In other shooter games, a lone sniper can hold an entire corridor by themselves or set up camp and pick off unsuspecting enemies from afar with well placed shots, but in this game, players pilot tanky mobile suits that stomp around and take many hits before going down; therefore, the most efficient way to take down an enemy is to gang up on them as a team while preventing the enemies from doing the same. This is where the support unit comes in very handy.

A good support player should prioritize...

• using stuns to open up opportunities for teammates to attack
  
• using stuns to save teammates from enemy attack (pursuit halted)
  
• dishing out a buttload of damage

I've seen a lot of inexperienced support players hang way back and hardly move or do anything worthwhile. You know the ones, you've seen em, raids love em. Look, I get that they're called GM Snipers but you really shouldn't be sniping like how we normally think of sniping because doing so goes against everything the ideal support player should do.

If you're too far away from the team, then you're also too far away from the enemy that are fighting them.
Remember that the most efficient way to beat the enemy is by focusing your fire on the same target. Mobile Suits don't die instantly, you can't pick off any enemy with a sick nasty headshot, you have to work with the team of randos as best you can. If you're too far away, you won't have a clear picture of where the action is or who's the best target to shoot at. It's also very easy to hide from your line of sight from further away since maps are designed with plenty of cover. The worst part is that being too far puts more enemy pressure on the rest of your team, making it feel like they're fighting with one less teammate. Even if you're missing all your shots, just having presence and taking some enemy attention away is still helpful for your other teammates since they will be able to easily land a hit on something distracted by you or fight with less incoming enemy fire.

Being stationary and never repositioning is the worst thing you can do in this game.
As a support, any moment not spent shooting at an enemy is a moment wasted. Do not ever wait for an enemy to come into sight. Never leave an enemy for an ally to fight alone. Be active, get into good positions to shoot enemies from unexpected angles. The only good time to sit at a sniping spot is when there is a good view of enemies that your teammates are fighting. If you don't see enemies to shoot at, then get moving. Even capturing a beacon is more helpful than staring off at the horizon. Do not sit at a hill on Impact Site throwing cannonballs at some dude on the other side of the map. Aim at whatever you're teammate is fighting (try not to stun your teammate).

Being too far away can drastically hinder your damage output.
As a support, you should always be looking to deal as much damage as possible and that will require constant use of at least several weapons. Most support units only have a 1 or 2 long range weapons and even those will have maximum ranges that prevents you from shooting at the other end of the Dark Space map. Being too far means you can't use sub weapons like grenades, vulcans, melee, or tackles. Taking a potshot is fine when its free and easy but you should still do so while moving in closer to the enemy so that they will be in range of your other attacks.

Using the GM Sniper 2 as an example - the only real long range option it has is the main sniper rifle with 6 ammo and a 4 sec cooldown in between shots. Relying solely on taking potshots with this gun will never put enough pressure on the opposing team. Maybe if you land every single shot as fast as possible it can do some work but you will eventually find yourself under cooldowns and reloads. (I'll go into more detail on this specific suit later since I've been seeing it a lot in 400 cost)

Aiming your gun will be a lot easier when the enemy is closer in front of you. Is it easier to snipe a moving target in space from the edge of the map or is it easier taking a shot at the enemy 10 feet away that your teammate just knocked over with a downswing? Keep in mind that cannon weapons also need to consider its projectile speed while aiming!

I'm not asking every support player to start charging at the enemy team but at least keep a distance of about 1-2 Dom Gomides behind the nearest ally. If you're in range to support your teammates, they will also be in range to support you. Most of the time you don't even need to be completely surrounded by your teammates, having just 2 buddies with you is already enough to steamroll through an enemy team if you're all competent with your MS.

In some space maps, you can afford to be a bit further back since there are more open areas, angles to attack from, and more maneuverability. On Arctic Base, charging into the middle shuttle platform should provide some safe cover during the start. You can also try to boost back and hide by standing still and becoming invisible to radar but this strategy doesn't always work out well. Generals should pay attention to their slow moving supports on this map and not boost too far ahead. Think about it, generals, if your slow ass support is baiting in all of the attention on Arctic Base, that means the enemies wont see you coming....

Generally speaking, staying in with the team is already good enough for most support gameplay, but here's some tips and advice for really putting the pressure on the enemy team.

