Overview
In-Depth Guide to Voltar. This guide will cover my most optimal build path for Voltar, along with some general tips and tricks in order to play this Awesomenaut as good as possible!
Introduction
Hello everyone! Its been a while! Recently got back into Awesomenauts, so i decided to help out my fellow Voltars by creating this guide. I hope you guys can take a lot from this guide to improve your gameplay!
Few mentions before we begin:
– This guide is intended for new players in our community, so for those veterans out there, feel free to skip to the build-order. I suggest trying to follow this path as best as possible. If you have questions regarding the build order, feel free to comment below.
– For those who are in a rush and need to see a summary of the tips and tricks, there will be a summary section at the end which will give you a spark-notes version of this guide. I will be going into more details throughout this guide nonetheless.
– I will be skipping the stats, that information can be found here: [link] on the Awesomenauts wiki. This guide will be mainly covering build orders.
– These builds are based off my experience with Voltar and are subjective. I am not claiming that these are the best builds, I’m simply sharing the builds that I found most effective personally.
Thanks for taking your time to look at my guide!
Important Notes on Gameplay
Positioning:
There are many common issues that I find with most Voltar players–it usually stems from positioning. As a support healer, your role is to stay behind the front lines. While this sounds obvious, Voltars who build full damage and are confident in their damage, tend to play more aggressively and more burst-assassin orientated. While this can work in the lower elo, this loses its effect in higher elo (L2+). As Voltar, you essentially use your teammate as bait so not only can you save yourself from taking damage, but you can deal your burst damage towards the end of the fight after your team used their DPS abilities, and heal them back to full mid-combat.
Heal vs DPS Builds:
Everyone will have their favorite build for Voltar–so i don’t expect everyone to follow what i will be sharing today. But here are my tips for deciding when or when not to build heal/dps.
Build DPS:
– When the enemy team are squishies, or lack the DPS to outburst you. This includes fighter nauts such as Ted, Lonestar, Rocco, Coco, (Nauts who dont necessarily 1 shot unless building full damage, and are not naturally tanky such as a Clunk, Sentry, and Deadlift).
– When your team are squishies–this should be somewhat obvious, but had to be said. If your team has a Froggy and a Leon, it doesnt take much to heal them back to full. At this point, its more effective to build Burst rather than DPS (Exploding Damage instead of Drone damage). Your central teamfight will be based off how fast you can 1 shot the enemy team, so unless you are vs a team of tanks, Burst is the way to go.
Build Healing:
– When your team consists of tanks such as Clunk, Sentry, Derpl, etc. This way you can completely maximize your sustain in teamfights and force the enemy team to target you first. With correct positioning, they will not be able to target you through your front-line tanks. Meaning, you are forcing the enemy team to burst down your tank, or out damage your healing. This is when Voltar truly shines.
– Other times when you build healing is if you’re not comfortable in your ability to duel as Voltar. I understand that Voltar is squishy and lacks mobility, so for those who want to lay it back, healing is always a good option.
Of course, there are many situations that dictate when and what to build, so knowing how to be flexible in your build is very important. However, here is a general path of what I build on Voltar. I use this in both casual and tournament environments.
eGGii’s Personal Build
Default Go-To:
– I believe that Chilli Flavoured Eye-Drops (Charged Heal) is very underestimated. it has very good synergy combined with the HoT (Heal over time) and extra range. First of all, your normal and max healing with be multiplied by x5 and your HoT will be multiplied by x3. This means at Stage 2 of Euphoric Thoughts (HoT), you will give 480 healing over the course of 10 seconds. On top of that, the farther you are from an ally, the more you heal. So, with stage 2 of psychothrust (extra AA range), you will heal from a range of 3.36 and have 24% additional heal power. If you are hugging your front-line because youre vs a Leon lets say, replace the range with Happy Thoughts (More base healing). When swapping lanes, always make sure to leave your ally with a charged HoT. Its essentially a free Health pack every time you wait 2 seconds.
– I almost never run boots on Voltar, all it takes is smart positioning and you will never need it. In replacement of Barrier Mag (Dmg Reduction) and Med-i-can (Regen), I always look to see if you need Baby Kuri Mammoth (CC Reduction). If you are vs heavy DoT (Damage of Time, such as Gnaw poison), its worth sacrificing the Barrier Mag. If you are against a more bursty comp, ditch the Med-i-can and grab BKM if needed early on.
– I understand some players use bombshell (mines for the healbot), which is not necessarily bad upgrade. I personally never run mines just because I feel like its not essential for the purpose of healbot. Yes, it can be very strong dealing a minimum damage of 560 (Stage 2) and maximum of 879.2 (at level 20), but by taking mines, you would need to sacrifice CDR on healbot. During teamfights, I’d recommend using healbot early to negate the enemy team’s initial burst or poke. Then, you would have a second healbot before the end of the teamfight due to the 2.5 second CDR. If you decided to take bombshell, you would need to waste your healbot to create map pressure through your mines (For only 10 seconds), which means your team will not be able to heal for 13 seconds. In my opinion, using mines for map pressure is a waste of healbot and a risk that a teamfight will go bad due to the lack of your healbot.
