Hey-- YOU! Don't post that whine. Read this instead!

I know where you're coming from, friend, believe me. Oh I have raged heartily over the Assassin, the Sniper, the Juice (oh the Juice), and was it worth it?

Hell no.

Here, let me let you in on a secret -- this isn't your average everyday run of the mill "it's okay if I get fragged I'll just respawn" FPS. This game borrows foundational elements from one of the most punishing, rage inducing games to date (DotA) and it's all cleverly disguised in a neat, colorful, friendly looking funny sounding team oriented objective based third person shooter package that lures you into thinking "Oh I've played this before!"

Oh, how mistaken you are good sir. How mistaken you are. And it may take you some time, but you'll come around (they all do eventually) and you'll be sorry you didn't sooner. So let's just do everyone a favor -- me, you, the guy that'll have to sift through your rant for anything remotely of value before locking it -- and lay down some ground rules of biblical importance before you run off to get fragged.

__________________________DOTH READTH AND WEEPTH--____________________________

RULE #1: THOU SHALT NOT DIE UNNECESSARILY. This is perhaps -- nay, it IS -- the MOST important rule of MNC and any DotA clone out there. Dying is bad. Period. It gives your opponents cash to spend on upgrades and turrets. It places you BACK at spawn rather than contesting the front lines, which means your bot lane is going to get pushed back towards your base and you have absolutely no income for the entire time you're jogging back to the front (since you're not killing bots), which causes you to fall behind in the money race, leaving you underskilled compared to your opponents.

POP QUIZ!

You are almost assassinated, but the face stab doesn't pack the punch required to take you down. You UNLOAD on the Assassin, but she manages to slip around the corner towards her base with a sliver of health. What do you do?

YOU STAY PUT, DAMMIT! "Being greedy" (chasing a low health opponent far into dangerous territory) is one of the most COMMON mistakes new players to DotA-esque games make and it almost always ends up with them getting fragged. Even if you GET the frag, it means NOTHING if you die afterwards. Your personal safety is the most important thing in this game. I CANNOT stress this enough. Your goal for every game should be zero deaths, and every time you die you need to remember how and why and make sure you don't repeat that same mistake ever ever ever ever again. Are we clear? I sure hope so. Did I mention you lose all of your juice when you die? Yeah, that sucks too.

COMMANDMENT #2: THOU SHALT FRAGGTH BOTS RELENTLESSLY. Another common misconception so many new players have is perceiving their primary targets as the enemy players. That is entirely false. Enemy players should be engaged when the opportunity presents itself, but at ALL other points in time, you should be fragging bots, ie "pushing the lane" towards your opponent's moneyball, NOT actively seeking out enemy players and outright ignoring the bot waves. Let's look at the players vs bots facts:

-Players are NOT a good, constant (key word) source of income. Bots are.
-Players CANNOT break the Moneyball shields. Bots can.
-Players are freaking HARD to kill. Bots aren't.

Are you starting to see why we want to rape and pillage as many mechanical constructs as possible, rather than getting tunnel vision on player frags? I'm not saying it's not important to kill enemy Pros -- it absolutely is crucial to frag your opponents -- but you cannot ONLY kill Pros. Pushing the lane is of utmost importance. Killing pros helps push the lane because it sends those truckers back to the spawn, giving you zero competition when it comes to muscling over their waves of bots. Again, engage when the opportunity presents itself, don't force it, and always push the lane.

OATH #3: THOU SHALT CONSTRUCTH TOWERS. It drives me NUTS to see a base completely devoid of any towers. Towers are crucial in providing solid lines of defense against enemy bot pushes. They act like speedbumps for enemy pushes, forcing them to grapple with an entrenched position and a difficult to break line before proceeding to your Moneyball. Without any towers, you will lose extremely quickly to anyone that knows how to mash mouse 1 while hugging a lane. You should be ASHAMED of yourself if you never spend any money on towers in every game you play. I almost always whore out a serious chunk of my cash to constructing, reconstructing, and upgrading towers throughout the entire game. You should too.

Let's put this idea into perspective with a quick example. Imagine you're in a game where you're getting absolutely HOUNDED by the enemy. They're at your doorstep constantly, right out front of your base towers, but they don't manage to break through. They're spending ALL of their cash on upgrades, and none of it on towers because they haven't had to play defensively the entire match. Meanwhile, your base is rocking the level 3 Rocket turrets on both ends of the Moneyball and you're holding on by the skin of your teeth for the whole round. Your shields haven't broken, but boy you're sweating something fierce and it's an intense match.

Then overtime hits. They try and suicide into your moneyball, they get some shots off, but they're mopped up by your level 3 uber-towers fairly effectively, and slowed by your Shavice turrets like chumps, making them easy targets. Meanwhile your juiced players are practically free to pillage the enemy Moneyball and last much longer inside the enemy base before being cleaned up. The countdown hits zero -- BAM, the enemy loses. Why? Because they didn't have any towers, man.

Let's run down the specific towers real quick:

-Laser Blazers are crap, don't build them. You're never too poor to afford $150 for a Rocket Turret, and if you are, then trust me, the Laser Blazer isn't going to help you.

-Rocket Towers absolutely OBLITERATE once they get to level 3. They're pretty good at level 2, and Pro bait at level 1. If you have any level 1 Rocket Towers, your first priority should be to get them to level 2 ASAP so that you have time to respond to an enemy attacking them and also so they have a bit more punch to defend themselves. Keeping a Rocket Turret at level 1 is like saying "hey, please come kill this so I have to waste another $150 to rebuild it."

