Evolve Stage 2 [UPDATED] How to EVOLVE into a monster(hunter)

Game Modes And Core Mechanics

This section briefly summarizes the avaible game modes and the core elements of the game. As a new player, you should definitely read through this to ensure you didnt miss some key component from the tutorials, as veteran you might want to skip this.

As of current, you have four choices for playing Evolve:

Quick Play (containing the modes Hunt, Arena and Defense

Hunt (ranked mode, where only Hunt is played)

Evacuation (campaign mode, 5 matches with the modes Hunt, Rescue, Nest and Defense)

Custom Play (whatever mode you want on whatever map you want with whatever settings you want)Generally, the low player base will make you stick to the former two. Evacuation doesnt seem to draw enough players and Custom Play is usually meant for 5man parties intending to have some friendly fun.

Quick Play is your goto 'I wanna play' button, usually with low queue times (take 'low' in a relative context here).

Evacuation is a campaign mode that was introduced a bit later then the orgiinal Hunt, adding new modes and a progression system: It consists of 5 matches in a row, where the first is always a Hunt, and the last always a Defense. The middle three matches can be either Hunt, Rescue or Nest and are voted on (from two given options at a atime) by the players. The twist of this mode is that the winning side of the last round gets an advantage for the new one, with the advantage being specific to the map that was played. Usually causes a snowball effect, however.

Hunt is pretty much the 'original' Evolve and what the game's balance is centered around, it as well comes with a ranking system and leaderboards. And proper matchmaking (attempts).

HuntIn the Hunt mode, the Monster spawns at Stage 1 at a specific location of a randomly chosen map. The hunters start at the same spawnpoint, but with a delay of ~30 seconds. Early on, the Monster will try to evade the Hunters, kill wildlife and eat to grow to Stage 2, whilst Hunters will try to trap and fight the monster early to beat it before it can evolve.

Growing to Stage 2, the monster will be in a spot where it can either fight, or try to evolve further to Stage 3.

At Stage 3, the monster has a significant advantage over the Hunters, and can alternatively attack the map's generator.

The round ends in a Monster victory if all Hunters are dead at the same time, or the generator has been destroyed. The Hunters win by killing the Monster, or surviving till the time limit runs out.

ArenaArena effectively takes away the whole 'hunting' theme of the previously mentioned mode and simply throws the Hunters and the Stage 3 Monster into a permanent dome to duke it out to the death.

Once one side killed the other, everyone is respawned in a new dome, repeating the procedure in a classic 'Best Of 5' format.

Whilst this mode offers 'instant action', it's balance is flawed by the fact that many abiltiies, both for Hunters and Monsters, revolve around detecting or avoiding detection. Which doesn'T matter at all inside of a permanent dome.

RescueIn Rescue, the Hunters and a Stage 1 Monster spawn seperately. The Hunters have to find, revive, protect and evacuate Survivors, whilst the Monster has to kill them. Both sides gain a 'rough location' of the next Survivors, which is replaced by their precise locations upon coming closer.

At round start, 2 survivors are spawned. Once they are both revived (or killed), the timer for the rescue shuttle will commence. Once the timer runs out, the Survivors can evacuate via a designated teleportation zone thing.

Once rescued (or killed), the next 2 survivors spawn. Once these two have been rescued/killed, a last batch of 5 Survivors is spawned.

From these total of 9 Survivors, the Hunters win if they rescue 5 (or kill the Monster) and the Monster wins if it kills 5 (or the Hunters) or the time limit runs out.

Survivors are NPC controlled 'unarmed Hunters', including health, strikes, incaptation and jetpack mechanics.

NestThis mode is effectively an inversed Rescue, in which a Stage 1 Monster has to defend 6 eggs, whilst the Hunters have to destroy those. The Hunters always get a rough bearing on the closest egg, whilst the Monster knows all their locations from round start.

Eggs can be damaged by any Hunter weaponry or ability, and have enough health to last a couple of seconds of focus fire. The Monster gets a location and sound cue if an Egg is attacked.

Due to it's start at Stage 1, the Monster usually has to give up the first few eggs whilst rushing to evolve, but alternatively it can 'hatch' eggs, turning them into small 'Goliath' minions. Those minions are weaker even then an actual Stage 1 Goliath, but they will move towards the hunters and attack them, dealing more damage then immobile eggs would.

The match ends in a Hunter victory if the Monster or all eggs/minions are killed. The Monster wins by either killing all Hunters, or by the time limit running out.

