Space Marine 2 Ultimate Survival Guide - Warhammer 40k

xaxis by the only side's will so right off the bat I need youall to understand Space Marine 2 is an amazing game straight up it is fantastic it is visceral gorgeous Punchy and the combat is beyond satisfying it's what many of us have been looking for in a 40K game for the last decade plus and honestly it expands well beyond the scope of 40K it's just a great game at its heart at its core I am very confident it is going to blow up in the next few days as you all start to get your hands on it and that even if you're not a 40K fan it will still be worth playing and will probably make you one but I'll leave my full Impressions and thoughts for another video I already have 60 hours in less than a week and all I've played so far is operations mode power leveling and pushing difficulty as far as I can to get as many of my characters High Tier gear and perks as possible more importantly just wanted to learn the game as well as I could to make sure that when I say something I actually know what I'm talking about I currently have three classes the Vanguard Bull workk and Tac Marine at or approaching level 20 have a bunch of Relic tier gold weapons and have completed quite a few ruthless difficulty missions and the new zch Focus Maps which are really godamn hard so even though I'm still well behind a few of the people who got Early Access a month ago I feel fairly qualified to speak on balance and to help you guys get the most out of this new combat system Space Marine 2 starts out pretty hard in my opinion especially in operations mode skill curve for getting good in combat is steep there's a lot of nuance and tricks for getting the most out of it and moving through each map quickly and efficiently and if you don't do so just like in the tide games verman and dark tide you will likely get punished if you want to look smooth and badass while taking minimal damage it's going to take some practice you got to put the work in once you get there it feels incredible even on minimum difficulty especially at lower levels if you're like a level one there will be times where you find yourself surrounded by a ton of kid Warriors and chaff you're having a real hard time cutting through it all you're getting plunked by termagon while elor eats your booty or the game just feels super hard where you get stun locked run over and feel like you just can't do anything the game's kind of unfair but honestly that is rarely the case if you play well and know what to do and how to respond there are a ton of seemingly hopeless situations you can not only survive in but Thrive and that's why I need to break down a few extremely important mechanics here and fundamentals in general that will keep you alive when all else seems lost so today I'm going to teach you guys how to survive in space Marine 2 because you're doing nobody any good taking a dirt nap while your battle brothers are out there purging number one in operation the co-op PVE mode with six different missions you do not regen Health the same way you do in campaign there it's all about melee executions and gun strikes while Fury is active to life steal health and get you back in the fight by putting enemies into a stagger State through damage or perfectly timed paries you can perform awesome executions that let you Feast on blood like a son of sanguinius true vampire the same remains true in operations only here resources are much less AB and UNH High difficulties and there are only a few specific ways to regain Health stems are a big one you'll find them scattered throughout each map but they become much less effective on substantial and ruthless difficulty as in they don't heal anywhere near as much and they're also quite rare only a few will exist on any given level so we need some other way to regain lost Health when a single Warrior brood combo or sunlock Trifecta puts our HP to 1% in the blink of an eye it can be really easy to die when there are dozens or hundreds of entities on screen all working together to try to kill you in different ways with some of them retaining close to one shot capability contested health is therefore our blessing from the emperor It's a lazy health bar that gives you a short window to counteract most or all incoming damage for example if you take a massive shot from a cardif effects and lose 90% HP you won't lose all of that Health instantly your red health will instead turn white and once a few seconds have passed then it will fully imbue the damage de while it's still white Health it's still contested Health which means you can regen most or all of that with a couple blasts from a melted gun into a horde or something else as long as you do damage proportional or in excess to the damage you just received so for example a bone sword the size of a minius just gutted me well if I deal similar amounts of damage back in short order I can act like it basically never happened and turn back the clock but it has to be quick the window is small you don't have much time to do so with that said certain classes have innate bonuses and perks that increase that window and allow you to turn contested Health back into real health and thankfully certain classes like the Bull Work can do some pretty sexy things that lead to massive HP swings which we'll talk more about in a moment as you'd expect dodging and parrying are also incredibly important elements of this game but you might wonder how it's possible to survive in the middle of a hor with 100 plus enemies all gwing at your cankles you can't Dodge and Parry all of them right is in Assassin's Creed enemies don't come