The new fade / lerk
.ADHd
Join Date: 2012-02-18 Member: 146565Members
Join Date: 2012-02-18 Member: 146565Members
<div class="IPBDescription">The pro's and con's</div>Really digging the new fade blink. It offers more control to the player which is something I have been "camplaining" about for a while now. A lot of people will argue that the new fade blink is too slow, but keep in mind that you also have much greater control over your overall movement now. I really like this and the ns1 fade style is a lot more appealing to me.
For those who don't like it as much try using celerity and adrenaline rather than cara+regen. You will move as fast as before, and this leads me to the con's part.
The fade has a little higher HP than I believe is necessary at this time, as you can SLAUGHTER marines without even using carapace or regen, and often can get away with just shadowstep for a while as well (Imbalance?). You can easily go 30-1 without even using regen+cara if you have a good comm who places crags and shifts. In very very late game the fade HP seems a little more acceptable once marines have level 3 weapons and shotguns, but even still I find that it is far too easy to escape a group of 5 shotgun marines with more than 150+ health every time. People who are proficient at fade are becoming godly again.
Overall great changes with the fade though. I really am digging the new feel and gameplay of it.
Now, on to the lerk....
Unfortunately, I do not have many pro's to say about the lerk. I do, however, like that our lerk has received a significant speed boost, however making them harder to hit at this point can be frustrating. So, right now the lerk feels nearly invincible to me (At times). I like the speed boost and think that this was a definite step forward but something still feels unbalanced with the lerk.
Right now the balance is too leniant for the aliens HP. They can take way too much damage before having to back off. The lerk is a lot more fun to play now however. Lerks are way good at countering jetpack marines now, and so are fades... which I think is overall a good thing if not for slowing down the potential time jetpacks hit the field. Fades and their tank armor are more regularly going to be hitting the field before jetpacks... and it takes longer to heal a proto lab than a hive. I am not sure what the deal is with that?
Please UWE! I love the new jetpack aircontrol, but that is the only buff you gave us. Everything else was a buff to aliens (As per usual) and the marines have more stuff they <i><b>have</b></i> to do to unlock tech. I think it was smart to re-lock abilities to hives, but not to force teams to need more than one CC. That is my opinion but it's been tried before and didn't workout the best.
Right now it seems to work <b>ok</b> but not as optimally as I would like to see. In all honesty I would prefer the marines to have not been touched at all these last builds and focused more on balancing out the aliens tech tree and economy. I am not a genius game designer but from my many hours of playtesting I have come to the conclusion that one of the biggest problems with the game is simply the alien economy moreso than their abilities and timings but I could be completely wrong.
For those who don't like it as much try using celerity and adrenaline rather than cara+regen. You will move as fast as before, and this leads me to the con's part.
The fade has a little higher HP than I believe is necessary at this time, as you can SLAUGHTER marines without even using carapace or regen, and often can get away with just shadowstep for a while as well (Imbalance?). You can easily go 30-1 without even using regen+cara if you have a good comm who places crags and shifts. In very very late game the fade HP seems a little more acceptable once marines have level 3 weapons and shotguns, but even still I find that it is far too easy to escape a group of 5 shotgun marines with more than 150+ health every time. People who are proficient at fade are becoming godly again.
Overall great changes with the fade though. I really am digging the new feel and gameplay of it.
Now, on to the lerk....
Unfortunately, I do not have many pro's to say about the lerk. I do, however, like that our lerk has received a significant speed boost, however making them harder to hit at this point can be frustrating. So, right now the lerk feels nearly invincible to me (At times). I like the speed boost and think that this was a definite step forward but something still feels unbalanced with the lerk.
Right now the balance is too leniant for the aliens HP. They can take way too much damage before having to back off. The lerk is a lot more fun to play now however. Lerks are way good at countering jetpack marines now, and so are fades... which I think is overall a good thing if not for slowing down the potential time jetpacks hit the field. Fades and their tank armor are more regularly going to be hitting the field before jetpacks... and it takes longer to heal a proto lab than a hive. I am not sure what the deal is with that?
Please UWE! I love the new jetpack aircontrol, but that is the only buff you gave us. Everything else was a buff to aliens (As per usual) and the marines have more stuff they <i><b>have</b></i> to do to unlock tech. I think it was smart to re-lock abilities to hives, but not to force teams to need more than one CC. That is my opinion but it's been tried before and didn't workout the best.
