Onos nerf
m3lior
Join Date: 2011-06-07 Member: 103181Members
Join Date: 2011-06-07 Member: 103181Members
Comments
It's not.
Now some times a team will drop an early fade or onos and they can be extremly destructive early game. However, if they go with an early onos drop that means theres a lot of upgrades and traits they are missing out on.
I'm okay with trading upgrades for straight up winning the game
it's not just that but the onos forces the marines to play on the back foot so that the aliens <i>can</i> get their upgrades set, that's the whole point is that the onos is literally a win button
Not really. He's about the same now, it's just that before he had a Hide Armor value of like 4 or 6 or something. The change removed the hide armor and translated it into normal values, this was a direct buff to Onos VS Exo. Not much else changed though.
If the ability to field onos so early remains then they need to have a scaling system in place. The end game siege unit coming out at 7-10 minutes and being spammed to 3-4 onos by 15m in pubs is just asinine. It's unfun to both play against as marines and rely on as aliens.
Now, at 6 minutes what can the marines possibly have in their arsenal, in terms of tech, both at Minimal (one resource node) and average (3?) nodes? What are the Pres of the marines. What do the aliens have aside from one onos egg?
When we can answer those questions there are still more to ask. Did the marines waste their res on a shotgun to lose it 30 seconds later? How about mines/welder?
All these questions, and probably more, have to be taken into account. Can we speed the marines earlier tech up? Can we alter resource flow? Make the egg cost more at two hives instead of three? Take longer to evolve?
As you can see this isn't a simple fix.
The onos in my opinion has to stay at two hives because sometimes you just need that guy to help take a third hive.
Now, at 6 minutes what can the marines possibly have in their arsenal, in terms of tech, both at Minimal (one resource node) and average (3?) nodes? What are the Pres of the marines. What do the aliens have aside from one onos egg?
When we can answer those questions there are still more to ask. Did the marines waste their res on a shotgun to lose it 30 seconds later? How about mines/welder?
All these questions, and probably more, have to be taken into account. Can we speed the marines earlier tech up? Can we alter resource flow? Make the egg cost more at two hives instead of three? Take longer to evolve?
As you can see this isn't a simple fix.
The onos in my opinion has to stay at two hives because sometimes you just need that guy to help take a third hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If Marines have three rts at six minutes? They'd have jack ######. Like, w1/a1 and Welders.
I don't know how often t.res is accumulated exactly so I can't calculate the exact number of t.res and what can be bought with it.
Games work well when they have a clear early game, mid game, and late game. You don't want people spamming colossus or broodlords at 6m in SC2. We shouldn't want it here, either.
These things are unstoppable late game, and when you have 2-3 of them it's just stupidly powerful. An early onos is a risky move, but no nearly as much to compensate for the amount of damage they can do.
Haven't played too many games huh?
Seriously the Onos is fine, if you give aliens 5 or more res towers, then yea they're going to get onos eggs pretty quick. And if your team doesn't understand how to trap and kill an onos, you're going to lose. Try playing as an onos then tell me how easy it is to run up a hallway at 4 marines without being nearly dead.
You also have to consider that 75 is a TON of res. If that onos dies, they missed out on putting up a second or third hive, upgrades, and more res towers. People forget that early onos is actually a pretty all-in type of strategy. If you lose the onos you're in a lot of trouble. But I've done several games where many oni died to several marines cutting them off or chasing them into a trap. It's pretty similar to when you lose all your exo's, it's a long time before you can get them back.
Seriously the Onos is fine, if you give aliens 5 or more res towers, then yea they're going to get onos eggs pretty quick. And if your team doesn't understand how to trap and kill an onos, you're going to lose. Try playing as an onos then tell me how easy it is to run up a hallway at 4 marines without being nearly dead.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fine then, enlighten me if you will, because apparently I don't understand. Let's try a scenario and maybe you can help me.
What is the best way to stop an Onos rush who is attacking my base? Let's say I'm comming and I have six guys in the terminal on the docking level late game, and a pair of Onos outside in the platform waiting to rush in. I have all the weapons and equipment upgrades, a proto lab with a basic exo unlocked, a robotics lab with sentries, and an observatory. Some sloppy fighting has let them push through the cafeteria and take it, and it's now filled with crags and whips, but we still have plenty of res and a second point in departures. The aliens have the just the two ons (say the skulks are trying to steal my res and are gone.)
How then, might I survive their attack? What should the com tell the guys do, and how would the com help?
If I couldn't lose this base at all, I would have 2 people stay back with exos with MAC welding backup. The other 4 would be sprinting to the hive to kill it. And then spam health on those attacking the hive. Possibly jumping out to help kill the 2 oni if the exos are bad.
Best case you kill a hive and the oni. Most likely case, Kill the hive and the oni retreat to kill them. Worst case everyone dies.
A better option would be to prevent them from getting 2 hives.
alien comms have to decide "upgrades or fastonos"
Seriously the Onos is fine, if you give aliens 5 or more res towers, then yea they're going to get onos eggs pretty quick. And if your team doesn't understand how to trap and kill an onos, you're going to lose. Try playing as an onos then tell me how easy it is to run up a hallway at 4 marines without being nearly dead.
You also have to consider that 75 is a TON of res. If that onos dies, they missed out on putting up a second or third hive, upgrades, and more res towers. People forget that early onos is actually a pretty all-in type of strategy. If you lose the onos you're in a lot of trouble. But I've done several games where many oni died to several marines cutting them off or chasing them into a trap. It's pretty similar to when you lose all your exo's, it's a long time before you can get them back.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
are you talking about your self huh ?
