X35 Earthwalker. Gears 5 Lancer is terrible

 

Gears 5 is an excellent game overall but due to decisions made by the developers ‘The Coalition’ concerning versus mode, they have damaged the game a lot which has resulted in bad statistics. Horde is fun, escape is fun, campaign is fun but versus sucks. One big change to verses that has ruined things in matches is what they did to the Lancer. Let’s take a look.

The Lancer is the signature weapon of Gears of war. Gnasher only fans will say otherwise but just look over all the Gears of War games. The main gun is always the Lancer. We have said this before and will say it again. The iconic things of Gears of War is the Lancer, The crimson omen and Marcus Fenix. Not the Gnasher. So when we see the developers make the Lancer incredibly weak, you know they already messed up. The Lancer is the workhorse gun of the COG army. It’s their main gun. So automatically this defeats the lame argument Gnasher fans make that the Lancer is a support weapon. Rifles aren’t support weapons, they are main weapons. Ask any Marine or person in the army if the assault rifle is a support weapon. Your support weapon would be the snub pistol. The Lancer is too weak.

Look at our X35 Earthwalker video above. You see how weak it is. You get away with running out in the open for that long and survive the lancer. That wouldn’t happen. The accuracy was good as we landed our shots and he still didn’t go down. We have seen people run through lancer fire, reach the shooter and one shot them with the gnasher, which is stupid. Gears of War is a cover shooter game. Therefore players should get punished for running out in the open carelessly. Yes we know the game’s multiplayer meta became the gnasher shotgun but that means the game is cover shooter while the versus is not. That’s a fail. We have seen multiple layers surviving a hail of bullets. Not good. What’s far more frustrating is when you finally down someone with the lancer or whatever and then you fire at them with the Lancer to finish them of as they try to crawl away. Sad thing is that the Lancer takes forever to kill downed enemies in versus. We have seen this many times. down someone trying to run, you down them finally and then you try to finish them off and they don’t die. You have to reload and by the time you finish reloading, they already crawled behind cover. That’s so stupid and the developers haven’t corrected that. How are you almost as tough as a healthy character, while crawling.

X35 Earthwalker. Gears 5 Lancer is terrible

The polite people in the comment section informed us that they also removed the damage buff you get from a perfect active reload. This was in every Gears of War game. Just Gears 5 that doesn’t have it semi-lately. Yet the Gnasher keeps it’s buffs from the reloads. This means that Lancer is even weaker than before. In Gears of War 3, the Lancer is a strong weapon. When you get that sweet reload it became stronger than the powerful retro lancer. Compare Gears of War 3 Lamnncer to Gears 5 Lancer. Heck, compare Gears 5 Lancer to Gears of War Judgement’s Lancer. In Judgement the Lancer is very good and very fair. Not the strongest rifle as well. We even saw a reduction to the stopping power of the Lancer in Gears 5. Once again, another nerf. This allows shotgun users to rush you, push through the bullets and still kill you. Low damage, no bonus from the perfect active reloads  and weak stopping power. This is a terrible combination. Multiple time we have seen where the Lancer fails and it’s frustrating. Even during an X35 Earthwalker Gears 5 livestream everyone saw that the Lancer once again was useless. People stated that they don’t bother with it anymore. 

There are a few people, conveniently they are the Gnasher only user players, who say the Lancer is how it should be. Well congratulations! You guys got what you wanted and guess what? Gears 5 has the lowest numbers of players. Gears 5 is getting smaller and smaller. Their numbers are terrible. New players try, hate it, get killed by Gnasher losers who want montage clips for their youtube channel over and over again and then leave and never come back. Old players are leaving and even veterans of the series like X35 Earthwalker don’t bother with versus as much at all anymore. Gears 5 sadly isn’t doing well. Many forum pages of people complaining about the game and the developers aren’t listening. Making the icon weapon of the game trash is a terrible idea. There’s more to say but we won’t bother. So instead watch something really cool like the video below. 

Overall… the Lancer sucks. The Lancer is garbage. The developers ‘The coalition’ has made some very bad decisions. We will definitely be avoiding versus mode a whole lot more. Versus mode isn’t fun. Let’s hope things change but we stopped caring some time ago. There’s tons of other good games to play. Now the Lancer in Gears 5 is garbage and it’s not good enough for… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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X35 Earthwalker Gears 5 Horde Tier list

Gears 5 has gone through a number of changes and most of them bad. Operation 8 has dropped in and it hasn’t really changed anything for us. Horde is currently the best mode for Gears 5 and it’s what we have been playing the most in groups of friends or with online random players. We wanted to do a horde class tier list because pretty much everyones sucks and they leave out crucial information. So here’s our Gears 5 horde class tier list but more of a quicker summary because it’s harder to explain through writing the than talking. Let’s take a look.

So let’s clarify. Th8s list isn’t about who does the most damage as some lists seem to be based on with heavy emphasis. High damage is very important but not everything. In the same way that having the highest top speed in a racing game doesn’t automatically make it the best car. There’s multiple factors. Turning, acceleration and some games have durability. Some tracks have many sharp turns and so a super fast car with crap turning will be terrible. So in this Gears 5 horde class list some of the things we take into account is damage, survivability, versatility and how well they fulfil their role. For example a damage class could do more damage than a support class but the support class supports the team incredibly well and is therefore better overall. So it’s not about simple silly things. X35 Earthwalker is a far better analyst and wiser than anyone else you could watch. Lastly we know that there are class combos since we invented some and wrote about it n our last Gears 5 blog post. No combos here just solo and their role. Let’s go from C tier to S tier.

C Tier 

X35 Earthwalker Robotic Expert Gears 5

Robotic Expert – This will surprise many people as we saw someone on youtube really bigging up this class. We conclude that it sucks and is the worst of the engineer classes. Sure killing enemies with an embar to heal your fortifications sounds nice in theory but practically it’s not great. For starters on inconceivable difficulty the enemies are harder to kill and require multiple shots. Also you are competing with your allies for kills. They can finish of enemies before you do. The embar has limited ammo so you have to make every shot count. If you sit back and wait for the perfect kill like a weakened scion to headshot, you aren’t pumping out much damage at all. You Could say use the embar on juvies and leeches but not only are they fast and harder to hit, they are very weak and your sentries might kill them before you do. The robotic expert does more damage than mechanic in straight up gun fights but the engineer classes are all about the fortifications and setting up strong defences. Something the robotic expert sucks at. This class doesn’t even have the card that increases your repair speed AND reduce repair cost which is something the other two engineer classes do have. Simply put, if you want damage then be something else. If you want strong defences… be something else.

X35 Earthwalker Protector Gears 5

Protector – This horde class got a major upgrade with one of the recent updates but it still isn’t enough. The protector simply put is an inferior Blade Master. Protector’s best stuff is bleed damage on melee hits and increased melee damage something a blade master also does plus more. The ultimate can create breathing room for a bit but ultimately doesn’t save you for long. The protector is fantastic for escape but not horde. The new passive of healing for 50% of bleed damage helps but it will be overwhelmed by drones with the claw and doesn’t protect you from being one shotted by boom shots and drop shots. There’s a card to boost shotgun damage but that’s pointless as the main focus and strengths is on melee attacks. If you want a strong shotgun then go for infiltrator class. The best card is the regenerative field which allows you to go in for the kill then run back to heal and get stim. Gears 5 horde classes will be tough to balance.

B Tier

X35 Earthwalker Nomad Gears 5

Nomad – We had to change our mind about Nomad. It’s all about the fear ability. People want to say armoured shot but listen up. Armoured shot is fantastic but it’s almost impossible to do as a solo player playing with random players online. The average horde player goes online with random players. You have to assume that no one will be insync with you. They do their thing and you do your thing. The only way to get stim by yourself is to execute enemies which on inconceivable difficulty is super risky. You can’t rely on chainsawing and retro charging enemies or hiding behind cover to pull them over. So many ways those things can go wrong. If you in a invited team and you had a combat medic staying sort of near you to give you stim then yeah armoured shot would make the nomad A tier for sure at a bare minimum but you most likely are solo with no one to give you stim. Nomads strength is about that fear. Spreading fear with headshots is super powerful. Combine intimidation with consecutive shots, markza mastery and acceleration with the passive of dealing double damage to fear inflicted enemies and you can really dominate the horde. The nomad has the same weakness as a number of other classes which is no defence. The nomad goes down just as fast as the others. It’s squishy and can’t stand up to anything 1v1 for the most part. Nomad can have fantastic damage but it’s a one trick class has no survivability outside of it’s ultimate, which doesn’t effect bosses. Lastly Nomads are sort of restricted to precision weapons really. So Nomad is a good class and fantastic in invited working together teams but for the average player it’s just good and we can think of other classes who are more useful or more powerful.

X35 Earthwalker Veteran Gears 5

Veteran – This class is just solid. It doesn’t have weaknesses but nothing special going on. For defence there’s a card to give damage resistance while in cover which is great. The veteran is the Gears of War representative class. It’s all about using cover and shooting with rifles. It does that well. It’s best card grants a boost to damage when your health falls below a certain threshold. This allows for the strongest rifle in the game but with a condition. The ultimate combined with the legendary card makes a deadly combo of shield and spear. The veteran is like the perfect class for beginners to pick and learn with. It’s simple gears of War. There’s nothing special or amazing about the Veteran. It has boosts to health through there passive energy upgrades, damage reduction in cover and strong lancers with protection during executions. It’s simple does exactly what it says on the box. You can’t go wrong with a veteran, good fire power but there are more powerful classes. The veteran is suppose to be all about the rifle and should have the best rifle but it doesn’t. We can think of two other classes that have stronger rifles than the Veteran and that’s embarrassing. The Veteran has to be the class we use the least. We never see a horde challenge where we look at the Veteran and say “oh yeah, it’s time”. You can’t go wrong with Veteran but you can ALWAYS do better. Two veterans in a team is not a good thing.

