4 creative uses for Assassin’s Creed 3 MP abilities
If you’ve read our Assassin’s Creed 3 multiplayer abilities and crafting guide, you know all the basic (and even advanced) uses for every skill in the game.
Morph, for instance, doesn’t have to just be used to hide; triggering it near your target’s blend group will reveal the player by turning all nearby NPCs into your clones. It’s an elementary tactic that almost every player knows about.
But what about the real, hardcore moves? The strategies that nobody’s ever even used because they’re too insane to even risk trying? Read on and take notes.
Identify targets with Tripwire Bomb
Some players refer to Tripwire Bomb as a poor man’s Smoke Bomb. But there’s just so much this little IED can do. With the right prep, it can fool even advanced players into sprinting straight to their doom. It can act as area denial for Artifacts, cap points, and the like. And apparently, it can also reveal targets from blend groups.
Wait, what? Yes, that’s right, Tripwire Bomb’s uncanny ability to sniff out (then snuff out) real players can be used on offense, as long as you know the ability’s radius well:
Then, you simply count to three (or whatever you’ve set your arming time to). From that point, there are a couple ways the situation could go. If you’ve hit the NPC, absolutely nothing will happen. You can approach the second persona knowing with complete confidence he’s the real deal. Approach directly through your bomb and you’ll also be protected from defensive Smoke Bomb or slap-happy contested kills.
If you’ve instead targeted the real player, he’ll either run for his life or (also likely) he’ll stand there and get smoked, because he didn’t even realize you could throw Tripwire Bombs. Either way, you’ve forced his hand and shut down the guessing game. Sure, Firecrackers and Wipe would work better, but if you have Tripwire available, this is definitely an option!
Shut down Animus Hackers three skills at a time
This may be old news for regular readers of Top Tier Tactics, but the other 2.8 billion people on Earth deserve to know how to stop Animus Hack, don’t they?
I can’t claim to have discovered the secrets myself; that’s all PigStuffy‘s doing. In her enlightening “The Truth About Abilities” series (we’re still waiting for more episodes), she revealed that you can do more during an Animus Hack than just running and hiding. Animus Shield, for instance, will block one (but only one) deadly pulse of Abstergo-powered death. Wipe, on the other hand, will completely disable Animus Hack for its duration, giving you (or someone else) plenty of time to murder or run from the hacker. And while PigStuffy’s video proved that Disruption doesn’t actually prevent Animus Hack from taking place, it definitely makes the normal target acquisition a lot harder than normal.
So, the next time you hear “WARNING: Animus Hacked,” remember you have some actual, tactical options. Either that, or you’ll just be compelled to watch my music video about it.
Play god with Throwing Knives
It happens in every free-for-all match: you’ve got your abilities ready, but the game hasn’t assigned you a target or any pursuers. You could use this time to find a good blend group or position yourself near important parts of the map. Or, you could just fuck with everyone else in the game.
Sure, some people consider off-target debuffs trolling, but harassing other players can directly and indirectly destroy their focus, their confidence, and their score. See the player who’s winning the match about to win a chase? Chuck your Throwing Knives her way to swing things back in your favor (eventually). Think the Hessian might have a shot at beating your score? Knife him right as he leaps towards a wire for an acrobatic kill.
As long as you’re not knifing the target of one of your biggest competitors, you pretty much can’t go wrong with some mean-spirited ranged antics!
Kill pursuers with Teleport
No, Ubisoft didn’t add a telefrag option to Assassin’s Creed 3 multiplayer (though it would’ve been more than welcome). Instead, Teleport can be used in games of Wanted (and in some cases, Deathmatch) to put your opponents between a rock and a hard rock (that happens to be attached to a club being wielded by the Bear).
You see, when you’ve accumulated three or four pursuers, the entire game starts revolving around you. Your contracted killers will be hellbent on hunting you down, while the remaining handful of players will be stalking them as they stalk you. As such, anywhere you go, you’ve pretty much got a mass of murderers trailing close behind.
