Evasion: An art form

Alright, Anti. You got this, you had to get it out on paper sometime, now's the time.
Bb-bu-but, it's so looong~
Shut up, AND GET TO WORK. You have the laptop ready, you can do this.
Alright, mom~
I'm your more mature alter ego, NOT YOUR MOM. Now go! Write the thing!


Alright. Let's get started(DO NOT READ the above interaction, for the LOVE OF GOD)

So, evasion. It has never been a standardized, exact science, mainly because of how messy the entire concept of evasion is. Now, evasion is a rather odd thing. Map awareness is class specific. Shooting is pretty generalized, situational awareness can be built up as well as taught. But evasion? Nah. Evasion is an art. It is a combination of every single craft in the game. Wave manipulation, weapon readouts, damage forensics, map and situational awareness, these are the skill factors you need. Natural factors you also need are a clear, undistracted head, reflexes, nerves, and good evasion gear.

A good evasion specialist will be in a situation where, when his mind is not processing aim, he'll be unhittable. As I am right now, I pride myself over that one thing. I'm pretty damn good at evasion. I've been running from people for the majority of my career, and I have made tons of mistakes. But I digress.

Alrighty, let's get to it. First off, let me say that I'm going to be classifying evasion. Evasion can be classed into two main categories:-

1. Direct evasion
This type of evasion uses YOUR gear, as in your yellow items, for evasive maneuvers. This sort of evasion is what all but two ships in the game are capable of, and to a major extent, are able to consistently apply.
2. Indirect evasion
This type of evasion is highly advanced and can be pulled off without yellow items. A rare sight indeed, it is usually dismissed as bad luck on part of the person making the shot.

Starting off, direct evasion. With the exception fo frost, every single item in your yellow deck has to power to evade something or the other, and each one of them has their pros and cons. Let's start:

1. Nitro

Nitro is a strong oneslot that is the most widely used and acknowledged evasion item. Unfortunately for nitro users, it is also the most misunderstood. See, nitro is USELESS if the shot has already been fired for people in most countries. Sniper shots take less time to reach you than your PING for crying out loud! So, I'll start off with the very basics of using nitro as a piece of evasion gear, moving on to the more advanced aspects of it.

The basics: Nitro is pretty simple to use if you're evading torps or mortars. Or even blast cannons and explosive cannons at long range for that matter. However, if you're here, reading this, you know of this. So without wasting your time, I'll move on to the semi-pro level of using nitro.
The semi-pro level: Now this is where things get, let's say, a little weird. Nitro is truly usable if you can "read" your opponent's attack. Note that, since I'm not talking about dueling with nitro, I'm not going into the intricacies of baiting a shot.

• I'm talking about when being able to "mindread" your opponent and being able to nitro when they're just about to release(or pull, but hey, game controls) the trigger.
• To do this, you must have an uncanny "sixth sense" that allows you to pinpoint the moment that your opponent's going to shoot on. How do you build that sense? Well, you can start training your brain to read minds by simply fighting a random dude in a custom, WITHOUT SHOOTING HIM. As you progress, you'll find out the following things:

1. Your opponent is predictable. They have a rhythm that they follow, a loop which they're comfortable in.
2. Your opponent is an emotional person. Nobody is a robot. And the more you piss them off, the more predictable they become.
3. Your opponent is human. They're bound to trip up if you keep hacking at their confidence for long enough.

​

• And with that knowledge, you've opened up your frontiers to encompass the semi-pro level. Find out your opponent's rotation, test them and tease it out of them, preferably over the course of three shots. Then, simultaneously if possible, figure out their "switches".
• What makes them shoot? Do they panickingly spam the fire button till their global cooldown ends? Do they fire after a little contemplation? Do they wait for the opportunity? You'll learn that because of the third factor.
• And at that point, you're ready.

