The New 2022 Meta

[deadmetal254 5]

Ok...

It's been a while since I played, definitely several months..maybe a year approximately. I've begun to notice that my build has not been producing as much as it normally has in the past. My main build is Vulcan with incendiary bullets, Titan with heat immunity and defender/booster drone.

Can anyone give me a crash course on what's been changed roughly and if this has been nerfed at all? Would be greatly appreciated. I also mainly do TDM.

[LambSauce 1,890]

I too have come back from a six month break, so I’m not up to scratch either.

However I do occasionally watch some of the esports players and streamers, particularly the Russian ones, and 99% of them seem to be using Paladin these days. Probably has to do with the OD.

[Spy 14,736]

1 hour ago, deadmetal254 said:

Ok...

It's been a while since I played, definitely several months..maybe a year approximately. I've begun to notice that my build has not been producing as much as it normally has in the past. My main build is Vulcan with incendiary bullets, Titan with heat immunity and defender/booster drone.

Can anyone give me a crash course on what's been changed roughly and if this has been nerfed at all? Would be greatly appreciated. I also mainly do TDM.

The combination of Vulcan (incendiary band) + Heat Immunity was nerfed with the release of Patch Update #647;

• «Incendiary band» augment now only ignites opponents if a Vulcan is under the "Burning" status effect.

As to the current meta, What LambSauce said is correct - the best hull in the game is Paladin due to its overdrive. (More information about Paladin's overdrive is available in the Wiki).

[LambSauce 1,890]

@deadmetal254 Just to add to my previous comment, this guy from TeamPointers streams for like 5-6 hours every day: https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBaHbKa123/videos

Good source for informing yourself about the current meta.

[TheCongoSpider 8,954]

2 hours ago, deadmetal254 said:

Ok...

It's been a while since I played, definitely several months..maybe a year approximately. I've begun to notice that my build has not been producing as much as it normally has in the past. My main build is Vulcan with incendiary bullets, Titan with heat immunity and defender/booster drone.

This could be that your Defender and Booster are not fully upgraded, which results in your Boosted Armour and Damage (Double At out and Double Damage) are not as strong as when you left. Consider upgrading Brutus in the meantime while also trying to upgrade one of either Booster or Defender, not both. 

Use Reinforced Aiming Transmission or Adrenaline if you have them, not Incendiary Band. 

 

 

As for the meta, you have those combinations at the top and you have combinations that are simply powerful relative to the rest of equipment. On top, as others have mentioned, is Paladin with its Overdrive and synergy with whatever turret and augment is powerful at the time. The drone you use with your equipment will have your effectiveness in battle differ. An EMP Tesla Paladin using Trickster is miles more powerful and dangerous on the battlefield than an EMP Tesla Paladin using Brutus. A stock turret might seem weak but can become very potent when equipped with certain augments. All in all it depends on what you have available to use. Some augments synergise better with some drones and/or hulls than others.

 

Notable strong/potent turrets:

 

• Freeze
• Tesla
• Hammer
• Striker
• Smoky
• Vulcan

 

If you consider each turret's best augments, that list expands to the entire roster...except Thunder and Magnum. The most potent augments being augments that apply the EMP or Armour-Piercing status effects to enemies easily. 

 

 

Notable strong/potent and consistent drones for their purpose: 

 

• Booster
• Defender
• Trickster
• Crisis
• Hyperion
• Assault
• Supplier 
• Mechanic

 

A lot of drones are outclassed in general effectiveness against these listed drones. One drone may be more potent on a particular turret or augment than another, but these are the best and most consistent for their purpose currently. 

 

 

[LambSauce 1,890]

26 minutes ago, TheCongoSpider said:

If you consider each turret's best augments, that list expands to the entire roster...except Thunder and Magnum. The most potent augments being augments that apply the EMP or Armour-Piercing status effects to enemies easily.

Is AP Magnum not good, in your opinion?

Or did they change Magnum in the last few months?

