[OUTDATED] The Complete Guide to Ayla

Overview

An in-depth guide from a League 2 player on how to destroy your opponents effectively and completely.

Introduction

((THIS GUIDE DOES NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE OVERHAUL MADE TO AYLA IN PATCH 2.9. THE CHARACTER HAS BEEN VASTLY CHANGED SINCE THIS GUIDE HAS BEEN WRITTEN, AND IS NO LONGER RELEVANT. AT THIS TIME, I DO NOT PLAN TO UPDATE IT. But I mean, if you wanna know how you USED to be able to pubstomp as Ayla for some reason, go ahead and keep reading. I won’t stop you. I spent a lot of time writing it.))

Hello, and welcome. My name is Thograr, and I’m a League player with over 650 hours logged into Awesomenauts. Even after all the fancy Starstorm updates, good ol’ Ayla remains my best and favorite naut. She’s easy for anyone to pick up, and has some of the most entertaining music and dialouge in the game. This guide is a detailed one with quite a bit of reading, but once you get through it, you’ll be able to wreck the faces of all who oppose you, and have a complete understanding of why you should make the choices I tell you to make.

Every awesomenaut has a role that they were made to fufill. Ayla is a brawler. She’s made to kill, but unlike a bursting Clunk or assassinating Froggy, she stays up in the enemy’s face and does consistent damage until her enemies are dead. Killing players gets her team solar and gets her enemies off the field, making it easier for her team to push. She’s not the tankiest character, and she has a hard time dealing with turrets, but her speed and DPS are unrivaled. If you want to improve your k/d ratio, you may want to consider taking on Ayla as one of your main players.

Character Overview

For perspective, Froggy, the squishiest character, has 1150 base and 1564 max.
Clunk, the tankiest character, has 1900 base and 2584 max.
Ayla isn’t all too bad when it comes to health, but she is on the squishier half of the spectrum.

Sentry, the slowest character, has 6.8 base and 8 max.
Coco, with the fastest base speed, has 9.4 base and 10.6 with boots.
Ayla is actually on the slower side when it comes to base speed. It’s the same as Lonestar’s, a character who’s not exactly renowned for his quickness. This is why she has the Blue Three-Wheeler available. Getting both of her speed upgrades is vital if you want to chase down fleeing opponents.

Let’s just get this out of the way right now. Don’t use this. Not even on droids. At 80 damage per swing, Ayla’s auto attack has a base DPS of 200, which is actually pretty good. However, it has the shortest range of any attack in the game, at an abysmal 2.5 (Skoll’s tiniest punch has a range of 3.8). Plus, it’s a melee attack, and only works horizontally. If you can hit someone with this, then you are in perfect position for the enemy to unload everything they’ve got right into you. Its max damage output, even if you somehow manage to stay alive and hit 100% of the time, is worse than the max damage of your rage attack until your enemy is below 40% health, which is too situational to rely on. With lower range AND lower damage than your other attacks, there is no reason to ever use it on anything except critters and turrets. Don’t build into it ever.

This is your main method of attack. It’s a great big bubble of hurt that starts at 60 damage per hit, clocking in at a base of 240 DPS. In our build, it’s going to max out to an amazing 400 DPS. That’s enough to obliterate a maxed out clunk in less than 7 seconds.

Using rage slowly drains your health. However, it also has lifesteal. If you aren’t hitting anything, you will take damage. If you are hitting one target, your hp will stay about the same (give or take a negligable amount, depending on upgrades). If you hit multiple targets, such as a pair of droids, you will gain health.

Rage grants you flight, but also gives you inertia and momentum. You need time to speed up when moving from a standstill, and time to slow down if you wish to stop. Basically, she drives like a semi truck. This makes knockback Ayla’s worst nightmare. While in rage, Ayla gets knocked back farther than she would normally, and it takes her additional time to regain her momentum in the correct direction.

