Welcome back Pilots! We’re here with another Spider Tanks Showcase. This time, we’re getting sneaky. Stealth abilities are on display!
Too often stealth is an overlooked strategy in the arena. Let’s face it, the arena is a brute force kind of place… but
Stealth Abilities and Strategy Overview
As we discussed in our Movement Abilities showcase, positioning is one of the most important things in any Spider Tanks match. In that regard, stealth Abilities serve much the same purpose – Get better positioning without the opponent ruining your day.
Stealth Abilities, however, can serve a little more niche function than movement Abilities. At the end of the day, movement will just take you closer or further from your target. Stealth Abilities, however, throw in much more confusion. Stealth Abilities not only get you better positioning, but disrupt the opposing team’s coordination and their positioning.
Stealth is a little more nuanced than movement Abilities though. When you’re using a Relay Drone, you don’t really care what your opponents think or perceive… either way, you’re going to teleport. When you’re using stealth, however, you need to take into account what your actions look like from your opponents’ perspective. Deceit is part of the strategy, and if you pull it off it’ll have devastating effects on the opposing team.
Silent Killer
Offensively, stealth Abilities can easily strike fear into opponents. The arena is already chaos, add in not knowing which direction death is coming from and it can be impossible for your opponents to feel safe.
Crucially, that’s part of the plan. In the early moments of a match, your enemies may not know that you’re packing Cloak Drone or a Smoke Canister. Once you’ve lost the element of surprise though, you still have the element of fear on your side. Your opponents will have to be wary of your stealth Abilities all the way through the match. Forcing them to think three dimensionally like this could force them to make a mistake at a critical moment.
To capitalize both on surprise and fear, your first strike with deception needs to really count. Not only should you secure a kill or a serious positioning hiccup for the opposing team, you should make your target lose their confidence. If they spend one minute sweating being humiliated in front of their team, you may have already won. Get them out of their comfort zone and it’ll pay off for the rest of the match.
Fade Away
Stealth Abilities are a quick and effective offense if you know how to use them, but they can also be beneficial defensively. If you’re on the run a quick Decoy Drone may not fool the enemy for long, but it can easily make them lose a split second to decide which is which. If an enemy has you in their sights, a smoke canister is just as effective at helping you dodge bullets as it is at hiding you while shooting them.
Even Disguise Drone or Cloak Drone can give you some time to get to safety. If you’re going through a large pack of enemies and you pop a Disguise Drone, you’ll be difficult to follow even for someone that was watching you disguise. A quick cloak when you have a minute where you know you won’t be shot may let you disappear in plain sight. True, they can still see a vague silhouette of your outline… but that’s much harder to follow than a big, showy, multiple ton hunk of metal!
It’s all about positioning and timing, and stealth Abilities let you use distraction and deception to get that few extra seconds here and there to unleash havoc. Defensively or offensively, they can be deadly in the hands of a master.
Sneak and Destroy!
That’ll be all for today’s showcase, but there’s tons more to cover in the Spider Tanks arena!
Next time, we’ll be back with a Hero Tank showcase – The T-Rex! Have mad skills with this ancient predator? Let us know on Discord or social media for a chance to be featured in the next Spider Tanks Showcase!
