Damnit's Intermediate Guide to Savage 2 (patch 1.7.9)

This guide is aimed at the beginner-intermediate player or commander who wants to refine their style or learn some new tricks. I assume you have played a couple of games of Savage and know the basics. The goal is to get more players operating at a higher level in public matches. Some of this guide is subjective, but most of these tricks are what you'll see the better players doing all
the time.


This is one of the most important areas for a player since building damage wins games.

For an attacker, the key is spotting when enemies are coming around the corners and killing enemy workers/builders. If you see someone coming, stop attacking the building to lose the speed debuff. Because the slow debuff from attacking a building will give an opponent a decisive advantage in charging around your back, you need to either fight with your back to the building, or you should charge slightly away from the building. I prefer getting some distance, however given enemy tower placement, you might not be able to. If enemy towers are present, you should almost never try to fight an opponent within their firing range unless you're have lots of charge bar and gust of wind. An enemy ranging you will probably do less damage than a tower; in addition, a more skilled player will likely stall you by blocking while the tower shoots you. When striking people repairing a building, don't get so close that your attack hits both the building and the worker as they'll be able to charge away from you – keep just enough distance to hit the player.

It is almost always more useful to hit garrisons, tech, and mines instead of directly attacking towers; until later game when static/cannon towers get built, you can usually hide behind other buildings. At the point when enemies do have static/cannon towers, they will usually place them on opposite sides of their garrisons to get 360 coverage; only then you attack the strata/arrow tower first, which are weaker late game. If enemy commander's workers are around, it is worth running into tower range to take them out since they will repair whatever damage you did after you die not to mention they cost 650 gold. If enemy buildings are close together, aim your reticule halfway between them and see if you can strike both (especially with hunter, lego, and pred). This clever shapeshifter is hitting both the garrison and the mine at once. Twice the damage!

Note where enemies are going to spawn from garrisons or sublairs! For sublairs, the spawn point is the door with 2 red flags; for garrisons, it's the circular tower end of the garrison. You want to be on the opposite side of this location ideally because spawned units have 3 seconds of invulnerability, during which all you can do is block or run away. Smart enemy commanders will place their garrisons such that the back end is covered by a tower, and the uncovered end is the spawn location, giving a defensive advantage.

For a defender, the key is sticking close to your buildings and forcing your opponent to get the building slow debuff when he swings at you. Also remember your priorities in terms of defending: demo packs, siege, builders, then savages. Try to draw opponents out into tower range by sitting out in tower range with a ranged weapon. Wait till an attacker completes a 3-swing combo on a building; after that they will be extremely vulnerable.

Gold Mines, Killing Of
A common situation is whether to attack a garrison, tech, or gold mine. First it is almost always the best idea to kill their garrison, as the gar doesn't have that many more HP than a mine and once you can kill the gar, you can easily take out the mine and gain map control. That said, if you find yourself alone at an enemy garrison, it is probably better to attack the mine (which does have less armor) because you won't be able to dent the garrison enough before more enemies spawn.

When at an opponent's main base it is best to keep their base mine very damaged but alive unless it is the only mine they have left. When an opponent is out of mines, they lose upkeep, dropping their building armor, making shield/chloro towers inactive, and increasing spawn time. Injured mines have a reduced gold income rate. So when attacking their main and they have other expansions, drop their base mine to <100 HP but alive. They will get almost no gold and this forces their commander to make workers repair the mine - which takes more time than to rebuild the mine, and gives you the chance to kill the worker for even more gold. Tech is the last thing I would attack; for humans order of importance is usually academy/siege/armory/monastery, for beasts it's pred/siege/sanct/nexus.

Items
Getting a 5 second break from attack to use healing pots can be tricky. You need to make your opponent think you are willing to go melee him. If they shoot you with range the potion CD will get reset. What I like to do is stay out of their melee range, preform 1 quick attack and immediately block, indicating I was thinking about closing distance. Once you have gust of wind, this becomes easier as you can run into some bulletproof bushes. If you an attacker, notice if your opponent is suspiciously just standing around and blocking. Pepper him with 1-2 range shots to reset hit potion cool-down in case.

Gust of wind is the most important item in the game since it increases your charge bar (better melee chances) and range immunity (pass towers). Lungs are very useful due to the speed buff for one player fighting many.

Shield of wisdom I would avoid buying until HB/shield towers show up. For the ~200 HP you might get, you could easily do more damage by using your abilities or range. One trick is to combine shield of wisdom with Maliken Brain. This is a pub only strategy if you think you can kill enough people to make it worth wasting a slot on maliken brain.

Rezz trinket is worth it (provided you have heal pots) since it forces enemies to camp your corpse. Simultaneous rezz with your squadmates in an enemy base is devastating. Recall trinket is also very useful in clan matches for preventing a seige rush; in pub games, probably not worth it.

In competitive/close games, avoid early maliken heart unless you know you can get 3 kill:death ratio (~300 hp healed is about the same as 2 pots for 250 gold).

The range upgrade is only worth it on legos/savages. Beasts would probably benefit from shield of wisdom more.

The armor & healing trinket is useful but the healing only works once per group of people that have the buff on. If your squaddies already have it, get something else.