at you in single file patiently waiting for you to ram a chains sword up their ass so what do we do well the big thing here is that dodging rolling parrying gun strikes and executions all Grant varying amounts of ey frames that keep you invulnerable against certain types of damage but a few types of damage can penetrate through or interrupt those frames like the blue Ora Le leaping attacks used by low-level guns and zor or heavy unblockables from Majoris or extremist enemies weaving these tools into a smooth cohesive combo is at the very core of Space Marine 2's gameplay Loop and where the skill expression really starts to shine where the skill curve really comes into play Perfect parrying on the correct frame will stun enemies leading to free gun strikes or executions which lead to eye frames which allow you to regain health or armor and in essence reset the entire situation taking a momentary breather when the proverbial [ __ ] is hitting the proverbial fan they allow your brain time to process all this color and information and there can be an overload of that with all the stuff going on on screen and then get ready for the next waves of attacks in a similar vein perfect dodging will slow down time and lead to a gun strike giving you a bar of armor back to help cushion against chip damage the assault Marine for instance has a 50% larger perfect Dodge window than every other class in the game as his innate passive meaning it's a lot easier for jump pack players to utilize that Dodge button and reap the benefits from it but sometimes the very best thing you can possibly do to get out of a sticky situation is to just Spam Dodge and roll fighting absolutely nothing if the squad is completely surrounded and overwhelmed spamming that roll button and moving forward in the level can often times save your life especially if you get to an elevator or loading area where enemies can't follow and will just Des spawn little bit cheesy I get it but even Terminus level mini bosses can sometimes be avoided entirely just by progressing to the next stage of a mission and sometimes you simply aren't equipped to deal with them so the only way you can get through and survive is to run quick aside here I know I use some terminology you may not be familiar with there are four distinct enemy classifications minoris is for lowle trash like cultist guns and zor jorus is for tyranid warrior brood and rubric Marines extremist is for specials like Scarab Ault Terminators raveners liors or lesser Sorcerers and Terminus is for bosses like the carif effect Hive Tyrant neurothrope hell brute and Hell Drake it will tell you the current Threat Level at the top of your screen and will often update you there before you're even aware that a certain enemy type is on the prowl nearby so pay attention to it I can save your life now if you play vermintide or darktide you know how important pace is which is the speed with which you progress to the level always try and keep a good Pace in operations mode you do not have to fight every ambient enemy you come across or every enemy you see and in fact it is often a massive detriment to do so means you're going to be on the level longer it means you're going to be pulling more enemies it means they are more likely to call in reinforcements and begin to overwhelm you both for power leveling which is just getting your XP up quickly and leveling up to get better weapons better gear all that and general completion rate avoiding certain engagements is key to avoiding frustration that stems from those evil nasty reinforcement Loops that lead to wipes that usually start because some idiot is trying to kill everything he sees even when it's way out of the way and ignoring the boys and not any threat to you at all do not pull everything you see on the map find a route stick to it get through quick especially on higher difficulties obviously when you're starting out you're going to want to soak in the scenery you're going to want to try out the animations totally get that talking more about once you've gotten your feet under you and you're into the actual gameplay Loop now on the subject of parrying there are currently three separate classifications for weapons when it comes to their defense type and each has a different way of governing how the pairing system works unfortunately the verbiage used here is rather misleading but I can illuminate the subject balanced fencing and block are the three choices when you hover over them it shows how every single melee weapon in the game falls into one of these three categories and explains what each does balanced has a standard Parry window one that is fairly small and requires somewhat strict timing to perform and should you do so you'll be rewarded with an AOE stagger for trash mobs that are all around you giving you space and time to do what you need to do a free Counterattack on the enemy you pared and a follow-up gun strike that will grant you armor same goes for fencing with the major difference being that the per window is increased substantially making it much easier to perfect Parry fencing equals easier perfect pares so why would you not always pick fencing weapons then well in reality I often do I prioritize the ability to perfect Parry because it is so godamn useful and stylish but the major tradeoff is that some of the master crafted in artificer tier weapons green and purple respectively will have certain stat deficiencies because they are fencing not always the case they're not always worse in every stat but frequently that is how it shakes out but I am often willing to trade some cleave and some damage to get a bigger