Normally, walking to the corner of the map in this situation would be suicidal, since you’ll most likely be boxed in by all of your killers. But Teleport changes that dynamic just a little.
89% of the time, none of your pursuers will see it coming, meaning in just a few seconds, they’ll go from putting you on a dinner plate to becoming the main course for their own assassins. Now if they want to murder you, they’ve got to walk directly through a gate of death. And, to top it all off, you’re probably now a lot closer to your own target, who’s also preoccupied with her suddenly easy-to-kill contract.
Got any tricks of your own?
I can’t claim to be the only person improvising Assassin’s Creed 3 ability uses out there. If you have a weird (but effective) strategy of your own, let’s hear it in the comments below!
Very good article, here’s some more!
Troll Morph: Can’t find your target because he / she morphed a group? No problem, just use a morph of your own. Excellent against newer players who have no idea why all personas around them changed. Some even happily re-morph their groups. Target or not, you can counter morph any group to expose and troll other players.
Knives / Disruption: You know how there’s always this sound playing when targeted by a ranged weapon? Repeatedly spamming them = lulz.
Decoy Bombing: Decoy bombing is known to be a combination of decoy and morph, however, in team games it can be buffed to even more devastating effects. Find a place with large groups of NPC’s and have two teammates morph as many people as possible. When the pursuers come, the other two players launch both decoy and bodyguard while the persons using morph use their second ability (also decoy or bodyguard). Since the ranged slot is still free, why not throw in Disruption. Most annoying team ever? I think so!
Similar to using knives on random players, I like to throw firecrackers into groups of people I have no current connection to.
See someone stalking their prey about to get a good kill? Throw firecrackers and watch both players panic and use their abilities or run away.
Brilliant article. I should definitely try some of these.
Throw Money Bomb at your targets best nearby escape route to expose them and block said route.
Use Disruption with an NPC(s) between you and your pursuer/target to drop their lock and force them to run away or get knocked out. Bonus points if they kill a civilian and you get a Hidden and/or Focus stun/kill. (Same works with Firecrackers.)
Use Glimmer to drop your pursuer’s lock after you walk around a corner, then escape or get a nice corner stun when they catch up.
Poison: Do a 2x Hidden Silent Extreme Variety Poison on the (briefly, of course) leading player, often times a prestige 2 dude whose favorite ability is, who would’ve guessed, Smoke Bomb, for 2700 points, instantly getting 2500 points ahead and making them ragequit.
That’s not very creative? Crap, figured so, but it was a trick that I was so proud of that I instantly ran to my favorite webblog and boasted about it. And no, I don’t have a screen to prove that. You’ll have to trust my word. And, given how AWESOME I am, would you doubt that I’d pull something like that off?
I’ll get to my creative use in a moment, but please, dear new players, just because something kind of sounds like Smoke Bomb doesn’t mean it IS Smoke Bomb. I’ve genuinely seen people use Tripwire Bomb and Money Bomb in exactly the same way one would use a Smoke. To much less effect, of course. I never bothered to ask them if they actually thought it was going to do for them what Imbalanced Bomb would, because at the time when I could have, I was busy introducing my knife/fist to their faces. Ah, they’re going to be nice little SB fags when they grow up – sorry, we do not talk about SB, do not…
Anyway, one nice strategy that I like to use to pass time when my target or pursuer aren’t assigned or nearby or I’ve completely stopped giving a shit is to spook people out. It’s quite effective, really. Walk conspicuously and sprint the last meters, climb up to above their position (don’t climb in their LoS, that’d give you away) and hang from the ledge, that sort of thing. Funnily enough, I am always met with the reaction of Smoke Bomb, even while I’m high above them. You figure out why.
You could also toss a Decoy at them, since experienced players will never fall for those anyway, might as well use that cooldown. Hilarious, really.
That reminds me, it might have been a glitch, but I once saw my Bodyguard stun a completely neutral player next to me (whom I had locked). Could we get some testing if that’s intentional? Because if it is, that’s awesome! Don’t like somebody’s poaching? HAVE YOUR GUARD SMACK ‘EM IN THE FACE!
