General Tips, Techniques and Tricks for Battlefield: Bad Company 2

This post is a part of an ongoing feature written by a Bad Company 2 expert who grows tired of seeing abysmal players online. With this general guide, you too can have an ace pin of your very own one day!

This first post is going to detail general tips and strategies for Rush Mode for all the classes, and soon enough I will write-up strategy guides for all 4 classes (engineer, medic, assault and recon).

Tip # 1: GET THAT STUPID ‘LONE WOLF’ CRAP OUT OF YOUR HEAD

It’s not going to do you any good. Your squadmates are your lifeblood. Here’s why.

The Battlefield maps are huge. You’re going to want to have buddies to spawn on who are close to the action, or, reversely, be in a good position where your squadmates can spawn on you. Just be mindful of the sort of situation you’re spawning on: if it looks like an impossible situation, don’t be the idiot that spawns on a teammate only to instantly die.

Coordinate attacks on M-COM–someone plants the MCOM station while someone else lays down smoke perpetually for cover, and someone else takes care of people who will start running in to stop you guys. Going in by yourself means that you not only have to arm it, you have to be the distraction and keep people at bay. Chances are, you can’t be that guy–and why risk it when you have a higher chance of success with even just another person lending you a helping hand?

If you find yourself in a situation where everyone is dead except for you, don’t just start running toward the objective…WAIT. Those extra 15 seconds you spend hiding somewhere safe may make the difference between a failed arming attempt and a succesful one. Not only does it give you time to start regaining a bit of your health, but your teammates can spawn on you with classes which are more appropriate for the situation at hand. It also gives you time to regroup–medics can dispense med kids, assault can give you ammo, and a recon can throw motion sensors to scout out the area. You can’t do all of that on your own.

I know you’re going to want to maintain a good K/DR, keep those stats up–all of these things are possible on your own. But none of that means jack shit if you’re losing. Honestly, if stats mean that much to you then you should know that you can only get mad points if you play with other people. There’s spotting points, resupply points, healing points, motion points, assist points, revenge points, savior points, defensive points…most of these points, you can’t get without someone else on your team being involved. And guess what? If these points come from a squadmate? You get an extra 10, 20 bonus points for any of those situations. If that isn’t incentive enough for you point whores, I don’t know what is.

You may think that running around lone wolf is the way to do it, but let me tell you, there’s nothing like dying after an epic battle, feeling like you could take the world down….except for the fact that you’re, you know, dead, only to have your team medic rush up to revive you…BOOM, second wind. And just like that you’re back in the game, ready to kick some butt.

Tip # 2: ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS SPOT.

Always. I cannot stress this enough. You should be sprinting while mashing the spotting button at all times. Why should you use the spotting button at all times? Well, for one thing, it may illuminate people or vehicles which you could not notice on your own. This alone can save your life an infinitude of times. Secondly, just because you think you can take care of it, doesn’t mean you can. If you die on your supposed ninja attack trying to knife a guy only to have him turn around and pop you in the face, at the very least your squad knows where this guy is.

And just because you couldn’t get him doesn’t mean everything is ruined forever: if you spot someone and one of your teammates eliminates that target, you will get spotting points. Therefore, every person that you can see but perhaps cannot reach? They should all be considered possible points. All of them. Lastly, it’s just plain useful to spot for your teammates–remember, this is a game with a huge emphasis on TEAMWORK. You’re not going to win on your own, and you’re going to get stomped if you try to play as a lone wolf. Letting your teammates know where the enemies are gives your team a huge tactical upper hand.

In short, you know you are doing it right when you’re playing a different FPS and you press the spotting button instinctively, even though it’s not going to do anything.

Tip # 3 PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT THE TEAM NEEDS

Listen, I know you’re going to want to lean towards being a recon. I know you are. Everyone does, even me. And I know there are going to be matches where you can just continually hump that little patch of grass, you stupid wookie you, popping off the enemy team’s heads left and right, feeling proud about how badass it is that you can snipe these ‘noobs’. Meanwhile there’s a tank that’s massacring your team in a bottleneck somewhere, which no one takes care of because either most people are sniping, or they’re too dumb to realize that everyone else thinks that someone else will take care of it, so in actuality no one takes care of it. In that situation, no, it doesn’t matter that you can kill a dozen people in one life. You’re supposed to be helping your team, and being X class perpetually isn’t going to cut it. Play the field; learn to play as all the classes such that should a situation arise where an assault is absolutely needed? You’re just the man for the job. Undoubtedly there will be one class with which you are the most comfortable with, and that’s fine. You can play as that class as much as you’d like–just be mindful of when the situation calls for something else, though.

