Steel Hunters – Ursus: Hunter Guide (Tips & Strategy)

Starter Guide to Ursus

Ву Kinvallatas.

• Real Name: Henrietta Björnsdottir
• Inception age: 62
• Place of birth: Rønne, Denmark
• Gender: Female

System Overview

Shard Cannon

Close-range Auto Shotgun.

Mods

• Blizzard
• Ferocious

Mainframe System

Core System that enhances stats and abilities.

Mods

• Bastion
• Irascible

Missile Barrage

Swarm of explosive rockets that homing at the enemy targets. Each launch uses Rage charges which Ursus collect during the battle.

Mods

• Fury
• Avalanche

Glacial Armor

Encases you in ice armor. Reduces movement speed if destroyed, otherwise restores structure points.

Mods

• Iceberg
• Ferocity

Gameplay

General Stats

With a base structure of 8400 and a base shield maximum of 2800, Ursus has the largest health pool of the roster, lending itself nicely to her role as an offensive tank.

General Playstyle

Ursus is a powerful, close-range brawler, featuring a simple but effective kit that thrives at close-to-mid-range combat. As the bulkiest Hunter in the game, she focuses on absorbing incredible amounts of punishment while returning powerful bursts of damage with her shotgun and rockets.

This Hunter is best suited to a frontline/tanking role, utilizing her durability to the fullest. Be warned, however, that Ursus is heavily dependent on her abilities and lacks a natural escape.

Systems

Weapon System

Ursus’s primary weapon is a Auto-Shotgun tailored for close-quarters combat. It deals considerable damage per shot and has a rapid rate of fire, but suffers from extreme falloff and an extended reload period in turn.

Blizzard

This modification focuses on improving Ursus’s raw damage-per-shot, offering a powerful stacking damage bonus on critical hits and granting bonuses to scatter reduction on perfect crits. On paper, this offers the highest damage potential of Ursus’s main weapon system, but also has the harshest drawbacks – using it to its fullest extent requires careful aim, spacing, and a little bit of luck. At higher levels, this modification grants damage reduction after two seconds of aiming, allowing Ursus more agency in her trading patterns.

Ferocious

This modification alters Ursus’s main weapon to fire a semi-automatic two-round burst with higher scatter, offering higher damage output and survival at the cost range. It rewards precise aim by increasing the damage of the second shot of a burst when it connects and offers an increase to critical hit damage.

This is likely the most versatile of Ursus’s main weapon systems, offering her some flexibility in her spacing while remaining a threat at close quarters. At higher levels, this modification grants a degree of vampiric healing after landing a burst from the weapon, adding some staying power to Ursus outside of her Glacial Armor.

Bastion

This modification grants Ursus increased overall durability, buffing her base shields by a small amount and improving the amount of health her repair kits restore. At higher levels, it provides Ursus with a reward for precise use of her rockets, granting cooldown reduction for the ability if it eliminates an enemy Hunter.

Irascible

This modification improves the strength of Ursus’s abilities, granting increased ability power and RAGE generation when fighting drones. At higher levels, it provides Ursus with a modest 7-second cooldown reduction to her shield timer, indirectly improving her survivability.

Abilities

Ability 1: Missile Barrage

The bread and butter of Ursus’s kit, this ability is Ursus’s secondary damage tool, allowing for massive bursts of damage in quick succession. By inflicting damage with Ursus’s mainweapon you build up RAGE charges which are used to fuel the rockets. Activating the ability causes you to enter RAGE mode, allowing you to fire rockets based on the number of charges you have. Each charge will fire one salvo of rockets with each salvo containing six rockets. Keeping the reticle over a target for a few seconds will grant you target lock on them causing the rockets to home in. You may manually aim and fire them as well without a lock-on.

While hard cover will intercept the rockets, they do have a vertical trajectory allowing them to bypass terrain if you shoot from an elevated position or the target’s cover is too low. The rockets’ cooldown is respectably low, allowing it to be usable in both PVE and PVP combat. Be warned, however, that there is a delay between entering RAGE mode and being able to fire your rockets – the use of RAGE mode also disables your main weapon for its duration, though you can still activate your abilities.

Fury

This modification alters the FANG Rockets to focus on sustained pressure and consistency, increasing Ursus’s RAGE gain for dealing damage and decreasing the lock-on time required for the rockets. As it offers unconditional bonuses, Ringleader is a good generalist module and the easy to get full value from. At higher levels, it gains the ability to reload and restore ammo to Ursus’s main weapon when consecutive rockets strike a target, allowing Ursus to continue pressuring a target after her abilities are on cooldown.

