Being a team leader is like getting a promotion at work with more responsibility and no extra pay. You'll need to keep doing all your old work, but now you have extra things to take care of too. It's often a thankless job but someone's got to do it.

It's not all bad though, there are some benefits. You'll get a much better understanding of the meta-game, your games will be more successful (more xp/hour), and you'll attract better players.

This guide is an attempt to give people an idea of what they should be doing when leading. It's not that hard, and it feels great when you pull off a well executed mission. It's also useful for those who are wondering why the hell that annoying player keeps nagging people to follow them.

This guide is pretty accurate for the release version of the game on easy and recruit level difficulties. For veteran and Aetriden difficulties adjustments need to be made. There is no single 'correct' way to lead. Different leaders have different styles and this guide is far from perfect so don't treat this as gospel.

1) Keep the team moving
2) Keep the team together

Without doing these two things your game is destined to end badly.

Leaders are assigned in the lobby prior to the game starting. There are (usually) two leads assigned, as indicated by the leader icons (next to the kick-player icons).

The host assigns leads simply by clicking where the lead-icons should be assigned.

Usually more experienced players get assigned the lead. It's always good ensure that the players that have been assigned lead, are aware of it, otherwise the team will wander aimlessly.

Also when choosing a leader, consider their experience, interest in leading, the class that they are playing, and if they're dropping with the team, or dropping solo. Try to always have 1 leader that is dropping with the team.

Some classes are better at leading than others:

• Medic - They're nice and fast. It's convenient to be able to get people to come to you to get healed. They're not doing too much shooting so they can focus more on leading.
  
• Assault - Good all round class. Nice and fast. Should be with group. Not so busy they don't have time to lead.
  
• Hellfire - Great leader as they (in my opinion) should be pushing from the front of the group, tanking a lot of the incoming damage and softening up mobs for the rest of the team. They have the ability to lead the charge through a wave of incoming mobs if necessary, and their skills are mainly short range, so they don't need to do a lot of off-screen work. They're slow but still fast enough to lead. The only downside is that often the hellfire drops solo, and meets up with the team later.

Some are ok:

• Recon - This class is usually running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. Usually because they're looting adjacent buildings with invisibility on while the team stays moving. It really comes down to the type of role your recon will be playing. If they plan on sticking closer to the group they can make good leads.
  
• Terminator - OK for lead. Handy for getting people to stack for a shield/nuke combo. The terminator does a lot of soloing and has a fair amount of micro, so they're not the best suited for lead, but they're not the worst either.

Some are not so good for lead:

• Marksman - They're too slow to lead. It's hard to follow someone who's always in the middle of the group. They also often aren't looking at their character or the group as they're busy shooting mobs or strols off-screen.
  
• Heavy Support - They're too slow to lead. See Marksman.
  
• Demo - They're usually at the back of the group playing with things that go boom. They shouldn't lay explosives in front of the group (for obvious reasons), so it's hard to lead when you're the last person. Finally, the demo has a lot of micro when playing. Adding leader responsibilities makes them very busy.l

Having said all that... any class can lead. It's just that some are better than others. Don't use the class as a single reason to choose leads.

As a team lead you have a couple of tools at your disposal. Firstly, you can draw waypoints (or ♥♥♥♥-pics) on the map. To do this press ESC to bring up the full screen map. Left click to draw lines, right click to remove them.

When drawing waypoints through buildings, try to align the waypoints with the building entrance/exits for players that don't know the map. If you don't know them, then don't worry about it, people will figure out where the doors are =)


You can also use the F1 key to draw temporary waypoints connected by lines on the ground. These will disappear after several seconds. They can be used to highlight something (ie. an item to pickup, something to activate, someone snatched, etc..) or also as a temporary route for people to follow.

If you notice your lead is deviating from the assigned path, but a temporary route is drawn on screen, it means that the leader wants you to follow the route, not them. They'll catch back up in a few seconds.


As leader, the F2 key is your friend. Pressing it will issue the 'follow me' command and draw lines from everyone's player to the leader that pressed it. A leader will issue this for one of the following reasons:

• people are starting to scatter and get too separated - they need to get back together with the group
  
• the lead decided to change the route and hasn't updated the map yet
  
• (during heavy fighting) the leader is providing a united direction for everyone to move in. Sometimes the team becomes stationary when mobs start coming in from all directions. This is very bad. The leader needs to pick a direction (any direction is better than standing still) and get the team moving that way).
  