[wolverine848 13,097]

26 minutes ago, LambSauce said:

Is AP Magnum not good, in your opinion?

Or did they change Magnum in the last few months?

AP Magnum can still get plenty of kills.  It's used as a short-range turret like Hammer or Ricco.  EVERY direct hits bestows the lovely AP status.

[TheCongoSpider 8,954]

@deadmetal254 Giving an example of a recent top meta combination will be the combination of Tesla and Paladin with a meta drone. The main part of this is Tesla being overpowered at the time of its arrival and the combination itself had access to most of its characteristics while Tesla was in its Early Access stage. Going off of the initial paramaters, Tesla had all of these small things coming together to make a super turret:

 

• Longer base range than the other melee turrets
• The ability to further increase said range significantly by itself or with the help of allied/enemy Teslas as well as the unmaterialised tanks on both teams
• High damage per tick coupled with a fast firing rate
• Infinite ammo with the main damage dealing mode of the turret
• Higher maximum critical hit chance than most turrets
• The ability to leave mobile mines floating around in the battle that deal high damage
• The ability to deal the entirety of its DPS immediately as an engagement begins
• Access to the EMP and AP status effect through Ultra Containers

 

 

What was the problem with Tesla? It had too high burst damage, and too high sustainable DPS. On release, its base damage when at maximum upgrades was 980, so very close to the delicate and uber important 1,000 damage barrier. The biggest changer of its initial interactions came from the Adrenaline augment, an augment which increases your damage up to a limit, in proportion to your remaining HP. All it took for Tesla was for it to lose 10% of its HP and this is where the big trouble began. Instead of needing 2 hits to kill an unprotected light hull, you could now one-shot it. Instead of taking 1.8 seconds to kill an unprotected heavy hull, you killed them in 0.9 seconds. Barely any time to react. It had crossed the most potent damage barrier. Many players felt like their Tesla protection modules were not doing anything, and by all means, they were not wrong. This is what happens when you cross the 1,000 damage barrier with a fast firing rate. 

 

 

Addition of Meta Drone:

 

What's worse than an overpowered turret playing according to the rules of the game? An overpowered turret ignoring those rules. The top drones for offensive purposes at the time were none other than Booster, Defender, Trickster, Hyperion and Crisis. A part of the base gameplay in Tanki is your supplies having downtime when their durations end. These drones do not have that problem, and three of them give heightened supply potency. This means you are harder to kill overall. Infinite Boosted Damage uptime means enemies will ALWAYS have less time to damage you before they die during an engagement. Infinite Boosted Armour uptime means you are never vulnerable to high damage or surprise attacks and will last longer, especially when your turret has high sustained DPS. 

 

Booster gave x4 damage for 3 seconds. This let Tesla's high burst damage shine as it had enough to one-shot light hulls with protection modules or boosted armour, or simply to kill them much more quickly and strengthen your longetivity. 

Defender gave a bit boost to effective HP and let the a portion of the burst damage and mainly the sustained DPS shine. 

Crisis allowed you to break the 1,000 damage barrier without the need of Adrenaline and also get to enemies faster/use heightened armour when fighting high damage, low firing rate turrets. 

Trickster allowed you to close the gap between targets quickly and give chase easier when running away. 

Hyperion gave infinite uptime to Boosted Armour, Damage and Speed Boost, ensuring you were not without firepower at any given moment. 

 

 

Addition of Paladin:

 

Looking at it from the perspective of someone using it for solo-play, Paladin's Overdrive gave the user immunity to status effects, passive healing over time, 90% Armadillo, and applied the Jammer and Armour-Piercing status effects to enemies within a radius around it. It is self-sustaining and it weakens enemies near it. The armour piercing status effect disables the effect of any damage reduce that is on the target, meaning they will take full damage from the enemy when inflicted by it. You remembered what we mentioned earlier about Tesla's damage, right? Adding AP means they will have to take the brunt of that. As both Tesla and the Overdrive is melee, it will be helping the Tesla whenever it can get its hands on someone. If the enemy haf AP Immunity, they were not able to use their own Overdrive to counter you. The hull itself was quite stable and had the ability to avoid projectiles by strafing. The Overdrive, for a while, charged very quickly, one of the fastest to charge on average, with the longest retention period. 

