guide Dealing with Overpowered Combos

[LOLKILLERTOTHEDEATH 1,921]

Broken combinations. Fun to use, but extremely irritating to have to face off against. Many different combos can make your life quite miserable - from the moderately accessible and not broken "Incendiary Band Heat Resistance" combo to the wholly broken Electromagnetic Salvo augment of Gauss. This guide suggests just a few ways deal with these combinations. Note that these tips don't have a 100% success rate but can help mitigate these combos.

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5. Prepare yourself adequately before the fight, if possible.

Like tests, preparing yourself adequately can often be the difference between you dying or living. Now note that this tip isn't universally applicable; there isn't much you can do, for example, to prepare yourself against, say, Electromagnetic Salvo (commonly called "EMP Salvo" or, more correctly, "EM Salvo") for Gauss. EMP Immunity for your hull isn't something you can do to prepare yourself because it's luck-based (and this guide is written to help those who do not buy and thus don't likely have all the augments that they need). I'm not going to tell you to "just get EMP/Stun/AP Immunity." That's like saying that nobody should be poor because the simplest solution to poverty is simply becoming rich. That being said, you're not entirely helpless, even as a non-buyer. For example, in the case of IB-HR (Incendiary-Band-Heat-Resistance) users, you can use Boosted Armor, some Vulcan protection (it doesn't even need to be maxed out), and buy the Heat Resistance augment for your hull. Will this make you nigh-invincible? No, far from it. But, it means that you can afford to be a little more careless and still make it out alive even if you do have a run-in with an IB-HR user. In the case of an EMP/stun augment, you can always get protections against the turret. I know it doesn't do much, but it does something at the very least. As for AP augments, I don't believe there's anything you can buy with crystals to help you.

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4. Chose your equipment carefully and after knowing the weakness of any broken combos in the match.

This may seem like a completely obvious thing to say, but I've been in situations where more than half the team is using Thunder protection against me when there are more powerful teammates to worry about. I've also seen players trying to use Hornet and Railgun when practically half my team was using AP Immunity with Railgun protection. Choosing your equipment and knowing what specific hulls and turrets have to offer is crucial. Don't be that Viking-Ricochet player who never turns their turret and insists on using Viking-Ricochet in Siege against a team that is more or less just Titan users. Instead, it is helpful to know the weaknesses of overpowered combos. In particular, IB-HR is weak at extremely close or long ranges, EM Salvo needs lock-on to do significant damage, EMP and Stun Railgun both need to land hits precisely, AP Freeze needs to get within range, and AP Magnum needs a direct hit. These are, of course, just some of the weaknesses to exploit. So, if you're facing off against, say, a Hunter-Freeze player using AP Freeze, for the love of God, don't pull out your Freeze protection and Titan unless you have AP immunity. Instead, opt for a faster hull, which will give you more maneuverability and agility to evade the Hunter AP-Freeze user, as they are only deadly when they're close to you. If you are fighting a Titan EM Salvo user, consider using Hunter with a turret that they do not have protection against and fight smart. Generally, medium or light hulls are a better bet against most of the overpowered combos because almost every combo has some (maybe not major) weakness that you can exploit. Additionally, I would advise waiting for a minute or two before you change your equipment because players will often leave the match or change their equipment by that time.

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3. Change the modes you frequent

This one might be a little controversial, but it works. In particular, what I mean is that you should choose the mode you play carefully. For example, if you go play Rugby or CTF, be prepared for many players to use Hopper. If you're planning to play Siege, then it'll most likely be Titan spam. What I have found is that more often than not, the least number of EMP/Stun/AP augment users are in modes such as Control Points or Team Deathmatch (TDM) and occasionally Assault. Depending on your love for specific modes, this suggestion might be nonsensical to you. Still, these modes are generally a lot more fun and generally see a lot better variety in equipment than CTF or Rugby, where practically anything moving is a Hopper, with some players using EMP/Stun/AP augments. Whenever I feel that I'm having a hard time finding a balanced match, playing one of these modes (more CP & TDM than Assault) lets me get into a decently balanced and fun match. Does this strategy always work? No. Indeed, quite often, you'll keep being put into matches that are very one-sided or where the enemy team consists of many players using overpowered combos. But, it does often do something to help deal with the more overpowered combos in the game.

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2. Don't fight like a younger man; nothing held back.