Ayla loses character collision while in rage, allowing you to fly through people. This can be important if you are in a tight space and there is a big skolldir or sentry that would otherwise block your escape. Note, however, that you only lose collision with droids and nauts. Other objects, such as skree’s totem, can still block you.

Evil Eye is a quick, small shot that has four stages of damage and slowing power based on how much health you have. These stages are when you are at or below 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% health. The less health you have, the more damage and slow it will do. Without upgrades, it will deal 30 damage, 7.5% slow at stage one, and do a maximum of 60 damage, 30% slow at stage four. Fully upgraded, it is a deadly 96 damage burst missle. Evil eye is mainly used as a finishing move or an escape tool at the end of a fight, as that is when you have the least health and can get the most out of it.

You can tell which stage your evil eye is in by looking at the icon, as shown here.

Be wary that the damage of the evil eye is not based on the amount of health you have when you shoot it, but rather the amount you have when it hits its target. As the eye is only out for less than a second, this has often has very little effect on gameplay. However, in the rare instance you manage to get killed before the eye reaches its target, the eye will reset to its minimum damage, as once you die, you go back to “full health” for your next life. This can easily rob a kill from you if you expected to do stage four damage. You have been warned.

The Build

Rage:

• Angry Drawings x2: Damage +2, Self damage +1.7
• Rip Apart Teddy Bear x2: Shields you from 12.5% of damage taken while enraged
• Blue Three-Wheeler: Move speed +1.6 while enraged

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Some people may notice I haven’t included firey jawbreakers in the build, which increases attack speed and therefore increases max damage output. It’s a great upgrade, and I’d love to have it, but unfortunately there are just more important items to get. Choosing this over another option usually just ends in sadness. The move speed on the Three Wheeler is necessary because your rage is consistant damage instead of burst damage, and takes time. You need to be able to chase down enemies that are moving around or trying to run, so that you can keep them in the bubble. If your enemies can outrun you, then your extra damage is wasted, and you will in fact lose health trying to catch them. The Rip Apart Teddy Bear is also essential. Ayla gets up close and personal with nauts and then kinda just hovers there and lets them do their thang until they’re dead. This means that she takes a lot of damage, and Ayla does not have the health of a tank. The shield from the bear is essential if you want to keep your deaths lower than your kills. Moreover, Ayla can use it to take on multiple nauts at once and not get instantly obliterated. She takes less damage, while getting healed from multiple targets, increasing sustainability. Remember, kills are good, but not dying is even more important. Finishing 8/2 is better than finishing 14/12.

Evil Eye:

• Toothbrush Shank x3: Damage +20%
• Fake Family Pictures x 2: Health needed for evil eye stages +10%
• Dummy Prisoner: Range +4

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It’s very easy to miss with your evil eye, and waste all its potential damage. Most of the time you will be using it when either moving away from an enemy and trying to put distance between you, or when it’s your last chance to kill an enemy before they escape behind their turret. In either case, making sure the eye can hit its mark is very important, which is why we get the range. If you miss, your damage output is 0. The standard damage upgrade is a given (more damage is always better!), but some may wonder why I chose Fake Family Photos over the Jail Food, which adds extra damage over time. There are a few reasons for this. First off, medi-can, scoop, voltar, or any other sort of healing destroy dot. Normal damage is always better, and this helps you deal more of it. The photos are also 50% cheaper than the jail food, and not only do they help deal extra damage, but they effectively add extra slow, which will prove to be important when making your escape, or setting an enemy up for a team kill. With the photos, if you are basically below half health at all (45% or less health required), you will be dealing your full 96 damage and 30% slow. This allows you to bait and ambush players in a much safer fashion, as normally you’d have to be below 25% health to get the same effect.