-Shavice Towers are EXCELLENT at restricting enemy movement inside of your base. Remember that Assassin constantly wrecking your base towers' **** at the speed of light every time they juiced up? Guess what stops that? Shavice Tower. They can either attack it, and god does that thing have a lot of HP and take awhile to kill, or they can try and run past it, and that means they're bullet bait for the entire duration of their power walk through your base. They'll probably get grappled and owned. It will probably be really cool. Haha, get it? Cool? Cold? Yeah whatever.

-Longshot Turrets are wonderful fire support. They really do help soften up the enemy if they're playing overly defensively. Build these suckers at the back lines so they can provide fire support while you attack. Remember though, they're super fragile, so if an enemy manages to make it to your Longshots they're going to be dead before you can get there. It's okay though, they're pretty cheap for how much they own so you can afford to replace them if someone picks a beef with the little guys. I should note that these things take the cake as my favorite turrets. They're 75 to build, 150 to get to level 2, and 300 for level 3, and they kick *** at level 3. BUILD EM. GUARD EM. LOVE EM. Have you ever been on a server and you're all like "god what keeps hitting me"? It's my bro Longshot.

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There, that's it; that's all I have to say. I know, I know, I'm probably wrong on a few minor details here and there, and this probably gets a little sloppy towards the end (it took so long to type and I'm getting tired jeez give me a break), but believe me when I say these are the things you should be worrying about as a new player to MNC. Stay alive. Kill the bots. Build the towers. If you follow these three tips, you will find yourself facerolling pubs in no time.

I'm gonna go play now. Bye. <3

For this post, I love you.

My God. It's so. Beautiful.

http://myfacewhen.com/99/

I approve of this, highly.

Took me some game time to actually realize that all these things are more important than I thought. Staying back in base as a support and doing nothing but attending to turrets and heal players leaving? Terribad idea. A safely placed firebase can cut down a lot of bots and generate delicious income.

Turrets are as vital as you write them to be. The more it hurts me to see players build either useless turrets on vital locations or no turrets at all.... the two moneyball nubs are NOT GOOD SPOTS for longshots :I Especially not erecting destroyed towers grinds my gears... It's like players just think that someone else might as well put them up again since they need their money for their own skills :I

STICKY THIS! STICKY THIS NAO!!!

Win.

This goes for the 360 crowd as well.

Seal of approval.

Only one note you forgot about longshots: DON'T EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVVEEEER, BUILD THEM IN STEEL PEEL! They just shoot into walls there.

Also, avoid building them very close to walls in general, and never in those 2 spots next to the moneyball (those are for Rockits, always), or, again, they'll just shoot into the wall, which is pointless.

That said, this guide is money.

Turrets are vastly overestimated in their worth.

You know what works a million times better then turrets? Pushing bots in their lanes so you never have to worry about your money ball at all.

The only time to build turrets is if you are contained in a base as a delay/juice time eater. Especially if you upgrade a turret (or multiple!) right as the juicer comes in.

Fighting in your base means you are going to lose in most cases.

qft

While I mostly agree with this idea that the best defense is a good offense, it is still important to keep SOME static defenses up. If you've got nothing built, you can very quickly go from winning to losing. If you have nothing up, it just takes one good juice, one good coordinated push, one set of unfortunate deaths, or one lapse in attention to a lane for your moneyball to go down.

Turrets are good insurance against those kinds of things. They'll slow down an enemy push long enough for your team to regroup and deal with a threat before it becomes a real problem.

Occasionally it is necessary to take a defensive stance, but the goal should always be to push back on offense as soon as possible. No player should ever be dedicated purely to defense, but everyone should be ready to contribute when it's needed.

This post should be stickied everywhere!

The vast majority of our news players seem to believe this game is only Deathmatch. It literally drives me crazy! They'll never care about pushing lanes, and when playing against me they'll go after me again and again... and again, without even trying to kill one of my bots.

Well I'm fine with that: when it happens, I just push my lane, kill 2 or 3 waves of enemy bots, juice, destroy half of their base, and finish the game in less than 5 minutes

Turrets are your most significant "defender's advantage" in MNC. Without turrets the only defender's advantage you have is a closer spawn point to the front lines, however with the maps being as small as they are that advantage is not a great one.

By definition, a defender's advantage allows you to defend against an attack with a smaller force. Without turrets you are required to match your opponent's attacking force Pro-by-Pro, meaning you have no extra manpower left over to do some sort of offensive action elsewhere on the map to draw the attackers' attention away from their game ending push.

So Turrets are not "vastly overestimated," they're very very crucial to weathering strong enemy pushes.

missing the part about gap shots absolutely dominating base defenses and being the best way to spear head a money ball assault. Seriously I have had so many losing games where I find one window of opportunity pump out 2 gap shots and escort a tank through a lane and by the time I show up all their turrets are gone and their moneyball is ours for the taking

Gap shots die if you like breathe on them.

Only need them for a few moments. and if you are pushing hard enough the enemy team should be far too preoccupied to sneak passed your front line and get to the gap-shots

You're already winning with that situation >.>

Being able to push a lane and being able to push to the money ball are monumentally different. And I have never had a losing game where there was never an opportunity for a tank and I to just spin through bots and clean up a lane

Pushing lanes and pushing the moneyball is the same thing. Both objectives are to you know, kill the moneyball.

Let me just get some bubblegum. There, stickied.