Section 1 and 2 can be skipped by using the dirty tactics in section 3 to unlock the 7th and 8th reel at a increased key cost. It might seem steep, but if you are struggling with bad RNG on teammates or it might trigger you, then consider it a more efficient option. But you do lose out on "The Chosen One" medal if you don't send The Immortal back to the garage on the hardest mode.
1: Tank selection:
I completed hardmode with 4 randoms and what i did was go malachite. It's very accurate, way better speed/agility then the cerberus, higher alpha and a bouncy turret (stats can be checked on ). I thought the cerberus would be best, but my game stats always placed me way higher on effective damage done with the malachite. Its just a perfect tank for its agility, alpha/DPM sweetspot and carry potential. Hence my choice. You really need to bring some DPM to the boss fight with all the random autoloaders. They are not as flexible as the cyclical gun on the malachite so you should fill the gap and help flanked doubles and legios on reload / hedgehog spawns / burning the boss down with your DPM.
2: Hardmode Boss strategy and how to not potato aim the weakspots:
Say in chat that people should focus the adds before boss once they spawn. Prioritize hedgehogs, save engine boost for when The Immortal goes for a ram/bad positioning and to not snapshot/aim drag the weakspots. But rather do the opposite. Let the boss's chassis weakspots "fall" into your aiming circle and to NOT take angled skirt shots on him as the weakspot model is misleading. It's visualized on the skirts, but due to spacing, any angled shots usualy overshoots the chassis weakspot under it. Thats also why your HE does 10 dmg sometimes on the weakspots i think. As the round penetrated the skirt, but hit an armored part of the chassis underneath.
3: Farming remaining keys and countering other farmers:
I used the malachite on low difficulty too! You got more speed then the standard double/legio keyfarmers out there and can go and solo an efficient path. And I never delivered more resources then i had to until phase 3. Then i dumped it all in the magnus before the slower double/legio farmers got to it with my speed. Making their gathered resources not count towards the end score and placing me 1st place 10/10 times. Resources gathered that go over the magnus treshold do not count so if you got spare ones after its full in 3rd phase then it's GG scorewise. This gave me 6 guaranteed keys per low difficulty game and with the malachite you have no problem carrying any situasion to a win condition unless 3+ people are bots (as long as people do damage, you got the speed to pick up their dropped resources). Kind of a dirty trick, but thats on the gamemode designers TBH as its not promoting team play at all when you need alot of keys and your fighting your own team on match preformance to get them.
Enjoying my King Tiger now and i hope you get yours too! Happy tanking.
