If you’ve ever played crucible with Chaossociety, you’re probably pretty familiar with the ratcheting sound of an LMG. Chaos doesn’t mess around in crucible, and he gets his heavy because he likes him some winning. If you have equally uncompromising intentions, listen up. Heavy ammo is the key to every crucible match, and you can ignore it at the peril of your zombified soul.

Know Your Timing

The first heavy ammo spawns in every crucible game type very near to the 9-minutes-remaining-mark. This is the most important one: you need to distribute this heavy very, very quickly, and you need to do so amongst the most players possible. Try to organize your team to arrive on your preferred heavy (or both, if possible) around 9:15.

Heavy ammo is essentially map control. When your team has more of it, it restricts movement across the map for the opposing team. In control, this means you can acquire more ideal control points. In skirmish, it means you can choose where engagements occur. Heavy ammo can win salvage games by allowing you to sit back on several relic captures and punish attempted collections by the opposing team; as soon as they deploy their probe, ambush them with rockets (don’t ever try to actually capture a relic while heavy is out. You will be the one receiving ambush rockets).

The first heavy allows you to dictate early play, and forgives early screw-ups that may have fed super energy to your opponents, because it gives you firepower to shut down some of those supers. All of the drops are important, so be aware of when they’re coming. You should try to lay cover fire or control heavy spawns around 6:20 remaining and 3:15 remaining; this will provide you 20 or so seconds before the heavy drop is announced, and give you the drop on opponents who are coming at the bidding of Lord Shaxx. By the time they get there for some heavy ammo, you can have a hot load of beef nachos ready for them instead.

Wait For Your Moment

I know it can be tempting to immediately go nuts with the justice-infused rocket distribution, but sometimes situational awareness dictates otherwise. If enemies are getting all up in your biz, and you’re on your own trying to snag heavy near their spawn, it’s best you just grab it. We’ll get to the fine points of denial later: for now, try and kill one or two of them, and at the very least, only allow one opponent to get heavy (remember, when a player with heavy dies, only the killer receives their dropped heavy). Don’t wait for teammates if it means the other team will just get heavy for themselves.

Sometimes, however, you don’t want to pick it up at all. If you’re practicing safe crucible (bring a buddy! Randoms will give you VD!), it may not hurt to take advantage of proximity to save some heavy for later. Heavy will drop for every guardian within 20m of the ammo spawn. Stand around 10m away, let your teammates pick up the heavy, then leave it there. This heavy will never despawn*, and unlike heavy dropped by your opponents, you won’t need to reload to get rounds in the chamber when you need to pick it up quick later (getting gunned down as you load up heavy you’ve pillaged from the corpses of your broken foes IS. THE. WORST).

Why wait? I have a couple of reasons to play this situationally. If four of my teammates are noshing heavy with me, then we don’t need one more rocket launcher walking around. Chances are we’d both be firing rockets at the same enemies, and kill-stealing from each other. This way, nobody is cutting in on anyone else’s Nacho-sales market share. It’s also pretty likely that one or two of my teammates are going to die and give the other team heavy; if I wait, I’ll have a sneaky rocket waiting for them as they try to load up my dead teammates heavy in their own LMG. And when I drop them, I don't necessarily want to pick that ammo up either. If I die too and drop heavy, I've spread out other heavy across the map that I can also grab later*.

*Be aware: if you kill an enemy who drops heavy, and leave it there, it will despawn eventually if you die a couple times. I’ve never got a consistent read on how many times you can die. Sometimes I die two or three times and it’s still there. Sometimes I die once and it’s gone. I suspect there may be a timer on it.

The Right Tool

Remember when we said the first heavy is the most important one? The reason for that is twofold. Not only does it get you off on the correct foot by controlling the map; it also informs you of what kind of heavy weapons you’re up against. The best players on the opposing team will be the ones with the heavy ammo on that first drop, assuming you didn’t deny it (good players know the value of heavy). Once you get a look at what they’re packing, it can inform what heavy to switch to.

