Are Some Upgrades... Just Better Than Others?
SmoodCroozn
Join Date: 2003-11-04 Member: 22310Members
Join Date: 2003-11-04 Member: 22310Members
<div class="IPBDescription">In most cases</div> It's been like this since NS has been started, but I'm wondering why the rest of the 9 upgrades are not at the levels of the 3 most "strongest" upgrades: regen, celerity and focus. Doesn't giving chambers except for defense, innate abilities such as adrenaline and cloaking cause players to choose upgrades over these 2? I know that people have used and won games with different upgrades, but for reliability, some upgrades are used more than others...
Yes, you might counter my argument, but I believe the 3 I mentioned are the best in most cases, throughout the game.
Yes, you might counter my argument, but I believe the 3 I mentioned are the best in most cases, throughout the game.
Comments
Ideally your team should have a nice mix of upgrades. Sof/adren/regen lerks for continual sporing of marines. Celerity/regen/focus fades for quick takedowns. Silence/cara/sof skulks for parasiting and node killing.
I mean you can mix it up to find what you are comfortable with but being able to stay in battle for as long as possible while hitting them hard and fast is always a good strategy.
with fade i usally take regen as i fade as teh second hive is put up, it allows you to constantly harrass la marines. All though with 2 hives i wish i could change to cara, cus it can save u against lvl 3 guns in the later game and you can heal reasonable fast with meta.
if your team goes sc second, get cara and focus as fade
Very good as a defensive bullet sink Onos, but poor if you're solo rushing enemy base.
I would say that cloacking is the least usefull for the higher life forms, next to redemption. Most people can see a cloacked onos, or fade. or lerk. And all these classes should be standing still to much.
Like silence is a great upgrade, but MT makes it completely useless. Just like a silent regen fade can be devistating since the marines wont hear the incoming blink.
But the upgrades that you can't hard counter are perferd, Like celerity, adren, regen, cara, focus, sof.
cara, cel, focus is better imo. You can take more hits up the **** from upgraded guns late game. Problem is you're going to be visiting the hive/gorge constantly for healing. But by this time, the marines have already lost if you've gotten the third hive up.
Generally, there's no really good upgrades for fade. It's all about preference, judgement, and experience with the fade that'll let you own the rines.
cara, cel, focus is better imo. You can take more hits up the **** from upgraded guns late game. Problem is you're going to be visiting the hive/gorge constantly for healing. But by this time, the marines have already lost if you've gotten the third hive up. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
So how is cara better than regen again. I'm talking about MOST cases, not times where you do something radical. I mean doesn't focus show it's power by costing 2 in co?
And for an onos, sof is preferable to cloaking or focus. Cloaking is kinda silly, because mt or scan will kill it (not to mention you'll only be able to sneak into ms once before they start looking for the image of the cloaked onos), and focus nerfs your ability to take down buildings quickly (hint baconmachine hint). sof lets you avoid traps and know exactly how many guns you're going to be facing.
What is up with that? That must be a misconception. Lvl 3 focus attacks have half the ROF but double to damage. Unless the number of attacks needed to down the building is odd, there should be no difference (and even if it's an odd number, we're talking about 1 attack more needed). Not to talk about adren saved if it's a skulk attacking an rt for example.
Also
Good upgradees: SOF Silence adren regen cara focus celerity
Crap upgrades: redemption cloak
Just depends what class
Onos - regen cel/adren sof
fade - reg/cara cel/adren focus/sof
skulk - reg/cara adren/sil/cel focus/sof
lerk - regen celerity/adren focus/sof
gorge - doesnt really matter
Focus attacks at 1/3 the normal rate? Why does it always say it halves the attack speed then? o.o
again in clan matches i nearly always take carapace even at 1 hive. with very experienced marines they will surely hand out lots of shotguns or a few hmgs when a few fades come and i find carapace saving my life a lot. i think it's more beneficial to the team that u don't die at the possible price of harrassing less.
silence for skulk.
Explain please. You must base that opinion on something?
Beretta, you are mistaken, tjosan is correct. At level 1, your attack rate is delayed by 33% along with a 33% increase in damage. At level 3, the delay is at 100%, with a 100% increase in damage. meaning 1 focus bite for every 2 regular bites. Hope that clears sausage.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->i dont care what its cut to, focus does nerf your sturcture killing.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't understand this. Focus allows you to kill buildings faster. Say you are a skulk chomping on a RT. If you were by yourself, you would come to a point where your energy usage overcame your energy regeneration, which is the "slow" point. If you had focus however, this point would never come as you lose less energy.
