Why so few tanky tanks?

Reading the tank guides on the forum and judging from the tanks I see in matches, most seem to favour the cautious long range game. Gold rate of fire, rail gun/product grenade as primary weapons, wait for juice, rush in and kill turrets.

I know how effective this can be and used to be how I played tank too. But the other day I decided to switch tactics and get up close and personal.

Endorsements: Gold armour, Silver speed, Bronze skill recovery.

I went product grenade 2, charge 2 at the start and spent the entire time concentrating on close quarters combat, trying to get into the enemy base and cause chaos whenever possible. It was a massive distraction to the enemy, allowing my teammates to move up and support me, got me lots more kills than I normally get as tank, but most importantly was lots of fun to play.

I experimented with RoF and reload speed to beef up the jet gun and blossum more frequently, but the defaults are good enough and faster reloading prod gren and charge are way more useful. Gold armour and silver speed are pretty much essential. You can't get in their face, take the damage and escape quickly enough when health is low without them.

I'm not saying this is the only or best way to play the class, and I'm sure expert players could counter it easily enough, but it certainly feels the most tanky play style to me, and is a bloody good laugh because if you play cleverly you're extremely hard to kill and can cause absolute carnage and panic amongst the enemy.

I feel like a god amongst mortals running through bases with gold armor, lvl 3 passive, and juice.

It's certainly the most tanky, but your damage output will be considerably lower than the other tank builds, especially without product 3 and charge 3. (Though you may get these, I just did not see a full skill build listed in the OP).

I recommend silver armor over gold because you really don't get many more practical benefits from gold armor as opposed to silver. With Silver, you survive the same number of rail gun shots (9), assassin back stabs (1), sniper head shots (1), air strikes while juiced (1) and every other grapple in the game as you do with gold.

Silver + Passive 3 is the threshold number to get you over most of the one hit kills in the game. All the gold would give you is give you more effective health against sources of damage whose output is less than a railgun shot. Not to say that this is not useful, just that rate of fire gold lets you max your damage potential while having the second strongest defense possible (which is still more health than gunners and support + passive 2 with gold armor.)

The variable in all of this is silver speed. I am a huge fan of silver speed on the tank. I will try this class tonight to see how I like it.

well the tanks a lane pusher, being able to remove blackjacks from a distance not to mention very fast, is extremely helpful. the tanks mobility can come from his charge as level 3 lets you do it every 5 or so seconds, so that pretty much takes away speed being on there. his passive always giving him health is enough that its not required to have health on your gold endorsement, however you will be extremely beefy if you do. you just have a different playstyle honestly, if it works for you, and you push lanes,deal with other players and win, go for it.

the only issue is people try to take the tank down farther away because they are afraid of getting charged or jet gunned. being able to railgun things quickly lets you deal with players from anywhere.

In my experience, every tank build should run gold RoF and bronze Accuracy. This keeps your rail gun strong at all times and allows you to interchange Speed, Armor, Skill Pill, etc. Skill pill is my favorite because it allows me to stay back and rail with a quickly recharging product grenade, but I can push if I need to and I have charge 3 recharging in like 3.5 seconds. Speed is my 2nd favorite because I can move a little quicker and is especially helpful when their ball is down and I need to keep getting to it to put shots in it. I only use armor if I'm playing against a very good sniper that keeps headshotting me. Otherwise armor isn't necessary, because you shouldn't be putting yourself in situations where you think you'll die.

why does rail gun need accuracy?

I rarely ever use my rail gun, usually only to pick off weak players as they run away. I've actually used Gold Armor, Silver Speed, Bronze Rate of Fire for a while now and it seems to work very well.

For a while I was going with gold armor and it was really nice, I survived most anything right off the bat and I was hard to kill. Got addicted to gold ROF though and been rolling with that. I think one of these days I'm going to try gold armor, silver skill regen and bronze health regen and see what it's like to be a brawler. probably only use it on Grenade3 and lazerazer though

It drastically improves your hit detection, especially at long range and against slimmer classes. Try using it with and without and you'll see a huge difference. Accuracy should only be a bronze endorsement though, never anything higher.

