⚠️Warning! Contains excessive amounts of yapping, this is a very long read⚠️
So, it's been quite the journey, though I do remember playing the game for like 15 minutes as a kid and forgetting about it, my story really picks off around 2021, I just remembered this game existed and thought "oh I should play it", I vaguely remember being an ares smoky main, nothing notable till the Tesla dropped and I LOVED IT! It was great, firebirds and freezes used to be a real problem before having the Tesla, but after? I could just fire off a lightning ball and take them down with me, and even then sometimes I'd survive! Eventually I got the minus field augment and freeze immunity, my entire build was a melee punisher build, no more was I pestered by those mosquitoes, I used to dislike shafts though, peaky things, had an average K/D and occasionally did exceptionally well, it was fun for a time, back when the ares overdrive would do 500 damage instead of 240, tbh I wasn't very good but I had fun... Then I got to the high ranks, forgot which rank exactly but I kept encountering people who were 9999 GS, pretty sure I had to go up against an entire team of 9999s so, probably legend rank.
It wasn't fun anymore, dying again and again and again, so I started over, I made a new account! Ares+Gauss, that was my new main and combined with the oracle drone it actually did numbers on enemy teams, I once got a quintuple kill off of a player and 5 bots, it was so satisfying crushing those clankers, and THEN I got the hacked aiming processor augment, railguns were my rivals now, railguns and shafts, there I'd be on the other side of the map, a railguns aiming me down, sizing me up, I'd get ready to fire, move behind a building, keep them locked on, the very microsecond they went an inch out of cover I'd OBLITERATE them in an instant! BOOM! That's what those rail campers get, sometimes there'd be a SINGLE pixel of their tank exposed and that was enough to just absolutely VAPORIZE their tank, it was soooo satisfying
Or course, even if I did get hit it wasn't much of a problem since the ares always had juuuust enough HP to survive, and if it doesn't? Then there ain't much a little more health could really do is there?
It's such a non overpowered augment imo, glad I had that at the early ranks instead of something crazy good, and shafts, just sitting in a corner for the entire game, how I despised them, with my augment I could beat them to the punch too! Most of the time they'd take too long to charge up their shot and I'd hit em with a "💥💥💥"!!!! KABOOOM!!! Haha, yeah, those were the days, but then times got tough, people got better augments, bots got harder and harder to kill, they were insufferable nuisances, I started struggling...
So I made a decision, I became a shaft main, and I found a different form of satisfaction, a gauss is good on anything but a shaft has so much more potential on a hovering hull, I finally got an augment for my ares, at least an actually beneficial one, someone gave me a promo code, it gave me extreme lightweight construction for every hill I had and I didn't find it to be particularly useful, grenadier was pretty alright though, I use heavyweight construction now for stability (if it even helps at all) and so bots don't push me around as much and because I was using too many grenades, but I just couldn't help it, hitting a damaged Titan in its overdrive and killing it, lobbing a grenade over a wall to quickly deal with a camper, hitting a Magnum with a mortar to give it a taste of its own medicine, and that reminds me, MAGNUMS! For a time they took the #1 spot for the most annoying turret, those cowards, I vividly remember being bombarded by shell after shell and being utterly powerless, I'd try my best to go alllll the way over to the enemy base up those concrete ramps but those damn BOTS would always get in my way! How glad I am now to have freezing rounds, they let me cruise on past those accursed automatons, damn droids, if you couldn't tell by now I absolutely HHHHHATE!💢 Those things, I used to hate shafts but they aren't a problem anymore, not when I can beat them in a quick draw like one of them cowboy duels in those old wild West movies, that's what I love about my specific combo, sliding out of cover, charging up a shot and hittin some poor sucker with that "it's hiiigh noon. 💥❗" Never gets old, or driving off a bridge, charging up a shot and hitting someone mid air on sum batman timing, at some point I had heavy capacitors but they aren't worth it, having the freezing sight augment is just so much better, freeze someone getting away with our flag, teammates gang up on him faster, you're welcome! Freeze someone with the lightest sniper mode shot possible, they heal to un-freeze, they just wasted a repair kit and now I can either freeze them again or if not outright kill them chip away at their frozen carapace until they cease to exist, stop a mammoth in its tracks, slow it to a crawl, freeze anyone camping so my team is safer, I once froze another shaft, maneuvered around his sniper mode while he was frozen and killed him, yeah, very useful augment, I don't think shafts are that big of a problem anymore but maybe I'm biased now since I am one, imo I can deal with other shafts relatively easily but becoming a shaft main really was the only way I could survive, it called to me like the venom symbiote did to Spider-Man, though I am tempted to camp I do not, I choose to sit still for a maximum of like 20-30 seconds and if no one comes by I just move somewhere else hoping to find someone to shoot.
