Tactics Nazi Zombie Boss / Hans Volter Tactics

[UsF]

Please post your tactics here. I am interested to hear what people do.

I have seen him being kited around the map for ages, because returning fire is hard to do, but he cannot catch up after his last regeneration. I have seen players get purposefully grabbed by him and drained, while medics stand around to heal the person that got grabbed. I have heard to not shoot him while he is regenerating, as it is wasted ammo.

How do people do with him? Keep distance seems a must, his melee attacks cannot be avoided once he is close, as you cannot stagger him from what I have tried (Maybe that is totally different with melee weapons and the parry/block system). Keeping a distance usually leads to spreading out and making it hard to heal a person, once they get grabbed.

 

[melipone]

Seems you can have a bezerker rotate around his rear side and Hans has difficulty hitting him. While hans is spinning in place have everyone shoot him. I did that with a chainsaw. Got grabbed a couple times but he died really fast

 

[PurpleFanta]

Seems you can have a bezerker rotate around his rear side and Hans has difficulty hitting him. While hans is spinning in place have everyone shoot him. I did that with a chainsaw. Got grabbed a couple times but he died really fast

That's an interesting tactic. I wasnt sure if you could even side-step Hans' melee attacks in the first place. Glad you can though.

You have to let him grab you to continue the fight, as I'm pretty sure he's invulnerable when he wants to drain life from someone, until he does.

I hope that gets changed in the future.

 

[Andariel]

Seems you can have a bezerker rotate around his rear side and Hans has difficulty hitting him. While hans is spinning in place have everyone shoot him. I did that with a chainsaw. Got grabbed a couple times but he died really fast

Yeah, I'm not sure if we can call it a "tactic" since it's more like cheesing him in a surprisingly cheap way (hope TWI solve this issue quickly). Here's proof :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6kMZVgRRhg

 

[avataco]

You can Parry his melee attacks, they're actually quite easy to time and you can do it multiple times in a row. If he's chasing you and you're low on hp its actually beneficial to man up and parry some melee attacks, if you get even just the first attack its enough to push him back long enough to get healed. Kiting him around small -ish objects with cover around is a good tactic.

Locations I've been successful in: Around the subway stairs at the spawn of paris map. In the lab map the room with the two staircases, you can kite him up and down and around the big glass wall. On the snow map there's the one armored APC outside in the snow thats in the middle, a decent spot there. The boss is much more difficult with fewer people, and kiting him around small objects doesn't work as well if you don't have an army of people shooting him.

When he's looking for someone to drain always throw your person with the most armor at him, his drain doesn't touch armor (or very much) so the person with armor is most likely to survive and get away from the "after damage" of the gas and nades, or the infamous drain and machine gun technique he likes to use to kill people off.

When you see him charging without smoke grenades and you're the closest to him, I highly suggest practicing the parry, his melee attacks are so predictable and easy to parry, even if you miss one and parry the 2nd you're in better shape than eating 5 hits because if you parry the 2nd one he's staggered and you get away.

Hope this information helps I just tackled him on a few higher difficulties recently and the parry is the nail in the coffin. I play medic so while I'm stun locking him through parries my teamates are filling him with too much lead for him to recover

Cheers,
Avataco

 

[Nenjin]

I've had the best (not door cheese) win by the whole team avoiding dat Life Steal attack.

If everyone can sprint away when they see those clouds, he can rarely get a heal off. What usually happens though is, people see the clouds, run away, then run back assuming someone got nabbed and needs a heal....at which point Hans grabs them.

If you're losing 1 person per heal he does, chances are you will be down to 1 or 2 people fighting him while he's red and ragin' across the map.

If people get life drained, but they managed to survive and no one else dies to grenades, gunfire or his melee, the fight can be won, it just takes longer.

Really the best advice for the fight is: break LOS if he's looking in your direction. Never get within more than a couple meters of him, because he can go into his life steal charge quickly. Never run in the open while he's looking at you or he will cut you down with his guns, especially if you're out of armor. When his back is to you, find some cover and unload on him until he either turns around or starts moving. If he turns toward you, get in cover and retreat from your position, in case he decides to run up to you and give you the melee business. And when you see those clouds, run, just run. Let Medic worry about healing the person he grabbed.

