He is an effigy of bloated, disgusting, mutated material. Bile-filled blots cover his body, constantly undulating like hellish bellows. He is a catalyst of the horde, a walking bomb, not of the conventional sort, but all the more deadly for his unorthodox expulsions. He is the bringer of hell, the lynch pin of any major Infected attack, the avatar of chaos. He is…

The Boomer

Essential. That word describes the Boomer in a way no amount of flowery language could. His input is required for nearly any Infected attack. With partial blindness, a horde of Infected, and even a second or two of helplessness if he dies close by, the sheer chaos a successful Boomer attack brings gives the other Infected their best chance to do their job: Separation and elimination.

That said, playing the Boomer can be hard. His size, pathetic health, and slow waddle mean you have to play especially stealthy to get a good chuck-up in, but stealth is counteracted by the sheer amount of noise he makes. So you have to be unpredictable as well. Here are a few basic tips that might just improve your Boomer play.

Do Not Spawn Until You Are Ready

This is in direct relation to the amount of noise the Boomer makes, as well as his slow speed. The longer you are spawned, the better an idea the Survivors will have of where you are, and the more likely it is you will die or be bypassed before you can do anything.

Get a specific plan, have an idea of what you are going to do, then spawn. This minimises situations in which you can’t get the Survivors and are forced to run after them in order to attack, usually resulting in an unfortunate death coupled with a humiliatingly useless explosion.

Spawn As Close To The Survivors As You Can

This is very closely related to the first point. The less distance you have to cover, generally, the better. The Boomer is the one class where you will force yourself to learn and exploit the spawn system intricately to accomplish this. Basically, in any situation if you cannot directly see the Survivors (ie, they’re behind something from your point of view) you can spawn, provided you’re far enough away from them. Do anything you can to spawn as close as you can. Line them up behind a pole, crouch behind a box, above them, below them, if you can’t attack from an unexpected angle, spawn as close as you can and attack while they’re looking the other way. The ideal attack is where you’re on top of them before they know you’re there, and learning the spawn system is critical to this.

The closest spawn distance also tends to be well in range of your spew, so remember you can push the limit in terms of how close you spawn to them.

Work With The Other Infected

One thing I’m going to keep stressing in all of these articles is teamwork. You are not going to get anywhere as the Infected without it. The best bet is to buy a microphone, even a cheap one should do, anything to make sure you can communicate and organise attacks effectively. Of course, this won’t mean anything unless you actually use it, so make sure you do that too.

It’s fairly obvious that the most damaging Infected attacks involve the Boomer in some way, usually with his attack starting the carnage. But there are other ways you can work with the Infected, especially in situations that may not cater to the Boomer. A more practical one is to work with a Smoker, the Smoker grabs a Survivor and drags him away from his mates, the mate(s) run to free the Survivor, ideally straight past you, in which case you vomit over them. Then bring the Hunters into the mix.

In an area where the Boomer has to cover ground, and there isn’t a Smoker to bring the victims to him, a Hunter pounce is always a very good distraction the Boomer needs to start his run towards the Survivors. Especially when staggered, a Survivor’s attention tends to automatically divert to where the Hunter is until it’s dead, which can give you that vital window to get close and projectile-puke before they see you and shoot. The problem with this and the previous suggestion is that the Hunter/Smoker tends to die, and there’s a very good reason that it’s usually better the Boomer attack first:

The Boomer’s Bile Removes The Affected Survivor’s Ability To See Outlines

This is, essentially, your greatest weapon alongside the partial blindness and the horde. The Survivors don’t know how much they rely on the outlines until they’re gone, and because affected Survivors usually have your horde to deal with, more often than not they can’t as effectively come to the rescue of any mates who’ve been roped or pounced just after you’ve unloaded yourself into them. Sticking together is one thing it is absolutely essential for Survivors to do, and your bile throws a gigantic pus-filled wrench into that mix.

It is now that the other Infected have a chance to do their worst with a lessened fear of being caught too early. Hunters can pounce someone for several seconds right next to a mate without them noticing, Smokers have a chance to pull someone completely out of the mix and isolate them for dozens of seconds while the other Survivors try to deal with their own problems and the Hunters, and the Tank…well…he’s a lot more powerful when they can’t see him.

A Guided Bomb

There comes that time in (nearly) every spawn where you have to make a decision. Should you jump into the middle of the Survivors in an attempt to explode or hold back until your bile recharges? In a lot of situations it’s better to attempt to suicide, considering the respawn time’s very similar to the bile recharge, but also remember that the Director sometimes spawns three Hunters and a Smoker, so there’s no guarantee that you’ll get a Boomer in the next spawn wave. Also there’s no telling whether your attempt will be successful, as Survivors are getting better all the time and may have the state of mind to melee you first. So you have to assume that this is the last Boomer you’ll get for a while, and try to make it count in whatever way you can.

