Summary
The Escort game mode inXDefiantcertainly seems to be the one that players are struggling with more than the rest. And for good reason: Escort requires smarter plays and better teamwork than the other modes.
One player cannot have quite the impact in Escort that they have in something like Occupy or Domination, and dying is a significantly bigger penalty to your team than it is elsewhere. Here are some tips for winning more Escort matches:
10Communication
Communication Is The Secret Ingredient Of A Good Team
A team that is not communicating well in Escort is going to lose to a team that is communicating effectively, even if there’s a gun-skill gap in the former’s favor.Outnumbered engagements are a much more common theme in Escort, especially when one team is more coordinated than the other.
Even if you’re a fantastic individual player, there’s little that can be done when you’re always facing two or three enemies at a time. So, talk to each other.Call things out like enemy placements and ability locations; you’ll be surprised at how easy it is and how much of a difference it makes.
9Balance Your Team
Don’t Stack Six Cleaners, Probably
While team composition doesn’t matter quite as much in othergames modes in XDefiant, it can matter quite a bit in Escort, whereteamwork matters more than gun-skill.Loading four Echelon and a couple of Phantoms, for example, is probably going to give you a negative result. But getting a couple of Phantoms, a Libertad or two, and some combination of the other three factions might prove useful.
Every faction has abilities that really come into their own in Escort,and making sure your team can use a wide variety of those abilities is going to be of massive help.
Don’t Sit On Top Of Each Other
XDefiant’s Escort mapsare wider than they might seem at first. A lot of players have tunnel vision around the dog that is being escorted, and while the dog is the objective, there’s also a left and a right that enemies are going to make use of.
A lot of the time,if your team leaves one side unwatched, an enemy is going to march straight through that pathand get behind you, putting at least a couple of people down and probably ensuring the dog marches forward for a good long while.
Make sureat least one person is watching each side, and communicating what’s happeningover there. If they go down, someone towards the back or the center is likely going to have to shift their focus over before a small problem becomes a much bigger problem.
7Value Your Life
Don’t Take Dumb Deaths, Protect Your Life
The respawn timer is a little bit longer in Escort, but moreso than that,you’re often going to be spawning very far away from the objective. Team checkpoints shift through the match based on the progress of the dog, and there are times that it’s going to take a longer time for an Attacker to get back into the fight. Conversely, there are times where it’s going to take a long time for a Defender to make it back, depending on where the checkpoints are at.
This makes each and every one of your lives more valuable in Escort than in any other game mode.If you die, you areout of the fight and useless to your team for a much longer periodthan is the case anywhere else in XDefiant. It’s not always possible, but do your absolute best to make sure your team gets some kind of value out of every life.
6Don’t Endlessly Rush
Know When To Push And When To Hold
Escort is not a game mode where respawning and immediately rushing the objective is the way to go.(It’s rarely agood tactic for any game mode, let’s be honest, but it’s particularly self-destructive in Escort.) Because of the slightly longer respawn timer and longer trek to get back into the fight,sometimes so many teammates are dead that sprinting back into the fight is going to be more harmful to your team than helpful,because you’re just going to die again and have to run all that way back.
Understand that sometimes you need towait for your team to regroupand make a focused push rather than running one or two at a time into the trenches. The other team might make some Escort progress in the meantime, or set your progress back a bit, but it’s ashort-term loss with a possible long-term gain.
5Use Your Team
Everyone Succeeds Or Fails Together
If communication were a cake, trusting your teammates to act on intel and move as a team is the icing.Communication doesn’t mean anything if no one acts on the knowledge.And a big part of that communication is trusting your teammates to do their best when it comes to acting on it. No one person can act on every piece of intel, so everyone is going to have to be involved in order to move and progress organically.
Something that can make this much easier iskeeping certain people in specific positions.Make sure one person is generally going to be on the left, someone else is generally on the right, a couple of people are on Escort duty with some floaters, and so on. This is going to help a lot when it comes to callouts, because everyone is going to have a working understanding of where their teammates should be, and everyone canreact reflexively instead of having to think about everyone elsebefore they do anything.
4Sneaky Pushes
Have Some Throwaway Tactics For A Rainy Day
Sometimes the dog is a tiny distance away from another checkpoint or the end of the line, but the Defenders have dug in well and thatlast push is proving difficult.In cases like this, havinga little throwaway tactic in your back pocketto move the dog those extra couple feet can end up winning you a match.
Take the lion’s share of attention from the enemy team with a Phantom and/or Libertad,and get an Echelon with a Digital Ghillie Suit and a pistol running around the other side and onto the dog. The enemy team might see them within a couple of seconds of dog-time, but ideally by then, the progress has already been made and it’s a moot point.
3Force Retreat
Keep Attackers Off The Dog To Force A Retreat
Progress isn’t permanent, andif Attackers spend too much time off the dog, the dog will start to walk their progress back.This doesn’t just hurt the Attackers logistically, it hurts them psychologically, too. Watching your progress be undone is demoralizing, and something as little as this can shatter the other teams' psyche.
Always keep an eye out, assometimes just a minute later one of them has left, and the remaining players are tilted; what was once a tough match is a cakewalk the rest of the way.
2The Dog Resupplies Ammo
It’s A Good Dog
Running out of ammo? If you can safelymake a stop by the dog, you can resupply ammoright then and there.
Living a long enough life in Escort to run out of ammo is not only quite a feat, but it means your team hasn’t had to play one player down for the time it would take you to run all the way back. Go ahead andreward yourself with a few extra bullets.You earned them.
1Be Flexible
Don’t Lock Yourself Into One Loadout
Situations in Escort can change fast,whether it’s because the enemy changed up their own tactics, or because you’re on a different spot on the map. What might once have been viable might now be holding your team back.
Keep a few different loadouts in mind for Escortand be willing to shift to them when the situation demands it. It’ll keep you fresh, and it’ll keep you thinking about how best to get the upper hand on the other team.