 

[melipone]

I prefer to just get him to do his heals as soon as possible, then you have your ammo available for the final phase. People are probably going to get grabbed anyway so might as well get them over with. Probably not the best tactic if you have a coordinated team and can avoid people getting grabbed, but my most wins come from just getting grabbed asap

 

[weeman2412]

I prefer to just get him to do his heals as soon as possible, then you have your ammo available for the final phase. People are probably going to get grabbed anyway so might as well get them over with. Probably not the best tactic if you have a coordinated team and can avoid people getting grabbed, but my most wins come from just getting grabbed asap

Yep. Also have 4 support specialist, 1 zerker that can parry and a medic seems to work really consistently. Of course no love for commando because he does pretty much no damage on the boss.

 

[poosh]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hra2zHf5foU

 

[Vection]

Yeah, don't bother shooting him while he drains. He seems to gain massive damage resistance while doing so, better use that moment to keep the drained alive and the others reload their weapons through so the shooting can begin anew when he is done.

Also, his poison grenades seem to stack on top of eachother, don't stand in a cloud where you saw a few grenades land at the same place.

His guns are annoying though, being very powerful even for WWII weapons.

 

[Nenga]

The fight, in my experience, seems to be all about the arena you fight him in, you want areas that are somewhat open but have a good amount of cover to dive behind. I dont know of a good area to fight him on outpost but the spawn area on burning paris and the main lab area on biotics lab are good options.

 

[legolas141]

I've had the best (not door cheese) win by the whole team avoiding dat Life Steal attack.

Just some clarification, have you actually defeated him without him healing? Me and the guys I play with have found it nearly impossible to avoid that life drain charge even if we keep running.

I find it hard to believe that he is not at least highly resistant to damage in his life steal mode, if not outright indestructible.

The three of us have run out of ammo and died trying to completely avoid it. while if we use one of us as bait and rapidly trigger the three heals, we usually have at least some spare ammo left at the end. Even with having to bring him back down to low health multiple times.

As I remember, the patriarch was relatively easy to kill before he healed if you were lucky enough to be able to set up a trap area with pipe bombs before he got to you. We were able to do it roughly 30% of the time.

After several rounds against Hans though, we have pretty much determined it can't be done without getting through his three healing stages.

Plus it is so much easier if you designate a player as food and simply keep darting him or using med grenades when he is being drained. Especially with the medic perk that restores armor. Now that one of our guys has that, our bait guy stays pretty much at 100 armor the whole boss fight.

I would love to have some kind of definitive verdict on whether it is possible to kill him without him healing, it would make a great challenge to undertake for my team.

 

[Nenga]

Just some clarification, have you actually defeated him without him healing? Me and the guys I play with have found it nearly impossible to avoid that life drain charge even if we keep running.

I find it hard to believe that he is not at least highly resistant to damage in his life steal mode, if not outright indestructible.

The three of us have run out of ammo and died trying to completely avoid it. while if we use one of us as bait and rapidly trigger the three heals, we usually have at least some spare ammo left at the end. Even with having to bring him back down to low health multiple times.

As I remember, the patriarch was relatively easy to kill before he healed if you were lucky enough to be able to set up a trap area with pipe bombs before he got to you. We were able to do it roughly 30% of the time.

After several rounds against Hans though, we have pretty much determined it can't be done without getting through his three healing stages.

Plus it is so much easier if you designate a player as food and simply keep darting him or using med grenades when he is being drained. Especially with the medic perk that restores armor. Now that one of our guys has that, our bait guy stays pretty much at 100 armor the whole boss fight.

I would love to have some kind of definitive verdict on whether it is possible to kill him without him healing, it would make a great challenge to undertake for my team.

He has a ton of damage resistance when he goes to heal, but if you keep running eventually he'll give up trying to heal and go back to fighting though. Honestly it's probably better to let him grab someone and heal that person though or the fight will take ages as he'll keep up trying to heal for quite awhile. I have had him stop trying to heal and go back to fighting but it takes awhile before he gives up.