Kiting
Kiting is when you stay just outside of melee range of an opponent and shoot them. Never stand still while you fire range weapons. First, you won't gain any ground, and second, you're more vulnerable. Walking backwards is slower than turning around and charging backwards. Dodging side to side at 45 degree angles is also better than just dodging backwards as forward charge will cover more ground. Also be aware than one melee hit equals ~2-3 seconds of range kiting. Be on the cautious side; fire for 2 seconds, pull out melee and block. Using the '3rd person guns' option in the gameplay menu of options may give you better sense of when you're in danger of being melee'd, but be warned that the target reticule is above and to the right of the real reticule.

Another form of kiting is when you use range exactly in melee range. This works best with the high HP lego and pred units who have slow melee attack speed. When facing a blocking opponent at melee range, throw a mortar/blue fireball and block immediately afterwards.

Maximize Your Gold, Souls, and Experience - Minimize Theirs
Eventually the team that gains more gold, souls, and XP will be able to defend a HS gar quicker, spawn more malphas, and win.

Killing gadgets and spawn portals is the easiest and best way to gain gold and xp. Landing the fatal blow on a player also gives significant gold & xp as well as their soul. Player damage / unit debuffs also give you assist gold. Building damage does not give you significant gold but gives decent experience. Respawnable NPCs such as boars are worth killing later game on passing. Gold is extremely important for stocking yourself with potions and giving your team a tech advantage (reaching sanctuary/armory before the enemy, reaching legos/preds before the enemy). Never stockpile more than 1000 gold; hit the b key and donate on the field. Don't be a 'SF whore' i.e. a player who exclusively hunts down enemy gadgets even when more important enemy targets are around, but if you see them, take them out.

Place your gadgets and portals sparsely and don't give up gold. Only drop portals when people actually need them. Look if there are any other eyes around before dropping yours. Given the choice between dying to enemy players or towers, run in front of their towers. Buying health potions also cuts down on enemy gold, xp, and souls since winning one fight doesn't mean that you automatically lose the next because you're injured.

Melee
A brief discussion of melee combinations. I'm working on getting some video.

The '1-swing + block' combo (or 2 swing block for marksmen) is the safest style; good players with low latency who do this require creative charge bar use to take down. Because of quick attack refund (you gain extra block meter upon successful melee hits) this style is fairly effective. However, it tends to be very static (i.e. player stays in one place due to frequent blocking) so it is easier to charge behind them and hit.

The '2-swing + block' combo is for sav/lego the most DPS (damage per second). That is, swing twice and block immediately afterwards, which resets your attack combination (your next swing will be the first quick attack, not the slower 3rd attack). You should always use two swings combinations on buildings for both the DPS; it also leaves you less vulnerable than 3rd swing on a building + slow debuff.

The '3-swing' (or 4 swing for marksmen and shapeshifter) full combination should only be used if you have a lot of charge bar or you can deal a fatal hit to an enemy (you need their soul / you're absolutely sure you can finish them since they have ~50hp). One thing you can do is 2-swing, turn around with charge, then double back and do the 3rd swing which an opponent may not suspect. After a full 3 swing it will take extra time before you can attack or block again.

Many special abilities (blind, critical strike, venom swing, etc.) reset your attack combination so it is acceptable to for instance use a savage to do 3-swing doublestrike 2-swing block.

Using charge bar is essential to winning melee fights. Most fights involve an initial period of ranging. The player who feels they are loosing the range battle will then charge in. You do not want to be the player who wastes all their charge bar closing to melee range. Instead gradually approach your enemy firing with range. Sometimes you can surprise an enemy who is charging at you by charging at them in response and getting the first hit since most people react to a charge by kiting or holding block.

Get a friend and practice using charge clockwise 270 degrees to the opponents back, swinging, then charging back to the 0 position. This is exactly the kind of charge use you want to use against a live opponent to avoid their blocks and swings. Strikes from behind do more damage and you avoid block altogether.

Stamina conservation is important. If you don't 3-swing you'll find you save much more stamina. What you don't want is to run completely out, because you will swing much slower. Another bad habit is players who hold down shift (run) all the time while swinging. You will run out of stamina very fast.

If you have gained a decisive HP advantage over an opponent (if you have twice as much HP), it is worth trading swings with them. That is, when they swing, don't block, swing right back.

Jump attack (JA) is a 'sometimes' move - you need ~70 stamina to pull it off. If you don't have enough stamina you'll just jump, run out of stamina, and preform a very slow quick attack. The knockback effect of a JA can be used to push people away from buildings. JA does significantly more damage to a block bar. However if you see someone JA you can usually hit them with 2 normal swings so if you're at low HP, probably not a good move. Also the windup for JA is larger (i.e. you see them jumping) which can give you time to charge away. JA has slower DPS then QA and drains stamina way faster.

One legitimate use of JA is versus Dark Rogue NPCs who seem to get confused if you JA them. You'll take less damage.

Most importantly: switch it up! I see tons of players who consistently use the same melee style (i.e. block swing block swing, 2 swing block) all the time. If you do this you'll become very predictable. Shake up your style with kiting and charge, switch between 1swing and 2swing combos, heck, JA once in a while.

