How To Convince Your Teamates and Opponents You Aren’t Terrible At Awesomenauts

Overview

This guide will help you convince your teamates and opponents that even though you are dying constantly with no kills, no lane clearing capabilities, and no supporting actions, you are not actually bad at the game.

Deceiving Others Through the Character Select Screen

The Art of Choosing First or Last
The most important step towards ensuring that your teamates are unaware of how terrible you are at Awesomenauts begins before the game even starts at the character select screen. The strategy here is simple– either be the first person to choose a character or the last. Never be the second person to choose a character.

If you are the first person to choose a character you can blame your feeding, constant deaths, and lack of kills/droid pushing/lane clearing/turret attacking/etc on bad team comp. Simply claim your teamates did not choose characters that support your character and therefore your team build is awful. Claim that they should have chosen characters based off your character, and had someone else chosen their character first you would have based your choice of character off theirs; however, since they are a bunch of hesitant ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you were forced to choose first. Now because they suck at Awesomenauts your team comp makes no sense at all. Even if the comp of your team is Leon/Yuri/Sentry or something that is objectively great double down on the claim that the team comp is terrible and your teamates suck, not you.

If you are the last person to choose a character, makes sure that you don’t actually select the character. Allow the timer to run out completely so that the game automatically selects the character you were hovering over. When the game begins, immediately send out a message over the chat to both teams saying ‘Oh no I was in the bathroom/making a sandwich/putting out a fire and I didn’t get to select my character!’ By sending out this message you lower people’s expectations of your performance. As the game proceeds and the opponents are racking up kills on you send out another message directed towards both teams saying ‘Sorry guys, I never play as ____’. By sending out this second message at this point in time both teams will surely feel slightly sympathetic for you and assume that you only suck as that character, not every single character in the game.

Choosing an Awesomenaut– The Supports

Choosing the Right Character– The Supports
The aforementioned tips for the character select screen can be used for any character. We are now about to delve into some character specific tips– in other words, these are the characters you should choose if you really want to convince your teamates and other players that you are not terrible at Awesomenauts. In general, the key is to choose a support character.

Voltar
By choosing Voltar you are choosing a character whose success is almost always dictated by having a decent team. In general, your first upgrade purchase should always be Psychonetic Repulsion. This upgrade allows you to heal both your teamates at the same time. Even if you never, ever follow both teamates and make use of this upgrade, the fact that you have it will show your teamates and the other players that you are a serious Voltar. After that, feel free to build whatever you want. it really doesn’t matter too much as long as you run around the map holding down the left mouse button constantly shooting out your healing wave to make it seem like you are trying to heal teamates. Likewise, make sure you drop your healbot every chance you get, even if your teamates are not in the vicinity.

As you continue to die and your teamates continue to die and they begin to yell at you in the chat for being the worst Voltar ever, make sure you respond in the all chat (not just team chat) pointing out that you are running around trying to heal your teamates as they run from you, dropping healbots they never make it to in time because they are incompetent, and most importantly are failing to protect their healer. By shifting the blame to your teamates surely no one will realize it is actually you who sucks at Awesomenauts.

Genji
Successful Genji players require a competent team more than any other Awesomenaut, even Voltar. The best thing about choosing Genji if you suck is that hardly anyone actually understands how Genji functions. Everyone acknowledges that Genji’s buffs are critical towards successfully winning, but no one actually bothers to track a Genji player’s build throughout the game to see if it makes any sense whatsoever because, frankly, they themselves don’t even know. Further, Genji is widely seen as one of the best Nauts and by picking Genji you pretty much ensure your teamates that you are in fact a fantastic player.

All that said, you don’t really need to know how to play Genji. Just do whatever and you’ll be safe from criticism because frankly no one knows what the hell you are doing and whether your play is competent at all– even if you are racking up the deaths. If your teamates begin to criticize you simply point out that you are a support character and Genji’s success relies on teamates that are great. If, however, your teamates call you out for constantly cocooning droids for no reason you need to be able to rebuke them. Simply state that there was an Awesomenaut, the game lagged, and you missed because of the lag. As we will discuss later, blaming failures on lag is a key way to convince your teamates and others that you don’t suck.

Yoolip
Yoolip is a great choice for someone who sucks at Awesomenauts because there is a high probability you will randomly get a kill or two by spamming your dinos. As such, make sure your first purchase as a Yoolip is the Antigravity Ball that extends the lifespan of your dinos. Your next purchase should be the Dino Poop which makes the dinos give out small health packs. Finally, you should get the Egg Hatcher upgrade that summons one more dino. Great, now you have a build that seems competent and allows you to completely suck but maybe occasionally get a kill or two while acting like you are healing teamates.

