The water tower between A and C offers an excellent vantage of attachers from C or people moving between B and A. If you hold A, holding the water tower is critical.

Similarly, behind B is a sniper's dream... a choke point that can hit enemies attacking from A or from C with great range and easy sighting, while keeping you in higher ground and slightly more protected than you would be if you were on an even playing field. A good sniper in this corner will not be able to hold B by herself, but will be able to rack up loads of kills and - hopefully - delay the taking of B long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

If you hold point C, holding the walkway near the water tower between C and A will afford you with an excellent vantage from which to rain fire on your enemies as well, and you can kill them at any of the three access points to the middle run area. Bonus: The geometry of A makes it unlikely that enemies entering your field of view from point A will be facing you, increasing your odds of winning in a 1 v 1 gunfight.

Beyond scoring loads of kills in these chokepoints, it's important to recognize than none of the control zones on Rusted Lands are easy to defend. They all have multiple access points from a variety of elevations, and it's far too easy to sneak up on a defender inside one of the zones. My advice is to either hold these choke points or to constantly be on the offensive.

-Disciple

I'm a fan of longer range fights personally. It's been my playstyle for years in FPS games. With that said... I loved me some Grifball.

When the hell do we get a sword game? I saw that thing again in one of the dark below videos and now it's all I think about.

I have wondered if my personal struggles in this map come down to playstyle; I do not snipe (I am nots the good at it) and in general prefer 1 on 1 encounters and locations where I can generate them. Tight spaces are my jam. This map doesn't have many, and there are alternated routes to those that do exist.

So you would be better at holding A instead.

I'm a fan of longer range fights personally. It's been my playstyle for years in FPS games. With that said... I loved me some Grifball.

Easy access to heavy ammo is great. Plus I can sniper down from the back of B in the ruins in both directions. If C starts getting taken over an easy grenade/nova bomb cleans up the space quickly.

I have wondered if my personal struggles in this map come down to playstyle; I do not snipe (I am nots the good at it) and in general prefer 1 on 1 encounters and locations where I can generate them. Tight spaces are my jam. This map doesn't have many, and there are alternated routes to those that do exist.

I think as ZackDark and I were agreeing elsewhere in this thread, B and C definitely appear ideal. And my limited experience with this map could be an outlier (it is a great map, I just don't get it).

They wouldn't get so nuked if they had some people back at the wall. That place is great for sniper coverage, as long as there are people on the ground to call out radar movement.

They certainly didn't play a perfect game, I'll agree with you there. But if you played this well on Blind watch at B and C, or on shores of time at B and C, I think you'd win, and it wouldn't be this close. Generally, with most maps, the key to strategy is holding the two points that give you a position of strength, to funnel enemies into one spawn; that's what gives you the best win probability. Maybe it's the way the multiple paths to B are set up, but at Rusted Lands, you don't need B and C to give you the best chance to win, and that's what gives me fits, I think.

My gut feeling is that A is worse to be in if the other team holds both B and C, because you can at least branch out in those ruins when attacking B from C.

I'm inclined to agree with you because of that balcony over B on the C side, plus the sniper's alley going from B to A; but I've lost numerous games in that position as well. Here's a great example from reddit of a team that appears to be crushing while holding B and C nearly the entire game (the excellent play of the poster may be masking for what looks like one player dropping, but it appears they play well and the game is close). The cost of holding B just ends up being too high for this team, I think; they were constantly nuked down at B, and didn't get the better of trades. But this definitely seems like the way to play this map, so why does it always end up being so close?

I really don't get the meta for this map.

I think B is the pivotal point, because holding it down grants you easy access to A and C every spawn, as opposed to the analogous.

The problem I run into is that almost every game I play, the points switch constantly. Holding A seems important because it has the best heavy access, but I think it also has the worst Spawn. B and C seem more defensible, but you cannot lose one close to the heavy ammo drop or your team likely won't get the heavy. It's hard to hold B for long from either point; I've won and lost games holding A or C, and I've never really figured out which is better to hold.

This could come down to an excellent balance on the map, but my k/d is by far at its worst on this map, and I chalk that up to a strategic failure on my part.

What's the best strategy for rusted lands? I played that map 30 times in the last week and I still don't understand what points to hold or how to defend them.