Brawler Gameplay Style
Max’s gameplay style revolves around cycling supers and helping keep your team alive by constantly pressuring the enemy. Great Max players should be able to push up with her team, dodging shots, providing speed boosts and consistent damage.
Game modes like Gem Grab and Brawl Ball all rely on a consistent mid player, and Max provides that. With her speed boosts your team can move more freely and get positioning for more gems or for goals. Max is great in the late game as a super could be used to kill enemies and steal gems at the last second, or to help your team run down the Brawl Ball map and score a goal in overtime. For Matches in Hot Zone or Siege, Max can get in the zone faster or grab bolts faster and give teammates the boost necessary to advance the map. All while dealing heavy damage and holding map position.
Max’s best maps are generally open maps, or maps with a medium amount of bushes, allowing for team pushing. Too many walls isn't ideal. Good maps would be maps like Backyard bowl, Field Goal, Pinhole Punt, Hard Rock Mine, Crystal Arcade, etc.
Gear Selection
Damage (Effective) - Max’s best Gear, with her damage already being high, a 15% increase to each projectile makes Max way more lethal. Combined with her speed, the damage boost can allow her to force back other brawlers or finish them off to escape pinches or bad situations.
Speed (Effective/Situational) - Max and speed Gear go great together, allows her to be unpredictable in bushes and combined with her existing speed makes her extremely annoying. Combined with her Run and Gun Star Power she can run through bushes and the enemy team like it’s nothing.
Shield (Effective/Situational) - Shield Gear is interchangeable with speed Gear, it all depends on the map. In more open maps the additional health can be crucial for pushing up and staying alive.
Health (Ineffective) - Max shouldn’t really use the heal Gear. She heals fine as is and is good at low health. It’s only viable in Bounty/Wipeout but even then shield/damage is better.
Vision (Ineffective) - Another Gear to avoid with Max, if you find yourself in a situation wishing you were playing vision to spot people in bushes, then you shouldn’t be playing Max. Vision provides little to no use for her playstyle.
Gadget Charge Gear (Situational) - Gear can be picked if you personally want it, otherwise it should be avoided, any other build with damage/shield or speed/health would be better.
Advanced Mechanics
Having unpredictable movements like brawl pros is crucial on Max. Max can be near unstoppable if you can read your enemy’s fire and avoid it. By periodically changing your strafes from wider to smaller and keeping your shots unpredictable, it will be much harder for your enemies to hit you.
Blocking a Tick head or Piper curve with your Phase Shifter gadget also takes a lot of skill and can be life saving if done correctly. You can block anything, but those are usually best.
It is important to use walls for peak shooting before pushing, charging supers while staying safe, and then using your supers to advance as a team. This is difficult and may take some practice, but mastering this can be extremely helpful and help you change the tide of the game.
Max’s ‘Phase Shifter’ gadget can be used to score quick goals in Brawl Ball. Max is INSANE if you can do this. Using your gadget to kick and follow the ball and then kicking it in. Normally only works once before the enemy gets hip to it, but if you can pull it off at the start of a game it puts your team up 1-0.
Brawler Interactions
Notable enemy interactions include control effect brawlers. For example, using Phase Shifter to dodge a buzz grapple, or using it to dodge a Tara super, or even using Max’s super to run down a Piper. The best one in my opinion is using a Gadget to eat a Shelly super, but that requires very precise timing.
During Max’s Phase Shifter Gadget she still gets knocked back, but doesn’t take damage nor suffer from control effects.
Brawler Synergies
Max is unique in that all brawlers synergise well with her. The Most Notable combos would be ones like:
Max + Gene: Having a Gene with speed boost makes it easier for them to pull someone, and allows Gene to pull them further back.
Max + Emz: With Emz super slowing effect, once she can charge it, a Max super allows her to get anywhere she needs to be in order to have complete control & take on multiple brawlers at once.
Max + Byron: Byron’s long-rage heal-over-time effect allows Max to push up more consistently and play more aggressively.
Max + Tanks: All tanks benefit immensely from a Max super, which helps them run down any brawler, or run away from a fight.
This page was written by Fenix and last updated on October 7, 2023. Follow this author below.