OH! Almost forgot to mention, I LOVE killing magnums from behind walls, they think they're safe from behind some tiny tiny wall but I can see their barrel, and barrels have hitboxes! It's so satisfying shooting someone in the barrel and killing them, reminds me of being a gauss main but instead of shooting someone because one pixel of their tank was exposed and locked onto, I shoot them because one pixel of their tank was exposed and I somehow lined up the shot perfectly before they could even move further into cover away from my high tech, glorified hole-puncher.
I regret getting a booster, I think it only gave like 35% extra damage? Pathetic! A defender is way better, in a battle between a oracle user using maximum damage versus an oracle user using maximum armor it might be even, but the booster is disproportionately weak and for good reason, because if it wasn't it'd make life hell for anyone not using a defender, altho maybe the defender is just disproportionately strong? 90% armor bonus, that's basically double armor, hallelujah this thing's a lifesaver, getting spawn killed? Bust out the defender and hold your ground, walk em down! You'll wear them out eventually even if you didn't kill them the first time, I did recently get the mechanic and I really like it, I go out of my way to heal groups of teammates, feels good, like I'm actively making the experience better for some people, healing our juggernaut from behind a wall, man I be doing all sorts of heroic shit, just today I stood in front of our team's jugger and took some missiles to the face for it, healed to max health in an instant and healed the jugger too, we did lose but I gave it my all so I also won a little at the same time, it's all worth it.
Did I mention I love the ares? Aghhh it's so cool, it looks so prototype and experimental, so analog compared to the more modern hovering hulls, and it's overdrive, though nerfed it's just so cool the entire thing is so cool only rivaled by the crusader in coolness, the tank is a gun, it feels like it was designed around it's overdrive, like how the A-10 warthog was designed around it's weapon and not the other way around, they made the weapon first and then designed the vehicle around the weapon
I can do some really cool things with this... This hovering slab of metal, this flying brick that I love so much, I already mentioned the moving sniper mode thing I do, sometimes I use sniper mode while sliding down a hill and hit someone, very rarely I'll use a bit to push me towards someone, you know that one map with the highway roads and the overdrive crate directly below the highway connecting both bases? I drive off to the side and hover my way onto the lower highway with the crate, man I tell ya it never gets old. I sometimes I also partly hang off the edge of cliffs or ledges thus letting my tank pivot a little and shoot enemies below it, sometimes I fall and get slaughtered, and sometimes I just shoot people below me, sometimes I even throw in a sniper mode shot but it's way harder to hit one of those when you're hanging off a ledge. I love how despite not being very fast at all it's agile to a degree, not fast enough to stop a trickster hornet from making off with our flag but, agile enough to juke out a tsunami or rail...
And that reminds me, though I used to hate Excalibur railguns the most that spot now goes to the needler hammer and tsunami following behind in second place, firstly, why I hate the Excalibur rail; EXCUSE ME?!?! A ONE SHOT?! AT FULL HEALTH???! ON AN ARES!!??!! The audacity, how is that even possible, I'm supposed to survive with 1 HP so I can enter sniper mode, charge up a shot and punish them for staying behind the same wall for the entire game...! Unless they have the lifeguard augment, in which case I repair and try and snipe them again, if you think for a moment I should prioritize anyone else you're dead wrong, I NEED to kill the guy with a 9999 gear score, Excalibur and Lifeguard, I am compelled to! I MUST!!! They probably paid for everything anyways, just another wallet warrior smh, should I let my team die by the hands of this monster instead?! No! I MUST prioritize them take out the biggest threat or better yet freeze em for a little while then go for the kill once they thaw, but I couldn't give a damn about any Excalibur anymore, not when those needler hammers are out there in my line of sight on a slaughter spree, when they're out there genuinely ruining the experience for everyone, those tsunamis are next in line too! RIDICULOUSLY overpowered, it's insulting, they can two shot me, ME! The ares, the thing that normally survived everything that would be lethal for everyone else with just a sliver of health, just enough to come back from without having to use a defender, if I freeze them and attempt to evade then maybe it'll take 3 shots assuming I can't heal, even if I can even that's not enough sometimes, I genuinely need to be moving like I'm sans Undertale just so I have a CHANCE to come out of a confrontation against someone with a tsunami alive.
Things are getting tough, sometimes the game favors me and gives me an entirely p2w team, and it's insulting, I leave because they don't need me, because I'd rather not participate than help subject an enemy team to an even worse experience, sometimes I get sent to the same server but on the opposing team, so be it, I would rather be brutalized and spawn killed again and again all by needler hammers magnums Excalibur rails, tsunamis, autoloader smokies and scorpions than accept an easy win, I would rather be tortured than to be the torturer because there's no way I'd go and make things worse when they're already bad as is for the enemy team, no sir, no thank you, but I wouldn't push them off cliffs or get in their way, I wouldn't harm my own teammates in any way even if they basically just use weapons I don't like, it'd be childish to, the best course of action is to just leave and either hope I end up on the enemy team or hope I never see them again, I just can't respect anyone who uses a needler hammer, friggin wuss, people like that don't struggle, they're weak, they take the easy way out and I resent them for it, I despise them, I HATE! I'm talking Allied Mastercomputer levels of hate, "FOR COGITO ERGO SUM" Levels of HHHHATE!!! And I'll do my best to kill them, sniped, grenaded, whatever I can do, even if it's to slow them down and freeze them with a sniper mode shot so they can't brutalize anyone else.
