Tank vs Assault: Help!

Assaults hover out of jet gun rang, move left and right so I can't rail gun them, my Product Grenade sails right past their heads, and they shred me with critical shots. You can't fight them, you can't run from them, what should I do?

switch to gunner and take the high ground from them.

doesnt even take that much money to switch to a gunner midgame.

or switch to another assault.

or stay under something and close range and tight to corners. you might win 1 our of 2 as a tank if you catch him close. or... youll just get one of those nifty hats you always wanted for MNC from TF2, and it will be in the shape of a bomb!

My gunner is so bad the 360 crashes in shame if I die too many times playing as him. The problem is, with Assaults, I can't pick the fight. They always attack me in the open. I could just hide indoors but that means I can't push any bots.

keep your distance with them when you have no back up. dont put yourself in a position where they can charge off a ledge and chase you. if they start chasing you rail as you are jumping backwards and obviously pro grenade. all it takes is a couple shots and they will back off. if you're red/yellow bar and they are chasing you and you have no escape always set yourself up for desperation charge + death blossom. your charge cancels theres out and thats your strong point tank vs assault. lvl 3 charge is very important.

utilize the charge hop (charging off a ledge and jumping mid air) to ambush them when they're not looking.

if you're having that much trouble hitting assault with rail try an accuracy build.

im saying there may not be an answer. it may be a case of stradegy. there may not be a way to go to the bot lane and push. you may hafta rail from afar, switch to sniper to push bots, switch to assassin to push bots, or switch to a class to kill the assault while someone else pushes bots.

unless someone else knows a good way to fight an assault with aireal advantage as a tank.

id personally OHKO a tank everytime with aireal advantage as an assault, easy to line up a headcrab.

like the guy above said, try a different build. armor, rate, accuracy?

*strategy

This is one of the tank's most difficult match ups. There are only five scenarios where I will use my jet gun against an assault:

A) They're really bad.
B) I have juice.
C) I have him backed up into his base.
D) He has me backed up into my base and has foolishly boxed himself in.
E). I've snuck up on him.

If it's any other situation, then you're better off keeping your distance and using your rail gun. It really comes down to practice.

I do have two rail gun tricks. Use bronze accuracy. It dramatically improves hit detection. The other is to keep in mind the nature of the rail gun. What I mean is, it has no bullet travel time (shots travel to their destination instantly), so you should never lead your target. Any time your target is inside your aiming reticule shoot and you should hit (unless there's heavy lag).

Hope this helps.

Edit: I would caution against everyone saying to use the tank charge jump vs assaults. At close range, you need the charge for crowd control and damage. If you blow charge JUST to cover distance, you are pretty much left to your jet gun + product grenade at close range. (At which point, bomb or charge will simply knock you back out of jet gun range). I'm assuming the assault is good in this scenario. The tank jump will likely work against non-armored assaults that don't see you coming, but an armored assault will have plenty of time to react.



Assault is pretty much the counter-tank class IMO:

-Good base movement speed AND burst mobility vs worst base movement speed.

-Headcrab is the one of the only three skills that will OHK a silver armor full passive tank, and is by far easier to achieve than either a pancake or a head crab AND is on a significantly shorter cooldown than either.

-Even if the head crab misses, bomb 3 won't, and you will be outside of tank charge range again.

-If you are somehow still inside tank-charge range, he also has a knockback or a grapple-throw charge to remove you.

-Jet pack means he never gets hit by product grenade 3's cluster bombs, and he is much more difficult to hit with charge/jetgun, and he will just fly out of your railgun grapple ring out attempts.

-Oh, and his rifle melts you like butter at mid to close range, without sacrificing mobility to do so.

----------

Railgun is your best friend against assaults, provided you are wearing gold RoF. Unlike them, you know exactly how much damage each and every shot your weapon will deal at any range. I still would not go heads up vs a good assault at mid range with this gun, but if you have cover and are confident in your blind, it is your most winnable battle. Take the high ground before they do, and don't let them take it back.

Against good assaults, losing the battle is almost expected at mid range. To win at close range, you need to be able to get into charge distance without wasting charge. This is the most difficult part of the fight. Charge 3 MUST be used to crowd control the assault. If it hits, you will win. This is difficult as most good assaults will use their jet pack to fly over most corners, making ambushes very difficult unless they have poor map awareness.

