Awesomenauts

[Pinky]

I wish I had come up with the name of this game myself, so boss.

Posting a thread here in case anybody else is/will be playing. It's a 3v3 left vs right sidescrolling platformer with DotA/LoL mechanics. You pick an archetypical hero, siege the enemy turrets, time attacks with CPU-controlled minions, and get "solar" (money) from kills to upgrade your stuff. Kill a turret and your side spawns a huge rocket-launching minion. Each side has a "solar drill" deep inside their base that gives each player $30/minute; destroy the enemy's drill to win.

A hero's skillset is made of: two spells, their weapon, and general attributes. Each skill has six different upgrade options, of which you choose three that will be available at the in-game shop.

It's also a drop-in/drop-out game. If a player leaves they will be replaced with a bot that isn't terrible; the bots are replaced when a new player joins. New players get all of the money collected by that player slot so they're not at a disadvantage. Pretty sweet idea.

The heros:

Sheriff Lonestar - "pusher" cowboy. Kinda slow moving, but has a rapid firing space pistol and he can double jump. He can summon a bull that charges forward and stuns enemies, this thing has great utility. His other spell is a stick of dynamite, and if properly upgraded it deals the most damage of any spell in the game. His pistol can be upgraded to become very powerful or fire rockets. Half of the top ten PSN players use him.

Clunk - robot "tank." Slowest hero, highest HP, uses a powerful rocket launcher and has a rocketpack for extended jumps. One spell is a melee attack that has lifesteal and can be upgraded to increase his max HP. The other is a self-targeting explosion with wide AoE around him. His rocket launcher can be upgraded to fire bigger rockets.

Froggy B - "stun" breakdancer. Fast with a short range pistol and has the fastest/highest jump. One spell is a line-type attack that makes him dash forward and stuns targets, the other does damage to enemies that he touches and can be upgraded to block damage from enemies. His pistol can be upgraded for better range or hit multiple targets.

Yuri - "support" spacemonkey. Has a rocket backpack that enables flight, with a laser beam that bounces off solid surfaces. One spell lays trip mines on the ground, the other is a self targeting AoE field that heals/speeds up allies and slows the enemy. The laser gets upgrades for status effects.

Voltar - "healer" alien. The fastest character, his weapon heals allies, and he can hover in midair. One spell summons llittle robots that can attack, the other lays down a machine that has a healing AoE. His weapon can be upgraded to repel enemies or hurt them.

Leon Chameleon - "gank" ninja. Fast moving melee attacker, average in most attributes. One spell hits enemies with his tongue and reels enemy heroes in, the other creates a decoy and turns him invisible. His sword can be upgraded to deal extra damage when hitting from behind, do critical attacks, and lifesteal. My personal favorite.

[Pinky]

One thing I didn't mention is that each character has a musical genre theme. Voltar is classical, and something similar to the Imperial March plays when you use him. Clunk is heavy metal, Lonestar is western, etc. Leon's music is the only genre I don't know. It's some kinda soft techno.

Anyway, here's my current build for Leon.

Tongue Snatch: Deals 15 damage on hit, reels in enemy hero.
Items: Tongue Stretcher, Steel Fake Jaws, Morning Star Piercing

Decoy: Creates a decoy and turns Leon invisible for an unlimited amount of time.
Items: Surprise Party Mask, Pinot Noir, Extra Battery Pack

Weapon: Melee attack that deals 8 base damage with moderate attack speed.
Items: Enhanced Muscle Fiber, Clover of Honour, Backstab Blade

Attributes: Can improve health, move speed, passive HP regen, Solar income.
Items: Power Pills, Space Air Max, Piggy Bank

You start with $200, and you spawn in a landing shuttle that you can control and collect up to $40 on the way down. I typically get 25-30. When I first get to the store, I buy the Tongue Snatch spell ($135) and activate Piggy Bank - it cost $0 to use and adds $125. Then I use that to buy Space Air Max ($135), which increases move speed. This typically makes me the fastsest hero on the field, and I run into a hidden position at the center before anybody else gets there. I should have ~$130 still in the bank.

Most players start with +HP, or +DMG, or attack spells so they'd kill me in a heads-up fight. That's why I ambush with Tongue Snatch and get a few hits in before they know what's happening. From there I harass by jumnping around and tonguing enemies. Tongue passes through minions, so it hits them on the way out and the way back for a total 30 damage to each. Enemies get used to running away when I pull them in, kinda hard to kill them at this point.