Right now it seems to work <b>ok</b> but not as optimally as I would like to see. In all honesty I would prefer the marines to have not been touched at all these last builds and focused more on balancing out the aliens tech tree and economy. I am not a genius game designer but from my many hours of playtesting I have come to the conclusion that one of the biggest problems with the game is simply the alien economy moreso than their abilities and timings but I could be completely wrong.
Comments
Edit: I think with improved hitreg, lerks are fine and skulks are probably underpowered. Occasionally you will find a smooth server and skulks are getting slaughtered.
Most people are still adjusting to not having 30 second leap and carapace at their disposal so quickly, yet they keep doing straight lines to marines on the ground (I have seen it countless times already).
Now you have to be sneaky and clever with the skulks, and this makes them a more powerful class if done right. I think the whole aggro leap skulk thing was terrible gameplay, and overall made the skulk a throw away class. Now I find myself killing about 3-4 marines per life when I was getting about 2-3 average with instant leap. Getting the leap just gave you more incentive to rush into a pack of marines to just get a kill or two. Now you can hide and parasite a couple... drop down and kill them both and run away and evade. Parasite the next guy and take him out as well. The gameplay is a lot more genius with the skulks and I personally LOVE it. It reminds me of the early beta's when there was actually a point to hiding up in the ceilings and etc.
I donno, I have noticed my KDR go up with skulks in this build even though you'd assume the opposite. You have to play differently now... you have to play smart (Which is better).
I guess you could argue that you could play that sneaky clever way even with instant leap but I am simply saying the gameplay didn't give incentive for it.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Sped up Lerk (13 from 11) and reduced his armor (50 to 25)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The problem is that the carapace upgrade did not change, so while it was 50/100 last patch its 25/100 this patch. That would be 175 effective health on the vanilla lerk and 325 on the cara lerk (a gain of 53% effective HP from normal damage). Pretty obscene amount of survivability from a 1 pres upgrade, especially brutal in the early game. I guess it's sort of balanced out by the fact that the lerk is horrible early game atm though (short of 2hive+spikes) but that's no excuse.
Also hitreg is as bad as ever, I would be very careful about passing final judgments about alien survivability based on current observations in the live build. It wouldn't be crazy to say that upwards of 30%+ of your bullets just straight up dissapear. Especially shotgun.
Skulks ambushing with 50 armor just seems wrong. And lerks with 100 armor doing anything feels wrong.
The fade could use a small boost to speed in blink w/o celerity. And a more visually apparent blink effect so you can realistically track a blink fade if you practice. If those changes happened I would also really like to see blink as the default ability for fades. And shadowstep as a second hive "cheapo" upgrade since it helps so much in-combat as a dodging and position mechanic, and as an energy preserving maneuver out-of-combat.
The problem is that the carapace upgrade did not change, so while it was 50/100 last patch its 25/100 this patch. That would be 175 effective health on the vanilla lerk and 325 on the cara lerk (a gain of 53% effective HP from normal damage). Pretty obscene amount of survivability from a 1 pres upgrade, especially brutal in the early game. I guess it's sort of balanced out by the fact that the lerk is horrible early game atm though (short of 2hive+spikes) but that's no excuse.
Also hitreg is as bad as ever, I would be very careful about passing final judgments about alien survivability based on current observations in the live build. It wouldn't be crazy to say that upwards of 30%+ of your bullets just straight up dissapear. Especially shotgun.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I have surely noticed that many of my point blank SG rounds appear to be of the nerf brand. It goes both ways though, as I have confirmed with a friend that I bit him 3 times with hitmarkers while he was jetpacking around. On his screen he was never hit once...? That isn't a consistent inconsistency though. Hit reg at times seems to be spot on, and as the game progresses or other unknown variables arise it becomes... well...
The lag compensation/prediction plays a big role too. Ping very negatively effects your hitreg from my experience. I was playing on an Aussie server with 200-250 ping, I was a few feet away from an onos shooting it with a shotgun dead on and never even recieved a client-side hit indicator.....<u><b>wut</b></u>??????????
I think the main problem is not that fades are OP, but instead, vortex is. Vortex is simply a game ending upgrade, and totally negates the purpose of using the onos.
Just last night I was playing a round in tram where my team had 3/3 upgrades and almost no pres or jetpacks. We ended up killing over 20 onos rushing into shipping with our shotguns and lmg's alone. The oni are pretty useless now... I think the onos would benefit from having a giant head mounted laser beam... but that is just me.
