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Winged Warriors

THE DISCIPLINE OF LIVING

Written by Isnagov

Winged Warriors Halo 3 Spartan   In almost any situation of any HALO game, your life is more valuable than any other player's death. Many players get caught up in the moment of many slayer and skirmish games and treat their life like a disposable luxury, dying every chance they get to touch a ball for a few more seconds or to finish off "that one kill". Yet the reality of their death carries much more weight than they give it.

    A player who dies while in a skirmish match cuts out one fourth of their teams' strategic power; it barely matters what they were going to do, because now they are useless. In any situation of any skirmish game, you being alive is better than you being dead. No team can coordinate and sustain a real defense or offense in skirmish without their full compliment of players, especially beyond the beginning levels of skill. Furthermore, mathematically, it is impossible to be considered a good slayer if you cannot control your deaths. For instance, if you kill ten people in a game but die twenty times you are a burden of ten deaths not an addition of ten kills. You could kill forty-nine people, but if you die fifty you still lose.

    So, the point is made that you should never die. The process of not dying is difficult, some say impossible, but it can be done with practice and experience. I once played a double team match with a good friend, Zirvon, where we won thirty to zero. So I know it can be done and as I have played I know that the following five things can make it happen.

1. The Preservation Of Disengagement
    The Breath of Disengagement is the most fundamental concept of not dying. At all times when fighting an enemy, allow yourself a way to get out without dying if the kill is unsure. Understand, I am not saying run away like a weakling, I am saying preserver your life if you know you won't win. If you fall back to a stronger position and then kill them you are now ten times smarter then them, because they followed you into death.

    When you are approaching an enemy understand where the exits are and where they have to trap you for a successful kill; if you can predict where they need to get you then you can avoid that area and survive longer. If they need to land four shots to your head then duck out before the last one hits, if they need to get you trapped in that corner then keep away from that corner. Most importantly you must learn to walk away from that fight if you are going to die. A one for one trade is almost never a good idea, with very few exceptions. A fight in which you cannot guarantee your survival is a waste of your time because you should have just planned a better fight.

2. Fighting In Your Weight Class
    Fighting in your weight class is a reference to weapons and shields, so simple. Never attempt to fight a player with a stronger weapon than you. Never attempt to fight a player with overshield from the front. If you always pair off against weaker or equal foes it will increase your life span dramatically. Many players let themselves feel forced to attack the stronger opponent to "take control of the power weapons" but that is just impatience and a lack of teamwork. Any two players can take out any one power-weapon-wielding player, so you rushing the guy with rockets "to wear him down" or "to distract him" is painfully stupid.

3. A Mindset of Patience
    Always have a mindset of patience in all situations. Whatever you think you HAVE to do now is something that you can probably do ten seconds from now, which is usually plenty of time to figure out a better way to do anything in HALO. If you and a player are facing off, approach slowly and with a clear understanding of all your options. Remember that you don't have to win a match by fifty you just have to win by one more than the other team. Rushing is the number one cause of failure in all HALO matches, because most players get so caught up in trying to fix something quickly they lose track of the big picture. Keep in mind that I am not talking about indecision. If a player is just taking to long to decide what to do that isn't patient that is slow. I have never seen a player perform worse because of patience.

4. The Lone Wolf
The lone wolf does not survive. They will last as long as they have the element of surprise or greater firepower, but eventually those chances reduce to nothing and they die. Any player's strength is tripled by the presence of a second player. Two players joined in combat create three variables an enemy has to control: the first combatant, the second combatant, and the space that two can control over one. Adding additional players to this scenario make it coldly simple. Anyone that has faced four BRs alone will understand why I need not explain further. A lone wolf is an anomaly, watch wolves; they only kill together, and always die alone.

5. Chasing The Spider
    Finally, don't chase a spider. A spider always lives to fight another day because they will run and trap players who like to chase someone smart enough to move to a stronger place. The best spiders make sure that if they HAVE to die then you are going to die also. Spiders are the players who seem to half cheat death and you go chase them around that corner only to discover the simmering glow of a plasma grenade at your feet. Spiders are the players who will win all the from-the-grave medals in HALO 3. Chasing a kill is never an option unless it is guaranteed and you will have visual contact of the player the whole time. If you are going to lose contact even once during that chase then drop it and call for backup or pick a new target. DROP IT AND PICK A NEW TARGET. I play like a spider and you always know when they are coming after you and since they can't see you it becomes too easy to finish them off. DON'T CHASE SPIDERS.

    Now, I know most of this probably seems obvious to you right now. That's great, I'm glad you figured it out after reading this. Very clever. But remember that knowing something is always just half the battle, you have to apply these rules and that is brutally hard. We are creatures of repetition, what we did before is what we will do again. Our bodies choose to do the same thing over and over again unless we force them not to. To do that you have to baby-sit every single thing you do and that gets boring and difficult, especially when you hear a Spartan Laser overcharging behind you, but at that point, you probably already broke one of these rules. Time to start over.

Isnagov

Published under the Free Documentation License