Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop – Bastille Guide

Statistics and Presentation

Leon Bastille

• Classe: Medic
• Type: Support
• Team Position: Fifth or Sixth (Backline)

With 4/5 Healing and 1/3 Infestation curing Bastille is unfortunately the less good of the two medics and must always be left out if Faith is available, nevertheless he has a very good reload speed bonus and he still remains a medic which makes him a very good character to help the team stay alive.

Main Task:

• Slow down aliens and prevent your team from getting hit.

Secondary Task:

• Heal your team.

Gear

Tesla Cannon:

Medics’ main mission is to protect their team and to prevent the aliens from touching your allies as much as possible, for that nothing better than the Tesla cannon.

One of the big advantage of the tesla cannon and that it is impossible to do damage to your allies.

In addition to electrocuting the aliens and applying a slow to them, it is capable, like all weapons, to applying a “mini stun” to your opponents during the first damage tik.

Thought of using tapping with this weapon to save ammo, it also makes it easier to control the mini stun.

Mini Stun: Interrupts the actions of enemies in progress if well timed.

However, beware, Tesla cannon has some drawbacks to consider.

Allies and props such as barrels and chairs for example, can block the tesla’s electric beam, some other objects such as doors attract the tesla’s beam.

Thought of not placing your aim in the alignment of your teammates if you wanted tesla for them.

Medical Gun:

Reason why a medic must wear medical equipment is quite obvious but why play the Medical gun and not the amp medgun, the Heal Beacons or even smg med, after all Bastille has a damage bonus, right?

Well for the question of the amp medgun it’s quite simple, Bastille is not the medic with the highest healing capacity BUT taking default medgun is always the best choice because on large maps it can happen that Faith completely exhausts her medgun and you could therefore give her yours.

And let’s be honest the amp damage bonus of the amp medgun is not very interesting since the specialist weapons can be carried and this moved with the Damage Amplifier extras.

As for the Heal beacons, it’s a pretty good item but it has two very big flaws, first it’s an item that forces your team to stay static and it’s very risky and secondly heals the infection with is very long and costs at least 2 beacons.

You might think that the SMG medgun is a good choice on Bastille but no, it’s a terrible weapon, it has too little quantity of med and in any case your role is not to do dps but to help your teammate.

This weapon also burns ammunition too quickly which means less ammo for your teammates whose main role is to kill aliens.

Medgun Managment:

1 medgun ammo regenerates 9 health (10 on Faith), and healing a Marine who has lost life will cause you to consume medgun ammo no matter what.

So if a marine is missing 1HP and you heal him you would use 1 medgun ammo for 1HP and lose a potential healing of 8.

To counter this “problem” it’s quite simple, just don’t heal the marines who need to be healed at full life (try to heal them at 90 or 95% of their max health). This way you are sure to use 1 medgun ammo for 9 healing points.

Extas:

For the choice of extras I strongly recommend you to use freeze grenades (or ice nades) because it is the extra support equipment by exelance.

In emergency situations, such as a horde too close to your team, too many shieldbugs per cm² or even an army of xenos close to you jumping on you, using an ice is often the right solution to all these problems.

Note that freeze grenades are able to stop the fire when an ally burns.

About Gas Grenades, I do not recommend playing them, it is not a very good item exept on WB (weapon balance). but if there is one of the two medics who must carry the gas nades (if necessary) it is definitely Bastille, because he is the backline medic, and a misplaced gas up front can slow down the team’s progress.

Positioning and Behavior in Game

Positioning:

With four player bastille should not be chosen, because Faith does a much better job than him in general.

But from 6 to 8 players having a good Bastille to help the backline makes a huge difference for the whole team.

Interaction and Mission:

Your main role in Bastille is to help the backline, and especially the weapon specialists, not to inflict damage or manage hordes, they really don’t need you at this level but your role is to cover them when they are most vulnerable, for example when they are reloading their miniguns.

You are also of great help when the front rushes a little too quickly and the backline has difficulty keeping up, your Tesla to allow them to stop fighting for a few moments to run and catch up with the rest of the team.

Don’t leave them behind!

I too often see Bastille players running to join their team without worrying about their weapon specialists or even leaving them in a complex situation when we need to reload their weapons.

On long missions, thought looked at how many medgun your Faith has left, if she has much less medgun charge than you, you can always ask her to exchange your medgun because she will make much better use of it than you.

She will thanks you for that.

And of course if your Faith dies you should take his place and play for the front because that’s where the main danger comes from and your frontline will need a medic much more than your backline at that moment.

Movements:

Helping your allies is great, but be careful not to make their job harder by trying to help them when they don’t need it.

The most common error in alien swarm is blocking, whether in vanilla or in ASBI blocking someone is very problematic and irritating.

To remedy this problem try to imagine a dead zone all around your allies, you are not allowed to cross this area.

Also as backline supports your role and covers your team while remaining behind them (inside the backline) you should never be the last in the formation exept from a VERY rare exceptions.

For example when your SW (weapon specialist) is dead or when the rest of the team is really too far away and you and your SW had to run to catch up, in this case covering back with tesla is the best option.

Do not stay front of your SWs, they need to shoot things and they cannot if you place yourself in front of them or they will kill you.