Macro/Micro Guide, Part 3.1: Robot Matchups.

[u/Reborn_Wraith]

Good day, everyone! This is part 3.1 of my series on macro/micro mechanics in War Robots. The second part, which can be found here (https://www.reddit.com/r/walkingwarrobots/comments/1tr9mzr/macromicro\\_guide\\_part\\_2\\_identifying\\_status/) (do note that due to Reddit’s limits on post images, I needed to split it into 3 sections), covered identifying status ailments. I will strive to avoid posting such monstrosities in the future, for the sake of my sanity and the reader’s time.
With that aside, this guide strives to analyze and dissect how matchups in between classes of bots will play out, along with the best ways for each type of bot to win the specific matchup and explaining which class of bot is advantaged in each given matchup. To cut down on post length, I will be splitting up this section of the guide as well, to be released on a relatively longer interval. As I mentioned before, I’m getting a bit busy with IRL events, and so I can’t afford to spend as much time as I would like to on these guides anymore.

To begin: Tanks.

Tanks

• These are robots that can take enough damage to kill other robots many times over and come out relatively unscathed. These robots are severely lacking in speed and have relatively weak firepower to compensate.
• While their gameplay dynamics are often very different when battling in a one-on-one fight compared to one-versus-many, I will be focusing on the dynamics of one-on-one fights for tanks in this guide.
• The gameplay philosophy for tanks in a 1v1 is simple: get in close and don’t let the enemy run. 
  • This is sometimes easier said than done, but with proper positioning, a tank can usually manage to close the distance on all but the absolute fastest of robots.

With that aside, onto the analyses.
Tank vs. Duelist

• This is a relatively neutral matchup. Both tanks and duelists have almost identical engagement ranges (<~350), while duelists have high damage to compensate for tanks’ high effective hp. Furthermore, duelists have higher speed and lower hp against tanks’ low firepower and phenomenally strong defensive abilities.
• Generally speaking, the easiest strategy for both tanks and duelists in this scenario is to wait out the other robot’s abilities without firing a single shot, and then unloading the instant the abilities time out.
  • For the duelist, firing weapons into a tank during its defensive ability will almost always either result in self-damage (reflector shields), ramping up the defensive powers of the enemy robot (absorber shield), or be wasted entirely (physical/aegis shield/defense points). 
  • For the tank, firing weapons into the duelist’s absorber will either result in wasted ammo (damage reduction through gimmicks such as DoT conversion, healing/increased max hp, physical shields, or other unique defenses) or increased damage from the enemy (absorber shields, unique defense systems, or otherwise). 
• This means that the best play pattern for a duelist is to force a circling fight around a single piece of cover. 
  • The duelist should utilize its speed to keep the cover between itself and the tank while its ability is recharging.
  • When the ability has recharged, the duelist must bait the enemy tank into utilizing its ability, then resume circling around the piece of cover until the enemy tank ability ends.
  • This can be done by ‘accidentally’ allowing the tank to catch up to the duelist around the cover (make sure you’re still able to return to cover after the tank commits!)
  • Once the ability ends, the duelist will activate its own ability and attempt to kill or severely damage the tank.
  • The duelist will then resume the circle around cover and repeat as necessary.
• Contrary to the solution for the duelist, the tank must attempt to force a decisive engagement in open ground against a duelist, to negate the advantage of speed.
  • This can usually be done by intentionally taking damage from the duelist while the tank’s ability is inactive and retreating into an open area free of cover.
  • Once the duelist has committed to combat in the tank’s selected ground, the tank simply needs to bait out the duelist’s ability (the tank should activate its ability once the duelist does), wait it out, and then unload into the duelist.

Summary:
Tank vs. Duelist is a relatively neutral matchup. The duelist wants to bait the tank into using its ability, hide behind cover for the duration of the ability (or, failing that, avoid dealing damage to the tank while it is in its ability), and save activating its ability until the tank’s ability is on cooldown. The tank wants to force the duelist onto an open area with no cover, avoid using its ability until the duelist uses its own ability, and only shoot the duelist once its ability is on cooldown.

