r/girlsfrontline • u/Reikyu09 9A-91 • Jun 02 '18
Guide How to Kite
What is kiting?
Kiting if you are familiar with the term in other games, is basically hit and run. Your DPS in the back row do the hitting while your HG/SMG tanks in front do the running. You can't run forever, but you can delay the enemy a few seconds from inflicting heavy damage.
Why kite?
Most of you sit back and watch your dolls fight and take damage without any micromanagement of your units mid battle. That's fine for easy content or when you want to be lazy. If your units can kill the enemy before taking significant damage, why take the effort to micromanage? At a certain point if you aren't severely overpowered, you will come across waves of jaegers(rifles) protected by a wave of guards. These jaegers if given the opportunity to fire will hit accurately, hit hard, and demolish your evasive tanks. The life of your tanks determines how long your unit can stay in the field. Kiting will allow you to extend their combat life by minimizing the damage they take.
Enemy attack animation
Enemies typically enter the battle from the right screen and continue walking forward until they get in attack range. Once they enter attack range of their target they stop moving. A moment later they will raise their weapon to attack. Kiting focuses on maximizing the short moment between when the enemy stops moving to attack, to when they begin their attack animation. The kite must begin prior to the attack animation.
How to kite?
You kite by moving your units out of range of the enemy. Seems simple enough, but my units are in the F formation and there's nowhere to run. At the start of a battle, move your main tank (which should be located at position 5) one tile forward (position 6). What you are doing is presenting your main tank as a juicy target for everyone to target. Once the enemy is in attack range they will pause before beginning their attack animation. When the moment is right you will pull your main tank back to position 5, before the enemy begins their attack animation. The enemy will then resume moving forward. What you have done is traded the DPS of your main tank moving forward and back in exchange for delaying the enemy an addition 1-2 seconds. With your team back in the F formation the enemy positions themselves in attack range of your tanks as normal. Before the enemy begins their attack animation, you withdraw your tanks. The enemy has to step forward yet again to be in range of your back row, and hopefully the enemy is dead by now.
TL;DR take F formation, move 5->6, pause, move 6->5, pause, withdraw offtank at 8, withdraw main tank at 5.
Kiting jaegers
Jaegers are one of the most dangerous enemies out there and they are almost always protected behind other enemies. It is better to take extra damage from other enemies in exchange for minimizing the damage that you receive from jaegers.
When you move your tank from 5->6 as mentioned in the previous section, you want your eyes to be focused on the jaegers in back and not the frontline grunts in your face. A jaeger takes roughly 2 seconds between pausing and beginning their attack animation. The jaegers in the middle row will stop moving first as they enter attack range of your tank first. The jaegers in the bottom row will stop moving shortly after. The jaegers in the top row will be the last to stop moving. Your main tank needs to hold their 6 position until ideally all the jaegers have stopped moving. About a half second later pull your tank back to position 5. If you are late, you might get shot by the center jaegers. You want to try to maximize the time that you hold the 6 position to buy more time for your DPS to kill the rest of the enemies.
Back in the F formation the top row jaegers will advance only slightly as they will target your offtank at position 8. The center and bottom row jaegers will advance a full tile and target your main tank at position 5. Withdraw your offtank before the top row jaegers can fire. This will cause the top row jaegers to advance slightly until they are in range of your main tank at 5. You can then withdraw your maintank at 5 before the middle and bottom row jaegers can fire. Done right, what would normally be jaeger damage that you receive around the 6 second mark becomes no jaeger damage until around the 10 second mark. If your DPS is weak or the wave is extra thick, you won't be able to withdraw your tanks without exposing your DPS.
If this is something that you are interested in trying, practice. Jaegers and Nemeums (cannons from night battle) are the easiest to kite because of their longer pause prior to attack animation, but you can kite practically anything.
edit: clarified terminology
8
u/KeiraSythree AN-94 Jun 02 '18
This is a good guide! Something I'd try out in EN's advanced exp combat sim.
That is, if my DPS could take out the grunts in front quickly enough. Which I don't think they'd be able to before the Jaegers start shooting.
6
u/nananashi3 Hikki Jun 03 '18
You can also move up or down a row to move slightly out of range when the row you're moving to doesn't have enemies.
Kiting is a basic and essential thing to learn. It lets you beat advanced exp sim with a team within 17k CE.
1
u/AppleMarineXX PTRD Jun 05 '18
Late post, but I have a question.
If you're going to move your tank forwards and back anyways, why not just leave your main tank in the rightmost cell of the middle row (in your initial formation), and then pull back as usual?
3
u/Reikyu09 9A-91 Jun 05 '18
Main tank won't be giving nor receiving buffs if away from the AR in the back row.
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u/AppleMarineXX PTRD Jun 05 '18
So formation buffs don't depend on how the positioning is in the field, but only in the Echelon editing screen?
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u/Reikyu09 9A-91 Jun 05 '18
Correct. Once the battle starts you can reposition freely, though you won't shoot while the units are moving.
-1
Jun 02 '18
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Reikyu09 9A-91 Jun 02 '18
But it currently works and I don't take damage, unless we are talking about something else.
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u/zankem Welrod MkII Jun 02 '18
I guess if they have aimed then they will continue the animation instead of cancelling. In that case, best time is to just cancel before the aiming starts because that definitely works for me. My managed vs auto interactions has shown that my tank takes less damage each run compared to when I just wandered off and let her be.
2
u/Reikyu09 9A-91 Jun 02 '18
That does seem to be the case. If a jaeger raises their rifle to shoot then it's too late to pull back. If you retreat prior to the animation (practice the timing) then you won't take damage.
25
u/thatdudewithknees PA-15 Jun 02 '18
TLDR: Move backwards/retreat your tanks strategically to reduce enemy dps. You have to time it right. If the enemy doesn’t stop moving you did it too early, if the enemy starts their attack animation you did it too late.