Clunk

Clunk guide by Restless Frager:

There's two ways you can go with clunk for the early-mid game, either Self Destruct or Missiles (his normal attack). They highly depend on your unlocks.

No unlocks loadout :

Bite : Multi Hose, Medical Pump, Screamer Engine*
Self Destruct : Thermonuclear Cleaner, Titanium Hard Hat, (Either the snail or cooldown reduction)
Missiles : Free Flight fins, Missile Barrage, Fat Pete
Utility : you will ALWAYS need boots, and my other favorites are piggy bank to start with the snare right away and the power pills turbo to have a HUGE health pool late game, but the last two are yours to chose.

*You ALWAYS must start with Bite + screamer engine (snare), since the bite gives you great sustain so you don't have to go back, and the snare will give your team first blood in 70% of your matches once you master the delay on your bite.

There's two ways to build clunk with this optimal loadout : Exploding clunk and Missile clunk.

Important : The missile build is hard countered by Froggy G. If you're facing a frog, you must go for the explode build.

Missile Clunk : Once you get your bite and snare, you'll want to analyze the situation ;
if you are staying in lane unharmed and don't have to move too much, you can spent your 350-400 first solar in missiles upgrade (Prioritize them in this order : Attack speed (fins) -> Barrage -> Fat Pete).
If, on the other hand, you have to go back to base regularly due to to much burst or the fights are happening all over the map, you'll want to get the boots as fast as possible.

Once you get your boots, you usually spend all your solar into missile upgrades. If you're not too ahead and taking a bigger pounding, you should instead save a bit and get your first tier of Medical Pump, it gives you +20 health per successful bite up to 60 until you die, it's really useful to safely land your snares.

This one is pretty straight forward. For the whole game, all you'll be doing is shooting people from as far as you can, until you see good opportunities to jump in and snare, letting your team unload their bursts and making it easier to land your missiles.

Strengths :
-Better DPS
-Less teammate dependent
-Less risky
-Great synergy with bubble Yuri (high attack speed and DPS)
-Much lower cost for fully operational build
-Doesn't rely on snares to function

Weaknesses :
-Not much burst
-Low to moderate ganking potential
-Low damage start

Here's some good tips about this build :

-Clunk's missiles work using a sequence. The first missile is always a small one, the first barrage upgrades makes it a 2 missile sequence, the second one being stronger. The second barrage upgrade makes it 3 with an even stronger missile, and the fat pete makes it 4 with a missile twice as strong as the first one.

Why the heck don't you just get fat Pete? Well if you get only fat Pete, it's only going to come out as the fourth missile and your 3 other missiles are going to be small ones, not really great DPS-wise.

-You have to be good at aiming and leading your target since clunk's missiles are the slowest ranged attack in the game, but you don't have the stress to be on cooldown.

-Clunk slightly outranges most turrets in the game, you can destroy a turret in 3-4 waves without any upgrade if unhindered by staying just outside it's max range and pounding at it.

On Ribbit IV, you can stand on the upper platform that's right next to the enemy turrets in the top lane to shoot it from safety, using your missile's small homing capability to curve around the "terrain".

On Sorona's bottom lane, you can stand on the last step just before the last turret and hug the wall to avoid being targeted by it. You can then aim just above the bot "maneuvering it", and clunk's long missile arm will shoot through the terrain.

Ribbit IV's trick also applies to station 404.


Explode Clunk : You still need to start with bite and snare, and will want to come back to buy Explode as soon as you can. Boots are a must right after you unlock explode.

You want to get one damage and one hard hat upgrade before getting your third Explode item, then you will want to either save for Medical Pump if you're doing good, or buy power pills tier 1 and 2 if the game is harder. Finish all your explode upgrades then get all your max health items and you'll be an invincible killing machine.

This build is quite harder to pull off. First, you need to reliably land your snares ALL the time to immobilize the enemy while you detonate. Then, you must make sure you don't chip off too much of your health in hostile territory or you're done for. Last, if you miss your enemies, you're just a huge target waiting to be attacked.

Since the bite lasts 0.5 less seconds than the explosion takes to charge, you'll want to move between your enemy and his fastest escape route, then you'll have to react very fast to follow them once the snare wears off. This stops to be a problem once you get level 2 snare, which lasts 2 seconds instead of one.

Strengths :
-Great burst
-Great ganking potential
-Bigger damage at the beginning
-Great synergy with stun froggy, tongue Leon and a Coco that lands good knockbacks

*Is a high risk, high reward build.

Weaknesses :
-Bad DPS
-Can be teammate dependent
-Much more risky
-Much higher cost to become fully operational
-Highly dependent on your ability to land snares

Here's some good tips about this build :

-It's great at clearing big minion clumps and farm tons of solar, if you can then retreat without enemy retaliation.

-Sometimes, you can save a teammate or yourself by just frightening your enemies with the explosion radius.

-You can use Explode to chip at a turret and run away when your minion wave isn't in proximity.

You can drop in and destroy opponents who are low on HP but think they're safe by hugging their turret.

-Can be used along with the minimap to create great gank opportunities ;

On Ribbit IV, you can drop in and out from the jungle using the bushes, start the epxlosion beforehand and arrive just in time for the explosion and a bite, usually ensuring a kill.

On Sorona, you can drop from pretty much anywhere to gank enemies.

Station 404's gravity pit is going to become your new home for ganks on this crazy one-lane map.


All unlocks loadouts (Now things get serious) :

Bite : Multi Hose, Medical Pump, Screamer Engine*
Self Destruct : Thermonuclear Cleaner, Titanium Hard Hat, Universal Charger
Missiles : Free Flight fins, Missile Barrage, Salvo Value Pack
Utility : you will ALWAYS need boots, and my other favorites are piggy bank to start with the snare right away and the power pills turbo to have a HUGE health pool late game, but the last two are yours to chose.

Missile Clunk : Salvo value pack is clunk's very BEST item in his whole loadout because of how it synergies with missile barrage, it's also his last unlock. You see, the value pack is a combination of barrage and fat Pete, so you'd get the exact same effect as if you bought the other two separately.

The trick is that barrage's missiles, which are second and third in the sequence, are ADDED to the value pack's. Yes, half of your missile shots now became double missiles. Huge dps, huge dps indeed. It even takes care of one of the negative points about this build, because eating the double missiles will make your opponent take around 40 damage, which is quite close to burst damage. This is la creme de la creme of Dps/burst builds.


Explode Clunk : Universal Charger, also an extremely good upgrade for Clunk. It reduces the charge time of explode to .6 seconds, down from 1.5. This one is very strong when you take Explode and Universal Charger instead of bite and snare at first.

Just keep it secret until an opponent has 3-4 HP bars left, when he's just thinking about retreating, then BOOM his face goes, giving you first kill and starting a mad snowball.


You probably realized I didn't talk about multi-hose, it's because it's useful but not as good as all the other upgrades. It's only use really is to create more sustain, and change this sustain in burst healing by doing AOE with your bite. It's also great late game to snare their entire team.

Additional notes by Groggy F:

Actually, Fat pete gives a higher DPS than one level of Missile barrage, even without managing the sequence.

Average damage per missile:

Base: 14
Missile barrage: (14 + 18) / 2 = 16
Fat pete: (14 + 14 + 14 + 26) / 4 = 17
2x Missile barrage: (14 + 18 + 22) / 3 = 18

As you can see, Fat pete gives a higher DPS bonus for the same solar, which is even more when you consider that you can always start with one due to Clunk's sequence system. Also, Missile barrage is pretty cost-inefficient in general.