The tank class can be a load of fun if you get used to it. Now, it is all I ever use in Crossfire. My endorsements are Gold: Armor, Silver: Health Regen, and Bronze: Either Ammo reload (why in just a sec) or Speed. Armor because it makes you REALLY hard to kill and gives you that extra advantage when you need it to charge in or get away. Health Regen because if you somehow get away from a major fight that you want to get right back into, just charge out and heal up in a couple seconds. Ammo Reload because the whirlwind type attack uses up all your ammo so the fast you can reload after that, the fast you can get back into the fight. Speed because tanks are as slow as a grandma driver. The extra little boost of speed to get across the level is always nice. My strategy on tanks is this: 1. Spot an enemy and decide if you want to use the rail gun from afar to try to take him down or sack up and go for close quarters. (Personally I prefer charging in) 2. For the rail gun, just sit there and snipe him down but always watch your back while doing so. If you can, get a grenade over near him. The quick stun/blind will let you finish him off. ----> For charging in, launch a grenade near the enemy you spot and use the Jet Charge to get into the fight and do crazy damage right off the bat. 3. Once you charge in and hit him (hopefully), use the whirlwind. IT DOES CRAZY DAMAGE. If the enemy is not dead yet, burn him down with your jet gun or pop another whirlwind out if you are close enough. -Remember that you can burn enemies with your attacks so if they have very low hp and are on fire, just get out of the fight and let them burn down. I have gotten a lot of kills from the grave because of this, more than you would think. -Deploying, not that great for a tank. To deploy with the jet gun out is almost pointless because of its range and you want to keep moving while up close and for the rail gun, it is really not worth it. Just keep moving! -Assassins vs Tanks: If you get grappled by an assassin as a tank, you need to charge right away, gather your thoughts, whirlwind when the assassin comes back, then burn or charge again if you can. TANKS CAN RAPE ASSASSINS IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. This strategy has helped me get numerous kills and not a lot of deaths in crossfire. I dont know what it will do for you but I hope it works! Good luck out there.
When a Tank is deployed the Jet gun's range is further. ...I'm not sure if it increases as you level up the deploy skill, or if it's just a set distance longer when deployed.
The tank is definitely an underrated class, but with that being said I still feel he's subpar compared to the Gunner. He can still die ridiculously fast under fire and he struggles in mid to long range due to the difficulty of using the railgun compared to the fully auto guns of most of the other classes. I think the classes are pretty well balanced, but if any class could use a small boost it's definitely the tank.
Tank=Blitz Now in Crossfire he is decent, I think the Railgun needs some working maybe an added CC effect to hit would be nice, also deploy is fairly weak. I find it only useful to add to his already quick regen, so grabbing a 2 isn't a bad idea but at 3 you can charge in close deploy and make Turrets cry. Other then that GRENADE is AMAZING!!! Great CC, wipes bots and helps work on dem Jackbots.
Deploy is only really useful in over time when the moneybal'ls down. With third grade deploy you can usually get almost half of it's health down without juice.
The only time a tank "dominates" me is when they sit with just the rail gun poking out around cover. It's much easier for them to force you to engage in close quarters if you can't ignore constant bombardment from an untouchable position. Other than that it's way too easy to just back-peddle (especially as the assault). I have played a few rounds against good tanks, one of whom was actually level 71 and we're still within a week of launch, and had my arse consistently handed to me.
Aside from killing players, tanks are also one of the best at actually winning the game. They can destroy bots like nobody's business, and the upgraded grenade is pretty good for helping to take out turrets, second only to the gunner's mortar. It's kind of a funny class to play.. big slow guy, solid color makes him stand out more than anyone else (unlike the stupid gunner who blends right in with jackbots), yet he has to sneak up on people. Still my favorite class, since I can't aim worth a damn with an analog stick
I like playing tank, but sometimes I feel like I'm only good with him because my opponents aren't as good as your average joe gamer. I feel like I rely less on his main weapons and more on his charge and spin attack. Is it just me, or could the hitbox to the jet engine cannon stand to be a bit... wider?
