Competitive Assassin/Tank Combo

In the last couple weeks I have noticed a lot of Assassin/Tank combos choosing lanes and pushing one lane each. Please stop this.

Assassin, push bots forward.

Tank, shoot pros and be the safety net for bots if they get past the Assassin. The Tank's time is much better served pushing for and holding top-mid than escorting robots. Once you control the map THEN push bots in.

Jon da prophet!

Bob da omb Bob!

In the last couple of weeks, I've been seeing a lot of dragons breath fire on me while standing on the ground.

Your time is better spent flying around and berthing fire so I can't reach you.

Then I stop dying to a gunner with too much time on his hands

Yep.

The Tank is too much of a high priority target to be chillin' all alone in a bot lane. It's very rare that a Tank will be able to get bots on the ball without map control anyway, so get up top where you can help your team and your team can help you.

Amen.


About 1/3 of my kills as an assault were on Tanks railgunning bots halfway across the map. E-Z killz brah

All 3 games that I played Assassin last night, Chollo kept asking me which lane I wanted. My response: "The front one. Kill people until I ask for help or if you spot bots past mid."

30 seconds later: "Lets switch lanes"

Goddammit. :|

I think it was ChoIIo asking me the same thing...'which lane?'
err...both

See, the new fags in the competitive community don't seem to understand that if you're each in a lane and one of you dies, the chances of your ball going down is much greater than if you're both watching a section of both lanes.

I completely agree but there were some people in the old privates who didn't understand that concept either.. boom or the dude, which ever played tank always called a lane and I never understood why. Assassin can easily watch both lanes. Whenever I play, I only focus on bots. I'll pick up kills on my way to the other lane.

That's why I loved deadpool's assassin and hawkshades tank. deadpool almost always kept the bots mid map, even if we were getting outslayed and kept in our spawn. That allowed hawkshade to provide support from a far and cleaned up many kills that way.

I also agree that the chances of your ball dropping is much greater when you have an assassin on one lane, and tank on the other. Sounds weird but it's true. Focusing on one lane shows the other team where you're coming from, and you're more likely to die when you stay on one side of the map. Applying pressure back and forth to both lanes makes them have to split their focus on the lanes, or put another man on bot duties. When they're trying to push back the one lane you just pushed, you have plenty of opportunity to push from the other side. I've downed many balls by making it look like bots in the right lane were getting close, but then went for a strong push on the left.

A lot of this **** is common sense, but I figured I'd write it up anyway.

As far as tanks go, I haven't noticed anyone that played an effective tank like shammas and hawkshade did. Assassin is good for pushing the bots, but a juiced tank should be an automatic ball drop if you have map control. GP's assassin never took down our ball if I remember correctly, but it was always shammas' tank.

and I thought I was done writing essays..

TL;DR - assassin's push both lanes, and tank provides support fire/map control. assassin's go for quick/sneaky ball drops, juiced tank should go for ball drop when the enemy is pushed back.

Both TEG members. They picked up on that habit because Phily didn't have the confidence to take both lanes, though he certainly had the skill.

It depends on the map.

On Ammo Mule and Steel Peel, the assassin should absolutely be pushing both lanes. On Spunky, the assassin obviously should be pushing the lane.

On Lazr Razer it's a little bit more complicated because the ends of the lanes are so far apart. I think that the tank should cover the right side, at least up to the middle. I mean, as assassin, I theoretically CAN get to both lanes, but the amount of time it takes me to go all the way back to clear out the other lane is more than enough time for me to lose any ground I've gotten pushing up bots on my left. I would say have Assassin pushing left, tank pushing right on LR. That way, tank gets right hand advantage for his rail gun, and as long as the tank can keep the bots in the middle on his side he can still do whatever he wants.

Grenade III really requires split lanes. Assassin can't push both lanes on that map...not fast enough to drop the ball. Once again, keep tank on the right for right side rail gun advantage...or maybe put assassin on the right so that he can go for the jackbot right when it comes out.


On any map, once you've got the enemy stuck behind their front bridge and bots pushing in, tank needs to turn into IM HUDSON mode and start charging, death blossoming, p.grenading everything in sight to walk bots in...because I do agree that while assassin > tank for pushing bots, tank > assassin for actually dropping the ball once bots have been pushed.

