A Guide to the Defensive Brute Pavium for Halo Wars 2

Pavium is one of two new leaders included in the Awakening the Nightmare expansion for Halo Wars 2. Below you will find a guide to his new units and abilities as well as the most effective way to use them in multiplayer.

Defensive Brute Pavium for Halo Wars 2

The Leader

Pavium, unlike his brother, focuses on a defensive slow build-up of power. This is best reflected by his abilities many of which focus purely on defence and a strong emphasis on artillery and ranged combat. This makes him a somewhat more tricky leader to utilise and makes him extremely vulnerable in the early matches often making you rely on your teammates for support. Build yourself up to the long game and you can make your bases extremely hard to crack but following up with your own attacks mostly relies on utilising established playstyles rather than something new.  

New Units

Pavium: The new hero unit is Pavium himself. Pavium is slow and tough and comes armed with a long-range mortar weapon and so in many ways behaves similarly to the hero unit Atriox’s Chosen. As a result, Pavium is best utilised by placing him at the back of your forces as his long-range mortar deals significant damage before anything can even get close to him. He has a passive bonus a healing drone that will repair structures making him great for base defence and repair. His special ability is a long-range spotting beam, targets hit by this are slowed and take additional damage perfect for taking out high priority targets such as hero units. The spotting beam makes a great combo piece with his new structure the Mega Turret.

 

As always upgrades will increase health and damage in addition to this one upgrade causes the units hit by his mortar to be temporarily painted for additional damage and the effectiveness of his special ability also gets upgraded to also paint the targets around the main target. Making effective use of Pavium can require a fair amount of micromanagement but the range and damage of his mortar give him a massive advantage throughout a match that coupled with his tank like nature means you’ll quickly find your Pavium scoring many kills and gaining veterancy.

 

Without a strong early game, Pavium is often essential in fighting off rushes and early game pushes and is therefore in most matches is an essential early game purchase.

 

A Guide to the Defensive Brute Pavium for Halo Wars 2 - A great hero for support and defence stratagies
Wraith Invader: A modified wraith that three infantry units can garrison inside and shoot out of. Similar in use to the Mastodon and Phantom dropship available to Commander Jerome and the Arbiter. Before being available to build it first needs to be unlocked as a passive ability one which can take quite a while to unlock. It’s well worth the trouble however as it has some significant advantages to other vehicles such as having strong energy shields and while its weapon is weak towards buildings, air and vehicles and intermediate against infantry it has the added advantage of leeching health from anything it attacks. An upgrade to the unit increases its shield strength and damage.

 

As with other troop transports, you can experiment with what infantry you garrison inside such as using hunters and elite rangers for anti-vehicle and anti-infantry capabilities or Pavium for long-range damage capabilities. More risky and inventive tactics could utilise Jump Pack Brutes and Suicide grunts using the Wraith Invader to safely deliver them to enemy bases. As always to get the best out of this combo involves having to purchase global upgrades for both infantry and vehicles. Once the unit is destroyed any infantry inside survive but lose most of their health. Backing up the Wraith Invader with additional vehicle or air units is often necessary to improve survivability such as some reavers to deal with the air heavy builds that Pavium will often face.

 

A Guide to the Defensive Brute Pavium for Halo Wars 2 - Charge into battle with the tough new infantry carrier

New Structure

Mega Turret: Unique to Pavium is the fact that he is the first and only leader to introduce a new structure to the game. The Mega turret is a formidable new addition to the game essentially a long range and powerful turret. It’s so big that it’s not built on turret slots but instead built on regular building slots. It starts off cheap but the price escalates with each new turret built but apart from that there is no cap on how many you can build and so an entire base could be dedicated to them should you wish. On slow moving clustered forces just a few shots from a Mega Turret can cause absolute devastation but are less effective on fast moving individual units or different groups of units approaching from different locations. They are also vulnerable to air due to having no anti-air capabilities and so you need to defend them accordingly. It first needs to unlocked as a passive ability before it can be built but is one of two abilities that can be unlocked at the start of a match. 

 

The turrets have two additional upgrades one which will leave a burning after effect and one that improves the initial damage. On many maps, some strategic use of the turrets can even be used to bombard enemy bases. Making use of various mini bases or defending main base sites means you can provide artillery support for you and your allies across most of the map. A line of sight is pretty much essential in getting the best use of them which is where Pavium and his special ability come into play or utilizing one of his new abilities the Orbital Designator. The turrets are a trade-off as they take up a spot that could be used for unit building or resource gathering which is why an aggressive expansion of mini-bases is so helpful. Don’t go overboard with their use and prepare for an inevitable air attack from seasoned players and you can effectively use the Mega Turret to bombard your opponents into submission.

