(NS2 STATS) First hive choice preferences - Discuss
Nordic
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
Comments
They boosted basic skulk movement to make shift hive less needed, and than people start playing shift hive more? lol
Meanwhile crag seems on a decline while its quite strong IF used well.. interesting.
That's a big 'If'.
Well, crag hive is the easiest to play. You just have more health.
Logically that makes sense but I am not sure that is accurate in practice. I see a lot of players around the skill spectrum, but especially low skill players, who claim celerity is almost necessary to be an effective skulk. Even before silence was put on shift hive, shift hive was chosen 70% of games. I think pub dependence on celerity is a major factor in shift hive being so
Personally I think celerity is fairly strong but not at all necessary. I think @fordprefect has said celerity is almost necessary for him.
For me, shift hive is THE hive to have. I'm going to be referring to PUB games to be clear. There is no silence on shift hive in comp (as it really should be, imo). Here's why I think, opinions ahead.
Commander bias:
Echoing is invaluable... especially in pubs. I will always drop my first natural, see how the next couple minutes go before I decide whether or not a shift is needed. That's a huge advantage over other starting hives IMO because for me, as someone w/ an RTS history, RES IS THE FIRST AND FOREMOST ITEM ON MY AGENDA. I cannot get the tech my team needs by the time I need it if I do not get the res I need asap. I can bypass the time it takes for my drifter to move from nozzle to nozzle, the clear danger of losing an unprotected drifter/unbuilt harvestor, and can fly comm and gorge up and echo out my own structures w/in a hive room.
I don't care to comment on the enzyme abilities because IMO, they're all about as useful or.. not useful, though I probably most often use enzyme on gorges building a hive and the rare organized ambush in a pub.
Alien bias:
Speed is good, but when the name of the game is ambush, and you can fly at full speed (esp lerk/fade whose movements are typically easy to hear) from around a corner, maintain speed, and chomp the living eff out of your opponent before they even realize you've bit them, I don't need speed at all. And in pubs, clearly most others don't either. As lerk, it's very easy to get 2 bites off w/ silence before the marine even realizes they're hit.
I don't know what else needs to be said about it, silence is OP as it is. By putting it on the clear first choice hive only made shift hive more viable in my opinion.
FURTHERMORE now I can have silence AND aura. As a lerk.. it's so fun. I know exactly where they're at, I know how many bites they need, and I know I will be able to FLAP FREELY without them knowing where I'm coming from. I wish I could say Fade too, but I just don't even try to fade unless my team is clearly going to win, but I imagine it's just as fun, though I'd probably use celerity if I faded.... ANYWAYS!
Crag hive.. meh. is okay. But as commander, I have almost no need in the EARLY game for heal wave or mucuous membrane. I've got Skulks and gorges on the field, gorges can heal themselves, skulks are expendable for the most part during this time.
Shade is not a good first hive almost ever IMO and it's not because things like vampirism aren't effective, but because by the time you need a 2nd hive, you're going to be at a disadvantage choosing between crag and shift, which.. imo.. just much more useful hives. Shade can be a solid second hive if you suspect arcs especially. I just think it becomes a handicap when you're on just shade and crag or shade and shift. Shift and Crag are just... 100X more useful IMHO. You're not going to be using ink in the early game either.
Anyways, there's probably some other obvious reasons I've skipped over, but I am not surprised one iota that shift is by far the most utilized starting hive.
SILENCE ON SHIFT HIVE IS OP. BONESHIELD IS OP. PO BACKWARDS IS OP.
They boosted skulk movement to make shift hive less needed, sure. They also boosted shift hive into being excessively strong. Or OP as he put it.
You're lucky I'm actually visiting today, because you misspelled my name :P
Well, I wouldn't put it like that; that might have been the case a few hundred hours of play time before, but I think by now I'm good enough to deal with not having celerity.
However, back when silence wasn't on shift, it was rarely necessary; Shift was almost always first hive. If not, second, after crag. Not going shift was just not worth it, since Celerity is such a great upgrade for all lifeforms and you also lose adrenaline for gorges. We can discuss the actual usefulness of additional speed vs. more health all day, but I think most people (mostly non-competitve ones) would agree with me if I say that celerity just feels so much better. Alien movement is a lot about going fast and speed upgrades just go well with that.
