The Tank and Spank (A guide to playing tanks)

First and foremost I'd like to say this idea was not originally mine, But I've yet to see it on the forums so I will gladly share it with those who don't know it. This tank guide is in 2 halfs, First half is gathering mode, Primarily building up killstreak/cash/juice with rail gun. Second half consists of mainly jet gun and death blossom while juiced in enemy base. This is how I've gotten my 6 kill multikill titles and many 20 jet gun kill titles along with plenty games 40+/5-. I hope you can use this to your advantage.

Endorcments

Armor - Helps you take more bullets. Which is important considering the play style of the class. Should be Gold / Silver always.

Rate of Fire - Makes your jet gun hurt quicker, And more importantly, Makes your rail gun a Gatling gun of pain. Should be Gold / Silver always.

Reload - Very good skill to have at very least bronze. Makes the use of your jet gun a bit more forgiving.

Health Regen - A good alternative to reload because unendorced it takes the tank a good while to recover fully from battle.

Speed, Skill Regen, Juice, Clip size, and Crit shot are poor choices for this.

Beginning of the game

The first part of the game is CRITICAL. Failure to gain control of the map often makes this strat much harder and less effective to do.

First quickly buy Passive and Charge. Use charge and hover to get to mid real fast and kill first waves of bots and start looking for players. Use the rail gun often to pin enemies back and then go in for jet gun kill.

You NEED to stay alive and start building your kill streak up. Not dieing is more important then kills in every case so don't commit yourself to something your not going to be able to finish. You need to get to 10 kill streak for this to be smooth.

After you've made 400 bucks from killing bots and players buy passive 3. Then forget about ever upgrading anything else. Now you need to start saving up for juice buys. If you have managed to stay alive, By the time you get 500 bucks you should already have juice or be really near it. Kill some bots / Bullseye and get it.

Second Half

Make your first run at the base. Priority is turrets, Support, and gunners. Kill everyone else that get in your way. You really just want to be taking out their defenses with this first one. When your bars starts to get to 1/4 then find your way out and get there fast heading for the juice dispenser. Before you buy your next juice make sure that you have a safe passage way right into their base again. if so get it.

Priority for following juice runs. Players. Kill them all, Jet gun just owns everything and death blossom with forms many multi kills for you. Ideally you want to be earning 100 per kill by now. So each juice run should near pay for the next. At this point it is rinse and repeat. Go in, juice, Own everything, Run out, kill bots on the way, buy juice and go again.

Don't worry about their money ball too much, Your bots will be pooring in and doing a lot of the work for you, Your team mates should be in the fray too by now.


Perfect this game style and you will be a tank god(goddess if it applies). Being good with the rail gun and Jet gun/Charge/death blossom combos will really make this even better for you. Keep in mind that this isn't just a pro killing strat but also a very good team play strat. Killing bots is very important for this to work. And you should do so often.

I suppose this could work, though I think a decent team would shut you down pretty quick since only one of your active skills will be doing anything remotely useful (and even then, you are only getting the damage instead of the knockdown/slow.) The tank has two of the best crowd control moves in the game that also deal insane damage, and you don't use either of them. This seems more like a "screw my team, I'll win this by myself" strat then a team based strat.

It's also completely dependent on you not dying, which is a huge risk playing a tank with no CC, long cooldowns due to a lack of skill upgrades and no ability focus in at least the bronze slot. If you don't have blind and/or charge 3, a good team will have little trouble getting a slam/freeze/charge/grapple/ on you and sending you off the map, blowing your kill streak and juice. (Which is not normally a big issue, but if you have a "snowball" strat like this, dying hurts you ALOT.)


I'm sure it works for you, but you are basically doing almost the same thing a good assassin will do (push lanes, farm, juice their base turrets, repeat) only the assassin will gain 2-3 juices before the tank likely gains 1, and she can afford to die a few times while doing it. She can do this just by investing 550 gold in her passive, and earning juice quicker than farming the cash to buy it (leaving her free to spam ejectors/hazards/bots, which give her a global presence on the map).

I just can't fathom not leveling either of the crowd control skills of the tank. You lose so much utility there and basically become a super slow, but tough to kill assassin.

I do accept that this takes a bit of skill o pull off as well, But for the cc moves, Maybe, MAYBE rank 2 grenade, MAYBE. Depends on the team your against. But during phase on you want to be like a sniper. So the grenade in super situational. And charge only has room for an escape while playing this strat.

While your base campin, If you get gappled / slammed. Your doing it wrong. Your jet gun will killing everything. Really fast.

As far as not being a team player. I mention that killing bots is very important for this to work and will not work if your team does not have bot control. And whats more to being a team player in this game that killing players / turrets / and bots for a tank?

My concern is that an ACTUAL sniper will headshot you and derail your kill streak this guide depends so much upon.

Freeze Trap will allow the enemy team to do whatever they want to you if they are co-ordinated at all. Assassins and Assaults can lunge grapple you from behind, which will let others continue to chain CC on you or ring you out.

I'm mostly skeptical because all this TANK build brings to the table is damage damage damage. The tank does not need juice to deal insane damage, and when he DOES juice, he operates almost exactly like a juiced assassin in melee mode. He plays like a sniper early game and a juiced assassin late game.

I guess it depends on your team comp, but the tank's ability to deal massive damage WHILE CCing multiple people or a turret is too good to ignore IMO.

Haters gonna hate I guess. Under your logic. Every1 might as well stay in their base because snipers head shot. And they have freeze traps so don't move either. Oh and just play assassin if you like juicing.

No, the only reason all of these are a big deal is your build depends on kill streaks and not dying as a tank that does not level crowd control abilities. If you are playing like a sniper as a tank against an actual decent sniper, you are gonna get domed.

All of the negative things I am suggesting don't have a major impact on your average player, but if you build the tank around kill streaks and juice, he is extremely limited in his skill set and very easy to shut down. You stated not dying is pretty much priority #1 with this build, and I just don't see how you accomplish that if the other team has just 1 decent sniper to dome you while you are railing away.

Not sure if you ever play sniper, Which I do a lot, But its difficult to head shot some1 on the move in this game. It takes quite a bit of talent.

And this is all implying that you don't have a team of your own as well and your just playing with randoms. If your playing with buddies, "Hey sniper on L2, Fire in his direction a few times" there you go. And when your playing with a team, You should never be sniperless, If for nothing else to counter snipe snipers.

Anyways, I'm done hurr durring over 'what ifs' and 'this isn't how i play so its bad's. This is how I play to win when I'm playing tank and I win a lot more than I lose when playing this way. I purely just wanted to share instead of getting into a pissing contest with a hater.

Not hating. Just giving you my honest opinion on the tank build.

i glanced at the endorsements then gave up reading once i saw u say skill regen was a bad choice

Nice idea in theory, but the reality is that depending this heavily on a large killstreak, especially without charge 3's stun to help out in a pinch, is just too unreliable of a strategy. I believe it's possible to pull off on occasion, at least against bad teams full of randies, but against skilled players I don't see this working often. We're not saying that because you could potentially be headshotted at any time by a sniper that it kills the strat then and there, but assuming as a tank you can kill any class you run into without needing to upgrade as much (or at least assuming you can do this often enough to make your whole gameplan and class around it) is just silly. I hope you don't get offended and completely disregard everyone who disagrees with you, as you seem to have done with the first responder. We're just trying to give you honest feedback

TBH the only time you can ever get decent kill ratios (30-4 etc) is when you get a big streak and all the enemies drop speed.