NPCs

The NPC's are distracted by the sentry bat, minimizing damage taken by players.

Place gadgets (eyes of the bat, ammo depot) in front of NPCs to get them to attack the gadgets initially and not you. Saves you some HP. Practice finding the exact range of AI aggression for these creeps. Since NPCs randomly drop items, it never hurts to take them out.

Squads

The check-six clan practices the flying V formation. Kids, don't try this at home.

Squads: Officers
Officers should generally buy the power absorption item. Know the command v63 (I need a dispel). Your main job is to ask when people are ready to spawn (use ctrl+enter for squad chat). Use F and 1 to target attack orders for your squad. Wait by your portal for more squaddies to spawn; officers have shorted spawn times than other units so don't be tempted to go off by yourself first. 2-3 people together can do a lot more damage. Officers get a very small regeneration buff that is barely worth mentioning (I guess I just mentioned it).

Squads: Combat

My ally blocks while I slice the enemy from behind for extra damage.

Think about maximizing the number of people hit by specials and also how to hit people from behind. For humans, bash and double strike are great stuns, but if at first contact you entire squad uses double strike, you'd only get 1 second of stun. Stagger your stuns to make the enemy stunned for the longest ammount of time; after 1 player stuns, wait until that stun is almost over before using your own stun. The same applies for beasts with blind. Once an enemy has been hit by a special, squad members should charge around and hit them from behind. It often helps if the officer initiates the fight by targeting one specific person to start unloading specials attacks on.

Squads: Picking Units
You can see in the squad tab what the other units in your squad are so communicate and plan accordingly. The officer should request what units they need depending on the commander's current objectives. Since the squad system automatically balances for new squads, in an average game you have either 3-4 people per squad.

Human squads around armory tech should be going for enemy sublairs: 2 savages and 1 marksmen with possibly a builder as the 4th. Uually the demo is dropped between the sublair and the mine, savages stand on both sides and place room between them and the demo; savages should stand far away enough so that the bat swinging through the savage can't hit the demo pack as well. The marksman should ideally remain on the outside not pinned between the savages to take advantage of backstab and distracting with wallriding or kiting until the demo goes off. If you have a builder, he should be sandwiched between the savages so he can get off as much building damage as possible.
Human sub attack formation: 2 savages defending demo packs.

If the beasts go nexus first, it's more likely to see sacrifice being used in squads; otherwise, squads should be composed of a core of 2 bats and a conjurer. The 4th unit could be another support unit (conjurer, possibly shaman) or a SS for blind and sacrifice. Similarly to humans, the idea is to place the conjurer, who does significant building damage, between the mine and the garrison and place bats on either side. Wingspin can make good cover for sacrifice. Often bats will be able to use their wide arc to hit both the garrison and the mine at the same time; which is why I recommend them over SS. Venom plant can do some damage to buildings, so if you're the conjurer, this is the time to drop one. Buy time by rooting enemies as they spawn; this way you can avoid the spawn time invincibility.
Later game humans should make squads of as many legos as possible. When fighting in a squad of all legos, it's important to clump with your squadmates and cast riposte. If an opponent trying to melee has to hit 2 or even 3 of you at a time, the riposte effect is devastating. It's possible that you might want to mix in a healer or two, but given the lego already has a healing ability, you might as well go with more riposte and stun. You can forget the marksmen/builders since lego have both high HP and building pierce; at this stage your squad should actively charge chloro/strata spires; a group of legos can destroy a garrison before a demo pack will even go off.

Later game beasts should go with at least 2 predators, 1 conjurer and/or 1 shaman. Predators and shamans are mana intensive; in addition, conjurers and shamans can use root to prevent humans from clumping up and pick off legos one at a time Because legos do low damage, if they are forced to chase down shamans this presents a good opportunity for predators to hit them in the back. If your team is strapped for cash and facing legos, shapeshifters can also overwhelm legionnaires with blind and their faster attack; make sure to isolate and target one lego with officer order (f+1).

Squads: Siege

The battle behemoth tower consists of 5 stacked behemoths and a steambuchet.
YouTube: 3 behemoth squad pushing

As far as seige and squads go: in general the tempest/steambuchet units are saved for all out seige rushes from a forward garrison; it is too hard to babysit these units any real distance. However, behemoths and rams make good additions to a squad. A ram supported by legos can be effective due to legos sitting around with riposte and bash while the ram flames and runs in circles hoping to lame someone. Behemoths stomp allows predators to take advantage of their greater DPS compared to legos. Avoid mixing too much siege into your squad; legos don't do much damage so it's important to have enough to stop a suicidal attacker.

Crowd Control

YouTube: Damnit fighting 1v7

A major problem with new players is that when they have one player outnumbered, they all tend to rush him with melee in the same direction. This has two problems: first, the person in front will prevent the people behind him from using charge. Second, the one outnumbered player can potentially hit several people at once and can direct the movement of the crowd as well as gain maliken bonuses from picking off the injured.

