ZoZo's 5* must read Guide to un-noobing your noob... noob.

So after another frustrating match I decided to do a quick write up to address a few things that have me pulling my hair out in some matches. Things that players do that scream "I have no clue what I'm doing and it's going to cost us the game"

I WILL continue to expand on this thread as I think of more, and understand this is meant to be informational for those who want to learn some pointers. Feel free to ask questions. Also note, I'm an extremely sarcastic person, none of the rants herein are meant to offend, if anything laugh at them as though it's a Lewis Black tirade as you read about stuff you too have been infuriated by witnessing. Besides if you got offended it's only cause you didn't know better about something till reading it here and were EDUCATED-> blush , learn :idea: , move on :arrow: .

I wanna start with the concept of turrets.

Quick Tip: if your gonna buy a turret, you would be wise to be responsible for its continued upgrades rather than neglecting them. If you don't wanna buy turrets, fair enough, but you would be wise to be cooperative enough to spend cashing helping your team upgrade existing ones. Too many players ignore this team ethic...and wonder why theyre base is getting rolled. A team constantly getting their base overrun is likely because they have no turrets up/ have no one putting them up past lvl 1-> which a few minutes into the game will have you feeding the team as they keep coming in and wrecking your o-to-easy to feed off of lvl 1 turrets.

Lazer blazers.
IF you MUST buy these-> KNOW this. you MUST have enough cash to boost these things to lvl 3 as soon as you decide to even make one. a lvl 1 or 2 is going to get destroyed so fast by any competent player that you are literally throwing away your money, and even giving any player to dmg it 35$ for killing and an additional 25$ to any players who helped them. ergo-> a lvl 1 lazer blazer is going to cost you 50, and likely pay out the enemy team more then that....your literally handing your cash over to the opposition if you buy anything short of a lvl 3 of one of these.

That being said, they can be useful early on in a match, but pretty quickly become obsolete, and you still probably should avoid buying these at all costs, as they are THE worst use of your money currently in the game. One more point to solidify this in your mind-> LB turrets will GIVE an enemy player a juice. nearly any class who taunts while getting pounded by one will build a juice, and a competent tank can deploy in front of one of these and be juiced in seconds w/o any real concern of dieing/failing to kill the turret.

Rockit Turrets
Lvl 3's are amazing, with a support hack, they're god. These are the best defensive investment there is. these will net you kills and return the cost it took to make them. they will also stand up to a juice, to bombs, and to jackbots. if you are a support you MUST NOT allow these to die if you can manage to help them, they are expensive, and worth it, HEAL them, HACK them, love them.

As I support I almost always build 3.3 Rockit turret on the farthest nub when playing in Spunky Cola arena. These will stop a jackbot dead in its tracks before the middle of the map, it will Shell the crap out of the small alcove on the front lines, the ramparts as a whole, the annihilator, and virtually any player stupid enough to underestimate them and walk into your half the map.

Money Ball Turret Nubs
****Now when it comes to the nubs by your money ball (The two always located on both sides immediately to your ball) there are only TWO construction options. NEVER NEVER NEVER buy a LB or mortar on those 2 nubs, you will look like an utter fool and waste your money.
here is why-> if a team is breached so far into your base that they are on your ball/spawn, then they will likely be in a position to be able to crush anything that cant stand up to damage, rockit turrets and shave ice are the only things capable of taking on that kind of punishment. This is where you need your most IMPENETRABLE of turrets, as they are your last line of defense against a ball drop. Now the other issue is mortar turrets (longshots, sorry, i have a habit of calling them mortar, just shorter to say i guess) these will not work the way you want them to on these nubs as they are UNDER your bases balconies on every map, and while they were patched to work better in that regard, it still won't work like you probably are imagining when you build one. Additionally, you want your mortars toward the front ANYWAY so they can more effectively shell the map as a whole.



