When welding for an exo..
Mikiesox
Join Date: 2013-02-10 Member: 182964Members
Join Date: 2013-02-10 Member: 182964Members
And an Onos comes charging in. Should you keep welding him through the fight or should you whip out the LMG (or whatever you you got really) and give him an edge in the fight? I'm thinking the damage from weapons 3 LMG on an up close Ones (won't miss much) is worth the time lost welding. Except I always see marines in big exo groups opting to weld until their mechanical buddies' end. You're not a gorge, you have heavy firepower that inflicts immediate damage, so why weld for the 8 second fight when you could unload 2 clips into the sucker? I can't be the only one who's come to this conclusion right? Anyone with some interesting numbers with scenarios on this?
Comments
Personally I feel that welding the exo might be better, since the onos' attack is so slow on exos... you welding could save that exo by 1 or 2 hits, giving it enough time to fend off the onos.....hopefully...
No I would shoot the Onos, if dual exo misses a few shots the Onos won't die before the weapons overheat, but a marine pulling a clip+pistol on the Onos will be enough to finish him off.
I wouldn't mind seeing some number crunching on this issue.
Well despite how stupid the mechanic feels, (that you need to run around with a welder attached to the EXO's ass in order for it to survive any encounter) and despite the fact that the welder heals the EXO slower than welding anything else in the game, (EXO weld rate is 25, player weld rate is 30, structure weld rate is 90, sentry weld rate is 150 and power node weld rate is 220) the fact is that by welding the EXO you are effectively reducing the Onos damage from 95 to 70 per second, which increases the time it takes the Onos to kill the EXO from 7 hits to 9 hits. That 2 extra seconds of life can be crucial.
Put it this way, what is the better outcome....
You kill the Onos and the EXO dies, or you kill the Onos and the EXO lives...?
If you shoot instead of welding, there is a greater potential for the EXO to die before the Onos does.
Also remember, that your W3 LMG isn't going to put much more than a dent into the Onos. Since the Onos will absorb 2 points of damage for each point of armor it has, (against an LMG) this means its effective health (versus an LMG) is 3100. For the EXO, the effective health of the Onos is only 2200 since the minigun does heavy damage.
In my experience what tends to happen if support marines shoot the Onos instead of welding is that the Onos will die AFTER he kills the EXO. The problem with that is that it's unlikely the person with the EXO can afford another one, while the Onos can get an Onos egg drop with ease.
So to me I consider the loss of the EXO a far bigger loss - with respect to the battle - since the Onos are relatively easy to get, and aliens typically have more resources coming in by nature of their innate map control.
If your team is rolling in res and you have an Onos that is really causing you trouble - so much so that you would be willing to sacrifice an EXO for it, then shoot instead of weld.
If you want the EXO to come out of the battle with the Onos alive, weld him. Just get behind, weld and pray.
Hmm. I don't like the 'innate map control' sentiment. To do this right as marines, you HAVE to limit aliens to fewer harvesters than you have extractors. You just have to.
When marine comms can drop dual exos (I'm looking at you, update!), perhaps this will be less of an issue.
Provided the exo can shoot straightish and you have a couple of light marines with you, there's nothing to weld while the onos is incoming (ie the exo is on full armour), then you're best off putting shots into the onos on his way in, then reload, then weld the exo once the onos has closed the gap and started hitting it. If the onos tries to escape, you've reloaded after your first clip and you can chase it down with 1 lmg and a pistol clip.
It's very situation dependent though. What was 1 onos charging in on his own for?!
By welding you also make yourself an easy target for any skulks bouncing around.
If you have no welder, jump in front of the Exo, block the Onos, fire as fast as hell, taunt -> it gives the Exo more time to damage the Onos and the Onos player might lose the will to fight when even a small lmg rine is confident and confronting him head on. Every second in the middle of the minigun storm is important for an Onos.
If I have a welder and a Shotgun, I shoot. The extra damage and the moral attack of the shotgun sound seems to be more than the welding aspect.
What I don't like is when I see an Exo die because his brave lmg comrades are running as far away as possible from the Onos to shoot it. The Onos might die, but the Exo is most likely toast. You have only a lmg, you should be a wall between the Exo and the Onos. This worked also the best against the NS1 devour. Protect the HA by getting eaten yourself
But in the end it might be only a matter of the circumstances and the favored play style.
It's less a matter of whether you can kill the Onos though and more a matter of whether you can kill the Onos *before* the Onos kills the EXO. If you shoot instead of weld, you have a greater chance of killing the Onos - yes. However you also have a greater chance to lose the EXO as well. Ask youself, what's more important?
Killing an Onos and losing your EXO in exchange? Or failing to kill the Onos and he runs away but your EXO lives to fight another fight?
For me what's more important is the latter. There will be other times I can attempt to kill the Onos, but once the EXO is dead, whether you kill the Onos is usually immaterial at that point. The EXO is gone and you lose a huge tactical advantage. If I am playing aliens, I'll trade an Onos for an EXO any day. (Unless we're sitting on one hive.)
Again, ask yourself what's more important... The EXO living or the Onos dying. In most cases those are the two outcomes.
1) The Onos will be very put off continuing through with the assault and might retreat in which case the Exo will have it almost dead by the point it is out of range, or dead straight up.
2) The Onos normally has to make a distance up before meeting the Exo up close. On average it's 2-3 seconds. Well no use standing there waiting for those few seconds - unload the clip. Then get to welding.
The correct answer is always situational, however more often than not, there's a fade trying to backstab marines welding, lerks gasing the immediate proximity around the exo, gorges healing the Onos... More often than not, it's going to be more effective to shoot than to weld. You can increase that DPS against the onos, or kill the gorge behind the onos, etc.
On paper, an EXO being welded should outlive a solo Onos. Whether the EXO lives all comes down to how well he aims. Sadly, because of a broken game mechanic, the Onos is able to clip his model OVER the EXO, rendering him blind. This action usually degrades the EXO's accuracy to the point where he cannot survive no matter which way you cut it. True and not true. True that there can be different attacks that require different responses, but not true since the OP didn't mention the Onos having buddies with him. If it is Onos versus EXO and welder, I stick with welding personally and I've had more success with it. Any time I'm tried to attack the Onos while the EXO is being attacked the EXO ended up dead and I was dead soon afterwards.
Dual Exo, W3, that can aim?
BLOODY WEALD.
It's simple. You need to fire longer at the onos as you can. Your weapons will overheat. Than you need to pause your fire. This is wasted time where the onos can do damage without receiving any. If 1 or 2 marines are shooting the onos, that is 500 to 1000 additional damage. You can weld the exo after the battle. At first try to do as much damage as possible to shorten the battle.
So, shoot dat meatloaf.
Edit: Cara Onos has 2200 of HP, not damage.
Citation: Multiple people saying shoot only if you have a shotgun -.- similar dps as lmg.
body block the onos + shoot. you take at least 2 onos hits and deal damage.
or body block to absorb 1 hit, then hide behind the EXO and weld.
it kinda depends on the situation.
no... lmg is nowhere near dps of shotgun - you're forgetting to count reload time. unless the onos dies in a single lmg clip, your dps will drop considerably.
Derp, wrong, in fact lmg dps is considerably higher if only measuring the first clip. As a side note, in my experience and certainly mathematically, one lmg clip plus an exo that can hit the broad side of a barn is sufficient to kill an onos.