The Big Ol' Tank

The Tank imo is not a super easy class to get into, but easier than assassin/sniper. Tank is the big huge guy who's job is to get close and distract the enemies with his huge defense. The tank is very slow but is very lethal if used correctly.

Basic tips:
1. Dont be an idiot, use your rail gun. It is VERY effective if you learn how to aim it. (You can wall shoot with it)
2. Dont charge off ledges like an idiot
3. Dont deploy out in the middle of the field, you will die, your a tank but your not invincible. Your jet charge and slow firing rail gun doesn't help much either.
4. Use your product grenades, it is one of the tanks most effective skills.
5. If you have juice USE IT!. Run up and destroy destroy destroy. Get very close to turrets and enemies for maximum damage.
6. Dont deploy in front of a Jack Bot Either... he will kill you before you kill him. (Unless you have juice or maybe bacon)
7. Your secondary attack for the jet engine is a spin, use it!

Skills- Product grenade: The tanks most effective skill, use it to stun everything! Also use it to blind enemies. Once you get it to level 3 it is very effective for pushing into the enemy base. USE IT ON THE JACK BOT!

Deploy: Not as useful as the gunners however good if your attacking the money ball or camping for defending. It can also be useful for taking out multiple rushing enemies. Again dont use it in open, you will either get head shotted or just die.

Jet Charge: Again a very useful skill. This skill is VERY powerful espically at level 3, being able to instant kill assassins and snipers. Use it to ring out opponents or kill them if you run out of ammo.

Spin- The secondary function of the jet engine, eats all of your ammo but is very powerful and can save you in a quick pinch.

Grapple- Used with the rail gun. The tanks grapple is weak but punches enemies FAR! Use it near the edges to quickly ring out an enemy if you can.


Tactics:

Skills- Start off with product grenade lvl 2 and passive lvl 2. This will give you a big advantage. Level 2 product will blind/stun and passive will give you EVEN MORE HP. Continue to upgrade your skills from there, your first level 3 skill should be be either passive or product grenades. Focus the least on deploy.

Beginning game: Your passive and product grenades will help you greatly. Start by picking off long range players with your rail gun, as they get closer use your engine. Be careful of assassins, they wont instant kill you but they can drain your hp enough for another class to kill you quickly. Finish them off if they "try" to kill you. Use the product grenade against bots and players. Get money and upgrade. Be very careful going out in the open, you are wide open to snipers and other classes as the tank is very slow. The jet engine has very short range.

Mid game: As you upgrade your skills more, continue with the same tactics. Push your robots using the product grenades and stun the jack bots for the offense classes to kill .Jump over his slam and take the aggro off your team. Try to kill assassins and other classes trying to sneak in from behind. Those corridors are small and perfect for a tank. Use your jet charge to get close if you have to, or to ring somebody out. Just dont use it near an edge, your better off using the spin.

End game- Push push push! Try to sneak behind enemies to take out camping supports, snipers, etc. Keep destroying those bots and draw enemy fire toward you. If your pushing forward, use the product grenades. Stun the turrets and bots to give your team an edge. The level 3 grenades split into 4 grenades and take down turrets hp FAST! Get close to turrets and burn them up. Again use your rail gun to take out long range enemies, and your jet engine when they get close. Your level 3 jet charge is DEADLY. Use it to get close and then finish them off with your jet.


Overall: Get up close and personal. Your hp and defense can help you with that as well as your jet charge. Take aggro of enemies toward you and watch our for snipers! Pick them off with your rail gun, you have it for a reason so use it. Remember the jet engine cant go far.

So what do you guys think? This is my preferred tactics for tank, leave a comment on your thoughts and how much a fail this guide is ^^

Having played a whole lot of Tank, I have to say that this is mostly really good info.

The only thing I think you're a bit off on is not using Deploy on Jackbots. If you're Deploy is full specced out and you deploy above its relative line of sight, you can take it out very quickly. if you have Juice it literally takes seconds.

It's a very helpful tactic in the end game for keeping Jackbots away from your Money Ball.

I think your guild is pretty much on the ball honestly, but I find charge to be THE one thing that keeps Tanks viable. It can be used to escape from combat too, which even though Tanks have a lot of health you need to know when to take cover. I always to check if it's off cooldown before I go into combat.


Oh, and if you see a Gunner (My personal pain in the *** as a Tank), most of the time you need to back off and snipe him with the rail gun. You won't out damage him with just the Burner, but I found that it is possible to engage Gunners at close range with a combination of the level 3 charge and Burner, but ONLY if you are 100% sure you are in range to charge his ***.