 

 

Couple it with the Trickster drone and you had very fast high-damage machine coming towards your face with little you can do to stop it, both outside and inside of the Overdrive.

Couple it with Booster and you let enemies taste your full damage during the Overdrive and even more, both outside and inside of the Overdrive.

Couple it with Defender and you became extra tanky in conjunction with the passive healing and 90% Armadillo.and more, both outside and inside of the Overdrive.

Couple it with Crisis and Hyperion and you had a combination of the three above when it suited you, both outside and inside of the Overdrive. 

 

 

Addition of Ultra Container Augments:

 

It was around here when fhe first few big nerfs for Tesla came. Most notable being the death of Dilatory Protocol, the halving of the maximum critical hit chance, and the decrease in the base damage from 980 to 810, and the ball lightning from 1,960 to 1,620. This allowed the TTK to drop a bit and allowed players to have some more time to fight back against the Teslas. With these nerfs came the gradual introduction of the Electroturret augments. Augments that turned your ball lightning into a fast projectile and allowed it to apply one of the many status effects in the game. Of the 4 Status Electroturrets, the most potent were AP and EMP Electroturret. Both being able to apply tank-weakening status effects at will to their target, allowing for a swift kill.

Killing was the fastest way to gain Overdrive charge, and what better way to secure a kill than to take away enemy defenses by force? Blow way your targets with ease with the Booster and Crisis drones as they allowed you to once again break the important 1,000 damage barrier and gain high Overdrive charge % for your next rampage. When EMP Tesla was released, the Overdrive charge times were significantly nerfed. This did not stop Tesla Paladins as, again, they had the power to kill enemies swiftly and efficiently. EMP Tesla disabled your supplies for 7 seconds, allowing the Tesla free reign to kill you, and even to take its time doing so! Because that 7 second EMP was able to he chained if by some miracle you made it out alive at the end of the duration. 

 

 

Addition of Proper Nerfs:

 

We are in 2022 now and to end an unnecessarily long saga, potent nerfs were handed out. Tesla has its firing rate slightly reduced, its ball lightning damage halved, and its ball lightning damage penalty on Status Electroturrets further increased. Paladin no longer decreases critical damage so two more hulls were added to the list of potential counters. Paladin's retention period has been halved and can now easily flip when driving off of cliffs if not careful. This is not the end of the combo itself, as it is still strong, but it is no longer the cancerous powerhouse that it used to be and was described above. 

 

 

TL;DR 

 

Here are some videos at different intervals of the Epic of Tesla. 

 

1. The days of Dilatory Protocol's domination.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

2. Adrenaline Tesla showing its strength with 980 base damage.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

3. Self-made video giving examples of the potential burst damage Tesla had with Electroturret by using Acceleration Protocol for increased ball speed. (4:45 and after for clear examples)

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

4. Tesla Paladin (Electroturrets) 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

[numericable 2,375]

I always use paladin with vulcan/ striker and booster. those are the new metas f2p combos. If you have their p2w augment, thats even better.

For striker use missile hunter as f2p or stunning missile for p2w gameplay; vulcan use adrenaline for f2p or rubberized round for p2w; gauss use emp salvo or AP gauss.

Those weapon are very good on mobile and pc too. But after all, it depends on the strategy you use on battle, for example if you are a defender/attacker/center middle offender. But those vulcan and striker can do the job in any situation so i would recomend them to you with a fully upgraded booster drone.

Also, dont purchase battle pass, wait for 1k tankoins and spend them in the next tankoins giveaway for esport, there are lot of great prizes which include 4th slot unlocked.

Edited February 4, 2022 by numericable

[deadmetal254 5]

Loving the information everyone. To put into perspective what I have so far...