Chain:

• Explosive Neckband x2: Damage +2
• Prison Guard Keys x2: Max health +150. Only activates after your next kill.
• Sonic Listening Device: Critters drop 200 extra health

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As we already discussed, you’ll never be using the chain on enemies. With this in mind, we instead upgrade it for utility. The sonic listening device almost doubles the amount of health you get from critters, jumping from 250 to 450. If you kill two of them, you’ll be getting 900 health instead of 500. This is a big difference, and with Ayla’s hit and run sort of playstyle, you’ll be using it a lot. The less you have to go back to base, the better. Each stage of prison keys only activates after a kill, granting you no immediate effect when you first buy it. We get this near the end of our build because it’s so situational. The damage is the very last thing you will be buying, maxing out your character. Most of the time the game will end before this point, but if it hasn’t, then you probably need that damage to help finish off the enemy turrets or base.

Utilities:

• Power Pills x3: Max health +12%
• Space Air Max: Move speed +1.2
• Piggy Bank: +130 Solar

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Increasing your max health is super important. Boots are also a must for every character. The third option is normally reserved for bank, but if you are facing characters heavy in dot, such as gnaw or skol, it may be wiser to get medican. If you are facing Coco or other characters with heavy slow abilities, then you might even want to consider… (brace yourself) Baby Kuri Mammoth. Slow absolutely destroys Ayla, especially if she’s lost her intertia in rage, and can’t build it back up. Always check the enemy team before you start your build. However, in most circumstances, piggy bank is the way to go.

Early Game

You should be getting these as soon as you hit the ground. As long as you collect all of the solar on the way down, you will have enough for all three upgrades. If you’re a few short, then collect the solar right above and below the base, or wait a few seconds for the solar to generate. Don’t waste your bank by going out into the field without the extra upgrade.

In the beginning of the game you are very squishy. As you can’t take everyone on yet, the main thing you will be doing is getting as much solar as you can. Ayla is excellent at farming droids. Her rage will destroy them quickly, and because there are two targets, she will actually gain health by doing it. Just make sure you float above them and not in front of them, so that they can’t do damage to you. Also take note of all the solar lying around on the field. Every bit helps. Don’t spend your time aimlessly wandering around to collect the little silver coins, but definitely make an effort to grab them if they are laid along your path. If you see gold coins lying on the field from defeated droids or nauts, make sure to run up and grab them, even if you have to go out of your way a little.

You are not yet properly equipped to outlast the other characters. Engagements with other players at this stage will generally only result in a kill if you have a teammate to help you out, or if you prey on those that already have low health. Attack nauts by hovering over them with rage until your health gets too low to continue, then drop rage and shoot an eye at them for high burst damage, which will hopefully finish them off. Because both of your attacks are so health dependent, and most of your seiges end with you having very low health, you will be spending a lot of time running around to collect more of it, either by killing critters, raging droids, getting pickups or going back to base. You are very much a hit and run character, which is why we get the speed first, allowing you to chase, escape, switch between lanes, and aquire critters/health pickups more easily.

Note: It may seem tempting to chase an enemy with reeeeeaaaally low health right back up to his turret. This is in most cases NOT a good idea, and you will get your face shot off. Do not attempt this until you have experience with Ayla.

Survivability, Damage, Survivability, Damage.

Your attack uses health as ammo. You are literally throwing your health at the enemy in an attempt to kill them, hovering over them while they punch you in the face, and hoping that they pop before you do. For this reason, a large health pool is important. It’s actually the first thing we upgrade, contrary to the build orders of most of the other nauts.

Experienced players know that not dying is more important than getting kills. If you start dying, then the enemy gets stronger, and your solar gain from all sources (including naturally over time) is put on hold while you’re respawning. Remember that as Ayla, your k/d is one of your main contributions to the team. This means that having more deaths than kills, especially at this stage of the game, means you are probably hurting your team more than helping. Focus on being able to survive first, then being able to kill. Health, shield, damage.