Anything the onos could have done before is now replaced with vortex.... stomp? Nothing compared to vortex... disabling arcs? Nothing compared to vortex. I would welcome back "Disable everything" stomp again over this vortex madness. The onos should be the game ending siege weapon. Now hes just a big meatshield target... which has a place of its own, but not when there is a different class that is all around better for ending the game.
Actually, the Lerk lost armor. I was just single shotted by a shotgun in my last game, so I certainly don't think they are invincible. (Yes, that should be impossible, but I was unwounded and a shotgun killed me in one hit. I imagine they had all the upgrades while the aliens had lost many upgrades at that point.)
no i'm proposing a limit of 1 disablee at a time
I agree that the fade/lerk are a tad on the beefy side early game and are balanced late game against level 3 weapons. Would be nice to have a way to have carapace in two steps, either a double upgrade or number of hives related.
So yes Fades and lerks can do some ownage, but the moment they die they also lose all the res (which isn't the case with marines who just repickup their weapons). So it's a bit tricky to balance, I hate glass cannons where one lucky shot from the marine side lose you all your ingame savings.
I do not agree however that marines would be allowed with their full techtree while being on only 1 cc, I'm sorry but both races need to have area control and 2 cc's isn't exactly that big of a deal. I hate those games where marines just turtle on one base and get away with it just fine. This will be even more apparant the moment that exo is out where marines just do their last stand with exo-suited marines murdering everything that comes through a doorway. Tying this tech to 2 cc's fixes that.
I think that UWE is going in the right direction with this.
In 212 the fade was a joke. You pay 50pres, blink in, miss 1 swipe and die within 2 sec cause you have no more energy to escape.
The current fade fit more to the classrole. A fade should bring terror to marineteam, he must be scrary and in an 1v1 with same skills a fade never has to lose.
Through the slower blink, you have much more control now and with the extra hp,armor and nearly endless adrenalin we have the old powefull fade back.
So, i think 250 hp and 100 armor, maybe some changes to energy would be right.
It seems that most of the ns2-veterans dont play atm. I didnt know most of the players right now, my friendlist tell the same.
So, if you have 80% new players on an server and 1-2 good fades, then the fades seems totally op.
They maybe a little bit op, not totally :)
<!--quoteo(post=1947794:date=Jun 30 2012, 05:44 AM:name=Khyron)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Khyron @ Jun 30 2012, 05:44 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1947794"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Vortex is the new devour.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why was vortex introduced? Nevermind that, just behold the pretty effects!
<!--quoteo(post=1951605:date=Jul 15 2012, 11:05 AM:name=.ADHd)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (.ADHd @ Jul 15 2012, 11:05 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1951605"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Just last night I was playing a round in tram where my team had 3/3 upgrades and almost no pres or jetpacks. We ended up killing over 20 onos rushing into shipping with our shotguns and lmg's alone. The oni are pretty useless now...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1951636:date=Jul 15 2012, 05:07 PM:name=dePARA)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (dePARA @ Jul 15 2012, 05:07 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1951636"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In 212 the fade was a joke. You pay 50pres, blink in, miss 1 swipe and die within 2 sec cause you have no more energy to escape.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1949634:date=Jul 8 2012, 12:50 AM:name=Khyron)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Khyron @ Jul 8 2012, 12:50 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1949634"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Change shotgun back to light damage. At the moment it's too effective against Onos in particular.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's what I originally thought vortex was going to be an was excited about the precision strike implications. Then I remember loading up cheats and trying it before it was released and thinking "Wow, this is going to be the most op thing in the world".
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/6D2R6.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
I wouldnt be jumping all around to change fade after this build, the hit detection is arguably the worst its been in a long time. I would like to see the fade blink base speed increased some, made hive 1, and have shadowstep be hive 2 however. Also a HP decrease to 250 would probably fit the speed increase well.
Lerk needs a bite that works well for DPS (is the risk/reward gameplay), and only 60 armor with carapace (and no slowdown).
Lerk needs a bite that works well for DPS (is the risk/reward gameplay), and only 60 armor with carapace (and no slowdown).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I totally agree with lerk 60 armor and no slowdown. 100 is way too much atm with cara.
Also onos should be 750/450 imho and 750/650 with cara. 900/850 is too much for current hitreg.
P.S. I don't know bout playtest but isn't onos supposed to have better damage reduction up front "because of thick armor plates"? Let's say 10-20%
<center><object width="450" height="356"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7JyUiCWCDPw"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7JyUiCWCDPw" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="356"></embed></object></center>
Until you can compare the NS2 Fade to the NS1 Fade and the Lerk loses weight, I will keep Gorging and Onosing. Because these two are supposed to feel as they do.