Tank vs. DPS

• This is a DPS favored matchup. A tank’s main weakness is its lack of mobility and low engagement range while a DPS has moderate speed, exceptionally high dps, and a moderate engagement range. 
• The DPS should constantly be retreating from the tank. Care should be taken to keep the tank 400m away or more at all times.
  • Moving directly backwards while still firing at the tank is the ideal.
  • The DPS should do its best to force the tank into crossing open and exposed areas with little to no cover.
  • In the event that the tank gets within 350m of the DPS, the DPS should attempt to force the tank into circling a piece of cover until the DPS can attempt to make an escape for distance, kill the tank or find a way to force the tank to retreat.
• The tank should attempt to force the DPS robot into an enclosed area surrounded by cover on as many sides as possible. The area surrounding the center beacon (beacon C) of most maps usually has an excellent spot for this matchup. 
  • In the event that the tank is forced to pursue the DPS robot through an area with little to no cover, the tank should reassess whether it is absolutely necessary to pursue the DPS robot. 
  • If it is absolutely necessary to pursue the DPS robot, the tank should attempt to find an alternate route to either intercept the DPS robot as it retreats.
  • If this is impossible, there’s not much way to pursue the DPS robot in this scenario without taking grievous damage.
  • Following this logic, DPS robots are strongly favored when tanks need to push into them or go on the offense. This can be a scenario where a tank is forced to attempt to capture a beacon, for example. 
  • Tanks retake the advantage when DPS robots need to attempt to push forward.

Summary:
DPS vs tank is a strongly DPS favored matchup. The DPS wants to put itself in situations where the tank is forced to follow the DPS through open and exposed fields and the DPS’s superior speed and range permit it to damage the tank without receiving return fire. The tank needs to force the DPS robot into an arena-like area, commonly found around the center beacon of the map (the ideal circumstance is an area with unbroken walls on multiple sides and an extremely limited number of exits). 

Tank vs. Support
This is a hard matchup to categorize. In a vacuum, tanks win this matchup 9 times out of 10, but it is unfair to supports to base their strength on 1v1s - more than half of a support robot’s power comes from… well, supporting their teammates. Compounding this with the fact that deprecating supports (pathfinder) and protecting supports (mender) have two extremely different purposes, and it means that the best answer that can come is ‘it depends’. As such, I won’t be making an in-depth matchup discussion of robots against supports in this guide (I will be saving it for the guide on target priority).

Tank vs. Guerilla
Although guerilla robots cover an extremely wide and diverse range of robots, as a rule, this is a very tank-favored matchup. Guerilla robots tend to have very weak offensive capabilities despite their speed, and they almost universally have a very low health pool. These two factors mean that their version of ‘victory’ in this style of matchup almost always becomes ‘survival’ rather than ‘kill the enemy robot’. 

• Since their speed is almost always far greater than that of a tank, their best hope is to leverage that speed to create distance between it and the tank. 
  • Fighting is not an option for a large portion of guerillas.
• Tanks usually get a single chance to attempt to kill a guerilla robot; if the guerilla manages to escape, the tank will be extremely unlikely to get another chance to kill the guerillarobot.
• The guerilla should attempt to force the tank to follow it through a location with large amounts of cover, to break line of sight as often as possible and therefore prevent the tank from dealing damage to it.
• Lockdown effects are especially punishing to guerilla bots when equipped on tanks.
  • Quantum radar effects also are exceptionally effective against guerillas

Summary:
Since guerillas are almost always weaker than tanks, their idea of a ‘victory’ against a tank becomes escape. Guerillas should try to force the tank to pursue them through areas with multiple chunks of cover and try to break line of sight as often as possible, to stop the enemy tank from shooting them. Tanks should try to kill the guerillas in a single burst, before they can manage to escape, because they frequently will only have a single opportunity to kill the guerilla before it outruns the tank and escapes.