Avalanche

This modification alters the FANG Rockets to focus on improving Ursus’s mobility and playing close to a squad mate, offering versatility at the cost of overall damage. When the ability is activated, Ursus gains an additional dash charge and has her dash regeneration increased by 15%, allowing her to reposition far more frequently under its effects.

This also enables her to gain RAGE from the damage her teammates take, encouraging a close-quarters, communicative playstyle with your partner. At higher levels, Avalanche gains the ability to increase rocket damage based on how far they travel to reach their target, allowing for devastating damage potential on fleeing or distant targets.

Ability 2: Glacial Armor

This ability is unlocked once Ursus reaches level 3 in-game, and serves as the cornerstone of her defensive power. When activated, this ability grants Ursus an enormous shield for a brief period. If this shield expires, Ursus gains a buff that varies based on the equipped system, but if it is destroyed, Ursus suffers from an equally potent debuff for eight seconds.

Few Hunters have the ability to output such damage alone, allowing Ursus a window to retaliate during this time. However, if the armor does break, the harsh penalties will often lead to your death.

Iceberg

This modification further enhances the defensive power of Glacial Armor, providing a sizeable increase to the shield that the ability grants and causing it to heal Ursus over time while the armor persists. If this armor is broken, Ursus suffers a 20% defense penalty.

This is generally the safest option of her modifications, ensuring that the armor will almost never be broken outside of direct confrontation with a Colossus or a Weaver with their minigun available, and provides generically useful bonuses to her staying power in a fight. At higher levels, this modification grants a burst of healing to Ursus and a nearby teammate (if applicable) when the armor expires (but is not destroyed), allowing for extra survivability across the board.

Ferocity

This modification enhances Ursus’s offensive capabilities while the armor is active, instantly restoring a third of Ursus’s maximum ammunition to her reserves upon activation and allowing her to gain a stacking damage buff based on damage dealt while armored. If the armor breaks, Ursus suffers a 20% damage penalty.

This modification naturally lends itself to aggressive play, rewarding Ursus for staying in a fight and keeping constant pressure on the enemy. However, it does have the lowest health of her armor options, requiring somewhat more cautious use of the ability. At higher levels, this modification allows Ursus to retain her stacked damage buff for a short time once the armor expires, greatly improving her offences once the armor comes down.

General Strategy

Ursus is generally a hunter who excels in the mid-to-late game of a match, as the bulk of her strength lies in her abilities. While her FANG Rockets are a potent tool at all stages of the match, Ursus is most powerful when the threat of her armor is in play, as she can be surprisingly squishy without it when caught out of position. As such, her goal is generally to reach level 3 as quickly as possible, though whether this is done through aggressive brawling or quietly farming drones is up to the individual player.

Once Glacial Armour becomes available, it serves as Ursus’s major spike, allowing her to take fights without fear and reducing the risks of aggressive play. In late-game encounters, Ursus becomes a terrifying juggernaut, able to periodically shrug off immense bursts of damage and shred people in close-quarters combat. Furthermore, Ursus’s quadruped nature grants her some distinct advantages and disadvantages.

The position of her main weapon (on top of her back) grants her an advantage at peeking from lower cover and exploiting uneven terrain, though the short-range nature of her weapon means that this requires specific situations to be especially useful. Additionally, retreating and turning quickly is generally more difficult, as you expose more surface area of your body for a longer duration compared to a bipedal Hunter.

Her greatest weaknesses lie in her lack of sustained DPS and mobility, and she is particularly vulnerable to being flanked when her armor is down due to the position of her weak spots on her body.

Advanced Tips

• Ursus’s main weapon is the only weapon in the game to have a sequential reload, meaning that it chambers each shell individually rather than all at once like the rest of the Hunters. This is a double-edged sword as it increases Ursus’s overall reload time but allows her greater flexibility as she can choose when to deal her damage. She can fire before completing a full reload for unexpected bursts of damage when you may need just a little more to finish your target.
• Glacial armor can either be used to close distance towards an enemy or in the very last second to surprise your opponent. Finding the right timing and playing around your decision is very important.
• When playing with a reliable duo teammate, do not be afraid to play aggressively and create space for them. Getting destroyed while still being able to win the fight thanks to your teammate should be considered.
• Be aware of your crit spots, especially on the back of her body.
• Ursus prefers reactor charge over dome.

Highlighted Synergies

Ursus pairs best with Hunters who can keep pressure up with her or support her at a distance – Hunters like Razorside naturally share her close-ranged focus, while Hunters like Prophet and Heartbreaker provide her with ways to offset her lack of range and force targets into her preferred range to fight at.