 

[FluffyNinja]

Just had a successful Hans Volter beatdown and I figure I shared the video. Not the best video, I admit, but it gives you a rough idea of what to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5rcxHxUvdc



There are several keys to the fight:

1) Have enough cover to hide behind when he's blazing with his dual guns. They do serious damage and rarely misses.

2) Recognize all his quotes that cues what he is going to do and responding according.
ex. "Let's try some Nerve Gas!" = Gas Attack. Prepare to run like hell away from teammates if targeted. Unload if not.

3) Do enough damage to make him want to heal and stop shooting when he deploys smokes and grabs someone to heal. Heal the poor guy though.

Yes, you can try to kill him before he grabs and heals, but trust me, it's a LOT more stressful then just letting him grab someone and repeating. The problem is that he gets massive damage reduction and if he grabs someone, his health WILL get fully replenished. IMO, it is a massive waste of crucial ammo and effort.

 

[CrashFu]

I'm still getting used to having the parry function so I keep forgetting to use it at dire times, whoops.

Here's a good way to get your entire team killed: only worry about your own *** and run away while Hans is mercilessly assaulting someone else, until you've successively left every other member of your team to die and you're the last one left alive. Then force your dead teammates to watch you kite around the map for twenty minutes while you suck all the fun out of the entire game experience.


Instead: Covering fire. With the exception of his grenades and gas attacks, Hans is only going to be attacking one person at a time. If that person isn't you, UNLOAD ON HIM. When he feels like it (IE is in Claw Mode) he can outrun players so if you don't keep him switching targets, he's GOING to kill someone.

DO have an escape plan ready though, because he could turn his attention on you at any moment. Actually, have two escape plans at any moment, because he can cover a lot of ground with those grenades and the way you planned to escape through may become a "dead end" before you realize it.

 

[Reallifeh8er]

Medic with SCAR, MedicAR, Medipistol.

Attack with SCAR and MedicAR, Heal with MedicAR, Medipistol and Medinades.

Always stay next to cover. And look for new cover already.

If he chases you, run around small covers, pillars, cars and if you can maneuver so your team can shoot at Hans.

1 - 2 - 3 and DED! GJ Team, Luv u 2.

 

[BiLLL]

Seems you can have a bezerker rotate around his rear side and Hans has difficulty hitting him. While hans is spinning in place have everyone shoot him. I did that with a chainsaw. Got grabbed a couple times but he died really fast

This is the easiest way to kill him... Its a exploit to his AI and it seems to work on any diffuculty and it may work on scrakes and flesh pounds occasionally as well. You dont even have to be a berserker just have one guy get the aggro on him and just circle around him you can melee bash him or just shoot him until he gets low enough to grab then he'll grab you or throw some nades and then you just run away and repeat the process. after 3 grabs hes done he'll just sit in the same spot spinning around in a circle for the entire fight. I Occasionally get hit and sometimes die but if you have a solid medic or some off medics you'll live through the grabs you will hold him in 1 spot long enough to take him down.

 

[CJwarrior]

Not sure if anyone noticed yet, but his resistance dies off right as he lets go the victim. Use that to your advantage.

 

[FluffyNinja]

Not sure if anyone noticed yet, but his resistance dies off right as he lets go the victim. Use that to your advantage.

Yes! This is one of the best times to unload and throw grenades.He generally stands there after healing and throws grenades/gas, making those periods the longest moment that he will be stationary during the fight.

I'm not too sure about this, but I also believe that he can hurt himself with his own explosive nades. (Not gas though)

 

[Nenga]

He has a ton of damage resistance when he goes to heal, but if you keep running eventually he'll give up trying to heal and go back to fighting though. Honestly it's probably better to let him grab someone and heal that person though or the fight will take ages as he'll keep up trying to heal for quite awhile. I have had him stop trying to heal and go back to fighting but it takes awhile before he gives up.

So after playing hans quite a few more times after this, I havent been able to reproduce this. Either he grabbed someone and I didnt notice, they patched this out, or it was a glitch that made him skip his healing phase.