Anybody that has played an operative for about 5 minutes has been disappointed. You mean I can only disguise myself as a dead opponent? Oooo, I can lay down a hack box. Lucky me, now I'm a easily eliminated objective target!

The operative is a slow starter. Initially, all you get are disguise and detect mine/operative. At first, you'll feel like you're being left out. Everybody else gets a buff, and you get to disguise yourself and detect mines. Detect mine is simple enough. Set your sights on a mine and watch the top bar fill up. Now you have a glowing land mine and some xp. Disguise is best used as a flanking tool. It generally works really well, but remember not to be seen by enemy operatives or the guy you're disguised as. Don't forget that you can still sight mines while disguised. By level 5, you'll be a flanking death machine. Also, you'll have unlocked some new operative stuff which will give you something else fun to do.

Homing beacon, sticky bomb, and comms hack are the three rank 2 abilities that shine. Homing beacon gives your team the ability to see the target through walls. You'd be surprised how useful this can be. Its a great way to single out key classes (medics, objective classes, and other operatives). It can prevent flanking, because your whole team can follow their movement. It also gives a healthy chunk of xp, which will be useful for unlocking more abilities. Sticky bomb is a dream come true. Stick it on a bot and watch them run around in circles screaming. Stick it on another player and one of three things will happen.

• They will wonder what the spinny thing in front of their crosshairs means and then go boom.
  
• They will run back to a clueless teammate to pull it off and then go boom.
  
• They will run back to a teammate that will pull it off, preventing the boom. Of course, this does remove two people from the battle for a short moment.

Last, but certainly not least, comes comms hack. Incapacitate and enemy and complete the hack on their body. You just killed them and provided fully operational radar to your full team. Silent footsteps? Doesn't matter, I hacked your comm. Silenced weapon? Doesn't matter, I hacked your comm. Trying to flank? Doesn't matter, I hacked your comm and I know you're coming. This is easily one of the best abilities that operatives get. Get used to crouching over incapped enemies to hack their comms, then disguising as them right away.

At rank 2, you also unlock Firewall Command Post. Hey, all your abilities can't be outstanding. Access a command post for a moment to make it take longer for the other team to capture. This turd of an ability doesn't really make a big difference, and barely gives any xp.

At rank 3, level 10, you get two playstyle changing abilities. The first is the caltrop grenades. Keep caltrops on the ground at all times. They do a small amount of damage, slow the other team down, and alert you that the enemy is walking over them. They can also be an xp cashcow, which you'll need if you plan on unlocking cortex bomb and emp grenade. Hack turret is awesome. A lot of people complain about turrets damage output, but they have never hacked a turret with a group of enemies standing at the shooty end. This is also a quick way to eliminate turrets without having to put your frag on cooldown. These two abilities allow you to be a real hassle to the opposing team, and, as an operative, that's your job.

Rank 4 is bittersweet. You get control turret and cortex bomb. Both are abilities that seem subpar, but both are situationally game changers. Everybody knows that turrets have a limited angle of use, but not anymore. When you control a turret, you get this crappy fmv looking view. You can rotate the turret 360 degrees around, look up, and a limited angle down (30 degrees?). I have used this to soften up a group of enemies before I jumped into the fray. Nobody expects the smart turret that chases the medic. Cortex bomb is ok against bots, but outstanding against other players. Bots will avoid your incapped body like the plague, but this can be used to hold objectives a little longer (hackboxes). Players will usually rush in to get the killing blow, only to find themselves completely demolished. Enemies will rarely survive a cortex bomb explosion. I always thought about rushing in suicide style with this, but I haven't had a good opportunity yet. Remember, operatives are there to harass and distract.

Rank 5, level 20, congratulations. EMP grenade does just what it says. Use it to disable enemy turrets, mines, and radar. One unlisted benefit is that it can freeze escort bots for 10 seconds. Yes, you read that correctly. You can stop an escort bot from moving for 10 seconds. This gives you significantly more time to damage the bot without it advancing! (Thanks G-Man)

At the beginning of this post, I said that anyone that has played an operative for about 5 minutes has been disappointed. After playing an operative for hours, I can say that its my favorite class.

Good post, I have an operative at level 7 so i'm not really into it yet. I have been enjoying my medic and engineer characters a lot though. I'll give it another shot when i'm done with my Soldier.

Hey, question about they EMP grenade. Goes it work on the "escort bots"?

I haven't tried it yet, but I'll try it and get back to you. I suspect it doesn't though.


