Hello readers!

I'm Kefka. You may have seen me around before. I've played every character, learned every weapon (except RPG and thrown.. but do they even count?) and have a decent amount of hours under my belt (over 300!). I'm not arrogant enough to say I'm the best there is at this game, but I do beat the majority of players I play against. Even before the sale.

I'm writing this guide because although I see a lot of people playing Hailey, no one seems to use her right. People don't take the time to learn her ins and outs and just dismiss her as a weak character and honestly if you play her badly, she most certainly is.

...But if you play her right, then you can dance around those donut-eating, fury-kicking, poison-hucking, grenade-tossing other characters everyone loves (who shall remain nameless).

That's where this guide comes in! After playing every character and much deliberation, I eventually decided Hailey was my favourite, and I want to share with everyone what makes her so awesome in the hopes that other people will see the light and we can increase the overall amount of Hailey-love on the planet.

As a note: I WON'T be explaining gameplay basics such as moving around effectively, or combat basics. I'm assuming you know all that jazz.

OK, so let's start with the basics.

Hailey Skye is a starter character. Along with Dutch McClone, she is one of the two characters everyone who buys TSE has right off the bat. But don't let that fool you, she is quite powerful.

Her special is a rocket booster. Hitting ctrl (by default) will send you rocketing either straight upwards, off at a 45 degree angle or away to the side. It will also cause slight knockback to anyone in your immediate vicinity when you use it.

While this isn't as straight-up powerful as someone like lance who can heal about 1/4 of his bar instantly with his special, the seven second recharge time makes hers the most versatile ability in the game.

OK, here is where I'm going to get into detail about Hailey and her special ability, the rocket booster.

The rocket booster is a pretty unique special. Sure, everyones specials are different but most of them have a clear-cut use.
Lance heals HP,
Bionic's arm is for finishing enemies in close combat,
Hank throws a grenade to finish an enemy from a distance,
Gauntlet's poison is good for area denial and against predictable enemies,
Leona's ability is good for hunting down pesky hiders during showdown (and OK for low-HP escapes),
Dutch's shield gives you a temporary advantage in combat ,
Vaine's cloak is made for ambushing,
Shur Foo's kick, well that one is actually pretty versatile, but it still doesn't compare to Hailey's booster.

The rocket booster has a plethora of uses. Movement is probably the #1 most important thing to learn in TSE but even a pro player who has mastered movement can't keep up with a Hailey who knows good places to boost and who moves effectively. In this manner, you can easily pick and choose which fights you want to be a part of and which ones look too risky. Fight not going your way? Just dive away, lose your tail and heal up in a safe spot. It's also great for hunting down and eliminating high-priority targets during the showdown.

Remember going straight up into the air isn't the only option. In fact, in most situations it's the worst way to use the booster. I've seen so many people use their boost in a tiny room just to hit the ceiling uselessly and delay their death by about .5 of a second, or boost way into the air only to die on impact with the ground like a dumbass. It's usually much more effective to dive mid-roll and boost off at a 45-degree angle or even just staight-up dive boost to get away, although factoring in the time it stuns you for if you don't hit anyone with the dive it doesn't buy you that much time. The most effective way to lose someone is to find a ladder, elevator shaft or anywhere a normal player would have to jump a lot to climb and just boost up. Most times this buys you enough time to find a safe spot and start healing.

So there you have a basic idea of the defensive uses of the booster. Now let's get into the meat of TSE and the stuff that wins games: offense.

If you boost mid-dive, the boost will activate and you'll do a "super dive" that works like a normal dive, except it covers a MUCH larger distance. This has many uses. Firstly, you can break melee stalemates pretty easily. Can't get a hit in amongst all the rolling and blocking? Are you staring down an enemy while you both sit there and block, waiting for someone to make the first move? Dive tackle them, jump in the air and hit them with the weapon of your choosing (I'll get into effective weapons later on). See someone healing but don't want them to escape? Dive tackle them and take em out with the weapon of your choice. In fact, your dive is great for hunting down any low-hp enemies on the run. Remember: no one can run away from an effective Hailey. As long as no one else gets to them first it should be a snap to catch them, dive them and finish them.

An important note, however: Unlike Shur Foo's kick, your rocket-dive can easily be broken. A shotgun blast, melee swing, or kick of fury will break you out of your dive and leave you with your pants down. If this happens, just do your best to survive until your rocket is recharged and you can get away to a more favourable position.

Weapons in TSE are largely a personal choice, so I'm not going to show you The One Loadout to Rule Them All™, I'm just going to give some tips.

