Strategy Portal

Strategy Portal
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Hello, and welcome to the Strategy Portal on the Gigantic Wiki!

What is a Strategy Portal?

This Portal is a place where basic strategies, tips, and other guides can be collated and collected for all Gigantic players! These guides are largely fan-generated, and are based on data from gameplay as early as the first reveals all the way up to the current CORE testing builds. If you have a guide to suggest, please create it and list it in Category:Strategy, or suggest in on this article's discussion page.

Tips and Tricks Sections

Gigantic Basic Gameplay Outline

CHOOSE

●        Hero Types

○  General Description:   Every hero in Gigantic is different, and provides a unique play experience.  Some of these heroes fall closer to “traditional” combat roles, such as Offensive, Support, or Tank, but some of them are quite different.  You can use these categories to broadly describe the way different heroes play, but a DPS ranged hero will still provide a very different experience than a DPS melee hero.

○  Efficient Combat Distance: One good measure of the gameplay experience, is how far away from the enemy you are when you’re attacking them, because it implies how easy it is for your enemy to attack you back.  Most heroes can attack from several distances, but heroes tend to concentrate their best play in only a few different areas.

■        Melee

●        Melee distance is about the distance you could kick someone from.  A hero who uses a spear to hit someone is still attacking from inside a melee distance (unless they threw the spear).

■        Ranged-near

●        Just outside of melee distance, is a place where you’re not far away from an opponent, but a melee attack can’t reach you.  Some heroes, like Mozu, thrive in this area, where you can take shots at people who can’t strike back.

■        Ranged-far

●        Many ranged heroes can switch between a close-range and a far-range.  Snipers do well in both, if they’re crafty enough, but only a few heroes can attack from a far range.

○  Skill Delivery Method:  The type of skills a hero uses also affect the gameplay experience a great deal.  Some heroes, such as Wu or The Margrave, spend a lot of time punching things.  But there are a lot of other ways to inflict pain on opponents in Gigantic.

■        Melee strike

●        Punching always works, just ask The Margrave about how many people who have disagreed with him on that point.  Some heroes have swords or spears, rather than punching.  For these heroes, the goal is to stand close to the enemy and hit them.

■        Leap skills

●        A Leap skill is one where the hero jumps into the air.  Jumping up into the air usually doesn’t hurt anyone, but coming back down on an opponent usually does.  In addition to doing damage, Leap skills let you use map verticality to confuse and evade your opponents.  A good Voden player can out-deerfox even the cleverest group of melee heroes, by escaping vertically.

■        Grapple skills

●        Grapple skills move your enemies around.  The Margrave can pick up opponents and throw them away.  Wu can use his tongue to pull people out of position.  These skills move opponents into positions exposed positions, which make them great ways to break a stalemate.

■        Projectiles

●        There are two kinds of projectiles in Gigantic, “true projectiles” and “hitscan projectiles”.  Hitscans were developed to increase online game performance, and Gigantic uses them for many heroes.  A hitscan fires like a laser, and you know immediately if the hit was successful or not.

In Gigantic, true projectiles move slowly, by comparison, and it’s possible for an opponent to get out of the way before it lands.  Uncle Sven uses true projectiles for all of his skills.  HK-206 uses a mix of true projectiles and hitscans.  Imani uses hitscans only.

■        Beams

●        Beams are like hitscans you have to maintain.  Aim at an opponent, and keep aiming at them, to keep performing the skill. Griselma, Vadassi, Xenobia, and Mozu all have beam skills, which require aiming.  Beam skills are longer range than a melee strike.  Beam skills usually carry status effects, in addition to damage.

■        AOE Casting skills

●        AOE standing for Area of Effect.  While it could be any shape, these are generally circles. Most heroes have some kind of AOE skill.  AOE skills are used for many different things, such as Voden’s healing pool or Lord Knossos’s focus skill.

■        Targeting Skills

●        Some skills are based on picking a destination for something: maybe the landing spot for an aerial strike, maybe the location of a summoned pet.  There is significant overlap between this and other types of skills, but you’ll recognize it by the white targeting bubble that pops up when you hold down the skill button.

