Recovery Tactics: What do you do when you fall behind?

[Jayzer]

I think the biggest obstacle for any new BTank player is falling behind. If you don't keep up with the best players, not only will the better enemy players eat you alive, but your teammates will be more likely to impede your income by getting finishing blows on creeps and tanks with their superior dps.

The first 10 minutes of the game are the most important and even small errors in your starting build can ruin the game for you.

What are some of the reasons why you fall behind, and what do you do when it happens to counteract it?

Obvious reasons:
AFK
Lag / chatkill
Inexperienced (not enough commands per second)
Not doing enough DPS to creep as fast as others
Feeding
Poor build strategy (ie the tink/mine combo I saw today)

So what happens when you find yourself up a superior opponent? Do you run away and look for someone weaker to feed on? Is it possible to restart your build by selling your tank or equipment and starting in a different direction without being so far behind?

I ask because it's my biggest problem right now in adapting my btank game. Thanks for reading

[RaptorXI]

-Save for a big tank: New tank, new luck! (hardest way, but it is worth every time)

-Camp and gangbang! (save skills like stun and wait for an ally to come)
-Buy a Teleporter and low range weapons to make cheap kills! (example: an enemy is retreating with red hp and not getting covered by his comrades)
-Stay at the tower (lane) and repair it with a Techmech!

Edit: I mostly fall behind because i am a (too) aggressive player. I like to attack and not to retreat first. Especially in the middle this style causes many deaths when i have 1 or 2 partners who are just defending. I remember something Indeterminismus said at the time i started to play clanintern games:
"bei guten spielern ist es nur rumgecreepe"

[Althend]

@raptor
You have to check your teamamte build :p



When i fell behind, I play support build or focus on creep ^_^

The good thing to do is to wait enemies to choose their big tank first and then get the good build to counter them (ex gob vs heavy)

[Prog]

I'll add some hints:

-As you might save for a big tank, you migh as well do the complete opposite: Try to change tank less often as you opponent to save the goldloss from the tankchange. You might play heli/medi quite long, or tanks as Heavy/Air Ship/Sky Tank/Hunter until the very late game (hunter even when everyone else has a titan).

-If you are comfortable with using items well get those with a huge impact on the fight, like troop command, repair kits, teleport,... If you use them well, you can even play 0-0 against someone worth way more gold.

-Most important: Play hitpoint-heavy. You should be rather low on weapons and high on hit points (or items doing something similar, like troops, repair,..). Why? It's quite simple: When you fall behind it is key not to think "how can i catch up?", but rather "how do i stop feeding?". Even if you never catch up goldwise, it is important for your team that you play safe and don't risk createing an unstoppable opponent.

@Raptor: I guess i said that about playing on side lane, as there it is unfortunatly true. In the middle aggressive play can be way stronger, but it is also way harder to pull off, as you likely make mistakes when all 3 players don't act together as a single unity in judging situations and reacting accordingly. But if played well, being aggressive can punish smalles positional mistakes, which playing defensivly/passivly won't. In my opinion the lack of good aggressive play is a "leak" of most average btanks players (including most clan-players), which results from the learning process of the game. When you start playing in publics and when you get your first hints (in any way) you tend to play more defensivly and just go for safe kills, as you can't expect your allies in a public game to help you. The general attitude of playing without fixed teams does play a role here as well - it's difficult to judge equally, when you allways play with different players.

[Althend]

The general attitude of playing without fixed teams does play a role here as well - it's difficult to judge equally, when you allways play with different players.

+1

I don't trust anyone

[olivercamel]

Most important: Play hitpoint-heavy. You should be rather low on weapons and high on hit points (or items doing something similar, like troops, repair,..). Why? It's quite simple: When you fall behind it is key not to think "how can i catch up?", but rather "how do i stop feeding?". Even if you never catch up goldwise, it is important for your team that you play safe and don't risk createing an unstoppable opponent.

+1
I also think this is the most effective way to increase the possibility to make a turn over.

When your enemies start tp to you from all over the map, and kill you for free, it is much better to increase the hitpoint asap with e.g. a gold hull than buying mass cheap weapons (1k - 4k) to fight back.

High hitpoint = in case of 5v5 like capturing a cp, if you die the last, you get high chance to make more kills ^_^

[RaptorXI]

I don't trust anyone

If you die the last, you get high chance to make more kills ^_^

Typical examples of egoplaying. It's so fucking unimportant who gets the kill!
And you lose gold when you buy/sell hulls, don't you?
I don't want to tell anyone how he has to play this game, so I suggest everyone just plays they way he can do best.
I would like to upload some replays of recents clan wars we had with sake against bug, btnk and fam where the advantages of rush tanks can be seen clearly, but my chieftain forbad it.