And really, that’s the general strategy for Yoolip when you suck– spam the robo dinos nonstop. If you are lucky, and you will get luck, the robo dinos will end up stealing a kill from one of your more competent teamates. So, when a teamate starts to tell you that you in fact suck, just point out that you do have a kill or two. If, however, you never get a kill as Yoolip make the argument that you are going for a support build which is why you got the health packs. Then tell your teamates they suck and should be getting more kills with all the free health packs you are spawning all over the place. To further this point, consider getting the Laboratory Centrifuge upgrade that causes droids you hit with a wrench to spawn a health pack. The health pack likely won’t help you from dying too much since you suck, but you can at least make the argument that you chose this build specifically to support your teamates and they suck for not protecting their healer.

One more important thing to note is that when you are Yoolip and you really suck at Awesomenauts you will constantly find yourself using Gripping Gaze on enemy Awesomenauts at inappropriate times. This means you’ll use the Gripping Gaze in a 3v1 battle, stunning yourself so that everyone else can demolish you easily. You’ll use the Gripping Gaze to grab an Awesomenaut while you are in fact in the vicinity of their turret, essentially killing yourself. You may even use the Gripping Gaze and miss entirely (which you should immediately take to the all chat and blame on lag). When you find yourself in these situations, and you will, blame your teamates. Take to the all chat and say that you have the worst team ever that is never following up on your sweet stuns. Don’t worry if they are clearing another lane or at the enemy core doing things that actually progress the match. Blame your teamates for allowing the support character to die. By doing this, you will cast the seed of doubt into the enemy team and maybe even your own team that ‘hey, this Yoolip may not be half bad. Perhaps they just have god awful teamates.’

Yuri
Yuri is an interesting pick for those who suck at Awesomenauts because, all things considered, Yuri is a very, very difficult Naut to play as well. But that’s the thing– because Yuri is such a difficult Naut to play as people will automatically assume you are great just by picking him! The main thing you need to do as Yuri is not die, but make sure your teamates know you are ‘around’. You can achieve this easily by building into Toaster Time, which makes your mines stay around longer. The strategy for tricking others into not realize just how terrible you are is simple. Lay a couple mines around the map, making sure they stick around, then go and hide really close to your turret but not behind it. Occasionally venture out to drop some mines then go and hide again. Your teamates can see you on the minimap, but if you stay just a bit in front of your turret and behind some droids you should be relatively safe and your teamates may not think twice about what you are doing. This works best if you have a good Leon on your team who can use their tongue to pull opponents into the mines, giving you a kill.

If, however, you find yourself constantly dying you may need to find yourself performing Plan B. Plan B is simple. Building into any random Time Warp upgrades and follow around one of your teamates constantly Time Warping. That way, when you die you can say you were buffing and supporting your teamate and that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ let you die. It is fool proof.

Choosing an Awesomenaut- Everyone Else

Choosing the Right Character– Everyone Else
Let’s be honest, you really should only be choosing supports if you suck at Awesomenauts but want to trick people into think you are not completely terrible. If, however, you are feeling adventurous there are a few other character you can choose with specific attributes you can exploit to deceive others.

Lonestar
Lonestar is a very easy Naut to use with an incredibly high skill ceiling. You, as a person who sucks at Awesomenauts, want to convince others that you know how to use Lonestar and are in fact pretty good at this game. Unfortunately, this isn’t as easy as with the support Nauts– but you can do it with a couple strategic upgrade choices and complaining about nonexistent problems.

A lot of the very good Lonestar players buy the Rocket Boots as one of their first upgrade choices. This allows Lonestar to perform a triple jump which, when used correctly, lets a good Lonestar maneuver vertically all over their opponents while supplying death from above. You, as a very bad Awesomenauts player, will surely not be able to hold yourself in a fight against others. You can, however, deceive your teamates into believing you can by purchasing this upgrade first. Your teamates will see that you got the Rocket Boots and assume that you are able to fully utilize them.

While this tactic will work for initial deception, unfortunately you will die a lot and contribute nothing towards your team’s goal. Eventually they will begin to suspect that you suck at Nauts. This is when you start spamming the Hyper Bull. Spam the Hyper Bull like crazy and start sending out all chat messages to both teams complaining that you pinned someone but your stupid teamates didn’t even bother to finish them off. It doesn’t matter if your teamates were actually in the process of killing an enemy Naut and you Hyper Bull’d the opponent to safety. Make sure to let everyone know that your teamates suck for not following up your sweet bull pin for an easy kill. If your teamates point out that you didn’t follow up yourself for an easy kill start sending out the Hyper Bull and following it straight into a turret to your death. Then send out an all chat message saying ‘what the hell why aren’t you guys following up my set ups?! Absolute garbage team!’ If you are luck your team will start to suspect that they are in fact garbage and you are great.