My personal pain to fight is the tank, because besides the gunner (which I make a point of never fighting close range) its the only class with the health to survive a chargem grebade a whole clip of the burner, plus the spin attack

My current plan to dela with enemy tanks is to run and find a support for help - any better ideas out there?

If you can, I would try opening up with the rail gun to lower his health a bit then Charge him asap and follow up with the Burner.


And I haven't tried this out myself, but what if you went into the stationary form to take him on...??

I thought the only difference in the stationary form is increased health regen when not getting shot, and the headshot shield? That doesn't sound useful

I have no experience with that ability honestly lol, was just throwing that out there.

I can call myself an avid Tank player at this point and I've gotten quite good at it. I'll tell you how I play and hopefully you can start using it your advantage as well.

Endorsement:

Gold - Reload (More on this in a sec)
Silver - Walk speed - Your slow, And you have short range. This comes in handy, just not as much as the short reload time.
Bronze - Skill time - This is more of optional, This low of the skill set on anything is barley noticeable. Others worth trying would be armor, health Regen, Juice.

Beginning - I buy passive and Charge. Quickly. Then charge the front line. Make sure to know the distance of your charge and be accurate with it. Use your rail gun to kills bots / Force players into cover. Once your close enough for the jet to take affect switch to it. star firing until you damage them a little, then charge and as soon as you hit them Death Blossom for the kill. Here is where Reload time comes in handy a lot, You can chain death blossom pretty well with it and anyone who gets in range of you is a dead man. If you get juice. Charge THEN juice and go on a mad death blossom spree. You will pee yourself in enjoyment when you see how effective it is. Upgrade to Grenade 2 -> Charge 3 -> Passive 3 -> Grenade 3 -> Ten start cashing in on bots, Tank stand is useless imo.

Midgame - Be a bot killer. Kills players as you see them but just start wreaking bots with death blossom. It's super effective. Try to focus on one side and befriend a support player. Once getting to enemy turrets, Kill them from afar with your railgun. When using the rail gun on players, They will hide 9 times out of 10, Product grenade as accurately as you can and go in for a charge / Death Blossom kill. Use the Product grenades often. This will make you better at firing them and a huge asset to your team. See a pack of bots, Grenade. Always.


If you make it over time, You should invest in at least tank stand 2 if not 3. It's really good for taking out jack bots. For a killer cash ball destroying combo, Use juice and tank stand right on it and blast away. You can quickly get an advantage in cashball health levels this way.

Hope this helps you a better tank player.

Personally I go Armor/clip size/reload

my starting perk is charge, i use the other 150 to start a longshot.

The product bomb is nice, but for my style of play, which is much more in the thick of things, i prefer the extra armor and the charge.

I play a "backdoor" style; I take the long road around, and burn/charge people for quick kills, then get out of there. If you see the chance to sneak up on someone, don't start shooting until you are a very close. If you start shooting when they reach the max range of your jet gun, there is a good chance they are going to get away. Get close, burn about half of their health then charge.

This takes down enemy players quickly, and doesn't give you much of a chance to get hurt.

I then always try to get out of sight, and set up another ambush.

Another trick is to bait. Let someone see you then run around a corner, if they come after you, charge as they turn that corner, then burn them away.

The reason for being so protective is that it can be hard as a slow mover to push across into ambush territory, and you want to stay alive for as long as possible, and keep the chaos in their base so that they can't shoot down your creeps.

You never want to get into a "dual" situation with a tank, your slow speed will kill you.

As far as it goes for the gunner, the best bet is to back away and rail gun them down. 4-6 shots will take one down, and usually gunners will keep moving strait at you to close the range, but you can move faster than them
(a lot of gunner players seem to have the last stand mentality, and will try to go down guns blazing)

Overall be patient, don't rush people, and let the turrets help rack up the cash. With the ability to rack up huge killstreaks as a tank, which in turn earns you more money per kill, you can focus on upgrading rocket turrets for the teams defense while also pinning the enemy in their own base.

I've been playing around a little and right now i'm health regen/armor/speed.
I am probably going to switch it up and go armor/regen/speed tonight. I like being the unstoppable juggernaut.

I always upgrade passive-charge-passive-grenade-grenade/charge. I only use deploy to drop down on moneyballs. I find I can take down jack bots easy enough just jumping over their slams while burning them up toe to toe.

Last night I was getting between 15-30:7-10 kill:deaths. Snipers and Assault were they only classes giving me any problems. Assault only when they are above/at range. Never really had any problems with Gunners. Just charge and light em on fire usually did the trick.