To fight one person (possibly more skilled) with a group of people, realize that given new melee rules and similar units, it's almost impossible to win a 3v1 with flanking. So if there are 4+ people spawning at a garrison and just a single attacker, I suggest you let others deal with him (in clan matches there is usually a defensive squad who does this) and go find & kill his portal. If there are 3 people around, you want one person to stand in front and block, one person to charge behind him and swing, and possibly one person to shoot range. Players can only face in one direction at a time. If you and your ally stand on opposite sides of your opponent, one of you will always get a shot at his back. If they try to swing they get blocked and slowed in addition to taking extra damage frrom the back.

How do you then fight a group of people with a single unit? This is where maliken lungs come into play. First you want to use the alt key to display hit points. Your goal is to kill any injured opponents quickly; that failling, you should clump up enemies and do as much damage as you can. Chaplains and shamans have pretty low HP so they make good soulfood as well. Shamans and conjurers are also your enemy since if you get rooted/confused, you can become surrounded. Also watch out for savage double strike; lego bash is more easily avoided since a lego standing still means he's probably using an ability. You want to bunch up your enemies by rotating around them until you get as many as you can in a line. This way, you can use your specials to hit more of them at once. You can herd enemies by using mortars/blue fireballs and their bouncing effects which players will try to avoid. Save your rocket launcher shots for kiting injured people. As far as melee style goes, you can't afford to do a full 3 swing combination; stick to one or two hits and reset your attack combo with block preferably. Sometimes very injured units will hold block and you may be tempted to try to melee their block down. Don't do this - you'll get slowed. Instead keep moving and try to kite them. The goal is to avoid hitting any blocks; these will slow you down. You move slower when holding block as well so only hold block when absolutely necessary. Rely on quick attack's block bar refund to stay alive. If you realize you are completely outnumbered you might want to consider wallhopping and hope the rest of your team arrives. Understand that against several skilled players using flanking, death is inevitable given that your block bar will run out, you will run out of charge, and they will chase you down. However, by wasting more than 1 persons time, you allow your team to catch up to you and keep pushing the front line.

Spending Ability Points
A 3-way split between agility, strength, and endurance is the best move for a fighter - you need damage to stay competitive with other players stacking endurance, endurance to survive towers, and stamina so you don't get winded and can land some jump attacks in. Avoid stacking all your points into one or two areas because you get diminishing returns for how many stat points you spend. For beasts, throwing in a couple of intelligence points isn't a bad idea.

Runes
Runes only help in the early game. Late game you should not be using runes as regular items are better uses of your inventory; in clan matches runes are not allowed. Runes will not make you great but they do help a little. They can however also make you sloppy. I suggest you don't always use your runes, it will improve your play style. A common question is whether you get more active effects stack on each other. The answer is yes; a second damage rune will stack on the total damage of your base plus first damage bonus. Of the active effects, dagger/heart/speed are the top picks depending if you play style is killer/tank/asshole respectively, for passive health/gold are best (armor is inferior to health), regeneration effects are very small and don't matter that much (either mana or stamina). I also suggest you don't buy them, you get a bunch of scratch tickets for accomplishments, there's a good chance you'll pick up a couple of runes. But if you want to support S2, go ahead.

Terrain Issues

Netukka's malph is protected from holy bolts by hiding in these bushes on Eden.

Many bushes, shrubs, and trees will give you range immunity. It's worth figuring out on each map which bushes will stop range. In addition, the blockers often go all the way up, so you can hide malphas behind what seems like a small shrub.

Savage 2's melee works kind of funny on steep hills; if someone jumps on your head for instance, neither of you will be able to hit each other. It's better to charge up to the same level to fight someone on a steep hill.

Wall Riding/Hopping

YouTube: Wall Riding 101
This move caused a bit of a stir up when the Squirrels revealed the full potential of this move during the grand tournament, but has since become accepted. Wall riding is done by dodging sideways up a ramp/wall while turned 45 degrees away from the wall; done correctly this will send you flying at a high speed without draining your charge bar or stamina. Wall riding can be used to jump over enemies and take out their portals. Note that people have gotten more used to this recently and will sometimes predict the location you will land. Wall riding can also be used back and forth to waste enemy time and manpower for minimal charge cost. It's worth asking your commander for a slow buff against someone doing this; don't waste more than 2 people to stop them. Marksmen/Shapeshifters can wall hop the farthest; the bigger units go much less. You can get a similar effect to wallriding by charging up a steep ramp.

Some Class Specific Notes
I'm not going to go through 'And this is double strike, it stuns you for x time and y damage...'. Here are some effective uses tips and combos.

SS melee is based on either backing up with 2 swings or hitting the side with 2 swing block combinations. It is particularly good against the slower savage. Don't try standing back in a pure range battle with a full HP savage; you'll lose, especially if they have their heal aura on.

Tapping static discharge rapidly will do more damage per second than holding it down.

Lightning: Kite with this to give an edge over marksmen; marksmen are generally considered to be stronger in melee so you'll need to out-shoot them.

Blind prevents enemy units from using abilities in addition to the blind effect. However, good players will likely hold block for one or two hits and then swing back; don't get lazy and attack with your full combination assuming they won't fight back blinded. It is safer to dodge backwards and shoot 2-3 lightning shots before switching back to melee - this will give you a good HP advantage. Also useful for disorienting legionnaires and forcing them to swing into your blocks, slowing them. Blind works on enemy siege too (steambuchets can't aim).