And, of course, after silence was moved to shift, going shift first became a total no brainer. (At least in pub, which I almost exclusively play(ed).) Celerity skulk is dead, long live silence skulk. It's very fun to stalk unsuspecting less skilled players Alien style with a silence skulk, but this is more than offset by how little fun it is to fight against. (Both for them and yourself.)
I spent a thousand hours training my ears to exactly locate skulks moving around me, and if the enemy went shade first, that would be a real gamechanger: Aliens are more squishy, but also less predictable. (Yes, normally skulks can sneak, but lots don't in pub and it does slow them down quite a bit.)
After the change, your ears became unreliable. Of course you can deal with that by amping up your paranoia, but it's frankly just annoying.
To answer your question, I'd say shift always felt best to the average player, and when it got silence it became objectively better than the alternatives in pub. And that's why everyone plays with it all the time now.
Silence on shift hive is OP for the reasons stated above but I want to stress the information deficit created by silence + aura as mentioned by 2cough. It's so god damn powerful on every lifeform bar onos.
Moving silence back to shade hive makes sense for many reasons, the difficulty is fixing the problem that silence has become a crutch for: early game alien expansion vs easy marine aggression early game (major problem is skulks throwing themselves at the nearest engagement time after time after time)
Imo, skulks should be quieter by default because this would help the play style of rookies drastically
I am also seeing a lack of understanding about why silence was placed on shift hive. The developers decided that the combination of celerity and silence was too strong, so they moved silence. As I understand it, the addition of the new upgrades was to increase player choice.
Personally, I am not a fan of silence on shift hive. I did not make the decision, obviously. I do like the addition of new upgrades, but crush and vampirism are underwhelming. Both could be great but they clearly are not right now.
Just spit balling ideas here. I think the following upgrade shuffle might be interesting.
Three traits would be altered would be useful because:
The three hives would now have the following traits:
I think the above hive combinations would be less OP than what we have now and also provide better tradeoffs between traits.
I doubt balancing is capable of fixing any of these abilities.
Shift:
-UPs: Silence/Celerity/Adrenaline
-SA: Echo
-DA: Enzyme
Shade:
-UPs: Vampirism/Focus/Aura
-SA: Ink
-DA: Hallucinations
Crag:
-UPs: Carapace/Regen/Crush
-SA: Heal Wave
-DA: Mucous Membrane
Now, let's break it down.
SHIFT: (Personal Starting Hive Rank: #1)
Shift is great all around. All of its abilities are arguably usable and cover different roles. Silence is great for ambushing, adrenaline is great for high energy cost lifeforms, and Celerity is great for an overall speed boost. No one could argue that Echo is beyond probably one of the most useful all-around commander structure abilities as moving structures around the map nearly instantly is game changing. Finally, enzyme has its perks. It can be used to speed up hive building or to increasing the likelihood of a good rush.
-UPs (9/10)
-SA (10/10) (I'd give it 100/10 if I could...)
-DA (7/10)
SHADE: (Personal Starting Hive Rank: #2)
Shade is nearly as good as the shift hive. Two of its upgrades are insanely useful. Focus allows for early and late game slaughter. Arua is great for strategic play and res-biting. Vampirism is lackluster, but the other two abilities make up for it. Ink is very necessary for some maps as arcs can be a serious threat such as Tram. It's niche, but it's a very useful niche. Hallucinations are an amazing ability as well. It is an effective damage mitigation tool and a decent distraction.
-UPs (7/10)
-SA (7/10)
-DA (9/10)
CRAG: (Personal Starting Hive Rank: #3)
Crag is great in some areas and super lackluster in others. As far as upgrades I feel crag is superb. Regen, carapace, and crush all have their place and their own usable niche. However, the issue of crag lies in its commander oriented abilities. In simplest terms, they absolutely pale in comparison to the abilities of Shift and Shade. In fact, shade's DA effectively does what the crag's DA does, just better as it doubles as a distraction. The crag's structure ability is also quite trash, as most of the time there will not be more than three structures/lifeforms in a room requiring healing. If there is more than three, chances are there is a gorge there, effectively mitigating the point of the heal wave.