X35 Earthwalker Striker Gears 5

Striker – We want to put this higher. X35 Earthwalker ended up loving this class and had lots of fun with it. In the last X35 Earthwalker Gears 5 horde livestream, X35 played the striker and made the class look like it’s A/S tier. It isn’t. It’s a melee class so it shares the same weaknesses as protector and blade master. You have to get up close to your enemies which is insanely risky. Your only real weapons is also close range. If you get downed next to enemies or some distance away you put the whole team at risk. The Striker class does have tools to help though. You get stim when you inflict melee damage which is huge. You get a big speed boost when you take damage (passive ability) which can be used to run away or close the gap real fast. As you get melee kills you recharge your ultimate faster which is how the Striker gets his kills… by melee. There’s a card that gives insane bleed damage to the breaker mace which makes a huge difference. There’s also a card that gives a huge damage boost on your first attack on an enemy who has full health. So the Striker can face scions with the greatest of ease. The legendary card is weak because it only causes the explosion by melee kills and not the bleed damage that the breaker mace inflicts which is dumb design. The ultimate is like the slugger except it’s for melee. Your hits stun the enemy and has a damage boost. The ultimate + breaker mace bleed + stim on hit is a powerful combo. Then melee hits bring back your ultimate faster to repeat the process. The striker is great and only high skilled players can play this class. It’s difficult. Again this isn’t the best melee class so logically there’s no reason to pick this class either… sadly. X35 has dominated, survived and got the highest damage in horde matches with this class before.

X35 Earthwalker Marksman Gears 5

Marksman – This will also surprise horde players. Marksman are very powerful and do high damage. They make certain enemies disappear. Scion? Dead! Pouncer? Dead! Snipers? Dead! Anything with a head becomes dead real quick with a marksman around. No doubt about it. Hear the weaknesses though. The marksman is in the group of classes as the squishiest classes. They have no health boosts, no damage resistances that matters, no stim, no defences AT ALL. A drone with a claw or even a hammerburst will down you so fast it’s so sad. The marksman can’t look after themselves. Plus there are some enemies that snipers aren’t good against like sires and rejects. If those come after the marksman then they might be in trouble. Also snipers are ammo box dependant and require A LOT of ammo. Sure you can build a locker fortification to get ammo but those things cost 5000 energy which could have been used for something else. Then you have to upgrade the locker for the extra space which is another 5000. So yeah, Marksman aren’t cheap. Marksman are only good against three bosses: Wardens, Stumps and kestrels. Stumps are never really a problem so you want to leave them in the back for last so sniping them out straight away is not the best option. We saw a sentinel fly through a base to the back and shot at a marksman for like a few milliseconds and the marksman went down instantly. No health. No defence. Just critical damage. So it can’t be A tier.

A Tier 

X35 Earthwalker Demolition Gears 5

Demolition – Yep. We see you shocked, astonished, maybe a little mad about this. “X35 Earthwalker doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How is demolition not S tier?” First of all shut up and calm down. Second of all, there’s a reason why X35 Earthwalker is the worlds greatest gamer and you aren’t. Know your place. The demolition has like the highest damage damage in the game. They literally can blow everything up and spread bleed damage everywhere. The bleed damage brings back their ultimate super fast for them to do another bombing. We know all that. We have done that and more. Demolition has the same problems as the marksman for the most part. THEY HAVE NO HEALTH. They are squishy. One slap and they bend over. You can have all the explosive power you want but the moment a drone elite catches you slipping just a little bit, you on the ground begging for a revive. Where’s your fire power now? The Demolition is also heavily dependent on ammo boxes. You use weapon lockers to get around that but that’s a lot of spending but once you are set up with multiple explosive weapons and maybe some grenades, you can destroy almost anything and do mad damage. Sadly it feels like the explosive damage has been nerfed (across all classes), this means less bleed damage too. We have out-damaged a fully set up demolition before with a few other classes before which is sad. The demolition should have mostly the highest damage output. The demolition is all damage, no versatility, definitely no survivability and a one trick class. It’s just got sooooooo much damage that it forces itself into A tier.

X35 Earthwalker Pilot Gears 5

Pilot – Has the second best stim card in the game. Just shot anything and you get stim. Plain and simple. Stim for yourself though. Now obviously the strength of the Pilot is the silverback ultimate. The silverback is a boss shredder. The bleed damage mulcher shreds and kills real fast. There is a bit of versatility. You can either focus on being all about the silverback as much as possible or us the hammer legendary card and be all about the dropshot. You can focus on a boosted enforcer smg which truly shreds at close range. You could focus on the freeze ability and finish of weakened enemies. The freeze is also excellent against bosses and works with the silverback. Do not underestimate this ability as it can help easily kill anything. The Pilot can boost their health meaning they aren’t squishy but thanks to their easy stim they become sort of tanky. Also, you can get your ultimate back quite fast. Not top 5 fastest naturally but there’s a card that makes it come back faster if two of your allies are dead but that’s worst case scenario and should aim to avoid this. You can spend energy to upgrade your ultimate cool down to get it back faster too. The negatives are obvious. The Pilot is considerably weaker without a silverback. If you are going for a strong dropout build then you require a set up like the marksman, requiring weapon lockers. The pilot has alright survivability, definitely versatile and has great damage but fantastic damage with the silverback. Protect the silverback as it can be destroyed… a big weakness. 

X35 Earthwalker Tactician Gears 5

Tactician – This class is powerful and does it’s role as a support very well. It has firepower as there’s an explosive damage bleed card and you start with a boomshot. The Tactician has cards to help mark as many enemies as possible giving your teammates awareness and sight. When teammates kill a marked enemy they get their ultimate back faster which is big. There’s a card that makes teammates do more damage to enemies you mark which is very powerful. Mark the boss and big guys. Then their ultimate gives ammo to your teammates which can be a big help depending on the classes you are working with. The Tactician can increase it’s help with energy upgrades meaning it isn’t as squishy as the squishy classes. Put all of this totter and you have a very solid class for sure which deals very good damage and supports the whole team very easily. Last of all you can invest energy in explosive ammo to quickly refill all your explosive weapons while in the ultimate’s circle (range). This means you can spam lancer grenade launcher missiles, spam boom shots, dropshot or whatever. This results in massive amounts of damage and it costs no ammo. The negatives is that a 50% boost to health from your passive energy upgrades just makes you survive a bit longer than squishy but not by much. The Tactician does it’s job as a support very well, it’s definitely got damage potential, has little survivability and has some versatility. Having a Tactician on your team is a good thing.

X35 Earthwalker Architect Gears 5

Architect – This class is underrated but very powerful. It has the card to make repairs faster and cheaper, something robotic expert doesn’t have for some reason. There’s a card to boost the damage of all fortifications and it’s a rare card meaning it’s not that hard to level up. So Architect saves energy when working and has high damage fortifications. Just by staying safe for a while you get free stim which you can use to attend to your fortifications. The decoy ultimate is the star here. DON’T SLEEP ON THE DECOY. X35 Earthwalker multiple times used the decoy and it distracted the boss enemies for the longest time. No joke. A scion, snatcher and something else all kept trying to kill the decoy. The decoy can last way longer thanks to a card, where if you hit enemies with ballistic rounds while the decoy is up, you extend it’s duration. Use a lancer and the decoy stays around for the whole wave practically. That’s so strong. But wait… there’s more! There’s one card which is the X factor of the Architect’s tools. The flank damage card is insane! It’s maximum is 200%. To put this in perspective quickly, the Veteran has a card to give 60% extra rifle damage, get another 50% from energy passive spending which totals 110%. If you had a level 2 flank card, you would get an additional 70% which totals 180%. The architect with one card can do more damage than a Veteran with two cards and fully upgraded damage with energy! That’s crazy. Remember that the Architect’s flank damage card is a common grade which means it’s the easiest to get to level 6. Thatr’s so cheap that it’s good. Combine this flank card with the decoy and we got some serious free damage. It’s an engineer that can really fight by itself with a powerful ultimate that can easily turn the tide of a wave, especially a boss wave. The Architect just doesn’t have any real survivability besides that regenerative field stim card. A good card for sure but other from that, Architect is squishy, has no damage unless flanking, no versatility as there’s only one way to play it.

X35 Earthwalker Blade Master Gears 5

Blade Master – The strongest of the melee classes still. Blade master has powerful bleed damage from melee which you can get through the energy passive spending. You can equip a breaker mace for increased melee damage which means more bleed damage. The highest bleed damage in the game overall. Nothing survives like three breaker mace standard swings. As you melee or melee bleed kill you heal for half your health. There’s like two damage resistance cards for close range combat. There’s natural damage resistance through energy passive spending. On top of that there is a card to gain stim if you soak up near a tap. Stim plus all these damage resistance actually makes you very tanky if played with skill. Melee classes like Blade Master are the most difficult to use and require the most skill. So even though the Blade Master is actually very tanky it doesn’t feel that way when you rush to cut up an enemy but unfortunately it doesn’t feel that way when three enemies target you down at the same time and you get downed at their feet real quick. To add to your firepower you have your ultimate which is one of the best in the game. You can have it give you instant stim to save your life, lots of shock to stun and immobilise enemies for you to cut them up too. You become almost unstoppable and dealing massive damage. The ultimate is also a Warden killer. It cuts through wardens armour and stacks bleed so much that the warden doesn’t stand a chance. Random wardens are no longer a problem when the Blade Master is around. You could dedicate a card to make sure you have a high gaming claw for ranged combat too. There’s also a blade dancer card which increases your melee damage as you melee kill stacking up to triple damage (200%). So there’s very high damage (one of the highest), lots of survivability, a little versatility and fulfils it’s role very much so. Not S tier because there’s not enough defence to truly survive out there. Enough in theory but you can go down so fast it’s scary at times.