There are a couple of lists below, bear in mind that any situation can have several of these variables acting at once, so you have to decide on the run whether one takes precedence over the other or what advantages doing one thing will have over doing the other.

Situations for Attempted Suicide

• When you’ve only managed to cover one or two (even no?) people with bile from your vomit.
• There is a danger of you getting left behind/no chance for you to retreat ahead of the Survivors to plan another attack.
• Any situation involving a handy ledge nearby for the Survivors to fall off.
• Situations where staggering the Survivors, biled or not, will give the other Infected that extra few seconds to do some damage.
• RARE: Situations where a Smoker’s roped a Survivor from a distance, but the Survivor’s been blocked from falling off a ledge. Exploding next to these Survivors can push them around (or over) the blocking objects and into a position where they’ll take the fall damage/incap-dangle from a Smoker pulling them off a ledge (it’s often better to get a Hunter to melee you to death for this, you can’t count on the Survivors to be silly enough to shoot you).

Situations to Retreat, Recharge and Plan a Second Line of Attack

• Where you’ve covered three or all of the Survivors in bile.
• You’re in a good position to retreat ahead to another place to attack from.
• Any situation where running in and exploding would disrupt the other Boss-Infected’s attacks.
• Open or corridor areas where running towards them, even when they’re biled, would have a high probability of a stray bullet ending your life uselessly.
• Situations where it would simply be better to explode in another place compared to where the Survivors are now (case in point: Ledges).

One thing you must remember when playing the Boomer is that the bile does NOT stack. Throwing up on people then exploding on the same ones will not trigger another horde, nor make the bile last longer, or do anything other than stagger them. The only time when it triggers another horde/blindness event is when the Survivors lose their purple outlines from the previous one. Do not suicide except for the reasons listed above as it can do next to naught if you’ve already puked on them.

If you do decide to suicide, try to jump into the line of fire of Survivors who haven’t seen you yet (the ones you have biled are perfect for this) or set yourself up to surprise the player enough so that reflex takes over and automatically clicks the LMB for you. Make sure you try to position yourself within explosion radius of Survivors who aren’t biled (or the ones you want to knock off an edge).

It can be a good idea to team up with a Hunter on suicide runs when you don’t have another choice (ie. you’ve biled on them, but can’t wait for recharge before attacking again for any reason). Just get him to melee you down to 10 health or under, then get him to melee you again when you jump in the middle of the Survivors to guarantee an explosion. The Hunter will get staggered, but his stagger time will be no longer than the Survivor’s, and their blindness generally means he can get an easy pounce in.

Strength in Numbers

People underestimate the horde because of it’s weakness, the ease with which Survivors can slaughter it. Many do not consider it a great weapon, but it stands that left unchecked, the damage output of the horde is extraordinary, even on Normal. Nowhere is this more prevalent than on a biled Survivor who has found themselves pounced by a Hunter or Smoked into the horde.

Single Infected don’t do much damage, but when you get 10-15 of them attacking someone who can’t fight back, the damage output is tremendous. In a matter of seconds any Survivor will be incapped, and if left alone will die very quickly. It is imperative that the other Boss Infected take advantage of the opportunity the Boomer creates, because without their input even a Barf Bagged team will take minimal damage.

The other important thing about the horde is it’s unerring tendency to force the Survivors to hunker up and stay in one spot. It slows them down. This is important, as even only hitting one person with bile will force the other members to fall back and cover them if they don’t want to lose a team-mate. It gives your team more time to attack, a better chance to do damage, and more time to respawn and hit them again.

There are many matches I can count where a failed Boomer strike ended up costing that team the level, because the lack of a horde rush allowed the Survivors to rush a section relatively safely. So be careful, and make sure your strike counts.

The Ultimate Support

After reading everything above it should go without saying. The Boomer’s input is essential. All his tools, all his abilities, make him the most dangerous Infected by far, which is ironic as he is the only one that doesn’t deal any direct damage. But that power needs to be used correctly, because it is so easy, not to mention frustrating, for the Boomer to be useless in the wrong hands.

So go forth and rule! You are the commander, the right-hand, the only one of us who directly influences the Horde. You blind them, knock them around, kill their ability to play effectively. You are his greatest tool, his avatar of chaos, the perfect weapon of distraction.

What would we be without you, minion?

It’s no wonder this guy is our mascot.