First of all, I wanna say that this is a kind of guide which focuses on the meta game of the l4d2 tank fights, no weapon stats or pictures, just text (and recently added a few vids in the end) . Following this guide you'll be able to become a good tank player. But still, even a good Tank can't kill them if there's no teamwork. I want to emphasize at this point that playing infected is all about teamwork and timing.

@ the beginner: You might not understand everything mentioned in this guide while reading. It will become more obvious to you later. I explained a lot of things for beginners in this guide but I don't wanna point out the obvious too much. If you literally just started playing, I recommend you pass control and watch the other player as tank to learn from them.

@ the advanced player: You might know a few things, but you can sure learn a lot here on how to become a better tank player.

@ the experienced T1/RVS Player: Most of this information will be very obvious to you. There might be however some things you might not have thought about in this detail.

To understand how to use the tank, you'll need to understand how tank control works.
Tank Control has 3 phases. The first phase is given to a random* player. Then if that player loses control, it will be passed to another random player and if he loses control, a bot will take over an after the bot loses control the tank will die.

*Not entirely random. The last player that did damage before the tank spawn usually gets it or the player with most damage.

You slowly lose control when you lose sight contact with the survivors. Experienced players will hide behind objects or fall back to make the tank lose control. However, if you stay in a safe room during a tank, the loading bar will just stop. This is particularly important during early tank in dead air, because the upper metal bars in the greenhouse count as safe zone and many people don't know that. If you hit a survivor, your control timer will be reset and you get a "new phase". If you manage to get line of sight on the survivors you can hide for 2 or 3 seconds and then look at them again and the control timer will go down much slower.

If you're the first player getting the tank, you need to know answers to the following questions:

- Is my team ready?

A good tank needs good support. You can see you team's respawn timer. Usually it's best to go in when your team is also ready to strike. The best wipes happen that way. However, there are a few places and especially in the first half of a map a few situations where it can be very good to just run into them and kill them giving them just little or no time to prepare or change position, like in narrow interiors, staircases and when they're boomed, stuck in the zombie horde.

- Where do they wanna fight me, where do I wanna fight them? Where should I go?

Although it can be lethal for the enemy team if a tank rushes straight in and catches the moment of surprise assisted by a zombie horde or attack, usually it's better to find a safe place for your tank.

There are many different places where tanks can spawn or where survivors can fight them, some pretty much hopeless for one team. In open spaces it's usually best to go up a roof or similar, that has numerous advantages. You're less vulnerable to molotovs and shots in general, you have cover to hide from shots and you can throw rocks. I won't cover throwing rocks in this tutorial because there are tons already.

Survivors will prefer two kinds of areas. Big rooms with just 1 or 2 doors for shotguns and open outside areas for snipers with no cars and few places for infecteds to spawn. Long passages can also work well. Shotguns, especially automatic ones can melt a tank in no time, so can sniper and other rifle fire if you're only throwing rocks and never going in. Fighting a tank in an area with cars can also work if the survivors manage to hide behind lanterns, small trees or other obstacles from the flying cars.

As a Tank, you prefer staying on a roof or another elevated position and throwing rocks from there. If they're too far away you'll need to keep changing your positions to stay close enough. If the survivors are falling back, you might wanna bring a car with you while following them, for the next player to use.

- How many survivors have molotovs and who has them equipped?

If you're the first tank and you're confident, you might wanna try and bait them into throwing molos and dodging them. You should expect molotovs coming for your ladders, cars and throwables aswell as in your direct path. Changing directions a lot as tank helps dodging. Anyway it's very good to know who has the molotov if it's just 1 or 2 players, either you can take them out before they're able to throw or your infected teammates can. Be aware of the players with molotovs and prepare to dodge.

(Same for Boomer Biles and Pipe Bombs but they're less important since they don't literally kill you)

If you get hit by a boomer bile, that's actually good for you if you have some time and hp. You can just run away, climb, hide somehow and wait for the bile to stop. If the effect stops, you will have nice common zombies as company. But you will lose some time and hitpoints, survivors can heal while you're blinded.
Survivors having pipe bombs can even ruin a perfect boomer. If that's the case, you might wanna fall back and wait for your teammates respawn.

If you're lucky enough to get a second control tank, the player before you at least did one thing right. He didn't die. You however, might just have few attacks left. If you have more than 2000 hp you can engage one or two more times. A 4000 hp tank in the second control is usually a very good thing.

If it's looking very bad for you and your team, play defensive and try to hit them with rocks from the far distance, throwing them over obstacles and sooner or later pass control to the bot. When the bot tank attacks, you will get a new zombie as support for a last attack.

Tunneling or not tunneling
Most beginner tanks will target a single player and hit him until he's down or die trying.
While this can be good if only 1 survivor is paying attention to what you're doing, all 4 survivors together can kill you fast. If you switch targets more often, a player you previously hurt could heal or get healed. So depending on the situation / player it can be good to tunnel, usually it's not.

Maintaining Control with Hits

Usually what I do is I try to get as many rock hits as possible before really engaging to wear them down and recharge my control bar. I try to hide on a roof top or behind a car and throw rocks at them. You can also punch incapped survivors to reset your control timer.

Dodging / baiting out molotov cocktails (NEW)

A molotov will kill any tank over time, everything survivors have to do is run away.
When someone attempts to throw a molotov on you, try doing a sidestep as soon as you see them throw. If you have a car around, try approaching the car like you're gonna hit it, but stop shortly before and turn around. Many players will perceive the car as an easy target for their molotov cocktail and fall for the bait.