• (when spammed) the leader wants everyone to move it NOW, stop looting and catchup. Whatever you're looting probably isn't worth it. If you think it is you better type it in chat and get the group to come back to you.
  
• (when spammed and the leader is stationary) the leader wants you to stack on him. Not a little to the side, right on him. This is useful if there is a plan to drop a nuke+shield the team, lay a trap for a boss, energize the team, etc... If you fail to stack you could die, or even worse, cause a team-wipe. If a medic is a leader, sometimes they will do this to get the team to stack for heals/buffs. If a terminator is leader, they will do this to get the team to stack for a group shield.

If the leader is stationary and spamming, this means stay near the leader and wait.

If the leader is moving and spamming, this means stay where you are and don't follow them.

Your primary goal as leader will be to ensure that all primary missions (TERRA or INSURGENTS) are completed prior to wave 13, ideally prior to wave 10. The earlier you can complete the primary storyline, the more freedom you will have to roam the map afterwards.

In addition to primary missions, you will also want to do the following:

• Complete secondary missions. Each secondary usually has a reward or penalty associated with completing/not completing it. Learn the different missions, which ones are mandatory, which are nice-to-haves, and which can be ignored.
  
• Destroy all STROL. Each STROL destroyed reduces monster health by 1%.
  
• Find weapon upgrades. These will greatly increase your teams DPS.
  
• Activate power stations. These will increase your teams armor.
  
• Find all 4 veterans. These sometimes drop safety beacons when looted.
  
• Find all 10 marines. These will increase everyone's health by 5 each. You do the math.
  
• Activate 20 turrets. Think Aliens the movie, directors cut. Who doesn't like turrets killing aliens.
  
• Eat ebats - The sooner ebats are found, the quicker your team will level, the more powerful the team becomes, and the easier the (early) game gets.
  
• Find and place all three t3 beacons. These are great for spotting high-threat targets.
  
• Activate all radars. The more radars activated the faster your safety-zones will charge. Also good for spotting high-threat targets.
  
• Loot!

This is quite a lot to achieve in < 1 hour, especially when you consider a large portion of the map may be off limits to you in the latter half of the game.

As lead you should be keeping an eye on the time, and the current/next wave. You should know what you should be doing and where you should be, and whether you are behind/ahead of schedule.

For wave times, see Lanvrik's Wave Time's Guide. Especially important are waves 5, 9, and 10.

Wave notes:

• Waves 1 to 3 are basically EZ-mode. Use this time to clear as much of the middle as possible. Try and loot dangerous/big buildings this wave, and do it en-route to the primary mission. W2 has a harmless fatty (behemoth), make sure the team doesn't get side-tracked by it. Just run past it.
  
  
• Wave 4 - You will either have the Dog Boss (Etaphreven) or a Dog Wave.
  
  
• Wave 5 - Snatcher #1 and Leviathon. I've found that with newer teams it helps to deal with the Leviathon as quickly as possible, use explosives, not bullets.
  
  
• Wave 6 - Snatcher #2.
  
  
• Wave 7+8 - Cruise control. No major threats so use this time to catch up on primary missions
  and loot the middle.
  
  
• Wave 9 - Boss wave. Make sure the team is together for the boss. See the boss section for more details...
  
  
• Wave 9 1/2 - (cooldown wave). Get last mission if in middle or get caught up on missions if you are behind. Finish off any boss nests. Finish of any parts of the middle that haven't been cleared. Maybe send someone to place a t3 beacon. Lifedrone anyone that died. It's usually ok for players to split up and accomplish tasks at this point as long as the whole team is together (no exceptions) by the time wave 10 hits. Make sure a waypoint is down for the main group so that solo-ers know where they need to get back to. The exception to this is if a lot of people have died and you plan on hitting reinforcements. See the section on reinforcements.
  
  
• Waves 10-11 - Be prepared. W10 is often where games are won or lost. The monsters are far more dangerous than what has been seen so far, plus snipers will start to appear. Make sure the team is together and away from the middle of the map. People get complacent during the CD and often get caught alone and off-guard. Wave 11 contains Snatcher #3.
  
  
• Wave 12 - Thanatos + Snipers
  
  
• Wave 13 - Boss wave + Snipers
  
  
• Wave 14 - Lots of tougher monsters
  
  
• Wave 15 - Hellspawn, Thanatos, + Lots of tougher monsters. Depending on DPS, you can either find somewhere to hole-up and trap the hellspawn, or shoot it down on the run. Thanatos shouldn't prove too much trouble unless the team is separated or he shows up at the same time as the hellspawn.
  