The bottom line is that if you put all your efforts into health you're going to get killed by the heavy who has just a little bit less health than you and more damage.

This problem is magnified with the tank as he cannot purchase upgrades for his weapons.

Tried this build once tonight, and you have pretty much ZERO long range capabilities. You will get destroyed if you are caught outside of jet gun range. I would only ever suggest running this on LaseRazor, and hope the other team has no map control whatsoever.

Close range gives you slightly more health, but your damage output is noticeably slower. This build will likely be more viable once the death blossom patch is out.

I always seem to do best in Steel Peel with this build. If you can manage to get to the ring overlooking their base and unlock the jump pad on ground level between their two exits, it gives you lots of choices when it comes to attacking and escaping from their base.

I don't find I get destroyed outside of jet gun range. I'll move up behind my bots if there's no cover available, running forward deathblossuming enemy bots whenever possible. Enemy pros at distance get product grenaded and rail gunned while I close the distance, with charge if necessary. They either stand and fight, in which case they're already damaged, or they run which means you can close in on them.

My endorsement strategy is usually:
Product grenade
Charge
Passive (skip this if the enemy team are bad)
Product grenade
Charge
Passive

Product grenade is a beast and plays a part in pretty much everything: killing distant bot groups if I don't have time to rail them, blinding enemies/turrets so I can get closer to them or escape if low on health, hitting distant snipers who've already taken a rail gun hit (if it lands near them at level 3 they're probably dead from the cluster bomb things)

Charge is also hugely important to this playstyle, not just for closing gaps and taking down pros, but also for quickly escaping to cover when under fire.

The best thing about the strategy is that it takes a lot of effort for the enemy team to take you down. Move with your bots and they have you and the bots to contend with. It's a huge distraction that frees your teammates up to attack with less opposition than normal.

Having said all that, I do have matches where skilled opposition totally own me So maybe this is more of a fun build for your average pub game.

Im Hudson, thanks for all the great tank posts btw. They've been very useful to me. I hope if we ever play together I'm on your team

Yes, hudson is a prophet if you will to the tank characters, and when i get put against him i learn so much about fighting my lovely lady's worst matchup.

And if you ever want to play with us our names are our GT's, just hit us up, i'd love to see your playstyle, and if you can survive my tactics

I might have been a bit harsh on your build. I will note that I WAS trying it on Steel Peel though, and without rate of fire tanks become fodder for even decent gunners/snipers, and assaults will have no fear of closing in from long to mid range on you. I'll give it another shot later today when I get home.

I used to play like this, and it was fun, but I got owned fairly often. I like the product grenade assistance to bring things a little closer when you want to use that jet gun. I think there should be a balance between defense and offense for tanks. You have to know when to push and when to defend. So a "tanky" tank can be useful at certain points in the game.

Humm, I should post my tank guide. I barely use the rail gun.

Please do. I love me some jet gun. Desperately awaiting the patch so I can try out Gold Reload Speed, Silver Speed/RoF, Bronze Skill Recovery.

Nah I think you're probably right and that it's just very level and more importantly opponent dependent. Well I'll stick with it for a while and see how it goes, and switch back to Rof/Armour/Skill which is what I always used to use. I'm sure I can play "tanky" style with that build anyway, it's just lacking speed. Maybe I could live with default product grenade reload times... maybe...

I'd suggest running RoF/Armor/Skill and then swapping loadout over to RoF/Speed/Skill once you upgrade you passive. The tank really does not need the extra armor other than surviving assassinations and headshots (both of which rarely happen to me unless I was already crowd controlled). I personally never run armor anymore because I don't fear assassins since Charge 3 will virtually one-shot them (or one-shot + death blossom them), and their cloak hum is a huge "HAI IM COMING TO BACKSTAB YOU" alarm. (Yay turtle beaches) Its easier to assassinate me without cloak than with it probably.

Its also kind of fun to actually give them a chance to kill you.

So if this patch works like I think it would, more ammo should lead to more damage for the death blossom, in theory.