LOL... I forgot to average the damage of Clunk's missiles with my DPM number My bad
Since DPM and all those numbers take the skill of the game and throw them out the window I decided to calculate some numbers of my own Enjoy.

I just used the 'Nauts starting stats for this so please bear in mind that like most numbers that get thrown around carelessly they don't mean much.

First get the DPS of each 'Naut, for this example I'll be using Clunk ( ) and Froggy G:
Clunk's is rather simple since his attack speed is 60 per minute, which means he fires one 14 damage rocket per second. As for Froggy G I gave him the luxury of rounding it up to 12 DPS just to make things simpler.

Next take the starting health of the opposing 'Naut and divide it by your 'Nauts DPS:
For example: Froggy G's starting health is a meek 105, divide it by 14 and you get 7.5 which is essentially how many seconds it will take to kill Froggy G with Clunk. Now switching the characters gets us 18.3 a rather astonishing number since that basically means Clunk can kill Froggy G twice before Froggy G will finally get a win. Of course this is not taking into effect range of attacks or anything else I just have them stand in front of each other and blast away like what most numbers symbolize.

TL;DR Clunk owns everyone at start...by the numbers of course

I mained Clunk day 1, but for what it's worth I've since come to think he is genuinely the worst character in the game. Everyone here has highlight the reasons why, but it's mainly because he just gets laughably outclassed by everyone pretty fast, and against half capable people you're reliant on homing, and no character should need anything in this game to be functional. He's a noob crusher, but that's about it.

Also, I love how Clunks bite has a correct hitbox all the time, but Froggys dash and Leons sword ALWAYS gain mystical hitboxes.

You must not lurk these forums enough. Disagreeing with Jenkins, even when he is patently wrong, is blasphemy.

One. I don't act like my word is law.
Two. Anything I say I back up. I don't just type, "His sword is the best cause it's super fast". I say, "The character is potentially threatening because of his range but his health makes him easy to counter."
Three. Show me an example of me being "patently wrong".
97. If you don't like the fact that I disprove anything you say, don't post questionable things. I don't look at someone's post and call them stupid for their opinion. If I disagree, I'm gonna comment on it, If I agree, I'm gonna comment on it.

Me and IsaacFrost, and even Groggy F have disagreed about things in this game. We're not trolling each other and there's no hostility. Just because I repeatedly comment on your posts doesn't mean I'm targeting you, it means you keep stating points that are debatable. Hell yeah I'm gonna look for a "friendly" argument. It's up to the opposing party to take it as a threat and react negatively, as so.

If you say my name, you want my attention, love.

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But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
tabdoesn'tworkthis'lldofine -Robert Frost

I like to think of Clunk as a big bully. He can act tough, but he can only duel with opponents he can take advantage of. But make no mistake he can have a large impact on team fights the longer he can stay in the fight. His Vacuum Bite has amazing crowd control and his Explode disrupts enemy positioning. Clunk's Fat Pete's and the Juggernaut upgrades hit like bricks even though following that path is expensive and difficult to farm but they are worth the investment.

His initiate is pretty decent but his disengage is fairly weak since his mobility is rather slow. So really his play style should lean toward taking advantage of his high base blaster damage, health and the tools of his kit to make him a threat that cannot be ignored to control threats for his team.

Go on and argue about how his abilities are easy to dodge. He has all the tools he needs to make a well rounded team composition and control team fights.

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The big problems I see with clunk are this:

1) His missile upgrades are weaker than other damage upgrades because it's a queue rather than just a flat upgrade.

2) He's sooooo slow. I mean, fine, he's supposed to be slow, but at his upgraded speed he's still slower than some characters is a crime. This would balance him out if not for his other issues.

3) His upgrades are expensive. I mean really expensive. Like I think his missile salvo upgrade is the most expensive in the game, and many of his others are close. Most characters have a few upgrades that are under 200 that are worth while, and only a few over 300, but not Clunk. This means he doesn't grow with the other characters like he should.

Honestly, I think if you fix his upgrade prices (drop most of them 10-20%), that will probably mostly fix him. Maybe change how his queue works or something.

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PS3 & PC casual player. Hope to see you around.

The thing you have to get around is Clunk isn't there for DPS. Clunk is there to absorb damage from the enemy burst skills, so that your DPS has breathing room in which to attack. Yes, Clunk has some threat through the burst of his SD and bite, but he's not going to be doing the closing of many kills unless you can catch a weakened enemy in your blast radius.

Is Clunk good at anything? His starting health is higher than most everyone else's max health with one of the health upgrades. He can easily double that through a health upgrade and the bite max health boost. Other characters would have to sacrifice either mobility or early game ability by dropping a 4th line slot to gain his health levels.

A knowledgeable Clunk player is going to know he's going to have a tough time killing a mobile enemy 1v1. So he's going to play more conservatively. He's going to be out in front of the turret to keep bots and enemy 'Nauts off of it. He's not going to go for 1v1 kills early. He's going to focus on clearing their bot waves right before they get to the turret while keeping the enemy pre-occupied with bringing him down. He's going to bully enemies off of the neutral creeps, using SD on them to get the health and zone the enemy away.

As rapid paced as Awesomenauts is, zoning is still important. Clunk's SD is a wide area where the enemy simply cannot be in if they want to survive a teamfight. A decent Clunk player will recognize the intimidation factor in letting the enemy know you have SD, much like Leon's tongue with max range: players are going to anticipate you doing this move, so an aggressive approach will force them to back off, even a little.

Froggy dancing on you with his tornado? SD. He'll back off since the inv duration won't take the hit for him once the duration is up. Leon grabbing your squishes and dragging them to the killzone? Stay in front, let him grab you as you start the SD timer. He'll be MUCH more wary about trying to nab your allies. Yuri flying around over your head? Can't dodge homing missiles very well unless he flies away.

Clunk can't do it all himself. The point of him is to zone, and to draw/absorb enemy fire. If they get you low, they chase: how nice is that? So focused on killing the clunk with the huge health bar that they don't see your allies shredding their turret.

Problem with mobility is the objective doesn't move around, so you gotta come to Clunk's playground sooner or later.

There is nothing wrong with Clunk. Play him more. If any of my competitive friends read this they would think its made up.

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Well said.

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It'd be nice if Clunk was more of a tank, like having an upgrade that decreases all incoming damage by, I don't know, 10%. Or even one that made Clunk share some of the damage of his allies because truly all a player has to do it jump over Clunk and kill the 'Naut he was defending.

While I have seen a good Clunk player or two, he gets a bad rep because idiots figure he's big and has rockets so he's obviously the best. I always dread when a random picks Clunk on my team because I know I'm going to have to cover his *.

While every other character can be decent in the hands of an unskilled player, Clunk is nothing more than a large target unless played very well.

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But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
tabdoesn'tworkthis'lldofine -Robert Frost