  
• End-game - Lots and lots of dogs (slashers,fluffies,devourers). The occasional hatchling. Now is the time to hit safety zones for extra supplies necessary to complete the final mission and evac to the dropship. If you are doing well on supplies and DPS you can consider lifedroning any dead players for bonus evac XP.
  
  
• EVAC - Once the SOLAR is triggered, look at the map for the evac point. Be sure to draw waypoints for the team to follow as the mobs will get slightly tougher again. A hellspawn will appear between the dropship and the team, so be prepared to either trap it, or fight it on the run. Knowing where the hellspawn originates should tell you the route it will take towards the team (if you plan on trapping it).

By the time wave 10 hits you are basically done looting for the game. Also, the entire team should stick together for the remainder of the game. No more soloing. Noone should be falling behind.

You should have all the equipment you need. There's a few buildings that can be looted by the team on the run, but it will just be 1 or 2 easily accessible lockers and not much else. If you see anyone with locker vision, spam F2.

From wave 10 through wave 15 your team should be more or less circling the outside edges of the map. This ensures that you won't get hit from mobs from all the spawn points at the same time. Once the final mission pops up and wave 15 is cleared, you can once again venture through the middle of the map. Disclaimer: different maps have different spawn points, the key is you just don't want to get hit by all spawns at once. If there is a map with lopsided spawns, adjust accordingly.

From wave 13 onwards, legendary items can be found on the map. These are always found outside so keep an eye out for them if you are moving around.

If you plan on reinforcing during the wave 9 cooldown, be sure that this is communicated to the entire team. Triggering the reinforce mission results in several slashers and snatchers spawning, so if anyone decided to go complete some solo task instead of chilling with the reinforcements team there is a good chance they'll die.

If someone is soloing sufficiently far from the reinforce point they shouldn't draw any aggro from the spawns and should be ok.

In the latter half of the game enemy snipers will appear. You need to make sure that these don't build up as they make fighting difficult. Keeping the team moving will effectively counteract the trouble they cause. Once a wave is more or less over, chase down snipers and then get back to the edge of the map.

If you have a marksman, they may be able to kill the sniper from long-distance for you. Be sure to provide covering fire for the marksman as they won't be watching their screen.

If your team is lacking in DPS, you may benefit from bunkering the team late-game (waves 14/15). This will help funnel the monsters in through a kill-zone where each player can use their abilities to the most effect. If you just need to survive these waves consider this as an option.

If your team has sufficient DPS then this should not be necessary.

Several game play elements were introduced many versions ago to dissaude groups from bunkering. These include the wave 13 bosses, snipers, secondary missions, and legendary items. If you decide to bunker early, be aware that you may need to leave the safety of your nest if you want to deal with any of these.

• Coordinating over teamspeak makes things 1000x easier. The official teamspeak channel for the game is join.ts4gamer.com. Encourage people to join even if they don't have a microphone and can only listen.
  
• Get to know central sector first. Then try leading on some of the other maps.
  
• Keep things simple. Don't try and accomplish many different things at once.
  
• If you don't know a map well, just think about what area you need to cover, waypoint it, and use the minimap to figure out the shortest-route path-finding for you when you are moving. Everyone else will follow you and chances are they don't know their way either. This also avoids walking into dead-ends.
  
• Don't lead the team into dead-ends (unless intentionally doing so to trap a hellspawn).
  
• Know where your missions tend to spawn.
  
• Central Sector. If you have TERRA missions, don't destroy the supply crates in the doorway near north radar. You may get Terra 2 in this buiding, and keeping those in tact will help funnel the monsters in from a single direction AND give you a nice monster free exit when it's time to leave. Make it clear in your waypoints to walk around the long way. Also mention this in chat. Then smack your head when people destroy the crates anyway.
  
• Don't forget to remind the team at wave 4 that snatchers will be on their way the next 2 waves.
  
• Keep an eye on safety beacons and when they got placed. You may need to hit them for supplies so knowing which ones will be at 100% is important.
  
• Keep an eye on solo-ers at the beginning of the game and remember what they have cleared. You don't want to cover the same territory as them. If the solo-ers look like they are going to wander into an area the main group is going to clear, tell them to go the other way.
  
• TERRA has fewer missions than insurgents. If you get insurgents, be prepared to assign a higher priority to getting to those insurgents missions as you may have more ground to cover. Especially on fast mode.

As many players will attest to, I am not the best leader, nor did I figure out any of this material on my own, so thanks to all the people I've played with for educating me. If there's any mistakes/improvements then please let me know and I'll update accordingly.