Is there anything truly useless for parkour?

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

Is there anything truly useless for parkour?

 

I made a list of the most useless things I could possibly think about, and I found creative uses for all of them!

This started from me claiming that non-recoil turrets have unique uses in parkour. My friend laughed at it and called it "Swift's Theory of Flying Unicorns". So we ended up building a Freeze Elevator. When looking at this situation from the side - realizing that I just made some of the best parkourists in the game to build a FREEZE ELEVATOR - gave me such a good laugh!!  :lol:

 

Before you read my ideas of how to use these things, just look at the titles and try to think of your own ideas, maybe you'll think of something I didn't!

 

 

 

Phantom tanks (aka ghosts)

These transparent tanks that just spawned and can't shoot or even touch anyone, even they are useful! You can gather a bunch of them in one non-phantom tank that prevents them from spawning, and once the non-phantom tank is gone all the phantoms materialize in the same place and push each other up, forming a tower of tanks.

There are two special things about them that make them a lot more useful: their ability to go through the invisible side walls without dying and the ability of Hammer to shoot them (explanation in this topic). These make it possible to do some special parkour tricks with ghosts and make it possible to enter some places that are unreachable without ghosts.

 

Firebird

This is the truly most useless thing in parkour, it has no special properties that can be used in parkour itself but it's still useful! Parkourists only use it to decorate their parkour videos with circles of fire and to show they can do a trick without the jumper shooting.

No no no wait! I said I found a creative use for everything! It's nothing you'll be using a lot, but it could be used when you need to have good timing with a tank dying and you need someone else to know exactly when he's going to die. A Firebird can burn a tank, or even a group of tanks and other players in the team will be able to see their health going down like a timer for their death. You could also make the Firebird burn tanks in sequence so every tank will die a little after the other, so you have a precise control of how you space out the deaths of a few players, much better to have one player take care of the timing than a bunch of players trying to time their self destructions right.

 

Freeze

You may be surprized, but Freeze isn't as useless as Firebird. It can be used just like Firebird for decoration, but it can also affect tank's movement, it slows it down!

Huh? Why would you want to slow a tank down in parkour!? o.O

I posted a "Freeze Elevator" screenshot as a joke. But the truth is it was never supposed to be an elevator, and wasn't built for a screenshot for my joke. We tested the way Freeze affects flying tanks, and turns out it slows them down in the air! No, it won't slows down their fall and won't make tanks last any longer in the air, but it does slow down their horizontal movement, which allows things like catching players that fly over a house too fast to land on it. Obviously it's not something you would actually do for a parkour trick, but it's still a possible use for Freeze.

 

Isida

Of course Isida can heal players between trick attempts so you don't have to waste time self destructing and getting back into position or waste repair kits... But there is also another use for it, it can actually help you jump higher! Isida has no impact force and can't move players, but it can increase the amount of mines you can jump on! Let's say I have a fully upgraded Wasp M1 and Spider (50% mines protection) and I want to jump on as many jumps as possible. I can use double armor and survive 3 mines. It's a pretty nice mine jump for a Wasp M1, but I want more! When I hit the mines, my front goes up while my back keeps sliding on the ground for a split second before getting up into the air too, I can use it to jump on more mines: place 2 mines and then another 2 with a little gap, then I can drive on the mines and hit the first 2, use a health kit to heal enough to survive the other 2 mines that I will hit in a fraction of a second later, when my back slides forward on the ground. So I jumped on 4 mines now, that's pretty impressive for my little Wasp, but I still want more! But I can't heal myself any faster, so I call a bunch of friends to stand around the mines with Isida and heal me! Their healing combined with me using a repair kit, can help me survive up to 6 mines!! Now that's a pretty impressive achievement for a Wasp M1, and a pretty high mine jump. Again, it's not something you would normally want to do because you would get much higher jump if all of these Isidas were shooting the jumper instead of helping him survive one or two more mines, but still a cool use for it!

