H2A combat mechanics and weapon times

bdub77 and I did some experimenting last night (no, not like that) and found out some interesting things about Halo 2 Anniversary.

[b]Melee damage varies by your movement.[/b]

It takes 3 melees standing still to kill.

A melee with a running start does significantly more damage. The bigger the running start, the more damage.

A jumping melee does the most damage. It takes off all your shields in one hit.

If you're on the receiving end, ducking will either cause a jumping melee to miss or significantly reduce its damage.

You can kill with two melees if the first melee is either a running or jumping melee.

3 BR body shots + a beatdown doesn't kill. One melee followed by a BR headshot does kill, however.

You can assassinate someone almost from the front if you jump to your right (their left), turn toward them and melee their right shoulder (the one with the butt end of the rifle).

[b]Vehicle weaknesses[/b]

We tested the hornet and the ghost.

The ghost has a weak spot. If you shoot the spinning wheel looking thing behind the wing, it's a one-shot kill, at least for headshot weapons like the Carbine or BR. Didn't test with the SMG or AR.

For the hornet, it's best to shoot the glass windshield. Once that breaks, you can headshot the pilot. I'm not sure how many BR shots it takes to break the windshield.

The EMP blast on Blood Line stuns the vehicles for 9 seconds. It seems to nullify the EMP effect if you get out and then get back in the vehicle, although by the time you do that the 9 seconds are pretty much over anyway. That means that you should board or grenade the hell out of the hornet as soon as you EMP it. The EMP switch takes 1:35 to reset before you can use it again.

[b]Rush + melee[/b]

With the red Brute Plasma Rifle (behind the base on Blood Line), it takes only about 2 shots + a melee to kill. It's almost an instant kill.

We didn't test how long you have to spray someone with the SMG or AR before a melee will kill them.

[b]Misc.[/b]

It takes 10 shots with the magnum to pop someone's shields, and then a headshot after that to kill. That means that, with a 12 shot clip, you can only miss one shot if you want to kill without reloading. Of course, this all changes if you're dual wielding.

As with all Halo games, headshots don't matter for taking down shields. For the BR, if you shoot someone 3x in the foot and once in the head it's the same as if you shoot them 4x in the head, as you can see in this Halo 3 video. Center mass is a bigger target, so you may want to shoot there and then aim up to the head for the final shot. Or if several people are shooting someone, you may want to always aim for the head anyway since you don't know how weak they may be already.

The three shot BR burst is not all or nothing. If your aim is bad, it's possible to only have one or two of the three bullets hit.

If you go through a teleport facing backwards or sideways, you'll come out the other side facing backwards or sideways. This is different from maps like H3's Cold Storage, where you would come out facing forward no matter what.

When you have camo, you show up as a white dot on the enemy radar. I can't remember if it's constant or intermittent. bdub77 may remember.

The plasma grenade is very strong if it explodes near you. It seemed to kill a full-shields player even if it exploded 5 feet away in our tests.

Here's a video that shows some of the bleed through mechanics. I'm not sure I agree with his wanting to make H2A more like H3, but at least you can see how some of the weapons and melees affect shields and health.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLLkAdH9Oec

[b]Weapon spawn times[/b]

Power weapons respawn X amount of time after you drop the empty one, like Halo 2 classic. Other weapons (e.g. the BR, Plasma Pistol, etc.), power weapon ammo, and power ups (e.g. camo) respawn X amount of time after you pick them up.

For maps with multiple snipers, respawning works like this:

Let's say you're on Blood Line. The sniper respawns 15 seconds after you drop the empty one. If you grab Red base sniper and then walk over the Blue team's sniper to pick up the ammo from it, Blue's sniper will respawn 15 seconds later, but Red sniper will not (because that's the one you're still holding). This holds true for Blood Line, Stonetown, Shrine, and Zenith.

It's not necessary to memorize the weapon times. My advice is to print out these weapon times and keep them near your Xbox. Look over the times for the important items while the map loads. Some weapons you'll want to time, and for others it's just helpful to have a general idea of how long it takes to respawn.

[b]Blood Line[/b]

Sniper: 0:15

Sniper ammo (an extra 4 shots, in the rocks in front of each base): 0:40

Rockets: 0:48

Rocket ammo: 0:45

EMP tower: 1:35, makes a noise a few seconds before

Hornet: 2:30 after destroyed

[b]Lockdown[/b]

Sniper: 0:38

Falling rocks: 2:00

Sword: ??

[b]Shrine[/b]

Rockets 2:30

Sniper 2:10

Waterfall 1:30 (lasts 30 seconds)

PP 0:47

BR 0:45

Carbine 2:00

[b]Stonetown[/b]

Rockets: 2:00

Sniper rifles: 0:30

Sword: ??

Camo: 1:17 (lasts 48 seconds)

BR: 0:47

[b]Warlord[/b]

Camo: 1:10 (lasts 48 seconds)

[b]Zenith[/b]

Sniper rifles: 1:20

Rockets: 1:15

OS: 2:20

Banshee: 2:25

Bubble: 1:30 (lasts 25 seconds)

BR: 1:00

I made a PDF file with the weapon timings for all the Halo 3 maps back in the day. PM me if you want it. I don't think I can attach a PDF to this forum post.

********* Jump videos ************

Lockdown Jumps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPCFOHver5Y

Shrine Jumps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUs7zH_oyHw

Stonetown Jumps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw2zu0AexuU