Back 4 Blood: The Messiah™ Build

Also known as your flock. Do not let the user interface fool you – you are alone – but not quite in the literal sense. Being truly alone would be manageable. Instead, you must face the added challenge of your team’s deficiencies. Expect scared birds, car alarms, friendly fire. Expect nothing and you shall receive less than that.

Since the immediate goal is the survival of your flock, you must think of it as a non-renewable resource that must be managed with perpetual care, similarly to a Tamagotchi. Where were u when flock is kil?

The omnipresent assailants of your flock’s welfare are your enemies – The Ridden.
From Volatiles to the Final Boss, you must be prepared to surpass all potential compositions that would otherwise lay waste to your flock. This strife for universality forces your hand on weapon choices, but more on those later.

For all practical purposes, your enemies are infinite. They exist to deal damage to your flock and since your flock is a finite resource, it will inevitably perish under their constant stream of harassment.

From the moment you leave the safe room, your team will, by its own lack of virtue, experience a constant stream of Infinite Damage. To manage it, you must become an Arbiter of Damage, not unlike a Cenobite[en.wikipedia.org]. To that end, you must control the flow of damage like a dam controls the river – let it pass through your team and balance its edge just enough to make your team’s available health last as long as necessary for reaching The Next Map.

The actual damage calculation is reminiscent of Newton’s Second law of motion, namely the derivative equations of instantaneous velocity[en.wikipedia.org]. For the purposes of this guide and its descriptive simplicity, we will treat damage as average.

The science above makes it clear that the less damage your team experiences, the longer it can survive. As you cannot predict exactly how much time will it take to reach The Next Map, you must always be ready to manage another quadrillion of Damage even while standing in the safe room doorway.

Under all circumstances avoid the risk of being damaged yourself – or worse – incapacitated. When you fall, everyone falls. Your flock is your meatshield.

So far, we have learned that a flock will inevitably perish when faced with Infinite Damage. You have two options to prevent and delay that from happening – 1) Kill the enemies before they reach your team or 2) mitigate their damage. You must learn to use both of these tools to protect your herd.

The key to controlling the flow of damage is in its prevention, but inevitably also in its mitigation. How do you mitigate Infinite Damage? In theory by Infinite Health. Since consumables are a finite resource and often out of your immediate reach, you must depend on the only two Cards that open up the possibility to mitigate Infinite Damage – Overwatch and Vanguard, the keys to your success.

A common error in reasoning is expecting your teammates to deal with some enemies themselves. It may be tempting to “leave that one common for Jim” while you dispose of greater threats, but rest assured it will not be dealt with. You must gauge the minutiae details of incoming threats and establish of mental queue of processing them based on how much Infinite Damage their existence adds to the team’s Pool of Suffering.

Also known as victory, it is a cyclical dichotomy between helping the Innocent and doing literally anything else.

Due to some fundamental Card interactions, your secondary weapon is melee. Your pick is simplified to either the Bat or the Machete; due to their wide swings, these can kill more ridden in one attack compared to the overhead strikes of other options.

For sturdier enemies and longer ranges, your picks are the hardest hitting sniper rifles – Barrett M95 and Phoenix 350L. With these, you will prioritize enemy weakpoints in order to shorten their lifespans, shortening the time they have for dealing Infinite Damage.

In the event of incapacitation, the game is over. The first card pick must therefore offset your greatest weakness, one that can end a run immediately.

Overwatch is your bread and butter solution in mitigating Infinite Damage.

Information on further card choices and options is WIP

1. Mute everyone upon entering the game. You care neither for accolades, nor for banter – do not be distracted from the ultimate objective.
2. Stay behind the team like a guardian angel, your fundamental strategy for making use of Overwatch damage mitigation. With up to 15 points of damage negated in one Ridden kill, it is your primary tool of managing the flow of Infinite Damage into your “teammates”.
3. Permanently ping the path the team should follow. Do not expect anyone to actually follow, but in the unlikely scenario someone notices your ping, it may speed up progress to The Next Map.

By Mr. Dat