Yes, this is indeed a reference to the Dark Knight trilogy (check here) where Bane easily overpowers Batman in their initial confrontation. The point here is, you need to hold back. That's not to be confused with just giving up midway through the fight. What I mean is, don't just blindly try to fight enemies using a broken combination. Fight smart because, without a doubt, if you try to brute force your way through them, you're going to lose the fight. Instead, try to fight using some general plans or some strategies. For example, say you're facing off against an EM Salvo user. Instead of fighting savagely, repeatedly take cover. Rather than tanking hits, take cover repeatedly and time it so that they cannot use their salvo on you. A lot of the time, if you do this, you'll likely be able to survive longer, at least, and perhaps even destroy them. As another example, if you're fighting against an IB-HR user, then keep moving at long range or circle them at close range. In either case, they'll have a hard time lighting you on fire. Preparing yourself adequately for the fight and using your brain instead of your keyboard is more valuable than simply attacking. I've often been in situations where an EM Salvo user thought they had me, only for me to keep resetting their lock on period and eventually destroy them.  

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1. The ultimate, super solution which will fix all of your problems:

OK, so this next one is going to: Blow. Your. Mind. Are you ready for it...? I should be getting a Nobel prize for this invention. Here is the brilliant, mind-bogglingly outstanding solution: Just leave lol. I cannot tell you the number of times I see players playing against extremely overpowered combos. They'll spend the whole match just complaining about how Tanki needs to nerf these augments (as opposed to doing something to deal with it) and, in the end, get nothing out of it. I don't understand why people do this. In the image of the chat, you can see a player who was clearly dissatisfied with the match, and rather than simply trying to find a new one, he decided to stay in the match and complain about how horrible he felt the match was (with some very colorful language which I have censored).
Needless to say, this sort of a reaction is completely pointless given that you can leave the match with 2 clicks instead. By joining a match, you haven't entered some legally binding contract obliging you to play until the match is over. As radical as it sounds, you can leave. You don't have to stay. I'm not saying that players need to suck it up and deal with it. What I am saying is, leave if you aren't having fun. There's no rule saying you have to stay, and I can assure you almost nobody in your team even took the time to read your name, nor would they mock you for leaving.
The screenshot of me in Brest is also another good example. There are 2 AP augment users, 2 EMP augment users, an IB-HI player (before the nerf that rendered Incendiary Band useless, pretty much, when paired with Heat Immunity), as well as a Compact-Fuel-Tanks Firebird (and though the Compact Fuel Tanks augment is by no means overpowered, the fact that there is also an IB-HI user [again, before the nerf] typically warrants use of the Heat Immunity augment). Also note that there are players using the Armadillo module with 4 protection slots, indicating that they likely spend time and money in the game. Additionally, most of my team consists of (at the time) non-broken combos (barring the IB-HI augment users and a single EMP Railgun user). Furthermore, the match is in Brest which is a map I don't much care for. So what did I do? Why, I left the match, of course! I was interested in using a (not as badly) broken combo in the form of Vulcan-Adrenaline, Crusader & Heat Immunity, and there's not much room to do that if you're repeatedly having your armor pierced or supplies disabled, or being cooked. Yet another instance of this (and I am sorry for the low quality of that image) is the other match where I was playing against two IB-HI users, an AP augment user and a Stun Railgun user. Once again, I just wanted to use my not-as-broken combo, but obviously it would be something of a nuisance to do so. So what did I do? I left. My team had nobody to counter these enemies, and I wasn't interested in spending a whole match chasing after certain enemies while my team was getting crushed. Does that make me somewhat selfish? I guess so, but does it really matter? I think not. Most of the time almost everybody's playing for themselves. Nobody's willing to lie on the wire and let the other guy crawl over you. A lot of players would rather cut the wire. At the end of the day, I'm playing Tanki because I want to play and I feel that time spent playing is time I (often times) enjoy playing. If I don't find something enjoyable (such as parkour wars in a parkour match) then I just leave because while the experience of my teammates is important, my time is more important to me. 

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Conclusion: Generally speaking, you do not want to combat these overpowered combos head-on unless you know you have them with their tracks to the wall. Instead, prepare as best you can before the fight, use the right equipment for the job, try to play in modes where players using overpowered combos are not present, and fight smart. If all else fails, just leave the match. Don't play if you don't even enjoy the match. I hope you find as many matches as you can where you're on the edge of your seat until the last minute! Good luck on the battlefield!

[Iron_Man 2,376]

Greetings, readers!

As promised, we've brought an exciting article for you all. Our recently retired Reporter, LOLKILLERTOTHEDEATH (as tempting as it might be to write that as "LOLKILL...", let's not do it) has written a resourceful guide on dealing with overpowered combos. We're sure that you'll find this guide quite enjoyable and helpful.