DefenseAs the name implies, this mode is about the Hunters defending a multi-stage map. Essentially, there are 3 objectives on the linear map, each guarded by multiple sentry turrets. The Hunters spawn next to the first objective, whilst the Monster spawns a fair distance away, at Stage 3.

The monster has to destroy the first generator to remove an energy fence and proceed to the second Generator. Once that one is down as well, it has to destroy the heavily armored and guarded fuel pump.

The Hunters have the sentry turrets aiding them and additionally cannot lose by being wiped. The Hunter respawn dropship timer is much shorter and even if all are killed, they will simply respawn. The Hunters win by either killing the Monster, or keeping the fuel pump alive till the time limit exprires.

On the other side, the Monster starts at Stage 3 and will get Goliath minions spawned in regular intervals, which will beeline for the current objective and try to destroy it. The minions will not attack Hunters, unless at low health or by being obstructed on their path. The Monster can only win by destroying the two generators and the fuel pump.

For new players, I would recommend to spend some rounds on Quick Play or Solo to get a feel for the controls, before heading into the ranked Hunt mode.

Hunters - Know Thyself('s Class)

Run around, see a big hulking monster, hold the FIRE button and watch the 'YOU WON' screen once it dies. Cant be that hard. Right?

No.

There's a lot of obvious things you should know as a hunter. And some more rather subtle mechanics. And then there's some stuff that is documented nowhere outside of some loading screen tips and generally unknown to everyone.

First and foremost, you should comprehend the way the Hunter team is compromised:

There's always a Medic, a Support, a Trapper and an Assault. Zero exceptions. And this makes it all the more imperative to know exactly which class is supposed to do what.

Generally summarized, all Hunters come with equal amounts of health, one 'primary' firearm that is able to damage wildlife and monsters (not hunters, there's essentially no friendly fire here), two more weaponrs, gadgets or abilities and a fourth 'class ability', that is the same for all Hunters within their respective class (Rogue Val being the newly added only exception to that rule).

MedicThe Medic is responsible for both sustaining his team and, wutnow, staying alive.

Whilst latter seems obvious, most medics forget that part and get themselves killed very quickly: Without a medic, a Hunter team dies. Sometimes very fast, sometimes slowly. But it dies. Either to the monster, or to wildlife.

As a Medic, your prime concern is not to be signled out and killed. After that, you are responsible to utilizing whatever tools you keep your teammates sustained (I'm not saying 'healed' here, because some medics actually don't rely on healing) and in the fight. And past that, you may have to use other tools in your arsenal against the monster. Next to the Supports, the Medics have the most varied field of abilities and tasks, depending upon character chosen, this goes as far as to consider Lazarus a whole new 5th class on his own. Therefore you will find further detailed info in a later section of this guide describing the characters.

Just one important note: Your primary weapon is weak. Like, REALLY weak. Except for it's special effect (if it has one), you shouldn't ever bother firing with it at a Monster, unless you got nothing better to do.

SupportUsually you would assume the Support to be the tanky dude sticking around with the Damage Dealer and throwing wards everywhere. Not in this game.

The Support is the single-handedly most versatile role in the game: Supports can protect from damage, detect the monster, cause damage, amplify damage, provide mobility... Each Support character plays differently from the first and the only common thing they have is their class ability, which is a rather long-duration AoE stealth field.

It has to be noted that the Support has the second-highest DPS from all classes. Thus, he DOES have the option to focus on firing at the Monster alongside the Assault (or as latter's replacement). Albeit it's strongly advised to not forget about the rest of your kit.

Past that, the only 'general' advice for this class bases around the Stealth Field:

USE IT. Nowadays it's a rare sight to see Supports use their Stealth Field for anything but 'Oh no, I'm being attacked, panic button deaggro!'. This is made worse by the fact Support's are never a priority target in first place.

The two significant uses of a Stealth Field:

It lets you approach the Monster without it spotting you.

You can use this to finally get your team into range for a domefight against a Monster that will run in terror whenever you come into it's smell range, or to set up an ambush ahead of it's path. Or, rarely, you can watch the Monster go into evolving state from up close, just to unleash literal hell upon it (Note: During evolving, the Monster has no armor and takes double damage.).

You can hide teammates

Yes, this seems incredibly obvious at first, but many people underestimate the value of this application. You can activate your stealth field and continue firing. This way, you will remain visible, but any teammate near you who isn't firing, wont. Often the monster won't even realize your stealth field is active. Hiding that low-health Trapper during a dome fight, or that Lazerus from a smart Monster trying to focus him can mean a world of differneces.