 

Double damage

While killing players can rarely be useful for parkour tricks, double damage isn't really a good tool for it. A better way would be to simply damage the tank that needs to die before I start trick so he can die in one shot later without wasting any double damage supplies. But wait, remember that thing with using Isida to jump on more mines? Double damage can double their healing rate so you need only half of the Isidas you would have to use without it.

 

Dying

While they are rare and not very impressive, there are a few tricks where dying is actually what makes the trick work. For example, pick any spot where a small mine jump would do the job. now instead of jumping on a mine, ride a dictator the exact same way but without a mine. When you reach the edge and need to jump, the dictator self destructs which moves him a little up into the air and gives you a little push up. To not have trouble with self destruction timing you can have a friend killing the dictator, or you can make him hit a mine to die, in all cases the result will be the same. The dictator's death is what makes it possible for you to make this jump. This is a pretty small and useless trick, but it is a pretty good replacement for mine jumps in the lowest ranks where mines are not available in the garage, and for hulls that can't survive mines.

 

Leaving the battle

It isn't really helpful for performing a trick, but it is helpful for preparing a complicated trick. When you need to position a tank somewhere very gently and precisely and then need to move away without moving him, sometimes the best choice is leaving the battle and joining back. Self destruction makes your tank move a little, which can push him and ruin the careful positioning. The tower created by phantom tanks, it can be done with the non-phantom tank just driving away, but this will work only if the phantoms are positioned perfectly enough or the non-phantom tank has enough lag to just teleport away. It can be done with self destruction too, but if someone is lagging a lot it will be much safer to just leave the battle and rejoin. When you leave the battle the chances of people seeing you disappear in different time are much smaller.

 

Lags

Everyone hate lag! It's just terrible! It ruins the gameplay for everyone! How can this be a useful thing!?

There are three uses for lag:

First of all, it can be helpful to get perfect timing in tricks where everyone need to hit the jumper exactly at the same time. The more lag the jumper has, the easier it will be. For him it will look like no one is moving and then suddenly everyone shoot exactly at the same time, even if while was disconnected from what happens in the battle for a second and one of his friends shot late.

Second way to use it is get hit more than once by the same player at the same time. This happens when you have some really bad lag and you're disconnected for more than a whole second. At this time your friend shoots you and sees you come back to the same place, he doesn't understand what just happened and shoots you again, or maybe he was shooting you with Ricochet and managed to shoot you 5 times or even more before your lag ended. When your game catches up with what happened while you were lagged away, it realizes that you got shot with Ricochet 5 times by your friend, so you see all 5 shots at same time and get an incredibly strong push.

Finally, the last and least cheaty use of lag, it is changing the timing of a shot. If only one of the helpers that shoot the jumper is lagging a little, you know that his shot will always be the last and will hit you when you are already in the air and rotated in different angle. You can use it in your favor to put your laggy friend in a position where you need the shot to hit you later, maybe even when you get out of his aim cone (the area in which he can hit you without needing to move). Presonally I found this little trick useful sometimes, and every time one of my friend is lagging I know what is the best position for him in the trick.

Here's a video showing something that clearly can't be done without lag: *link*

 

Bugs

There are some bugs in the game that can help you do parkour, and one of them makes a very popular OMP trick possible: Border Jump. When you lean off the border of most maps, you get this bug where your hull goes a little through the ground and gets pushed up through it. This allows you to get into a wheelie easily, even while driving fast, which the can get you sliding fast in a wheelie and the only thing that's left to do is to shoot down when you want to jump.

Another bug is the prop glitch. Props are the building "blocks" of Tanki maps. Have you ever hit something while driving on flat ground or while slightly touching a flat wall? That's the glitch. The physics of tanki allow you sink a little into the ground when you swing your hull, and this way you can take control over when you get this glitch. Simply accelerate and then suddenly start driving to the opposite direction right before you reach the border between two props. This will cause you to swing your hull, slide back a little with your back slightly sinking into the ground before you start moving forward, and if you did it right you'll hit the edge of the next prop, stop sliding back and your front will go up higher. This way you can get into wheelie on flat ground with Thunder and a few other turrets. This bug can also be used to make a ramp next to a wall where it seems like you lean on thin air. You can even use it to stay in the same place in wheelie.