1/10/11: annihilator info

Annihilators

These should never.....never....never be up for long. If you have the money on you, disregard whatever you were saving up for, and take the responsibility to buy them YOURSELF, don't wait or assume someone on your team will do it. LISTEN for micky cantor or the crowd, they are audio cue's that are trying to tell you to get your butt to the middle of the level PRONTO.

If you buy one of these, farm a juice asap, crush at least one lanes turrets, and help the bots push in. This combination will almost ALWAYS cause a ball drop when done right.

From the other side of the coin, if one is used ON you, start bot killing IMMEDIATELY. It amazes me how teams will just shrug off the sound of an enemy annihilator hitting them and continue to try and kill players. You have just lost ALL your ground, are at your most vulnerable via being the only thing an enemy player has to look at during this time, and if you are too lazy to kill the sea of bots now coming toward your base for the next minute or so, your ball WILL drop, leaving your team in a frantic scramble to get their act back together. If responded to well enough, you will have cost an enemy player the 250$ they spent to tie your team up momentarily, and by simply lane pushing like you should have been doing all along!

1/11/11: updated some old turret reviews and OP statement of intent, added shave ice in-depth, and turret-busting guide!!

Shave Ice Turrets

These honestly, for cost and effectiveness are more worthwhile than lazer blazers, which is depressing cause you hardly see them in lue of ppl buying crappy lazer blazers.

These at max upgrade take more of a beating than any turret in the game. Their freeze can penetrate walls and boundries, they ruin an assassins day, and at max capacity can slow your enemies to a CRAWL, basically creating one enormous sniper-style freeze trap all over your base, this can make a money ball drop in your base a FAR harder affair, and can hold enemies at the door better then pretty much any other turret. For this reason they're incredibly wise to use on the front lines, or at peripheral entrances (steel peel, lazerblazer)

I have seen it work strategically toward end game to prevent juice rushes on your ball in OT, if placed on the nubs close to your ball, as well. This is still a very specific and singular reason to use them though, so I still recommend the use of RT's if your gonna build on those 2 nubs, and leave SI turrets at the doors.

From Whantstowhine: A 3.3 Shave-ice at the furthest nub from spawn on Spunky Cola will win alot of matches for a number of reasons, one of the most important being it keeps enemy assassins from getting into your bot spawn so easily. Even a 1.2 shave ice is enough to reveal assassins heading back to where you definitely don't want them.

Additionally, as I hinted at before, A SI turret at the peripheral entrances works wonders for limiting the routes an enemy has into your base, removing pesky sneaky players from easily entering and wrecking your other turrets. These peripheral entrances are favorites of assassins too, so it further increases they're usefulness in a match with competent enemy assassins (you'll recognize those when you see them, biggest give away is they aren't stupid enough to run straight at you imagining they can't be seen and they actually TRY to screw with your turrets)
Example/explanation:
Lazer Blazer Arena: The R and L entrances on this arena have nubs immediately next to them, and their frost can extend through the walls, and out a way, causing you to literally expand the security of your base out into contested territory (and this game is LARGELY based on map control for a win)
Steel Peel: The front doors use them well, but one specific example is the back bridge way being a normally vulnerable route, as stated before, SI turrets can completely cut off these kinds of routes, making it easier for you to keep your ball and your turrets up, as well as allowing you to keep more of your teams focus on the important lanes/lane pushing.
Ammo mule: though not the most often used route by players as this map is pretty open, the far right and left nooks can be shut down by use of SI turrets on the nubs adjacent to them.

Turret Busting! With best-in-class-methodology!
There are some classes better at it then others, but the funny part is how few players there are that even realize how their class can best accomplish it, and may be astonished at how well they can.

Gunner: MORTAR.....MORTAR....MORTAR. FTL of god SHOOT your MORTAR. This thing will destroy a lvl1 rocket turret in like 4 freaking shots, and from SO FAR away its almost absurd. I honestly want to slap a gunner on my team, regardless of their kill count, if the enemy team even HAS turrets up.

