So I'm pretty good at games, I've never played a game where I'm ever not in the top 3 on the scoreboard the vast majority of the time after just starting for both KDR and objectives, but I am fucking AWFUL at this game. In comprehensively bad. And I don't really get what I am doing wrong. I did fine in Monday Night Combat, but in this game, I have the following problems:

I play Captain Spark exclusively. This is because he is what I picked at first and after doing so bad, I'm determined to get good and refuse to change to something else.

My problems are as follows:

1. I die extremely quickly and do terrible damage. I die to the starting bots, even once I'm a higher level. I can barely kill them. I'm attacking constantly with my sword, I really don't understand why I'm not doing any damage. Leveling up the HP or Weapon Damage abilities changes nothing. I get that this class is (probably?) meant to be a glass cannon, but I'm not figuring out how to shoot said cannon, as it were.

2. I have absolutely no chance against other players: I'm instantly put in a locked animation the second I get somewhat close and am instantly dead. I have no idea how to counter this. In the rare situation where I'm not animation locked, I do absolutely no damage and die nearly instantly.

3. Grapple doesn't seem to work. Nomatter what angle I approach people from, my guy grabs the air and stands there like a dolt. My latency is fine. Do you need to do it from a specific angle? Is there a specific way to do it?

4. I don't understand the alt fire for the sword. Sometimes I can use it, sometimes I can't. Sometimes I can spam it, sometimes I can't use it for 40 seconds. Sometimes I can use it after attacking a few times, sometimes I can't, and sometimes I can use it right away, or never in a fight.

I know that these problems lie on my end, but I've played a fair bit and I honestly can not figure out what I am doing wrong or what I need to do to play better. Does anyone have any advice? Am I missing something?

1- Use your alt weapon (his laser gun) for farming bots.

2/3- Spark is more of an assassin, you need to wait for the good moment where you can sneak them behind (the teleport ability can help with that) and use your throw to do some ring outs. That's his really strong point. And use your alt fire with your sword to blind people. Use the lunge ability to close in too (R when you have a melee weapon in-hand) The best trick is to learn to lunge and grapple while lunging, you will do a "kara" throw, which means that the range of your lunge is kind of added to the range of the grapple.

4- You can use it after 3 swings of your sword.

If you want more tips on the game in general I'll give them :P

Have you played any Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games before?

If you go into this playing it like a shooter you are bound to do badly.

Your first problem was playing Captain Spark first. He is, by far, one of the hardest (if not the hardest) Pro to play, especially since half of his abilities are prone to bug out right now. I really suggest you play an easier Pro until you understand the game a bit better.

When Spark jungles, the neutral bots WILL kill you at level 1 if you try to just sword them. Run backwards while shooting them with your Raygun to kill them. For normal laning, stay behind your bots to let them take the damage instead of you.

The reason you're not doing any damage is because you're likely doing badly near the beginning and are underleveled- once you're 2 levels behind someone you won't do damage to them as a Commando. Not only that, but Commandos don't excel at taking down full enemies- they're best at chasing or finishing Pros that are low and getting the hell out before the enemy team can react.

In terms of grapples, note that they're calculated serverside- even 50ms ping on both players can thus throw off clientside views. Make sure they're not in the air (you can't grapple someone who is in the air) and you're pretty much touching them. You can counter grapples yourself by jumping like a maniac.

And the reason the alt fire with sword is so inconsistent is because it's bugged, something that will (hopefully) be resolved in today's patch.

@Kidavenger said:

Have you played any Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games before?

If you go into this playing it like a shooter you are bound to do badly.

Did you read his post, he said he played Monday Night Combat.

@jozzy:

MNC and SMNC are 2 completely different beasts.

@jozzy said:

@Kidavenger said:

Have you played any Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games before?

If you go into this playing it like a shooter you are bound to do badly.

Did you read his post, he said he played Monday Night Combat.

I wouldn't call MNC a MOBA. SMNC is a loooooot closer, and follow the rules set up by the genre. It's an entirely different way of thinking about the game.

@TobbRobb said:

@jozzy said:

@Kidavenger said:

Have you played any Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games before?

If you go into this playing it like a shooter you are bound to do badly.

Did you read his post, he said he played Monday Night Combat.

I wouldn't call MNC a MOBA. SMNC is a loooooot closer, and follow the rules set up by the genre. It's an entirely different way of thinking about the game.

Well ok, I'll give you that. But I definately wouldn't call Monday Night Combat a standard shooter either, which is what Kidavenger is talking about. The OP basically is saying he doesn't seem to be doing a lot of damage, and gets killed really easily. I am not a MOBA expert, but that doesn't sound to me like he is approaching it as a typical shooter.

Basically what I am trying to say is, MNC and SMNC are still closer to eachother in terms of gameplay than CoD and SMNC.

