AC4 Black Flag multiplayer strategy #18: Abilities Guide (kill streaks)

Welcome to Part 18 of WiNGSPANTT’s Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag multiplayer strategy guide!

Revelation

• Deathmatch: 5/5
• Wanted: 5/5
• Assassinate: 1/5

Revelation is one of the most powerful effects in Assassin’s Creed multiplayer, despite the fact that it doesn’t award you any points, nor does it impair your enemies. Instead, it allows you to break the fundamental contract system by automatically identifying and highlighting your pursuers for you. In case it’s not immediately obvious, this makes it insanely easy to stun, avoid, or troll them.

Having access to this kind of animation, essentially the kind of cheaty vision you get in single player, is immensely useful. And the fact that it only requires a streak of 5 to activate makes it even better. I mean, sure, you could use Streak +550, but you could trigger Revelation twice in the time you trigger Streak +550 once, meaning just three total stuns would beat it out (without leaning on Kill Buffer, to boot).

Revelation is obviously insanely powerful in Deathmatch, but it’s actually better in Wanted, where it’s a lot harder to identify pursuers (thanks to more angles of approach and multiple lookalikes per persona). So often players run away from one murderer and straight into another… but with Revelation, you can see exactly what you’re getting into. Then it’s up to your personal skill to knock out, slow down, or ensnare your would-be assassins before moving on.

Additional notes

• Revelation will see through Disguises, but not through Glimmer.
• Be wary of nearby neutral players. They might be assigned to you faster than you can react to their shift in color.
• Revelation is almost useless in Assassinate since players will typically wait as long as possible to become your pursuer.

Mass Morph

• Deathmatch: 3/5
• Wanted: 2/5
• Assassinate: 1/5

Mass Morph is a great gimmick in Deathmatch, but ultimately not something you can rely on.  Its biggest flaw is that it resets if you die, which kind of kills the whole point of a massively impressive kill streak. But, worse than that, Mass Morph pretty much neuters you as a player. Once activated, you pretty much can’t kill or stun anyone without giving your identity away… negating your army of defensive clones.

If you decide to use Mass Morph, combine it with abilities that will further frustrate opponents into killing NPCs. Use it with Decoy, Bodyguard, and Poison so you can continue to operate without such a high level of scrutiny. Still, it’s usually not worth it, unless you like being paid in lulz.

Streak +250

• Deathmatch: 3/5
• Wanted: 4/5
• Assassinate: 4/5

Streak +250 is easy to understand and moderately reasonable to achieve without the use of Kill Buffer. There’s no downside to free points, so the only question you should ask yourself is “Can I get more points per X kills/stuns with another streak than I would get using +250?”

That’s tough to answer. Revelation or Daze can be triggered with as few as 3 actions, and either could lead to a stun that’s already worth 200 points. Therefore the gap between these streaks comes down to the utility you can eke from Revelation and the difference in difficulty between achieving them.

Still, Streak +250 is great for Assassinate, especially if you don’t intend to equip Kill Buffer for Streak +550. Weigh your options, playstyle, and personal skill before making your decision.

Daze

• Deathmatch: 3/5
• Wanted: 1/5
• Assassinate: 1/5

Daze is an absolute beast in team modes, where messing with lots of players at once is devastating, but not so much so in free for all matches. Wanted and Assassinate tends to be too spread out to ever catch people in your wake, and in Deathmatch, other streaks are just too good to consider using Daze.

Save Daze for your AA or MH clan scrims… don’t bother with it otherwise.

Streak +550

• Deathmatch: 3/5
• Wanted: 3/5
• Assassinate: 4/5

Streak +550 is obviously very similar to its little brother +250, but the additional kill/stun requirements make it extremely hard to achieve without Kill Buffer. Even with Kill Buffer, you’d be lucky to activate Streak +550 more than once a match, so you should seriously consider if using both a perk slot and your kill streak are worth 550 points to you throughout a match.

For instance, if you think equipping Streak +250 and any other perk could make up the missing 300 points, you’d be better off going with that setup. Again, this is dependent on your play style and game mode… there’s no hard and fast rule.

In general, Streak +550 is great if you plan to rack up a huge amount of mid-value kills, especially in Assassinate (or hey… Wolfpack!).

Animus Hack

• Deathmatch: 4/5
• Wanted: LOL/5
• Assassinate: LOL/5

Like Mass Morph, Animus Hack is a gimmick. Unlike Mass Morph, Animus Hack is a fun gimmick that can result in thousands of points. At least, it can in Deathmatch.

In this game mode, you’ve got an extremely small space with huge line of sight. Not only that, but enemy players exist without lookalikes, making them easy targets for Animus Hack, even from across the map. It’s not uncommon to kill all 7 players, even disintegrating them multiple times each, when triggering Animus Hack. That’s a lot of laughs and a metric boatload of points.

There are certainly counters to Animus Hack: Disruption, Firecrackers, hiding in hay bales, or getting a lucky kill/stun. And there are definitely major drawbacks to using it: you’ll probably only get to activate it once, late in the match, and it requires Kill Buffer to do it. So while Animus Hack is a flashy way to scream past the lead or jump ahead by an unapproachable margin, it’s by no means foolproof. It will work significantly better on low-level players than on seasoned veterans.

Animus Hack is almost useless in all other game modes, but pulling it off is always impressive, frightening, and funny. If you somehow manage to use Animus Hack to win a round of Assassinate or Manhunt, more power to you!

Additional notes

• Animus Hack can be blocked by Animus Shield. It can also be impeded by anything that impairs your ability to lock onto targets.
• Animus Hack takes about one second to kill a player, so your pursuers and target can still get you if they’re fast enough.
• Focusing on your targets will not earn you any additional points. You will not earn Execution bonuses either.
• Try activating your hack from a rooftop, where you can easily spot players and where nobody will be able to reach you without exposing themselves to your death ray.
• “Animus Hack” was also the title of the best-selling hip-hop single in 2012.

Looking for more tips? Head back to the main Assassin’s Creed multiplayer strategy guide index.