Monday Night Combat: Bacon Makes Everything Better.
The other day, Rich said something to me that really bothered me. He said that Monday Night Combat was “Just OK” and that it had “some issues to work out”. When pressed further, I was hit with a response that makes me believe he thought he was playing a different game.
The first point to touch on is that this is NOT a standard shooter. Monday Night Combat is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) and its objectives go beyond just kills and deaths. I know it’s a new concept for you people, winning a game without having to reach a specified kill count, but you should really give it a try. I blame Bungee for bringing you chumps into my gaming scene. Since I have a severe lack of competent teammates, I am going to break this game down for you kids in hopes that you will suck less.
Monday Night Combat is an XBL game that pits players against players and throws robots in the mix too. There are six different classes (“Pros” as the game calls them) that you can choose from; Tank, Gunner, Support, Assault, Sniper, and Assassin. In addition to having different weapons, each Pro has a different skill set that consists of 3 activatable skills, and a passive one. You earn money by killing enemies on the map and then use that money to buy upgrades for your Pro. As you upgrade your skills, they become more powerful (obviously) and allow you to influence the battle in different ways. Once you have played enough to get custom classes, you will be able to change your endorsements; these give you things like extra health or a faster rate of fire. If you like Team Fortress and/or DoTA, this is the game for you.
The objective in Monday Night Combat is simple: destroy the enemy team’s Money Ball and you win. If the enemy team destroys your Money Ball, you lose. To assist you in this process, both teams automatically spawn robots that follow a set path around the map leading them to attack the opposing team’s Money Ball. The robots will undoubtedly meet at some point where they will kill each other off, unless of course, you are playing the game correctly. You see, your robots… they aren’t that great. They move and attack whatever is along the path to the Money Ball and stop whenever there is combat. So what needs to happen is a player needs to come along and help shoot the enemy robots down the path so your team’s robots can advance. Following me so far? Good. The more enemy robots you kill, the easier it is for your robots to attack the enemy Money Ball and bring down its shields. Enemy robots and turrets will prioritize to the closest unit, so if you stand a couple feet behind your own robots, they will take the fire and you are free to wreck shop.
On the flip side, you also need to kill the enemy players that are pushing robots into your base and keep your Money Ball defended. WOAH! Double Objective, what does it MEAN? Well it means that you have a team for a reason, and everyone needs to play their role. Before I can bitch at you for not playing your role correctly, I need to bitch at you for not knowing what the roles are. Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you the standard MOBA role definitions.
The Roles
- Carry
Characters which specialize at killing other players through physical damage. Most characters that have wind-walk, an invisibility skill, or blink can fall into this category. Often these characters need to get more money than other classes.- Disabler
Characters who possess the ability to disable other characters, basically forcing them into a disadvantage while they attempt to fight or flee. Disables include any skills that move the enemy without his or her consent, stun an enemy, reduce movement speed, disallow movement, reduce damage, reduce attack speed, reduce armor, prevent physical attack, or prevent skill use. A good example of a stun is the Tank’s knockdown ability at the end of his level 3 charge. The Sniper’s trap is considered a root because while a trapped enemy cannot move from that spot, they can still look around and attack.- Support
Characters whose skills are meant to directly aid the rest of the team. Characters with healing or protective skills fall into this category. Pushers can be counted as support, although sometimes they can be used individually instead of working together with the team.- Nuker
Characters which possess the ability to cause a significant amount of damage in a single instant via use of an activated skill in lieu of a regular attack.- Pusher
Characters which can quickly destroy enemy towers, robots, and other players due to their ability to deal a lot of damage to an area of enemies.- Tank
Any WOWfags in the house? You should know what a tank is by now and if you don’t, stop playing video games. Tanks are big bad motherfuckers that eat damage and shit rocks. These classes are well suited for pushing lanes and killing Pros, but are also great on defense.
Now that we have the basic roles down, lets see how they apply to the Monday Night Combat classes.
Assault
Pusher | Disabler
The Assault’s grenade launcher weapon allows him to quickly push lanes as well as towers making him a great pusher. Level 2 charge gives him a great knock back ability that can be used to disable and/or ring-out opponents. His remote mine also has a knock back that can be used to ring out opponents.
As an Assault, you want to be escorting your robots down to the enemy Money Ball with your grenade launcher. If an enemy comes along, switch to your machine gun, pop a few shots off and then hit them with a charge. Make sure to position yourself and your grenades in prime spots for ring outs and be ready to use your jet pack if you end up getting knocked over the edge.
Assassin
Carry | Disabler
The Assassin is really good at killing other Pros and can move around the map quickly. Blind not only disables your opponent and stuns robots, but also gives you added mobility by increasing the height of your jump for a very short time. When the enemy Money Ball is exposed, the Assassin can do high amounts of damage to it quickly.