TrapperAh, the Trapper. More or less they key role of any Hunter team.

In Hunt, you can afford an inaccurate Assault, a aggro Medic or an AFK Support. But you can never afford a bad Trapper. Why? Because of their class ability: The Dome.

This ability is beyond imperative for the Hunters to win. The Monster is inherently faster then the Hunters. And any Monsters traverse ability outclasses the Hunters jetpacks, too. It is, simply said, possibly to catch the monster, but impossible to prevent it from just running off again. EXCEPT with the damn dome. A well placd dome on a Stage 1 can instantly win the Hunters the game. A badly placed dome can give the Monster two minutes of uninterrupted hunting.

After stressing that part, lets take a brief glance at the Trapper's kit: All Trappers have a very distinctive set of tools.

First off, a peanut shooter. Really. All Trapper guns, without exceptions, are terrible. Do not use them to deal damage to the Monster. Use them to avoid doing nothing if you can't do anything useful else (exception might be Crow's weapon that can deal direct health damage, bypassing armor).

Second, a CC (read: Crowd Control) ability or gadget, something that limits the Monster's movement or simply slows it down. In most cases, this tool does not cause direct damage and thus can be used whilst chasing down a monster to give you better chances at catching up. In most cases, you will use this ability as often as possible to minimize the damage the Monster can deal during dome fights. And even more frequently to prevent it from dealing damage to YOU.

Third, a detection/tracking ability. Something that lets you mark, locate or track the monster. These abilities vary greatly from Trapper to Trapper and can come with other benefits like damage or a reviving NPC. Their most obvious use is to help locating the monster during the Hunt, but as well they are useful within a dome fight to prevent the Monster from wasting your valuable dome time by hiding behind a corner.

Fourth, the dome. It's deployed with a brief delay of maybe a second, after which it encompasses a wide area with a forcefield that prevents anything from leaving the dome. Usually the Monster. The dome runs out after approximately a minute, and can be ended early either by the Trapper, or by the Trapper being incapitated. Which, really, is the reason why the Trapper will usually end up being focussed by the Monster and busy avoiding to be murdered horribly.

As a general TO-DO list for Trappers:

Find the monster with your trackign ability

CC the monster for your team to close in

Drop the dome to prevent the Monster from running off

Continue CCing the monster whilst running in circles screaming and hope your team kills the Monster before it kills you.

Hunters - Know Thyself('s Class) - Continued

AssaultAs Assault you are, unsuprisingly, supposed to assault the Monster. Dealing damage is your prime concern throughout the game. Assaults do not have any abilities not designed to deal damage. Some add some minor utility, like Torvald's Shrapnel Grenade providing weakspots for everyone to fire upon, or Lennox's Thunder Strike letting her cover distance. But even those are primarily meant to cause damage.

The only 'non-damage' ability Assaults have is their Personal Shield, which lets them tank absurd amounts of damage. Relatively.

And here lie the two most important rules of Assault gameplay:

When fighting the monster, exclusively focus on dealing damage.

The Assault carries approximately 50-70% of the team's DPS (depending on the team composition). If there's a dome up and you are not dealing damage to the monster, or dead, you are doing it wrong. It's imperative to know that you should NOT interrupt firing to revive some teammate. ANYONE can revive. Only YOU can bring the pain. The best way to help teammates in peril is by putting so much hurt on the monster that it either dies, runs away or is too busy fighting you to annoy your teammates.

Do not ping the monster during a chase.

I'll elaborate this in further detail later on, but in brief words: Whenever you attack the monster, it enters combat mode and gains shorter cooldowns. Damaging the monster across a large distance, without actually dealing significant damage, will only let it move out of range faster and prevent your team from actually catching up. As much as your only concern during a fight inside a dome should be to damage the monster, you should not fire blindly whilst outside a proper fight.

Past those directed class-based advice, here are some general tips and guidelines for Hunters:

NEVER MOVE ALONE!

This rule is obvious, and yet I saw too many rounds where one Hunter didn't and lost the match on his own.

First of all, there's half a dozen of wildlife's that can grapple you. Whilst grappled, you can do nothing except activating your class ability (except Trappers), which will at best delay the inevitable painful death. The only thing that can free you are your teammates (whom you have just left behind).

Even worse, THE MONSTER has a grapple. Some have more, some have less damaging ones, but they all have in common that you are completely helpless once grappled. And additionally, it's near impossible to dodge a Monster's grapple, not even whilst airborne.

Don't randomly shoot at everything that's moving.