Support: your heal beam is mean as hell when juiced, combo this (w/ or w/o a juice) with your air bombs and you can seriously cause some harm to enemy infrastructure. A lvl 3 support bomb is a HUGE radius, and when at full status can drop 3 instantly. You can do this from safely outside an enemy base, and barring overhealed turrets, 1-2 will destroy any LB turret, 3 will even bring a lvl 3 rockit turret to within a sliver of its life. TBH your bombs are THE most important part of your team if the enemy starts using lvl 3 rockit turrets, as you are the one truly reliable class to contend with these W/O a juice. While there are many obvious reasons to use the skill regenerating endorsements, this is honestly the biggest one. BTW, your the one class that can build a juice without ever getting yourself in danger. DO YOUR JOB AND HEAL SOME, you'll build a juice for free super fast, help your team mates stay alive, and then you can go be a wrecking ball when its full!

Assassin: Let me say this, and listen as hard as your FREAKING can. If your gonna be an assassin, the enemies should NOT be able to mount an unbreakable defense. There is NO, NONE, NOT ONE excuse as to why you shouldn't be using your juices to cripple turrets, you DO NOT need juices for ANYTHING else as this class. You start flashing, then your sexy cloaked *** should be sprinting at the first enemy turret you see. You have the speed and dmg output with your melee weapon to take out multiple turrets in a single run and get out alive. I cannot believe how many obsessively bad assassins there are in this game as to constantly create matches where three...THREE people on your team will chose them and the enemies turrets will go untouched. GET THE MESSAGE?! p.s. YOUR CLASS builds juices FASTER than anyone. GO KILL BOTS UNTIL YOU SEE AN ENEMY.

Tank: Blind it with ad grenade, burn it to the ground. Honest. to. god. that....simple. even w/o a juice and only a lvl 2 ad grenade (being as it doesn't even blind at lvl1 you should be buying this as one of your first upgrades in the match anyway so you CAN do this to turrets), you will drop a lvl 1 rockit turret w/o it firing at you.

Assault: **little embarrassed here, I could use someone to make a write up for this as i literally never play this class, I feel its honestly the class with the least utility** (that being said I have seen some amazing ones, I honestly just don't get the class and prefer going like 30 and 10 with almost any other class that I DO get)

Sniper: PEW PEW PEW PEW. nuff said. Kinda close to their base? FLAK....PEWPEWPEWPEW. nuff said. Juiced? PEWPEWPEW HARDER. nuff said.

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

ILY, ZoZo. Please marry me?

While I'm guilty of not using the Annihilator as often as I should (read: once, because I farmed money from the get-go), I cry just a little bit whenever I see people stupid things like LS under cover (or on Steel Peel).

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

Don't forget Shaveice!!

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

While we're on the subject of Longshot turrets: is it really true that they do nothing when you build them under the spawn ring? I tried paying attention to them once (when the action was a bit low) and they seemed to be firing non the less and it looked as if the projectiles were traveling THROUGH the ring. Don't know if they actually hit something, though. Same goes for Steel Peel: I could swear I've seen Longshots (and Gapshots) fire through the walls, but again: not sure.

So how do these things really work? Did anyone test this?

Oh, and a quick ninja edit: Laser Blazers lvl1 are $25, not $50. A lvl 3 costs you $175, which is absolutely dirt cheap. As long as your team has a sniper watching out for juicing tanks (shouldn't be hard to HS a tank deploying in your base ), I think that lvl3 Laser Blazers can be worth it on some maps.

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

Lv3 rockits are the only turrets that can really stand up to juice attacks. A hacked Lv3 rockit can actually kill most juiced players before they can kill it. They are the best "end-game" turrets. The problem with Lazer Blazer turrets isn't necessarily that they're BAD (at lv3), but that they can't be easily replaced with Lv3 rockits later on.

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

Yeah, that's very much true. If the enemy is smart enough to NOT destroy that LB turret of yours, you're stuck with it for the rest of the match and you can't get something better for it in its place. Maybe it should be possible to demolish turrets? The griefing potential would be astronomical though... But for serious matches with no griefing it would open up a lot of potential.