Tip # 4 USE YOUR UNIQUE ADVANTAGES

Assaults should always provide ammo crates. People may not always be hurt, but they’re always going to need bullets. Medics should drop a med-kit at every possible moment, because in a firefight, those few seconds of healing power may make the difference between a dead team and a live one. Medics should also be reviving people as much as they can (or makes sense to)–I know that a lot of you are playing medics to be a one man army with your light machine guns *coughM60cough*, but that’s not your role. Recons should always throw motion mines whenever they can–knowing the positions of your enemies cannot be stressed enough. Engineers should always take care of vehicles–be it tracering, shooting rockets to, or setting up mines.

These are just general unique advantage tips– we will get to more specific, advanced tactics once we post specific class strategies. It is imperative that you are aware of what your specific role within a team is, though.

Tip # 5 DESTRUCTION IS YOUR FRIEND

Everyone knows that most things in BFBC2 are destructible. Its one of the selling points of the game. Still, most people forget to use this feature to their advantage. Is the enemy hiding behind cover? Well blow that cover away! You have a wide array of tools at your disposal to do so. Assaults can use grenade launchers, engineers can use rockets or even mines, recons can use mortar strikes, medics can use grenades, and most classes can use C4 provided that they use an all-kits weapon.

If you are on the defensive and the offense is taking their sweet time to get to your base, you should be destroying the entire landscape before you. Any trees, buildings, cover–anything that can be destroyed, should be destroyed. This way, you will eventually reach a point where there is absolutely no possible route that the enemy team can take that cannot be immediately visible the moment that they walk out of their spawn. Having this visibility means that you can take care of people before they’re anywhere near your base. It also works wonders as a psychological threat: holy cow, there’s no cover! What am I supposed to do??

If there are a pack of enemies in a building, there’s no reason you shouldn’t destroy the building. If you manage to sneak up on an enemy base, and C4 the outside of the building till’ kingdom come, you may net yourself a good deal of kills without the enemy team ever knowing what hit them.

Lastly, remember, ALL MCOMS ARE DESTRUCTIBLE. You need about 8-10 sticks of C4 to destroy any one MCOM station, or a little under two dozen Carl Gustavs. Anything else that has explody bits can also do the job, it’ll just take a lot longer. I once played a match where one assault guy spent the entire match shooting only grenade launchers to the MCOM. His team was getting destroyed, but since he spent the entire match doing just that, they were able to advance because eventually he destroyed the MCOM. It takes patience, but if it does the job, then why not?

If you have that patience, you can also use the UAV to call a hellfire on any exposed MCOM. It may take upwards of 10 minutes, though, so be wary. Another neat trick is to take the UAV and have three teammates put all their sticks of C4 on it–though they will need both explosive upgrades for this to work–and then fly the UAV to pretty much touch the MCOM station. Once there, the person flying the UAV must tell their teammates, and then you can detonate the C4 on the UAV and destroy the MCOM station. Just make sure that the person manning the UAV is the best possible pilot–you will need to dodge all enemies. If someone so much as shoots you once, all the C4 will instantly blow up…it won’t destroy you (unless you’re playing hardcore), but it’ll throw your plan down the drain.

Sometimes, destroying the MCOM stations are your best bet because it is swift and instant: you won’t have to go through the motions of having to arm it and defend it. You can just outright get rid of it.

Tip # 6 VEHICLES ARE GOD

Vehicles can singlehandedly win a match. A team with a good driver/pilot can plow through an enemy team like no one’s business. If you’ve ever met a good hind/apache pilot, you’ll know about the absolute terror which they are capable of inflicting. Piloting those things can be difficult for a new player, though. If you’re on the PC, simply join an empty server and have at it until you know what’s what. If you’re on the consoles, you’ll want to play maps that have two choppers at a time (like Valparaiso or Isla Innocentes) so that that way, your team will always have a spare chopper that you’re not piloting off into the sunset because you haven’t figured it out yet. There are plenty of fantastic videos on youtube which can help you learn the ropes.

Do not, under any circumstances, just abandon your tank on enemy lines. You’re giving them firepower that they would not otherwise have. Always PRESS THE SPOTTING BUTTON so that your character yells out whether or not there are mines which you need to be mindful of. This is key–honestly, I can’t tell you how many times I swore to god that there was nothing in front of me, only to be promptly blown up because apparently there were mines there. Do not make that mistake. You’ll also want to fly around at top speed when on a Humvee, but this is also not such a great idea: you won’t have any time to notice the extremely visible mines which are about to claim your life.