If you kill wildlife, you give away your position to the Monster, waste time, sometimes even health and on top of that leave a free food source if the Monster ever comes across it. Only shoot wildlife to free a teammate or to drop a buff (indicated by a red star symbol above the animal's head). On the same page: If a teammate is grappled by ANYTHING, shoot it. Doesnt matter whether it's a plant, a Leviathan or a Monster. Only damage can break grapples.

Don't constantly fire at the Monster during a chase. Whenever the Monster takes damage, it gets massively reduced cooldowns on his stamina (traversal ability). The monster is already faster in travel, if you keep firing at it, you only make it faster and will never catch up. On the other side, DO use any kind of non-damaging abilities that slow or mark the monster.

Don't beeline after tracks. Tracks are NOT meant to just constantly follow them. As I've said, the Monster is inherently faster. You can't catch something that is faster by taking the exact same route. Instead, use the tracks to determine where the monster went and predict where it will go and HEAD THERE instead to set up an Ambush.

If there are no tracks, don't idle around. You can still pinpoint the monster with Daisy, by sound cues of dying animals or by broken trees/plantlife. If necessary, split up to expand your search range.

Don't rev if you got a Lazerus. If you revive teammates, you give them strikes (the grey bars that reduce maximum health). If Lazerus revives teammates with his 'revivifier glove', there are no strikes. Aka, as long as you keep Lazerus alive and let him do his job, you can get incapped or even killed as often as you like to with no ill effect. Of course if Lazerus himself goes down, try to have someone revive him, he can't revivify-glovy-thingy himself after all.

Hunters - MEDICal Advice

The following sections lists the currentla avaible Hunter's, briefly summarizes their abilities and provides tipps to their playstyle. As well, they contain details on how to counter said abilities from the Monster's perspective.

Note that this section is highly based upon my subjective oppinion and therefore might not be entirely accurate.

ValArmor-Piercing Sniper Rifle - Deals fair damage, but can only fire slowly. Leaves weakspots on the Monster that double all further damage.

MedGun - Run of the mill 'lock on target and heal it' medical beam. Heals at a substantial pace, but not enough to outheal the damage of a Monster, even less so at higher stages. Can be used to revive teammates across a distance.

Tranquilizer Rifle - Slows and reveals the monster for a short period of time. Incredibly potent for chases (since it deals no damage) and when stacked with whatever CC the Trapper has.

Healing Burst - Default AoE heal

Pros - Constant healing, tanking single targets, chasing

Cons - Very vulnerable, low damage (even for a medic)

Difficulty - Moderate

Viability - GoodVal is a great default medic and, due to her run of the mill healing mechanic, a very suitable starter character for new players interested in the class.

She is possibly the best Medic for instantly recovering from injuries during the Tracking phase. With her, the team can just rush past dangerous wildlife, take the hit, and heal up during travel.

Once the Monster is spotted and fleeing, Val can tranq it consistently to apply a severe slow AND highlight the Monster, whilst not causing damage that would speed it up.

During actual combat, she can tank people with her healing beam, but suffers from having no defense mechanics and being somewhat unable to deal with damage spread out on multiple teammates. As well, due to the low firerate of her rifle she has no damage to speak off.

From the Monster's perspective, Val is a really annoying obstacle. During chases, her tranq's will make it easy for hunters to catch up, unless you manage to break line of sight long enough for the tranq to wear off. In a fight, she is one of the most tanking (read: tanking others) characters there is, making it much more of an effort to single out targets.

Usually, there's three ways to deal with her healing beam: Right off the bat, you can ignore her and just focus down the target. This will take much longer then without her presence, cause you to take much more damage and can easily get you killed on Stage 1 without scoring a single incap. On Stage 3, it's less difficult, but still takes an abundance of time and armor.

Alternatively, you could focus down Val herself. She has little abilities to defend herself, except for trying to tranq you and heal burst herself. The downside is that this will actually make you not target the Trapper or Assault, meaing you will take a lot of retaliation fire and STILL be stuck in a dome.

Lastly, the best but most difficult options, is to prevent Val from healing her target. Most easily achieved by forcing the target either out of range or out of view of Val. Wraith's Abduction works great here, as does Behemoth's wall. Without those, simply turning around to knock Val away with a strike every few seconds will do as a sub-optimal alternative.

Rogue Val - modified Val version

Semi-Automatic Sniper Rifle - Significantly less damage per shot, but comes with multiple shots per mag and a high firerate, totalling to higher DPS then Val. Still not too great, and does not provide weakspots.

