Isonzo – Officer Perk Guide

This guide aims to help officers determine what perks to use and when to use them, or what perks not to use and why.

Guide to Officer Perks

All credit goes to An Englishman named Gavin!

Introduction

Officers are an important part of either side’s army, and are so crucial to a battle that a bad or absent one could lose the game entirely. In this guide, I aim to give officers guidance on how to be effective, specifically in the perks they use, since other than their call-ins and rifle unlock, this heavily affects how an officer contributes to their team.

Assault Officer

This is the first perk you’ll have as an officer, and one that has, in my opinion, the greatest impact on the team’s combat effectiveness, and is also the most all-around perk the officer has, being effective at any time in a match, and as both an attacker and defender. This perk halves the cooldown time between charges, by default 100 seconds. The Charge ability, if you don’t already know, allows the entire team to spawn instantly for 25 seconds, 1/4th of the cooldown time. However, with the Assault Officer perk equipped, the active time of the perk is only 1/2th of the cooldown time. If you have 2 officers with this perk equipped, you could have instant spawns for the entire game if they time their charges right. You can see if a charge is currently active in the bottom left corner, below the squad overview. The meter that is slowly depleting is the respawn time for the team, as the entire team spawns in waves instead of having individual spawn times. Instant spawns can impact the game greatly, even greater than call-ins in some instances, as what is an opening without an army to exploit it? Additionally, call-ins have much longer cooldowns that are affected by how well or horrible your team is doing. Having as many men as possible in the field is important and can lead to victories, since your enemy may not have a charge active and have to wait around 12+ seconds to respawn. Such a long time allows your team to move up and contest the point, causing the enemy to have to spend more time to get to the objective.

The same can be said for defending; if an army is advancing, and a good chunk of your men have died, call your charge before the enemy can contest the point. Your men will instantly spawn on the point (assuming they chose to spawn on the point and not somewhere else), surprising an enemy who previously thought the point to be filled with nothing but the bodies of your fallen comrades, leading to the point being filled with their bodies instead.

Engineer Officer

Next up is the Engineer Officer perk. This perk is equally useful on both offense and defense, however there’s a slight lean towards defense due to their heavier dependence on fortifications, and the Assault’s Saboteur perk that allows them to have 2x sabotage speed, as well as the Engineer’s Engineer Company perk which grants them 2x Building and Sabotage speed. Of course, other classes that don’t have such perks can also benefit from this, however I believe it’d be better to leave sabotage to these classes. And I can see how this can be abused with the Assault and Engineer perks to have insane sabotage and build times, however this requires the officer to be nearby, which you can’t always guarantee, being the big important target you are.

Frontline Officer

My personal favourite and second go-to perk for officer, and imo the most underrated of the officer perks, Frontline Officer allows squad leaders to spawn on an officer, no matter where he may be (Excluding Out of Bounds, obviously). Able to be effectively used on both sides, this perk allows for quick reinforcement of a point, as not only can a squad leader spawn on an officer, but his squad can also spawn on him once he spawns, thus making the officer a mobile forward post. Squad leaders can count on the officer looking at them the same way, seeing Every. Single. Squad Leader as another mobile forward post. This places more responsibility on both parties, the officer allows squad leaders to spawn on him, and subsequently that leader’s squad can spawn on him as well, and squad leaders allow the officer to spawn wherever the action is, thus allowing for a more flexible attack or a sturdier defense. This means that both leaders and the officer needs to focus on staying alive for the benefit of the team.

I find this best used when either side is contesting a point. All squad leaders being able to spawn on the officer allows for especially quick reinforcement of the point, especially when paired with a charge. This also simply allows the team to spawn closer to the point than the FPs allow them to.

Alpine Officer

This, my friends, is the absolute worst perk for officer. This doesn’t help the team in the slightest, other than adding one more body to the objective. You could achieve the exact same result if you spawn on a squad leader who would most likely be on or near the point. Even if no squad leaders are around the point, you can still spawn on the way to the point instead of having to spawn at an FP, whilst also allowing other SLs and their squads to spawn on you. This perk is redundant, and has no better use case than simply using Frontline Officer. Please don’t use this perk. As an officer, your job is to assist your team more than your own abilities in combat. Of course, combat abilities can help you and your team when using Frontline Officer, however they aren’t explicitly required. Again, Do Not Use Alpine Officer.

Inspirational Officer

Inspirational Officer is a very effective perk that is best used to reinforce or attack a point, as well as a general defense perk due to the reduced weapon sway and the aura that can cover an entire point. This perk allows the officer to directly influence his soldiers’ performance in combat, as it not only increases the amount of stamina a soldier has allowing him to sprint for longer periods of time, thus minimizing time spent travelling to a point, but also reduces the weapons way of those around him, thus making this an effective offensive and defensive tool. This perk allows any soldier near you to be an accurate marksman without the need of a scope, and naturally it affects you as well. This is by far the best perk for assisting your soldiers, but that isn’t to discredit the other perks as well (Except Alpine Officer.). This can also be used with the Mountaineer’s bugle ability to give your soldiers faster movement and bolting speed, making any respectable marksman who’s using Scout and an actual rifle a deadly menace, due to the bolting speed stacking. Mountaineers also benefit from this exchange as they now have double the stamina and, if using Light Infantry, nearly triple the speed.