Shapeshift: if you have a blue circle under you, there is an enemy electric eye around and enemies will see a red circle around you, so it is not safe. If you are not revealed, you will not be attacked by enemy towers unless you attack them; after your first hit, towers will shoot you. While you are not revealed, enemies can also can friendly buffs (i.e. heals) on you, which can be amusing.

Sacrifice: don't just hold block; take advantage of quick attack refunding your block bar on successful hits to stay alive longer. You should only hold your block bar for the last few seconds.

Hunter melee is all about attacking the back due to their wide attack arc (it is wider than the savages) and either stacking poison through block or getting mad speed with frenzy.

Frenzy gives you a speed bonus every time you score a successful melee hit. Wingspin does not give you frenzy bonus. However, glidestrike does, so you should open with a glidestrike to give you that initial speed bonus. Switching targets is very important to keep up your speed; if someone is at low life but playing the full blocking game, ignore him, hit someone at higher health a few times to gain full speed bonus, then finish the lower HP person with a glidestrike. Due to the speed of frenzy, I feel it is safe to 3 swing with a hunter.

Glidestrike can be used to move around the map, but due to its low cooldown it is actually best used for pure damage. Glidestrike will apply melee modifiers (poison, frenzy) and will finish off people at low health. You should always open a melee fight by gliding right behind them, turning 180 and hitting their back; it's also useful for ending fights. Be careful that you can be hit with melee swings while gliding, so gliding through a number of enemies already fighting someone can get you killed. That said since you have no collision, use it to escape sticky situations. Glidestrike doesn't work up steep hills or solid objects (things that are not enemy players) so make sure you don't get stopped prematurely. Glidestrike is particularly effective when attacking enemy buildings; when faced with a player holding block in front of an enemy building, directly attacking them will probably result you also hitting the building and getting the slow debuff. Instead, back up a little to make him come to you, glidestrike towards the building, you'll get stopped moving by the building, but you'll do damage and be behind him, turn 180, hit them, and you avoid building slow (a leading cause of player death).

Venom stacks and goes through block. It also prevents enemy players from using potions, so if you know an enemy player often uses them, poison may be a better choice than rabid. Versus legos with riposte, poison may be better since you want to end the fight quick. Without riposte, frenzy is better since lego attack speed is slow and you can take your time.

Wingspin is of limited use. You should only use it in groups to drain block bar around buildings. If you are not next to something worth defending, smart enemies will simply back up or block 3 times and end you. Around buildings, if one player wingspins and another fights normally, this can be an effective combination. To fight towers, take some healing pots, and go attack the tower until you're at ~200HP. Activate wingspin, which gives you the 5 second cooldown on potions. When wingspin finishes, spam your potions, then finish off the tower. Fighting wingspin - you should usually block 3 times then swing twice, block, swing twice, special attack. If there are more than 2 people wingspinning and you are not a legionnaire, you should probably back up. You can still run with wingspin on, so use it. Don't use wingspin 1v1, you'll die against anyone with a brain. Also note that you could probably use extra glidestrike/frenzy/venom instead of using wingspin mana. Wingspin hits 11 times and does

Statue healing is a very limited use move; you should carry potions, don't waste time by sitting around for a very slow heal. However, you can sometimes use statue to recover potion CD time. In a group, sometimes you can bait people into attacking your statue, it's important to pull out of statue and get the first hit / glide. Don't forget to turn off your melee modifier before using this ability, because you can't cancel frenzy/venom while statued and you'll lose mana.

Somewhat inferior to the legionnaire but also your best shot at killing legos. You have pretty much two options: activate all your abilities and melee, or kite them until riposte wears off. Usually there are other enemies that don't have riposte on that you can kill first. If you plan on kiting first, use roar to lower their armor (greatly increases range damage).

Red fireball does less damage than blue, so use it only to tag people at long range, preventing them from using potions.

Blue fireball is your best kiting weapon; aim high so that it hits without bouncing first. Also the perfect tool for taking out annoying marksmen who think they can out melee you. With the anti-armor debuff, marksmen will get wasted fast with your range, don't try to pure melee them because in groups you'll become much slower from blocks and get backstabbed.

Frenzy + 3 swing + venom strike does about the same DPS as a lego attacking a building.

Root's main combo for a single conjurer is to root then jump attack. Don't root and shoot them with spores which do middling damage. Unlike the human builder, conjurer melee is strong (good range and damage) versus both players and buildings. Venom plant is good versus buildings and not worth it versus players. It does more DPS than the steam turret, but avoid placing lots of these in combat zones as they are a good source of gold and xp. Mana fountain combos well with healers, but again it gives a lot of gold to the enemy, so hide em.

Conjurers with rezz trinkets are a danger to human bases; try to coordinate your rezz trinkets with squad members. It forces the enemy to waste time camping all your bodies.

Much more effective than human chaplain and best unit versus malphas. Shaman swings do ~100 dmg to HB, so ~11 hits and malphas is dead. Storm shield does not last very long; wait until your allies are charging at towers before casting. Carry mana potions so you can Chant for extended periods of time. Jump attack with charge works pretty well on these little guys.