Chain Medgun - Heals one target for 70%, and other nearby targets for 20% each. Sounds great, until you realize it barely heals 110% of what a normal medgun would do, and only in specific circumstances.

Poison Dart Rifle - Reveals and poisons the Monster, dealing DoT.

Healing Field - Passive AoE health regeneration, which can be activated to give herself (and only herself) a massive health boost.

Pros - Constant healing, powerful self-heal

Cons - No utility past her heal beam

Difficulty - Moderate

Viability - BadYey, more damages! Awesome.

Not.

Val's main selling point is the fact she can tranq, cripple and chase Monsters across long range. Rogue Val instead has a laughable weak DoT that, again, cannot be used during chases AS IT DEALS DAMAGE. Additionally, her single-target heal is replaced with a sorta-AoE heal beam, but whilst this makes her tanking ability weaker, it doesnt notable improve her overall healing capability. And even the weakspots from her sniper are removed.

Overall, I would consider Rogue Val overall inferior to the original version and should be avoided.

Usually, I consider it a field day when fighting a Rogue Val. Her healing beam is notably weaker then Val's, and if you simply power down one target, the weaker single-target healing and lack of a heal burst clearly shows. During a chase, she can't tranq you and if she applies the poison near the end of a dome fight, feel fre to run off and use the ticking low damage for traversal boosts.

Ignoring her presence entirely tends to work out fine.

CairaNapalm Grenades - AoE contact grenades that set Monsters ablaze.

Healing Grenades - AoE healing grenades. Heal herself only at half rate, but still.

Acceleration Field - Massive (40%!) speed and jump height boost as aura. Useful to catch up, regroup or run screaming.

Healing Burst - Default AoE heal

Pros - Constant healing, great AoE heal, Napalm Nades hardcounter Wraith's decoy

Cons - Mediocre range, less effective against tanky Monsters

Difficulty - Easy

Viability - GoodCaira's biggest selling point is her ability to CONSISTENTLY spam healing grenades non-stop. Whilst the plain healing per second on a single target cant compare to that of Val, she can quickly fix damage to the entire of the team, including herself (keep in mind she only heals herself at half the rate she heals others, though).

Her Napalm Grenades can add some ticking damage during a fight and are a great counter against the Wraith's stealth (as burning will keep him visible).

The Acceleration field can be used to close in on a monster, or to increase her own evasiveness when targeted, but comes, especially due to its limited duration and cooldown, a tad short of Val's Tranq's.

Overall, Caira's a solid medic who is a fair bit more surviveable then some others.

To a Monster, Caira's a pain in the ass. Handing out hits left and right will just let her AoE heal everyone back up. If you try to run or hide, she will, literally, light you up with Napalm for ticking damage. She's the bane of anything that tried to hide or stealth. And if you try to kill her, she can prolong her life with the movement booster and the minor self-heal.

The only saving grace is that she neither excels at single-target tanking, nor has any way of impeding your movements. Usually the best way to deal with Caira is to leave her alone and hard-on focus a single target into ground, usually the Trapper.

Hunters - MEDICal Advice - Part 2

SlimLeech Gun - Mediocre damage shotgun which reduces your Healing Burst's cooldown on hits.

Healing Drone - Remote single-target healing drone, which can however be destroyed.

Spore Cloud Launcher - AoE 'blindness' to the monster's smell sense, deals no damage however.

Healing Burst - Default AoE heal, albeit this one has twice the range of the normal ability

Pros - Excessive heals, fair damage (for a medic), solid surviveability due to heals

Cons - Lack of utility features

Difficulty - Medium

Viability - ExcellentSlim is probably the single best character at healing damage. The amount of healing he can pump out, to himself, to single targets and as AoE is borderline obscene.

It starts with the fact that he can attach his healing drone to anyone in sight, which will then proceed to follow the person around, patching him or her up. The drone's healing is close to Val's medigun and it's only downside is that you cannot heal someone actively being murdered, as the Monster's attacks would instantly kill the drone. But it's still a no-cooldown hands-free healing.

But now comes the big part: Slim's primary weapon has a surprising DPS (not anwhere near Assault levels, but above what Medics usually offer) and recharges his Healing Burst with each hit. And actually it does so incredibly fast, letting him spam the healing burst all across a fight. And it even has a doubled range, meaning you will usually hit every hunter with the heal, too.

Lastly, he has a weird form of utility in which he can lob grenades that disable a monster's sense of smell, and obscures enemy outlines and health bars. Whilst this sounds useful on paper, there's two big flaws: First of all, Monster near always focus down single targets. And usually they will find and attack the target before Slim can potentially launch a 'stink bomb'. And whilst it obscures health bars and smell, it doesnt do so enough to actually prevent the Monster from just continuing to focus said target. Secondly, using the Launcher would mean NOT to use the incredibly useful Leech Gun + Healing Burst combo.