Parry window because I think it makes the game easier and more fun more parries equals more fun as for the third option this one is super misleading and frankly I think it should be renamed but it is called black I need to be very clear here the only traditional Block in the game is for the bullworks shield it is the only class and only weapon that can just hold down the block button for every other class even if you have a block weapon be it a thunderhammer a chainsword whatever if you are not a bull workk with a shield it will still only be a timed Parry animation you cannot sit still and hold block you still have to time it appropriately if you successfully time your Parry it will just block the attack and push you backward Wards without conferring the advantages of a perfect Parry where you stagger them and get the gun strike and all that jazz the benefit then of course is that block weapons typically have better stats in other areas that make up for the inability to perfect Parry regular attacks block weapons can still catch blue aura attacks like gaun and zor leaps it doesn't block you out from using those but they cannot perfect Parry regular attack animations from enemies okay so we got that out of the way hope that was easy enough to follow let's get into the specific details and gameplay Maneuvers that will truly keep you alive with each class should be fairly obvious by now but armor is by far your biggest friend in Space Marine 2 because it prevents damage to your real health bar any reliable way you can fill that up in the midst of combat will dramatically enhance your survivability because the damage isn't going through to your HP there are two armor classes amongst the primaris Marines in this game with gravis and bull armor giving you three armor bars Baseline that's for the bull workk and for the heavy and Phobos armor for Sniper and Vanguard ravers only granting two otherwise there's no real HP difference between the classes outside bullwark who has an innate 20% extra HP chip damage once your armor is dropped is a huge threat and is pretty much always going to be one of the leading causes of wipes that's where Turan squads just bit warriors with their arcing fragment ation shotguns rubric Marines with their Inferno bolters and CTA snipers where all those really come into play Barb stranglers for instance will drop little bulbs that explode into big green vines that cut off egress getting caught in them just shreds primaris armor your armor will just completely disintegrate when you move through those once that happens then the turmon squads will move in little Shooters will just chunk HP bars once the armor is gone so as long as you're keeping armor up their impact is going to be much less noticeable how do we do that then well every class and melee weapon archetype in the game whether they are a Dodger or a roller or some combination of both can do a running attack into a gun strike if you take nothing else from this video learn how to running attack into gunstrike it will dramatically increase your survivability in bad situations because it gives you an absurd amount of eye frames and the longer you you are virtually Untouchable the more time you have to plan to think and to position your character in a way that will maximize your chances of living all you have to do is Dodge or roll towards an enemy then hit melee attack when coming out of the animation as long as you hit a trash mob bigger than a cultist because you can literally run or walk through those guys and they will explode they are tiny humans you're a primaris marine a towering creature that's like 9 10 ft tall completely clad headed tone armor of course you're going to squash a little dinky human being anything bigger than that but smaller than a tyrannid warrior long as you hit them with a running attack which means turant shooter horun melee boy or a zor you will automatically get a red Crosshair symbol over one of their heads then all you have to do is just press shoot for me it's right trigger on pad then you will gun strike and you will get back one bar of armor this is huge because it means if you are being overwhelmed you can basically abuse this move over and over again to keep topping off your armor and prevent permanent damage to your health all while moving closer to the objective you are trying to complete or buying time for down allies to respawn on their 60sec or 2-minute timer learn how to running attack it is super good for everybody you should be using it often now I want to turn your attention to Bull workk for a second because they are a super entertaining class with some really Unique Mechanics as I mentioned earlier there are a few useful tricks to immediately top off Health most of them related to the banner ult from bull workk that have been kind of on and off buged with perhaps unintended consequences in regards to White health so it's a little bit hard to know exactly where the bouncing will head on that front but as of the current build there's some crazy stuff you can do number one B is the only class that fully tops off and heals when they go to the drop pod I believe that is a bug I do not think that will stay in in the game but for example you can drop Banner to fully fill yours and your allies health bar with contested Health the white health bar then any execution or gun strike after that will fill most or all of your bar back to full real red Health that means if the entire Squad is all at one HP and about to die on that last pixel and a banner gets dropped when enemies are blinking red for execution the entire Squad can immediately execute them and