Callouts

[ADM D Kilkin]

What is a Callout?
A callout is quick piece of information you tell your teammates in a game to help them make better decisions with greater knowledge of the situations around them.



Rule Number One: "On My X"

This is a great example of a terrible callout. Why?

First, the player who is making this callout clearly did not make a good callout in time so no teammates were able to help him in his fight. It cost him and the team a death.

Second, it's not always convenient to have to look for a player's X, and if there are more than one Xs up at a time there may be some confusion on the callout. In these situations when you have nothing better to say than, "One shot on my X" or something similar, it's better to look around for teammates and tell one of them specifically where to look, so your callout would instead be something like, "Derrick, there's a guy one-shot around the corner" or "Josh, he's one-shot to your right."

On my X can be used to inform your teammates of a weapon you just died with, for example, "I dropped Sniper on my X" but even so you should find a better way to make the callout.
 

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Rule Number Two: "One Shot/Absolute, Weak"

These callouts are used for telling teammates how weak an opponent is. If you're shooting somebody and land four shots on them just before they get around the corner, they'll be one-shot which means they can die from a headshot or melee. When they get around the corner one-shot, don't chase them, just call it out to your teammates that he's "one shot blue balcony" and your teammates can help you get the kill.

Absolute is a variation on one-shot. This means they are no-shields with red health, after you've landed 6 body-shots, or a grenade and a few body-shots etc. Absolute means they could be no weaker and you could probably just poke them with a pillow and pretty much kill them.

You can get fancier with these, like "two-shot" if you land three shots on somebody. That would better inform your teammates of how to handle him, and whether they should challenge the player or not.

For everything else, you should say "weak" as in "weak on our objective." Weak is used if you don't know how much damage you've done, usually by grenade or AR, but you're alerting teammates of the easy kill. Generally you should only use weak if you think you got them to at least half-shields, otherwise just callout the player normally like you need help getting kill.
 

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Rule Number Three: When to call out/Who to call out

Pretty quick rule. Halo is a team game. Callout while you're fighting to get help from your teammates. Fighting players 1 on 1 in a 4v4 is silly when you could easily call your enemy out and turn it in to a 3 on 1 fight. At the same time, think about who you want to call out. Not everything is worth it. If you're alone on the enemy side, there's really no point in calling out the one-shot guy over there since nobody can help you. At the same time, you shouldn't be over there by yourself.
 

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Rule Number Four: Weapons

Part A: Weapon Spawns
Keep a rough idea of when Rockets and Sniper will be respawning in the game, and try to keep your teammates informed of when they're coming back. For example, on most maps rockets come back every 3 minutes after being picked up. Since rockets are often first touched ten seconds into a match, you can assume rockets come back around 8:50 (left on the clock in a 12:00 minute game). Around 9:20 you should give your teammates a reminder that rockets will be back in 30 seconds. These same rules apply to Snipers, and any other weapons you feel are important enough to control.

Part B: Dropping Rockets
If you die with Rockets, or you kill the guy who has them on the other team, make sure you call them out. Also make a note of if they need to be reloaded or not. This will help your team decide what they will do after picking up the rockets so they don't get killed while trying to reload because they thought they'd be able to blast someone. If you shoot two out of four rockets and then die, call out "Two Rockets down on (wherever you died), they need to be reloaded." It might also help to keep track of how many rockets the enemy has fired if they have them.

Part C: All About Snipers
Calling out snipers can be confusing. "Sniper our healthpack" could mean a lot of things. It might mean the other team has a guy sniping in your healthpack spawn, or there might be a sniper down in your healthpack spawn, or maybe their sniper is looking to your healthpack spawn. Because of this, you need to be more descriptive when calling out anything related to snipers.

Sniper Down: Means that their is a Sniper Rifle on the ground wherever you call it out. Example, "Sniper down our Carbine."

Sniping: Means someone is sniping from wherever you call out. Example, "Sniping from their Carbine." Just "Sniping their Carbine" is also acceptable.

You can also call out if you know their Sniper's sightlines. For example, "Sniping Ring 2 looking our Rocks," which lets your teammates know where to go to avoid being blained.
 

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Rule Number Five: Directions

 

This is optional, but you can make callouts more effective with things like where someone is headed. For example, "one guy, our training going to sword." Now your teammates know almost exactly where the player is and what he's going to do.
 

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Rule Number Six: Tone

One of the most important and overlooked rules is the tone you use when you callout. Shouting a basic callout won't really help anybody and will annoy your teammates. At the same time, casually mumbling, "hey guys, uhhhhhh, on our carbine, uhhh, there's a guy he's got sniper and he's weak" is just getting in the way. Speak clearly and confidently and just say "One guy weak, sniping our carbine." You don't have to repeat it more than twice, and try to shake it off if nobody cleans up the kill. No reason to get frustrated and yell at your teammates just because they missed your callout.
 

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Rule Number Seven: Gamertags

Have you ever heard a callout, "one-shot in P2" and when you go to shoot the guy, he's definitely not one-shot? You got switched on. Another player came out to fight you while the one-shot player hid safely. You assumed the player fighting was one-shot and then challenged when you should not have and got killed. Teams can avoid this by adding gamertags to the callout. So instead of "One-shot P2" it's now, "One-Shot P2, Mr Nibbles." So now when the other guy pops out and you see that it's not Mr Nibbles you know it's not a one-shot guy, and you won't have to challenge.
 

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Rule Number Eight: Call Signs

Also known as service tags, call signs are the 4 letter/number abbreviation that appears over your head. Your call sign should be clear, concise and quick to call out.

For example, mine is Duce. It's easy to say, quick and represents my gamertag. A bad call sign would be something like A482, 1337, FHDG, etc. These call signs are difficult to say and decrease the chances of a teammate calling out to you to potentially save your life or a teammates life.

When you're in game, you should try to keep your teammates call signs in your field of view. If they aren't in your field of view, you should consider changing your positioning so that you are at an angle that will allow you to assist your teammates.

Another reason why you should have your teammates call signs in view is so that you can see what colors your teammates' call signs are when they are calling out. A teammate that has a blue call sign is not engaged. A teammate with a yellow call sign is shooting at an enemy and you should help put shots in if you are in a position to do so. A teammate with an orange call sign is taking damage. Your teammate should be calling out for help and you should be positioning yourself accordingly so that you can turn the battle into a 2 on 1 and hopefully save your teammate.

 

All credit for this goes to Ogre 9000