This boils down to an incredibly linear playstyle, where Slim simply goes Rambo on the Monster with his Leech Gun, activates the Healing Burst whenever charged. Occasionally a healing drone, but that is optional.

As a Monster, Slim is a nightmare. He will provide both high healing and an additional source of damage. The only real way to deal with him is to either overpower his healing whilst eating the damage (which works out worse then even overpowering Val, at least she doesn't shoot you whilst tanking a target), or to focus him, which somewhat interrupts his Healing Burst spam.

The spore cloud launcher is a nuisance at best and the healing drone will usually get destroyed by accident, and cannot be used to tank someone in first place. Watch for remote revive attempts though.

E.M.E.T.Replay Cannon - Shoots tracking darts, which attract a swarm of guided missiles. Easy-to-apply damage.

Healing Buoys - Deployable AoE heal over time, which can emit Healing Burst remotely. With bonus heal.

Respawn Beacon - A rather weird gimmick which either tends to save the day, or attracts the Monster.

Healing Burst - Default AoE heal. Note that using this will cause all Buoys to emit additional healing pulses.

Pros - Damage 'on the side', can set up healing position, AoE healing

Cons - No direct healing, respawn beacon is usually a useless gimmick

Difficulty - Easy

Viability - OkEmet's trademark is his primary weapon: You only need to fire a single shot, for all 8 homing missiles to track and hit that target. Firing multiple times will only redirect the missiles against the new target. Since the firing sequence of the misiles and the reload takes some seconds, this means you only have to fire once every ~5-6 seconds to apply your maximum DPS. Which isn'T high, but you effectively get it for free.

For healing, you will usually lob the healing pods at an injured teammate and then instantly use the healing burst. Alternatively (or in your spare time), deploy healing buoys in elevated spots which will likely attract Hunters on their own. During travel, you can try to lob pods ahead of the team for them to get healed as they run past, but this is definitely less efficient then most other Medic's.

Now... for the respawn beacon. Placing it causes a REALLY audible cue, plus displaying a big blue countdown timer on everyone's screen. And additionally, the beacon emits a hard-to-miss blue beam of light skywards. Couple that with the fact it can be destroyed by any kind of monster ability, including the ranged ones, and you get a fun little useless gadget that will rarely ever survive, unless placed on the other side of the map (and why would you be there?). As well, if one of you died, something already went REALLY wrong and chances are your team will be wiped within those 30 seconds even if the Monster weren't to destroy the beacon.

As a Monster, EMET is a 'meh' target. He can provide some healing, but if you focus someone nearby buoys will be smashed anyways. And since past that he can only heal with his Healing Burst, which has a cooldown, you can usually safely ignore him, as long as you keep the sudden heal burst in mind when planning on incaps. His weapon deals near-unavoidable, but relatively low DPS, and his reaspawn beacon is a joke you should never have trouble destroying.

Hunters - MEDICal Abonimation, Lazarus

Yes. Lazarus gets an own guide section, simply because his presence alters the play style for both Hunters and Monsters IMMENSELY.

LazarusSilenced Sniper Rifle - Rapid-fire sniper rifle with low damage per shot, but produces 1.5x weakspots all over the Monster.

Celestial Lazarus Device - Revives incapped or DEAD hunters EXTREMELY quick WITHOUT adding strikes. Pretty much the reason for Lazarus' existence.

Personal Cloaking Device - A simple self-stealth ability. Lasts half as long as the cooldown takes afterwards.

Healing Burst - Default AoE heal. And Lazarus' ONLY heal.

Pros -LAZARUS DEVICE, rather durable due to personal cloak

Cons - Practically no healing, No special utility

Difficulty - Hard

Viability - ExcellentLazarus is effectively just his 'revivifier glove', attached to a stealth and a somewhat useful sniper.

The big point here is that Lazarus COMPLETELY overahuls the 'attrition' game of the Hunters: Usually, being incapped means you take a strike, reducing your maximum health or outright killing you on the third strike. But if Lazerus revives an incapped teammate with his glove, or even if he revives him FROM THE DEAD (which is possible up to 45 seconds past death, unless the corpse was eaten), no strikes are added.

This effectively means, as long as Lazerus isn't incapped, any incap the Monster deals to anyone is completely meaningless. Whilst any point of damage dealt to the Monster's health remains permanent.

