Is shade hive 1st/2nd viable on pubs?

Savant

Open question.

With shade first there is a sacrifice. For what you get (cloaking/ink + silence/camouflage) you need to give up either shift (hatch/energize + celerity/adrenaline) or crag (heal/heal wave + carapace/regeneration). This means that when you are at hive two, your lifeforms will be lacking either celerity or carapace, and if you go crag last you won't have any crag chambers until that point. Considering the strength of the marine team at this point in the game, this can make the alien team very vulnerable. Even if you go shade second, you still end up with lifeforms lacking either celerity or carapace until hive three.

Note, I'm not suggesting that shade first is completely broken. I've seen teams make it work. The problem is that it needs a level of skill and teamwork that tends not to be present on public servers.

So, is shade hive 1st/2nd viable on pubs? Why or why not?

MaximumSquid

Savant:

Silence can be devastating in the right hands, but is awful on Gorges

Usually going shade hive first means getting both silence and cloak evolutions to let your team decide how they want to play

The only real downside to Shade first is that you will have very weak Onos if you cannot secure that 3rd hive
Give Shade first a try on maps where there are 5 or 6 tech points as you really won't be risking much beyond egg lock

Blarney_Stone

In my personal opinion, it's just too costly to wait until the third hive before getting celerity or carapace. They're just too important for the early game to put off researching them until you have three hives. Shade abilities are nice but they aren't really needed in the early game. Silence isn't needed because skulks can move silently anyway, and camo will only inspire your skulks to be less aggressive and more camp-y in a part of the game where you really should be expanding as far as you can possibly go.

The shade evolutions are a nice luxury to have, but IMO they should always be put off until the third hive.

Calego

In some cases more than Celerity is adrenaline. Adrenaline can be the difference between your pub fade having enough energy to get out of a sticky situation. And it's the difference between having a gorge capable of biling down a power node in one run or two, not to mention the healing powers.

I think if you're forced to choose crag/shift for second hive after going shade first, crag is the better bargain. Once the weapon upgrades start rolling out you really need carapace to be useful.

Shade first is certainly viable, but with its current state it is decidedly weaker overall than either of the other two choices.

ScardyBob

As with everything, if you have good players, then many strats are viable. If not, then go cara (if <20p) or shift (if >20p) and hope for the best.

MMZ_Torak

The biggest reason I don't like Shade first is that it kinda plays into the marine's strengths. Shade first forces the marines into a much more methodical approach and reinforces moving in groups; both of which lead to marine dominance. Couple it with the fact that Shade first requires more skill on the part of the Aliens to use properly and that fact that you are pushing Crag or Shift to the third hive; which can easily make taking that third hive harder. This tends to throw a layer of grease on the slippery slope.

In the right hands, it works fine. If there is a skill disparity leaning toward the alien team, it works fine too. If the marine team has it's act together, it is a death sentence.

Tyrsis

The only time I've seen shade work is if aliens had a few high level skulks, and the kham _knew_ it was an all in strategy and planned for a 3 hive or bust game. Also only silence is researched. Realistically we probably would have won these games anyways, but it's certainly nice being able to run full speed and flank, and do something different. You can basically get silence + carapace + leap in exactly 6 minutes if you can hold 4 rts.

I think it went like this:
3 rts -> shade hive -> veil / silence -> 2nd hive -> heal it -> crag hive -> leap -> shell / carapace

Lock 3rd hive location and you're good to go. Obviously start can be optimized a bit to get silence out quicker while not delaying 2nd hive, but that's the idea. Without good skulks who can really abuse silence and keep the 3rd hive location contested (no pgs), you're going to have issues though.

Industry

Once ink works properly again... Crag 1st (carapace) Shade 2nd (silence) all day er'y day.

Blarney_Stone

Industry wrote: »

Once ink works properly again... Crag 1st (carapace) Shade 2nd (silence) all day er'y day.

What's wrong with ink now?

Industry

Blarney_Stone wrote: »

Industry wrote: »

Once ink works properly again... Crag 1st (carapace) Shade 2nd (silence) all day er'y day.

What's wrong with ink now?

Unless it was stealth fixed in the current build, you have to ink before the scan to prevent an ARC from firing and even then seems to not block vision sometimes to the ARC. (It works properly in sewlek's balance mod)

ritualsacrifice

It's supposed to be able to prevent arcs from targeting structures that have ink on them.

Tinker

Silence is one of my favorites, especially with leap. Unfortunately it requires smarter play and is therefore unpopular :P

Slice

If you go Shade hive, get silence and tell your skulks to use silence. Do not cave in to the whines for Cloak. Cloak makes your team crawl around the map and sit somewhere waiting to ambush a marine.

Ambush and baiting and valid tactics but if the whole team is sitting around waiting for someone to walk under them, it cripples your offensive push.