Most stunning weapons like cannons and rifles can often provide enough stun for you to switch into another weapon for quick bursts of damage or more stuns to keep an enemy pinned down. They don't have to be long chains of melee swings using multiple bean sabers. A quick one-two punch is often all you need to keep pumping out damage on the enemy team. Make sure to set your hotkeys so you can easily chain your attacks together.
Example:

• Back cannon into bean rifle can do pretty good damage.
  
• A stun weapon into funnels/psycommu is a good way to keep yourself safe behind cover.
  
• An instant stun rifle into back cannon can stop an enemy enough for your teammates to get in on the action. After all, the good support provides opportunity.

When trying out a support, set your weapons to preferred hotkeys then go into free practice and see what attacks are good to start a chain and what attacks are good to follow up with. I like to start with stun attacks that are easy to aim but take too long to switch to or require charging.

• Grenades are good for infantry and safely attacking an enemy too close to teammates
  
• Vulcans are weak but it's better than nothing and can help build up stagger against enemies with Maneuver Armor. Note that vulcans can be fired while boosting so you can chase enemies with it, fire while retreating, or just add on a bit of damage while repositioning.
  
• 6-Tube Missile Pods like those found on FA Gundam, or flash grenades on Ground Gundams and Methuss are awkward to aim sometimes but provide really good stagger, best used for self defense against enemies charging at you.
  
• Melee weapons are good against almost everything if you can land the hit. The damage doesn't matter so much, it's the fact that it keeps an enemy staggered in place that makes it helpful and it's option every MS can use in close combat.

You're not gonna be clashing with the raid with your level 1 melee priority but a quick slash from your bean saber on an enemy unaware of you is just as good as any cannon stun. I'm not saying you need to be hitting the melee all the time (though some support MS benefit from that playstyle) but being able to comfortably fight melee and close range will make you a much stronger support than someone who can't.

• MS such as Dra-C, Jamru Fin, and Zero Shiki Type 2 AR have powerful lunging downswings that can be devastating when used at the right opportunity while keeping you mobile
  
• Check if you have the skill High-Performance Balancer, which can let you swing melee or tackle from boosting. This allows you to easily weave melee attacks into your range combos.
  
• GP04 straight up has Forced Injector, Balancer, AND TWO HIT MELEE.
  
• Saving your thrusters for tackles is also a good way to deter melee enemies coming after you or your teammates, don't be afraid to tackle someone in the middle of a swing, it will connect even from behind or the sides.
  
• Tackling is also another stun option but beware that you will be out of thruster energy so best use this when your allies are nearby ready to follow up.

For ground combat, the feet are the best thing to shoot at. A MS with broken legs is as good as dead and you can also get around shields. For space, you would have to shoot the back but that's often not as easy to do

In the moments where the only enemies left are far away and you can pick at them from a good position, crouching and zooming in with the scope will help you land your shots. I don't advise doing this often since it will take time away from the action and leaves you vulnerable to attacks. Only take this position when safe to do so and when the enemy isn't likely to leave your line of sight.

In an ideal world we would just yell "Support me!" and all of the generals on the team come flying in to save our ass from the mean nasty raid players but sadly this game typically requires more effort out of us. You'll likely die to a competent raid than can run (or sneak) past your teammates, or maybe the entire enemy team is just raid, it happens. But making it as difficult for them as possible is the key to better survival against raids. If you've followed my guide so far, you'll be at least somewhat prepared for whats to come.

In most situations running away and putting some teammates between you and the raid will be the safest option. Even if you're confident you can take on the raid in a 1v1, it's still better to flee after knocking down the raid so that you waste less HP, time, and ammo fighting with a disadvantage.

Once you have some allies to help you, try to stay and provide assistance if possible, especially if you can land a stun or two. If no allies are available or they died, keep using hit and run tactics.

Pay attention to I-Frames. - getting hit with a massive downswing hurts like crazy and could potentially kill you if it came out of nowhere, but if you survive, don't panic, you'll get back up with temporary invincibility. Do not shoot or charge up any rifles, use this time to run towards your nearest teammates. Tackling will also give you some I-Frames but I like to save my tackles for melee counters if I could.

Watch closely - maneuver armor will only protect the raid while boosting, this means they are most vulnerable when they stop moving. If you see a distracted raid or noticed they ran out of energy, hit it with all your stun weapons and pray that a general will notice and step in. Opportunistic generals are much more likely to notice a stunned enemy than they are to check their radar.