Playing the time game

The longer the fight lasts, the more attacks your team can carry out on the survivors. Always keep that in mind. If you get your timing right, there's a good chance to win. If you die as a Tank because you get burned or gunned down and your team can only have one attack with you, they'll rightfully get angry and you might be kicked out of that game even if you played well before.

Attacking in Waves

Syncing or synchronisation means attacking at the same time, assisting your team. By that I mean attacking the survivor trying to help the survivor that got caught trying to help the other survivor that got caught if you know what I mean. After the attack, if you can't finish them off and your support is dead, get out of the fight and try to attack again later.

Tank and Infected Synchronization

T1 players like to let the tank go in first and then let the infected pick off 3 survivors at the same time after the tank incapped the first person. This strategy of course can't always work but it's the most common and successful tank strategy among professional l4d2 players. Don't hit a survivor grabbed by one of your teammates, you will most likely free them. (exception: low hp survivor grabbed by jockey OR possible instant kill if they're punched from a high distance or into the water)

Spitters and recharging jockeys

Because you want to be able to get 3 survivors captured at the same time, you would want a setup with 3 special infecteds who can grab a survivor. The Boomer is very useful aswell and can be a key factor in a tank fight. That really doesn't leave much room for spitters and that's why many people sacrifice their spitters fast when a tank is spawning without doing a good attack to get a new zombie in time. If you see that happen, the spitter player probably wants you to wait for him. I even teamkilled some spitters and jockeys recharging, because the jockey recharge is about the same time as the respawn time or even slower. I'm not saying you should do that casually and warn you that you can get kicked for that aswell. Many jockeys on cooldown will not understand that it's a good play.

Splitting them up / Focus

As Tank, you have the capability of making survivors run like chickens. If you move smart enough, you can create a significant gap between players for your teammates to exploit.
Slow survivors are easy targets for a tank when he can get close enough. Healthy survivors attacking you from behind are more dangerous for you. So I really recommend switching focus a lot to create that gap I talked about. Punch one guy to the left, one guy to the right and hope for good support.

Using an incapped survivor as bait.

If you managed to incapacitate a survivor but don't want to risk too much of your hitpoints and your team isn't ready, you could start playing games with them. Simply hide, back off or climb up somewhere safe until they try to pick their friend up. What you wanna do is getting close again so they stop the healing process and as soon as they drop him you can hide again. If they actually pick him up, it's not that bad since he has to heal anyway, so unless he's black and white there's no point in focusing him.

Using Hittables

Hittables are certain objects like Cars, Dumpsters, Trees a large rock (Cold Stream), bumper cars (Dark Carnival) with red outlines you can punch as a tank. Dumpsters are a lot lighter than cars and a little more precise but the car's weight and rotation makes it the most convenient throwable. The trees are a little heavier than dumpsters and spin like cars. Bumper cars are close to useless and the large rock in cold stream is just large and heavy. Any of those will incapacitate a survivor instantly but for some reason cars in The Parish's Bridge final won't.
Don't get stubborn with cars. Cars are very strong if they are close enough and no obstacle is in the way. But if the survivors are hiding behind anything and shooting you, all you can do is to go in, get them out and hope for a possibility to land a car hit.

How the cars fly and if they hit is random to a certain extent, but there are a few things you can do. You can aim up to make it fly higher and wider or you can hit the front or rear of the car to make it spin, spinning cars are harder to predict and thus harder to dodge. Also, crouching improves accuracy but I find it hard to speak of accuracy with those objects and I barely notice a difference.

Watch out for Survivor Mistakes
You wanna take advantage of the enemy team's mistakes. If one of the survivors is seperated, a special infected will usually take over and kill him. That also counts for rushing survivors. If there is one single rusher, your job as a tank is not to let anyone else rush. Your zombie teammates will handle the rusher if they're good. It's enough if you manage to kill 3 and 1 guy rushed. More important though, keep the 3 players seperated from the one player.

Hitting a Tank with a Melee Weapon deals a lot of damage to him. If you're a Tank, you wanna avoid getting humiliated. Their melee attacks are faster than yours, so you'll need to predict a little where they might go and punch there.
Always have in mind there might be an insane player challenging you to a melee fight, or worse, whole teams. The player hitting you is taking a great risk. If you can, punch them against a wall and try to punch them again when they're standing up until they're downed.
You might wanna try to punch all of them and split them up with your punches. Also try to dodge their melee attacks and make them leave their safe positions or split from their teammates. I'm not saying hitting a tank with a melee weapon is a mistake in general, I do it a lot myself especially on medium hp tanks.

These are some Videos I found helpful:

Curve Rock Tutorial:


Hittables Tutorial:


Damage output of different weapons compared:


Someone Killing a Nooby Tank with melee:

Well I hoped you enjoyed reading or at least it was helpful, see you in the game!

If you found errors or if you think I forgot to mention anything, you can tell me but I might just not care and leave this guide like it is.

If you like my guide, follow me on sh1tter

Charger Homing Missile

As charger, if you're given control of the tank while charging, your bot charger will automatically seek a new target. Only works if you charged in their direction or get him somewhere close.

Haymaker

I usually didn't want to include this because - I can't do it. Didn't feel the need to practice it and I'm not that keen to use bugs to my advantage. Basically you punch the ground and get a rock at the same time or in short sequence, the punch first. Also accelerates the rock throwing animation.