The only thing that interrupts the alternating process of survivability and damage is the speed you get after your first damage upgrade. The Three Wheeler helps you utilize the extra power you just obtained. Getting the speed before your damage is rather moot, because it doesn’t matter how fast you are if you’re just going to whack the enemies with a soft, fluffy pillow once you catch them. Around the time you’re getting your second health upgrade is when we get into our character’s midgame.

Mid to Late Game

During the midgame your attention is split. You still want to focus on solar, but you also want to start hunting down other players. Complete your rage tree as fast as possible. Once it’s done, you will be the most powerful that you ever will be in relation to the enemy team. Take advantage of it while you can! After this point, the more time that passes, the more upgrades the enemy will get, and the better they will be able to defend themselves, while your main source of damage remains the same. Get the sonic listening device and dummy prisoner next, in whichever order you like. Once you have these two upgrades, you’ll be entering the late game.

Now you’re in the late game, you can just fly around and kick butt. Killing players should be easy now, and as you build up your eye it will be even easier. If the enemy is pressuring your side, you can also choose to just fly past them and speed around the open field, eliminating all droids that would be backing them up, so that their push fizzles and dies. You’re faster than them, what are they gonna do about it? Hit you? Nah.

Make sure to stick with your team when pushing turrets or the enemy base. As long as you’ve been playing your cards right, you and your teammates should be able to whack all structures to hell. Enjoy your victory!

Pushing

If you have a free push, be sure to take it. Ayla’s chain eats through turrets. Once again, however, it is the shortest ranged attack in the game. If an enemy naut is defending the turret, do not try to use your chain. You will be in the exact same position as the droids they’re trying to destroy, and you’ll take a lot of unneccesary damage. If your team is pushing a defended turret, stick around to provide some support and make sure your allies stay alive by raging enemies who dare come out to confront them. Use your Evil Eye whenever it’s off cooldown to attack the turret from a distance. If you’re alone against a defended turret, just get and Eye off and get out of there, even if it means you have to leave your droids. There’s no use hanging around if you can’t accomplish anything.

Once you start attacking a turret, the entire enemy team is notified. Keep an eye out for the enemies’ positions on your mini map to make sure you don’t get ganked, especially if you’re alone. It’s easy to die during a push when enemy nauts come from both sides. If you are alone, you want to get away from their turret before they actually get onscreen. A tiny bit more turret damage isn’t worth getting killed over.

Evil Eye Build

Hahaha, just kidding. Don’t build into the eye before your rage, kiddies. It just ends in pain and misery. It’s a cool idea on paper, but in practice you just die a lot. You can’t farm droids with your eye, and to use it effectively you have to always stay at low health, leaving you vulnerable to suprise attacks. Not only will the build just be less effective in general, but the fact that you aren’t getting your farm, and are probably losing solar due to deaths, means that a normal ayla build will easily outspeed it. Don’t do it.

Strategy by Map

Ayla is excellent at destroying the solar boss. You can start killing him without much trouble once you’ve built up to your first damage upgrade. This will earn your entire team 20 solar each. It might not seem like much, but it doesn’t take much time, and any bonus is an edge on your opponent. Simply hover a bit above and behind the boss. Once he turns to face you, reposition yourself so you are behind him again. If you do this right, then you should be able to keep him in the bubble the entire time and he will never fire a shot at you. Try it in practice mode a few times before doing it in multiplayer.

After you’ve destroyed your solar boss, go over to the enemy side and kill theirs too. This will give you even more solar, and it will deny the enemy the chance to profit from it. Just be careful that no enemies are near you when you start to fight their solar boss, as many people will not take this sitting down, and will try to steal the kill from you. Worst case scenario, they kill the solar boss, which will not only give them the solar but also restore them to full health, and then they easily kill you.

Sorona has two map features you should take advantage of. The first is the worm gold. The worm has 9 solar under it. This may not seem like much, but it adds up, and like I said, any bonus is an edge. You should be checking regularly to see when the solar respawns so you can reclaim it.