I'm pretty certain that grenades also stun turrets as well.

I like the tank a lot , but his y button attack is useless and pathetic. Please change it!!!

Very nice strategy for The Bit Ol' Tank...it's definitely a fun class to cause some carnage, especially JUICED!!!

The Tank's deploy is useful, just not as useful as some other skills. It's main problem being that you can only use it against stationary targets (turrets, moneyballs, and Jackbots trying to figure out why they can't slam you away) thanks to the short range of your flame.

At level 1 or 2 while being backed up with a maxed out Passive, you can take out one Jackbot while just sitting in deploy. In fact, one game that went into overtime, I had everything maxed but deploy maxed, sat down in a lane with 3 Jackbots coming at me. I killed the first a little bit before the other two started noticing me, and then used Juice to finish those two in 5 seconds total.

Whenever I jump into a base I use deploy to help blow up Rockit turrets faster. Deploy is the only thing that allows you to take them on without bot support.

If I wasn't so attached to having the high health (being the Assassin's number 1 counter rocks) I'd try going for a level 1 or 2 perk in speed, start a match upgrading deploy and charge (so I can get there as fast as possible) and then just jump down and deploy on the few turrets in their base.

The grenade definitely stuns turrets.

I will say that I started using death blossom a whole lot last night, and was amazed at how much damage it does.

The only thing killing me was assault at mid range, usually after I got ambushed with a bomb, and they finished me off with the rifle. Gunners are just about ambushing. Walking up to them is going to be hard, but grenade, charge and burn works really well.

THIS.

VERY Important to deploy OUT of the Jack's line of sight fire and headshot. Otherwise, the OP outlined everything that I've found the tank to be useful for. Tank should be MOSTLY for defense. If your entire team is Asses, you're not gonna push with a tank unless you are assisting bots.

Which brings me to my final point: Tanks should be doing one of two things ONLY: Running MB defense, or ASSISTING BOTS. It still amazes me how much of the population ignores the bot component all together. Tanks should also be launching the Bouncers in time for them to reach a bot-on-bot conflict at the same time team bots engage for that extra edge and then jetting up to the crated front to clean up what's left.

Can I throw in that spawncamping as a tank is the bee's knees?

By far, I use the jet charge most often. It can be applied in almost any situation especially ambushes and as a good finisher in a pinch. I find myself using the product bomb against bots and turrets for a quick stun to give me time to get in and lay waste. Pros I find are not worth a product bomb because more often than not, they will dodge it and it will bounce away.

Also the deploy is good for a little health regen and if you pick the right distance you can distract a deployed gunner and eventually kill him with your rail gun to keep that minigun's pressure off your team.

Tanks are actually very good offensively if they can get in turret range. The jet gun tears turrets up and if you deploy you can pick them off from higher ranges. Once you deploy to fire on a turret, you are very likely going to die, but if you take a rocket turret with you, it is worth it.

Spin, spin, spin, spin! Spin is amazing. You will kill assassins without armor endorsements in one spin. You will blow up all regular bots in one spin. You cannot be grappled when you spin, spin does a ton of damage. The big thing to remember about spin is that it eats up all your remaining ammo, but only requires you to have one ammo in your gun. So if you are almost out of ammo and the enemy is close enough, spin. It will probably kill him, there is no reason not to.

The rail gun has perfect accuracy and arena wide range. You start shooting at a sniper and he will move. In fact, you are probably better off than the sniper in a long distance war if you can aim the railgun.

One jolly good game of Steel Peel I was camping a nook in the center along the wall next to the door to a jump pad. Two people playing as Noobs (That class with the sword and the stupid insta kill) kept trying to kill me. Over. And Over. And Over again. They kept sprinting right into y deployed state, finding it was not only impossible to do their lame grab attack but I was quickly burning their health.

Yet I killed both of them four times each, often both at once. Then a gunner tried to scare me out once or twice but since I was already deployed he could not touch me. In short, do not underestimate the skill just because it does not instantly kill enemies or does not throw enemies out of the arena. Same deal with Singed's Goo in LoL. Just because it does not do damage does not mean it is not his most important skill. In that same game, they started flat out ignoring me in that nook because I was sitting pretty with a 10 kill streak.

Hilariously enough, I often ignore Jet Charge in favor of Product Bomb and Deploy. Product bomb makes a good quick mortar and with skill recharge that thing fires fast and often for great damage.

I've never gotten a kill from the product bomb alone, it's mainy used for the stun.