Gnaw
Deceiving others by playing as Gnaw is a fairly straightforward endeavor. Simply place your weedling where ever on the map while spitting acid in random locations. It really doesn’t matter. Inevitably, opponents will come into contact with your goo and weedlings allowing you to deal a terribly small amount of damage and maybe even a lucky kill or two. Just make sure you hide after doing so. Let your weedlings and goo do pretty much nothing while you hide and you shouldn’t be dying too much, you should have a presence on the map convincing others you may have some sort of strategy (you don’t), and you make even rack up a few random droid or Awesomenaut kills. If you are dying a lot make sure you blame your teamates for not finishing off the enemy Awesomanuts after you’ve done a ton of damage over time. Make sure you let them know how easy it is for a competent player to finish off the enemies after you engage. Divert attention away from you towards how terrible your teamates are. This is a common strategy, but it is a strategy that works.

Ix
Ix is an interesting character in that he is listed as a Support, but really, really good Ix players actively engage the opponents and bring down turrets single handedly. You, however, are a terrible Ix player and can do neither. That is okay! You can easily deceive your teamates and others into thinking that you are normally one of the best Ix players around!

First and foremost, you need to buy Prismatic Moon Dust. This leaves a trail of moon dust that does damage over time after every third radiate bolt. Now, you need to make sure that you are holding down the left mouse button for the entirety of the match. Your teamates and the enemies will see you constantly leaving behind hazardous trails of moondust and assume that you are actively engaging with droids and enemies. If you are lucky, your moondust will in fact cause some random damage to droids and enemies.

Next, you need to make appropriate use of your Psionic Bond. Constantly, any chance you get, shoot the Psionic Bond at your teamates, wait a couple of seconds, then occasionally swap positions with them. You see, the Psionic Bond heals your teamates and therefore in their and the opponents eyes you are playing a support role. By occasionally swapping positions with your teamates and immediately firing the Radiant Bolt in every random direction you can convince your teamates and others that you are conscious that swapping position is not always the best option and that you are strategic regarding how you use it. In actuality though, you have no clue in the slightest regarding the best method of using the Psionic Bond and swap. As your deaths accumulate and it becomes apparent that you are swapping teamates into certain death, make sure you take to the all chat and type ‘lol my team is a bunch of scrubs can’t even capitalize on my swaps’. Remember– it is always your team that sucks, not you, when you play as Ix.

Chucho Krokk
Much like Gnaw, the main strategy for playing as Chucho when you suck is to simply hide while making your presence known. This means you need to convince others you are actively partaking in battle when in fact you are hiding in safety. This is pretty simple to achieve with just two upgrades. First, make sure you purchase the Black Mail upgrade that allows your sticky bomb to be picked up when enemy Nauts or droids walk over it. Now you can throw your Sticky Bomb in any random direction or place without thinking and something will inevitably pick it up and take damage. Next, you need to buy the Alien Repellent Varnish that gives your Hyper Bike Turret a shield allowing it to last longer. Now all you need to do is zoom somewhere on the map, get off your bike so now you have a turret, throw a sticky bomb, and hide. Let the bike turret and the stick bomb do their thing while you avoid enemies and contact with anyone. When your bike turret is destroyed immediately call your bike again as soon as possible, rinse and repeat.

Raelynn
Raelynn is pretty simple to play as when you suck and want to convince others you are good at Awesomenauts. Simply buy the Gryc Lubricator that extends the length of your snipe shot, stand literally right next to your turret behind friendly droids where no enemy Awesomenaut will attempt to attack you, and keep sniping straight ahead. You will inevitably rack up the droid kills despite not killing any Nauts. If someone tries saying that you have no idea how you are playing Raelynn respond in all chat ‘lol wtf I’m clearing lanes what are you doing?’ Never engage and you should limit your deaths. At the end of the day, the people that get mad at you typically only care about how many times you die so who gives a crap if you aren’t really contributing too much to team fights or anything.

Choosing and Awesomenaut- Everyone Else (contd)

Froggy G
Just keep taunting. Taunt all game at every opportunity. It doesn’t matter. His taunts are too good for other players to care that you are feeding.

Random
This should go without saying but by choosing Random you always, always, ALWAYS have a free pass. As soon as your drop pod lands send out a message saying ‘Randomnauts!’. Then just play like your normal, terrible, self. As your deaths accumulate and people start telling you how badly you suck just say ‘lol I know I never play as ____ I went random lol’. Even if you got lucky and are playing as someone you are only bad as as opposed to terrible you can easily convince everyone in the match that, well, hey this guy just got unlucky with Random and got a character they never play as.

Others
It should go without saying that you can choose other players such as Clunk or Skolldr, however, it is much more obvious you suck with those characters than with others. It’s hard to explain away exploding yourself to death as a Clunk than it is to make the argument you are playing support as Voltar. In the next section we will discuss some tactics that are applicable to all Awesomenauts if you feel so inclined to play some of these other characters.