If both sets of droids are under the worm, press the button and to destroy all four of them and farm their solar. This will cause you to gain 29 solar instead of just 9. That’s nothing to scoff at. Do not press the button to farm your droids if the enemy droids are not also present. This will just allow the enemy to push. Also be wary not to hold the button for too long, or all the solar will drop down into the hole and be lost. Do not simply wait around the worm the entire game, but make sure to check back often. If you keep taking advantage of it, the extra solar will start to give you a big leg up on your enemies.

Note your minimap whenever you plan on running under the worm. If you see any enemies in the highlighted area of the minimap in the above picture, be very careful. Only go under the worm if you KNOW you can make it. It’s always better to be safe than it is to risk them dropping onto the button and getting you killed. Instead of gaining a bit of solar, you will lose 30 and the enemy team will gain a total of 90.

The second feature that you should take advantage of is the thin floor of the upper lane. The range of your rage is large enough so that you can float under it and hit whatever is standing on top, while sheilding yourself from all damage. It is rare that you will ever be able to kill someone like this, as they can easily jump out of range, but it does accomplish three things. First, it allows you to easily destroy enemy droids even if all three enemy nauts are with them pushing. Second, it gives you some area control, as oftentimes enemies will not want to be in an area where they can take unnessecary damage. And third, it allows you to have presence in both the top and bottom lanes at the same time.

This under the floor trick is a bit of a defensive tactic. Most of the time the reason you would use it is because you are afraid of the enemy dealing a lot of damage to you if you were to attack from the actual top lane. If you feel like you can take on the enemy directly, there is no need to attack from under the floor, but always remember the option is open when more direct approaches are difficult.

WARNING: If you are using your rage near the top of the level and you hit the invisible boundary that is the sky, your rage will turn off, and you will fall.

There’s not a whole lot to say about Aiguillon. It’s an open map with lots of room for chasing, which is good for you. If you grab the stealth, make sure to find a teammate and stick with them. Surprise attacking an enemy by yourself is much less effective than it is with a teammate. Lure them into what they think is a 1 v 1 fight with your teammate, then reveal yourself and tip the scales in your favor. If you can, it’s better to start the engagement on your side of the field, so that it’s harder for the enemy to run.

If you have the stealth and are at low health, do a quick check to see if there are any health orbs around rather than killing a creep and losing stealth. If there are none, note that teleporting back to base to heal will cause you to lose your stealth, while running back to base without teleporting will allow you to keep it.

Don’t waste the stealth on droids, if you can help it.

AI Station 205
You don’t have a whole lot of room to chase without coming into turret range in this level, so don’t get too greedy. Bide your time and wait until later to get agressive. Once the front turrets have fallen, the map will open up a lot, and you will have all the space you need to hunt your enemies effectively. Just make sure you don’t die too much before that point.

Before the enemy’s front turrets fall, you’ll mainly want to stay in the top lane, where there’s easy access to health and critters. Plus, as a bonus, if you hover under the glass platforms, you can rage droids close to the enemy turret while the turret’s shots are blocked by the floor.

Know Your Enemy

Your Counters

These nauts will ruin your day. Any match that includes them will be significantly harder. Know to watch for and avoid them when you can.

Coco Nebulon:

You can’t kill Coco. She’s the only character with higher speed than you. Combine that with the slow from her blaze, and you’re left completely in her dust. She will sail away as you futily inch forward through her fire/lightning/doom trail, taking damage over time from the blaze while at the same time losing health for being in rage without hitting anything.
You can’t hit her, but she has no problem punching your face from a distance by using her lightning ball. The ball is equipped with knockback, which as you may recall, is Ayla’s worst nightmare, thanks to her inertia during rage. If Coco goes out of her way to upgrade the knockback, she can send you half way across the map with it.
If you are fighting a Coco, don’t even bother chasing her unless she’s already used up her blaze. Usually, if you can kill her, it won’t be until lategame when your eye damage is maxed out.