○  Skill Payload: Skill output is what happens at the end of your fist, after you use a skill.  For some heroes, using a skill means punching someone.  For others, it means summoning a clone, or teleporting, or healing a teammate.

■        Damage to enemy

●        Ultimately, winning the game means damaging opponents until they cannot stop you anymore.  Every hero can do damage to others. You cannot damage teammates.

■        Healing to self or ally

●        If you live long enough, you’ll need healing.  Healing comes naturally from being out of combat, but it can also be part of a player skill, or a creature skill.  Killing an opponent causes them to drop an orb of health, which can also be used for healing.

■        Buff to self or ally

●        Buffs are status effects which can give you a temporary edge in combat.  These can give you extra armor, extra speed, extra damage--basically anything you can do, can be improved by a buff.

■        Debuff to enemy

●        Debuffs are things that make combat harder for you.  Being slowed, being poisoned, being weakened to do less damage--these are all examples of debuffs you can suffer from.  Luckily, your opponents can suffer from them as well.

■        Movement of self

●        Movement is very important in Gigantic.  A hero who can’t run away is a hero who is about to get beaten to death.  Some skills let players jump far or high.  Some heroes can teleport or hide.

■        Movement of enemy

●        Sometimes, moving the enemy is useful--especially if they’re standing next to a cliff.  Different heroes can push or launch opponents.  This moves them out of position, but if you use it at the right place, it also gets you a kill.

○  Combat Roles: Combat roles are not necessarily distinct in Gigantic.  Someone playing Vadasi could be a healer, but they could also be a close ranged DPS fighter, depending on which skill upgrades the player has taken.  Similarly, some heroes who normally serve the role of tank, can spec for mobility, and use their skills to capture distant battlefield objectives with less team support than normal.

Your combat role is not what you “have to do”, but what you’re actually doing.  As a result, defining your combat role depends on how you play your hero, and how good you are at it, as much as the hero you’re choosing to play.

■        Damage

●        Some heroes specialize in damage dealing.  Damage output is often measured in Damage-per-Second, or DPS.  It’s important to remember, the person who does the most damage might not be the person with the most kills.

●        DPS-specializing heroes: Tripp, Tyto the Swift, HK-206, Lord Knossos

■        Tank

●        Tanking, is what happens when you prevent damage from reaching your allies.  Sometimes, this happens because you stand in front of them, and people with more armor are better at that.  Sometimes, you can tank by drawing the other team’s attention to you, or by interrupting their skills before they can be properly used.

These other forms of tanking are equally effective, they’re just harder to do right.  A good Tripp player can be a good tank, simply by forcing the enemy team to chase them down. 

Regardless of how you do it: more health, more armor, or more skill--being a good tank means you give your teammates the ability to do their jobs, without having to defend themselves from the other team.

●        Traditional tanks are: The Margrave, Lord Knossos, HK-206

■        Defense

●        Defense can mean healing and it can mean buffs, but it can also mean denial of access to a specific area. 

Griselma can do a whole lot of damage, but her Portal Beasts can’t move without her help.  This means she’s especially effective at defending an area, but less effective at reinforcing someone who is already in a fight.

Defense is especially important when the other Guardian is rampaging, and you need to prevent the other team from reaching your Guardian to damage it.

●        Defensive heroes: HK-206, Griselma, The Margrave, Aisling, Xenobia

■        Support

●        Being a support hero means influencing the outcome of a fight, rather than ending the fight or preventing the fight.  Xenobia is the queen of support heroes, and a good Xenobia player can change the course of a game.

Supporting your allies can mean healing them, or making their attacks more powerful, but it can also mean weakening your opponents or canceling their attacks.

Every hero does better by working as a team, but support heroes are difficult to use alone in any situation.

●        Hero Skills

○  General Description: Every hero has 4 skills and a special ability, called a Focus skill.  These skills are your basic tools for winning a match.

■        Hero skills are all very different from each other. Check out their skills [/www.gogigantic.com/en/ here].

○  Using a skill puts it on cooldown.  You have to wait for the cooldown timer to reach zero before you can use that skill again.

○  Basic Skills and Focus Skills are special, and do not have cooldown timers.