The confusion ability works pretty good versus the skill heavy lego/savage. Try to target legos who haven't activated riposte yet since it prevents the unit from using any abilities. Also legos do fairly low damage so shamans can be used to swarm them. Watch out for getting ranged at melee distance however.

When using a behemoth, sprint and jump, then while in the air, start your swing. This 'jumping attack' will give you some extra distance and gives enemy players less time to run away.

If you do not move your mouse side to side initially when using behemoth swing you can then move the cursor without moving your model and you will attack the location you specified without seeming to turn. There is a limit to how far you can deviate from your initial swing (about 210).

Do not be tempted to use the behemoth's special abilities (tree smash, shockwave) on buildings that seem to be at low HP. They do almost no damage to buildings.

Try to get a conjurer/shaman to root and behemoth swing.

Both of these are 1 hit kills (well, ram + fire is 1 hit kill) and can also block off spaces between buildings. Behemoths do significantly more damage to malph than rams (but they won't kill Malphs, Behemoths just delay them until more units arrive). Behemoth stomp / ram flames can chase people out into tower range.

Remember enemy commanders can dispel tempest ethereal form. Once you click the meteor ability, regardless of the hand waving animation, a meteor will fall even if you got killed while casting it. Push should be use defensively to push enemy players away from buildings into tower range (effective and annoying since tempests have high HP).

Always use the key c to get a upper view of the map when firing siege!

Received an armor reduction recently. Kiting with xbow and marksmen is a pretty vicious combo. Their 2 swing + block is quicker than any other unit. Good enemy commanders will almost certainly dispel invisibility, debuff, and attempt to worker kill you should you go demo their base. Also good players who use eyes rarely let demos survive. I think you're probably better off playing a...

Once armory is up, you should be mostly spawning these. Savage melee is based on kiting and using your specials in combination with charge. The savage can effectively do 2-swing or 3-swing followed by crit or double strike which will reset his attack combo. Though critical strike is a bit harder to aim than double strike, note than you can still hit multiple players with it. If you're sneaking up on someone, i prefer to start with a critical strike so they can't hightail it. Rage gives you really good DPS on buildings; make sure to always use 2 swing + block + 2 swing ...

Note that the ravager does more DPS assuming you can land most of its shots, while the weaker repeater is better for quickly kiting people.

The rage ability claims to give you a movement speed bonus, but the UI hasn't been updated - it doesn't make you faster.

If attacking a building that is being constructed and enemies (but no workers) are around, you might consider using critical strike's damage over time to delay the building's construction while you fight off enemy players.

Once academy is up, always save enough money to buy them. Unless you have incoming behemoths, in which case, use savages for better DPS. Wait until the last second to activate riposte or bait people into attacking you then turn it on. I see people activate riposte when at far range distance and that just encourages beasts to keep you at range distance until riposte wears off. Extremely good at crowd control; circle around, dropping mortars and do 1 swing + block.

Lego stun leaves you a bit vulnerable, so charge away, jump, cast stun and turn around to hit the enemy who's following you. Stun also resets your attack combo, though you should almost never 3 swing with a lego. If you see an enemy lego just sitting in one place it means he's about to whirl or stun, so back up or block. Lego whirl leaves you very vulnerable, use this only outside of a pack of enemies with allies, or as a last move before you're about to die. Lego heal is great when fighting range, you barely take any net damage.

A solo lego can take out a strata spire without dying or using any items (solo pred can't take a tower without items). Don't be afraid to charge towers.

Melee has small range though decent damage. Avoid spamming gadgets. Apart from the classic 'do not shield generator your own towers', ammo depots and steam turrets are a great source of gold to the enemy. Only place them if your teammates request it. When with teammates, go straight for buildings. Don't sit around and try to snipe with the semi-auto if you could be hitting buildings.

If you're trying to win a game with humans, I strongly suggest you leave these to lesser skilled players. Thanks to shield of sol, they are survivable, but their armor debuff is not as useful as the shaman's root or ability disable. Use mana pots if you insist on playing these.

Only spawn these if you've got a decent player protecting you or are relatively close to the enemy you want to shoot. Don't stand still; practice going in a circle where you end up facing the enemy building again after completing one rotation and your stone throw has recharged. Try to get stuck up a hill to make meleeing you more difficult.

Again, always use the key c to get a upper view of the map when firing siege!

Learn to count the # of seconds before ram goes off. Hills are bad news for trying to ram enemies; avoid them. Stay with teammates. Save speed until you see enemy units. Save flames for damaging enemy buildings. For instance, you can kill a strata spire by doing speed-ram-fire-ram next target and the fire will kill it (instead of wasting 3 ram attacks the spire).

Also can kill behemoths 1v1 easy. :)

*Hellborn*
Playing these isn't rocket science so I'm not going to spend much time on it. The main thing to remember is play defensively and stick with your team. Wait for siege even if you lose 100-200 life from negative HP regeneration. Don't rush in because you can get a couple of cheap kills, because good players will overwhelm you quickly. Revenants are good at staying back and hitting towers but their melee is inferior to preds/legos; you're better off saving for one of the other two. Devourers are solid siege defense once they eat up, but avoid charging into enemy bases with one since they're a huge target. Few people seem to use this, but malph eruption does significant damage to buildings; use the fire debuff to pick off injured healers.