With this "extra" energy, you could use things such as metabolize, a fast getaway leap, a well-needed stomp, etc. Focus not only powers your primary attack, but gives your other abilities more energy to use.
Not only that, but you take less damage when you rush a tf farm and swipe at something with focus, than going in twice with a regular swipe.
Another good use of focus is with conjunction with primal scream. You get a faster damage to time ratio and damage to energy ratio.
Skulks:
Carapace - Celerity - Focus (guess I'll be using it alot more in B6)
Gorge:
Redemption - Celerity - SOF
Lerks:
Regen - Celerity - SOF
Fade:
Regen - Silence - SOF
Onos:
Regen - Celerity - SOF
Silence rocks on fades. You can chew up whole marine squads if you know what you're doing.
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Especially when pubbing, i prefer silence/sof/regen lerk.
It is the best way for dealing with lone rambos and pesky ninjas of course
b6 will also change alot of things, concerning upgrades and upgrade orders. I had a great game the other week, we went for sc and mc....a whole silence and sof alien team is pretty scary.
You have to choose upgrades based on current need or anticipated future need. For example I personally lerk often, and I usually get carapace and celerity. Many people will disagree with me, but I have reasoning for what I do. In my experience the #1 cause of lerk death is being surprised and dying before a reaction is possible. Carapace adds extra armor, which prevents this from happening. Often I will escape a dangerous position with less than 50 health, something that would have killed a regen lerk. I choose celerity because a lerk is capable of extremely fast movement with this, which makes it difficult to hit. If you combine the two you have a small, fast unit with a very high damage potential versus multiple opponents. I find this more useful than a regen/adren lerk. That's simply my way of playing, and I choose upgrades to match. This does not mean I always go cara/cel. Often I will go regen/celerity to counter solo marines when I'll be far away from healing, especially on larger, longer maps. On maps like tanith I would almost never go regen because I never leave the immediate hive area, nor would I have a reason to.
Choose upgrades that match your <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=86674&st=60&#' target='_blank'>role</a> and you'll be good to go. For example a hive defense fade would do well to choose carapace if most of the action is near the hive, especially if a second hive is going up. Carapace fades have a larger margin of error in terms of choosing when to leave the fight, whereas regen is far less forgiving of those who stay too long. Adrenaline does the same versus celerity. If you have crap adrenaline management, adrenaline will help a fade survive a situation that s/he otherwise wouldn't have made it out of. Often once players have mastered the basics they move on from "help me survive" upgrades like adrenaline to more offensive upgrades like celerity.
Mixing it up is also highly effective in choosing upgrades. Something rarely seen or used is silence on the lerk or fade, whereas actually getting this upgrade and using the unit and upgrade effectively can be devastating. Any Lunixmonster regular can tell you my silence lerk is pretty much devastating until they marines have MT. Effective usage of units and upgrades will win the day, even against a supposed disadvantage. It's amazing how taking away one of the senses causes the enemy to lose an advantage (it's hard to fight a lerk in a large room if it moves vertically and you can't hear where it went. The senses are very important in games).
Special note on focus: Focus is not important because you can kill marines with armor0 in 1 bite. Yes, that is an important aspect of focus rushing, but it's not why the upgrade is powerful. It's powerful because lacking team cooperation (namely having full armor people always in front, rotating out damaged marines, and welding), a focus fade will devastate marines lacking HA. Two swipes kills any non-HA marine, no questions asked. Being able to move in, get a bite/swipe in, move out, and repeat it moments later and getting a kill is very important and is a powerful ability. Focus allows aliens to counter marine armor without having to land multiple bites. Combined with a lerk, focus is nearly unstoppable versus anything but HA marines. I know this from personal experience at top level competitive play (Sup Mustang). Even focus skulks are unstoppable killing machines given leap.
Carapace - Celerity - Focus (guess I'll be using it alot more in B6) <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
hmmm...why using it a lot more in B6? i didn't quite catch the part where it changed the focus upgrade...
it all really depends on play style i guess...personally i take celerity.