On Laser, if the Tank is pushing for top-mid, I see no reason that he couldn't still act as a safety net being that the lanes aren't that far apart in the middle anyway.

As for GIII, the games usually get off to a slow start because of all the jump pad buying to cover distances. However, once 2 of the jump pads are purchased from low mid, an Assassin should have no trouble at all clearing both lanes. Also, since you should really only be cutting up bots, your sword can wait until after you have bought a jump pad or 2.

The point is that if you have bot killing power in the front and back, you won't really need to panic if your Assassin dies because the Tank will be behind her instead of in the next lane over. If the Tank has to drop his lane to cover yours, you're risking a complete loss of bot control, not just a minor set back.

If I am playing assassin on LR, and I decide to go pushing both lanes hard, it's simply too slow because moving from the top left hand corner of the map (just outside of the enemies front bridge) all the way to the bottom right corner of the map (where the enemy assassin is going to have bots pushed up if a tank isn't covering that lane and I'm not covering it) takes so much time that by the time I get back to mid, bots in the lane I was pushing are already at mid.

I can't see a tank successfully holding bots against an assassin only pushing that lane if he's not in the lane the entire time. I'd say that in competitive - Tank pushes bots to mid and then holds map control past that...while assassin pushes bots up the left where it's easier to sneak them in.

If the assassin were to control both lanes, the best way to do it would be for the assassin to hold all bots in the middle and push the right lane up instead of the left...that way he can get back to his own base in case of a crisis much quicker. It's something I used to do when I first started playing try hard assassin and played it in every pub game solo. This still leaves quite a bit of space between bot lanes once you're pushing up towards the front...but yeah. I'd say overall, Lazer Razr's meta game allows for more team customization for the roles of the assassin/tank.


As for Grenade III...Jon, do you remember that first private match I ever played where I was on a team with you, Miracle, Tom, and Kckzi? The one where they yelled at me for sucking? The one that got me to start posting **** about them and basically began that whole fued?

Literally, what was happening that game was we were on Grenade III and instead of pushing one lane I was attempting to push both. Well, we kept bots past mid all game, but despite the fact that I was doing nothing else but attacking bots, and I was hardly dying, we didn't drop their ball until I listened to them and stuck with one lane.


Ultimately, on every map, at some point, the assassin's gotta commit to a lane. Obviously, on most maps, assassin is pushing both lanes. But once you got them pinned, the assassin really needs to choose one and stick with it...otherwise you won't drop the ball, you'll just constantly have your own bots dying right when they get past the bridge.


I do agree with you on this - seeing tanks pushing bots on Ammo Mule and Steel Peel makes me sad. Not only does it take away from your team's ability to put damage into pros, but the tank killing all those bots takes a significant amount of juice gain away from the assassin, which cripples your team - I'd say at the highest level of play, an assassin's ability to juice spam off of the bots he kills is really the difference between what makes an assassin good vs. not good at the highest level of play (this is true...if you think about it, no matter how good of an assassin you are, you can't push bots much farther than what you have map control of. But if you can hold bots until you have juice and then help clear out some of that map control, you've become a legit asset to your team).

You're mostly arguing my point, but beyond that, didn't you write this?

Yes, I did. It's just still not fast enough for those 2 maps. Gotta have somebody cover that back walkway/ejector pad for you, at the very least, on LR. And grenade 3







well, fuck grenade 3.

YAY!!! Now i can kill pros not bots

Jon Ive been told scince the begining that assassin pushes one lane and tank the other...I also read it on shamass guide (cant remember which one).
The type of tank I want on my team is someone that mainly focuses on shooting at pros but can also give me a hand with some bots.
E.g: Steel Peel: The tank can easily watch one of the lanes and railgun it from A FAR(talkes literaly 3 sec). Once done with that wave of bots you can focus your attention on pros or viceversa.
Amo mule: same thing here
Lazor Razor: The assassin can easily watch both lanes here.

Also this way I can push one lane really hard and get the ball down easier.
E.g. Without having to worry about both lanes I can camp my bots while cloaked and with juice, this way if the other assassin comes close to them i can juicen on him and get my lane really far into the enemy base.

But i will admit tho I should focus more in both lanes and not just one, ill try to switch off my playstyle.