HB have significantly larger block bars, but I see HB 3-swinging all the time. Only 3 swing if you know you can kill someone and get a soul. A malphas can block several whole attack combos by a legionnaire.

Save your charge bar for chasing injured people or running away instead of running into combat quickly. Don't run out of stamina either; HB sprint is faster than normal units.

Also I must add that the purpose of HB is to end games. Once you've taken out their sanctuary / pred den and have malphs in their base, the game is effectively over. Don't sit at the spawn; end the game by taking out their SH from behind.

Commander Tactics

(Check eax's guide on s2howto.com, he's a better commander than me!)

Commanding usually boils down to your action players. A good commander won't necessarily win a game, but a bad commander can lose the game. Here are a few things to bridge the gap between mediocre to decent commander.

The most obvious thing is to use typing, pings, draw on the map, and preferably voice chat liberally. Players can't see units on the minimap unless an eye is placed, so it's your job to let them know where enemies are spawning.

Note that portraits of all your players are in the upper left hand corner (click the arrow tabs to expand them) and you should apply buffs by clicking once on the buff and then on the player's portrait.

Game Opening
Start the game by building your base mine and creating a worker which you will send to your first gar location.

Optional: Speed an officer. If he spawns fast enough, he may be able to get out of their commander's initial reveal sight and escape debuffs. This is not as important in public games where typically players will not wait until their officer drops a spawn portal.

Reveal slightly outside the enemy base. You will be able to see where enemy players are headed. Hold alt to see who their officers are. Give one enemy officer a slow and the other a bleed; this way, only one can be dispelled. Reveal does not show enemy units to your own team so you should inform them where the enemy is headed.

Turn your attention back to your own troops; it is likely one of your own officers has been debuffed. Speed buff will more or less cancel slow buff; bleed is more important to dispel since it prevents placing a spawn portal.


Economy and Upkeep
Recap on the basic Savage 2 economy scheme: commanders build steam/grove mines which provide a fixed amount of income depending on the mine (if you look at the mine, it will say how much gold per income cycle, it gives). On most maps, expansions which are more hotly contested (the north mine on Morning for instance) will give more gold. The more mines you control, the smaller the respawn time will be for your team and obviously you'll get more gold per income cycle. A damaged mine will produce less gold than a full HP mine. Once all gold mines on the entire map have been depleted the game goes into sudden death (more on this later). If your team has at least one gold mine, you have maintained upkeep; if you have no mines, you have no upkeep (UNMET). Having no upkeep will have the following effects: all your buildings will have reduced armor, your shield towers/chlorophillic spires will not do anything, and your team will have an excrutiatingly long spawn time.

As a commander, you want to maintain upkeep for as long as possible and usually want to prevent going into sudden death. There are a few tricks for doing this. First, if you are doing reasonably well (have full tech and some towers) try to leave one gold mine damaged. This means it will have lowered extraction rate so you'll get less gold, but as long as it has some gold you still have upkeep, so do not repair it and instruct your team not to repair it. In larger maps with many gold mines, later in the game you might want to resist building mines until one of your other mines goes out. Remember, even though you might get enough gold for large fortifications of shield/chloro towers, if you go into sudden death, all those towers will be useless.

Sudden Death
Once all mines on the map have no more gold, the game goes into sudden death. In sudden death, both teams have the effects of 'no upkeep' with the additional factor that nobody can repair buildings (but you can still build new buildings). So if you know you're going into sudden death soon, repair all your structures beforehand ASAP. At this phase in the game, hellbourne will become extremely effective at killing your base, because there is no upkeep and because respawn time prevents people from using spawn invincibility to kill HB. Sudden death is somewhat better for beasts because they can suicide bat wingspin towers.

Only Buff the Worthy
You can pretty much only count on a few officers and players to follows your orders. To insure loyalty, make sure to buff only the people who do helpful things like building damage or killing portals near your base. It's not worth spending buffs on healing random injured newbies simply because officers are capable of using that HP much more wisely. Use speed buff liberally to get your officers to the front. Also avoid spending your bleed debuffs on really injured newbs and instead use them on enemy officers who can drop portals. It's fun to get comm kills but not as beneficial since an action player probably could have killed them anyways and taken their soul.

Do Not Resurrect People In Front Of Towers
I feel this is worth mentioning since they'll hate you. Make sure you have line of sight of the corpse, that the player isn't surrounded by enemies, or if the player specifically requests to be revived. The cooldown is too long to waste this ability. If in doubt, ask the player in question or use reveal.

Ping When Recalling
Let people know where to go when recalling by pinging. It's likely you don't have eye coverage otherwise they'd be defending already.

Don't Go Into Psychotic Yelling Mode
ONCE YOU DEGENERATE INTO ALL CAPS IT BECOMES VERY UNLIKELY PEOPLE WILL TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY OR RATE YOU MORE THAN 1 STAR.