Ted McPain:

Ted’s shotgun is the bane of your existance. It does great damage against you whilst knocking you back. By the time you regain your momentum and come back at him, he has another shot ready, and can blast you again. If he buys the power briefs, which increases shotgun knockback, you will be literally useless against him, and you should just avoid him entirely.
Ted’s airstrike has a downwards knockback that will nail you to the floor if you’re in rage mode. If you are raging above the chute in the middle of Ribbit IV, one airstrike will send you uncontrollably all the way down to the very bottom of the stage, causing you to hit the jumpad and shoot back up, ricochetting around like a pinball. It is a very disorienting and overall unfun experience.

Sentry X-58:

Sentry has a super large health pool. His black hole will fill up very quickly from either of your attacks and wreck you, while at the same time sheilding him from some of the damage. Not to mention that most of the time, you have to take the damage of all his mines if you want to get to him. Sentry often won’t be able to kill you if you are mindful of him, but you won’t be able to kill him either, causing you to have to head to base many a time empty handed, while sentry’s tanky, lifestealing self will stay in lane and push.
If you are fighting Sentry, always be aware of the status of his black hole. If he has a high powered one saved up, don’t attack. If he doesn’t have one at all, try to lure him into charging it and then don’t give him any damage to store. The best time to attack is when he has a little baby black hole stored without any damage on it. That way you can plow through it and kill him before he has the chance to charge another.

Lonestar:

It’s the knockback king himself, Lonestar. Lonestar isn’t very good at killing you, but he IS very good at keeping you from accomplishing your goals. If he is wise with his bull, and especially if he buys the extra knockback and the extra cooldown, he will harass you to no end and keep you from making any progress.

Your Prey

You have an advantage over these nauts. Playing against them will seem like easy mode. Pick on them.

Vinnie:

Vinnie only has one relevant ability to use against you, and that’s his spike dive. Once he’s used it, he’s powerless. You are quite a bit faster than him, and you both fly. In fact, his flight mechanics are clunkier than yours, with that wierd jumpy thing he has to do. His bubbles pale in comparison to your rage, so you’ll never even have to worry about him stopping to attack you. You are his biggest counter.
If you are fighting a Vinnie, wait for him to use his spike dive, then go in for a free kill. Just be aware of how long the fight is lasting, in case his spikes go off cooldown again. Even if this does happen, Vinnies will a majority of the time just use them to try and escape your wrath, rather than to turn on you, as they will be at rediculously low health by the time this happens.

Skolldir:

Skol is a dynamic opponent. How you approach him will change throughout the match. Near the beginning, the turrets are close together, you have low health, and he has high health. This makes his throw pretty terrifying, and you’ll probably want to avoid him.
As the game goes on, you steadily rise above him in power. Once you have a little health and you don’t have to worry about being thrown into turrets, you can always beat him in a 1 v 1 fight. All of skol’s attacks only work horizontally. He punches sideways, throws sideways, and pounds the ground. All of these things can be avoided by simply hovering above his head. If you do this, he will be powerless against you.

Genji:

If Genji meets you on the field and there’s no turret to run back to, he’s pretty much screwed. He has no real choice but to run. His cocoon and his blessing will help him do this more effectively, but at the end of the day, you are the lion and he is the gazelle.

Last Minute Tips and Tricks

• Fighting opponents near their droids will give you more lifesteal.
• If you hover under a superdroid (via glass platform or sorona floor), they can’t hit you.
• Rage is great for destroying weedlings, especially if they’re clumped together. If no one else on your team is properly equipped to handle them, make sure you take the responsibility.
• In a hopeless situation, killing yourself with rage can deny the enemy team solar they would get from killing you, and will always deny them their kill ratio.
• If you get hit with an attack that has mega knockback, you can use the momentum to escape in the direction you were knocked at super speed.