A Players Guide to Vinnie & Spike

Overview

A guide to the character “Vinnie & Spike”, I go through stats and tactics. As well as describe to you my build, and the idea behind the upgrades.

Introduction

Hello folks, I’m PineappleRocket, and today I will be introducing to you my first guide. Now, if you happen to be wondering what makes me “good enough” to write a guide on a character. I would say.. Nothing? I sit at League 2 in game on Awesomenauts, nothing special, and I’m not the best with Vinnie. I’ve just put in the research on his stats, and try to help myself as much as I’m trying to help you guys. This guide will not make you the best by any means as Vinnie, I’m just hoping to provide you with information that will hopefully improve the way you play. So if you enjoy this guide, find it useful, or if you hate it, and think it’s bad please let me know. All feedback is appreciated, and now, we will get on to what you came for.

Now, Vinnie & Spike, is a very powerful character. He can easily be a game changer, and good for powerful team comps. He was my main character for quite some time. To be successful with Vinnie, you have to understand how his upgrades operate. What the upgrades can do, and how to use them. Much like any other character, you will need practice with him. So in this guide, I will be showing off my personal build. I will also be showing off his other upgrades, not everyone has the same playstyle so my build won’t work for everyone. His character description is “Assassin”, “Crowd Control”, and “Nuker”. It’s pretty easy to see why he was given the title “Nuker”, and “Crowd Control” But some people don’t understand the meaning behind “Assassin”, but theres a good reason for it, but we will get on to that later. Let’s move on to his abilities shall we.

Spike Dive

“Spike Dive” is Vinnies more popular ability of the two. The ability has moderate cooldown, and high damage, with a decent sized area of effect. The default damage for this ability sits at 35, which isn’t a lot. But compared to other characters abilities at start, it has a decent damage. The cooldown rate is 7 seconds, and the range is 6. This attack isn’t very versatile, so there’s not many things you can do with it. But one cool thing is that you can hit through the turret to a certain distance with this attack. If there’s an annoying Raellyn, popping of shots while standing right on top of the turret, you can spike dive her, give her a good scare. And send her on her merry way.

The 3 upgrades I use for the spike dive is “Dead Seahorse Head”, “Bag Full of Goldfish”, and “Chrome File”. I’ll go through each of these three upgrades, explain them to you, and hopefully by the end of that you’ll understand why I use them.

Dead Seahorse Head: The Dead Seahorse Head is a 2 level upgrade. Each level costs 140, totalling in a cost of 280. What the upgrade does, is it adds a second volley of spikes to your spike dive so that you can dish out even more damage. Level one upgrade will add a second volley, that dishes 20% of the regular damage. So if your spike dive does 35 damage, the second volley will do 7 damage. With the level 2 upgrade, it will deal 40%. So if your spike dive does 35 damage, the second volley will do 14 damage. Now, after seeing those numbers, you realize that this is not an upgrade you’re going to want to purchase early in the game because it won’t benefit you hardly at all. But once you get to the higher damage, it becomes much more beneficial. For example, after maxing out the chrome file upgrade your spike dive will do 55 damage. If you have Dead Seahorse maxed with that, your second volley will do 22 damage, add those two numbers together and thats 77 total damage done. So, with this tool you become a much more powerful killing machine.

Chrome File: The Chrome File upgrade increases your damage count, for the Spike Dive. It is a two level upgrade. 210 Solar per level, with a total of 420 solar. Level one will increase damage done by 10, making the Spike Dive do 45 damage. Level 2 will add 20 damage, resulting in 55 damage dealt by the Spike Dive. It should be pretty obvious why you should choose this upgrade. The more damage you deal, the faster you kill the enemy. This is usually one of the first upgrades I purchase. (Piggy Bank> Space Air Max (boots)> Spike Dive> Chrome File (1&2)) That’s usually my order of operations when playing as Vinnie & Spike, and from that point on I get my upgrades based on demand.

Bag Full of Goldfish: This upgrade boosts your damage by 15 points, and only costs 150 Solar. But, there is a catch. You have to have 150+ Solar on hand to be able to deal that additional 15 damage. This can boost your Spike Dive to 70 damage, which is ridiculously powerful. Match this with Dead Seahorse Head, and your second volley will deal 28. Totalling in 98 damage dealt. This can kill several enemies that are around <75% health in one hit (as long as you land both spikes.

