Comprehensive Spidering Guide

[Poseidon]

ys am just triggered and venting frustrations

really its beyond the scope of most any type of guide and comes down to a players general sense of awareness so as to react optimally to any given set of conditions.

jus so common for me to go for the play and either have 2 retreat or jus am ded instead of a beautiful push, solely bc sharker in front of me has never been clued into what the f is going on. no time for hesitation!

[Turban]

a. Your main objective as shark is to use your reps to help your team gain and hold the flag. Killing is secondary. Order of preference when using reps (for any facet of the game, whether you are attacking, cramming, or in flag room battles) should be:

i. Protect the terrier

ii. Timing with your shark partner

iii. Protecting yourself to preserve the timing with your shark partner

iv. Pushing the enemy

v. See items i through iv

vi. Protecting teammate spiders

Generally speaking this seem like the correct order, but there are obviously cases where you can disregard timing aspect (such as when enemy shark dies on attach when you are even slightly controlling the flag room battle) allowing you to be more aggressive while potentially enabling a play for your team in the process. It is rather rare for two players to be in sync when this particular scenario happens as majority of players simply do not pay enough attention to what is going on in a flag room battle, however this strategy can be incredibly deadly when correctly executed. This is one of many different scenarios that might slightly change your "order of priority" and most of those can only be learned through experience.

c. Always repel fast moving bursts (unless it’s obviously going to redirect it to the wall your terrier is sitting on and thereby kill them). Don’t assume that your terrier will be able to dodge them.

Might be worth mentioning that you want to repel the enemy bursts early to stay on the enemy side. Several sharks tend to repel the bursts way too late which leads into slow and deadly bursts disrupting your side of the flag room. You have a massive repel radius, take advantage of it.

As an added fact the earlier a burst is repelled the longer it stays alive which can be a rather annoying mechanic to deal with. This happens because bursts have to travel a certain distance (2800 pixels) before disappearing which under normal circumstances happens in 8 seconds, however repels slow down the burst travel speed significantly which essentially triples the remaining alive time of a burst.

d. Always grab greens if they’re not out of your way. It can be an easy way to regenerate reps.

Completely agree and this is one of the most common mistakes less experienced players make. In my opinion sharks have priority over all greens given how broken repels are, and I daresay there are times where you even want to go slightly out of position to grab a cluster of greens for an additional power spike. You have a 17.39% chance to receive either shrapnel or repel from a random green.

There is also the added benefit of giving your terrier full charges (17.39%), bursts (8.70%), and portals (3.48%) which are incredibly beneficial to your team.

e. Change your repel graphics to have color at all 4 corners of the .jpg file. Repels are square shaped (even though the graphics are round). The full .jpg file extents work as a repel, not just the default circular shape. I added a bright green blob around the outside of my repel graphic so that I know the exact extent of the rep to use it to my advantage.

This is actually incorrect. Repels affect both enemy weapons and enemy players around you in a 150 pixel radius. This is a massive radius often underestimated by the players.

f. Change your bomb graphics to text to know how much shrap you have at all times. Learn the shrap patterns (0 = no shrap, 3 = shrap expels in “peace symbol” pattern, 5 = shrap expels in “star” pattern). You can use this to your advantage to know when to try mining aggressively in flag room fights (high shrap) and when not to (no shrap). Also use this to determine where to place the mines as you’ll be able to predict where the shrap will expel to.

A less known trick, but works quite well. You can do this on the zone selection screen then going to Options > Display > Weapon Gauge > Text. Alternatively you can use ?status command, but it's a bit tedious to do in an intense flag room battle. If you are lazy and do not want to do either, you can assume that most of the time when you spawn with shrapnel it will be a 3-shrapnel pattern.

There are several locations in flag room where you can either mine or bomb the wall to threaten terrier kills, force repels, or trade kills before dying when you have exhausted your repels and usefulness. If you are lazy and do not want to do either, you can assume that most of the time when you spawn you will not have 5 shrapnel pattern.

As an added fun fact shrapnel deals only 6 damage in its first 0.25 secondsas it is considered to be in an inactive state. It has to travel a distance greater than 150 pixels to become active and start killing other players.



Overall it was a good starter guide, and while I have slight disagreements with some of the views on the game it will still work as a solid foundation for any aspiring shark player.

[Nipple Nibbler]

I don't recall if I seen Ogron's shark guide, he did do a good job with the spider one though.

I find it amusing my priorities while in Shark are almost the exact same as a2m's. Yet every game there's always that one spider that complains I am not repping for him. Spiders really need to learn it's not our job to protect you, it's your job to get behind our repels. Sharks have to make split second decisions constantly throughout the game, and are arguably the most important ships in basing. Most sharks are too busy trying to win the game to care about that 1 or 2 bullets that slip by and hit a spider.

One thing you might want to add to priorities is protecting your other shark. It doesn't matter if a spider dies but if a shark dies behind you, there is going to be a huge gap in timing. Obviously this wont happen if you have a 10* shark partner but
there are not many 10* sharks.

Common things off the top of my head I see weaker sharks doing wrong:

- a2m touched on this already, but the bursts. Stop letting bursts by. Your terr has enough to worry about YOU should be repping the before they get to your side of the flagroom.

- Your repels are more effective if you boost before repping. This can get you killed if you boost into a bullet that rep ignores you, so it can be a learning process. Regardless you should always boost on your last repel to maximize the push.

- Watch the game when you're dead. You have no idea how much this simple thing will improve your awareness. And you will be able to get off a lot of clutch rep on attach saves.