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

Well, if it gets demolished by a teammate, then maybe the money should be returned to the player.

Example, i put up a long shot turret and someone wants to replace it with a rocket turret.

He pays, while I get my investment back, or... I guess I could get half back. Either way, there is going to be some grieving, you're right.

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

Not only that, giving money back (doesn't matter to who on the team it goes) for recycling a turret would become an unfair tactic to deny the enemy a turret kill while immediately replacing it with a new turret (and hence circumvent the turret downtime). On the other hand, if the turret would really be destroyed while giving the money back to the one who paid for it, there would still be griefing (because the base will be without turrets for quite some time).

I guess there's no logical way to solve this without giving an open invitation to griefers.

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

Protip: Never buy laser blazers.
Level 1 Rockit power > Level 3 Laser power
Level 1 Rockit cost ($150) < Level 3 Laser blazer cost ($175)

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

I was basically going to say the same thing. Saved me a lot of typing.

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

If you could, put in a section about ShaveIces.

-Best armor of the four turrets
-Freeze effect penetrates walls
-3.3 on Spunky can completely cover middle lane juction, and Annhilator

They are far too underestimated among the newer generation of players.

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

Yeah a hacked shava on spunky is pretty beastly.

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

LBlazers are also a problem because tanks can go into tank mode in front of them and get almost instant juice, while other classes who have armor as an enhancement can fill juice by taunting in front of them. Unless you have two LBlazers covering each other or a Firebase covering a LBlazer etc. then don't ever build them.

A 3.3 Shave-ice at the furthest nub from spawn on Spunky Cola will win alot of matches for a number of reasons, one of the most important being it keeps enemy assassins from getting into your bot spawn so easily. Even a 1.2 shave ice is enough to reveal assassins heading back to where you definitely don't want them.

For my take on the general run of stupidity that is a large percentage of the user base, see this post I started (and recently re-upped) two weeks after the game came out on Live:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2600

Assault is probably the WORST class at destroying turrets. The only options they have are A.) spamming from a distance with the grenade launcher and after about 30 or so grenades you may kill a level 3 rockit turret. B.) Do hit and runs with level 3 bombs and supplemental fire with nades or the rifle. (Both of these tactics are nullified while the turret is being healed).

Where the assault really shines is with pro killing / money farming in the form of streak building (which can then be used to upgrade the base or buy juice) and moneyball ownage. A juiced assault can drop a moneyball in around 8 or 9 seconds.

Ya that's the issue I have with assault, i never seem to do well with them cause they are so confined to a specific role, they aren't really the masters of much of anything it would seem-> although I do find they, more than any other class, cannot be eluded, they are meant to hunt pro's down, and cannot be fled from whatsoever (unless your a tank, GOD do i feed off the cock-sure assaults who forget to fly-> charge+whirl =equal dead. If they are smart enough/good enough to fly&spam though....different story)

a juiced assault with his GL can easily take down most turrets in a base though

If you can run around while hitting them consistently, that is. When I play assault, the nades have the awkward tendency to miss turrets by a hair for some reason. And when I'm juiced, I'm not going to stand still to carefully take aim of the turrets.

true, hitting turret with gl seems a bit harder then with most other guns, but my point still stands, assault can kill turrets (in bout 3-6shots for any turret i think if juiced), it's just not easy to hit them... though i think... that for most turrets that isn't actually too hard, cos they all have a part which is bulkier and thus easier to hit (ahwell, no problems for me with hitting turrets anyway)

Nice guide!

Wish all new players could directly look at it before starting to play... And I'm specifically talking about you assassins who will go only for pros when you could end the match in 5 minutes (bots > juice > turrets > bots > etc), and about you supports who won't bother hacking EVERY Rockit-turret you'll see around the base.

On a side note, lvl 3.3 LB used to be really efficient before they got nerfed... Now they are totally useless :-/

Re: A few pointers I insist on giving out.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2299&p=22756&hilit=Ice#p22756

They called me crazy when the game first came out.