X35 Earthwalker Jack Gears 5

Jack – Jack is A class for sure. His strengths and weaknesses are very clear. Jack lacks damage as it’s not his job to do damage. His health is low. Those are the weaknesses. His strengths is the amount of super support he gives. Jack’s electric shocks does a little damage but it also stuns enemies preventing them from attacking. Jack could stun a boomer scion allowing snipers and others to take it out without fear. On top of that the electric has a passive effect. Anyone attacking the stunned enemy does 50% more damage. So imagine a full powered sniper hiding a boomer scion in the head with 50% extra damage. This is easier to do as Jack can cloak. Enemies cannot see Jack or detect him at all while cloaked allowing him to move around without fear. Jack has a healing beam which can be used to heal allies. Its a strong heal overpowering the damage of most enemies. This beam can also revive downed allies and since it’s a beam, Jack can repair from a distance which is very useful. This beam also repairs fortifications which helps out engineers classes a lot with fortification maintenance. jack is also one of three classes who fit the ‘team saviour’ category. We have seen Jack be the only survivor from a slaughter and sneak around, grab tags, lure enemies away, revive team mates, stun specific enemies and bring the victory. X35 Earthwalker witnessed a Jack bring victory from certain defeat. He crowned him the best random online Jack player. Jack is amazing but it doesn’t stop there. Jack’s ultimate is game changer. He can hijack and take control of a non-boss enemy and use it against the enemy. Literally take over a scion mulched for example and stack shredding the enemy. Then there’s a card that makes those controlled enemies explode for extra big damage. The hijack saves lives. Your team could be pinned down by an annoying enemy and Jack comes in and just takes that enemy away and puts it to use. Jack is so good. Jack players do need to time their hijack ultimate carefully as while you are hijacking an enemy, you can’t revive anyone. You also can’t cancel your ultimate either. So be careful. Jack’s support abilities easily outclass any weaknesses and goes straight to near the top of A tier. We rather have a Jack on our team than a demolition… that’s how good Jack is. 

X35 Earthwalker Slugger Gears 5

Slugger – [We have to now update the slugger due to more discoveries and buffs]. This one is straight forward. It’s just straight up destruction with grenades. The only Gears 5 horde class that has some sort of explosive damage increase which shows poor design choices on behalf of the developers. There’s an epic card that increases the damage and radius of grenades. When the Slugger is carrying 8 grenades which has massively increased damage, as in much more than 110%, they destroy everything. Especially when a horde is pushing through a tight area and grouped up by a barricade, the multiple grenades make them disappear quick. The ultimate is actually very good as well. The damage increase of 50% is nice but the real thing is that your bullets now stun and knock back enemies. You can literally hold back the horde by hitting each one with bullets like from the spraying of a lancer. Keep a specific enemy busy, set foes up for your team etc. It even stuns the bosses like the matriarch and carrier. This ultimate does the most in the hands of a player with decent intelligence and tactics. What made us change our mind about slugger moving it up from B class to A is the ‘power shot’ card which is new. It makes all ballistic rounds penetrate through multiple targets and increases damage. At level 6 you do 60% increased damage! This changes everything. Think about it, remember that one of the passive horde upgrades for Slugger is damage increase which at max grants 50% increased damage. So 60 + 50 = 110. Then if you activate your ultimate you have 160% increased ballistic damage. That damage passive horde upgrade is universal damage. It applies to EVERYTHING: scorcher, ballistic, explosives, heavy weapons and even grenades making it the best damage increase in the game for a passive upgrade. This makes the granges have a maximum of 250% increased damage. This also means the slugger has the strongest tri-shot and mulcher in the game! A tri-shot with 110% increased damage, landing headshots is scary. X35 Earthwalker discovered some over powered tactics and combos with the Slugger that will make you think the Slugger is S Class but it’s not that crazy. Lastly the Slugger has 50% explosive damage resistance for explosives as it’s passive but through the horde upgrades you can have a maximum of 30% damage resistance. So the Slugger can have a maximum of 80% explosive damage resistance and 60% ballistic damage resistance when combined with the card that grants ballistic resistance within 15 meters. There’s some tankiness to the class. The negatives are obvious. Without grenades, the Slugger loses the vast majority of their damage. On top of that, the grenades cost energy. So it’s constant drainage on power which is a negative. It’s ultimate can help and it’s good but it isn’t a game changer. There’s a card for the shotgun but you have to be close range putting you at risk and the reward isn’t worth it… but again, you rather be an infiltrator for shotguns. The slugger surprises everyone. It’s now a powerful class. Real solid with serious offence and some defence. The slugger has the highest damage output for simple weapons. Their grenades out damage Gunner’s tri-shot, demolition and tactician’s explosive weapons, striker with breaker mace. Those grenades at 250% would mean that if a grenade did 2000 damage it now does 7000. That’s huge. Only the demolitions ultimate does more damage. The Slugger has come a very long way. It’s actually very good.

X35 Earthwalker Mechanic Gears 5

Mechanic – The Mechanic is the best engineer class easily. The mechanic has the card that gives repair efficiency and reduces repair cost which makes a difference. There’s a card for increased fortification damage making fences and off course sentry guns much stronger. Combine that damage boost with the energy spend passives and the damage is really strong, shredding the horde. There’s a card to give fortifications damage resistance. There’s a big common card that at max level gives fortifications 175% more health! That’s huge! To give an example if a fence had 1000 health the mechanic’s fence has 2750. Nearly three times as much. So imagine a range of fortifications that deal more damage, got damage distance and has 175% more health. The horde can’t get through that. Now unlike the robotic expert and architect, the mechanic has some actual survivability. There’s a legendary card that gives the mechanic stim when he repairs fortifications. This card is powerful. X35 Earthwalker himself has faced a group of enemies looking at him by dancing around his sentry guns while constantly repairing which grants constant stim which actually kept him alive. The mechanic WAS the decoy. He didn’t die. The mechanic is an engineer class that can stand in the middle of a fight and do his job. The other engineers have to hide. The whole point of horde since Gears of War 3 was to have strong fortifications. The mechanic represents horde. It’s pure fortifications and all fortifications. On top of everything the update gave the mechanic a new ultimate. The mechanic summons (no dark magician included) and places a turret which does a lot of damage. This turret is something any ally, except Jack off course, can use and start firing. A class that hasn’t got much firepower can use that turret instead to do immense damage. The turret did more damage than we thought. The mechanic has no real weakness. It’s damage is it’s fortifications and those things are solid. Off course a swarmak and matriarch don’t care about fortifications. Mechanics have survivability and is a must have class for a horde team. Seriously, increased damage level 4 turrets with max energy spent passive damage upgrades shreds the horde without question. 

S Tier

X35 Earthwalker Infiltrator Gears 5

Infiltrator – This class is crazy. It’s basically a blade master but stronger and uses a shotgun instead of melee. The infiltrator has higher damage than the blade master, more defence than the blade master, same speed as the blade master and more survivability. There’s cards that cause immense bleed damage with the shotgun. Then there’s a card that multiplies the damage the shotgun does on bleeding enemies. Strong synergy there. Then there’s a card that gives instant stim when you kill by shotgun or shotgun bleed damage. There’s a card that grants damage resistance while you have stim. There’s also a card that increases stim capacity so you can have more stim. There’s a passive energy spend option to increase movement speed too. So the infiltrator becomes incredibly difficult to defeat. Maybe the second hardest to defeat… maybe. Then there’s the ultimate which cloaks the Infiltrator. So like Jack, can’t be seen at all. While cloaked you can execute humanoid enemies for free. So if you are trapped or about to die, you can cloak and then run away since all enemies instantly lose interest in you and go away after your team. The infiltrator truly doesn’t have a reason for dying, especially when ultimate is ready. The Infiltrator has some versatility. You can either go full shotgun and stim, being a powerful sword and shield with stim batteries and enhanced stim along with the other three shotgun cards. Or you can focus more on the cloaking as there is a card which extends the duration of the cloak called cloak batteries. There’s also a legendary card called chain which extends your ultimate every time you execute an enemy while cloaked. At level 4 each execution grants 4 more seconds. You could literally run around killing off grenadiers, elite drones, snipers and whatever you want for your team or go revive everyone and even collect cog tags to bring back alive without fear. Lastly the passive ability makes it so that the first shot you fire will automatically end your cloak but that one will do ten times (10x) more damage. One shot on a big enemy can straight up eliminate them. The infiltrator is just so strong and inflicts standard damage like no other. This is S tier without question. So don’t argue.

X35 Earthwalker Brawler Gears 5

Brawler – This is a tough one and took a lot off reasoning. The brawler is the lowest of the S tier classes. The brawler has the most versatility of any class. You can focus completely on setting enemies on fire with perfect active reloads. Use the ‘All the glory’ card to cause enemies who die from burn to explode dealing area of effect damage. You could focus solely on your ultimate with the burn and recharge card which makes your ultimate recharge faster for every enemy burning. This gets your ultimate back much faster. Then add the killing time card which extends your ultimate every time you kill an enemy with the ultimate. This allows for a seriously long and effective train of destruction. You could focus more on tackling enemies. Killing a enemy with the tackle grants instant stim to yourself. There’s a card which makes a tickle kill grant even more stim. There’s a card which let’s your tackles set enemies on fire and any enemy already burning, the tackle does even more damage, at level 5 you do 250% more damage. There’s also a card that reduces the damage you take while sprinting. You could even focus on the scorcher as there a card that increases scorcher damage and another that allows you to have more scorcher ammo. Combine scorcher cards with burn type cards and that’s a scary combo for defensive play. The Brawler can do crowd control as there’s a common crd that at max level reduces the movement speed of enemies who are burning by 60%. The brawler also is the tankiest class of them all! There’s the perk up card which at max level grants 60% more health and regeneration speed. There’s the 40% (at max) damage resistance while sprinting, There’s increasing of health through the energy spend passive system. There’s the inner fire card which grants at max level 35% damage resistance while your ultimate is available. Let’s do some quick maths. Let’s say all classes have 500 health points. Perk up makes the Brawler have 800 hp. The max energy spend gives 50% which means a total of 1050 hp. The brawler has more than double the health of snipers and demolitions and all cases with no defence. Now for the damage reduction. Assuming the Brawler has 1050 hp. Inner fire gives 35% damage resistance. So lets say a boomshot natural does 1000 damage, it now does 650. Now if the brawler was hit while sprinting with the sprint image resistance card which is 40% that’s a total of 75% resistance meaning that 1000 damage boomshot now does 250 damage on a direct hit! 250?! That’s a joke, except it’s a reality for the Brawler. That would mean a sprinting Brawler would need 5 direct hitting boom shots to get downed! No other class is close to doing that! And uneducated ignorant people want to complain and say what good is maths after school. Also the brawler has ammo regeneration which means no ammo boxes needed. Independent of ammo boxes is so good. Need we say more about the brawler? No. His only real weakness is his lack of damage. His damage is, on the grand scheme of things, weak. Relying on burn damage isn’t the best and his charge tackle like with inconceivable and master difficulty requires lots of skill and tactics to be successful. Brawler is the tankiest and more versatile of all the classes. Get great damage if focused on ultimate.

