



If I were asked what the one thing is that separates the good and bad players, it would be situational awareness. If were to only take away one thing from this guide, this I believe to be the most critical. While many have began to instinctively perform these actions without such examination, it is by putting it into simple language that those of us who haven't may begin to do so and those of us who have to improve through careful examination.Situational AwarenessParticularly in our case called Battlefield Awareness, is remaining knowledgeable about your environment, the implications of every aspect of it, and it's projected status when variables have changed. To break that down in our situation this means to...A.) Remain aware of the environment.Know the map. Every nook and cranny. Know where every ammo boxes are and always know how much ammo you have left. Know which of you powers is best used in what situation and remain aware of the cooldown. Most importantly this means knowing where the enemy is at all times. There is a phenomenon called tunnel vision in which we become so focused on an objective, such as bursting down an important target, that we lose awareness. It is critical to realize when your doing this. If you are shooting at an enemy and suddenly you are shot from the side or back, you weren't remaining as aware as you could have been. To prevent this you...B.) Know the implications of every aspect of the environment.Know every piece of cover. Notice every direction in which every piece of cover gives you an advantage and more importantly note the weaknesses, which directions you can be shot from. Enemies will aggressively flank you which means trying to expose your weaker areas. Retaining awareness will allow you to react as quickly as possible when an enemy tries to do this. Knowing the cover intimately will allow you to move to a more favorable position where you gain the advantage, but it is absolutely key to retain awareness while doing this so that you do not expose yourself to the fire of another enemy. At any given time there is a most advantageous position to be in and you should be there. Variables change quickly however, so the most advantageous position one moment could be the worst the next. In order to determine what to do in these situations we must...C.) Know all the possible outcomes of any given situation.It is only through remaining aware of your environment and knowing the implications of it can we predict what will happen when variables change. This means knowing with confidence what to do no matter what happens. What if that enemy starts to flank you? Where will you move? What if there is an enemy turret around that corner? What if a phantom suddenly appears behind you? What if you head into that room and there are two atlas, three phantoms, a turret in opposite corners denying you cover, and smoke grenades are being tossed everywhere? We must ideally have a plan for each of the situations before you even turn that corner, head through that door, get shot in the back, etc. If that plan fails then you must in split seconds determine what the best course of action is. Expect your plan to fail miserably and have a second one immediately prepared. By layering these contingency plans we can retain the greatest advantage possible in any situation no matter what we are faced with.Note that reading about this topic is certainly not enough, you must experience it.Most importantly to capitalize on that experience, you must examine it. Soldiers in real life do not have the luxury of mistakes, but we do. A mistake is never a bad thing provided that you have learned from it. Any time you have done something wrong or even at any time in which you did not do the absolute best you could have, examine the implications of your actions. Study what you could have done to improve in that situation and experiment. Every mistake you make is an opportunity in which to learn a valuable lesson. The consequence of your actions essentially end with that session, but the lesson you potentially learn will be carried over into every game afterward. Playing it safe is usually good, until your faced with a worst case scenario. It is only by facing those situations and examining the implications of your actions can you know with certainty what to do when they happen. When you have become adept at adapting to the worst case scenario, you will find yourself maximizing advantages when your plans do succeed.Splitting The GroupThe second topic I'd like to discuss are the act of splitting into coordinated groups.I cannot stress enough the advantages of dividing into two man teams.Two individuals move together to support each other, never moving so far that they cannot support the other group. The ideal would be having one individual who can strip defenses (this can be through sustained fire or abilities like overload/energy drain) and the other who can provide some damage mitigation (this can be through krogan with fortification or even crowd control abilities like combat drone or stasis). Some abilities can do both, like overload, and some classes can do both, like engineer. Redundancy is a good thing provided you have divided the groups in the most advantageous way possible without leaving the other lacking. This changes depending on not only the skill of the player, their class, but even the choices in power evolutions. I wont go into listing the most advantageous groupings here because that could be an it's own very wordy topic. Moreover each group it would be good to have someone to have long range capability and one short range for maximum versatility.Changing group dynamics on the fly is most advantageous.If you'd have an appropriate amount of redundancy in capabilities, you could even further divide the group into several possible groupings given the situation. Group A, Player 1 (with long range) with player 2 (short range) would be default for adaptability and similarly with group B. Should you be faced with a situation such as enemies spawning down a long firing lane such as the Cerberus base, you could change the group dynamic to a second configuration. The groups then change to Group C, with both long range players setting up on the high ground, while Group D now formed of both short range players flaking the same enemy group and attack from the side through the corridors. You must understand in changing configurations like this, you are changing the strengths and weaknesses of each group. The concept relies upon knowing which group can capitalize on a given situation in order to play to it's strengths and minimize it's weaknesses. This is a very basic structure of the possibilities, attempting to maximize effectiveness for a given situation. It is key in using such a plan of course to have good communication and the players know exactly what to do when changing the group dynamics. Also a certain amount of redundancy is needed in roles such as defense stripping and damage mitigation, you do not want toleave any possible group configuration lacking in a key area if your goal is to maximize advantages while retaining adaptability for when variables change.Mobility is absolutely key.I touched on the aspect of flanking using these two groups and to do this it is not necessary to get so complex as I have done in the paragraph above. The advantages of the two group structure are invaluable even with suboptimal groupings. This inherently provides damage mitigation by dividing enemy fire and splitting their attention, while giving you the advantage of focusing on more singular grouping. An enemy will often focus on one group, who is not even being actively damaged because of cover, while the second group sweeps those who are not focused on them. Each group covers the other to create a situation where you are mitigating damage to you and maximizing damage to them. Maximizing of course with area denial in such that an enemies cover may provide nearly complete defense to one groups firing lane, it provides none to a second group who is flanked to the side effectively denying them the area.To use the term in a rudimentary fashion, this establishes a killbox.This means that if the enemy takes cover from group a, group b has a clear firing lane to pick them off and vise versa. So no matter where they move, they will not have cover. For example anyone who has played enough at the Cerberus base may know about the L shaped area with a ladder down to it to the side of the center high ground with the ammo box. Enemies will often spawn near the landing pad down one alleyway as well as to the opposite side of the level parallel to the corridor. This makes being in that corner near the ladder into a killbox where if you take cover from one enemy group, the other can clearly hit you. I've seen it wipe entire groups due to a lack of understanding that this area is inherently disadvantageous. Our goal splitting into groups is to use this same tactic on the enemy. This goes back to battlefield awareness, knowing where the best position for each player to be at any given moment in direct relation to each other player and each other enemy.In conclusion, I have been playing far to much trying to get my girlfriend the asari adept.Hobbies I DoMass Effect 3