But these are just a few of the many things a coco is able to do as a support character!
LET’S TALK BUILDS!
The most recommended one right now, and team-friendly is the "Knockback-awayyyy" Coco build in my opinion, as it provides both an initiation for team fights for your team but also a good poking-harassing advantage.
Finisher-Extreme Poke!
Lightning Ball :
Voltage Amplifier (+damage)
Conducting Gel (speed+range)
Heavenly Fire (+blaze-trail)
Blaze :
Silver Coating (speed boost)
Chuck’s Board (+dot damage)
Time-travel Turbine (+duration of blaze) (OR) Syphon Disruptor (+20%slow on blaze)
Base-attack :
Static Gloves (+damage)
Flexible Heat Sinks (+attack speed)
Super Conductor (+particles)
Utility Slots :
Solar Tree (solar farm tool)
Space air max (+movement speed)
Med’I’can (health regen)
Building into it through the game!
What you basically want to do is build into the damage of your ball as soon as you can, and then continue into the blaze tree thus adding even more lethality into your lightning balls.
(these should be your trips to the shop, do not go to buy just 1 thing, cuz otherwise you are just wasting time going back and forth….less travels means more solar!)
Solar Tree – Ball Lightning
Conducting Gel (super important,even though it depends on what nauts you are up against, always buy first though) – Boots
Voltage Amplifier x1 – Med’I’can x1
Voltage Amplifier x1 – Blaze
Voltage Amplifier x1 – Med’I’can x1
Heavenly Fire – Time-travel Turbine x1
Silver Coating x2 (or) Silver Coating x1 + Chuck's Board x1
(OR)
Rest goes however you want. You can get Super Conductor whenever you want after the 3rd line, in order to enhance your close combat capabilities.
Just make sure you follow this order when you get in the melee damage tree:
Flexible Heat Sinks x2- Static Gloves x3
HOW TO PLAY THIS BUILD!
It’s kinda obvious, that if you are going into this build, you want to become a lethal “sniper”, so you better practice a little bit your behind turrets/walls/people/whatever ball-aiming before you get into a game with people that know how to avoid things like that easily.
Heavenly Fire combined with the duration on the blaze is there to give you the advantage of still damaging people even if you don’t hit them with the exploding ball.
You should still stick to your teammates and try to leave blaze on the ground to control an area with the slow it provides. As soon as you get your silver coating, you should be able to run in and out of situations to leave blaze all over the place, just make sure you are REALLY GOOD at it, otherwise you are just going to end up dying over and over again.
Other than that, it’s all about poking the enemy team with your high-damage balls and blaze trail all the time, and finishing off people that are about to run off or so.
POSSIBLE PLACEMENT IN A COMBO!
This Coco build can fit pretty much into any combo, since it’s just a pure-damage naut if you play her like that. So feel free to test it out with anything. But Coco is STILL NOT GOOD FOR SOLO QUEUING, even if you play her like that, mostly because you can’t expect your 2 teammates to be that good at holding the line. That’s mostly because as soon as you launch a lightning ball, you can’t do anything until your cooldown is ready again.
I’ll upload a video on my youtube channel, showing how to play this coco build in the current patch, but until then, take a decent video pre-patch with the same build. (not much change really…only the permanent health you get over time in a game.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GmxNy6h7sg
Knockback-awayyyyy! (hidden beast…)
Lightning Ball : Voltage Amplifier (+ball damage)
Thunder Striker (+knockback)
Conducting Gel (speed+range)
Blaze :
Silver Coating (speed boost)
Chuck’s Board (+dot damage)
Disruptor (+%slow on blaze)
Base-attack :
Static Gloves (+damage)
Flexible Heat Sinks (+attack speed)
Power Gloves (+tower damage)
Utility Slots :
Power Pills Turbo (+maximum health)
Space air max (+movement speed)
Med’I’can (health regen)
HOW TO PLAY THIS BUILD!
This is a support-heavy build, so what you want to be doing, is feeding your teammates kills. The way to do that is by getting your speed and knockback on the ball fast, and trying to knock people back into your teammates fists/snares/dashes/bites/whatever. That requires some practice, and learning how to angle your balls when trying to get someone behind a turret, but 1 out of 4 of your balls should be doing a decent knockback for a kill.
Building into it through the game!
There are 2 ways to build this Coco, and they differ quite a lot because of Coco being such an expensive naut.
(these should be your trips to the shop, do not go to buy just 1 thing, cuz otherwise you are just wasting time going back and forth….less travels means more solar!)
Also remember to buy pills when you need them, if you see the enemy's team burst damage is getting higher, make the right call and go for em. I'd suggest buying 2 stages in 1 go.
Ball Lightning - Boots
Conducting Gel – Knockback (yes…farm until you have 320 solar to buy both!)