jump back up the full or they can melta into a mixed horde to accomplish a very similar thing there's also some super cool attack that bu work can perform when it comes to blocking and parrying with the focus strength perk unlocked level 22 Shield bash will outright stagger zanor and gaun leading to free gun strikes every single time so you see tyn it hordes you Shield bash them gun strike Shield bash gunstrike same thing with zor hordes those are ubiquitous on higher difficulties you'll have all kinds of targets you can gun strike for free essentially with invigorating icon at level 23 no matter where you are on the map dropping Banner will fill all teammates bars with contested Health all the way so you don't even need to drop it on them to get the benefit before that point normally you'd have to be right next to your teammates to drop the banner on them but anywhere they are on the map with this ability execute while health is full white and it will suddenly Go full red and incredibly strong best Al in the game easiest way to keep your teammates topped off and Alive especially when stacked with vanguards in fire for 15% cool down reduction on Alt with every single performed finisher this means anytime you execute anyone gun strike or melee execute you will get a 15% coold down reduction towards your next all so what that means is you can just Spam banners all throughout the map it is really gross and then there's the perfect Perry shock which is a full damage shock grenade for 5 seconds can be buffed with 25% extra damage a little bit later in the tree every time you perfect Parry Parry in attack electric field forms on the ground take one or two steps backward then just hold block as the entire horde kills itself under the wrathful Gaze of Pikachu just make sure all the gauns or zor are walking into that electrical field and they will die very quickly turns bull workk into a brick wall with insane DPS can clutch just about any nasty situation you could possibly think of with that Tech but you want 100% need to be aware of this because it's something that really impacted my gameplay in the first couple days when playing bull workk he is the only class in the game that can just hold block as we said which Canon will screw up your paries a lot because if you hold down Perry even a fraction of a second too long you will block instead and no longer be able to Parry cuz you're blocking this doesn't impact any other class where you can just hold down the Parry button a bit too long every time and it will still just play the Perry animation because you can't block with those characters remember no other class can truly block besides bull work so what happens here is that the muscle memory can easily get screwed up especially if you're on gamad uh Xbox controller PlayStation controller especially if you are not running a fencing weapon and there's a good chance you'll spend entire runs completely unable to Parry anything you're like what the hell's going on I can't do it why am I so bad why do I suck that is why you holding Parry a fraction too long and it's blocking instead and that can and will get you killed can feel super bad be cognizant of that I pretty much always play fencing weapons with bull workk because perfect Perry is such a gigantic part of his game and final tip cancel calls for reinforcements anytime it's possible there will be this weird echoing pulsating sound that goes throughout the map care that's all you there's a oh God damn it the enemy that is calling in reinforcement will be highlighted and after a five or 6C period they will finish the call and a wave will spawn in one of the easiest ways to lose is to allow a single enemy to call in a wave then you get caught in a death Loop spiral where you start becoming overwhelmed and then another enemy calls in reinforcements cuz you're busy fighting trash and can't shoot him and stop him and then two or three waves Stack Up particularly during an event and especially with an extremist or Terminus enemy present there is a really good chance your squad is just going to be sent back to the menu a simple charged head shot from a Plasma Pistol or running melee attack on a summoning enemy could have prevented that loop from ever starting in the first place so keep your eyes peeled when you hear that sound and you see that highlight go after them they are top priority almost always unfortunately sometimes there's some weirdo lone straggler that will call in from behind two walls and from like 200 yard away and in that case it is what it is nothing you can do about it but when you can stop them do it that is your top priority in my opinion I think that should never happen they should have to have direct line sight and be within a certain distance of your team to call in reinforcements that's not really how it works in practice right now but yeah running Dodge attacks perfect parrying and abusing contested health will keep you and your team alive when Space Marine 2 makes landfall they are the core mechanics that even make survival possible especially unsubstantial and ruthless and they aren't all explained super well in game makes for a super enjoyable and high skill healing combat Loop though that is very reward Bing to learn and master and I think it's going to be what gives this game legs for the months and years to come I hope this guide was helpful I have been your host any Pride from milk and cookie s of war and I'll be bringing you a ton of Space Marine 2 content in the immediate future from multiplayer to operations lore and everything in between this game is awesome seriously see you guys in the next one