Hit them with a product grenade AFTER they over commit to a fight. The assault can get away with so much right now, that its very common to see even high level players blow their assault charge while jet packing towards someone who has taken cover from a mid range fight. Hit them right after they waste this. Now they are blind with one less get out of jail free card with a half drained jetpack. Even if you can't kill them, it makes it much more difficult for them to escape.

This might be the one class you DON'T want to jumping deathblossom against, as if they drop bomb 3 or charge 2 while you are doing it, you will fly twice as far from the knockback. Alternatively, if you DON'T jump and they have charge 3, they will just grapple you out of your blossom.

Its not as bad as the assassin vs tank match up (from the assassin's perspective), but its a very annoying fight (especially when the other team often has 3 or more of them).

i do it all the time against gold armored assaults that are distracted. an assault aiming down their sight is extremely easy to pro grenade. i dont have a problem killing them or weakening them enough to the point where i can chase/rail them. you should always assess the area you plan on charge jumping into and if your team doesn't have map control it's usually a bad idea. assuming you didn't charge jump into 3 enemy pros, charge 3 + skill recovery will give you an escape just incase you fail and speed power ups help.

always be aware when you plan to aggressively chase someone

shh, dont tell them that.

that will take away all my uberstreaks.

God i love when one random doesnt get the point to NOT go left from your spawn and use the jumppad up on lazorrazor. you might as well walk from your spawn to the nearest ledge and jump off, waiving back to the arena as you fall. it would save both of us some time.

New statement based on peachy's statement: Charge Jump if you play like peachy.

Rub your beard in his face and taunt him since he'll never be able to grow one like yours. Srsly.

On Topic: Either get close, or get far. He'll lose at close and far range if you know what you're doing, but he'll smash you at medium range. Charge and death blossom or product nade and rail him.

Assault is a very powerful class vs any other class 1v1. Like everything lure them into a 1v2 and you have a better chance.

Hudson covered pretty much every point about how weak the tank matches up vs the assault. Now days if I even see an assault on one side of the map I try to avoid him and take a different route and if I'm lucky enough to get close enough without him noticing while he is distracted and not blowing my charge 3 in the process, then the odds slightly more in my favor than a head on head fight, obviously, but only if they are bad enough to let you get that close. Assaults are a big counter to the Tank.

Semi long - offtopic; Is there even a class that hard counters a good Assault player? They dominate mid-range, and every other class besides Gunner is fairly weak mid range (Sniper/Tank/Support/Assassin). They have the maneuverability that long range wont get them killed very often. See a Sniper / rail-gunning Tank shooting at you? dash away. If dash is down, Grenade launch a few grenades in his direction while jumping and heading for cover. Chances are your skinny buns won't get touched anyway. Someone catch you close range? Dash to knock him into mid range (or rung out), headcrab for an insta kill or to knock him into mid range and gun them down. Losing a midrange battle? Np, just dash around a corner and drop a bomb to push away / kill anyone stupid enough to follow your red-healthed self.

I've never played the gunner so is this the one class that is the counter? I still seeing the skill-set and mobility of the assault winning in most AvG matchups.

I don't feel the assault is OP and I'm not QQing, his job is to take out pros to prevent them from doing their jobs as bot pushers / lane defenders / ect and he does that job extremely well. I just see no weaknesses in his skills that makes him vulnerable vs any matchup, barring player mistakes on the assault's side.

no hudson, i just feel like the charge jump is the tank's best element of surprise and is the best way to go on the offensive against assaults.

Gunners can win at mid range vs assaults, but I would not say hes a counter. Its closer to a 60/40 match up that swings advantage depending on a number of variables (mostly the gunner's spin up time).

Gunner deploy IMO SHOULD be the counter to assault players: The deployed minigun is the only weapon in the game that slows enemies while doing massive damage to mid range. The problem is headcrabs still slaughter you.

I'd LOVE to see deploy level three make you immune to headcrabs (YOU HAVE A HEAD SHIELD! ) . Let air strikes still one shot you though.

I was agreeing with your statement after you qualified it, silly.

i thought you were mocking me

I'm much more comfortable tank vs assault than gunner vs assault. I think the gunner vs assault match up is just awful. Any good assault player will expose the slow health recovery of the gunner and chase them all over the map. Gunner not prespinning? Gun them down. Gunner prespinning? Throw a bomb and chase them.

That and the Gunner's large square upper body makes a nice target.

Yep, once an assault starts juice chaining you might as well just sit in your spawn. Hardest Juiced pro vs pro IMO.