X35 Earthwalker Anchor Gears 5

Anchor – The Anchor was A class at first but then got promoted. The update helps as the Anchor now does 30% more damage with the Boltok. That makes a difference as there’s a card for Boltok perfect active reload bleed damage. More damage means more bleed damage as bleed is a percentage of the actual damage. The Anchor has good tankiness as there’s the crazy tough card which grants 60% more health. You can also increase health with the energy spend passive system. So Anchor is harder to kill and takes more. The Anchor with the passive energy spending system plus passive ability means 80% increased boltok damage. You perfectly reload your boltok and unload on an enemy, especially headshots and watch their health drain away real fast. You can increase crit damage too so even more damage which means more bleed damage. The Anchor has ammo regeneration which means you never have to pick up an ammo box. The only gun the Anchor needs is also the boltok which means the minimum amount of needs of all the classes, no need to buy a weapon or anything as the Boltok is all you need. Now let’s talk about the show stopper here which is the ultimate. That barrier literally saves lives. This barrier blocks all forms of fire including scorcher and cryo attacks. Allies can hide behind the barrier too. The passive ability of the Anchor grants any ally who shoots through the barrier 50% more damage. This is big especially if three allies rally behind the shield. There’s a card which extends your barrier for every kill you get, which is powerful. There’s a awesome card that grants stim to everyone for every bullet you take to your barrier. Get everyones attention, then stand in the open and activate ultimate and watch all your team glow with stim. Loaded. The Anchor’s ultimate comes back quite quickly so don’t worry about waiting for the life and death moment for your barrier. Use when you want. The barrier also lasts. A very long time. Incredibly long actually. We have seen the Anchor save a team with that barrier with everyone hiding behind it in the open and dealing more damage inks to the passive. The anchor has tankiness, almost invulnerability, high damage, ammo independent, gives stim to allies, quite fast recharging ultimate, doesn’t require anything, enhance damage with barrier and a team saviour class. Having an Anchor is always a good thing.  

X35 Earthwalker Combat Medic Gears 5

Combat Medic – Here we are. This class is super. Where do we begin? The Combat medic through the energy spending passive system can have more health making it tougher than other classes with no health boost at all. The combat medic has a natural rifle damage boost of 30% as a passive. This combined with it’s 60% rifle damage boost card plus the damage boost from the enemy spending passive system means the Combat Medic has a stronger rifle than the Veteran. Think about that. The combat medic has a stronger lancer than a class build around rifles and cover. That’s silly. So the Combat Medic has damage and can defend itself. The combat medic has a card to have multiple grenades which means multiple explosive damage. That’s just the simple stuff. The combat medic has helpful headshots which means that any headshot you make grants stim to yourself and all nearby allies. The combat medic is handing out free stim. This means tankiness for the whole team, not just himself like Infiltrator and Pilot. The combat medic has intervention which means that if you kill an enemy sort of near a downed ally, that ally is instantly revived. This ability is so amazing. You can wait for a juvie to come near an ally or throw a grenade to get the job done. As long as it’s a kill. Two allies once was down and X35 Earthwalker just chainsawed a reject some distance away and they both got up. The Combat medic review better than Jack who is an awesome reviver too. At level 3 the intervention card has a range of 14 meters! That’s huge. The Combat Medic has maybe the best ultimate in the game. It revives every downed ally. If all four members are down, the combat medic can bring them back up no matter where they are on the map. The ultimate also works on yourself. If the Combat Medic is downed he can still use his ultimate to get himself up. Not the best use but it works. Once the whole team was down including X35 Earthwalker. He timed it as allies crawled away. Then bam, everything got up. That’s the most epic feeling in the game. The true definition of team saviour. The Combat Medic also has the fastest Ultimate recharge in the game thanks to one card. There’s a grenade card which recharges the ultimate over halfway if you kill something with a grenade. This means that if you kill two enemies with grenades you instantly recharge your ultimate. That’s too good. You can revive a downed roaming team mate like an Infiltrator or Blade master, then use your 8 grenades and throw them all to blow up and kill enemies and get your ultimate back ready to revive another player, while giving everyone stim and dishing out good damage with rifles like the Retro lancer. The Combat medic could get a torque bow or long shot sniper and headshot drones to make the distance reviving of downed allies with intervention easier. You could instead use the damage resistance cards to make the Combat medic tougher. There’s a card that makes your team revive repair fortifications. There’s even a card that makes it so that if anyone kills an enemy you marked, the killer gets a ton of health for it. We talking 1500 health. There is different ways to play the Combat Medic but one style completely outclasses the others but there are still options though. The only real downside is that the Combat Medic is ammo dependant. X35 Earthwalker has never failed a horde while being the Combat Medic. Combat Medic is in our opinion the second best class in the game. Solid damage, more than a veteran. Good survivability, the only class able to do something after getting downed. Versatility, multiple ways to play but there’s a clear best way. The ultimate team saviour, it’s ultimate is too good. Excellent team support, it gives free stims and has the best stim card in the game and can revive others at a distance. 

X35 Earthwalker Gunner Gears 5

Gunner – Last but the exact opposite of the least. The Gunner is in our opinion the best class in the game! It’s the best combination of attack and defence overall. The clear negative is that you need to hold a heavy weapon but once you have one, it’s a whole new game. All damage you inflict with a heavy weapon heals the Gunner. So you can stay in the fight longer than others. On top of that there’s a card called bait armour which makes it so that whenever you take damage you gain damage resistance for a period of time up to a maximum of 60%. 60% is huge, so combine that with the self heal willow damaging. The gunner beats elite drones and their claw weapon blow for blow. The heal and damage resistance over powers the damage. If you rock with the tri shot you deal immense damage. Tri shot alone is so darn powerful but it can get headshots which is even more damage which means even more healing. The Gunner has ammo regeneration for chain guns like the tri shot and mulcher making the Gunner ammo independent as heavy weapons are the only guns it needs. The ultimate is one of the best in the game. You become completely invulnerable to damage. Melee, flames, explosives, bullets, torque bow… it doesn’t matter. No damage at all. Also The Gunner is the only class that can survive a torque bow stuck in him. If you get hit, you can activate your ultimate before it explodes, you negate all damage. There’s a card that recharges your ultimate for every bullet you hit enemies with mulcher or tri shot. This makes your ultimate come back incredibly fast. Second fastest in the game. By the way, your Ultimate doesn’t just make you invulnerable, it also reflects the damage enemies send your way (if it’s ballistic rounds) right back at them. This is further enhanced by the bleed card where every damage reflected back causes bleed damage. This allows for gunners to 1v1 bosses like stumps, Kestrel and swarmak. These three use ballistic weapons. A Gunner can just stand in front of them and activate the ultimate when it shoots at you. Watch it’s health drain away. It’s actually funny. The Gunner also has a team resist card which grants huge damage resistance to the whole team for 6 second the moment you activate your ultimate. This can easily save your team in a serious fight. There’s also a battery card which makes it so that as you get hit by enemies your allies ultimate recharge faster. This is a very good support card also. There’s even a card that gives yourself and nearby allies explosive damage resistance up to 32%. This has easily saved lives before like from boomshot area of effect damage. The Gunner has very high damage, the best survivability, great support effects and INVULNERABILITY. The Gunner is the only class that can solo the horde by itself. The Gunner can stand up the horde and survive… X35 Earthwalker has done it before. Matter of fact, we had a match where the whole team abandoned us at wave 6. X35 Earthwalker was a Gunner and the other ally was a Gunner too. They beat the whole horde match by themselves. Off course those cowardly traitors were replaced by bots but bots aren’t as good as good players. Still all the waves even wave 12 was defeated by two Gunners. No other two horde classes can do that. Not even two Combat Medics, definitely not two demolitions. Maybe two mechanics… if the stars aligned but even then things can easily go wrong. Only the gunner can do that. We will upload a video of the last wave as proof. The one true Gunner weakness is sires. Even the ultimate doesn’t save you from their grab ability, it will stick rip your head off. Even so, the Gunner is the best. Number 1.

That’s our tier list. The best tier list. The list isn’t in order amongst the tiers themselves. We just wrote about them in whatever order we felt like within the tiers themselves. We aren’t saying the protector is better than robotic expert. We just wanted to write about the robotic expert first. The information we put here isn’t in full eat as it’s long to write and we are way better at talking about points than writing. So take this as the summary. Now it’s clear some classes are better than others but none are better than… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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X35 Earthwalker Warden Gears 5

Gears 5 has another huge problem caused by the developers, ‘The Coalition’. This is terrible as Horde mode is the best thing about Gears 5 currently. Versus isn’t fun. We already spoke about the problems with versus and so won’t echo it here. This is about the Horde mode. Yes we are aware of the changes coming in the next content drop and what changes are coming to certain horde classes. That has it’s own problems too but that’s for another time. Let’s take a look.

Now Horde has a big new problem that we noticed for some time now and it’s completely turned us off of horde. When you get to wave 8-12 the game will sometimes throw in a ‘Random Warden’. We call it a random warden because it feels random even though there is most likely a pattern. The problem here is that it makes everything so much harder and ruins everything for the most part. First of all who’s the guy or person who said that Horde on inconceivable difficulty wasn’t hard enough? Who was the guy who requested or suggested adding a ‘Random Warden’ to spice things up? Idiot! Many players like X35 Earthwalker (obviously not as good as X35) play with random players so the amount of team work we have is considerably less. Dealing with a warden is more of a teamwork thing, not a solo thing.

X35 Earthwalker Gears 5 Horde

If you don’t have the right horde classes on your team, then beating a warden becomes a massive problem. The blade master is an easy counter but most players aren’t blade masters. The Warden most of the time sprints straight towards you and requires attention while the horde pushes on you. X35 Earthwalker as a gunner was holding down the entire left hand side of the map all by himself… after all he is the best Gears 5 player in the world. Hie entire team was on the right fighting at the base. Warden shows up in the wave. Eventually X35 see’s the downed symbol of a teammate, then two downed, then someone executed. X35 can’t go over there because he’s facing DR-1 oppressors, annihilators, and numerous enemies. Soon only one guy was left alive over there. Then X35 was the sole survivor. Then almost solo-ed the entire horde by himself while being chased by a warden. By the way, the survivor modifiers was on for that horde frenzy meaning if the whole team dies, it’s all over. That wasn’t fun. No one on the right side of the map had the actual means to beat that warden by the looks of it. All four got folded… like hoes. That’s not fun. We even in another match had two bosses show up which is normal but they got joined by a warden. Why?!! Who’s dumb idea is this. Once again the coalition has no idea what they are doing. 

