Avoiding the Grey Screen: A Quick Guide on Gamesense [CONTEST]

Overview

A small guide detailing a few things to try and help improve your gamesense, as well as upgrades you should consider when upgrading a character.

Introduction

As you play Awesomenauts you probably are familiar with being dead. It happens to everybody. But there are ways to help prevent that from happening as often.

This guide is going to go into general upgrade things to keep in mind, as well as ideas to use when trying to move around the map.

Keep an Eye on that Minimap

As simple as it sounds it often is the most ignored. Unless you’re actively in a fight your attention should be on the minimap above most other things. It gives you the information you need to decide what part of the maps you are needed in.

Simply put, if no enemies are visible on the map and you are very far from your turrets and your team, there’s a good chance they are coming for you. It also helps you track whether or not you need to back up your team in a fight or help them escape.

Don’t Underestimate Defense

As appealing as that 25% increased damage may seem, 16% more health from items or damage reduction will keep you in a fight considerably longer.

All characters have access to Baby Kuri Mammoth, Power Pills and Med-i’-Can.

Kuri Mammoth is good against teams with large amounts of crowd control abilities, or teams itemizing into Crowd Control. Examples include Scoop or Admiral Swiggins

Power Pills is good against assassin oriented teams. Examples include Froggy G and Vinnie & Spike.

Med-i’-Can is good against anybody that fights a sustained fight. Examples include Gnaw and Ted McPain.

Most characters have their special defense upgrades as well, so don’t forget to consider your options with those.

Don’t Rely on Piggybank

Piggybank is a boost of money, sure. However, that small advantage you got can quickly diminish the longer the game goes on.

That is not to say you shouldn’t get Piggybank but try to get it if you’re a team that plans to win fast. Once the opposing team catches up your advantage withers away and all you’re left with is one less upgrade, which could have been one of the defensive upgrades previously mentioned.

Coordinate with your Team

If 2 of your teammates can defend against the entire team, and they are sure they can hold, use it to push. If your team can’t, help them.

As redundant as it may seem it isn’t rare for teams to not work together to counter enemy strategies.

With that in mind you should also make sure the ones better for defending are in a position to do so, so you don’t have a case where somebody who’s a bad pusher trying to cover for the other teammates.

Itemize to your Character’s Strengths

Assassins generally should focus a bit more on damage, obviously. That said, most assassins tend to have a bread-and-butter ability, something that they will use frequently and dish out damage with. This is the ability you want to put more effort into upgrading. Don’t ignore other upgrades when needed, but the majority of your Solar should go into your focus ability.

Tanks, on the other hand, generally want to itemize survivability and crowd control. Since damage generally isn’t their strong suite, 25% more isn’t a terribly big difference. Most tanks have upgrades that provide damage reduction, healing, or crowd control of some form on every ability.

Supports generally focus on utility and stats that help their team. Trust your team to do the damage, but focus on keeping them alive through what you can do.

Focus on what you can specialize in with your role, and trust your team to do the same.

Don’t Harass Teammates

Teammates who tend to get harassed tend to perform worse the more it happens. Contrary to seemingly popular belief, telling a player “U SUK” does NOT improve their gameplay.

If somebody on your team makes a mistake, don’t call them out on it. If it’s happening frequently ask them kindly to try and stop doing it, but don’t harass them. Provide help instead of insulting them.

Push Level Advantages

If you get ahead in levels, try to throw some weight around. The health and damage advantage should help you in fights, and in turn when pushing. Don’t get careless though, since if you get caught out a single Naut isn’t tough to take down level advantage or not.

Conversly, if you are behind in level try not to engage fights that seem even. Chances are they have the immediate advantage over you. Play defensively until you can punish a mistake they made, don’t try to repeatedly engage.

Don’t Trickle Fight

If you plan on fighting enemies you generally need to try and have a player advantage. a 1v3 will almost never work so don’t go in as such.

If one player does this, don’t follow them unless you know you can make it. If they are almost dead just use the time to retreat and regroup. If it keeps going somebody goes in, dies, then somebody gets caught out because of that, you are always going to have the player disadvantage. Cut your losses and play defensively until you can get back with your team.

At the same time, don’t chase a low health enemy if they are too far away. If they aren’t in a position for you to readily catch, switch your priority to pushing again or fighting a new person.

Conclusion

Unfortunately I can’t cover every possible situation, but hopefully this guide gives you a good idea for general situations on what to do, as well as to help coordinate with your team.

Gamesense is something you learn more as you play the game, so this guide merely serves to be just that: A guide, not a law.

See you next time, space cowboy.