As an Assassin, you want to take out all of the assholes harassing your team. Your priority targets should be the Sniper and Support classes. Sneaking up on them for a kill makes life much easier for the rest of your team. The Assassin can also grapple Jackbots giving your team a fair amount of time to attack it without fear of retaliation. Use your blind ability to get out of sticky situations or disable a wave of robots about to crash your Money Ball. As an Assassin, grappling an enemy from behind will likely result in a kill. Some Pros can avoid kills from behind by getting the Armor endorsement as their gold or silver sponsor.
Gunner
Pusher | Carry | Disabler | Tank
The Gunner is one bad ass motherfucker. His minigun allows him to deal out massive amounts of damage to robots and Pros alike, on top of that he gets an added critical hit chance when deployed. He has a great disable in his slam that can be used to fend off pesky Assassins or even get a ring out. The Gunner’s mortar is extremely powerful as well, use it to push lanes, destroy turrets, and harass enemies at a distance. The Mortar’s splash allows you to be less than accurate when lobbing bombs across the map, and can do a ton of damage on a direct hit.
This character is great on both offense and defense so make sure you supporting the right side of the map! When teamed up with a Support class, the Gunner is a beast and really tough to take down. Push with your robots and deploy when you have a good position. If you know an Assassin is about to grab you, deploy yourself then immediately undeploy and start mashing the X button. 9 times out of 10 the Assassin will miss their grapple (due to the deploy and the delay between grapple attempts) and then get knocked back, preferably over the edge. You may want to get the Armor endorsement if you find your are dying to a lot of Assassins.
Tank
Tank | Disabler | Pusher
At first glance, I didn’t like this class at all, he seemed like a gimped version of the Gunner, but with the right endorsements he can be a killing machine. His charge is great for countering Assassins that grapple him unsuccessfully (due to his increased health from his class skill) and his spam grenade is amazingly annoying to enemy Pros. The Tank’s primary weapon is a jet engine that shoots out a huge jet flame. The closer you are to what you want to kill, the faster it dies. The alternate fire on the jet gun hits enemies in a radius around the Tank and does damage based on how much ammo is in your clip, grab the Ammo Mule endorsement to maximize this. His rail gun is like a really powerful no-scope sniper rifle with a slow rate of fire, use this one at a distance.
As a tank you prefer not to be out in the open, you want to be in the trenches and tunnels. Places where your enemies don’t have space to get away from your jet gun. Use your charge for ringouts and closing the gap when your enemy is just out of range. The spam grenade is the equivalent of a flash bang that only hits enemies and should be used often, there is nothing worse than having your vision blocked by a bunch of advertisements. Take a few pot shots from time to time with the rail gun, it will get you a lot of assists and your teammates will thank you.
Sniper
Carry | Support | Disabler
The Sniper can do a lot of damage from across the map to any enemy unit including Pros which allows him to earn money and build juice quickly. His traps are a great safeguard for your camping spot and his Flak is awesome for big battles, finding cloaked Assassins, and taking out turrets.
The Sniper is pretty kickass in this game. He can 1-shot kill people with head shots (unless they have face masks) and even though his Submachine Gun has a small clip, it will punish anyone that gets too close. Throw some traps down and make short work of any idiot dumb enough to get caught in them, head shots have never been easier. Support your pushing teams with your sniper rifle and then get in the action with your SMG once you’re juiced.
Support
Support | Nuker | Pusher
The Support class can do a number of things to help your team. Obviously healing should be a top priority, but he can also drain life from his enemies when he gets low. The heal/hurt gun works on Pros, robots, and turrets, this alone makes him extremely versatile. Additionally his air strike is great for killing anything within its blast radius, just be sure there is nothing overhead to block the bomb drop. On the flip side, if an enemy is on a platform above you, he will never see it coming when you drop the beacon on the floor. Firebases are mini-turrets that Support can drop to hold choke points and defend the money ball. Any turret, including firebases, can be hacked by the Support Pro. Hacking provides bonuses for your turrets and can take control over enemy turrets.
As a Support Pro, you want to make sure you are, ya know, supporting your team. Keep your teammates and robots healed to the max. Over-healing gives your teammates additional health beyond their normal max HP which can mean the difference between life and death when an Assassin comes creeping around. A fully upgraded Firebase will heal nearby units so be sure to position it in a highly trafficked area. Sticking airstrikes to enemy Pros is probably one of the most rewarding things in the game. Targets that are stuck take additional damage and will more than likely die from the hit. And please, for the love of god, use your shotgun on Pros. Stealing life is great, getting a 1 or 2 hit kill at close range is better.
You will probably find that some classes can blend and fill other roles throughout the game, but your best bet is to stick with what you’re good at… and by that, I mean what your class is good at.
I hope you now realize that you should not be trying to get the most kills in the game. In fact, with certain classes, it is possible to do everything right and not get a single kill all game, but ultimately you will be leading your team to victory. This isn’t Call of Duty, this isn’t Halo, this is Monday Night Combat and fuck you if you don’t like it.