I love tank. The endorsements I roll with are gold RoF, silver armor, and bronze reload. You can't really play it as a tanking tank, it's more of a DPS tank. (If you're having a lot of trouble staying alive you can switch rate of fire and armor) You can do oodles of damage with your jet gun and your rail gun. When the game starts I grab Passive level 2 for survivability and Charge level 2 to help with early kills. I spend half the first 50$ on a laser blazer turret somewhere and charge down the lane with railgun and shoot at anyone I see and kill bots when no one else is around, anything gets close kill them with a combo of the jet gun and charge, never forgot about how awesome the rail gun grapple is if you get caught with it out at close range. I level up charge, product grenade, and passive, never bother with deploy. Use all the money you would've spent on deploy instead on turrets and bots. The main things with playing like this are just staying in areas with lots of cover, watching your back because assassins will hate you, and making sure you get the jump on everyone, or you can outaim them with your railgun (remember it generally only takes 3 shots to kill a sniper, hopefully they don't headshot you and you can get them)
The biggest part of playing tank is learn how to deal with people trying to kite you and learn how to deal with people at long range. The former usually happens with supports and assaults trying to keep you at midrange, your two main options are to charge at them with your jet gun if you're close enough, or start backing up, launch a product grenade at them and get your rail gun out and start shooting while you look for cover, and if they get too close with rail gun out, either charge or grapple them. For the latter either long range product grenade + railgun them. Or find a route of cover to get close. Or just avoid them completely and go somewhere else you can be more effective, getting tunnel vision on one enemy as tank is really dangerous to yourself
Playing tank effectively is all about knowing your environment and using it, you have to be sneaky. And mobility is key. Always keep moving, you're a big fat target. Use jump pads to get behind your opponent. I often hug walls out of line of sight and slowly peak around corners to ambush pros coming down a lane. Make them come to you. I used to take passive and charge right off the bat, but have since switched to grenade. I've gotten pretty surgical with pegging people at long range with the grenade. I use it on almost every cooldown. Remember, you don't have to be on the ground to use charge. It's great for stopping the momentum of a ring out and flying back in. I can usually get right back into the arena with a charge followed by jets. Using jets first will not stop the backward momentum and you'll always land short of the arena. Assassins have gotten smarter since they know they can't usually take a tank toe to toe. Often grapple and run. But they usually always dash in a straight line. After they eat your charge they usually have a sliver of life left if not dead. Pull the railgun out and pop them in the back. I don't engage gunners unless my grenade is up and I can easily get into range. Trying to go head on vs one is suicide. Open with grenade, lite em up, then charge usually does the trick. I avoid snipers unless I can get the drop on them. And even then traps make things difficult. Assault give me the most trouble because they can stay out of range while still doing damage and being very mobile. Sneakiness comes in handy here.
I added this to another thread but would also like to add it here to help out as well. I don't know if it's 100% accurate or not but from my experience it works really well. When ever you know an assassin is coming for you, or any pro with grapple intent, just keep jumping up and down or stay in the air with your jumpacks. The assassins will reveal themselves trying to grapple you and you can easily deal with them and the assault becomes more manageable, not having to worry about ring outs.
And if you ever think someone is about ready to grapple you, stay away because they can grapple you even if you're charging them, it's stupid but you just have to deal with it
What buffs would you consider? I mean he's no where near as useless as the TF2 pyro thankfully due to his charge, high health and jet gun, even if he has a huge hitbox and is horridly slow. In comparison to the Gunner, he has more mobility with the charge and the stun grenade, so it's not all bad, although I have to say that I'm astonished by the amount of kills a gunner can amass from newbs who don't know what cover is. I will admit a slight jetgun range increase or knocking off a second from the jet charge cooldown would be nice, but that's all I can really think of...