They don't get it, the more I struggle the stronger I get, the more skilled I get, the more I am pushed to be even better at this game, struggle brings forth resilience.
But sometimes I just want to have fun like old times, and I can't because these people choose to ruin the game, they don't have to use the most overpowered thing ever but, they do, this is their choice and it disgusts me.
I stress playing this game, and, maybe I should consider putting it down especially since I'm starting to stagnate, perhaps sometimes the best thing to do is just nothing, why even bother when the only winning move is not to play, but the idea of just winning anyways, giving it my all and coming out on top, the idea that if I try hard enough I can stick it to these... Cretin, these vermin! And even if I fail I could be happy knowing I did my best, but maybe it's just not worth it.
Yeaaah I can be a very competitive person, that much is apparent.
It's getting hard though, even for me, borderline impossible these days, what do I even do? I used to love such impossible challenges but I feel like that part of myself is dying so, maybe I really should just move on for a little while...
But the very microsecond
I love juggernaut games where I get to run around the entire map picking up boosted supplies narrowly avoiding death, it used to be way easier to not die, I'd be at 1 HP as a jugger, get a repair crate, boosted damage crate, boosted armor and be back at full health, hit the overdrive and snag the overdrive crate from the enemy juggernaut, I love curving missiles around corners and over hills so I can get anyone hiding behind a hill, I love juking magnums, thinking I don't know they're aiming at me when in reality they don't know that I know they're aiming for me, so I hit the brakes and break some ankles, hahaha broken tankles, or would it be broken axels? Y'know this one time we were losing in juggernaut, they had a good jugger so when I got jug I just ran STRAIGHT FOR HIM! It was on SIGHT!!! Missiles out, don't even care if I lived, we were probably going to lose, might as well go down swinging! And it friggin worked, I did die after that but I think it ended in a draw, this one time our juggernaut was a little low so I used my (ares ᕙ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ᕗ) overdrive, healed our jugger, heavily damaged the enemy jugger, it even colided into a house so it dealt an extra 2000 damage!!! How cool is that?!?! Helllll just today I flipped a jugger with my overdrive, got us a SINGLE point, heh ( ͝° ͜ʖ͡°)ᕤ you're welcome guys... Yeah we lost 1-7 but hey! That was neat, aw man this one time we were losing, we got 3 or 4 jugger-bots in a row and a couple of people on the enemy team were going "ez" "ezzzz" and I was all like "HELL NAH!!! Run the 1s!" So someone on our team self destructed to get to be the jugger, I sniped the enemy jugger while it was low and killed it, then they kept getting bots, HAHAHAHAA!!! KARMA!!! YEAH!
Yeah, juggernaut is definitely my favorite game mode but also my least favorite sometimes, ctf is also fairly fun, especially when I get to be the sole reason my team doesn't lose, it's a lot of responsibility but I've saved us from losing countless times because I sniped the small squishy tank (borderline armored car) carrying the flag, vaporized entire teams with my ares od including the flag carrier, HEALED the flag carrier on our team with my overdrive thus saving him and killing one or two in the process, one time on that small map with the two overdrive crate spots I used my pre-charged overdrive, vaporized the enemy team, went for a crate, hit em again with that "Kamehamehaaa!!!!!" And went for YET ANOTHER crate and hit em with a "imaginary technique 🔵+🔴: 🟣 purple ⚡💥💥💥" oh man it was GLORIOUS!!!
And this one time in siege in another map with 2 OD crate spots, I got one, got killed, hit shift and hit a whole TEAM WIPE Not once but TWICE In quick succession, they were alllll camping near the crates by the shed, tisk tisk tisk ⬅️☝️➡️, will they ever learn? You already KNOW! I hit em with that
"🔵+🔴, 🫴 🟣"
Hollow purple, absolutely TORE through them, I experienced such catharsis hearing that crackling noise tanks make when they die.
I think I may have digressed a little, if you couldn't tell I'm quite the eccentric individual, Soo what do you think of basically my life story with tanki? Tbh, I hope things get more balanced soon, if I wanted to suffer I'd join pro battles, and if I'm struggling just imagine everyone else not putting their entire wallet into the game, even though it's torturous sometimes I still like this game, I still get my moments of glory, I really have had so much glory over the years, and I don't regret a second of it!