Use accumulated stun - almost all raids and a lot of higher cost generals will have maneuver armor so you should get comfortable with using weapons that build stun instead of instant stun when you see them boosting around. Missiles, grenade launchers, vulcans, bean guns are typically what you can use to stop something charging at you. The FA 7th Gundam is a support that mostly uses stun accumulation and I recommend going into free practice and try firing on a moving target. In free practice and 1v1 duels, you can see the stun meter under an enemy's hp which is really helpful for figuring out which weapons do the best stun buildup and how many shots they require. Beware that the FA 7th Gundam is a 550 unit so you will have to deal with perfect gundams if you go into a public match...

Beat them at their own game - dont be content with just a stun, get them with a downswing! But don't hang around afterwards, run like the wind. Just be sure you can land the melee before committing to it otherwise you'll have a bad time.

Do not fear the raw melee - If you ever see any enemy with their melee weapons out and they haven't stun you yet, watch for any boosting movement or big arm swings and then hit tackle. This will get you the counter about 90% of the time. Skilled veteran raid players are much less likely to fall for this but some MS that don't have reliable stun weapons like Red Rider can be easily caught if you pay attention. If the enemy purposefully baited your tackle, then they've pretty much outplayed you I'm sorry for your loss. If you're really lucky and are able to recover from a stun quickly, you might just be better off hitting the tackle button against their melee swing than trying to run away. It's not like you have a dodge roll anyway (usually).

In space, use AMBAC - ever since the operation star one campaign, almost every MS in this game has been granted the AMBAC skill. I highly recommend practicing AMBAC movements as it will allow you to move like you have Forced Injectors. Using AMBAC to escape up or down and create unpredictable movement is a great way to fight anything in the open areas of space.

Most support units are pretty straightforward, you stun enemies and keep shooting and have a gud time but here, I will note down some advice for MS that I think are commonly misunderstood or utilized poorly, starting with the GM Sniper line of suits because I think a lot of players don't realize that some of these are actually way better fighting close to mid range than they are at actually sniping.

I think the GM Sniper 3 is the only true long range GM Sniper support but sadly I do not own one and can't really speak on it from experience other than fighting it. It does seem like a really solid support though from what I can tell.

I'll try to add more to this list if anything else comes to mind.

You have a sniper rifle, a grenade, and a bean saber. The sniper rifle is stop-to-fire so keep that in mind when aiming. To aim the rifle and the grenades at moving targets, you need to make sure your crosshairs stay on the target cus neither weapons fire immediately. Note that the grenades are best thrown from closer distance due to its slow speed when thrown. Once you land a hit with the sniper rifle, you can follow up with grenade if its too dangerous to charge in, making sure to aim the grenade while tracking any enemy movement. Combining rifle and grenade attacks will be pretty decent damage on its own if you land most of the hits, but if the coast is clear, try making use of your balancer skill to go melee. The GM Sniper 2 has a disgusting melee combo if you switch back and forth with the rifle and the bean saber. It's situational but really nice when the situation comes up. The melee sets you up for another point blank rifle shot which sets up for another melee and so on. This is great because it lets you can pin down an enemy and set them up for your teammates. If they roll out of the combo well then they've used up their thruster and you can just hit them again if they didnt roll away far enough. If a teammate wants to join in on the fun, make sure to boost away and let them take their swings while you toss grenades.
One more thing I noticed about the grenades is that you can use them while in the air. Could be handy in situations with enemies behind cover or if u just wanna look cool jumping off with a grenade toss.

Yet another GM Sniper that is better suited up front than far back. Much like the Prototype Stark Jegan with its giant milk jugs, the GM Sniper Custom ML can do good work using it's missile launcher. In fact, back when I played this game on ps4, this thing is almost always equipped with the Rocket Bazooka rather than the actual sniper rifle because the rifle doesn't really stun the enemy. The bazooka leads into melee (this MS has balancer!) which then leads into missiles. Feel free to also use the missiles any moment you can on unsuspecting enemies, like when they're not looking at you or someone else stun them first and remember to aim for the feet.
I rarely see this MS being used these days in 350 but when I do, it's usually standing in the back of a space map taking in the nice view.

As stated in the earlier section, this MS got a skill list that fits more like a general unit minus the dodge roll. It is possible to just switch between your two rifles and shoot everything from a distance but I find that this tends to run you out of ammo and overheats quickly if you're focused on shooting as much as you can. There's no vulcans to fall back on either so you might as well play like a general and get in there with your bean saber. The mobility on this thing is also really insane, if a raid comes at you, fighting it head on is lot safer compared to most other support units.