-UPs (9/10)
-SA (3/10)
-DA (3/10)
To me, the shift hive is the most utilized due to it being the best overall hive to start off as. Echo has so much utility and enzyme is quite useful if utilized correctly. On top of that, celerity and silence are amazing to have access to at the same time as they fill exactly opposite niches. This is also why crag is seen as the worst. The upgrades are good, but the commander abilities are garbage in comparison to what the shift and shade can accomplish. Now, before anyone argues that we must nerf the hell out of Shift, that's not the solution. The solution is to make the shade and crag more appealing as starting hives. So, how could we do that?
Here is an example for fixing the crag heal wave ability:
The crag's SA could be changed to give a brief boost in structure HP or an effective structure shield. This would give it some utility as a harassment nullifier. A form this could take on is boosting the structure maturity to max (if it isn't already) and boosting it to 110% on top of allowing the crag to heal as many targets as possible (though a slight healing penalty might be warranted). This would be practical and useful to commanders.
Now, I haven't covered everything in this list. I'm aware that strategies exist with each hive. I was talking generally or this would be pages.
The synergy of silence and aura is too OP. Ink is also the second best hive ability because games typical stalemate around the fight for the 3rd hive and/or defending the 2nd hive where ARC plays are strongest.
I disagree with people that say celerity and silence are OP, I think it's just suitably strong just like how regen and silence are suitably strong. I liked @nordic ideas. I think crag and shade hives do need a bit of buffing on top and again I agree with @nordic over your solution
Coolitic raises some good points, but it would still be better than what we have now.
@NexZone30 raises another good point, which are the hives' secondary effects. Echo is just too damn useful (especially early game) compared to everything else.
Ironically, it had the opposite effect. You were supposed to bring balance to the force, not destroy it...
I would even go as far to say that all drifter abilities are equally overpowered. Drifters are weak and difficult to use, so we don't see the drifter abilities often.
I agree that echo has significantly more utility. I don't think this is all that important. Public players will not complain that you chose crag or shade hive because now you can't echo. They complain because they don't have their personal upgrades. I have even seen some players verbally assault the commander for not choosing shift hive.
I disagree that they cannot be balanced. There is a fine line where it would be good. The purpose of this change I mentioned is a way to put silence back on shade hive. It keeps upgrades to the themes of the hive. Crush is an extraordinarily confusing upgrade. It clearly needs a revamp. The lifesteal portion of Vampirism isnt all that bad. A slight buff could make it a worthwhile but not OP upgrade.
It seems no one made the connection. This idea I proposed is in ghouls balance mod. Test it out. He has not changed crush or Vampirism although he moved their hive.
While you are right about this, the commander is the one who actually has to decide which hive to evolve, and echo is definitely going to influence that decision, regardless of what his team thinks.
Its mainly a skulk or late lerk upgrade to destroy structures. pres is not a issue for free skulk upgrade swaps.
At a cost of 3 res, its not a huge concern for lerk in mid to lategame either.
Ive even used it on onos, although I often hear the onos should just go with the added armour of carapace.
Its main issue, as always, it that pubs just dont use upgrades as they should.
I see not why it would make shift weaker if we move crush to shift.
Reverse it's effects on armor percentage.
Currently when you attack 70% goes to armor and 30% to hp.
Each level of crush increases the armor percentage by 7%. Rank 3 crush means you deliver 91% of your damage to armor and 9% to HP.
Reverse that and it becomes 49% armor and 51% hp.
a 75 damage bite deals
34.125 armor and 6.75 hp with old crush
18.375 armor and 38.25 hp with new crush
26.25 armor and 22.5 hp with no crush
In practical terms this would mean a skulk could always kill a marine in 3 bites regardless of armor.
This may sound overpowered to you but consider currently that marines rush armor 2 in basically all games. This provides a potential tech path for aliens to counter that build and force more dynamism into both teams build orders, while there is no tension on marines choice of armor 2 there is never a reason not to rush it first.
Unless that "fine line" is where there is a small amount of both cons. Not everything can be fixed by adjusting numbers, sometimes the idea itself is just bad.
Also, what's the justification for having lifesteal with camo? If you are going to add something together with camo, at least make it something stealth/deception oriented.
Crush is confusing because it is inconsistent. Crush has high utility in certain situations, but is not as widely applicable.
Getting crush on an onos would help you kill certain structures, exo's, and arcs faster. It would not help you in combat.
That is totally true. I don't think crush or lifesteal is a bad idea at all. I think it was just poorly implemented.
This is certainly not true now. I remember it being false in the past as well. There may or may not have been certain times when it was true.
Crush affects spikes and bilebomb.