Thread: I dread being the tank

Originally Posted by Rachkir

i see one guy crouching in front of the tank today. He died rather quickly. I said to him, you play CSS dont you. then LOL'ed.

High 5!

What's all this oriental jibberish cluttering this interesting thread about!?

I'm hesitant to click those!

Yeah, clicking those would probably be a bad idea. He's made a couple of identical posts in one of the other forums as well.

here's a good pointer, don't try to rush in on a team with power weapons. If you have to make them come to you, do it, tank won't despawn, someone else on the team will take control, just make sure your teammates aren't idiots and are willing to go with this strategy. Lobbing rocks is great, especially if you have pretty good precision in aiming, I hit a guy on the blood harvest finale from the other side of the house while he was in the barn. Also if someone goes down, it's good to go after the person trying to help them up. And lastly, teammates! Wait for a hunter/smoker/boomer attack if your up against a good team, and while their attention is diverted, ATTACK! Blindside em.

Props on the HG2tG quote graw!

well, as a tank i'll try to incap everyone or as many as i can since when i try to finish someone off i normally die before i can kill them, but if i incap a few of them the rest of the zombies can finish them off, and i also remember where all the survivors are. if i think one's going towards someone that's down, i'll go towards them and they run away or i'll just turn around and chuck cement at them that normally stops them... but when i'm the tank i look for anything i can throw at them like a car or forklift or something and take it with me or if they are already close to one i'll use it as cover and wait for them to group up or to just come closer and then i throw it at them and continue to use it as cover from whoever is still alive.

As for the person who asks why many tanks only incap and not finish... that's imho smart playing, as a tank incaps a lot faster than finishing someone off (and while you incap someone, you can juggle him, an incapped person can shoot you while you punch him.)

Imho, the tanks job is to separate the survivors. As a tank i normally try to knock single survivors away from their team, so the other infested can easily pick them off. But i keep in mind where incapped ppl are, and will ambush anyone foolish enough to come and rescue them.

Ok, here's a list of tips from this thread that you should use to make your tank playing much more effective and enjoyable.

1. As a tank, you should wait. Most people will throw all of their molotovs right when they hear the tank music so you should stop and wait a little bit until their molotovs are gone. If they aren't this impulsive you should try to lure them into throwing a molotov by popping out in the open for a second and make it look like you're trying to pursue them. Don't worry about them coming for you, most of the time that is a good thing because it saves a lot of your health trying the usual "chase them all around the map" nooby strat. Now this will only really work on certain maps. In the No Mercy Finale, you should still do this but you shouldn't wait too long. Remember, the survivors have a frustratingly large number of molotovs, but this will still buy you a little more killing time and it will help future tanks stay alive.

2. You should train you're rock throwing skills. The ability to hit survivors at long range with a tank is invaluable. Blood Harvest is a great example of this. You have beautiful sight lines there so USE THEM! Also try employing that tactic mentioned by... somebody, I forget. I think it was Sean Connery. Whoever it was, this was the tactic. When the survivors are in the house, stay outside the house and have the other infected guard the other exits. The survivors will come out of the house looking for you because they are so astonished that you haven't killed them yet and then, after you down him, you just wait for the rest.

3. Tanks are freakin scary. You can't tell where they are coming from because you hear them coming from everywhere, you cannot pinpoint their location. They are big and ugly and really imposing. which you might think doesn't matter but that imposing quality of the tank causes people to make mistakes. Tanks are also scary because, if the survivors start making mistakes they know that they will get pwned. They can sort of get away with mistakes with other infected but with tanks it's excellent performance or death. My point is that you can use this fear. Dealing with the tank always comes first with most players, which allows the rest of your team to incap pretty much the whole team as you flaunt your scaryness. Players will naturally start making horrible mistakes like splitting up when a tank starts doing anything. USE IT!

4. Control. Your control is not infinite, as slow as that bar is. look at it every once and a while. And your health too. People playing as a tank don't take health into account much of the time. Of course very experienced players will do this but average players have this mentality that a tank is a freakin tank so it is nearly indestructible.

5. TEAM GAME! The best tip is to work as a team. a tank by itself is not as lethal as you would like it to be, so team work is your best strat when playing as a tank

Thanks for the tips. Count me as another who sucks hard with Tank... and at VS in general. I have 5 achievements left for 50 and three of them can only be done as Infected. How am I ever going to get All 4 Dead? Answer: I probably won't.