 

A Guide to the Defensive Brute Pavium for Halo Wars 2 - Long range bombardment has never been this fun before

New Abilities

The new abilities focus on a defensive playstyle.

Mega Turret:
A passive ability that unlocks the structure at any base or mini base site.

Burnout: An ability that when used on your structures will increase their production rate. Use it on resource gathering structures to get a boost in supply and power or use it on unit structures to build units faster, also increases the speed of research upgrades so is great to use on the War Council. Can also be used on allies buildings as well as turrets to temporarily increase damage. While focused on defence some clever use of this ability can allow you to surprise opponents with rush tactics. An additional ability point improves its effectiveness.

Enduring Will: Weaker than other healing powers but lasts a very long time. Can be used defensively to give your defending troops a long lasting bonus or used to hold down key checkpoints more easily. Furthur upgrades will increase the duration further as well as the rate of healing.

Orbital Designator: When used this ability temporarily gives you a line of sight anywhere on the map. Costing only 50 power to use it can be used early on in the game to easily scout out enemy bases giving you a heads up on what units they’ll be building and so on. Remains useful throughout a match especially when used in tandem with Mega Turrets or offensive leader powers such as Rain of Fire or Ultra Mines or could be used to gain line of sight to deployed BlisterbacksAt level two the revealed units and structures of the designator will take additional damage.

Rain of Fire: Deploys a swirling formation of plasma beams to deal some significant damage. Upgrades increase the damage and radius. Makes a great combo piece with orbital designator to soften up bases and opposing army without the need of ever getting close to your units.

Ultra Mines: Finally a mine leader power that actually has some decent use. Deploys a large field of devastating plasma mines that can wreak ground forces. Best used in choke points or deployed around your base for extra defence. They have cloaked automatically a few seconds after deployment but can still be taken out quite easily should your opponent have a detector in their army. One of the best ways to use the mines is offensively as you can deploy them on top of your opponents during the middle of a battle. Again a very effective combo piece with the orbital designator.

Wraith Invader: A passive ability that allows you to build the new unit from main bases.

Full Salvage: All buildings will now automatically heal over time. In addition, recycled buildings grant a full resource refund so make sure to utilise this when you know a building is going to be destroyed.

Paviums Stand: Upon use, this ability makes all structures you own on the map briefly invulnerable. Great for last stand defence and clutch moments.

Lich Vanguard: Calls in a Lich ultimate unit that unfortunately cannot be controlled directly and instead patrols the designated area and provides support with its powerful beam attack. Patrols the area for a significant amount of time making it great for both defence and offence but can be destroyed. Has the added bonus of spawning a portal which all units can be purchased from great for reinforcing and supporting existing pushes on the fly. The Lich Vanguard acts as an ultimate ability but only costs 600 supply and 600 power to deploy making it very easy to deploy when needed in the late game.

 

A Guide to the Defensive Brute Pavium for Halo Wars 2 - If only it could be controlled directly :(

 Blitz Mode

Unique cards available to Pavium in Blitz:

Pavium 240 energy

Lich Vanguard 200 energy (units deployed around the lich have no deployment fatigue)

Mega Turret 160 energy

Ironclad Blisterback 130 energy

Wraith Invader 100 energy

Rain of Fire 80 energy

Enduring Will 60 energy

Ultra Mines 50 energy

All of Paviums blitz cards work extremely well in this mode primarily for the defence of the capture zones. Placing Pavium, the Mega Turret and Ironclad Blisterback on the ridges overlooking the capture zones is particularly effective. The Wraith Invader can defend from within the capture zone with the likes of hunters and elite rangers garrisoned inside it for extra damage. Enduring Will is great for sustained defence whilst ultra mines can devastate advances within the chokepoints. Rain of fire is perfect for clearing zones and ridges. Simply getting set up in this strong defensive style is the challenge and so back up the deck with some pure offence as well as something to contest energy drops with.  The Lich Vanguard is great for support both in offensive pushes and defence and its passive bonus makes a huge difference, it also acts as a great deterrent and at 200 energy is far cheaper than the scarab which has a similar use. 

Final Thoughts 

Pavium is far more tricky to make use of than other leaders but once you get the hang of it he opens up some interesting possibilities. He’s often best used in support of other leaders such as his brother Voridus for a deadly combo of attack and defence. As such he shines in 3v3 and 2v2 whilst more likely to get crushed in 1v1 playlists. His new units and abilities work particularly well in blitz. The key to victory is making clever use of new abilities for defence, not over-relying on Mega Turrets and preparing accordingly for the air-focused attacks you’ll likely see from your opponents.

Check out our guide to Voridus or read the full Awakening the Nightmare review.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

×