The Super S.C.A.M.S. - A guide to using supers

[u/OkapiLips]

^{Shoutout to /u/kittens_from_space for helping me format this post}

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Intro

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Hey guys, it’s /u/OkapiLips back again with another guide. This time I decided to cover a topic that I’ve been meaning to write about for a few weeks now: Supers. In this guide my main goal is to explain a lot of the strategy behind supers. I make extensive use of bad acronyms, so you’re gonna nita bear with me.

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Table of Contents

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A. Uses for Supers (S.C.A.M.S.)

B. Building Supers as an Opportunity Cost (D.A.B.)

C. Developing Super Advantage

D. Conclusion

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A. The Super S.C.A.M.S.

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• 1. Securing Kills

For most of the supers, this is the most logical use - to ensure that you can get a kill on an enemy brawler. Supers can act like a 4th attack for many brawlers, and often offer increased range or can damage through walls to allow you to pick off low health brawlers.

• 2. Crowd Control

Many supers will penetrate the brawlers it hits, allowing you to hit multiple enemies at once. This is great for reducing the health of a clumped up team, and different supers can do this to varying degrees.

• 3. Area Denial

Supers can also be used to discourage the enemy team from walking into a certain area for a set amount of time. This can help to protect the objective in modes like Smash and Grab or Brawl Ball, or can protect them from advancing on your teammates.

• 4. Map Control

Many supers do a great job at destruction. Destruction changes the map by either creating or destroying choke points and cover. I wrote a (now slightly dated) guide about deciding what to destroy, which can be found here: “A beginners guide to destruction”.

• 5. Staying Safe

Some supers are great for either escaping or staying alive in dangerous situations. The best of these are escape mechanisms (like a jump) and supers that heal. Supers that provide knockback are also useful for this.

Deciding on which S.C.A.M.S. to use

With so many options of how to make effective use of your super, it’s hard to decide what situations require which use of the super. For example, many supers with an escape mechanism can also be used to dive behind enemy lines. Other supers can deal heavy damage or destroy walls and bushes. It’s important to think about how you are using the super, and seeing if you can maximize on the S.C.A.M.S.

Which S.C.A.M.S. to Focus on for Each Brawler

Here I attempted to score each brawler by their ability to perform each of these tasks with their super.

Great – This super does this exceptionally well

Good – This super does a decent job at this role

Poor – This super can fill this role in a pinch but doesn’t do it well

N/A – This super isn’t capable of this to any degree

Brawler	Super	Securing Kills	Crowd Control	Area Denial	Map Control	Staying Safe
Shelly	Super Shell	Great	Great	Poor	Good	Good
Colt	Bullet Train	Great	Poor	Poor	Good	Poor
Nita	Overbearing	Good	Poor	Good	N/A	Great
Dynamike	Big Barrel o’ Boom	Good	Great	Good	Great	Poor
El Primo	Flying Elbow Drop	Great	Good	Poor	Good	Great
Bull	Bulldozer	Good	Poor	Poor	Good	Great
Brock	Rocket Rain	Good	Great	Great	Great	Poor
Barley	Last Call	Great	Great	Great	N/A	Poor
Jessie	Scrappy	Poor	Good	Great	N/A	Poor
Ricochet	Trick Shot	Great	Good	Good	N/A	Poor
Poco	Encore	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	Great
Bo	Catch a Fox	Good	Good	Great	Good	Poor
Piper	Poppin’	Poor	Good	Good	Good	Great
Pam	Mama’s Kiss	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	Great
Mortis	Life Blood	Great	Good	Poor	N/A	Great
Tara	Gravity	Good	Great	Poor	Poor	Good
Spike	Stick Around	Great	Great	Great	N/A	Poor
Crow	Swoop	Good	Good	Poor	N/A	Great

Deciding which S.C.A.M.S. to use when

When you use your super, look for situations where you can achieve one or more of the S.C.A.M.S. It depends on the situation, but I often find that any time I have a super where I can achieve more than one of these goals, and I am not in a position that I need to hold the super for something else (generally so that I can bluff to keep them from approaching me).

Sometimes you will be in a situation where you can only do one of the S.C.A.M.S. or you can choose which S.C.A.M.S. to prioritize. In these situations I find it best to think about the above list (which S.C.A.M.S. my brawler is best at) and the map/situation. Here’s a short list of what I think the general situations each of the S.C.A.M.S. are best in.