And of course the previously mentioned 4th of July firecracking. It’s like a party, except everyone invited is either scared or blind and deaf. So I guess it’s not really like a party. Sadface. On the bright side, it’s a great way to lure people into panicking and doing something they’ll later regret, often tossing their Smoke prematurely.
I don’t usually just ram into people, really, that’s immature. But you can apply the previous tactics more stealthily, too. (This works best in Deathmatch) move oddly across the open to attract their attention, then nest in the closest blend group to them. Occasionally twitch back and forth, fastwalk out mashing LMB or sprint out and stop to taunt right outside Smoke range. Because they’ll always drop it. Then proceed to get them assigned as targets because hooray broken targeting system and kill them.
Did I mention that I hate Smoke sheep?
I’ve developed two unconventional tactics, one which until now is flawless for me, and another one which is good in theory, but a bit difficult to apply:
The first one is what I really originally called “Offensive bodyguard”. Similar to the use of tripwire bomb already mentioned, when my target is in a morphed or blended group and having a pursuer, I send the bodyguard to stun one of the members of the group and detect my target. If after locking and activating bodyguard, a warning appears that I can’t stun that character, that’s my target. If instead of that, the bodyguard is succesfully activated, I know that’s an NPC. But even at that time I can`t say the ability is wasted, ussually the target thinks the bodyguard is my character and goes for the stun after what he/she hinks was a “Lured”. This gives some time to increase the meter or try a better score. During some sessions I’ve been really lucky and managed with this tactic to make my pursuer also fall for it and attack my bodyguard after it already stuned a morphed NPC. So I could get a kill and a stun at the same time.
The second one, I’m not sure if it is a formal tactic or more of a desperate anecdote, because I’ve tried it a few times with not a very good succes rate. It is while being in a group and having blender, I ran as oblivious and clumsy as I could in order to imitate a decoy. I used this a few times when all my abilities were on cooldown and defenseless thinking “I’m gonna die anyway”. The problem is that the pursuer must be a player good enough to know what a decoy is and be aware that one could come up at any time, but not good enough to tell the difference between a decoy and a stupid guy running to his death. Ideally is better to pull this in a new lobby where no one knows what abilities I’m ussually using. As I said its succes rate in my experience is so far one out of four or so.
I hope this could help anyone… And sorry if some of this is already mentioned before, or if in what I wrote there is any inconceivable mistake, english is not my first language. Cheers!
Paragraphs. That’d be a handy addition.
Anyway, nice tactics. While Bodyguard will always stun and not kill if it’s a civilian (as if its code had been copypasted from some other game…), people often won’t realise that fact in their blind rage of “lured, go punch ’em”. And the fact that you can take advantage of the mechanics, in a way which is exactly the reason why Decoy no longer uses the NPC you have locked, without actually triggering its cooldown is even better. Of course, honorable players wouldn’t use it that way, as it’s basically a poor man’s oSB shoving glitch.
People always say to run away simultaneously to your Decoy so that you’re not identified as the one who’s not running. I guess that does make sense because if they don’t fall for it, you’d best have a running start.
Surprisingly though, I haven’t yet found someone advising to imitate a Decoy. That’s pro mind games right there!
I’d say that in order for this to work, you’d have to make yourself known. Be Doctor Awe- sorry. Play a little with the same lobby, make sure to always use Decoy so they get used to it. Then it’ll eventually lose its effect, as they’ll know not to go for the first running off. Which is exactly when you switch over and start doing it yourself. It does not sound like an easy tactic, though.
You have to do it exactly as you’d use a Decoy, when they’re close enough that their compass wouldn’t significantly change. However, many people expect you to dart out of a group right at them in hopes of getting a surprise stun (without getting oSB’d). So you need to run in a way which does not betray you through information output, but which doesn’t trigger their reaction of going for a contested kill either.
Pull that off consistently and I’m impressed, to be honest.