X35 Earthwalker horde modifiers Gears 5

Next issue is the some of the modifiers themselves. They make things too ridiculous. Once again you are mainly with random players who do whatever they want for the most part. There’s a modifier called ‘even stronger enemies’ which makes enemies do 3 times more damage. That’s stupid. Remember that when you beat wave 4 the enemies do 2 times more damage. Then another 50% damage boost after wave 8. We talking about 350% more damage! A simple drone elite and even a simple deebee bot will down the whole team solo if not careful. It’s stupid. Then there’s modifiers that create chaos in combos. The freezing bullets modifiers is an example. The grenadier with the overkill was able to instant freeze a sniper class character from a good distance away. This caused instant death. The worst is when the drones can freeze you. Snipers, not so much at all. Some modifiers just straight up make things boring, prevents you from playing how the class should be played. The elite drones do too much damage as well but we have already talked about that. So imagine trying to deal with a rushing warden who’s got twice as much health, with random players, none has a direct counter, with a horde that has cheap modifiers coming after you. Again it’s not fun. We have beaten horde with ‘Random Wardens’ multiple times but it was boring and ruined things. 

This is just two issues we brought up here. There’s more to say like how slow class progression is and that it takes too long to level up. Which is harder to do with the increased difficulty, single modifiers and ‘Random Warden’. When you fail, you don’t get the big prizes meaning you spent all that time getting to wave 12 just to get nothing. Those pity cards and 1 star doesn’t make up for it. We have been playing Gears 5 much less now. Since Horde was what we came back for but now that’s not fun a lot of the time. The Coalition once again is messing up and making decisions that ruin their game and makes their numbers get smaller and smaller. Now Gears 5 may be getting new content but it’s current state isn’t good enough for… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Gears 5 horde classes X35 Earthwalker

Gears 5‘s current best mode is easily horde. No question about it. Due to the coalition never listening to actual wise feedback versus has lost so much players and attention. Escape is fun most of the time  as some challenges are just unfair and you need an actual team to get good results. Horde is the best and it’s gotten some changes, so X35 Earthwalker the best gamer in the world and universes ultimate strategies, is going to just talk about horde classes. Let’s take a look.

Now some of the classes got recent updates. Let’s just cover those first. Anchor and Combat medic got buffs. Anchor now does 30% additional pistol damage while Combat medic have 30% additional rifle damage. These were good changes and should have been done a long time ago. Anchor and Combat medic were underpowered. Demolitions mark duration actually lasts far longer now, like it was suppose too. The Brawlers soothing warmth card works with scorchers now. Not sure why it didn’t work before. There was a few others but you can go to the official website to read about them. Now that’s out of the way.

Demolition and infiltrator Gears 5 horde classes

We heard some people doing what seems like a tier list for the horde classes and majority of these guys aren’t that good at it. Someone said that demolition and infiltration are S tier classes even though they were suppose to take everything into account. Here’s our problem with this. Infiltrator should be A class because it has a major problem. You have to get close range! That alone is a big problem if you are playing on Inconceivable difficulty where a elite drone can down you with what feels like 4 bullets from their rifle. If you make one mistake or even miss a shotgun shot, you will die. Demolition’s problem is the same as infiltrator as they both have no health boosts meaning they go down the fastest out of everyone. The difference is that Demolition doesn’t have to get close. They can stay in the back but if they ever get pushed, it can be a serious problem. Both classes are pretty much the kings of damage though with consistency if done right. The demolitions ability to blow up everything, get their ultimate back real fast and then blow things up again, makes it the top not just boss but horde killer. Infiltrator can evaporate a boss if they firstly make the boss bleed, cloak, get a perfect active reload and then fire their shotgun (overkill preferred). If you master these two, then there’s truly nothing that can stand against you. X35 Earthwalker plays both classes and he is said to be the best player of these classes in the world. His main frustration with them is, as we mention before, how fast they die. A pouncer can one shot you. So if you make a tier list then take EVERYTHING into consideration like how much health they have and survivability. Sure they are the kings of damage but other classes like Combat Medic, Brawler and Tactician all survive longer and takes more hits. So demolition should be S class while infiltrator should be A class.

Gunner Gears 5 horde classes

Now let’s talk about gunner class. Overall the Gunner class is the most solid class in the entire game. It’s has the best balance of offence and defence. Good versatility too, with the best ultimate ability in the game overall thanks to what it can do in various situations. Sure the demolition does the most damage with his ultimate but you need to set it up and if something runs up to you your ultimate can’t save you in time. Not a problem for Gunner though. Let’s break this down semi style. The gunner can do heavy damage if equipped with a tri shot can do immense damage, especially when you get headshots. There’s a card called bait armour which gives excellent damage resistance for every bullet you take making you harder to kill. Your ultimate makes you invincible. You also reflect all ballistic damage back to the sender. You combine this with the bleed card and you have the nastiest combos. Multiple times I would see a group of ballistic weapon wielding enemies and just rush out there get their attention then activate ultimate. Watching them kill themselves is so much fun. Big enemies like DR-1’s and guardians with tri shots are worthless against Gunners. Bosses like stump and kestrel get completely demolished by gunners. 1v1 the Gunner class beats everything. Only a few things like a matriarch gives real problems. The Gunner overall therefore is the best class with solid offence and defence with the best ultimate. Gunner is so powerful. We sort of recently uploaded a gameplay video of Gunner gameplay against the horde on inconceivable difficulty. Go check it out, it’s on our Bitchute and youtube channel.

Anchor Gears 5 horde classesGunner Gears 5 horde classes

Class combos are where it’s at. Gunners work fantastically with Anchors. Anchors especially with their buff is now pumping out big damage. The Anchor’s ultimate is powerful. It stops everything. Ice, fire, explosives, bullets, torque bow etc. It stops everything (except something walking through it). It also lasts for a very long time, especially with supportive cards, which make it last longer or extends based on specific kills. This shield brings one of the nastiest combos in the game. X35 Earthwalker, Diamondz L45 and N63 Prodigy not held back the horde but pushed the horde back. Big difference. Diamondz L45 as the Anchor used the shield. X35 and N63 were both Gunners and stayed behind the shield firing at everything. Remember that firing through the barrier increases damage by 50%. It didn’t matter what was in the way. It died. All their attacks failed while we destroyed with loads of bleeding damage and heavy weapons. Seriously, we pushed the horde back. We were the monsters. Then when the barrier finally went down, one of us gunners went in front and used our ultimate. Funny thing was this was during a bold wave and our two teammates were back up in the base running for their lives from a matriarch. Now there are many more combos that make some things overpowered. Literally broken… but figure them out for yourself.

Robotic expert Gears 5 horde classesMechanic Gears 5 horde classes

Now we saw someone online say that the Robotic expert is better than the mechanic. That is terrible thinking. People can have an opinion but some opinions are just dumb. We compared the two classes with their cards and it’s one sided. Mechanic is better hands down. This doesn’t mean robotic expert is bad. Not at all. It’s still good just that when it comes to their main function which is building fortifications, strong defense that keep the horde back, Mechanic does it better. Straight up Mechanic has the card ‘Reinforced Fabrication’ which at max level increases all fortification health by 175%. That’s nearly 3 times the amount. So a quick example if the standard barricade has 1000 health, then the Mechanic’s barricade would have 2750 health! Huge difference. Remember this applies to all fortifications including guns, decoys etc. Not only more health but there’s a card called ‘Overload’ which increases the damage of ALL your fortifications, not just guns. At level 4 the damage increase is 30%. Combine that with your personal upgrades (which you spend energy on) you can increase the damage even more to make guns shred like no other. There’s also the ‘Efficient Fabrication’ card which reduces the initial cost of fortifications. At level 3 this card has a 25% cost reduction. All those savings add up.

Quick example. You start horde with 10000 energy. You can normally buy 5 barricades with that as they cost 2000 (we are not counting the passive ability discount). For mechanic each barricade costs 1500. So the mechanic can buy 6 barricades and have 1000 left over to go towards something else or for repairs etc. Also the mechanic has healing repair which grants stem as you repair. This helps with survivability immensely. Where the robotic expert and others would fall, the mechanic would survive. I, X35, have stayed at the front lines repair and moving behind my fortifications and repairing as they got damaged which gave me stem. The horde was mostly focused on me, who they couldn’t kill while my team killed the horde with my sentry guns. Robotic expert has ‘Precision repairs’ which means that every time you kill something with a precision weapon like ember or sniper, your fortifications get healed which is very powerful. You can communicate with your team to leave wet enemies for you to kill to instantly heal your stuff with having to spend energy big saving. That’s the best thing about robotic expert. Also Robotic expert has the MUCH better ultimate. A DR-1 is always better than two tracker balls. developers need to buff Mechanic ultimate or give entirely new one.

Architect Gears 5 horde classes

Speaking of engineers. The Architect class is one that we slept on the most. This class we can argue is actually better than the robotic expert class. I know, that’s crazy talk, especially since we hate the promotion classes as they are garbage. Still are… except Architect. Regenerative field gives stem if you don’t take damage for 8 seconds. Combine that with stem capacity which increase the maximum amount of stem you can have, makes you hard to kill.. harder than the robotic expert. Top of the line is the same as the Mechanics ‘Overload’ card which boosts fortification damage but it’s a rare card, not epic so it’s easier to get and max out. Architect fortifications do far more damage than robotic expert’s. Hologram extent seems like that one brown card. It at level 1 extends the duration of the hologram ultimate ability by 50% when you hit an enemy that isn’t facing you. This means, in theory, your hologram which detracts the horde and attracts them, can last the whole horde wave as long as you hit enemies with the snub pistol from the side or back. That’s over powered if it works as described. So you have easy to get shields, distract enemies with ultimate, fortifications shrewd and do massive damage and then keep the ultimate lasting forever with a few snub pistol shots. Sounds like an epic plan to me. We have seen someone use the architect and they actually impressed us. Only one player did it so well. Not our strategy but they did better than the mechanic or robotic expert we had before on the same map and conditions. We might just try this class next.