Really? I think against teched out marines, onos are useless.
Largely based on what you guys have said, here is what I think needs to change:
<ul><li>Restore carapace amount to previous levels, remove speed reduction. So skulk is back to 30 armour. It has lead to some insanely tough aliens, and the slowdown makes it very poor for a first hive choice. It also makes the onos far too slow.</li><li>Fix the carapace amount for lerks so its inline with others. I assume the 25 jumping to 100 was an oversight. With the carapace change I mention above, I think 40-50 armour is sufficient.</li><li>Reduce fade health and armour to make it more demanding. Currently idiots like me can rack up kills as we walk into marines.</li><li>Reduce vortex res cost to 30 (same as stomp), reduce research time, and make it only work against a single target.</li><li>Change shotgun to light armour damage since now all aliens besides Onos have low armour, and carapace is weaker.</li></ul>
Can't shoot what you can't see or track without getting lucky - its really as simple as that. No animations, facing direction information, only a really faint purple glow. Tweaking hp numbers and all that jazz around 100% blink damage currently isn't a very efficient way of balance when the underlying mechanic (blink) is still kinda messy.
I didn't think i'd ever say it but shadowstep is kinda nice, and without that random limitation of its use in the air it'll be arguably more useful than blink.
<b>Lerk</b>
Lerk cara numbers are over the top and i dont think you can argue that its cara values are in any way shape or form balanced. Playing a lerk is braindead easy with cara and you can tell the hp numbers have been set that high due to the idea of core lerk play consisting of 'skillfull' crop dusting. Balancing lerk around shotgun normal damage is hurting rifles alot.
[*]I too am a fan of the new fade movement, although he can still turn and face different directions a bit too quickly. Sometimes you forget which way you're facing!
[*]Please take the training wheels off the fade. For the love of god.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
LOL at that picture :)
I have decided to generall hold off on making suggestion and comments on alien life forms until hitreg is sorted, ive see some crazy stuff happen, but it is beta so :D
I know vortex is powerful if used correctly, but then, if aliens hold 3 hives, they do deserve a huge advantage imo.
<b>Until aliens receive the same scaling treatment as marines, real balance will never be achieved in this game.</b>
There are only two things UWE can do:
1) They either make fades sturdy enough to fight against w3, a3 marine, which makes them insanely strong vs a0/a1 marines.
2) Or they balance them against a1, w1 marines and they become absolute ###### late game.
The problem is that the carapace upgrade did not change, so while it was 50/100 last patch its 25/100 this patch. That would be 175 effective health on the vanilla lerk and 325 on the cara lerk (a gain of 53% effective HP from normal damage). Pretty obscene amount of survivability from a 1 pres upgrade, especially brutal in the early game. I guess it's sort of balanced out by the fact that the lerk is horrible early game atm though (short of 2hive+spikes) but that's no excuse.
Also hitreg is as bad as ever, I would be very careful about passing final judgments about alien survivability based on current observations in the live build. It wouldn't be crazy to say that upwards of 30%+ of your bullets just straight up dissapear. Especially shotgun.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Really good point, but don't forget that cara slows that lerk back down, so that choosing that route leads to the same exact vanilla lerk speed from last patch, which was a patch that did not receieve much negative feedback regarding fighting cara lerk...
The lerk is almost there, IMO, a few more changes, like spores covering it's model more , better umbra feedback etc and it will be an enjoyable class
Thx for the good feedback
Thx for the good feedback<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Let's not forget poison bite changes.
The lerk is almost there, IMO, a few more changes, like spores covering it's model more , better umbra feedback etc and it will be an enjoyable class
Thx for the good feedback<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah I agree the lerk is a very good class atm, feels almost done.
While I can't predict the future, I'd expect a change here eventually.
I suggest corrosive armor damage as the DoT mechanic to fulfill the harass /support role as well as scale well with late game/exosuits.
Not talking about usefulness, but about gameplay fun. Stomping and goring can be fun, blinking is not, because fade feels like an onos without being able to stomp and gore. There is no tough movement for the fade, no high-speed mouse-flicking through tight passages of the level, no speed gain by skilled using of a movement system (in the Quake engine that was Bhop of course, plus blink. Nothing feels better than gaining speed without even pressing forward ;) ).