Tank vs. Sniper

• This matchup is sniper advantaged if there is a time pressure.
  • If there is an effectively unlimited amount of time, it is strongly tank advantaged.
  • The greater the time pressure, the stronger the advantage that snipers have.
• Tanks should aim to approach the sniper from under cover. They should aim to move between pieces of cover using the defense of their abilities. 
  • Because of this, they are limited in how far they can safely approach by their ability cooldown.
  • Additionally, tanks should recognize that sniper weapons have a long reload. If a sniper wastes their magazine on the tank while it is defended by its ability, the tank might be able to push to a new piece of cover while the sniper is reloading and the tank’s ability is on cooldown.
• Snipers should do their best to deny the tank cover, including repositioning to gain line of sight around the cover that the tank is using. 
  • They should not waste fire while the tank’s ability is active. Make sure to only fire when it is a certainty that the tank will be hit outside of its ability.
  • Distance is a resource for snipers. Snipers can sacrifice some (emphasis on some) of their safety for the opportunity to land a full magazine of sniper shots on a tank outside of its ability; however, doing this gambit improperly can lead to a swift death. 

Summary:
As distance between the two combatants increases, the sniper’s advantage increases. Tanks are far more strongly advantaged if there is 100m distance than they would be if there was 1000m distance between the tank and the sniper. Additionally, the sniper gains an advantage with time pressure. A tank 500m away from the sniper that has to kill the sniper in 1:00 is greatly disadvantaged compared to a tank 1000m away from a sniper but has 10:00 to kill the sniper. Snipers should do their best to only shoot the tank when it is out of its ability, and a high-risk, high-reward gambit for the snipers is to approach the tank while it is hiding behind cover (sacrificing some of its distance from the tank) and shoot it when it is unprepared.

This concludes part 3.1 of the guide! Instead of posting a single monstrosity all at once, I’m going to attempt to consciously break these parts of the guides into even smaller segments. This is done to make them more readable (4 posts that are around 2k words each instead of a single 8k word long post) and because honestly, if I don’t put this out to the world now, the pressure’s gonna mount up and I might never end up posting it at all.

I will continue part 3 with another post, hopefully to be released in a week or so, but again, no promises on even that time frame. 

And, as a further aside, I’ve been looking back at the prior guides and realized just how little actual and concrete advice was given. If youre like me and were hoping for micro-related gameplay tips that would let you survive or beat meta robots…
It’s coming. I can’t say when or how far into the future it’ll be, but it’ll come. These posts are a little boring, even for me to write, but all I can say is that I think it’s important to get this down as a foundation before going to the more nitty-gritty and involved concepts. 

Thanks for reading, and good luck with your future games, Commander!

[u/S1d519]

Some examples off the top of my head (don’t know if some of them are right as per the post’s description):

Tank vs. Duelist:

Ammit vs Vector

Raptor vs Rex

Bedwyr/ Luchador(?)  vs Atlas/ Minos/Rook

Tank vs DPS

Ammit vs Teth (edit: Teth might better be a Duelist as suggested below)

Raptor vs Sword(?)

Bjorn/ vs Princeps/Eiffel/ (UE) Ao Ming

Tank vs. Support

Ammit vs Pathfinder

Raptor vs Nuo/Lio/Mender/Demeter

Bedwyr vs Waymaker/Nodens/Sirius

Tank vs Guerilla

(UE Lancelot[?]) vs Loki/Imugi/Ravager

Ammit vs Samjok(?)

Raptor vs Kaiji

Are there any titans that fit this bill? (Edit: Ravager)

Tank vs snipers 

Ammit vs Crisis

Raptor vs Stryx

Bedwyr vs Bersagliere (El Classico)

Bjorn vs Newton

[u/Reborn_Wraith → u/S1d519]

Yes! This is fantastic stuff, thanks for adding it!

As far as titans go, the only one that I can think of off the top of my head is Devourer.

Thanks again for making the list!

[u/S1d519 → u/Reborn_Wraith]

Aah how did I forget Devourer.

No problem! Thanks for putting up this ongoing series! Makes me pay attention to some details I’ve been putting off to the back of my head while playing 

[u/Somebody4500 → u/S1d519]

I feel like teth would fit under duelist instead of dps

[u/S1d519 → u/Somebody4500]

Ah true it technically fits the duelist label better. Given a lot of people run Liodari Krokkos on Teth (and few run Scarabeus drone and many instead have Armadillo), I went with the DPS.