Now we saw someone make a tier list for the horde classes. They had a category labelled ‘never use’. He put nothing in there which automatically tells us he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Yes, there are three classes that should never be used on inconceivable difficulty… for the most part. Slugger, Striker and protector are the worst things in the game. Protector is the worst but this the best ultimate of the three. The protector to sum up is an inferior Blademaster. Anything the protector can do, the Blademaster does better and more. Striker can be good IF you have a breaker mace but then those cost money (energy) at the fabricator and can be destroyed by enemy ballistics which is stupid by the way and should be taken out of the game. Enemies can literally break your breaker mace by firing at it. The ultimate is basically useless as it’s no damage increase but does knock enemies away which is bad if you are a melee class. You want enemies close to you. We tested the ‘stem siphon’ card and it didn’t work properly at all. Not all the hits generated stim. So it’s trash. If you have breaker mace, get in, hit something to killl and get out. then you can work with this but progression in levelling up classes is horribly slow in this game and the best cards are too far away. Again Blademaster is better is every way. Lastly Slugger is the only one that stands above the other two and can be used but in only one way. The ultimate can be useful. Your shots knock back and stun enemies. You could activate your ultimate and shoot each enemy you see with one bulle6 from your lancer and that will stun them. Meaning you can lock down all the enemies or critical ones allowing your team breathing room and time to fight back. So the ultimate could save the day. There’s two cards that give some power: Grenade capacity and Modified frag. So increase the number of grenades you can carry and then increase grenade damage. Think about it. Grenades only cost 500 and every time you buy them, you get the maximum amount you can hold. Imagine a group of enemies approaching you and you hurl 8 grenades at them which do increased damage. That’s destruction. Then quickly by more by staying near the fabricator and repeat. If only the slugger had grenade bleed damage, then it would rise up the ranks rapidly but sadly no. It’s described as a shotgun class but it’s an inferior Infiltrator. So there’s truly no reason to ever use Protector (2nd hand Blademaster) and striker (3rd hand Blademaster). Slugger (2nd hand Infiltrator) can be used but only in one way and there’s always a better class.

We could go on for a very long time about the classes, their strengths, weaknesses, combos, issues, nerfs and buffs and more but we have to leave it there. Ended up typing more than originally planned. So yeah, appreciate that. Now there is lots to say about the classes but there’s far more to say about… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Gears 5 is here again and this time they have something new with Operation 6. This means new characters: Colonel Victor Hoffman, Queen Reyna and locust Zealot. It also comes with a new… well not new a map from the past called Speyer. We are overall disappointed with it. Like that’s all. That’s not going to bring in new players or change anything really. We like new characters though. Just stop messing around and give us Aaron Griffin!!!! The Coalition need to step it up. 

Now this isn’t about about Operation 6. We always did like Hoffman and locust Zealot does look real cool. Don’t like how Queen Reyna looks though but hey. Tis is about horde and some issues it has. Even the new event which came with Operation 6 called ‘Escape from Kadar’. So lets’ get right into it. Horde overall is our favourite thing in Gears 5. We have survived hundreds of waves solo (with random players) and in a team. We have beaten inconceivable difficulty many times, even in Escape mode. So yes we are more than authoritative and relatable as a source of information.

Horde needs an additional resource for players. Players use their collected energy to power up themselves with passives like increased health, ammo regeneration, critical damage etc. This is very good and cool but then this means players aren’t donated their enemy to the fabricator for the mechanics t build strong defences. After all you need to be powerful to survive so you priorities yourself first instead of the team. They need to make it so that collecting energy contributes to both a energy and maybe boost points or experience points which you can use for upgrading yourself and the energy for fabricator or building. So yeah, they need a second resource management bar.

Now let’s talk about one big problem, actually scratch that – two! Two big problems with one literally being bigger. Firstly the Swarmak. This big good for nothing son of a pharaoh results in an instant loss. It’s presence means you lose. It spawns in and just heads straight for your base. It doesn’t take it’s time. If you aren’t under shelter or up in a really high place where the boltok spawns in Gridlock then you are screwed. Fences don’t stop it, sentry don’t stop it. Nothing stops it! We hit it with the demolitionists ultimate ability, had brawlers set it on fire and even a whole team attack it and it doesn’t die in time. Sure there can be exceptions like two demolitionists using their ultimates and then lancer grenade launch missiles spam with boom shots maybe but then another spawns to take it’s place which is stupid design. Why another? You out of resources by then. Regardless even if the whole team faced the swarmak, the whole horde are still coming for you including pouncers who jump right into your base, scions with heavy weapons and more. The Coalition got the formula right in Gears 4. The Brumak would sit back and fire it’s guns and missiles from a distance then after while it then makes it’s approach. It’s like it either waits until you almost killed all enemies or after a certain period of time. Do that developers instead of have the swarmak comes straight for our base and destroy everything. It’s better for the team to run straight at the swarmak and get themselves killed to so when they start again they get a different boss and keep all their fortifications alive, saving energy.

The Guardians and Sentinels are huge problem and simply put have no business in Horde. These guys are fast, deal immense damage and worst of all have large amounts of health then on top of that… they have shields. Cool design but shouldn’t be in horde. Imagine this. You have a nice base with great defence and sentries. Wave starts. A Sentinel shows up and heads straight for your base. It flies OVER all your defences and parks itself right in the back of your base while spraying it’s Tri-gun (which is like the strongest weapon in the game) killing everyone. If you are allow health class like demolition, marksman, mechanic etc you go down within half a second on inconceivable difficulty. We have seen it wipe out a whole team before. It doesn’t care about defences as it flies over. It’s so strong that you aren’t beating it 1v1 unless you are a Gunner class or maybe Pilot in your silver back. The shields get stronger in later waves too for some reason. You manage to get it’s shield down bu then it flies away behind cover out of reach so you can’t get it. Then comes back with it’s shield again. Wasting your ammo and time. So you need a team to face it which means less or no one is focusing on the horde coming to you since you are either fighting or reviving downed teammates. It can also straight up kill a downed person too which is unfair. Guardians are worse as they have salvo rockets which can down groups at the same time even when trying to revive. They can truly ruin a good run. Shriekers from Gears of War 3 were fine because they had really low heath but if ignored can really weaken your team as they fire from high up meaning cover is useless. Remove sentinels and guardians. 

Now for the main reason that Escape from Kadar sucks. This big woman above this paragraph. The Matriarch is the alpha woman. Body building ladies don’t mess with her. All jokes aside she does rule. She doesn’t give a shake about your fortifications. Actually she doesn’t even acknowledge them or know what they are. She just walks through them and wonders what she hit (she doesn’t seem blind like beserkers). In Escape from Kadar you have loads of locust hybrids which come at you with pipes which delivery a one shot kill strike. Unless you have really high armour or good stim etc. Then you have Sires which rush you down and try to grab you. If they grab you, it doesn’t matter how much health you have as it’s instant kill if you don get freed from it’s grip. Those aren’t too bad but then the boss on wave 5 is a Matriarch which isn’t too bad but she does destroy all your fortifications. St wave 10 there’s TWO of them though at the same time. Unless you are a very specific build of classes you can’t stop them in time. It’s like Attack on Titan. The Matriarch is the armoured titan who smashed a hole through the wall and so the locust hybrid and sires can come straight in. Imagine fighting the sires and pipe swingers while dodging the big women who are trying to kill you. Also she can grab you and rip you apart even in the middle of your chainsaw execution! You be saying something she be like “wat chu doin likkle one” Then rip. We be like you can’t do that, it’s na execution. She be like “I make the rules”. So cheap indeed. We did beat them though. X35 Earthwalker being the universe ultimate strategist came up with a plan and it worked so well that we actually made it so easy. Inconceivable difficulty next. The Swarmak is the colossal titan and the matriarch is the armoured titan. Most teams can’t beat Escape from Kadar, even in advanced difficulty. It’s super tough unless you find that good formula.

Overall it’s clear that horde has some problems. Swarmak needs to be reprogrammed, Two matriarchs should be just one instead and less amount of enemies on later waves , guardians and sentinels need to be removed. AAn additional resource needs to be added for personal upgrades instead of the energy. This is us keeping it simple though. We aren’t going to go into every little detail. Horde needs to be improved. Maybe we will talk about the classes more next time. Now Gears 5 has horde problems but it’s problems are clearly seen by… the ‘Earth Walk!’

For more information check out the link below:

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Gears 5 is a very popular third person shooter game developed by ‘The Coalition‘ and published by ‘Xbox Game Studios‘. Gears 5 is off course an Xbox exclusive that’s also on PC. So Xbox Series X and Xbox One. Right of the bat this game is overall very good but not excellent and we will be discussing the reasons why and what needs to change. The developers aren’t very good at listening. When they do listen it’s listening to the wrong people. Let’s take a look.

Let’s jump straight into the biggest problem that Gears 5 has. It has lost lots of players. So much that it’s a fraction of what it use to be. It’s improved a bit in recent times but still embarrassing compared to what they use to have. It was so bad that there were videos being made about Gears 5 dying and why it’s dying. So that’s clear proof of a problem right there. The biggest reason the player base has shrunk is because the game is a narrow corridor. There’s only one real way to play. Gnasher shotguns only + wall bounce like a maniac. If you can’t wall bounce really good and use the Gnasher shotgun then you are going to die, again and again. New players can’t do this, they just want to play the game but get abused and end up with final scores of 4 kills and 19 deaths. Gears 5 is suppose to be a third person shooter, not a beat em up game. That’s how close range this game is and has become. You even have youtubers like Landan2006 and others who even mock anyone using lancers and keeping back like they aren’t suppose to do that. Man, Landan and those youtubers use to cry about the retro lancer through the whole video. The remaining body of players are like Landan in this sense (we know from first hand experience and hate mail).  

Let’s explain some more. New players join a match maybe taking what they learnt from the campaign. They see enemies, take cover and fire with their lancer. Since the enemies are wall bouncing like crazy most bullets miss them, even when out in the open with certain tricky movements. They close the gap. The new players tries to get their shotgun out but are dead before they can get a shot off or danced around. That’s their experience for the whole match. Gears 5 isn’t new player friendly. Those players are just there to serve as fodder for others montage highlight videos for youtube. That’s not fun. Those players don’t return. Developers need to do something and fast. Yes, practicing is important but Gears 5 doesn’t offer much room for that. You just get bodied (killed) again and again. Other games have done a much better job. For example Star Wars battlefront 2. X35 literally did a livestream on that game yesterday. It was his first time EVER playing the game. No warm up matches or anything but in his first matches he got eliminations, double kills, did the objective and won his first match against players who have been around for a good while. Sure X35 Earthwalker has natural skill and is the greatest and smartest gamer of all time but he has never played a Star Wars game before. Freshly downloaded and jumped straight into multiplayer. You can watch the livestream here. We will turn those matches into a video and later edit them into this post. Star Wars is new player friendly and gamers of different skill can make a difference and even fight back against seasoned players. In Gears 5… new players will literally be everyone’s whore… and being a whore isn’t good.