***EDIT***
It does work against escort bots. The original post will be updated accordingly.

I'm not finding Operative too bad at all. I LOVE Caltrop grenades and being able to Hack Comms and disguise. I play Engineer a lot too, though. Maybe that's why I havent noticed such a bore playing Operative because I'm really only playing it 60% of the time. I havent been playing that long, but still I cant see how the class is really that bad; that's why they made a whole objective type dedicated to it, because it doesn't have a whole lot of uses - but on their own, none of the classes do, so that's a hard one to pin just on Operative.

The EMP grenade does definately work on Bombs.


If only there was a proper Radar to make use of the Comms Hack.
I've played the Operative for roughly 4 hours today, invested in some abilities and managed to get into the Top 3, XP wise. However, usually on the worst team you can imagine with a 5000+ XP Medic on 1st and an Engineer or Soldiers with 2000-4000XP on 2nd.


The only really interesting thing I found was, how good the http://steamcommunity.com/id/vrevoluzzerv/screenshot/578922800409766589 actually is. I believe the minimum signal allows you to make a 15m distance to the hackbox.

I loved being Operative right from the start.

Disguise, get into the enemy lines, slide tackle 2 enemies at once, melee one before they recover, toss a frag... I get incapped, but I take one person down, and leave the enemies totally out of position when my teammates round the corner and finish the job I started.

Sticky Bombs are a great starter when you're coming out of Disguise - toss one onto a guy from behind, then slide tackle to slow down the "run to a friend" process. best used if there are enemies close, but not too close. And Caltrops... I LOVE using Caltrops...

Does anyone know how much time Firewall adds onto capturing Command Posts?

You could only disguise yourself as a dead enemy in Quake Wars, too. As Him Indoors put it, "Quick! Nick his uniform!"

Yeah, it makes some otherwise impossible hacks (Shipyard is a nightmare) doable. Its the one good thing about the otherwise arduous Operative objectives. On Terminal sitting in that little room with the hack is almost certain death, I like to jump up on the conveyor belt behind it, provides a decent amount of protection and you still get 4 bars.

Its better to dip into the closet in the room. Most of the time you'll go unnoticed. Additionally, you can bounce grenades off the wall to defend your hackbox.

I love being the Operative. Disguising yourself and hacking a turret behind a group of enemies and tossing in a sticky or caltrops can cause some mass confusion.

What I'm doing currently is splitting up my abilities between Operative and Engineer.

When playing online, I'm straight Operative.
When playing offline, I play defensive teams as Engineer to rack up the XP to level up faster. This makes up for the craptastic XP gain of Ops and Soldiers.

So BAM! Best of both worlds :ninja:

What kills it are a few minor glitches.

Situational awarness will show up even if you are disguised. I have spent a lot of seconds trying to aim up my aim for mines. Couldn't they put an aim up while disguised?

I found that EMP grenade also work on command posts. I guess it stops the bonus they give for 10 seconds?

Wait what?

Not sure what level you are, but between comm hack and disguise you should be in the 3-4k range every game at least.


Bulpdaun + Sea Eagle on Operative ftw.

Operative question:
If a hackbox is already placed on the objective can you start the hack from a distance? Or do you have to go up to it and start the hack?

You have to connect your PDA to the hack box upclose.

Um, operative and soldier are two of the easiest classes to get xp with. Engineer is probably the hardest. As an operative, if I'm trying for points, I can pull over 10k+ every match. As a soldier, you get a ton of xp for giving ammo to people that are completely out. You do realize that if you tell someone, "Go crazy burning through ammo. I'll keep topping you off." while playing defense, you'll be over 10k+ as well.

You only get like 35xp when a land mine detonates, but you can get hundreds of xp off a single set of caltrops.



Can we get someone to confirm that it actually takes away the benefit from the other team? All my friends are sleeping. It would make sense, but it might just make it unhackable.




You have to run up to it first, but then you can move away.

I was offline when I discovered I could EMP a command post, and was still able to try and take it during the EMP effect. I couldn't successfully take because there were enemies all around me.

Operative easily gets the most XP if used correctly.

My first character was an engineer, and I got up to level 15 rank 4, then found the going tough and XP coming too slow.
So I made another character and tried out the operative. Very slow going until you unlock HOMING BEACON!!!

Seriously if you spend the whole game just spotting enemies you really rake in the XP. I was getting 15-20,000 XP in the long missions and around 8-9,000 in the shorter ones. Add in the caltrops grenade and you got a steady flow of XP.

Definitely recommend the operative for those trying to level up quickly

Heavy Operative is the Business

Homing Beacon on light doesn't seem worth it imo? Because you have to be iron sighted on them for the effect to happen? Most of the time I'm running around killing out of Iron Sights.