 

Fully upgraded:
Vulcan 7-20
Freeze 7-20
Hunter 7-20
Titan 7-20

Almost fully upgraded:
Railgun 7-19
Gauss 7-17
Hornet 7-19
Defender Level 16
Booster Level 12

Trying to figure out what to use as far as primary module slots.

[TheCongoSpider 8,954]

17 minutes ago, deadmetal254 said:

Loving the information everyone. To put into perspective what I have so far...

 

Fully upgraded:
Vulcan 7-20
Freeze 7-20
Hunter 7-20
Titan 7-20

Almost fully upgraded:
Railgun 7-19
Gauss 7-17
Hornet 7-19
Defender Level 16
Booster Level 12

Trying to figure out what to use as far as primary module slots.

Can you tell us what augments you have for each equipment listed? 

 

As for primary modules, Smoky, Vulcan and Gauss should be good. Swap one of them out for Freeze if they are annoying you and there aren't any of the other three turrets in the battle.

[NikmanGT 4,375]

In my opinion, it's obviously Paladin, as for the turret I think it doesn't matter much what turret you equip, be it hammer, isida, tesla, freeze. I believe melee and short range turrets are OP with Paladin and serve as the new meta.

[deadmetal254 5]

@TheCongoSpider Here are the augments:

Vulcan: Reinforced aiming transmission/Incendiary Band
Freeze: Toxic Mix/Shock Freeze/Corrosive Mix
Railgun: Electromagnetic accelerator "scout"/Super AP Rounds/Round Stabilization/Reinforced Aiming Transmission
Gauss: None acquired
Titan: Heat/Cold Immunity
Hornet: Heat/Cold Immunity
Hunter: Heat/Cold Immunity

Edited February 4, 2022 by deadmetal254

[wolverine848 13,097]

2 hours ago, TheCongoSpider said:

This is not the end of the combo itself, as it is still strong, but it is no longer the cancerous powerhouse that it used to be and was described above. 

Oh it still is.  They still manage to fight AND KILL three enemies, without any help.

Been in battles where Paladin was doing ALL the capping in a 5-0 CTF battle.

They are especially OP on smaller maps where there's no where to hide from their AP aura.

The "nerfs" to paladin have been almost negligible.  They either need to remove the AP aura entirely, or cut the duration of the OD in half. The OD can last while crossing the entire length of even the largest maps.

[Frylock 1,617]

20 minutes ago, wolverine848 said:

Oh it still is.  They still manage to fight AND KILL three enemies, without any help.

Been in battles where Paladin was doing ALL the capping in a 5-0 CTF battle.

They are especially OP on smaller maps where there's no where to hide from their AP aura.

The "nerfs" to paladin have been almost negligible.  They either need to remove the AP aura entirely, or cut the duration of the OD in half. The OD can last while crossing the entire length of even the largest maps.

I mean its OP and cancerous if they are in groups. Rather than themselves.  Or if they are using the meta drones to make the thing so annoying to go against individually. But pre-nerf paladin was sure OP by its self and groups. But I will not deny that it is still strong.

Edited February 4, 2022 by MysticBlood

[wolverine848 13,097]

Just now, MysticBlood said:

I mean its OP and cancerous if they are in groups. Rather than themselves.  Or if they are using the meta drones to make the thing so annoying to go against individually. But pre-nerf paladin was sure OP by its self and groups. But I will not deny that itis still strong.

It does not need to be in groups to ruin the battle.

The OD (status immune, Jammer aura, AP aura, healing) + Tesla/Freeze + EMP augment + the right drone (booster/Defender/Crisis/Trickster) enables them to cap at will or kill multiple enemies - by themselves.

Tesla and freeze are OP melee turrets that have massive synchronicity with Paladins short-range auras.

Have seen this done many times - after the last patch.