Now new players also struggle because there isn’t any help for them. The Lancer got nerfed to the point where it is useless in many cases. Gnasher users can just ignore it a lot of the time if it’s just one person lancering. This nerf decision game from dumb developers who listened to Gnasher shotgun only users… only. So they did their terrible decisions from Gears of War 4. Back then they nerfed the lancer, removed the retro lancer, removed the hammerburst and made it into a power weapon, limited to some maps. Basically every option players has that can counter a Gnasher shotgun has been removed or limited. The Lancer in Gears 5 is garbage. There’s actually nothing you can do against those gnasher players who spend all day on Gears 5 with their wall bouncing trying so hard to be like those pro players like explosive, franchise and toy soldier or like those youtubers like Dan the man (the best) or zeus the moose. Causal or newer players don’t stand a chance. Who wants to keep playing a game where they die all the time, stand no chance and have no fun? So the players leave and go to Fortnite, Star Wars, or call of duty. We saw two players (one was the guest of another) and they got destroyed. Their scores at the end of the match were like 2 kills, 20 deaths and 3 kills, 19 deaths. We never saw their names again. Gnasher shotgun users don’t care and glad the rifles get nerfed because it’s in their interest ALONE, not the game or communities interest. Well keep listening to them The Coalition (the developers), your player base is getting smaller. Congratulations. Make your game new player friendly and give options for newer and casual players. No casual or new player is going to look up and watch those videos online of what settings to have for your controller, sensitivity and how to hold your controller in a reverse claw grip stupid motion. No. We just want to play the game and have fun.  

This leads to the next problem. There’s more to say about the last one but we have to move on (got things to do). There’s no options in Gears 5. Your options for starting load out in social matches is: Lancer, Gnasher, smoke grenade… that’s it. You select your lancer it only gives you the option to change skins. Gears of War 3 was so much better. You can pick between Lancer, Hammerburst, Retro Lancer, gnasher, sawed off. Gears of War Judgement was the best at this. There options was Lancer, hammerburst, retro lancer, Gnasher, markza, classic hammerburst, sawed off. For grenades it’s: frag, ink, stim, smoke and spot. Compare Gears of War: Judgment and even Gears of War 3 to Gears 5. There’s no options. Like we said before, Gears 5 is a narrow corridor, linear and boring. Lancer and gnasher only. Don’t you just love a restaurant that has a big fancy menu but when you open it, the only thing there is rice and chicken. That’s it. No lamb, pork, beef or duck. The rice is just white rice, no basmati, no brown and no jellof rice. Just white rice and chicken (no seasoning). That’s Gears 5. Gears of War 3 has the best multiplayer of all Gears of war games. Gears of War: Judgement is second. People still play Gears of War 3 now and at times it’s faster to find a match on 3 than 5 at specific times. Gears of War 3 is casual friendly but skill gap is very clear so the best players still come out on top but causal and newer players can fight back and get kills still. The retro Lancer countered the gnasher. The hammerburst countered retro lancer. Certan tactics with the sawed off countered hammerburst. The options allowed for different strategies, different tactics, different styles and different matches. Wake up developers… people like options. 

The next problem is that Gears 5 is lacking very popular and good game modes from previous Gears of War games. Many people liked Beast mode from Gears of War 3. Many liked Overrun from Gears of War: Judgement. Where are those two modes now? Beast Mode was good fun and allowed for serious destruction as the powerful locust horde. Overrun is basically beast mode and horde merged together but not perfectly. Players still come back to Judgement for the Overrun mode. X35 Earthwalker did a recent livestream on Gears of War: Judgement, playing Overrun and some players joined eventually. Gears 5 is missing out on those big modes. Why can’t they create their own perfect horde + beast mode. Human players fight to gain points and build fortifications while the locust horde players tries to tear it all down. Missed opportunities here developers. What’s also a bad move is that they changed king of the hill. It use to be three rounds in Gears of War 3 (first to win 2 though) but now in Gears 5 we only have one round. That’s a problem because now you get less time to fight with your opponents, less time to learn about them concerning how they fight and how to adjust, less time to get revenge on the player that killed you and also less killing time and action. In Gears of War 3 X35 had two matches that lasted a long time and he got over 121 kills in one and 105 in the other roundabout. You can’t get kills like that anymore. Don’t mess with the things that players loved. 

Another poor decision that The Coalition has made is making characters and skins mainly purchasable instead of earning them like in Gears of War 3. In Gears of War 3 you had to do stuff like get 2000 kills with the Lancer to unlock this skin and medal. Play 100 matches of horde to unlock this character or by levelling up. Get 1000 kills with each weapon to unlock chairman prescott. It was always play a certain amount of this, or get this medal or get this many kills or revive this many people etc. In Gears 5 it’s buy these coins with your money so you can buy this character. We at X35 Earthwalker have nothing against microtransactions. You can’t buy items that put an advantage over other players in Gears 5 which is good but when you had a certain character in Gears of War 3 it was also a statement to show you earned that character through that means. Like not everyone had Aaron Griffin. You had to play lots of horde to get him. So when people saw you had him, it was cool.

Gears 5 doesn’t even have the medals that appear next to your name. X35 Earthwalker completed the Gears of War 3 and Judgement campaign in the hardest difficulty and earned awesome rare medals as proof. They were displayed next to his name and hardly anyone had that medal. You felt special and elite. Gears 5 hasn’t got that. Bring it back The Coalition. Stop taking out good stuff! The medals also had certain titles and names that comes with them like ‘brutal Legend’ for the highest level of the MVP medal. There’s ‘god complex’ for the highest rank of revives. They appeared next to your name like ‘Gear deity’. You’d see some cool names and stuff you maybe haven’t got and would like. X35 Earthwalker had the ‘King of Cog’ title in Gears of War 3 which was fitting as he use to rule Gears of War 3. He was king. In Gears of War: Judgement his title was ‘Seriously judgemental’. Those were cool things. Nothing in Gears 5. Can’t even be done. Sad.

     

Gears of War: Judgement had many good things in it and one of those things that Gears 5 doesn’t have is character skins. In Gears of War: Judgement you could have a flaming skin, neon glowing skin. digital data effect skin and a whole lot more. In Gears 5 it’s just the character and that’s it. Gears 5 has weapon skins but not character skins which were cool and made you stand out. Imagine your Old man Marcus character but has a desert camouflage skin or golden marcus, or flaming marcus, even silly funny things like bunny suit Marcus or clown suit Marcus and he will have lines like “Hey stop clowning around” or when he gets shot but in the bunny suit says “that’s not very bunny… I mean funny, oh shut up!” That would be hilarious. You might say that doesn’t belong in gears of War but only the campaign needs to be all serious. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of fun in the multiplayer.

Since we are talking about Gears of War: Judgement, another thing that Gears 5 didn’t add that Judgment has is rewarding players for playing the campaign and other modes besides online multiplayer. Gears of War: Judgement had prize boxes that you aren’t for killing enemies, earning ribbons and levelling up. This applied to campaign as well. People who played the campaign weren’t wasting their time. In Gears 5 you get nothing for playing the campaign. The only way to get cards for your horde and escape character classes, or experience points to level up is to do multiplayer. Sort of recently The Coalition brought out a dlc that’s about the hive buster characters Mac, lahni and keegan. Only two days ago have we heard of just two people who started playing it. There’s no talk about the dlc at all. Everything is either multiplayer matches, horde or escape. Why? There’s no real reason to play it. You don’t get anything awesome, level up or anything. Hey developers! How about you reward players for playing the campaigns. Simple thing but yet they won’t do it.

Another problem is weapon balancing. We mention that the Lancer has been nerfed in Gears 5 and even worse they removed the increased damage buff you get from a perfect active reload. Anything that threatens the gnasher is nerfed or removed. The strongest weapon, most dominate weapon, most used weapon and what appears in the most montage videos is the gnasher shotgun. Always has been and looks like it always will. This is the problem. Imagine a shooting game where one gun is the dominant clear best gun and everyone uses that gun and only that gun. Image a call of duty match where everyone uses one gun only. Not fun or creative and it’s the same boring thing every time. Gears of War: judgement had the best weapon balancing of all the Gears of Wars. Gears 5 has terrible weapon balancing. They need to learn from previous games that have better multiplayer. In Gears of War: judgement almost all the starting load out weapons were strong and viable except the sawed off which was terrible. X35 Earthwalker got kill streaks and did serious damage with ALL the guns (except the sawed off). Lancer, retro lancer, hammerburst, classic hammerburst, markza and gnasher. The gnasher shotgun didn’t dominate anything except for code range co meat (as a shotgun should). Gears 5 it’s the gnasher all day every day.

Lastly the gnasher shotgun has certain, let’s call them trick shots, which shouldn’t be in the game. You have what’s referred to as a ‘back A’ and ‘forward A’. If someone comes in within range while you’re in cover you can do either one of those and consistently get one shot kills even though the shotgun isn’t facing the enemy! Last time we checked, bullets come out from the barrel of the gun, not the direction the camera is facing. I have seen pro players and try hards slide towards a cover, hit the cover then almost instantly pull back and fire at someone on the other side of the cover and instantly kill the person while their gun is facing 90 degrees in a different direction. That’s stupid. Sometimes it looks like their shot curves around a corner to fully one shot down you. Why is the gnasher shotgun capable of that dumb stuff?! Go online and see for yourself. It’s weird to describe but simply put, the gnasher shotgun is capable of trick shots where the bullets come out, from what looks like the camera, instead of the barrel of the gun. As if the gnasher needs anymore help. That’s almost like saying, Superman can move planets, destroy planets, hold a black hole, move in negative seconds, survive supernovas but that’s not enough… let’s give him more powers. How about as Superman breathes, his strength increases. You wonder why the player base has shrunk immensely and hardly anyone is talking about Gears 5 in a positive light. You wonder why Gears of War in it’s current state can’t compete with Call of Duty, Definitely not Halo (the best) and not even star wars battlefront 2 which we are currently having more fun with right now. Gears of War 3 had some of the most fun matches we have had in gaming EVER. Gears 5 can’t do that bro.