EDIT: He is even saying he is using the sword the most.

@Kidavenger said:

Have you played any Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games before?

If you go into this playing it like a shooter you are bound to do badly.

This actually explains pretty clearly why I haven't been having fun with SMNC. I've been approaching it completely wrong.

Thanks for all of the advice guys. A lot of it was pretty helpful. I'll see how much of it I can apply

@jozzy: All entirely correct.

@Pinworm45: Just remember to keep your level high, it's an insane advantage. And kiting/circlestrafing bots with ranged weapons is pretty much vital.

kill bots, play conservatively, don't go for pro kills unless they're weakened and just need finishing off.

you have one of the lowest amounts of health in the game, your strength is really in your mobility and harassment.

use your ray gun to kill bots from range, constantly stun people with your E skill, even if you don't intend to kill them.

@Pinworm45 said:

My problems are as follows:

1. I die extremely quickly and do terrible damage. I die to the starting bots, even once I'm a higher level. I can barely kill them. I'm attacking constantly with my sword, I really don't understand why I'm not doing any damage. Leveling up the HP or Weapon Damage abilities changes nothing. I get that this class is (probably?) meant to be a glass cannon, but I'm not figuring out how to shoot said cannon, as it were.

2. I have absolutely no chance against other players: I'm instantly put in a locked animation the second I get somewhat close and am instantly dead. I have no idea how to counter this. In the rare situation where I'm not animation locked, I do absolutely no damage and die nearly instantly.

3. Grapple doesn't seem to work. Nomatter what angle I approach people from, my guy grabs the air and stands there like a dolt. My latency is fine. Do you need to do it from a specific angle? Is there a specific way to do it?

4. I don't understand the alt fire for the sword. Sometimes I can use it, sometimes I can't. Sometimes I can spam it, sometimes I can't use it for 40 seconds. Sometimes I can use it after attacking a few times, sometimes I can't, and sometimes I can use it right away, or never in a fight.

1. you are a lower level, see above

2. you are a lower level, see above. also they grappled you

3. make sure they are on the ground, not jumping since it can do wierd things to your grapple timing if you arent used to it.

4. changed this patch, it will be on a cooldown like other alt fires now. attacking and using skills will reduce the cooldown though.

Sparks is one of the more difficult characters to start playing with because you're don't have a grasp of the pace and the dynamics of the game. Since you don't know the arenas as well it's difficult to play Sparks the way your supposed to. The easiest thing to would be to switch to a another character so that it's easier to familiarize your self to the gameplay.

Whoever you choose to play, you need to always keep a few things in mind.

1) You really want to make sure that you aren't feeding the other team kills. Treat every life like its the most important one you have because it hurts the team once the deaths start to add up. That's usually when someone on your team, ignoring that you are learning how to play, starts hurling insults about how you play. Ignore that and start talking to your team. Coordinate about where you're attacking and defending. A team that talks together has a major advantage over teams that try and lone wolf it.

2) If you can kill bots there's no reason you shouldn't be. Trying to go after players to get early kills is tempting but its a very high risk high reward situation. If you have a great understanding of how to play your character then go right ahead, but too often do players neglect to attack the bots. Even if you're just tagging them for someone else to take out, you need to pay attention to the bots. If you look at the players that level the quickest youll notice that they all have high bot kill counts in almost every case. That's for a reason. Killing bots give you the level push you need to stay ahead of the enemy in the early game. So the best thing you can do is stay with your bots, defend them so that you can get through their defense.

3) Coordinate on the annihilator. If the other team has a level advantage, the last thing you want to do is jump into a fight for the annihilator when most of your team isn't even up there. Most of the time people complain that their teammates aren't heading up to the annihilator to defend. In most of these cases, it's not that the team isn't going up there, it's that no one is coordinating an attack and so everyone is just rushing to their deaths without their team mates. Try to flank them, catch them off their guard because a frontal attack will be difficult to pull off if their a higher level. If they have turrets make sure you focus on them first so that its safe to attack. A good support player will place his turret in a location where it's harder to attack the turret. In that case, you can't fight a battle on two fronts. You need to take the turret out or your going to get out gunned. Get to know all your knock back attacks that aren't grabs, its much safer to attack someone trying to press the button with a knock back than with a grab for obvious reason. The grab leaves you more vulnerable to a enemy counterattack and dying there is just going to make it that much harder for you team to get the annihilator, so know when to attack and when to back off.

4) PRACTICE! If you have a friend or can find someone who also plays that's willing to help you, play practice games. You want to get used to playing a character. Experiment on how to move around and get a feel for your cool downs. Practice matches are a perfect place to do that. And if you have someone to play against so you can experiment against a human player do it.

Let me know if you found this useful at all. I'm thinking about writing character break downs and posting them for new players. Anyway, glhb