In Gears 5’s horde mode, characters are now pre-assigned roles that they fulfill on the team. There are currently 5 different roles; offense, scout, tank, engineer, and support. Each character fills a different role with their toolsets having slight deviations from each other based on their role.
Fahz is a character in the offense category. As such, he brings several benefits and a few detriments to the team based on his starting kit and how effective he is overall throughout any given horde match. Let’s take a look at some of them. Note that this will be pertaining to high-difficulty horde only. (Insane or above.)
10 10. Pro: Range
Fahz is a sniper. As you can imagine, his greatest advantage is doing damage from a distance with precision weapons. In horde mode, one of the last things you want is for enemies to get too close to you. Being able to lay down damage from a distance is always a nice option.
Sitting in the backline picking off targets before they ever even get near your team’s base allows for you to say relatively safe, and if you do happen to get downed, your teammates won’t be pressured as much to pick you up.
9 9. Con: Precision Intense
Being accurate is largely the name of the game with Fahz. If you aren’t able to line up shots reliably, there’s a good chance the team might get overran. Because of this and the fact that you have to be quick with your decision making and committed in your target selection, it can make more demand games nerve-racking.
It can be either feast or famine for a Fahz on some waves, and sometimes hitting shots isn’t enough when enemies have regenerating health so you have to be extra sure that a particular target is the one you want to take down.
8 8. Pro: Headshot Kills
Headshot Kills is one of several ways you can circumvent execution rules. Fahz’s kit is pretty much built around nailing headshots so you don’t have to worry about those pesky drones crawling away after being downed.
Especially from a distance, headshot kills are invaluable. Drone-type enemies can be some of the more dangerous ones, so it’s a huge boon when you can get rid of them before they ever have a chance to be a threat with headshots thus never giving them a chance to heal or be recovered by an ally.
7 7. Con: Inconsistent Damage
Damage output can be a little inconsistent with Fahz. It’s not that you can’t do damage with him, but it really depends on what enemies are being thrown your way. You won’t be laying down huge amounts all the time like a Kait, or a JD for that matter. Most of the time you’ll usually be picking off smaller targets or finishing off larger ones.
The inability to lay down a large amount of damage in a short amount of time with precision weapons means that if the rest of your team isn’t making up for it, you might have some problems during the late game, or you better be ready to break out the heavy weapons often.
6 6. Pro: Sweep Potential
The upside to your high focus damage is that you can practically sweep some waves. During waves where larger targets aren’t coming at you, Fahz can pop more than his fair share of heads without laying down a ton of damage to do so.
It can be especially apparent during waves after boss waves where imagos and DBs are often sent your way in abundance. A Fahz can easily cut down a good majority of these targets and make the wave a cakewalk to allow the engineer more time to fix up the defenses if they took a significant hit during the boss wave.
5 5. Con: Resource Consumption
Fahz requires a fair amount of resources to stay consistently effective. His starting loadout ammo just isn’t going to last very long in the long term. He definitely requires a weapons locker with many different weapons to swap between. He also definitely needs a heavy weapon or two to lay down some heavier damage in more demanding games.
It can help with enemies like Scions or Pouncers that end up getting too close too quickly. It isn’t exactly ideal for him to stick to one weapon throughout a wave, so a constant flow of resources is important to him.
4 4. Pro: Stopping Power
Precision weapons do a reliable amount of stagger on hit, even if they don’t kill. They don’t even need to have active rounds ready all the time either. Grenadiers can be annoying since they’re sporting helmets, but one shot from the longshot can get rid of it instantly. The embar might be slightly less effective since it doesn’t have a scope, but the first shot dependably staggers enemies, allowing you to get a better second shot in.
Even the boltok can stagger enemies pretty well at shorter ranges. Since you’ll be using these weapons slightly more than the rest of your team regularly, being able to slow down the enemy’s progress can buy some precious time.
3 3. Con: Map Dependent
The never-ending struggle when it comes to snipers in video games. Whether it’s COD, Overwatch or Gears, sometimes being effective as a sniper simply comes down to map design. Some of the maps in Gears 5 aren’t exactly the best for horde mode. Some of them feel too small and congested giving the aimbot enemies an unfair advantage.
Fahz can suffer here as well since some maps just don’t offer optimal sightlines no matter where you set up at. This doesn’t mean you still can’t be effective, but it does mean you’ll have to work harder than normal, and you’ll be forced to find maximum value out of your ultimate almost every time you use it.
2 2. Pro: Recon
About that ultimate. Sometimes it can feel incredibly empowering when you find headshot after headshot with it. Other times, you might not get any kills out of it. It’s an ultimate that you pop at the beginning of waves or as soon as you get it to see what happens.
One guaranteed benefit it does give you though is un-punishable reconnaissance. Being able to see enemies through walls is often an underrated asset in team-oriented games, depending on who you ask. But information is everything. If you know where the majority of the enemies are engaging from at any given moment, you can better plan for it. That’s the extra benefit X-ray gives you if you have a team that likes to communicate.
1 1. Con: Few Fallback Options
So, let’s just call a spade a spade. Enemies in horde mode are straight-up bullet sponges. They take an unreal amount of punishment and focus to take down at times. This is to make up for their rather simplistic A.I. Contextually, enemies are literally little more than mindless drones who have little sense of self-preservation. This means that once they’re in on you, they’re in, and they aren’t going to retreat.
Having fallback options is a nice way to account for this. Unfortunately, Fahz has few ways to push back enemies that get too close to him. All you can really do is try to make distance and dance around them while firing still trying to line up headshots under pressure. If enemies break your defensive line, a Fahz might not provide much help in removing them quickly.
NEXT: Gears 5: 9 Bad Things About Horde Mode (And The 1 Good Thing)