Thank you for the tips and the complimment, it means a lot to the newb me coming from a player like you. My only problem is I don’t usually trust enough on the decoy to use it often, and I tend to rely on other abilities.
I first thought of this idea while watching some commentated videos from good players to get better, and listening to things like: “Yeah! Nice decoy buddy.” when it was a really obvious one.
Also, I agree with you that the most crucial part of the plan is to act exactly like a decoy, mainly because theuy don’t sprint in the same way than a playable character. So what I’ve tried to do, not perfectly yet, is sprinting and suddenly changing direction, once or twice. Like in a zigzag sprint. The change of direction is what in my opinion makes the pursuer think it’s a decoy. And obviously it is substantial not to unintentionaly climb a wall nor jump off a ledge, it has blown my plan away a few times.
As most part of Top tier tactics, I assume, plays on Xbox and I do it on PS3 my stupid secrets are still safe haha
“You could use this time to find a good blend group or position yourself near important parts of the map. Or, you could just fuck with everyone else in the game.”
I did that in one ACR DM game where I picked the wrong set on accident (knives and TWB), and only got one target and one pursuer in the whole game. Sure, I could have left, but why do that when I could fuck up everyone else’s good time? Oh, I had fun with that TWB.. Knives, of course, did me no good at the time.
Here’s the link for the video, if anyone cares to see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skToQ4pchbY
for some reason i can’t get the hang of AC3 like i did with brotherhood and it’s putting me off the experience as a whole, Also there seems to be very few players on any game mode i have played and i have not had one full game lobby since Christmas day. is anyone else having this problem or is it just me?
Dropping Money Bomb before/during a kill creates a wall of civilians who will shield you from anyone trying to rush you. Save my arse many times.
Recently, I witnessed something very odd. I was playing a little Deathmatch as usual (though Wanted really took on me, tbh – more room to play around Smoke Bullshit), going after my target, to then hear the suspicious whispers. Obviously, this told me “Bodyguard, get the heck away”, which I did. However, it ran right at me and even a little past as I went out of sight. “It’s just a decoy” I thus figured. Only for it to then punch me in the back of the head.
It’s possible that this is yet another thing to blame on Ubi’s way of bugfixing (which is NOT), but I’m curious if that might be replicable. I can’t recall whether that person used other abilities. Perhaps it’s an interaction if you use both Bodyguard and Decoy when there is exactly one duplicate of you around?
I couldn’t test this, so if someone could verify this, I’d be grateful.
Another thing which I’m not sure I or someone else mentioned before is the technique to let people choose their fate. Everyone loves pistol, I know. It hard counters Shit Bomb, and quite often yields you more points on aware players than you could get otherwise and with less time and risk spent. Just don’t fuckin’ spam it on me. Besides, if you have a problem which cannot be solved by shooting some guys, then you sir are tackling the wrong problems.
Anyway, what I’m proposing is that you, while you’re not in danger from your pursuers, stand a little distance away from them so you have time to react if they do bolt at you, pull out your gun, and essentially just hold it to their forehead. Then what? You wait. They need to do something, you’ve got time.
Do they run? Shoot ’em for 200 points. Do they try to get a surprise stun off on you thinking you’re just testing them? Shoot ’em. Do they try to inch around a corner? Screw that, shoot them in the face. Either way, they lose and you get to shoot something. In the face.
Do they use Animus Shield to then dash around a corner? Well, you just countered Animus Shield using Pistol, because you’re still close by and you then just climb onto whatever obstacle they’re hiding behind and pounce onto their heads (silent/incog, since you’ve been hanging in their LoS) with totally balanced roofing range.
That’s how I play. Sure I love stealth, but sometimes you just need to break the flow and call a huge stinky finger to stuff like the counter system and such. Who gives a crap about what’s supposed to be good against what? In your hands, even Closure counters Smoke, because you’re awesome!
Actually, just in mine. Because I’m Doctor Awesome. I always win. What you got? And Closure still sucks. At least Sprint Boost and Templar Vision had some SuperPro uses. Insert your favorite Smoke-Bomb-imbalanced rant here yourself.