 

[DestrotankAI9 1,513]

11 hours ago, deadmetal254 said:

@TheCongoSpider Here are the augments:

Vulcan: Reinforced aiming transmission/Incendiary Band
Freeze: Toxic Mix/Shock Freeze/Corrosive Mix
Railgun: Electromagnetic accelerator "scout"/Super AP Rounds/Round Stabilization/Reinforced Aiming Transmission
Gauss: None acquired
Titan: Heat/Cold Immunity
Hornet: Heat/Cold Immunity
Hunter: Heat/Cold Immunity

You are in luck, as you own some good combos here (well, reasonably good luck anyway as you do lack optimal Freeze augments).

Your best combos for the current meta are surely:

 

- Vulcan with reinforced aiming transmission and Titan/Hunter (or you could use it with Hornet too, altho personally I wouldn't be a huge fan of Vulcan with light hulls), and obviously heat immunity works really well with this Vulcan augment to give you no-reload gameplay - many combine Vulcan with heat immunity and do very well. But you might need to equip other augments, the Cold immunity could come in very useful now as Freeze status effect is now quite powerful, and removes the effect from your boosted damage while you are under the effect.

 

- Freeze (no augment) with Hornet or Hunter. Freeze is now really strong, and even stronger with Hornet and Dictator's overdrives which give 100% critical damage for a short time, through an effect called supercharge which they temprorarily grant you. Freeze has the highest damage increase for critical damage in the game (400%), so it combos very well with Hornet. Freeze will also work very well with Hunter. Sadly for you, the augments for Freeze that you own have been nerfed. AP Freeze is good against Titans (therefore good in Siege), or if you encounter many Freeze modules, but I find regular Freeze to be better most of the time, as the damage decrease is quite significant. Shock Freeze has had massive nerfs, and is in a bad place now. The best Freeze augments are now Adrenaline or Jamming mix, the first obtainable from the garage and the later from Ultra containers. Never equip Corrosive Mix, the loss of Freezing status effect is not worth it.

 

As for drones to use with these combos - Defender for Freeze, and Defender or Booster for Vulcan. However drone MUs are now VERY important, as the power level of your Boosted Damage and armor is now linked to drone upgrade level. So at only 12/20 upgrades, your Booster will be noticably weaker than 16/20 defender. Number one priority for you is to get Brutus drone and upgrade to 20/20 - you will need to use this when you run out of batteries. Brutus is very fast and cheap to upgrade these days, MUCH cheaper and faster than any other drone - so this should not be hard. Upgrade your other drones on sales - they are great drones, but need upgrades.

 

As for the incendiary brand augment - never use heat immunity with Incendiary brand now - ever - as others have said, as now the augment combination does not work at all since a patch some time ago. There is only one augment to use with Incendiary brand and that is Heat resistance (yes, that rare quality augment), and you would also want to combine it with a heavy hull - and probably also Defender drone. How effective it will be I don't know, it could actually be quite good with this particular setup - but other Vulcan augments will probably perform better.

 

As others have said, Paladin is probably the best overall hull right now. Although honestly, a lot of the other hulls are also good, and I would say there are many situations where I would prefer other hulls. I couldn't be bothered explaining when and why right now though, and this post is already long enough lol. I'll give you two examples: In Juggernaut Viking is still king, although Hornet and Freeze also has a claim to the throne. My favourite combos here are Viking with cyclone striker and Booster,  Dictator with cyclone striker and Defender or Freeze with Hornet/Dictator and Defender/Trickster. In small maps in CTF/RGB/ASL I often use Mammoth with various turrets and Trickster, and regularly outperform Paladins.

 

But in general, yes Paladin is the strongest overall hull - especially in capture modes.

 

Also, I agree with a lot of what others have said, but personally I would put a high priority on Striker protection, because it is currently highly powerful, common, and has many strong augments. Modules I would have equipped starting most modes would be: Striker/Smoky/Vulcan/Freeze, and for Siege I would change Freeze to Gauss. If I only had three module slots, it would be hard to choose, but I would probably go with Striker/Smoky/Freeze most of the time.

 

Hope some of that helps anyway. Good luck and... upgrade Brutus lol.

