Diamond is poor guys best friend (in iOS)

After a week of slugging it out in iOS Expert2 in my non-DIESS (Dashes, Inquisitor, Ember, Scourge, Shocktrain) hangar I'd had enough. Just appalling the gang ?grape? going on there and I was the prison ?female dog?.

Note1, I only play Domination now that there's a choice again.

Note2, we've all been victims of tankers, its a crappy thing to do to your teammates.  Don't do it.  If you lighten your hangar enough you'll go down the league ranking.  I feel that going out there with 5 Cossacks is pretty useless to help your team too.  I don't advocate that at all 'cos I get totally p'd when the blue whose supposed to have my back is running something ineffective.
 
After deliberately staying in Diamond1 before, this hangar took me to Expert2 in 3 days:
- Orkan Rog 11/12
- Orkan Stuka 11/12
- Plasmahad 11/12
- Zarny 11/12
- Tarancilot 10/11

I have no doubt the climb would've continued albeit more slowly, but every battle sucked; I hardly ever had the best setup in a 1on1, bottom of the damage table and lots of mech-outs. The msg was clear: this is the stomping ground of DIESS gear, the rest are cannon fodder. I needed an out, I needed a hangar that was fun, and I wanted to have situational advantages that I could control. This was the ticket:

- Splash Gareth 11/5ork/11 - he's never a killer anyway, all you wanna do is force reds to give you bit of space and respect. Gets beacons, influences game, low damage.
- Taran Rog 10/11 - pairs up easily, mobile, influences game, less damage that Orkan Rog. I had 2 lvl11 Tarans so I put them on him so he wouldn't be frustrating.
- Aphid Gepard 10/11/12- Super fun (my current favourite) and jeez! The aphids are 11/12/12 and he gives such a smack, but put a foot wrong and you're dead - perfect.
- Punisher Griff 11 - Mostly low damage 'cos whatever shield the red has got it has to eat through that 1st and no damage score for that - but he's a factor in every game.
- Magnum Thunder Leo 11/10 - I don't find him highly effective in doing damage but he's contributor to the game. What I like most about him is his high HP, he's built to just take the hits and get a job done. He can get lucky, I found myself in the red spawn at the end of a game with just one red left, he spawned in front of me in a PDB which I took down at blank range, then straight away another one, and then a Cossack that didn't survive this 2nd jump. That was 350k damage in about a minute.

How did this pan out? In Expert2 this hangar just got totally obliterated. After a bit of up and down I was soon firmly back Diamond1 (no tanking), my lowest league points being about 3050. I decided to put a lvl12 Orkan on the Gareth so now he cracks a jaw instead of just giving a black eye. I was sorry to drop the Zarny but he just racks up damage in the right situtaions and the same with my Plasmahad.

The current situ for me is:
- I can play my heart out, I'm mostly number 4 on the damage table, I get a lot of beacons and a normal number of wins and losses.
- I'm a factor in every game
- If I really play well, this hangar has the goods to really dish it out. I did over a million damage if you can believe that! I'll put that damage table at the end of this (the game was at Canyon of all places!) That's with just one Orkan.
- I can get around really quickly, which I love. The exception being Leo so I might swop him for a Thunder Carnage.
- I need to play well or this hangar is useless. The Gepard is the epitome of this, he is so soft and vulnerable to everything but those three high lvl Aphids are devastating. I had a DB chasing me around a building at SZ and just 2 salvos took him down. PP is def his best map and if it goes well I'll cap the first 2 beacons in Gareth and then spend the rest of the game capping and dishing out damage in the Gepard. He'll do 400 or 500k damage.
- I see just about Zero DIESS stuff. I do see some Kumies that I assume are from the event but otherwise its just good old school (and tough) competition. I have to take on Lances and Furies and all the old meta stuff.

It's awesome. I'm light but I'm stacked, it's a lot of fun and my league position is stable. If I start climbing I'll just tweak my damage down a bit. I've got extra weapons
and bots I can bring up just enough to be functional but I'd rather have light fast bots that are really levelled high.

What's the future?   Well, I wrote this yesterday and I'm back in Expert today.  I'm just getting good with these setups.  At Moon, DC, Valley and especially PP, that Gep can do serious damage.  Even SZ.  So I need to lighten up a bit more, the Griff is gone and he's the most boring anyway - I put the Galahad in in his place but I'll have to see how that goes - maybe too much damage.  Maybe an Thunder Carny, he's got some serious weakness and is fun but then I'm lacking any range.  Honestly, I'm thinking of a Gekko Gepard.

That'll be:

Aphid Gerpard

Gekko Gepard

Splash Gary

Taran Rog

Plasmahad