Clutch: The Not-So-Gentle Giant

A basic overview of Clutch strategies, abilities, and other essentials.

Beginning Notes

This guide contains all my findings about Clutch, and my ideas on how to use it. The guide will be updated when I find something new to make it more comprehensive, but if I miss something please comment and I'll gladly add it in, with credit to the finder of course. And now- onto the rest of the guide.

Clutch Overview

Clutch is one of the harder Champions to master, given its large hitbox, difficult-to-manage passives, and stats. However, when used properly, Clutch can be a high-speed nightmare tank for enemies. Before we get to that though, we need to cover the basics.

Stats:
- Health: 100 base health, spawns with 25 points of overheal.
- Armor: 100 base armor, with a max capacity of 150.
- Speed: 300 base speed, but this isn't the limit of Clutch's speed as we'll see shortly.

Passives:
- Acceleration: When walking forward, and only forward, Clutch can gain momentum up to a significant amount of speed. This momentum comes in three "gears." Every time one-third of the acceleration gauge is filled, a short pause occurs before the next third begins to fill. Beware, as rough terrain or tight hallways can easily reset your acceleration gauge in no time, as bumping into walls resets it.
- Air-Dodge: By double-pressing any movement button, Clutch can perform a mid-air leap in that direction, allowing for added mobility. Leaping forward can be used to gain speed in mid-air, and can combine with Acceleration for a trick we can do later. Only one Air-Dodge can be attempted every time you lift off the ground, so be careful when to use it.

Actives:
- Clutch effectively has two actives bound to the same cooldown and timer. One is a shield that can block an infinite amount of damage in a very large range, but only covers Clutch's front. When a weapon is fired, the shield disappears and reappears after a short time. The shield stays up for quite a while, and can be used to cover allies from fire as well as Clutch. You can use the shield to effectively counter enemy actives, as it will work against acid spit, drone fire, and more.
- The second Clutch active is the mining laser. While it looks cool on paper, it is essentially just a lightning gun with extended range. It does DPS equal to the lightning gun, and can be used for a max of three seconds. Using it cancels the shield. This active is only really useful if you're pressed for weaponry, or in Instagib mode.

Now that we've covered all of Clutch's basic abilities and aspects, it's time to get to the meat and potatoes of the guide: Strategies.

Clutch Strategies

Here we are! Finally, you can learn something new and useful about this murderous mining bot. Since Clutch's gameplay depends greatly on the gamemode, I will break the strategies down into gamemode-specific lists. In addition, I will rank Clutch's overall usefulness compared to other heroes in this gamemode.

General Strategies:
- Remember when I said that Clutch could use its passives in tandem for a useful trick? This is where that trick comes in. Air-Dodging, when used, automatically adds one-third to Clutch's acceleration gauge. However, when you stop moving, the gauge resets. To do this trick, simply jump and press forward thrice, holding it on the third time. This will add one-third to the gauge every time, skipping the pause in between thirds. Use this when out of combat to greatly increase your movement speed and gain the upper hand in mobility.
- Clutch's shield is, again, only useful from the front. Always check your environment before activating it, lest you get destroyed from behind. Coordination with teammates is essential for this.
- Clutch has a fairly big model ingame and you need to be aware of that a lot of the time. Dodging enemy fire is going to be a lot harder without fully utilizing your passives, so try to build muscle memory using Air-Dodge in tricky engagements.
- Clutch is very good with non-auto-fire weapons. Nailguns, Machineguns, and other auto-fire weapons are less useful because they constantly reset the shield if it's active, greatly reducing it's uptime. Learn to love Railguns, Shotguns, and Rockets.

Team Deatchmatch Strategies:
- Clutch is fairly useful in Team Deathmatch, provided you have a mic and teammates willing to cooperate. Clutch's shield really comes into play as a support tool here, as if you can coordinate, you can essentialy shield your entire team from damage from the front.
- Aside from shielding teammates, Clutch has no exceptional use in this gamemode, which leads me to assign him a B-rank usefulness here. It should be noted that the strategies listed here also work for 2v2 TDM unless otherwise stated.

Deathmatch Strategies:
- Clutch's usefulness actually drops here without any teammates to support. Your shield is less useful because enemies are everywhere and that is going to lead to lots of getting shot from behind. The only real advice I can confer here is to always be wary, and try to save your shield for when you're getting ganged up on.
- Clutch is fairly useless in this gamemode compared to other Champions, so I'm going to give him a D-rank usefulness rating.

1v1 Competitive Strategies:
- Clutch is fairly better here than other gamemodes. The fact that his shield can block almost any enemy ability, combined with the fact he spawns with it ready, makes it easy to take out enemies with low risk.
- You will only ever have one enemy on the battlefield at any given time. This makes it much less likely that you'll be attacked from behind, but always be wary. If you can, set up ambushes that always keep the enemy player in your field of view.
- Due to his ability to deal out lots of low-risk damage in this mode, Clutch gets an A-rank usefulness rating here.

Instagib Strategies:
- Clutch is basically the instagib god. Despite his large hitbox, his shield combos well with the Railgun, allowing you to have great blocking uptime and still try to take your opponents. My advice is to take your time aiming, as every missed shot opens up opportunities for your opponent.
- Clutch's mining laser is key in this gamemode, and this gamemode only. Despite the fact it sucks in other scenarios, it will kill anything in one shot here. Think hyper-powered laser pointer. Use it to clear out groups of enemies without the hassle of having to wait for the railgun to load another shot. Enjoy, you scrub.
- Due to these strategies, Clutch gets a usefulness ranking of A+. Bravo, you beautiful bot.

Closing Remarks

And that's most of what you need to know to use Clutch effectively. Good luck, and happy fragging. Again, if you think I missed something, please put it in comments so I can keep this guide as relevant and useful as possible. Thanks for reading!

[<lfrag17>]

Am I correct in my assumption that shield no longer goes down whatever gun you shoot?

[The Slamburgerler]

Clutch is hot, and I mean temperature. you know how hot his systems must run?
He's a not-so-lean, mean killing *MACHINE*

[THE GOOD CAPTAIN]

clutch is the hardest character to play and you all, (including this guy) suck.

i have proof

[Chris]

tldr

[s1lverFoX on YouTube / Twitch]

Just used in instagib. Confirmed A+

[averagemechaenjoyer]

Honestly my favourite part of him is his voice actor and quotes

[vasyan]

Clutch was a mistake

[Acidburn]

thanks

[Jack]

If Clutch is properly used, i can win dm with 10 frags in the lead. His airdodge is a very powerfull abilty - you can travel to places very fast; you can adjust battle-distances to your favor and evade much disatvantages. It takes very much time to learn Clutch. But at the end he is the most fun Champion! For me he feels sometimes even OP!

[Jack]

Deathmatch: Playing as clutch it is essentialy to know that allmost every enemy´s shot will hit you, no matter what distance he is shooting from because of clutch´s large body. Use this this fact to your opportunity! So basically you can aggressively air dodge into enemy´s face and fight them effectivly with starter shotgun or gauntlet! This strategy works even better with rocketlaucher. But be carefull to not engage shotguners! Also keep in mind that lightningguners will push you back.
Also pushing the enemy with shield makes the whole process alot easier.

Look for 1v1 battles. Avoid wide open places because players with starter machinegun will easy frag on you.