[Battlemaniac]

i play aggressive (as my nick suggest), rush after rush after rush... if it gets so bad that i fall behind, then i switch to play support and decoy (intentionally dying to let team capture another CP, when i pretend to capture a CP meanwhile causing enough damage so they can't teleport to save the other CP, else is instant kill for team members :wink: )
but usually it pays off, but it sucks when you always gets your kills stolen by team or creeps. LOL :lol:

[Althend]

I don't trust anyone

If you die the last, you get high chance to make more kills ^_^

Typical examples of egoplaying. It's so fucking unimportant who gets the kill!
And you lose gold when you buy/sell hulls, don't you?
I don't want to tell anyone how he has to play this game, so I suggest everyone just plays they way he can do best.
I would like to upload some replays of recents clan wars we had with sake against bug, btnk and fam where the advantages of rush tanks can be seen clearly, but my chieftain forbad it.

Where is the ego problem about not trusting people? ^_^

It is totally normal if your teamates are each time different. You can't expect them to come cover you. Not trusting dosn't mean not helping :o

[Ger-Dyers-Eve]

I tried in a wonderful Match with olivercamel (and versus him *g*) today this strategy. I had a Thunder Tank, 2 Basic Magic (after purchasing the TTank, I had only 1 left) and then, I bought at the false point of time the false Weapon, so all I could do was "ok, you try not to die so often now" because there was no real chance versus anyone. So I was going for a Gold-Hull and after I had it (only 2 Kills untill then *g*), the game changed into a wonderfull "nothing to do, but creepkilling"-game. Later, we won this game due to 2-3 mistakes in the strategy of our enemies :mrgreen:

[IlPalazzo]

-Switch to Exploder
-Switch to Trader
-Buy equipment secondhand from the junkyard... This will allow you to catch up in DPS and help your teammates scrape up money.
-Stay close to your CP, the health regen/mana regen can turn the tide of a battle.
-Move to the middle lane and stay close to your team.

[olivercamel]

Later, we won this game due to 2-3 mistakes in the strategy of our enemies :mrgreen:

You won basically because the team was imba ... but i also play bad today (maybe as normal). Didn't even win a game tonight.

[jonjon]

I think the biggest obstacle for any new BTank player is falling behind. If you don't keep up with the best players, not only will the better enemy players eat you alive, but your teammates will be more likely to impede your income by getting finishing blows on creeps and tanks with their superior dps.

The first 10 minutes of the game are the most important and even small errors in your starting build can ruin the game for you.

What are some of the reasons why you fall behind, and what do you do when it happens to counteract it?

Obvious reasons:
AFK
Lag / chatkill
Inexperienced (not enough commands per second)
Not doing enough DPS to creep as fast as others
Feeding
Poor build strategy (ie the tink/mine combo I saw today)

So what happens when you find yourself up a superior opponent? Do you run away and look for someone weaker to feed on? Is it possible to restart your build by selling your tank or equipment and starting in a different direction without being so far behind?

I ask because it's my biggest problem right now in adapting my btank game. Thanks for reading

Superior opponents? I do not know of such a thing. When I get defeated, they say they defeated ME. Not my team. :lol:

Haha in all seriousness, in the first 10 minutes you just have to have your weapons firing at all times. Keep a good creeping distance. Use the tip of your weapon's range radius to target specific creeps. Don't try to save for something big. Sometimes getting 3 basic arrows is better than a swarm because you would've have earned more from getting the second one. Buffer your weapons (that is drop your weapons and pick it up). On an advanced level, you have to anticipate when the enemy is going to spam all their specials on you or when multiple enemies are going to gang. Trying to combine two things at once. For example, if you're using Thunder - wait for your opponent to advance towards you with his creeps. Stun and ulti immediately and then move forward. Creeps will die and you will be able to attack your enemy without surrounding creeps.

Most people will ask to switch which is not a bad strategy. It's not good to restart your build. You should fill up all your slots first before selling stuff away. Consider the junk yard.

[Keiser]

-Most important: Play hitpoint-heavy. You should be rather low on weapons and high on hit points (or items doing something similar, like troops, repair,..). Why? It's quite simple: When you fall behind it is key not to think "how can i catch up?", but rather "how do i stop feeding?". Even if you never catch up goldwise, it is important for your team that you play safe and don't risk createing an unstoppable opponent.

+1

When I see someone fall behind in pubs they usually keep doing what got them in trouble. They get MORE aggressive with too little hit points to try to get more kills to make up for dying. They then just end up dying more to the more powerful opponent, and he ends up with an early game thunder tank or air ship. The key is to be more conservative and at all costs avoid more feeding. 200-400g from 1-2 kills is a decent chunk in the beginning, but by minute 10 it isn't much if you haven't fed more. If you pushed it and died 4 more times, that's 1200g he's up on you PLUS all the creep time while you were dead, maybe even a tower kill thrown in at your cp. It's a difference of cash in the thousands.