Vehicles can, obviously, transport you where you need to go, and quickly. Using that to your advantage may mean that you can zip behind enemy lines quicker than they expect you to–giving you enough time to blow up an MCOM with explosives without the enemy team ever knowing you were there! If you’re on an air vehicle, your pilot can drop you off at the very back of the enemy base. The enemy team doesn’t expect anyone to be parading behind them, and so you should use this fact to your advantage as much as possible.

Tip # 7 GO WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE

Knowing the maps like the back of your hand are only one part of the equation. Once you know your maps, you should, whenever possible…explore what you don’t think is explorable. There are a ton of nooks and crannies which you can only get to if you venture off into zones where the 10 second timer starts going down. Of course, this exploration should only be done if you actually have the luxury of doing so: don’t be an idiot running off into no-man’s-land if your team needs you.

You’ll be surprised at the ridiculous places which you can run through. This may mean discovering a route which no one else expects you to be at. Also know that just because the timer is running off doesn’t mean all is lost. Just stick to the edges wherever possible and the timer may reset itself because you ran back into the “good” territory. Some locations you can only reach if you continually reset the timer while you run towards that location. Any map you can think of has locations such as the ones I’m describing, but you can’t figure them out unless you really explore your boundaries.

Tip # 8 KITS, KITS, KITS

Okay, so your squadmates are only part of your lifeblood. The other part of your lifeblood is the kit you’re running around with. They’re what makes you, you. If there are kits lying around, and you have the chance, you should pick them up and use their advantages. For example, you may have killed an enemy medic. You can pick up his kit, revive a teammate, and then pick your kit back up. Congrats, you just saved yourself a ticket because you were smart and used a kit that was lying around to your advantage. You could also just throw down a medkit to heal yourself. If you pick up a recon’s kit, you can use their sniper to scout the area out, or use their motion sensors to see if anybody is around. Basically, should you see a kit lying around, don’t be shy about picking it up and using its unique advantages to help yourself out. It’s not like anyone else is going to use them anymore.

Tip # 9 GIVE YOURSELF THE GIFT OF SPEED

Console players, make sure to install the game on your harddrive. The game saves configurations for classes (most of the time). This means when a match starts, if you already know you’re going to start off as X class, you can just instantly spawn and do what you need to do. The combination of having the game installed on your hard drive with preconfigured kits may give you a good 10, 20 second advantage to lay out mines before the enemy gets anywhere near you, to get to a good vantage point, or even to simply vault across the map and into the MCOM stations before everyone on the enemy team has even gotten a chance to spawn. This sort of preparation may secure an MCOM station for your team within the first couple of minutes of the match starting.

If you’re not on the first map, pay close attention to how much time has to go by before the game tells you that you can move on to the next part of the map. Often times, you can start running into the darkness and get far into the next map without dying. You just need to figure out the timing for it. I usually wait about 20 seconds after we take the last MCOM station on a map, and start running into the next part of the map. Doing this keeps up the pressure and further takes advantage of the enemy team trying to take some time to recuperate and figure out what they’re doing. You never want to give them that luxury, and you don’t have to if you know what you’re doing.

Tip # 10 FIGURE OUT WHAT PEOPLE DO

Certain maps always elicit certain behaviors. Port Valdez always has snipers on sniper hill, or snipers on the left and right sides of sniper hill. Valparaiso always has people running toward the lighthouse. On Nelson Bay, most people will opt for staying back and destroying the buildings/MCOMs from afar, because that’s the easy way to get rid of the objectives.

Every map has things or behaviors that people always, always replicate…and this knowledge can give you the upper hand in terms of knowing enemy positions without actually seeing them, or simply giving you preparation for the assured sort of assault the enemy team is bound to make. It might also mean that you start developing tactics which aren’t what people expect you to do. For example, certain maps have MCOMs that are very difficult to take…but sometimes, you can just use the map assets to get rid of them. This means that sometimes you can use that conveniently placed Stationary AT to shoot rockets at a point from afar. People won’t expect you to be doing that–they’ll expect you to be doing what people normally do on this map–and so playing with these expectations may give you an upper hand.

Lastly, noticing what people do may prevent you from making the same tried-and-true mistakes. For example, sometimes your teammates will decide that for the love of god, they will get through this part of the map through the right side. Then the enemy team starts mounting their entire defense on that side…and for some reason, your teammates cannot will themselves to try something else. No, they have to absolutely go up through that right side. This gives you a great opportunity to go up through the left, where there’s probably no one waiting because absolutely everyone else on your team is being an idiot on the right. On that same note, if you keep trying to advance on one side and it’s not working…change it up. Don’t wait until you’ve wasted like 10 tickets and your team is about to lose to decide to change your tactics up. By then, it may be too late.

And those are my top ten general tips for Battlefield Bad Company 2…make sure to check regularly for our next installment of this feature, where we will detail strategies for the assault class.