You have all of your opponent's cards in the palm of your hand. At this point, your opponent might as well be the environment to you: Predictable, and plannable, with switches you can manipulate them with. You can understand when they'll fire before they even do. To new players, I KNOW you have that instinct to run an instant before the shot is fired at you. It isn't a mystic power , it's your brain involuntarily telling you. It's your reflexes working overtime to help you press the attack. USE IT. THAT is the essence of nitro usage in the semi-pro level.
Pro-level: And now we touch on what CAN be done while using nitro. You can do a lot of very difficult stuff with enough practice:

1. Speeders can get into the hitbox of the opponent with the precise knowledge of how much of a distance the nitro can carry them.
2. Speeders and enforcers can press into and attack with torpedoes incoming if they know how to skim an enemy torpedo's trail, this completely throws off a torp user's rhythm.
3. Fixers can get into pulse distance, and while turning 180, they can pulse+nitro away before anyone even has the time to process their entry.
4. Nitro can be used to form a thrust vector that can rapidly push you in a direction that seems completely unnatural to your opponent, a super dangerous ability especially on the enfo and interceptor.

And even all of this would only scratch the surface of pro-level nitro usage to be honest with you guys.​

 

2. Overboost

Overboost is another underestimated yellow evasion item. Super, SUPER strong at what it does, yet intensively used for just getting around the map. Let's talk overboost. It increases your ship speed by n% for x seconds, in general. Overboost DEFINES speeder. The superb high speed offered by this item is often misused, however. What I see players do: They use OB when:

• They aren't using anything else
• They just wanna get into or away from a fight

Sure, you can use OB for all of these things. But trust me, the times you'll feel its effects the most are when you'll notice it the least. You see, what OB ALSO does, in addition to getting you from one place to another, is to GIVE YOU A DANGEROUSLY STRONG THRUST VECTOR that you CHOOSE to engage, making you unpredictable when enemies expect you to be predictable as a clock. Let's get into it!

The basics: OB not only helps you get from a PART OF A MAP TO ANOTHER fast, it also lets you get from a certain FIRING POSITION to another fast. How do you leverage that? Well, you can follow the following strategies:

1. You can move into an opponent's blind spot really fast
2. You can switch up flanks(for example, switch from one alleyway in Wayward to another in a small timespan)

The semi-pro level: When you've learned this, we come to the advantages of OB as a controllable thrust vector, and some basic psychology. So again, here I go:

1. First off, you can, under certain conditions, substitute nitro for OB.
   Spoiler: Long-winded explanation, read only if the TL;DR is unclear

   For example, let's talk about this: You were scouting, leftlane, Fighthouse. You saw an opponent on Pillar, who fired an RG shot, you took it on the TS, and smartly, blocked the angle from the dude who fired the RG. Next, the enemy team woke up to your presence, and THEY are all midlane. Now as you transit from left pillar to cap point, you're wide open. You "sense" an incoming sniper shot and dodged it(and a couple others) with nitro. The enemy shooter tries to push the engagement with an excannon. By this time, you're retreating to the "Infamous rock"(that nail-like rock that has the infamy skull-and-bones on it) and have a considerable distance built up. At this range, the opponent can hit you, sure, but IT TAKES TIME for the shot to hit. Now, you know that you have to rely on discretion here. You need to tell the difference between a "going-to-miss" shot and a "hit" shot... Or so YOU think. But here's the thing. You *DON'T* have to, if you're moving DIAGONALLY to the shooter. You only have to punch OB, it will take you, in both the transverse and diagonal directions, clear out of the excannon's arc, EVEN IF IT'S VERT COMPENSATED.
   TL;DR when being shot at range, move diagonal to your opponent, firing OB the moment the shot leaves the barrel. Works only for slow projectiles.
2. You can also use OB to do figure-8s around two enemies at a time. Works really well when you manage to wedge yourself between a fixer and his heal target. You can make the fixer miss a critical heal by getting in their way, plus their target switching from healing to DPS is pretty sloppy(they don't practice it that much) and you give them pause as they decide between healing their teammate and hitting you. Super useful.
3. The dance/juke: Works super well on enfo as well as reaper. The forward-backward movement causes midrange attacks to go astray, especially with OB helping you. When you consider the enforcer's new(post-3.2) moveset, you'll see more and more OB-propelled attacks.
4. Driftshotting

The pro-level: If you understand the use of the overboost as a mid-high range unpredictable thrust vector, I think you'll get this:

1. You can use the overboost at close range on the enforcer, it brings the turn radius to just around 1 unit out of a defender's hitbox. Super irritating to combat especially for anyone who's not in an enfo.
2. You can also use it in a speeder, the "accelerated maneuvers" are pretty darn scary. I cannot teach them, because they mainly rely on being able to "read" present and future weapon angles while basically making a "fighting retreat". I feel, however, that imagining the opponent's turret to be a blade you have to bend around to strike at them, is a good strategy.
3. If you know that you are at your opponent's range limit, you can bait shots while all the while moving away with overboost. A hard skill that needs a complete understanding of weapon range and how waves and positioning affect it.

3. Tesla shield

I've discussed quite a bit about tesla play(double tesla shield builds) here.
But if you're here for normal single TS gunplay, well, it's not really that hard.
Tesla shields are an *Oh crap* tool in my book. That is, you don't use them(unless of course you are scouting at long range) unless there's a high-damage shot you cannot possibly afford to take or dodge.
They work great against sniper cannons at range, but the closer you get to your target, the less they become an asset.

This is because of something I call the "DPS gap". At range, there are two polar extremes of weapons that can hit you(snipe and rail), and the heaviest of them(rail) is almost never fired on yellow boats at range(because of cooldown), unless said yellow boat is so sloppy that they cannot manipulate waves.
Up close, ANY weapon can hit you, and MOST of them are capable of handing out a 4 second stun that experienced players have learned to dread.
I can only give perking advice here: Go all HP if you're not a ranger speeder, and DON'T use it on enemies who are brawlers, you'll be toast.

 

Now, we move on to indirect evasion. Luckily, almost all of the concepts here have been cleared because of a certain thread I wrote a while back, called "Wave manipulation: How to be a ghost on the horizon"
Let's see... Other than that, I can talk about one more thing.

• Disciplined and smart use of cover

One of the rarest things in BB is GOOD cover usage. There's so much cover provided, and so little of it is used well. Back when enforcers ruled the bay with double TS OB, the better ones were master cover users. Why use both TSes when you could take advantage of a NATURAL shield with INFINITE HP? Well, using cover is pretty hard, to do it justice.
The easy way to use cover is to hide behind it. The important aspect here is to know your cover. Cover like the suitcases on Crash N Burn is good against sniper cannons and railguns, but God help you if you are too close to them and your opponent has torps or excannons. Again, the same advice goes for the "shallow barriers" on most maps. Fighthouse is an interesting exception. It is the only map where the non-lighthouse side has a barricade that allows you to shoot as well as hide. That barrier is GREAT, but look out for torps, again.
Next, we move on to walls. Walls are good cover, always, but make sure they're mortar proof if you're in a slower boat. Also, when coming out, make sure you "corner-peek" so that you don't get hit by a swarm of torps.
Finally, let's talk about visual obstacles. These obstruct aim but are actually transparent, so to speak. Obstacles like leaves(Dropdead) and water fountains(WayPains) are examples of this. Know them well, because they can stab you in the back when you least expect them to.​

 

My secret: I don't keep count

 

Well, I don't do social media, and I practically breathe BB. There's very very little that goes on in the public sector of the game that I don't know about I spend about three hours a day commuting, and ofc, there's the massive prep leaves we get during our exams. Sometimes I need prep leave, sometimes I don't

 

Bwahahaha It's not complete yet LOLOL

 

@Agile Vanguard @Nikkie! @JoshW if you would be so kind as to delete your respective messages leading up to this, I'd be really, REALLY grateful. I'm unfortunately at character limit already(crossed it when I attempted to add OB to the list) and the one slot I reserved for this guide was clearly a lapse of judgment on my part.


Oh, and P.S. BUMP! Overboost strategy added!

 

Oh, @Epekka , you too!

 

That's a dueling move, you seem to be on your way to becoming a duelist!

 

Oh well xD. Guess typing on mobile has its advantages after all No autocorrect on PC lol

 

Also, could you please delete all your messages up to this point in time?

I need to add more strategy

 

Delete all the messages before this post:

 

Yup! All those