How to play- Battleborn Meltdown (Paradise, but also applies to Coldsnap)

There's no real good in game guide to play Meltdown. So here's a guide on how to play this game mode.

Overview

Super simple, you gain points by sacrificing allied creeps to Minrec. I also believe you get three points for people kills- pretty negligible. Then you get something like 5 for gunbots, 10 for shepherds, and 20 for elite bots. You win when you get to 500 points. In the case of a time out, whoever has a higher amount of points wins.

How to Win

Since the main way to gain points is to sacrifice allies, the way you win is to kill the enemy creeps.

This means wave clear is extremely important, and should honestly be one of your top priorities.

One thing that you need to keep in mind, is that the gunbots and shepherds actually do a metric shitton of damage.

I believe, in nearly every single scenario, the best play is to clear your lane as fast as possible, then shoot at the enemies while they are clearing their lanes. If they have to defend against the creeps without creeps, they will take so much damage, it's pretty much either a free kill or they will have to back.

In addition to this, if you try to kill them before the wave is clear, they'll probably just get overshielded by their shepherd.

Wave Clear

In my opinion, the best wave clears in the game are:

Thorn, Caldarius, Oscar Mike - These are the hands down best at lane clear. Their skillset can pretty much solo a lane safely, allowing them to put immense amounts of pressure on the enemy. Thorn can blight + volley the shepherd's weak spot, which will basically kill a wave on its own instantly. Caldarius can flashbang bleed + shoot the shepherd's weak spot and clear it in one TMP clip. Oscar Mike (Level 2+, he can't do it super efficiently at level 1) can Napalm Grenade the wave and clear it.

The only time I'm actually worried about clearing the lane is when they have 3+ people in lane. But then you're talking about 1v3+, so they kind of deserve to have better lane clear compared to you.

After that, you're looking at people with decent wave clear- for example Marquis is the best at killing Shepherds but he's awful at killing gunbots. Mellka is really good, but she has to get in there and use Spike. Orendi is all right, but I feel her AoE is too small and she has to use a full rotation to get most of them down. ISIC and Montana can pepper the whole wave down pretty well. Ghalt can toss a trap down on them, but then you're using a trap on not killing people which feels pretty bad. Toby can shoot them from across the entire arena pretty well, but like Marquis, shooting at minions is time you're not spending shooting at dudes.

The problem is, pretty much everyone I listed is ranged. What do you do if you're melee?

If you're melee, all is not lost. You want to get the overshield- This is extremely crucial- without the overshield you're probably going to take a lot of damage unless you outnumber the enemy. Then, run up to the enemy shepherd and start hitting its weak spot. Then, fall back and kill the gunbots.

Then, depending on the situation, you can press forward and hit the enemy, switch lanes, re-evaluate, etc.

Gaining Experience

So we've glossed over wave clearing, but what happens if the enemy has a super evil wave clearer and he beats you to it, and now you're behind? Or what happens if you're the big dick wave clearer and you want to get even more ahead experience wise?

Well, there are pretty much three ways of gaining experience- The first is killing people. Everybody knows this one- you get experience when you kill an enemy hero. That one's self explanatory.

The second way, is killing enemy creeps/buildings. So by listening to my advice, you're going to naturally level as long as you tag an enemy a few seconds before it dies. In addition to this, you can kill accelerators or their supply station or the stinger turret on the sides if they build them, which should get you some extra exp.

But what do we do when we can't kill heroes or creeps or buildings? Well, there's still a way of gaining experience. When you summon a minion or build/upgrade a tower, you gain experience. So, if we step back, this means that gaining shards (assuming you don't invest into gear) will also give you the net effect of giving you experience.

Getting ahead

So we know how to clear the wave, but what can we further do to put on the pressure?

There's... five things you can do to in order to further advance yourself. And some of them rely on others.