 

Flipping

Some tricks actually start with a flipped tank, or use a flipped tank to make them look better. For example, that trick where you push a flipped tank on a mine and then he shoots down, or when a flipped tank leans on another tank to make a ramp and shoot the jumper in style while being flipped. Also elevators are almost always made of sideways tanks.

 

Handstand

You know this moment when you get perfectly balanced while standing on the front or back of your hull on another tank? It's called a handstand, and it's pretty useless. But it is a nice position to start a trick from,I used it together with two Strikers to make something very creative, and there are tons of other tricks that can be started with this! You can even set up an elevator of tanks doing a handstand, or build stable tank structures with them.

 

Wheelie

For a long time wheelie was just a stunt or a funny thing you can do. But now there are lots of uses for it. For example, you can have a dictator making wheelie on top of a ramp to continue it and let you jump high up from him, or you can jump from the ramp at a tank that is rotated with his front to you in a wheelie, hit his edge and make a pretty cool edge jump off of him. You can even make a tilted elevator with it! I know this one is not as useless as the other things in this list, but I felt it was the right thing to add it because many players still don't know about it.

 

Gold boxes

Sounds useless? Hard to believe it isn't, right? In fact, I can think of two popular uses. First one is decoration, so many people love gold boxes... so having one lying around next to you while you do a trick can decorate the video a little. Or you could have some of them dropping around you while you fly in the air in a parkour rank up. Second thing has something to do with gold hunters - it's setting a target in the air, that you have to reach with precision and good timing. There are many players that enjoy making the so called "gold box skills" videos, in which they use various tricks (sometimes OMP, sometimes complex tricks with one or more players helping them) to catch gold boxes while they are still high in the air. Some people find this parkour style more interesting than targeting roofs of buildings, before it was possible to drop gold boxes players were catching repair kits this way and pretending they were gold boxes. This parkour style also adds an element of competition into parkour, and adds another type of target - one that has to be reached from any direction and doesn't matter if you flip or die after it, which many players prefer over traditional parkour.

 

Trolls, enemies and anyone else

I just happen to be an expert in Parkour Fighting which offers some nice solutions to this problem. These annoying players in public parkour battles that come to kill players... All they want to do is kill you, and not help you parkour in any way. Same goes for enemies in normal battles, they come to win a battle and destroy their enemies. One way you could use them is by jumping from a ramp or just doing some other trick that doesn't take much preparation. They will see you and start shooting, their shot might give you the extra boost you needed to get a good jump and land on a roof. Alternatively you could force them to be a part of your tricks. It's not always easy, but you can flip them and position them where you need them to serve as an edge for an Edge Jump, as a higher ground to climb something, or even drop mines on them to make use of their "death jump". You can make use of enemies that wait on top of a ramp to shoot you as soon as you get up, just get a decent acceleration, drive up the ramp, get shot by them and shoot down, and you'll make a very popular parkour trick! To add more style to it, you can also use an unsuspecting tank that just drives somewhere as a helper for your parkour trick. Watch this video from 1:40 and you'll see how easily a random player can help you make a parkour trick by simply driving up a ramp. Or watch my first video to see how I force an enemy to help me climb a wall, and take advantage of his self destruction.

 

Server restart

Hmm... how could a thing that kicks you with all your fellow parkourists out of the game be useful? You know these profitable DM games of 999 kills and no one is getting near ending it except for one player who's there to stay for hours and take a whole lot of crystals out of the battle fund. There is no way this friend will give up his 20k battle fund to come help you make a trick that you really wanna do but you need one more player for it. But sometimes you can get lucky and have a server restart that will automatically finish your friend's DM and give him the battle fund, so he can finally come to parkour with you and get that trick done!

