a ship drops below 75% power your weapons until they are at about 98% the power off. Rinse repeat, I know its not that easy all the time you have enemies and friendlies to watch over. Energy generator makes things easier and gives you the ability to heal for long durations. Once you master power management, you should consider swapping out the Energy Generator for a Target Warp.

#3 Your biggest adversary is tunnel vision when you focus only on one ship other friendlies die and then you get wrecked, it’s that simple. This goes double when you’re playing with a team, DO NOT just focus on your friends there are up to three other people who need your services and can give you an ungodly score.

#4 This is a mistake I see even veteran healers make, hold LMB down all the time because its infinite ammo. Doing this while easy, means if you look at a cloaked friendly the enemy team sees a BRIGHT GREEN LINE right to their position. Which will piss off the cloaked friendly and might get them killed, at the very least they will have to reposition for their attack run. This is a something that should be stopped before it becomes a habit.

#5 Just like I said in #4, NEVER EVER heal a cloaked ship unless they ask you to, its just a bad idea! I don’t know how many times I’ve seen healers try and heal me or another friendly cloaked ship and point out our locations to the enemy only to be shot down almost instantly. This goes for yourself too, if you use Emergency Evac and want to stay hidden DO NOT heal anyone with your primary you will point out your position to the enemy. I see noob Kali pilots Emergency Evac and then continue healing all the time, which is just giving the enemy a kill.

#6 As counterintuitive as it sounds use your secondaries, a lot, I mean it I use mine at least 4+ times a match. While you have only your rocket turrets don't even bother, just use your main beam, once you get the Light Machine Guns switch IMMEDIATELY and use them! If an enemy ship is close to death and all friendlies in your vicinity are over 60% health switch to LMG and add your DPS. What's the worst that can happen you don’t get the kill and help your team kill faster? Best case you get the kill and piss off the Dread that did 98% of the damage.

#7 Play every class, no you don’t need to buy them, play the trader ships or hero ships just play every class. I would suggest playing every class a minimum of 5 games and don’t switch too much. This will help you learn how the ships you are healing are played and what to expect from friendly and enemy ships of that class. Case in point, playing the Trader Valcor (Light Corvette) it will teach you how to make strafing runs on Tac Cruisers and in turn how to survive/prosper (with a kill) from them. So play each class, if you have access to hero ships play the Huscarl and Silesia maybe the Outis (its not that good) don’t bother with the Morningstar its terrible and you should already be playing a lot of the Kali. Another thing, it might seem small, but play the Trader Aion even if you have the Hero ships its good to know what other people are working with.

As always you can come check out my Dreadnought streams Monday - Friday starting about noon Pacific to 6pm or when my wife gets off work. If you've gotten this far congratulations for making it through that wall of text, I've got 4 more in this series to publish!

Tactical Cruiser 101 Part 2