Ao Ming, my new favourite bot

Near the end of one match at Springfield, where the reds were down on bots, but we were almost out of beacon control, possibly without any normal way of winning the match, I tried to save us the match and ditched my bot for Ao Ming, and was able to quickly fly it across the valley, into their buildings, take down their remaining red home beacon guards, land and fight off their reserves (Titans included) and claim the beacon and help save us the match, as the blues managed to hold / reclaim the rest of the beacons.

Lately I spend a lot of time walking and hitting with the two Alpha (Vengeance) weapons, instead of flying. It significantly helps with my brawling longevity, as well as helping absorb more Ao Jun fire. Taking flight can sometimes have far too many reds firing on me at once. Walking around and healing gives me a higher chance of living and brawling for the rest of a 10 minute match. I jump (fly and land while still moving) and fly as needed.

One match, I was almost able to kill a freshly spawned Arthur with 5 reds able to fire on me at the same time (Titans included) by flying up and hitting it on it's head. I couldn't last their combined assault long enough to completely kill Arthur (who seemed to have then went on to slaughter blues unfazed by their almost dead health due to his shield) but I almost got them.


Testing is showing the Alpha (Vengeance) machine guns are way more accurate and damaging at 500m than the Beta (Retailator) machine guns, which miss a LOT of shots at 499m range.

Preliminary (recorded) tests against a stationary Invader at 495m show a single full clip Level 9 Alpha Vengeance doing 155736 damage,

and a single full clip Level 5 Beta Retaliator doing only 27063 damage the first time, and only 27936 damage the second time... as they miss most of their shots. 


So, the Alpha Vengeance machine guns seem excellent at 500m and maul Phantoms well too.

I don't have plasma Titan weapons to test, but the Wiki numbers suggest a similar long term DPS to what I did to that Invader at 495m.

UPDATE #2

Well, at this rate, it could be faster/cheaper to max my Titan weapons than my regular ones.

Ao Ming seems to do around 41 km/h in flight (it's around 2/3 the speed of a Lv12 Ares), instead of 31 km/h. Fantastic for getting from one side of Springfield to the other, and it can hit enemies way faster than usual by hitting them from the skies. Biggest problem is getting focused and cut in half while midair.

Ao Ming is an excellent brawler when used as a walking, non-flying bot (with occasional jumping and flying as desired). Not only do you get increased resistance, but it's much harder for enemies to hit you while walking, behind cover.

Unlike the Beta Retailators (which are near/useless at 500m) those top-mounted Alpha Vengeance machine guns (the ones that look like Tempests) do great damage at 500m, and Ao Ming has two of them. I find myself killing off bot after bot (Titans included) at 500m, and Phantoms seem especially weak to them.

Ao Ming flies much higher than Ao Jun and can quickly reach the top of the map with a quick second flight off a tall obstacle. You can land as soon as you fly, which gives the Ao Ming a fast recharging jump ability too.

Did some more Custom Game testing.

Other than being able to fly backwards as your guns (hopefully) rip up the Leech, and hit them with 4 guns instead of two, the minimum 95m distance a flying Ao Ming forces Leeches into accepting seems to give no damage reducing advantage against storm/gust shotguns, with their shots doing around 10% more damage than hitting a ground/tank mode Ao Ming point blank.

The Beta Retaliators aren't any good at range, and I'm considering 600m Cuirassier plasma or 500m Rupture rockets over them as I spend a lot of time on the ground with them being deactivated.

Being able to burst them and re-land would be nice.

Beta Plasma has 600m (*Important* to me), 15 seconds for a full recharge, but they only start doing more damage than rockets after 30 seconds of continuous use.

Beta Ruptures only have 500m, 30 seconds for a full reload, 36% more burst damage with a shorter burst time too (but lower sustained damage after that), and they have Splash Damage (*Important* to me).

Depends how good the splash radius is on the Ruptures, I guess. i.e. is it worth sacrificing a 600m plasma burst.

I could equip one of each (if the splash radius is good), too. Be able to hit at 600m AND splash people behind cover...