I always start my first heavy out with a rocket launcher; if possible, I switch to Truth while I’m waiting to grab it (have your buddy be your spotter; don’t do this without a spotter, unless you think nacho cheese is just the best). If you have a Truth, it really is the best rocket launcher for the first drop: the proximity detonation can allow you to bum rush the enemy heavy spawn, and possibly nab both (this is why you want the first heavy very, very fast, as we said before); if you don’t have Truth, get one with proximity detonation. Truth also gets the drop on other rocket launchers; if you play with Truth, you know what can or can’t handle it.**

For the next heavy drop, I leave it at the drop and give it about a minute; then I might bust out my LMG. If there were lots of rockets the first time around though, or I notice lots of rockets after the second heavy drop, I go back to Truth. You need to play situationally. LMG’s don’t beat rockets.

**Nothing. Nothing can handle the Truth.

Know when to hold ‘em, Know when to fold ‘em

On the subject of LMG’s: they have a time and place. This is where waiting to pick up heavy really shines. It allows you to choose which heavy you want to use. I often wait until I die, then switch out my exotic primary for an exotic heavy while I’m waiting to respawn; this way, I can capitalize on my Thorn and my Thunderlord at basically the same time.

The time and place for an LMG is not when your opponent just put three rockets into the Truth tube. If I am going to run an LMG instead of a rocket launcher, waiting gives me some buffer time where I’m not eating a rocket right as I’m getting started with my LMG. I can saw enemies in half without fear of retribution, and I’ll probably still have some heavy when the next drop happens.***

This is where LMG’s really shine. In Skirmish, they win matches outright, especially with Field Scout. If you do play Skirmish, try to capitalize by having two teammates shoot rocket launchers and one teammate stroke an LMG; shut down the opponent’s heavy quickly with the Truth, then save some rockets for shutting down supers, and let the Thunderlord win every engagement in between.

***One other thing to keep in mind with the waiting strategy: know your spawn situation. If you’re on Blind Watch and you’re pretty secure with B and C, you can wait. If the other team has flipped the spawn a few times, don’t wait. You might find yourself back on A soon enough, and now you can’t get to the heavy you never picked up. If you’re on A though, it never hurts to wait; your opponent will have lots of heavy, but a minute later, will not. That’s when waiting can give you an edge and help you flip C spawn.

Shut it down

You know when the timer hits. You’ve got your Corrective Measure with field scout, and you still have heavy from last time. Now's your chance to do a little camping.

Pack up your LMG and head for one heavy spawn; send your team to the other. If you’re there early, you should have a good window of opportunity to mow down enemies heading for the heavy spawn; crouch so they can’t see the 90% of impending doom that was just forecasted. Don’t stand right on top of it, either; smart teams will save some supers for heavy denial, but it’s more than likely that your enemies will direct their supers at the spawn point itself, not at you. A fist of panic will survive your LMG fire, but you can avoid it if you anticipate that it’s coming and they don’t know where to point it.

And on that subject: this is a good time to use your super. Assuming you got there early, you’ll have plenty of time to line up Dr. No’s Lead Salad Special or your Fabulous Oprah Angel while your enemies come sprinting. The early bird drops orbs; the late weasel eats nachos.

Crouching helps here too: the less radar signature you put in play the better. Then when all of your enemies are surrounding the heavy, leap in and deliver a Donkey Kong Laser Ground Pound of your own. Time this right and you’ll actually get more heavy than if you just stole it: if they’ve already picked it up, all of them will drop it for you.

Doctor Banana is not an actual doctor and taking his courses does not guarantee success. Stop following his advice if you find yourself suffering from bowel-shaking rage or tumorous growths. Do not play unprotected crucible with randoms, as they are known to carry several forms of venereal disease. If your crucible diet mostly consists of Big Beefy Nachos, consider taking some buddies out to dinner next time.