The first is to contest the neutral shard spawns. These are the shards that spawn on the left, center, and right. These spawn at 28:00, then 2 minutes after they die. So what you can do is wait in middle > kill middle shard > rotate over to right > kill right shard > (clear right wave).

Then, since you're the dude that killed the shards and you can keep timers in your head (We're Quake boys), you will say "Middle shard spawns at ~25:50 then right shard will spawn at 25:40" and you should have an advantage in getting to those two spawns before the enemy can.

Next, once the neutral spawns are contested, you need to push into their base. First, kill off their accelerators. These need to die.

But after their accelerators go down, you need to kill their thumpers / supply station. Now there's two ways of doing this. Basically, do you go in from middle, or do you go in from the sides?

The middle route is riskier (unless you have a marquis or a thorn, and to a lesser extent toby or railgun kleese- then it's free because you can shoot the thumpers from the middle), but it's a million times faster.

You can go from the sides- this takes longer since you have to clear both sides, but you just shoot the thumper from the far sides, or from under the thumper near the accelerators.

Third, once you kill their thumpers, their safe shard spawns are actually now contested shard spawns. Now, every time their shards spawns on the top left / top right, you can be the one that steals it. That's a lot of shards, but keep in mind that you may be overextending- plan accordingly. They can also summon a thumper on you, and even a level 1 thumper means you get slowed.

Besides that, #4 is summoning big minions. These big minions cost 600 shards (and they give you a bunch of exp for summoning them, win win). Then they walk over to the enemy grinder.

As of now I don't know the most optimal way to summon big minions. But I do know that you should probably exert map pressure when you do summon them. And I also know if they have a marquis or someone with lots of mid pressure, they can literally snipe it out the gates. Just be aware of this.

And lastly, #5 is getting your safe shards.

Getting Back from Behind

So we know how to play from ahead. But what do we do if the enemy has the wave clear because you decided to pick Orendi in All Pick instead of Thorn, and they decided to tryhard with Miko/ISIC/Marquis/Thorn and since it's all pick you never fucking saw it coming?

There's a few things you can do.

The first is, even though they beat you in fights, you can still contest the neutral shards, but you need to be fast. Stand at the shard spawn location at 25:45 for example. Quickly break the shard and run away. If someone comes to contest just back off.

Besides that, you can get your safe shards. If you can do the above two points, you have a pretty good chance of turning this game around. If you can only do the last one, you're still in a decent position.

What are we doing with these shards? Chances are, you have a level defecit- and this is pretty important, because one level in this game can be the difference of a thorn having a 800 damage burst with blight+volley+headshot, and a thorn having a 1600 damage burst with blight+volley+ultimate+headshot ^(if you can't tell, I think Thorn is one of the best characters in the entire game). So we need to close that defecit.

There's a few things we can do to counter this defecit. First off, just make sure your thumper turret is up. I don't care if it's a shitty level 1 thumper turret- any thumper turret is better than no thumper. It actually gives you back so much map control because the slow in this game is a death trap. If you can't build a thumper, you can always summon mega creeps, your supply, or the accelerator/stinger in the middle. The main thing is experience in this situation, not really the utility you get from them.

Second, we need to make sure we're actively clearing lanes, but we don't want to get into a bad fight. Clearing lanes will give you the experience you need, but as we said from before, we're behind so we don't actually want to teamfight. So if you're someone like Caldarius, save that Q to get away, not to fight.

We need to avoid fights until we get a power spike (For example, level 5 is a very common power spike) or at least until we equalize the field. And then we want to take an advantageous fight and win. But you need to recognize that you're behind. So what's the best way to recognize the fact that you're behind?

Just press the tab button and look at enemy KDRs and levels. Or check out the minrec score bars.

Conclusion

So that's pretty much it.

tl;dr: Clear waves -> Damage enemies.

Get shards. Kill buildings. If buildings are dead, exert map control and steal their shards / dive them.

If behind, get shards, rebuild buildings. Play defensively- don't go for kills, go for exp. Catch them out of position and start getting back ahead.