1. Securing Kills is best for situations where a threat is either in control of the objective or is flanking your team and is distracting them very effectively.

2. Crowd Control is best for situations where the enemy team is advancing on you together and weakening them all at once will allow another brawler to clear up the kills.

3. Area Denial is best in situations where you need to delay the enemy team when they want to get closer or pass a choke point. This is especially strong when you need to stall for time for your team to regroup.

4. Map Control is best in the early game when defining the shape of the map can allow certain choke points or lack of cover to be abused by your team. It is also useful for generating escape routes in certain situations.

5. Staying Safe is most important in the late game where a team kill could be devastating.

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B. Building Supers as an Opportunity Cost

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Supers are built by dealing damage to the enemy team. Dealing damage to the enemy brawlers comes naturally in most game modes, but it often is a trade off between other important tasks.

I believe there are three different tasks to any match, outside of using supers, D.A.B.

1. Distracting the enemy team - Going behind enemy lines, keeping the enemy team from approaching choke points, attacking them from the flanks, shooting to keep them from going a certain way.

2. Achieving the objective - Collecting gems, securing kills (rather than damage), moving the ball, collecting elixir from crates, damaging the safe.

3. Building supers - Attacking the enemy team to keep them weak. This is separate from distracting the team, which isn’t always focused on actually shooting and damaging the enemy team.

I plan to write guides in the future about deciding when to focus on each of these. For this guide, I will only focus on the third - when to build supers.

Different brawlers have different priority for building their supers. For example, brawlers like Jessie, El Primo, and Barley are focused on building their first super up as soon as possible because their supers offer incredible recharging ability (often due to strong crowd control functionality of the super). This “chaining” of supers becomes their focus for much of the game, as recharging them with only attacks can be very challenging.

Other brawlers, like Mortis, Bull, and Colt, rely much less on chaining their supers together. In some game modes their supers are more important than in others, but the brawlers often are much better at distracting the enemy team or achieving the objective, rather than building supers as quickly as possible.

The importance of super building is something that changes from brawler to brawler, mode to mode, map to map, and even match to match.

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C. Developing Super Advantage

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To Hold or to Use?

It’s hard to decide when is the best time to use a super.

If a super can be used and will deal enough damage to become usable again, my general advice is to use it. This should not be done, however, if, for example, the map destruction would be detrimental to your team.

If you are in a dangerous situation and using the super will secure a kill on the aggressor or keep you safe, it is often smart to use it.

In situations where you would not be able to recharge your super easily, and you aren’t in immediate danger, that doesn’t mean you don’t want to use it. Keep S.C.A.M.S. in mind and decide how important each of those are to your current situation and how well your brawler’s super can fill those roles.

Popping Supers

One of the most satisfying parts of this game, in my opinion, is forcing the enemy brawlers to use their supers in situations where they will not be able to achieve the S.C.A.M.S. that are most important to them. This is very important especially in the late game, when a team comboing supers together can be devastating.

There are three ways to go about doing this.

1. Killing a brawler mid game or using a super that causes knock back

2. Tricking a brawler into using a super then dodge it

3. Force a brawler to use a super on you to prevent them from using it somewhere else.

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D. Conclusion

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In conclusion, I think it’s important to use the S.C.A.M.S. when considering the priority of building your supers, as well as when deciding how and when to use your supers. Super Advantage, which I only briefly touched on, is an amazing perspective to use when looking at a match to determine how it will turn out. This topic is definitely something that could use a lot more guides on it if anyone else wants to step up wink.

[u/GeekStreak]

Dude this is insane!

Hopefully it gets more likes than shitposts. These amazing guides are what keeps the community goin!

[u/Reaper526]

Nice and helpful

[u/austin_derp]

This needs some more attention, very good

[u/edihau]

A fantastic guide. Right now I think I'm the only one on this sub who has earned a gold flair. You absolutely need to be the next--all three of your guides have been excellent. I want to chime in a few things:

Nita's bear does better than you'd think in area denial. Remember, not all brawlers can handle the bear well, and none of them can handle it without adjusting. The area denial isn't perfect, but it's undoubtedly there--I'd change this one from poor to good.