On the downsides, Lazerus only has the Burst Heal to heal at all (and yes, that is as impractical as it sounds) and his 'support ability' is actually just a rather egoistic cloak. His sniper rifle provides the usual 'medic-mediocre' DPS, but as wel a lot of weakspots with 1.5x multipliers, usually gaining the Hunters a fair net increase in damage.

Lazerus' gameplay is all about staying away from the monster at al costs. Ideally, pelt it with your rifle from outside it's smell range, to avoid being targeted. Whenever someone is incapped, you [s]charge in to spam revive until he gets back up[/s] sit back and relax watching your teammate die as the monster camps his body for your approach. Then move in (cloaked) and revive him/her with no resistance.

The problem is, any monster with a brain will only ever bother attacking you in first place, meaning you will need your whole team's effort to stay alive. Or to deal enough damage to the monster to make it worth the strike you will receive.

Save the cloak for when you think the monster will attack you. But avoid using it WHILST being attacked, as it'S not hard to follow someone cloaked as you keep hitting him.

The goal of Lazerus is to stay alive and without strikes, to revive your teammates whenever needed for them to slowly wear down the monster.

As a Monster, playing against Lazerus means the following: Whomever you incap, will not get strikes, making the incaps pointless, unless you actually eat his corpse. And, remember, you cannot eat whilst being fired upon.

Thus against Lazerus, you have three options:

The most obvious way is to focus Lazerus instead. He cant revivify himself, meaning that you can just put him on two strikes and then kill him before any real fight. Obviously, this means you will be in a world of hurt whilst trying to hit kill him, making this more of a Stage 2+ strategy.

Alternatively, you can try to plainly wipe the hunters all at once. Either starting with Lazerus, or incapping people fast enough for him to be unable to keep up (or incap him as well). Obviously, this is rather tricky at Stage 1 and usually is more or less a Stage 3 thing.

Lastly, some Monsters can actually just eat the corpses. As Behemoth, you are tanky to begin with and can easily incap someone, then keep spitting firebombs and tongue graps at him to prevent lazerus from reviving early. Once dead, put up a wall and nom up the corpse. Wraith can employ a similar tactic, by using his Supernova to murder the incapped target, then drop a decoy and eat up the corpse whilst the decoy draws the fire for two seconds.

The only time to ever not hit Lazerus would be when he's dead, or you really need to get out of that dome by knocking over the Trapper.

[OLD] Monster Do & Don't - How To Feed On The Hunters

General Monster tips:Employ an equal mix of sneaking, running, leaping and climbing. If you only sneak, you will be encircled in no time. If you only run, the Hunters will always be on your heals. If you don't leap, you won't make distance. And if you don't climb, the Hunters will have a full jetpack whenever they engage you.

Lay false tracks. If you encounter a crossing, walk down one path for a few meters, then start sneaking and go the other. Of course this won't confuse the Hunters forever (well... most of the time), but it may give you another minute. Be aware that this doesn't work against Daisy (if they are following her), as she will sniff out the 'newer' sneak track right away.

Use the liquid element. Most maps have some sort of water in them, be it a lake or a river. You don't leave tracks whilst moving through water, not even when moving at full speed. Additionally Daisy seems to have troubles tracking properly in water. Lastly, Hunters are MUCH slower in deep water, making it a great spot to pick fights, too. Be warned though, that some maps have acidic water that will slowly drain your armor if you're moving along it.

Climb high points and then leap/fly to travel large distances without tracks. Tracks only become visible if the hunters are close enough. If you go King Kong on a tower and then leap off without being seen, the hunters will have to scramble and re-find your tracks first.

Sneak by aggrssive wildlife whenever possible. If you know the Hunters are following you, make tracks towards a predator, then sneak past him. Chances are someone will somehow agitate it and take damage or delay the group.

Don't forget to smell.. Seriously, it's a free near-permanent wallhack. You might as well tape your RMB down to keep it permanently triggering.

Don't engage the Hunters, unless on your terms. This means, always run on Stage 1 and always run if you got no armor. Preserving your health should be your prime priority.

Don't constantly switch targets in a fight. If you constantly switch targets, don't be surprised to see everyone constantly being healed back up. Stick to one target and incap it to add a strike. If you have the armor to spare, maybe even camp the body and punch it dead to prevent revives (unless they got a Lazarus).

Don't focus the wrong target. There is an additional section at the end of this chapter detailing this.