(Note to self... listen to your own guide. -Damnit)

Take Care of your Workers
You have little builder portraits in the upper left. I like to keep 1 builder at main for tech, 1 a little behind expo for repairs, 1 at possible BD location. Keep these little guys alive since they're costly and buff them if necessary (speedy builders will outrun non speeded players). In the beginning you can get by with 1-2 of these, don't hold up tech by getting all 3 right away. You can sometimes kill very injured players (~100HP) with them in conjunction with slow debuff, but only if you're sure you won't lose any.

Reveal when Placing Buildings
To avoid loosing any tech during construction, save up recall, the slow debuff and at least 1 worker. If you don't have eye vision around your base, use reveal slightly outside your base to make sure no incoming enemies, then place the building. Similarly, make sure there are no enemies that could rezz when you rebuild mines. It's better to be cautious.

Don't Overextend
Many games, one team will get lucky and destroy the enemy's first garrison. The commander gets overconfident and takes 3 mines. The enemy team techs to monastery or armory and takes out these mines before you make a net profit on them, and now your team is behind on tech and positioning. Take 2 mines max, then build tech to solidify your position. Don't be greedy.

Don't Get Siege Rushed (if you can avoid it)
Reveal your backdoors and hellshrines constantly. In fact, it's probably a good idea to leave a worker around your BD and eventually build a gar there late game to save you a horrible siege rush loss. Shield/chloro your main & academy/pred-den in the back of your base.

Placement
Do not place your tech so close together than a lego/pred/hunter can hit two things at once. Spread out is better. Also small corridors and behemoths are bad news for your team.

Cannon/Static spires have a much smaller build space limit than Strata spires, so you can often get a static, chloro, and strata spire in front of a sublair with another static spire in the back. Place strata spires on the edges of hills to get more reach. This is something that is map dependent; watch replays of good commanders (Ero, Iceraven, various SoR members) for map specific tower placement. Also some maps allow for 2 strata spires to be placed at a garrison due to the terrain (AncientCities,

Beast Strategy
Beasts should aim to secure more expansion spots than humans before legos appear. Early game is very aggressive as bats cover a lot of ground quick and conjurers are both good vs units and buildings.

Sanctuary first: benefits are gust of wind, rezz trinkets, and shamans. Gust balances out humans getting armory & repeaters, can be used to close distance on armory->towers, rezz trinkets allow conjurers to do good building damage runs and forces humans on the defensive. Shamans can be useful, but sanct first is more of an item unlock for a competent team. Preferred tech.

Nexus first: benefits are spires, lightning strike, sac, venom, and wingspin. Spires are only necessary if your team really is getting pushed back or if you have a 'middle' garrison close to an enemy garrison. If you team does not have their backs to the wall, sanctuary first is a better idea. Some higher level players really like lightning strike...

After these two, you should go either for preds if the enemy is going to get legos up, or HS then siege if your team can spawn at least 3 malphs (potential game ender).

Human Strategy
Humans should aim to survive till the Academy since Legos in packs are very hard to beat given riposte and have an edge over preds. They should also keep at least 1 gar alive until then because it's hard to build Academy under constant base attack.

Armory first: benefits are double strike, repeaters, towers, demo packs. Armory mostly increases Savage effectiveness; double strike is great for human squad teamwork. Towers are OK, don't build many as you want to get legos fast. Note that gust of wind, conjurers, and wingspin mean that you'll need to keep a worker near forward expo. Definitely the better choice of first tech.

Monastery first: benefits are gust and rezz trinket. Chaplains are inferior to shamans and won't help as much as double strike, so don't do this.

After armory and monastery, always go Academy.

Later game (I've got all tech and I'm bored...)
Focus on taking backup chokepoints and getting your HS gar after getting preds/legos.

Malphs protecting siege is the surest way to win a game. Focus on securing a HS using all 3 builders! Builders are incredibly important later game when few people will spawning builders and you need your best players using legos/preds to defend. Another common strategy is that officers go to the HS with your builders, drop portal, and you recall one to spawn as a builder. Don't get lazy and forget to reveal. Reveal costs very little mana. Malphs don't do that much building damage unless upkeep is down, so an equivalent number of siege units will end you faster. Most importantly, listen to your officers, they can tell you when they think they can hold a position.

Endnote
I started playing Savage 2 relatively later, right before the 1.7.* patches. I played in the grand tournament for x6 in which we got 2nd, a couple of other clan matches, games on the short lived vet server, many pubs, etc. When I refer to 'pub game' I usually mean a game where there are a number of bad people you can kill for souls. In these games, single hellbourne and maliken items become too effective. When you see the average SF of a game go to ~130, then it becomes more of a skill game and you'll need to spend gold differently as well as alter your play style; but ultimately these are the games which are more rewarding to play as most veterans will agree.

Savage 2 has a small player base. Work on building not only your skills but a positive reputation with other players. Everyone has bad days, but if you use chat, work together, communicate with your squad, it'll make the game more enjoyable for everyone and people will want to join your squad and team. Hopefully this guide will help elevate the pub game level and maybe get some clan matches going again.

-Damnit

P.S. Send me a PM on the forums if you have any other tips you think aspiring players would enjoy.