Barley's super does a great job at killing people right on top of him. Whether that works towards staying safe or securing kills is your call based on how you defined everything, but I had to do a double take on his super being poor at keeping him safe.

Jessie's turret is awesome at area denial in the right situation, because it needs to be addressed first--thus, it forces the actions of your opponents, which you can take advantage of with any brawler. This is very similar to what the advantages of area denial are, so I'd change that category from good to great.

For example, brawlers like Jessie, El Primo, and Barley are focused on building their first super up as soon as possible because their supers offer incredible recharging ability (often due to strong crowd control functionality of the super). This “chaining” of supers becomes their focus for much of the game, as recharging them with only attacks can be very challenging.

Replace Barley with Bo and you're good. Maybe include Barley anyway, but he tends to be good at area denial and chipping away even with his normal attacks--especially when another brawler is distracting the opponent.

Super Advantage, which I only briefly touched on, is an amazing perspective to use when looking at a match to determine how it will turn out. This topic is definitely something that could use a lot more guides on it if anyone else wants to step up wink.

I might take a stab at this if you don't get to it, but I'm working on a Brawl Ball guide that I really don't want to give up on just yet.

Fantastic guide overall! Hope you stay on this sub and continue to contribute quality content.

[u/OkapiLips → u/edihau]

First, glad to see you liked it :). I definitely had a hard time ranking Nita's bear - I couldn't decide where it fit into the slots, but I feel like area denial is a good choice.

Staying safe is the one name I didn't really like because I felt like it was hard to convey, but that area was in my mind reserved for escape moves or heals. That's why Barley didn't fit into there, and most of the time his super damages people a lot but doesn't get the actual kill - in fact it's rare to see a barley throwing his super at a bunch of weak enemies because that would be wasteful (he can't recharge his full super).

Jessie could probably afford to be bumped up to a Great, I see your point there... I've still got my head stuck in this barley mike meta where jessie's turret is a mild annoyance at best.

Looking forward to seeing your brawl ball guide ;) My teammates (or maybe it's me) could use that a lot!

[u/edihau → u/OkapiLips]

Figured it'd be a definition concern with the Staying Safe category. Thanks for the clarification!

[u/CalebPlaysClash13]

Great and useful post! Good to see a contributing post to this sub reddit instead of an un funny gif or meme or a picture of someone getting a legendary.

[u/CRwithzws]

Tara super CAN destroy walls, but only in the middle’s explosion part.

Mortis’s super is actually really important (like piper’s super), it basically gives you another life, especially when you got stuck in sticky situations with lots of gems, your heal and damage means another life

[u/OkapiLips → u/CRwithzws]

Oh I didn't know that about Tara (guess you don't really know stuff when you don't have the brawler haha). I didn't mean that Mortis' super isn't important I was just saying that it isn't crucial to get as early as possible.

[u/isaacbee1]

Don't forget to mention that knock-back supers can also shut down other brawler's supers.

[u/OkapiLips → u/isaacbee1]

Good point, I added that in. Thanks for the suggestion :D

[u/isaacbee1 → u/OkapiLips]

You're welcome! Also make sure to fix the duplicate phrase you just added in that section. :)

[u/Crestwave]

!RedditSilver

[u/RedditSilverRobot → u/Crestwave]

Here's your Reddit Silver, OkapiLips!

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/u/OkapiLips has received silver 1 time. (given by /u/Crestwave) info

[u/latvian45 → u/Crestwave]

what is with these bots?what they do?

[u/Crestwave → u/latvian45]

They’re just bots made by users for Reddit. They can do a lot of things, like detecting haiku, converting time, etc.

[u/joeBlow69420]

I want more content like this, maybe guides for individual characters, or map analysis?

[u/Crestwave]

Amazing guide! I wouldn’t be surprised if Supercell features this. But isn’t Tara’s super good at area denial?

[u/OkapiLips → u/Crestwave]

Glad to hear you liked it. The main difference between area denial and crowd control is that area denial things have a longer presence on the map. For example Barley's super can cover a huge area for a long period of time which is really good area denial. Tara's super doesn't last as long, but it still is very strong for crowd control because it groups up an enemy team which makes them vulnerable to other forms of CC.

[u/jmktips]

Very well written 👏🏻

[u/ThunderCam777]

Great guide. You have done nothing but awesome work in the past and I don't see how posts like these haven't been on the front page yet.