DPS/Burst Build
As a quick note, I’d recommend either going Burst-oriented or DPS-oriented for damage build on Voltar. Yes, you can go hybrid and mix the two, but in order to completely maximize your damage, simply chose one or the other.
DPS Build (Recommend vs Tanks/Fighters):
– With this type of build, you want to try and abuse your drone range as best as possible. You want to be in range where your drones are always hitting, but not too close to take excessive damage. This varies based on who you are against. This can be done by starting the fight behind someone, blocking their escape path (or moving along with them), and using healbot with the knockback if they are pressing you or if you can secure a kill (or low hp of course). One advice i would give for this style of fighting is to be not afraid of the tower. Yes, if you hug the enemy tower, you will die. But you can abuse the healbot’s knockback and healing power to tank some of the hits. With Barrier mag, you wont necessarily get oneshot. This is why i value this item significantly and always pick it up early as Voltar.
– Just make sure you dont throw your drones out unless you can secure the kill. The more drones, the more DPS. While you can throw 1-2 drones for poke, never throw 3 out. Time it so every time you throw a drone, the next one will replace itself. The summon CDR is 4 seconds. If there was a sudden, unexpected teamfight, you will not have the DPS to support your team if you continuously throw drones for poke. Aint worth it!
Side note:
– On ALL of my builds, I always run Eye-Drops (charged heal) and Euphoric Thoughts (HoT). This combo is all the healing that is needed to support your teammates. Sure, it doesnt hurt to have more, but this is the combo that i believe is the bare minimum to be effective.
Burst Build (Recommend vs Squishies):
– Only suggestion i would give when fighting with Bombshell, is to place it in a position where it forces the enemy to make different movements to avoid your bomb. This way, you can control how they move and possibly body-block them to land in your mine.
Disengage Build
This build is meant to support allies by disengaging fights or creating distances between specific enemy. For example, knock away the Clunk, stop Leons from shredding your team, etc. As long as you dont use your drones to knock away dying enemies, you should be fine!
Disengage Build (Recommend vs ‘sticky’ or assassin nauts):
– Make sure when using Knockback drones, try to hit the enemy in a up-down orientation. Sounds strange, but try to aim the drones in either a diagonal downwards or upwards motion. This is will disrupt their movements the most and ‘pin’ them. For horizontal displacements, I mainly use the healbot. This is very effective for nauts who has single jumps, such as Ted, Scoop, Voltar, or those whose jumps can be disrupted easily such as Derpl or Sentry.
– You can also try to combo the healbot knockback with the your drones. You do this by throwing a singular drone, healbot, then another drone aimed to where they will be knocked back. I commonly use this against Clunks or Snorks, nauts who you need to create distances.
Summary of Tips and Tricks
– When using the Knockback on healbot, if you decide to not run Energy Drink (More HP on Bot) make sure you use your healbot after the AoE damage and shield it with your body to prevent it from dying. It only has base 250 – 440 Health.
– Control your teammate’s movements by placing the healbot further back if you deem a teamfight to be not in your favor. Voltar has the ability to sway a teamfight, abuse that power and control your team’s positioning. Be creative in your healbot placements. Dont always throw it down in the middle of lane or in view of enemy projectiles.
– Always make sure to combo your Eye-Drops (Charged AA) with a drone. This is the most optimal poke damage you can dish out. On the topic of Eye-drops, never spam heal unless heavy DoT or very close fight. Always charge shot in teamfights for most healing.
– Be selfish when it comes to creeps–you cant heal yourself, but you can heal allies. Communicate that and have your team give you the natural healing around the map.
– Use your team as bait, never be the one to rush into a lane first. Similar to the last tip above, you can heal allies, but not yourself (Unless with healbot of course).
– Understand the room. Different team comps require different builds and playstyle. Be flexible with builds–never follow the same build path every game.
– Play off enemy cooldowns. Example: If a Clunk explodes, you can take advantage of that and fight him. If Frog dashes on you but misses, fight him. As you can negate his tornado with Knockback on healbot. understand how long the enemy cooldown is and abuse that. You wont be able to fight most Nauts head-on, unless you play smart.
– Build DPS:
– Feelin Baller and bored of being the support 😉
– Against/Have Squishies on your team
– Confidence in your abilities to duel as Voltar
– Build Healing:
– Have Tanks on your team
– More teamfight-oriented
– Serious about winning
Like always, glad I could help some of yall out to improving your gameplay. If you have any questions or concerns hmu in the comments. Thanks for your time again!
– eGGii
Here are the links to my other gudies:
Net Lens Penny:
[link]
Leon: [link]
Derpl: [link]
Skolldir: [link]
Deadlift:
[link]