■        A basic skill, [LMB] on PC and [RT] on xbox, is something you can use all the time.   This is the attack you’ll do the most.

■        A focus skill is your most powerful ability, but you need to gather focus in order to use it.  Players can gather a focus by giving or taking damage--giving damage is faster and hurts less!

Once you have at least one charge of focus, you can spend it all at once to activate your focus skill.   Each full tier of focus makes the skill more powerful.  You can hold a maximum of 3 focus charges.

●        Unlocking Heroes

○  General Description: There will always be some heroes to play on rotation, but if you have a favorite, you should unlock them so they’re always available to you.

○  You can unlock heroes using Crowns or Rubies.  Once a hero is unlocked, you can always enter queue with that hero, regardless of what the rotation looks like.

○  You get crowns from completing matches, and you get rubies from completing special achievements, such as earning a Medal, or completing a set of Fortune Cards.

■        You can also purchase Rubies.

●        Unlocking Skins

○  General Description:  Skins can be purchased with rubies.  Different color palettes of a skin you own can be purchased with crowns.

○  Why would you want to purchase a skin?  It helps people know you’re a force to be reckoned with.

FIGHT

●        Creatures

○  General Description:  You don’t have to fight alone.  You can summon creatures to help you.  Each creature belongs to a specific family, and different families of creatures do different things, but every creature knows how to fight if an enemy gets too close.

■        Bloomers

●        The bloomer family heals you if you’re injured, which prevents you from dying as often.  Living is popular and cool.

■        Cerberuses

●        A cerberus provides radar on your mini-map.  It’s very useful for tracking enemy movements, and ensures you’re less likely to be attacked by surprise.

■        Cyclopses

●        A cyclops will build a wall somewhere nearby, which can block an opponent’s path, wasting their time.

■        Drakes

●        A drake can attack from far away by bombarding the middle of the battlefield with aerial AOE (Area of Effect) attacks.  This is useful for adding damage to enemies if they stay grouped up.

You can upgrade baby creatures to adults by spending focus charges you collect.  You have to decide which use is more helpful to you, using your focus skill, or upgrading a creature.  Adult creatures expand on the skills of younger creatures.  They’re tougher, more dangerous, and take longer to summon.

●        Guardians

○  General Description:  Your Guardian is the one who keeps bringing you back to life when you die, so if the Guardian dies, you lose.  Luckily, Guardians also know how to fight, so if you need help, retreat to them for some safety.

Be aware: sometimes an opponent doesn’t care how safe you are--they’ll chase you no matter what.

POWER UP

○  General Description: Your skills are good when you start the match, but they can get better.  You start with one skill point that you can use to upgrade a skill or your hero.  Every time you gain enough experience, you’ll gain a level, and a new skill point.

○  Max level: 10

○  You gain experience by:

■        Killing opponents or creatures

■        Assisting in kills of opponents or creatures

■        Summoning creatures.

●        Upgrading Skills

○  General Description:  You start a match at level 1, but as your hero gains levels, you can choose upgrades to improve skills, or change their function.  You start over every match, so you’ll be able to pick upgrades which are going to help against the opponents you’re facing now.

○  Each skill, and your Tier1 upgrades,  can be upgraded to one of two options (left or right).  If you choose the left upgrade for your basic skill, you cannot go back to take the right upgrade.  On the plus side, you do unlock a different set of upgrade choices on the left side.

There are two branches of upgrades. Once you go down one branch, you lock in that choice.   Experimentation is the best way to find great new combos, which fit your play style.

○  At level 5, you gain a Skill Specialization.  This lets you permanently make one of your skills even better than normal.  The specialization gets even better, again, when Clash starts.

○  Remember, it’s dangerous to upgrade skills in combat, since you cannot do anything but move while holding Control to upgrade.  Don’t get caught not paying attention to the battlefield.

○ You can upgrade one of your abilities by holding either 1 or 2 for left or right upon leveling up (and at the start of the game), however, these aren't always what you want as the game chooses which abilities can be upgraded in this manner for you. This option is removed when you press control to manually level, even if you let go before leveling anything.

