Shade Hive
Benson
Join Date: 2012-03-07 Member: 148303Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Join Date: 2012-03-07 Member: 148303Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">where did it go</div>I've been noticing a very popular trend to never get shade hive in a game, even competitive ones.
Is silence and cloak so bad no one wants it over cara and regen?
Personally i think silence is better then cara cause you get shot less.
General Question: Why would you guys pick crag over shade?
Is silence and cloak so bad no one wants it over cara and regen?
Personally i think silence is better then cara cause you get shot less.
General Question: Why would you guys pick crag over shade?
Comments
Is silence and cloak so bad no one wants it over cara and regen?
Personally i think silence is better then cara cause you get shot less.
General Question: Why would you guys pick crag over shade?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Straight combat effectiveness is generally better than stealth. Cara is also useful on all lifeforms; why would you want a silent Gorge or silent Onos is beyond me. Skulks also have a built in silence that they can use if they really want to. I imagine when they release some more builds things will change, but for now cara is top priority next to augment.
Silent fades, lerks, and leaping skulks are deadly, especially with cara, but still no one gets shade and only gets 2nd hive for regen.
Silent fades, lerks, and leaping skulks are deadly, especially with cara, but still no one gets shade and only gets 2nd hive for regen.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It depends on the match, you need to lock down a 3rd Hive and have 80(40+20+20)res to spare. Most people get the third hive when they can, sometimes games end before that happens.
It's a much safer bet to roll Crag Hive on your first hive for Carapace/regen than it is to go Shade (which is quite a liability if you don't get your 2nd hive going asap). And by the time you get your 2nd hive up, it's not even worth spending the res to research cloak or silence because those upgrades are not only less beneficial to higher lifeforms, but the nature of mid/late game makes them quite ineffective at that point.
edit: Oh and Shift Hive will be the nail in the coffin for Shade Hive :(
Augmentation probably helped kill the Shade Hive as well. With the second hive being not nearly as important as it used to, Aliens can simply hold off on one Hive for a lot longer and Carapace is the best bet off one hive.
However now all lifeforms are available at any time, and second hive isn't a top priority compared to harvesters (or moreso replacing them as they die all the time).
Cloak is junk and silence is only good on skulks, but not as good as carapace
So there's no reason to pay 40 resources so Skulks can be Carapace + Silence
What makes sense is to leave the 2nd hive un-upgraded and in the event your main hive goes down you can recover quickly by turning Hive #2 into another Crag hive
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If you want to talk potential buffs for Shade Hive I can illustrate the problems 1 by 1 if you like
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which two?
Ah yeah I forget Celerity will be different than NS1... I'm guessing it's good for gorge and onos (or gorge/skulk)? It's main allure is ease of movement on infestation I think, right? Moving between hives...that's the best I can speculate. And depending on how good Hypermutation is (that's the 2nd Shift Hive upgrade wasn't it :s) Shift Hive may or may not be able to compete with Crag Hive in any capacity..
The TL;DR is Crag Hive<!--sizeo:1--><span style="font-size:8pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->(carapace)<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--> absolutely dominates.
Celerity is useful to all lifeforms.
Especially true since the Gorge is not a real lifeform.
Especially true since the Gorge is not a real lifeform.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's been said Celerity is going to be geared toward "being able to get from hive-to-hive" quickly by some dev posts, so I believe this implies that it's going to be some kind of on-infestation-only mechanic or in the least a rather defensive upgrade. It won't be the static movement speed upgrade that it was in NS1.
So what you're saying is... buff Lerk speed?
yes but only when travelling through areas where nothing is happening and you're totally safe
otherwise it's <i><b>Imba OP</b></i>
However, it also means that the second hive comes before augmentation, which can sometimes be a real downer.
yeah, I agree. when I first started playing NS2 I thought it was a toggle and that I could only turn one stealth thing on at a time. that would have even been better than the current lame way :/
*Brutally easy
Not to be pedantic, but clicking on a single unit and then activating the ability of said unit in a non-toggle manner is the textbook definition of micro. Macro is the overall decision to build a shade hive vs a crag hive in the first place. I was complaining about having to activate the stealth manually. Is it easy? Sure. Does the manual action improve the game with its presence? No.