So after running through those 3 upgrades I hope you see why I chose them, it turns the Spike Dive into a death dealing machine. Now that we’ve gone through the Spike Dive, we can move on to the Smoke Screen.

Smoke Screen

“Smoke Screen”, one of Vinnie’s abilities. A seemingly not very useful ability, that is more than rarely neglected. But, it is a very useful tool. The smoke cloud, by default, blinds its victim, making it a very useful escape tool. But with the right upgrades, it can be used for much more. The most important upgrade you could get for the smoke cloud is invisibility. With that upgrade you will be invisible after using the smoke, for around 6 seconds, which I know doesn’t sound like a lot, but in Awesomenauts, thats more than sufficient time. You can not only use this upgrade to escape, but you can use it to ambush enemies too. Now, this upgrade doesn’t only turn you invisible, but allies around you as well, which makes this upgrade even more useful. But be careful, if you use this while around an ally who is already cloaked, when your timer runs out, they will decloak. So lets get into the upgrades.

Clowns Mask: This is a powerful upgrade to have while using Vinnie. What Clowns Mask does is it makes you immune to all debuffs 1.5s on the first level upgrade. What this does is it makes slowing effects, stun, silencing, blinding effects, etc. uneffective on you. So you could be in Cocos blaze trail and not be slowed down. It can be very useful, especially when dealing with Yuri’s. And its also one of the first unlocks, which makes it an easy choice. On level 1 like I said, you have a 1.5s immunity which will cost you 150 solar, for the initial upgrade. And level 2 will double it, giving you a 3s immunity. Totalling in a 300 solar upgrade.
Mammoth Sock with Holes: This is debatebly the most important upgrade when dealing with the smoke screen. This gives you the ability to go temporarily invisible, which can be used aggressively or defensively. Its a 175 per level upgrade, totalling in 350 Solar. Level 1 will give you a 1.2s invisibility, and level 2 will be 2.4s. So in that two seconds and a half seconds you could sneak up on the enemy quickly turning the tables. This upgrade disguises your teammates as well, which is even more useful. Get yourself and a buddy, go invisible and run in, appear and knock out the opponents. Be wary though, if a teammates is already invisible, for instance Leon. And you use your cloud on him, he will reappear after 2.4s with you. That’s the just of the Mammoth Sock upgrade, even if 2.4s doesn’t sound like a lot, its very useful as an escape tool.

Withered Presidents Mask: Now tied with Mammoth Sock, the Withered Presidents Mask is extremely useful. What this upgrade does is that it upgrades your movement speed by 80% for two seconds after activating the smoke screen. This matched with the Mammoth Socks will be very useful, you will have increased movement speed for basically the entire time you are cloaked (excluding the .4s). It is a one level 140 solar upgrade, nice and cheap, and is generally the first upgrade I get after buying the Smoke Cloud. There isn’t much to say about this upgrade aside from the fact that it almost doubles your movement speed. Great for catching fleeing enemies, or making it a lot harder to catch you.

Bubble Gun

And Vinnie’s last but not least ability, his Bubble Gun. The Bubble Gun is Vinnie’s default attack, by default it will shoot 3 bubbles, all equalling 3 damage each (each of which are piercing). With a total of a 9 damage attack. With this standard attack his DPS will be 12. Now, since the upgrades for his Bubble Gun are straight forwards, as well as the way to use it, I won’t go too in depth. But these by far are the 3 best upgrades to get for the bubble gun in my opinion. First off, the range upgrade (“Sharky and Remora”) upgrades the range on the bubble gun by +4. This can heavily increase the lethality of the bubble gun, you’ll be able to catch running opponents much easier. You can also outrange the turret. The other two upgrades for the bubble gun will be his attack speed “Scarfish”, and the damage upgrade “Al Carper”. Use these just to make the bubble gun a much deadlier tool. All the bubble gun upgrades will cost a total of 1025 Solar.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, Vinnie and Spike is a versatile character with upgrades to make it easy to play defensively just as well as offensively. Like I said, this guide will not make you the best at Vinnie, it will just provide you with an edge, some additional information. I apologize if you did not learn anything from this guide. But if you did, I’m glad I could help. And after all, just have fun, and you will get better with practice.

Also, make sure to check out my other guides if you haven’t already!
[link]
[link]