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So, to introduce to many:
Frontal Tanking!
Tanking in general is designed around mech attributes. And you can tell by it's geometry and other feature. The mech is physically designed to excel at what it is meant to do
One with these conish nosed mech, like the direwolf, are meant to directly tank in the front facing position. They are often characterized by small skinny weak looking arms(To reduce damage to arms), ones that do not cover well, or ones with heavy weaponry in the arms. It also is often on mechs with slower yaw speeds. Unless some other aspect of the mech is also based on faster yaw. At which point the mechs abilities will reflect this.
This cone setup helps give the opportunity to tank while keeping the enemies in front of you. And it generally requires you keep them that way. The cone help to more quickly get fire from CT to ST and possibly arms to reduce damage to any specific location. This even works on PPC if the PPC is from wide enough fire potentially(Although I'm not sure)
The point of this design, in general, is to allow tanking while aiming forward and minimizing time to return fire. This is because this minimized movement from the target location when spreading damage within a smaller radius of your center allowing you to get your crosshair back on the target faster.
You do this by wiggling back and forth evenly in both direction from the location where the enemy is firing from. This allows you to move back to center much faster and is a necessity for slower mechs, or otherwise permits mechs to have slower yaw or other attributes without penalty to fighting.
If you have one of these mechs do not tank with your side arm(unless it actually has side tanking arms also.Example: Awesome). Your arms will melt like butter likely taking a chunk of your DPS and killing you.
If you have not used one of these. They are generally the most powerful tanks in the game. They can soak up the most damage and possibly return it. They are for super heavy tanks like the direwolf and others meant to push on locations and help deal massive damage(hence the arms can't tank for extra weapons.) They can literally potentially tank against the entire enemy team and still come out with even damage at the end of the match. Particularly if they get to attack the enemies one on one slowly. They will kill you if you do not play correctly or think you can take on a heavier assault mech. Even if it's from another assault(The Atlas is support more than direct pusher. Although with good attributes. although it is still good at frontal twisting if I'm not mistaken. It may lack a cone because of IS ranges or it's better yaw speed and better ST/CT's. But it has a very vulnerable head(Pure CT on the center axis!).)
The weakness of these mechs is generally side angling. If they cannot physically or effectively keep the enemy in front of them, Shots are more concentrated on a spot and it burns through making it likely to remove weapons and reducing their DPS(which can be part of their tanking, as it reduces incoming fire in the long run.) They are most vulnerable to anyone taking down their DPS(unless they have good buddies or tank attributes) and being attacked from wide angles. Never solo one of these unless you know exactly what to do. You can't even necessarily encircle them to get their back as is the case of the direwolf before the movement changes. It could not be encircled by lights because it had just enough turn speed and torso yaw to always get on lights trying and kill them before they could do anything.
Frontal tankers are also generally designed to take down enemy mechs as quickly as possible as part of tanking. It reduces their armor losses. So they are potentially very good at killing quickly, or reducing the enemy armor enough for an ally to swiftly take it down, or destroy enemy weapons and remove dps from the map.
Side note: This is why the Annihilator will be an interesting frontal tank for IS. It may be something close to an IS Direwolf! But on top of this it will likely be good at turreting and long range or possibly hill cresting. I'm not sure. But it's thin arms and interesting torso may give it very interesting capabilities. It may just be a question of how well it can push. if the heat in particular has CT and ST, it will naturally get fired upon while cresting and a higher likely hood of misses on top of damage spread before you get your upper body up all the way. so it will be good at going up and down hills to fire. This will be useful for that obvious as well as making the enemy fire and give a break to weapons fire for hill pushes for the rest of the team.
As a side tip. when I tank in my direwolf of doom. I tend to not get close fast. I maintain proper distance and keep the enemy coming one at a time between major pushes. Unless I have backup. This reduces potential fire(and angling issues) and reduces the affect if something does come from multiple angles. Range will always reduce the affect. So if you want to hurt one get close and come from different sides. Or do anything to reduce DPS. But do not let them kill you and reduce your DPS. This is why the direwolf can be really nasty with the correct setup. And if you tank with one distance can be a good ally. It reduces damage literally and the likely hood of anything hitting one spot to much. If you need to kill one guy to turn to the next guy to tank. This is what I mean by effectively front tanking. If they never shoot or hit you it doesn't matter. It only matters that you can frontal wiggle with them in front when the damage is hitting you.
You will notice the Annihilator starts with semi long range weapons. This is probably an ideal distance for weapon damage reduction and rotation speed of the mech. Or whatever makes up it's tanking characteristics, and likely best or most powerful weapon layouts.
And with these types of mechs you generally want to make tanking a higher priority than attacking. They are designed to minimizing time to aim to allow quicker shots. So you don't generally need to worry about returning fire. The only exception might be getting hit by rare build where the enemy can fire constantly. Either take the CT damage and fire or use allies. It's weakness if it's constant fire on you give it the chance to be concentrated on by other mechs.
These types of mechs are generally also better off with fast firing or instant shot weapons like most ballistics missiles and faster lasers. Coincidentally these are also the more powerful and better Damage/Heat ratio weapons.
And UAC's are ideal for these mechs as they increase total damage output per slot/ton while minimizing fire time and, at least on the clan side, have good damage/heat ratios.
BTW, a good example of combined tank mech is, as mentioned above, the Awesome. It is awesome precisely because for this reason. It has massive return weapons, side tanking, and frontal tanking. This is so it can push in the way it does. It can side turn and fire but also front tank when needed. This would be particularly useful against situations where the enemy does not all fire at once(Staggered fire) If you go turn at the enemy from arm tanking, and a guy try to concentrate shots in your CT or arms when you try to fire, you can quickly front tank by shaking back and forth to mitigate before firing your weapons. This gives it versatility in tanking and means it can more easily push forward while tanking and still return fire. This reduces return fire times when pushing forward if fired up and allow continuous tanking while charging. This gives it invaluable versatility and reduces any affect on enemies trying to stop it from exchanging blows and hopefully taking down enemies to reduce incoming DPS. Which then gives it more tanking ability in the situation.
And if you are concerned, the Garthok was garfled because of a cockpit shot to a Garthok with only melee weapons... Garthoks will not be so easily garfled on a cone mech in game.
Notice how they force them to take on the Garthok one on one. This is on purpose! Avoid this if you attempt to gnarfle a Garthok yourself.
I wonder if Clan newbs and new converts were forced to gnarfle a Garthok before being allowed to go into battle with Clans...
Edited by Arugela, 04 June 2017 - 04:50 PM.
