A life in the shadows is the life of the Recon. You strike
hard and
fast, and break away before you're overwhelmed by the superior
firepower and stability of the other classes. You are more
than
capable of toying with solo soldiers in the field and breaking their
spirits as they have no idea what hit them. Your mobility is
unmatched, your range insurmountable, and your melee as devastating as
a rocket launcher when hitting from behind. No wonder
everyone loves
this class!
The Melee Weapon
The No Elves campaign
is in full force, and the only relic of that forgotten time in gaming
in Global Agenda is the Ghost Sword. Big enough to be held
with two
hands, swung with one, it's the iconic weapon that forces people to
flip out and target Recons immediately when hit. Not paying
attention
when being melee'd by a recon and leaving your back open rewards the
attacker with critical hits for much more damage. This bonus
modifier
stacks with all of the damage boosting abilities that Recons have,
enabling them to cripple a target with two strikes and then deliver the
killing blow with a rifle shot as they panic at how low on health they
are.
The Guns
The Recon Rifle is a little bit
different than the other classes' respective rifles. The base
stats
are the same, but the entire Marksman skill tree can benefit it as well
as the sniper rifles. The end result is a burst rifle with
the ability
to out-range any other class in the game, that loses no damage except
at the most extreme ranges. Of course if you'd rather snipe
in a more
classic style, the Ballista and Scorpia rifles are clones of each other
that each give a massive debuff to the target hit. The
Ballista lowers
the defense of the target to all forms of damage, and the Scorpia
lowers all incoming healing for a time.
Generally solo sniping
is frowned on unless you are extremely good at it and can hit high
priority targets consecutively. A pair of Recons that focus
fire
targets together though can devastate an offense or clear out a point
with little trouble, putting out so much damage that healing can't even
begin to counteract it. Sniping nests of Robotics equipment
is also
recommended/expected of you, as the Robotics will have to choose
between coming after you or tending to his little metal farm and
eventually running out of energy. Remember that if you're
going for
the Robotics itself, taking out the medical station first will make
your job far easier!
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Distraction is the name of the game in team battles. If they
come after you, you're doing it right.
The Specialty Guns
All you
can do with your specialty slot is cloak, which isn't as bad as it
sounds. There are two cloaking devices available and each one
bestows
a unique buff when active. The Sprint Stealth increases your
running
speed by a fair amount, making it effective for getting around the map
quickly and evading enemies. The Spring Stealth enables you
to get a
little trickier with your approaches and escapes by greatly boosting
your standard jump capabilities. Spring Stealth is wonderful
for
allowing you to climb to great heights without revealing yourself by
using the Jetpack, and enables you to dodge AOE attacks much better
since they're aimed at the ground to try and reveal you.
Leveling
these devices will greatly reduce the power drain, and level 4 is
barely noticeable.
The Jetpack
Not too bad
looking, actually. You'll get a lot of use out of it as you
maneuver
around to more advantageous sniping and infiltrating positions.
The Off-hands
Recons
have two kinds of support weapons -- Offensive and Buffing.
These
include the devastating Bomb line that tosses a bag full of explosive
goodies at an area, and after a few seconds explodes with spectacular
results. The damage of these is on par with the grenades of
Assaults,
but they also have devastating secondary effects. From long
term
burns, massive defensive debuffs, and one of the only Stuns in the
game, these bombs can instantly turn a situation around if they hit
people or turrets. You can also lob mines one at a time to
various
surfaces and places. These are fast to recharge, but can be
shot and
destroyed by attentive enemies which limits their usefulness.'
The
buffing line starts with the Stims. These are 5 second buffs
that
increase your damage of a type by 25% when activated at level
4. From
there, you can activate Visual Scanners for stealth detection and an
additional 10% ranged damage. These bonuses all stack with
your boost,
and can be devastating in combination with defense lowering abilities
like your bombs and sniper shots. They have a long cooldown
versus
their up-time, but enable you to kill targets before they can react and
get healed.
You also have access to some unique systems like
Decoy. Decoy makes a clone that charges random targets and
melees for
no damage, but boy do people panic and shoot at it in a
hurry. It's
also one of the Recon's few good PvE skills. Bionics gives
you a buff
that increases run speed, jump speed, power regeneration, and passively
negates all fall damage. One of the most overlooked ones is
Sealed
Systems, which purifies you of all debuffs and makes you immune to them
for a short duration. This is key as any damage you take will
reveal
your shadow in stealth, so in order to escape those pesky Magma Lance
assaults, you'll need to dispel that fire.
The Boost
The
best boost in the game. Not only does it give you and your
team in a
wide radius 40% bonus damage and 20% movement speed, it also enables
X-ray vision for that time. Speaking of that time, it lasts a
whopping
13 seconds, longer than any other buffing Boost. Generally if
you hit
that around your team, the other team is screwed. It's
amazing!
Is it fun?
Being
a Recon is all about picking your fights. You have widespread
chaotic
AOE to clear out a point, the sniper rifles to pick off key targets at
a distance you can't be struck back at, and the melee prowess to make
people fear your sudden appearance at your back. Once they
detect and
attempt to kill you, the mobility kicks in and you can lose your target
any number of ways. Just remember that you have to contribute
to the
objective : this is not a Deathmatch game! If you're not
killing
people at the objective, you aren't helping nearly as much as you could
be. You can even stealth to the edge of a point and sneak in
some
capture points or block a capture before lobbing a bomb and returning
to stealth. Nothing makes people rage quit like a good recon,
so if
you revel in other people's suffering, you'll love this!
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