Edited February 4, 2022 by DestrotankAI9

[Abellia 504]

14 hours ago, TheCongoSpider said:

This is not the end of the combo itself, as it is still strong, but it is no longer the cancerous powerhouse that it used to be and was described above. 

I would like to note that similar nerfs would have destroyed any other combo, making it completely unplayable and/or a joke. A good example would be the changes to Duplet and Rapid Fire Mode, former powerhouses, and immediately after their nerfs they were completely unplayable - and stay so to this day.

Tesla and Paladin were hit much harder and they just went from being the most broken combo by an obscenely large margin to being the most broken combo by a large margin.

Comical.

Edited February 4, 2022 by Abellia

[Incorp 2,084]

23 hours ago, TheCongoSpider said:

Booster gave x4 damage for 3 seconds. This let Tesla's high burst damage shine as it had enough to one-shot light hulls with protection modules or boosted armour, or simply to kill them much more quickly and strengthen your longetivity

Wait, do you mean before of right now?

[TheCongoSpider 8,954]

6 minutes ago, Incorp said:

Wait, do you mean before of right now?

Before the drone and supply cooldown rebalance. 

Edited February 4, 2022 by TheCongoSpider

[Frylock 1,617]

12 hours ago, Abellia said:

I would like to note that similar nerfs would have destroyed any other combo, making it completely unplayable and/or a joke. A good example would be the changes to Duplet and Rapid Fire Mode, former powerhouses, and immediately after their nerfs they were completely unplayable - and stay so to this day.

Tesla and Paladin were hit much harder and they just went from being the most broken combo by an obscenely large margin to being the most broken combo by a large margin.

Comical.

Honestly, I don't think that duplet is completely unplayable as a non status augment. However I do agree of it once being one of the best at one point. However I think duplet hammer does fine if it has the meta drones or if someone that likes to always charge in and  does better with the augment. I guess its just me. Recently I used duplet on a light hull such as hornet/Med hull such as hunter/crusader with max engineer.(Booster and crisis would work the best with the augment, However I like to use engineer for recovery as I raid in with duplet.)  I think it does well for a non status augment...It does about 980-1080 per duplet shot  if you are close enough without boosted damages if the enemy isn't wearing wolf module. So to me its somewhat useful not useless. 

I think stock tesla is balanced its just the status augments for tesla that makes it OP.. The only status tesla that I can see as meta is EMP, and AP tesla since its the most used. Possibly Jamming and Freezing tesla is up there as well. 

 

Edited February 5, 2022 by MysticBlood
removed the last part

[NikmanGT 4,375]

For the current scenario, it has got to be Helios. Pair it with either Viking or Paladin, even booster or brutus, it continues to be overpowered in general.

[TheCongoSpider 8,954]

Due to the across-the-board damage buffs for some turrets to justify the Booster nerf, it has made some of them more powerful with Crisis since its boost did not change. The most notable major interaction change being Hammer, which went from dealing 2,808 to 3,276 damage, allowing itself to one-shot unprotected medium hulls. This allows:

• Blunderbuss to pass 2,000 base damage on both normal and critical damage without Booster
• Duplet to instantly kill medium hulls that have DA when used with Crisis
• Adaptive Reload to make an efficient use of its gimmick with Crisis
• Blunderbuss to instantly kill medium hulls that have DA when used with Camper

 

Here are some videos showcasing what 3,000-damage barrier break looks like (take all those Scorpion videos with Crisis as examples as well, funny thing is we have next to no comparison of it without Crisis). 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Other notable changes with Crisis:

• High-Precision Aiming System one-shots unprotected light hulls with the normal damage (but who uses HPAS with Crisis anyway?)
• Thunder, Scout Railgun and SBE Shaft one-shot unprotected medium hulls with the critical damage (they all have relatively high critical hit rates)
• Magnum one-shots unprotected heavy hulls with the critical damage (same critical hit rate as the three above)

 

The meta keeps changing with each patch note and may likely change again with the next one in a few hours. Currently, Hammer was the one that was (intentionally) created into a potential powerhouse in the past few weeks.