 

Bushes, trees and any other sprites

Bushes are not just decoration in the game, some maps are designed in a way that allows players hide in the bushes and gain great advantage from it. Parkourists can use it too to hide a helper behind a tree or put a mine under a bush and shoot a cool video of a trick that includes some surprizing parts no one would expect until what's hidden in the bushes is exposed.

Another use of these sprites is remembering specific spots on the ground, in an open area with just grass and bushes it is the best way to remember where exactly you should place the mine or where the jumper starts driving from. Just remember what bush is the closest and where relatively to it is the spot you need to remember.

 

Black marks

Usually you don't want to have a bunch of black marks in your video, showing how many times you failed before finally landing that trick... but sometimes you might want to create black marks on purpose! It might be for decoration but can also be used to mark specific spots on the ground without needing bushes or anything else around. For example, you can shoot a mine you placed to create a black mark on it so everyone else who can't see the mine from far will still know where it is because the black mark on it is visible from everywhere. This can also be used to mark other positions, anything that needs to be visible and it's location has to be shown precisely.

 

---

 

Think you can find anything absolutely useless for parkour? Go ahead and post your ideas, challenge my creativity!

[ToiletPaperRoll 1,318]

gold boxes

 

they make everyone run like noobs

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

gold boxes

 

they make everyone run like noobs

Easy one, added! :P

[r_I_already_won0 2,339]

Nice work! :)

 

What about Parkour trolls who start killing? :ph34r:

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

Nice work! :)

 

What about Parkour trolls who start killing? :ph34r:

Trolls, enemies, team mates, AFKs and absolutely anyone... I can use them all, and I did many times!

Added :P

[cube3e 1,973]

@My.RAGE and @Mr.Latvian

[stanzhang 3,291]

Useless thing in parkour? hmmm I would say server updates :D

[ToHoYoNTaDa 1,147]

Smoky

[need.higher.rank 3,491]

Pretty good 

 

oh and i guess the next guide of F&F will be of Skyscrapers?

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by need.higher.rank

[stanzhang 3,291]

Smoky

Smoky with the alteration could be really good in parkour.

[PracticeParkourStunt 2,542]

Think you can find anything truly absolutely useless for parkour? Go ahead and post your ideas, challenge my creativity!

 

Yup, and that thing is: nothing

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

Useless thing in parkour? hmmm I would say server updates :D

Added! This doesn't directly affect a parkour trick, but it gets you enough parkourists to do it, that's the best you can get out of it I guess.

 

Smoky

Smoky is very useful, it is pretty strong and I used it several times in Fight & Flight parkour videos.

[I3acon-GG 72]

Nice topic :D I really liked it

~Nathanael Johnata

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

Nice topic :D I really liked it

~Nathanael Johnata

Thanks! :D

[stanzhang 3,291]

Added! This doesn't directly affect a parkour trick, but it gets you enough parkourists to do it, that's the best you can get out of it I guess.

I need to find some useless thing that you can't think a use for :D

[GeeVuh 1,647]

Geez. How the heck did you guys think of that Striker trick... geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzz.

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

Geez. How the heck did you guys think of that Striker trick... geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzz.

It was just another one of my crazy ideas :D

Me and darrex come up with most of our tricks ^_^

Edited January 8, 2017 by SwiftSmoky

[cube3e 1,973]

 

oh and i guess the next guide of F&F will be of Skyscrapers?

 

Yes.

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

If any of you was doubting the usefulness of lag in parkour - WATCH THIS lol :P

[Bugs.meeny 1,013]

A bush

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

A bush

Good one!

Added :P

 

Also added another thing - black marks that are created by mines and other explosions

[cube3e 1,973]

If any of you was doubting the usefulness of lag in parkour - WATCH THIS lol :P

Don't think anyone ever has, lol.

[duzagh 18]

yes splash dammage

[cube3e 1,973]

yes splash dammage

Without Splash Damage, tricks like Splash Jump will be impossible to do. Atleast come up with something good. .-.

[gabriele02 3,813]

a wall bug/lag