To summarise. There’s a lot of things that the developers, The Coalition, need to improve on and fix. There’s stuff from previous games that wasn’t put in Gears 5 which was a bad job. This isn’t us being mean and making fun of them. We are harsh because we truly care about this game. We can’t help it that we are better developers than all these current day game developers and if they had our input and leadership all these games would be better. That’s just facts. We have played Gears of war since Gears of War 1 and completed the campaigns in the hardest difficulties and played each multiplayer. We have done many game reviews and have shown to know what we are talking about. Check this out. We have asked many Gears of war players and most agree that Gears of War 3 had the best multiplayer. X35 Earthwalker’s mother plays video games and one of the games she plays is Gears of War. She loved and was serious about Gears of War 3. She wasn’t a big fan of Gears of War 4. Gave Gears 5 a try and soon went back to Gears of War 3. When most of the players, even a gaming mother and off course the greatest and smartest video gamer of all time (X35 Earthwalker) agrees that Gears of War 3 is better, then that clearly means Gears of war 3 is better! This means The Coalition is doing a worse job than what they did in Gears of War 4 and currently not as good as Epic Games with their Gears of War 3. It’s not hard. Take note of what was good and bring that into your game and if possible make it better. Add… not subtract. You’ve lost many players. Chased away new players and making some of the current players bored or annoyed. Fix this! Stoo making dumb decisions like making hammerburst a power weapon. Forum pages were full of players hating that decision with a few gnasher only users happy about it. Stop pleasing the few and sacrificing the many.

Overall Gears 5 is still a very good game and well made but clearly there are some areas that need improvement and some things that need to change and others that need to be added in. We lobe Gears of War. Our favourite multiplayer is Gears of War 3. It was the best. We had many great matches and we want more of that. Hopefully developers like The Coalition will learn from this and reach out to us. We can test games for you and look at your ideas. We want to help. Now we could say more but typing takes a lot of time. Now Gears 5 needs to change and Gears of War 6 must not make these mistakes but what doesn’t make mistakes is… the ‘Earth Walk!’

For more information check out the link below:

More information

Gears 5 is the latest instalment in Gears of War franchise. Gears had a Tech Test earlier and many gamers got to try it giving us a taste of what it to come. Now X35 Earthwalker himself tried it and off course has his own thoughts and opinions of the game. Now remember that the Tech Test isn’t the final release at all and more work will be done. It’s all in development still so keep that in mind. Let’s take a look.

The first thing we experienced in the Gears 5 Tech Test was the bootcamp which was the tutorial for the game which teaches players about aiming, shooting, handling grenades, roadie running, cover etc, all the gears of war stuff. The tutorial was done very well. It goes over the main mechanics and what you need to know in order to play and survive through the game. There’s some character based humour as we all know Baird is very sarcastic and got some jokes which works well with Del who can also be sarcastic, have jokes and like Baird likes and is good with technology. It’s good to see the relationships, connections and interactions between characters. Makes things relatable.  

The Bootcamp did show of the excellent graphics that Gears 5 is going to have. The whole area looked real good, the materials, lights and even the flying bot known as Dave looked detailed too. You can already tell that a lot of work is going into Gears 5. Even when you look at all the formations and environment in the distance it’s all detailed and does make you want to go over there and explore them, even if there aren’t any collectibles, just to take a look. The tutorial is too long though. There was a few combat instances that weren’t needed. Minor but still something.

Now the main meat is off course the multiplayer. The new things was revealed two weapons, a game mode and a few in game mechanics like kill cam replay mainly. The two new weapons in the Gears 5 Tech Test are the Talon auto pistol and Breaker Mace. The Talon auto pistol is basically a discount gorgon pistol. Yep. The talon has unbearably bad recoil and control. It’s damage is good though but what good is it if you can’t even control the thing when firing. This is coming from some who is a master with rifles including the heavy recoil retro lancer of Gears of War 3.

The breaker mace is a cool new melee weapon. Think of it like the energy sword from Halo in terms of you rush enemies or hide around corners and then hit them. If you land the hit then it’s normally a one shot kill. Like the beam sword you also sort of track the enemy when you start your swing if within range.  Even though there are multiple counters to this weapon and melee isn’t encourage at all in Gears of War nor is it successful, it still feels super good to get a kill with this weapon. The Breaker Mace execution is so far the best in the game. More on this later.

The new mode is arcade mode which is basically a regular team deathmatch except each player must select a character and each character has their own starting load outs, kill perk and weapons to unlock. As you kill you gain personal points which you can then spend to get weapons. For example Kait moves faster than everyone else on the Cog team and if she has 6 points then she can purchase a torque bow. 2 points for a Bolton and 4 for incendiary grenades. So everyone is trying to get kills to purchase the weapons they need for the fight. Sort of reminds us of ordinance drops in Halo 4.  

The new mechanics do actually change some things about the gameplay. For starters the melee is no longer a generic swing at your opponent with the current holding weapon. It’s now a swing with a knife which finally gives those knives the gears carried around a use. So whether it’s a lancer or Gnasher you will swing a knife with one button. Gears 5 finally has kill cam replays. Remember when someone killed you but you don’t know how or thought that shot missed? Well now you can watch and see for yourself what happened according to the game. Lastly rifles and some other weapons like the Snub pistol can now headshot enemies! It took the developers long enough to do this. So if the enemy has received enough damage and you then land some shots on the head, they die instantly like a headshot. This makes rifles more lethal.  

Now we can easily tell that Gears 5 has had a lot of work put into it. The graphics are very good for what we have seen so far and that’s an excellent sign. The environment like the kids, water and lands around the training grounds are look so cool. Sounds are very good but some of the guns like the Lancer sound more on the weak side. Arcade mode is definitely going to be a hit with the players and many will have fun and great moments in them. These new mechanics show that new things are being tried and areas are being explored. Things do need be taken further though. Off course the weapons we mentioned much earlier isn’t all the new guns in Gears 5. We are just sticking to the Tech Test.

Now for the negatives of Gears 5. We have a lot. For starters Gears 5 is taking up after the multiplayer gameplay style of Gears of War 4. This is a mistake the Gears of war that had the best multiplayer gameplay was Gears of War 3. Even to this day there’s a good number of players who are still playing Gears of War 3. We even know of a mother of three children who tried Gears of war 4 multiplayer but instead went back to 3. The developers want a faster paced, quick everything multiplayer which isn’t the best for a Gears of War game. Gears of War is about taking cover, not dashing everywhere. Even the golden rule of the Cog is “take cover or die”. This highlights the other major issue of the game. Gears 5 based of the Tech Test has no actual counters to the Gnasher shotgun. That weapon has ruined the game for many players. It’s still the dominate weapon in the game. In Gears of War 3 even new players could play the multiplayer and stand a chance because there were weapons they can use to give them a fighting chance against a crazy wall bouncing Gnasher shotgun user. In Gears of War 4 we have seen new players try and then leave because they had no fun being completely destroyed every single match. We remember one player who stayed for four matches (Gears of War 4) in a row and tried their best only to get a heavy negative result in each match and until finally leaving. We know for a fact they aren’t coming back.

In Gears of War 3 you could use hammerburst, sawed off and the retro to counter and force Gnasher shotgun players to change their strategy. In Gears of War 4 Gnasher worshipping players kept complaining until their daddy (the developers) hushed them down bu removing retro lancers and making hammerbursts a power weapon. This is going to be the problem in Gears 5 and we can feel it. The developers need to learn from Gears of War Judgement which easily had the best weapon balancing of all the games. The rifles dominated at mid range AS THEY SHOULD! How is a shotgun beating rifles at mid range in Gears of War 3 and 4? HOW?! Halo understands… at mid range the shotgun pretty much does nothing and that’s a shotgun from the year 2557… the future. The Talon machine pistol is a discount gorgon pistol and it’s crazy recoil doesn’t help to stop the Gnasher. The enforcer feels better and seems more effective but doesn’t compare to the retro but just you wait, the Gnasher worshippers will complain about the enforcer and cry for nerfs. We have so much to say about this but we have to try and keep this short. Lastly Arcade mode suffers from players abusing the weapon system. X35 Earthwalker once entered late into a match that was horrible. The enemy team were all camping up in a high place on the Training grounds map. One player had a sniper and never moved from his spot. The other tea mates watched the entrances to his location. X35 did what he could and even destroyed half the team but couldn’t reach the sniper. X35’s team were clearly new at the game and kept going into cover and then standing up taking their time trying to aim at the sniper who would snipe all their heads off, getting multiple kills and continuously purchase snipers to keep going. Eventually three of the players had snipers and the whole team camped in their spot. Talk about lame. X35 Earthwalker left the match… Something needs to be done.

Overall we found Gears 5 multiplayer to be disappointing. It it stays the same or is like Gears of War 4 then we know it’s not going to be great. Changes are needed and the developers need to take into account that different experienced, skill and style players will be trying the game. From what we can see so far we are looking forward to Campaign, horde, Escape (new) and Map builder (new). Trust us when we say we are big Gears of War fans. We played every Gears of War game, beat every single one in insane difficulty concerning the campaign and found every collectible. We have made Gears of war videos on Bitchute and Youtube and even streamed the games but sadly we aren’t excited for this game. We are looking forward to it but not excited. When it comes out is when it comes out. The multiplayer we already know what time it is (how it’s going to go down). Don’t get us wrong, Gears 5 is a very good game. Looks great, works well, responsive controls, the mechanics work, the voices are good, new weapons modes and you can Cleary see that a whole lot of work went into developing this game. So overall it is a very good game. We are just disappointed with the multiplayer especially when we compare it to Gears of war which we enjoyed s much that us and many others are still playing after all these years. We even had more fun playing Gears of War judgement multiplayer over the Gears 5 tech test. Honest feedback is honest feedback. If you want to know more about what we think concerning Gears of War 3 then check out our previous blog post here and over here. So we do like the game and looking forward to it but not the multiplayer. 

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Some Epic Gears of War action