●        Map Navigation

○  General Description: Every hero can walk, sprint, and jump.  But beyond that, there are a few things you can use to get to the right place in the map.  Getting there at the right time depends on you.

■        Mini map

●        The mini-map is located in the top-right corner of the screen, and it contains a small map of the level you’re currently playing.  Your teammates will always show up on this map.  Enemies your team can see show up as red dots.

●        The mini-map keeps track of all the creatures who have been summoned.  Enemy creatures start as a red dot, but if a teammate aims at one, the red dot is replaced by a descriptive icon, showing to which family the creature belongs.  Adult creatures have a white ring around their icons.

●        The mini-map will also tell you if a creature is being attacked, by displaying an exclamation point on top of the creature icon.

●        If you’re using a Cerberus, it will automatically show you the location of nearby, visible enemies.  Some cerbs can even show the location of invisible enemies.

■        Ping Wheel

●        Pinging the map, will display a large translucent shape on the battlefield, and will place an icon on the mini-map.  This is a good way to tell your teammates where they should focus their efforts, or warn them about a sudden change in the balance of power.

●        Don’t ping too much, or your teammates will tune it out, but sometimes the difference between victory and defeat, is whether or not your team was able to show up to the fight together, instead of trickling in one at a time.

GO GIGANTIC

●        Rampage

○  General Description: You can’t hurt the enemy Guardian unless your Guardian attacks it first, and brings its defenses down.  That’s a difficult job, and the enemy Guardian will only be vulnerable for a few seconds, so make the hits count.

○  Power

■        General Description: You need to give your Guardian power before it can go on a rampage.  Power occurs naturally throughout the world, and you can collect it, simply by running over to it and pressing the collect button.   Your magical bond with your Guardian collects the escaping power from a heroes and creatures you kill.

■        Gain power from:

●        Collecting power orbs

●        Killing enemy heroes

●        Killing enemy creatures

■        Your creatures can collect power orbs just like you, and it gives you the chance to be somewhere else, rather than waiting for a power orb to spawn.

●        Baby creatures collect power orbs faster than you

●        Adult creatures collect power orbs even faster than babies

■        The other team will also be collecting power.  The first team to get 100 power will rampage.

■        If you lose a rampage, your power is converted to a defensive shield for your Guardian, which will help protect it.  Don’t stop playing if you lose a rampage! The next 15 seconds are important!

●        Wounds

○  General Description: Guardians die after sustaining 3 wounds.  If your Guardian is rampaging, then you have the chance to deal 1 wound to the enemy Guardian.  To deal a wound, you have to attack it enough when it is vulnerable to damage.

○  Vulnerable: When you rampage, your Guardian will grapple the enemy Guardian, and pin it to the ground.  When this happens, a weak spot is exposed, which can take damage.

○  If a Guardian is shielded, it will be difficult to damage until you fight through the shield.

○  If enemy heroes are in the area, they will try to attack you to prevent you from taking the wound.

○  Guardians do not heal during the match.  However, you must deal enough damage during a rampage, in order to finish off a wound.

○  An attacking Guardian will damage the other during a rampage, but it cannot deal damage if the enemy Guardian is fully shielded.

■        You still can, but this is as strong as the enemy guardian’s shield can get.

●        Clash

○  General Description:  During the Clash, the battlefield changes.  The Guardians get closer, and more violent.  Teams can often use the transition into Clash to their advantage, and can turn defeat into victory.

○  Starting Clash

■        Clash begins after 5 rampages, but it can begin early if one team takes two wounds from the enemy Guardian.

○  Creatures move

■        Creatures at some locations will teleport to new locations when Clash begins.  You can be there waiting to attack or defend them.

○  Battlefield changes

■        Some things will be destroyed, some things will happen in new areas.  But they way you play a map is different before and after clash begins.

○  Faster pace

■        Making mistakes becomes more punishing in Clash.  If the other team is well organized, they can capitalize on your mistakes, and you can find a health lead disappearing quickly.

●        Win

○  Deal 3 wounds to the enemy Guardian, and you win.  It doesn’t matter how you played in the first half of the game or how many rampages there have been.  If you deal 3 wounds first, your team wins.