General Tips To Convince Others You Don’t Suck

Now, we’re going to discuss some things you can do for any character in any situation to convince others that you are not horrible at Nauts. If you decide not to listen to any of the character specific advice, and don’t feel like taking advantage of the first or last character select screen tips, this is absolutely what you should pay attention to.

Blame Everything on Lag
Awesomenauts does not have dedicated servers. Therefore, lag is an inevitability when you play this game. Use this to your advantage. If you die, if you miss a Clunk explode, if you Rage yourself to death as Ayla, you need to blame these events on lag. Imagine the following scenario– You are playing as Froggy G, have very little health, and have exhausted both Tornado and Splash Dash. A Lonestar right in front of you unleashes their Trinamite in your face and you die immediately. You need to send out a message to all chat as soon as possible saying ‘that was some insane lag!’. You may even get verbally aggressive towards the Lonstar player, accusing them of somehow being behind the nonexistent lag. You need to let everyone know that you would have never died if it wasn’t for the lag. Actually, you need to do one better. You need to let everyone know that you would have killed the Lonestar if it wasn’t for lag.

This logic and lag blaming works in every situation. Always blame any mistake you make on lag. Don’t worry about the fact that anyone can press Tab to bring up the status screen and see that all the connections are great and you are in fact the host of the match which means you literally have no lag. Blame your terribleness on lag. Stay consistent.

Claim the Game Ate Your Input
This pretty much never happens, and if it does it is incredibly rare but also incredibly memorable. Therefore, if you die or make a stupid mistake you can opt to blame the mistake on the game not registering your input. Immediately take to all chat and say that you pressed the button to activate whatever stupid special move it was that absolutely would not have saved you but the game didn’t register it! Then immediately blame Ronimo for this non-existent problem. Everyone will be sympathetic to you.

It Isn’t You that Sucks, It’s Your Teamates
This is such an obvious statement that you may even begin to believe it yourself! Obviously it’s not true and you are absolutely awful at Awesomenauts, hence why you are reading this guide. But, you maybe, just maybe, even trick yourself into believing this is true. The objective is simple– blame your teamates for your terrible performance. You see, you are lucky. Awesomenauts is a team based game and you only have three people on each team. Therefore, if one person sucks the whole team is going to suck. So, if you suck, your whole team is going down.

Use this to your advantage. When you start dying constantly and your team is down multiple turrets and only 6 minutes have progressed in the match take to the all chat and start bad mouthing your team. Make sure you say things such as ‘worst team ever’, ‘bunch of scrubs’, ‘bunch of league 10 losers on my team,’ etc. Then, become even more agressive and start calling out individual teamates. ‘Worst derpl ever,’ ‘do you even know how to play leon u suck’, and ‘lol sentry sucks so bad’. Don’t worry about the fact that your teamates have 0 deaths and multiple kills. Just keep at it. Keep sending messages to the all chat letting everyone know your teamates suck. If you are persistent enough, your teamates may even begin to think they suck for not being able to carry you. Keep at it until inevitably you lose. Send one last message saying ‘reported for being terrible teamates’ and exit the game. Don’t even think twice about the match. If you’ve done your job well, though, everyone you play with will remember hearing about how terrible your teamates were… and they’ll forget about how terrible you were.

Sorry Guys I’m Just having a Bad Game
Never say this. No one believes this even if it is true. You aren’t convincing anyone you terrible Awesomenauts player.

I Was Trolling The Whole Time
This is by far the most obnoxious way to convince your teamates and opponents that you are not actually terrible at Awesomenauts, but it does work and therefore we will discuss this tactic in a bit more. As soon as your teamates start suspecting that you are awful at Awesomenauts due to constantly 1v3ing the enemy team and running straight into undamaged turrets without any droid protection resulting in constant deaths, you need to begin doubling down on these sorts of actions. Run into a swarm of enemy Awesomenauts. Allow droids to kill you. Let the solar boss kill you. Run into turrets. Stay in base and don’t leave. Stand behind your turret not firing. Just make sure you take to the all chat and let everyone know that you are, in fact, trolling. If you are really good, you will even have your teamates reporting you while encouraging the other team to report you for trolling.

If you are reported and given a temporary or permanent ban from Ronimo for trolling then congratulations! You now have documented proof that you were in fact trolling and not actually sucking at the game. Good job!

Conclusion and Parting Words

It you have followed this guide and absorbed all of the information I have given you, you should be able to successfully convince others that you are not horrible at Awesomenauts. As someone who is absolutely terrible at Awesomenauts but has managed to convince quite a few people that I’m actually pretty good in certain games, I stand by every word of this guide. So get out there, play some Nauts, constantly die, constantly throw your teamates into unwinnable situations– but do so in a way that allows others to think ‘hey, maybe they aren’t actually bad at all.’