Don't forget about Lazerus. Lazuerus can cloak himself and revive people within mere 2 seconds, without even adding strikes (aka, without the patient suffering permanent damage). Even worse, he can even revive dead hunters, as long as their corpse wasnt eaten (by you or wildlife) and the time span after their death isnt longer then 45 seconds.

Whenever you fight a team with a Lazerus, keep in mind that you will not deal lasting damage unless you take out Lazerus first.

Don't forget about your armor. You don't need to kill the Hunters in the first fight. Just going on, scoring an incap and hopping out is fine enough. Keep in mind that every incap reduces their health permanently (unless Lazarus, see above).If you get all Hunters on 2 strikes, you pretty much won by default.

Don't forego opportunities. If you see an enemy Hunter on low health, or them being held up by a Tyrant, use that and put some additional hurt in. Nothingis more satisfying then sniping a low health Hunter with a rock from afar. Free strikes are always good (unless Lazarus, then see above).

Don't try to rush down the Generator, if the Hunters are still able to fight. Destroying the Generator takes good 20-30 seconds... and is interrupted whenever you take damage. Therefore, even a single Hunter can completely prevent you from dealing damage to the generator (even across the map, as a Medic). Once you reach Stage 3, armor up and then track the Hunters down. Only attack the Generator if they try to hide away to either force them out or win.

Don't forget your pounce/grapple. If you attack from sneaking, you will do a short-ranged pounce to pin whatever target you hit. Since the pin is broken by damage, it's not easy to use it in a fight, but it can still be worthwhile. There will be certain moments when only one person is firing at you (f.e. because everyone is busy shielding, healing, reviving). In that moment, pounce the damage dealer (usually the Assault) to deal damage whilst taking none at all. I have seen teams that take several seconds to realize what is happening and switch to a weapon to break the pin. Switching between normal and sneak attacks doesn't take you any time. But switching weapons does cost them. And, obviously, use the sneak attack whenever you come across a loner. Assured incaps are tasty.

Don't ignore sound. Just as the hunters can hear you, you can hear the hunters. The jetpacks make a distinctive engine sound that can easily be heard even from outside smell range and prematurely alerts you of their approach.

Don't try to hide as a christmas tree. Keep in mind, the more armor you have, the brighter you glow red. Hiding with full armor is near impossible, whilst having no armor lets you hide in any bush large enough. Or even in plain sight.

Don't constantly sniff when trying to hide. Whilst usually sniffing constantly to avoid hunters is great, if you're forced/intending to hide, you should avoid sniffing too frequently. The sound is highly noticeable and will lead hunters right to where you are hiding.

Targeting Prioritiesvary alot.

The hunter team setup, your own stage and your monster are key factors when it comes to deciding what to priorize.

But I'll try to give you a basic scheme that should usually work.

Stage 1:

Obviously, you will not want to actually target hunters at this stage. The only time you should be fighting them is after being dome'd. In this case, the targeting priority is clear:

TRAPPER. Ignore everything else. Even if there is a Val and Hank tanking him, you should only ever fake to switch targets to make them switch targets, before returning to attack the Trapper.

Note that this even holds true with an enemy Lazerus in the team: You won't deal lasting damage, but your current priority should be escaping anyways.

Stage 2:

Here things start to become interesting.

If the enemy team has a Lazerus, he should be your top priority. At Stage 2, you should be able to burn (literally) through Hank's shield and Lazerus' limited self-healing. Try to incap him, then focus the Trapper (who likely set up his dome already). Let Lazerus be revived, then incap him a second time. After that, he becomes near useless because you can simply kill him at the start of any fight (and effectively consider him non-present).

If the enemy has no Lazerus (anymore), priorize either Val or Hank, if present. They can bolster their team's defenses a lot and it will be easier to put strikes onto those. If you're domed and want to break out, focus down the Trapper, it should be well-possible on Stage 2 (even with afromentioned around).

Usualy, you should avoid focusing the Assault, simply because his shield + teammates will take too much effort to overcome.

Stage 3:

Here's where the fun starts.

First off, kill the Lazerus. If you did your homework at Stage 2, he should have 2 strikes. If not, incap him until he has 2, then kill him.

After that, just focus down the Assault. Punching him around will prevent him from applying the DPS, which means you shouldnt take too much damage even if (or especially if) his team is tanking him. Once the Assault is down, you can usualy waltz through the remaining team with ease (as you don't take a lot of damage). If the Assault is revived, just knock him down again.

Hunters - SUPPORTing The Team

Personal Cloaking Device

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=336118766

[UPDATED] How to EVOLVE into a monster(hunter) - Comprehensive Guide