Blaze - Med'I'Can x1
THIS is the point where the building of Coco is divided into 2 sections.
Harasser – Knocker! (RECOMMENDED)
Voltage Amplifier x1 – Med’I’can x1
Voltage Amplifier x1 - Disruptor x1
Disruptor x1 – Voltage Amplifier x1
Chuck's Board x2
Chuck’s Board x2
Disruptor x1 + (whatever is left)
And then just go for :
Flexible Heat Sinks x2- Static Gloves x3 – Power Gloves x3
Now, you would ask….”why silver coating and why blaze since I do knockbacks?”
Here is why…
Silver Coating : Allows you to have more maneuverability and makes you the fastest naut in your game. Other than that, you can just surprise an enemy hiding behind a turret, by speeding and throwing a ball to knock him back really fast (trust me, they never expect that).
Blaze You are not a killer even though you can be with the increased ball damage. You will use your balls for your own farming purposes but also for other people (knocking droids into a clunk's hungry mouth, a yuri's mines etc.) but when you are up against Nauts, you must have good judgement of when is a good time to just hit them, or to knock them back. So if you are up close the enemy turret and your team is pushing, use your lightning ball the right moment as to knock the enemy. If you CAN'T knock the enemy, at least harass him along with the incoming waves of droids behind him in order to get maximum damage output on the enemy side and support the push.
Also, Voltage Amplifier is there to provide that extra damage when farming/pushing/harassing and to provide a starting damage output when you actually get a decent knockback. Extra slow is not really needed (like on the auto-attack for example....waste of my money in my opinion) since you will have the base blaze-slow accompanied by a couple Disruptor upgrades along the way, which enhances you area control capabilities too.
There are situations where knockback might not work as intended (pushing enemies back saving them) but that’s a thing you have to practice to make perfect yourself!
Here’s a really good video showing how we utilized Coco on Sorona (worm fun) with my team :
http://www.twitch.tv/mrp0w/c/2220221
And now…..the beast coco…
DA BEAST.
(this is a bit risky, but can work with the right comp, the other build is still recommended over this one though..)
As soon as you get the starting things we mentioned, your team will have to be making a good defense, until you get all of these…
Flexible Heat Sinks x2
Static Gloves x1
Static Gloves x1
Static Gloves x1
Power Gloves x2
Power Gloves x1
(yes…lots of trips back to the shop, but you will be pretty much a poker anyway, just killing droids and knocking people into your teammates all the time, so having a bit extra damage on your base attack will help you save some time on killing droids.)
So….as soon as you get all these, all you have to do is basically wait for your team to make a single push. As soon as you get to an enemy turret, it has been calculated that you need no more than 10-12 seconds to take it down (with only 1 droid or naut helping you). The same goes for the base, so the game is “GG” as long as your combo survives the end-game (which hasn’t proved to be hard, since 12 seconds to end the base isn’t that much…).
(By mr.pow’s calculations, she does about 95 damage per second on a turret or on the base with all her melee upgrades bought.) (I know…..awesome…)
POSSIBLE PLACEMENT IN A COMBO!
MANY possibilities right here….
You can pretty much pair her up with the following:
Skolldir -> Knockback, then throw.
Derpl -> Knockback into snare, dead.
Froggy -> Knockback, dashed, dead. (we all know why…)
Genji -> Cocoon.the.end.
and it just keeps going, so you can find many ways to utilize a Coco in your team combo! Just try it out! It’s super fun!
OTHER POSSIBLE BUILDS!
Other possible builds could be stuff with decreased cooldown on the ball lightning for even more poking, even double slow on the blaze for maximum area control. But I personally don’t like these builds cuz they are even more expensive and you need to wait lots of time to actually get them whereas with the builds I mentioned you are getting more and more useful as the game progresses.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS!
Q : Kelf, how do you think when you play Coco? A : Lay back and poke the enemy with well-aimed balls. As soon as you have your blaze, try going a little bit more into contested territory (like the middle stealth areas in certain maps) to put some blaze down there to claim it for that short amount of time for your team. But it’s mostly about laying back and dying as less you can.
Q : Kelf, Who do you consider a good Coco? A : I won’t call names, but I will say that a good Coco is a player with good “juking” abilities and perfect aim. Yes perfect aim, cuz without it you can’t hit ANY player who knows how to jump correctly. (try hitting raork 3 times in a row. Now THAT is a challenge.)
Q : Kelf, why don’t you use cooldown or blind on lightning ball? Lots of good Coco players use cooldown! A : The only reason to put cooldown in your build as a good Coco is to maximize your farming (through killing droids of course) and your poking on the enemy team. But I still find it a waste of a slot in the upgrades tree of ball lightning.