Guns, guns, guns. Hailey's maneuverability makes her a perfect match for long-range, hard-hitting guns. When I first started playing Hailey, I rolled with shotgun+pistol. This was very effective, but I found I couldn't really keep up with skilled players who use the sword. They just blocked all my long-range attacks and although I could dance around their swords pretty effectively, I just couldn't keep up with their kill count. So, I learned the in-and-outs of the sword. In hindsight, this should be a necessary step for anyone who wants to play Hailey. The blocking combined with your ability to quickly move around the map means you can mitigate most ranged damage. I won't tell you you HAVE to use the sword, it's your playstyle and do it how you want, but I found once I got used to using it over the shotgun it was much, much better for me.

Personally I like the pistol as a secondary. It's high DPS (provided you aim well) and good ammo pool make it a highly versatile weapon and perfect for Hailey. You can get 3 shots into a person after a dive (which is about 1/3 of their bar) and still have ammo left to chip them down while they try and run away. Usually after 2 sword slashes people try to run but since you're Hailey, you can just dive em and finish em off easily.

There's really no reason you couldn't use the rifle or SMG (although personally I find the rifle a little restrictive), they both do good damage and mesh with the sword very well. I prefer the pistol, but you should use whatever you're most comfortable with.

I don't recommend using the RPG or thrown with Hailey. Or anyone. They really are just awful.

Well, we're nearing the end of the guide now!

Here I'm just going to give you some random tips on how to effectively Hailey:

-Stay Mobile. Standing still in TSE is a death sentence for any character! It's very important to master things like rolling, wall-kicking and -hanging, and jumping especially if you want to play Hailey.

-Stay alert. Listen for fights and aim around often to find low-HP enemies.

-Don't be afraid. Get in there and fight! It's tempting to just run around and never die as Hailey, but DON'T! Playing passively is not only boring for you and everyone else, but it'll never win games! Don't be afraid to die!

-Know your enemies. When you get near the showdown at the end of a game, have a look at the score board. Take the time to scope out your competition and right when the showdown starts, dive them out of nowhere and hit them with some major DPS. If you don't kill them, you'll at least force them to heal for awhile while you can rack up some of those sweet, sweet, double-point kills.

-Think fast! Hailey is very effective at luring enemies into traps. Lots of long, straight platforms you can dive-boost across to do falling damage with. An example of this is the right-most elevator in Downtown Beatdown. You can heal there and anyone who jumps onto or lands on the platform you can boost-dive-tackle to do about 1/3 of their health bar

-Just like a regular dive, your boost-dive will miss enemies who are ducking, sliding or even just standing on a lower part of ground than you. Keep this in mind so you don't end up in a sticky situation with no boost to get you out safely.

-Find a good balance when it comes to boosting around. You'll want to make sure you're making good use of it; being mobile is important as Hailey. However, while seven seconds might not seem like a long time there's nothing more frustrating then dying without killing anything because you wasted your boost jumping around the map for no reason rather than getting an advantage over an enemy in combat.

-Learn the maps. There are lots of spots that were practically made for Hailey to heal at, and lots of great diving spots you can lure your enemies to.
Some examples include:

• The elevator shaft in Fishy Business
  
• The dungeon in Castlemania: heal there and if you see anyone quickly boost up the hole
  
• The topleft-most platform in Fishy: you can easily cross the entire map from here
  
• The bottom of the pit on the right side of Downtown Beatdown is a good place to heal. Just boost up to the platform where the elevator goes ifoyu see trouble.

That's not all of them, not by a long shot. Just the first few that pop into my head. Expirament yourself in-game to find good places to heal at or advantageous places to boost.

Well, that's it! My knowledge of how to play Hailey has been fully reverse-engineered. Now that you've read this guide you should be able to go out there and rack up the kill counts that are sky(e) high!

...Except not really. I wrote this guide as a starting point for people who like her but feel they just can't keep up. There are things about playing Hailey I can't teach you. You just have to play as Hailey and get to know her playstyle. It takes time to learn the feel of the maps, where to boost and when; when to be offensive and chase them down for the kill vs. recognizing when you're outmatched in a situation and using the boost to put some distance between you and your hunter. You can be a skilled Hailey, but not til' you figure this out!

You won't dominate right away after reading this guide, but spend some time playing with Hailey (ooh la la) and things will start clicking into place. You'll start moving around the map like it's second nature. You'll always have the advantage in combat and eventually, winning showdowns will feel as easy as writing a GUI in Visual Basic to find the next clue!

I tried to slip in as many Hailey lines into this guide as I could... see if you can find them all!
^^

Cheers everyone,

~Kefka