Not to mention when the marines know you're on a shade hive they will go all out weapon damage and obs to hard counter your evolutions
This disappoints me greatly.
Shade hive will always be that last hive upgrade that's taken (or flat out not taken at all). No amount of "special little tools" they give that tech line will change that and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If it doesn't benefit the player personally, either combat effectiveness or life longevity, it's a useless perk. As Kouji said, carapace is a requirement because how marine's scale, taking shade will just hamper your team and put you a serious disadvantage. Further more, because Marines damage scales rapidly at the beginning of the game (early shotguns, then level one dmg), if you don't have carapace, your skulks will being doing damn squat (fades will be paper thin) and Marines will have an easy time pushing Aliens back and win map control.
If shift hive upgrades are going to be limited (and piss/poor like I'm already feeling they are going to be) Alien Kham will have the interesting choices of always going Crag -> Shift -> Ignore Shade for a backup Crag.
Its not really a big a deal as it sounds. Its actually this way with most upgrades, but we don't notice it that much, until you actually say it.
Carapace is a little too general, and always has been, but has its draw backs. Every class can use carapace, and it is a big improvement, but with level 1 guns up and decent aim, it isn't giving you all that much.
Regeneration is nice to have, but nobody is taking it before carapace, that already means it isn't <b>as useful</b>. Even then, while people still evolve to it if 2 hives are up, what real use is regeneration to a skulk, or even a gorge? Sure, it has its niche moments (rarely), but ultimately its an ability for Lerks, Fades and Onos only.
Silence is quite clearly designed almost entirely for skulks, and to a lesser degree Lerks. Fades might get something out of it, if just to be different, but ultimately its a two lifeform upgrade (and always has been even in NS1).
Even when looking at celerity in NS1, you can see how limited its uses were. As a gorge, taking celerity was more of a party trick, as an Onos, there was little point. Fade does most of his movement through blinking, so any benefit he gains needs to be multiplied by the percentage of time he spends actually moving by foot. Essentially it is once again an ability made for skulks and lerks, but it didn't make it a bad upgrade by any standards.
Purely as an example, imagine if Shades gave a massive benefit to skulks and gorges, making them something like 1.5 times as powerful as their carapaces counterparts. However, imagine if that improvement translated poorly to lerks and fades, and plain awfully to Onos.
Then maybe Shifts would be the best for Lerks and Fades, but would leave your early game skulks and gorges quite out-gunned, and would result in lacklustre Onos when the time came.
And then, for the real long term planners, an alien team could choose to go Crag first, which would leave the first 4 lifeforms somewhat underpowered for the early to mid game, but result in really potent Onos coming out towards the end, if the aliens survived that long.
What Goblin said. Focus more than made up for the lack of benefit that celerity gave Fades and Oni.
Unless someone can tell me what Hyper-Mutation actually does, I'm not holding my breath for it to be amazing enough for me to pass up going crag first hive.
What Goblin said. Focus more than made up for the lack of benefit that celerity gave Fades and Oni.
Unless someone can tell me what Hyper-Mutation actually does, I'm not holding my breath for it to be amazing enough for me to pass up going crag first hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you go Lerk with hypermutation you can go for free skulk, back to Lerk, for 20 more res Fade and back to gorge for free etc.
I don't know if it also counts if you die.
F.e. you are Fade and killed 3 rines trying to kill an RT, go gorge heal it up, place some hydras and go back to Fade (in a shorter time than normal). Or you are Onos in SUB hive gets rushed in Atrium, go Fade, Blink to Atrium and reOnos at the other side of hive in 3 or so second.
So it can be a very powerfull Upgrade