Q : Kelf, what do you think of melee Coco? Only good for tower pushing? A : As I mentioned in the start of this guide, Coco is a support character. Her melee auto-attack when upgraded (only then) Is quite good, but that still doesn’t make you a killer. You can still only utilize that in team fights. If someone gets knocked by your ball, you can finish them with particles or something else which is kinda useful, but still very late-game oriented.
Q : Kelf, can I be your girlfriend? A : No, sorry. I already have 2. We could talk about it though at some point.
Q : Kelf, do you think Coco stands a chance against the broken nauts that are in the game right now? (e.g. froggy g, genji, derpl, yuri and all their combinations) A : Having won games with my team against good players playing those nauts, I’m starting to believe it’s actually possible. It’s still frustrating and requires lots of defensive behavior from your team until you reach the 15th minute or so, but after that you should be fine.
Q : Kelf, why not tree-bank since Coco is so expensive? A : Piggy bank is for the weak. As long as your team is playing defensive for the first 3-4 minutes, you should be fine with solar. Also, you need the spare slot for regen-boots, cuz both are super important. Regen because you want to keep poking without having to go back to the shop all the time (plus the fact that you want to farm big amounts of solar before making trips back) and boots because I believe Coco is a naut that doesn’t “need” it, but becomes even better with it in many situations.
Q : Kelf, do you like any of the different Coco skins? A : No. She took of her shirt, and then put it back on with her last skin. Some people have to be murdered for us to get “Witch Coco” I guess.
Q : Kelf, why do you consider Silver Coating (the speed boost on blaze) so important? A : It is probably my favourite upgrade, just because it makes you the fastest player in the game when you get it. But other than that, you can escape pretty much everything with it (well not snares, but you get the general idea). Escaping is rule number 1 for Coco if she wants to wealthy in the late-game.
Q : Kelf, why do you lag so much?!?!?!?! A : I lag so much because I live in an area in Greece that doesn’t have any better internet than I currently do. The best companies can support for my area is 3mbps of download and 1mbps of upload. I’m currently waiting to move to Holland for my uni studies, so I should be back in the saddle for this game on a competitive level again soon.
Q : Your lightning balls are invisible!!! Is your lag always like that? It’s kinda cheatful to play like that… A : Not really, it depends on who I’m playing with. But just to point out, it is worse for me than it is for you. It takes me 4 seconds to kill a single health creep with my base attack despite the amount of upgrades I may have at that point, and I can’t really escape close quarter explosions/tongues/snipes/anything. Even if I move out a little bit, it’s still going to get me. It’s also quite important to point out that everyone has a different ping to me, so you can’t anticipate or learn how to play with the lag, it’s always different.
Q : Kelf, what “top-world” rank bullcr*p are you talking about in other games, I just see a laggy whiner! Tell me more about yourself, so that I know who the cr*p you are…. Are you even a kind person anymore..? A : I’ve been one of the most important mage theorycrafters in WoW, and the raid leader of the 6th in the world raiding guild in WoW for 5 years straight. Other than that I was ranked 2nd in the world in C&C tiberium wars and 3rd in Battlefield 2142 as a Commander of my platoon. I’ve also been in top 20 in the world with my CoD clan. Yes I do whine a lot, cuz I feel like I’m getting bullied over my lag all the time, which I find it kind of normal since people can’t understand how it is on my side. So even though I’m a kind person, expect me to rage due to my history in gaming (I’ll always be an elitist jerk).
Q : Kelf, can I join your 3-headed-monkey team? A : Please check our team’s thread to see if we are interested in getting more people in or if there are any upcoming changes to our roster! viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13260&p=139980#p139980
ENDING! (finally! )
Coco, to sum up, is still an expensive and hard to play naut, due to the fact that you do not have any “super-powers” many nauts possess to dominate the game at some points (except her late-game tower-pushing overpower I guess). I find her to be a hard to play naut, because aiming is three times more important that it is with any other naut (even raelynn has a yellow beam when she is actually targeting an enemy naut).
So I’d say…make sure you practice a lot before playing here in more competitive games. She might look easy (playing shotgun coco, by running into people’s faces with balls) but that has been proven not to be the best way to play her thus far since there are many dangerous abilities out there right now (like cocoon and dash) that will just annihilate the Coco in a couple hits.
Please feel free to ask any questions you might have about Coco and any builds you might want me to add to the guide (cuz there are other builds, but I still prefer to use these, since I find them more useful in any situation.)
YOURS, Kelfecil, Team Founder of Team 3-Headed-Monkey.
P.S. I will upload more guide/how-to videos on my youtube channel soon, so subscribe if you are interested! http://www.youtube.com/user/Kelfecil00 Also, as soon as I get to Holland I will start streaming, so you can look at Coco gameplay in a more direct way (I guess..)