After a few minutes of skirmishes and farming, I'll buy Backstab Blade for $275. It does +8 damage when I hit enemies from behind, for 16DMG total (most heroes have 120 to 140 base HP, Clunk is an outlier at 220). The first hero I tongue usually loses too much HP to fight me before he realizes what's going on, so I get a few easy kills. It's easy to get another $135 for Tongue Stretcher which doubles the tongue's range. Now I'm ganking hardcore.

The problem is that enemies usually keep buying HP, DMG, and attack spell upgrades. If I reel them in and they just stand and fight, there's a good chance they can kill me. So, my next buys go in this order: Enhanced Muscle Fiber, Power Pills, Enhanced Muscle Fiber, Power Pills, Clover of Honour, Power Pills, Clover of Honour.

EMF costs $195 for +30% attack speed, Power Pills cost $135 for +30HP, CoH cost $180 for +20% critical hit chance that does +18DMG. I max the attack speed bonus first because it's necessary to get results from critical hits, with HP upgrades every other purchase to keep my survivability up. I've spent about $1690 now, with 210HP hitting for 8/16/26/34 DMG depending on crits or if they're running away.

Once I have all that it's the end game. My typical choice from here is to get both Steel Fake Jaws upgrades to add 100% lifesteal to my tongue, so I can recover 60HP by tonguing a pair of minions (15dmg*2hits*2targets), then Morning Star Piercing which doubles tongue's damage, and the second Tongue Stretcher upgrade so it goes all the way across the screen (can't remember SFJ or MSP cost).

I can win even if both allies are bots when I play this build well. If that 2doesn't win the game I'll start buying Decoy upgrades, which pretty much makes me impossible to kill since there is no detection in the game. I wonder if they'll change that.

[Sage]

Seems pretty cool. I might have to get it.

[Pinky]

I was gonna post "sure is samefag in here" or something similar. Thanks, Sage ;p The game is free for PSN+ players.

From my expierences, my Leon is pretty weak against Froggy B or a well played Clunk and Lonestar. Tried tweaking the build, but any changes to improve my power against those guys dramatically decreases my effectiveness in general. Grrr

Just got done with a series of games. In the first I dropped into a match on Corona on red team with Voltar and Yuri for allies, and blue team was Voltar, Lonestar, and Froggy. Froggy was their team leader. Nuts. On top of that, we had already lost the top front turret, the bottom forward turret was damaged, and blue team was pushing our rear turret. None of their turrets had taken significant damage. Figured I would just play for fun.

I started with enough cash to get Tongue Snatch, move speed, tongue range, Backstab, and all upgrades for attack speed, crit damage, and HP. So, I come out swinging like Batman and wreck their push with a double kill. Momentum carried us forward and smash one of their front turrets. Took down half of their rear turret before blue team recovered. Our team destroyed their solar drill about five minutes later.

Next round was Corona again. Their Lonestar switched to Clunk. Froggy's dash-tornado-dash combo is really dangerous against my squishy melee build. Clunk tried to come out with his self-explosion spell, but with exra move speed I could run away before it went off almost every time. My allies Voltar and Yuri both went for recovery spells, which helped keep our pushes going. The game went back and forth for about fifteen minutes before we finally won.

Third game put us on Corona... again... and it was extremely competative lasting almost half an hour. By now Froggy had caught onto my swag. By the end of the game I think he had gone 14-4 and was winning most of our showdowns. But I was slowly building up over the game, ending with something like 17-5, and my sword eventually put out so much damage they melted when I attacked. I spent a solid three minutes just hunting minions to prevent them from building up any steam. One of their turrets was down to 1/3 health and I finished it off solo.

Fourth and final game was on the jungle level. I think one of their players quit, and Clunk went back to Sheriff Lonestar. We got the advantage early and took down a turret pretty quickly. They abandoned any attempt at defending our attack and pushed on one of our turrets. So, it was a race to the solar drill. We got to theirs first and won.

[Pinky]

New DLC that includes two new characters, and minor changes to the last row items. (now instead of PPT costing $270 and adding 90hp, it costs $0 and adds 30hp. the old PP are renamed PPT, but have the same three-tier $135 that adds 30hp. also the Piggy Bank gives +$150 instead of +$125)

My new favorite character is definitely Derpl. He shoots a nuke and also has a cannon that fires cats. The other character could use some work but I'm still learning how to play with her. Should have released this last month, the Awesomenauts community on PS3 is practically dead already.

[Pinky]

So, a lot of content got changed, I just didn't notice when I scanned through most of the original characters. Like, Froggy's weapon is so absurdly powerful now I can solo the entire enemy team without buying any health upgrades.