Yeah I played some Tank tonight and was really impressed by him. He's unmatched at close range, you just have to get to that range without dying first. The rail gun is a solid long range weapon, it's gotten me a good amount of kills on low health people who thought they were safe hiding around a corner/far away. The death bloom is amazing for killing bots. The grenade seems nice, I haven't really noticed its damage yet though. One annoying thing I keep seeing is that I'll charge in and death bloom, but my charge will knock the pro back just enough to avoid the bloom. I'll probably just start charging and jet gunning and only use the bloom to finish off low health pros or kill bots. I was running gold armor, silver rof, bronze health regen. I tried swapping out the rof for speed, but noticed a big increase in time to kill on the jet gun without rof, so I had to switch back. The main frustrations with the class are the turtle speed and the deadzone he has in midrange combat. If you get caught by a gunner or assault at mid range you might as well bend over.
I play as the Tank the most, and recently I've found being an offensive Tank plays the best :!: G = Reload S = Armor B = Skill Refresh With the faster Reload speed, we can dominate the Black Jack bots in one hit with our Jet weapon's "spin attack," because we can use the spin-attack every 1.1 seconds (give or take). This means we're basically a spinning mass of death, and anything that gets close to us will die. ...With the extra Armor we can survive Assasins better, and Snipers. And with the Skill Refresh we can use our "rushing" ability (the B-button) to get in, and out of combat more often, which is important considering we can spin-spin-spin everyone to death (and it helps because we're very slow moving).
The tank is one of the best classes for moving bots up a lane. Keep close to your bots as cover, and every time your bots get into a confrontation with opposing bots, pop out, and death lotus them for an instant kill of all the bots. Your bots will demand a reaction from the opponent, or create enough cover for you to fry their turrets up close and personal with the jet gun. Should an enemy get close, a quick charge followed by a death lotus usually finishes most classes off. Hear an assassin, immediately use death lotus to find your flaming little friend. The class is great, and the product grenade can take care of targets that want to range you, lock turrets for a little, and clean up bots from a distance. The deploy's first upgrade is very useful considering if you are low on health, turn a corner, activate it, and in seconds your health is back. Then just return to battle. The third should only be for end game, where you deploy to hit the money ball, since it makes your jet engine an infinite ammo gun, and when deployed above the moneyball, you are in range of everything and everyone. Treat the tank as the name suggests, have a few friends tag along, and you initiate the confrontation taking a majority of the damage. Unless you are getting shot at by a sniper or a gunner, you should be fine while your friends make quick work of your distracted victim. Then continue to push quickly down a lane. I find that a tank is the most effective way to push a lane quickly and force the enemy onto defense. Also last tip. Deploying in front of a turret while your bots are getting hit is almost a guaranteed way of killing a turret. Your jet gun does a large amount of damage to a turret, and while deployed you take reduced damage. So long as the turret has no help, that turret is going down in seconds.
I settled into the tank really quickly and am now playing a custom with RoF/Armor/Reload. After reading this and other things I started trying to play it in different ways, here's what I've experienced so far: -If you're grappled by an assassin then spam your B attack because they will usually end up in front of you at the end of the animation. If you've leveled it up, this will very often kill them. In fact, leveled up, that B attack is dangerous to pretty much everyone. -avoid assassins if that ability is on cooldown. Your jet gun will certainly hurt them quickly, but it can be risky to go head-to-head without that B attack to back you up. -I too thought Tank deploy was useless until I started using it to take out jackbots and turrets at a distance. It's very effective for those sorts of situations, and for attacking the moneyball if you have some back-up. -Do not underestimate the value of the rail gun. It's a great ranged weapon, can make short work of lower level turrets or firebases and is probably your best defense against gunners. It's also useful for cutting through bots before they get too close to base. I usually spawn, switch to railgun and then wait to get closer until I use my Jet gun now. - Kill bots because you're awesome at it, but don't let it slow you down. You can kill most bots so quickly that you can help with that effort while simultaneously doing lots of other things, like providing defence or assaulting a defended position. I've played plenty of games where I've only made a couple of kills but have made the most money, but I've also played plenty of games where I've got a lot of kills and assists as -well- as killing all those bots, so don't think you have to be focused on that one thing.
