Titanfall tips and tricks for dealing with titans, players, and more

Titanfall is yet another bombastic first-person shooter, but that doesn’t mean the skills you’ve acquired in Call of Duty, Halo, and Battlefield will translate.

We’ve spent some time with the frenetic multiplayer-only title on Xbox One, and we think we’ve come up with a few ways to help you stay alive longer and take out more enemies. Developer Respawn and publisher Electronic Arts are running a massive beta for the game right now on both the Microsoft console and PC.

If you’re playing the game, these tips might help you out.

How to take out Titans

Titans are big, powerful mechs that players can pilot. They are difficult to take out in most situations, so how do you kill these beasts? Titanfall doesn’t have any one foolproof solution, so you’ll have to mix it up.

Titan versus Titans

One of the safest ways to take out a Titan is to work together with your squad. If you and your teammates are all piloting your Titans together, this will make it much easier to destroy a lone enemy. One Titan is dangerous, but a band of giant mechs watching each others’ backs is nearly unstoppable.

Misdirection

It is awesome to go all Robot Jox and go head-to-head with another pilot in a Titan, but this isn’t necessarily the best strategy. A move we think works well is to jump out and let the Titan pilot itself. Let the other pilot continue attacking your walking tank while you either hide off to the side and pelt the opponent with your anti-Titan weapon or try to jump on the enemies back and fire into his guts.

Your titan will almost always the brunt of enemy fire, this should enable you to survive longer on-foot.

Give ’em everything

If you would rather continue piloting your Titan, you need to use all of your tools. That means the main weapon, the secondary weapon, the ability, and the melee attack. You can’t just spam primary fire and expect to win a duel. Mixing things up and doing the unexpected is the key to victory.

Titanfall is not just the name of the game

One of the best ways to take out a Titan is with a Titanfall. When you call in your ride and it drops from the sky, it will destroy whatever is underneath it. That includes minions, players, and other Titans. If the opposing team has multiple Titans sticking to one spot, it’s a good idea to try to drop your Titan right into the middle of the maelstrom and hope that it smashes some unsuspecting enemy.

Dealing with players and bots

Titanfall is a 6-on-6 online shooter, but it fills up the rest of the map with computer-controlled Grunts, also known as minions or bots. Killing minions is extremely easy because they are slow, stupid, and weak. Killing players is difficult because they are the opposite and unpredictable.

Things you need to know about minions

Minions are weak, and they aren’t worth a lot of points in Titanfall’s team deathmatch mode known as Attrition, but they aren’t pointless. When you damage anything, it cuts down the time until you can call your titan into battle. That means minions are worth killing when they are in front of you, but you should definitely not busy yourself only going after minions.

Minions probably won’t kill you, but they’ll get you killed

Like I said, Grunts are dumb. They’ll look at you for a good long while before they actually fire the trigger. The trouble comes when you spend your time killing Grunts instead of looking for enemy players. If you’re just spraying into a group of minions, the opposing team is going to see you lit up on their minimap. They’ll be able to find you quickly, and if you are just chasing after bots, they’ll take you right out. Even if you took out six minions, players are worth significantly more, and worse, you’ve given away the advantage to the other team.

So feel free to kill a minion if they’re between you and where you’re going, but otherwise just keep moving.

Finding the players

Enemy minions present a problem. They’re obvious. They’re everywhere. They don’t look very different from Pilots, which players control. So how do you find the Pilots? You have to keep a close eye on your minimap at all times.

Minions are tiny little dots on the minimap. They give you a good idea of the opponent’s staging location, but that’s it. Instead, you should look for the big red circles, which indicate an enemy that is firing their weapon. Line up your sight with the enemy. Try to spot them from a distance, and then go for the kill. Again, don’t get distracted by minions because killing enemy players is key.