- If you're doing the above, and a single bullet is about to hit your Terr that will DOA you, simple wait. 99% of the time it won't kill your terr (unless they are EMP'd). Wait for the bullet to hit, then attach. 99% of DOA's are the shark's fault, not the Terr's. Zidane told me DOA's are the shark's fault, once I realized this I DOA a lot less.

- When sharks are out of time, the one that detaches first GOES FIRST! Don't wait like that dumb kid at a stop sign trying to be nice signalling someone else to go first, you are wasting precious time.

- Another thing that a2m touched on, be adaptable. If you have say mikkiz on your team, you can bomb and mine with more freedom he will be really aware on it, and honestly he seems to thrive on the caos of it. But if you have someone like say spookedone, he will be watching the other end of the flagroom and die to it really easy. You have to change your style based on what your team needs.
- Again someone touched on this already but it is a very common mistake, while holding cram, once again don't repel for spiders. Very rarely does a spider break a cram by himself. Your job here to be to stay in time and push the enemy terr/sharks down. If their sharks can not get up high, they can not break the cram.

- Mines on the roof; A good chunk of these will have shrap, if you repel them close enough you can repel the shrap and mine at the same time. This is because what most people don't know is that each repel casts more than once. Don't be the noob that repels a mine and let's the shrap hit your terr that is poorly positioned to catch it.

[a2m+]

This is actually incorrect. Repels affect both enemy weapons and enemy players around you in a 150 pixel radius. This is a massive radius often underestimated by the players.

Without tinkering with ship settings (which I know you have in the past), there was no way for me to know this. That being said, I still recommend updating the repel graphic as it helped me to visualize that the radius is indeed larger than the circle graphic that appears when you push the button. Ultimately, you end up getting the feel for exactly how large they are through experience, but when I first started getting competitive, the graphic change helped me out in cram situations.

[Vehicle]

Nice guide a2m+. I'm in no position to write a guide, but If I were going to add anything it would be tips about where to mine for maximum enemy impact and minimum negative team impact (ie: near enemy side walls, not on flag). And I would make it abundantly clear that mines and bombs are secondary to repping for your team and creating space, something I think a lot of even veteran sharks could use a reminder of every so often.

Unfortunately, I also think lag has to be addressed somewhere in a shark guide. It's really hard to put to words, but the delay in time between when you rep and when it works is a cruel mistress that every shark needs to understand.

FWIW, I hate the text status bar and use ?status to see how many shrap I have and I have a ?status macro near my rep and mine keys. I probably mine/bomb less than most sharks though. (EDIT: This brings up another obvious tip that might not be obvious: change your key defs so you don't have to press shift to do what you want.)

These basing guides (is there a terr one?) should be compiled and stickied somewhere and perhaps linked to in ?go twbd or something. Somewhere where new players beginning to move into competitive basing will find it.

Also, lol at the angry spids in this thread.

[ogron]

a2m+ wow, awesome post, thanks!

i didn't check this thread until today. i tried to include it in my original post, but for some reason it won't let me edit it?

I turned it into a downloadable image so aspiring sharks could save it to their computers for reference:

Sharking Tips (by a2m)
with notes from turban and rageritual

Sharking Primer (by ogron)
with wisdom from Mattey


Adapting to your Terr

I really loved everything you wrote about adapting to the terr you're playing for.

I find a lot of sharks I play with these days in random BDs make a lot of misplays when playing with an aggressive terr.

They're constantly detatching automatically when I'm diving top bar, diving the flag, diving the cram to get high, and I get stuck with a shark 3 inches behind me and get wiped.

You need to stay attached, rep on attach more, watch your death timer and delay your attach 0.2 seconds if a bullet is going to DOA you, then attach, then rep before the next bullet hits, if the dive is to the top bar where an enemy spid is firing at your terr you need to double rep or you're going to die.

To make things worse they then rep while behind you, repping things into you that you dodged.

The amount of sharks who don't pay attention to bursts or don't know the burst patterns is also an issue currently. They either don't rep, or when they do, they catch it way too late and rep it into you or rep it so late it's now on your side bouncing around and now I've got 2 enemy bursts ping-ponging off your 2nd and 3rd rep and it's on a different position than on your screen because bursts are client-side, and drastically reducing my movement options, wasting my concentration on more stuff meaning i'm more likely to miss other stuff, forcing sub-optimal positioning, etc.

Terr Safety

Terr safety is just too low of a priority as well sometimes.

There are sharks who just won't rep. Like a burst is coming but the other shark is still alive, so they don't rep because it's not their turn. We get a tek, and the final enemy spider dives the terr and fires 2 bullets and they try to save all 3 of their reps for the cram and you die because you were EMP'd and had 1000hp. Congrats on saving your 3 reps. Or your breaking cram and an enemy spid in mid hit you before dying, then a stream of 2 bullets from cram comes down as you dodged the last bullet and your shark next to you doesn't rep to save his 3 reps and you die. The shark doesn't see shrap on his screen so doesn't rep even though shrap is client-side and your terr is in the shrap line.

And as Nipple Nibbler said, sharks not watching their death timers and not repping on attach when they need to happens way too much.

Everything I've just mentioned I've seen multiple times in just the past few weeks.

Learning burst patterns is definitely something all 3 ships should do, yet an unbelievable amount of spiders and sharks (including 10* players who've won TWLB) don't know them, which is mind-boggling. You save yourself so much mental energy pre-dodging a pattern you recognize rather than having to follow around 2 bursts bouncing around.