1. you need second hive to have onos, so they aren't missing that.
2. after you plant onos egg, you can get all important upgrades for your team in like 2mins.
3. it's not the onos that is overpowered, it's the distraction it causes to marines and allows rest of the aliens to expand and raise havoc, if it was 1v8 with onos then yeah, onos would lose pretty sure.
4. onos comes way too early, i've seen earliest onos on 4mins of the game when aliens got 6res nodes immidietly and gorges helping to build a hive, if aliens are cornered and forced to have ONLY 3rt's, you can get onos for aliens within 6mins, it's so stupid, marines can't have anything with 3 res nodes, imagine if marines sucks ass and they manage to hold only 3rt's and suddenly there would be flowing in exo's with dual miniguns.
there was one game i planted my self onos egg at 5min, i was able to take whole map ALONE because aliens sucked ass, but i was eventually killed and all my team did during 10mins when marines didn't have anything but 2rt was to build whips in hives like insane ammounts, so yeah, onos alone is not op but it needs the team, and if alien team knows what to do, onos is both impossible to kill but also gets your team more rt's, bases etc, wich in order gives alien more onoses.
but that all is not the point here, point is that aliens shouldn't be able to get onos, wich is very endgame lifeform at 6mins, not even 8mins, onoses belongs to endgame, skulks are perfectly capable to handle marines at 6mins of the game, if they aren't then aliens simply don't know how to play and doesn't deserve a win.
biggest problem is that aliens simply doesn't have so many resource sinks as marines, marines NEEDS and is ESSENTIAL to have 1. armslab with upgrades 2. phasegates 3. welders, mines and probably shotguns if aliens indeed go to 6min onos. So aliens can AFFORD to get that onos egg, marines CAN'T afford to go straight to exo's because there is more essential stuff to be had, and even if you went STRAIGHT for exo's ( wich would suck anyway without upgrades ), you need another commandstation, armory, armory upgrade, prototypelab, and exo upgrade, and in addition 50res to buy suit, and that is just normal exo, not dualminigun wich is supposed to be onos counterpart, that all costs 175res, and remember, that is only normal exo without any essentials marines needs. what aliens needs to have fully functional onos able to both def and offence is : hive(crag), cara upgrade, onos egg.
that's 160res to have fully functional onos wich is equal to marines dual minigun exo with level3 armor and mayby even level1 weapons.
Here are some of the usual ways of how 6min onoses play out:
1) Best case for the marines: Onos quickly overextends and gets trapped. Dead onos and the alien teams investment gone. This is pretty rare, and even in this case, marines have most of the time been forced on the defensive and have abandoned some RTs (and have not killed alien RTs). Most likely the onos has already paid back at least a significant part of the investment.
2) Second best case for the marines: Onos can be contained with experienced teamplay and counter-onos tactics, such as armory blocking. Marines commit roughly 3 marines to defend at all times and aliens flank around to kill RTs. Marine map control is weak, alien map control grows. Marines can try onos-trapping and teching up. If at some early point the onos can be killed, there is a small window of opportunity for new expansion or attack. At the meantime the aliens have grabbed more RTs and saved up for more upgrades and a new onos egg.
3) Worst case scenario for the marines: Onos cannot be contained and shuts down PG expansions one after another. Skulks eat RTs. Within a few minutes the marine team gg's out and logs on to the forums to complain about the OP 6min onos.
Basically, what it comes down to is that the 6min onos is a no-brainer tactic that almost always pays itself off and absolutely always is worth trying. It doesn't really even exclude other alien strategies, only delays them by 2 minutes or so. Here is the build order with guesstimated timings:
- Early hive drop and 1-2 extra RTs right at the start
- Possibility of leap @ 2-4 min
- Carapace or Onos egg @ ~5-7 min
- Onos egg or carapace @ ~6-8 min
- Leap if not gotten earlier
- Celerity or blink
- Blink or celerity
With earlier carapace you can have more effective skulking and lerking. With earlier onos your skulks lack carapace for about 2 minutes more. Leap is not necessary, but is sometimes a good choice. Skilled skulks can in many cases use wallhop and carapace to good enough effect though, especially with an onos tanking the hits.
tl;dr: 6 min onos is way too attractive an option right now and makes games boring. While it is not an auto-win-button, it does almost always pay itself back due to giving aliens a lot better map control. A lot of map control wins games.
However, if the UWE numbers are correct, and it's 50/50 winrate with the early Onos strat every game, then think of how bad Aliens would be doing without it.
Dunno. It certainly makes the game bland. But it can't just be plucked out and nothing else be done.
However, if the UWE numbers are correct, and it's 50/50 winrate with the early Onos strat every game, then think of how bad Aliens would be doing without it.
Dunno. It certainly makes the game bland. But it can't just be plucked out and nothing else be done.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pretty much this. If you just nerf the onos, alien winrate will plummet- what are you going to do instead, fades? A 50 pres lifeform that has to run in fear from a lone shotgunner. Lerk is okay for support, but you don't want to be relying on it if the marines have a1 or better, and good luck killing structures with it.
Maybe fades need to get buffed or shotguns nerfed. Or perhaps like many people have suggested before, the ability for aliens to remove dropped weapons through a gorge devour ability. That way fades might see more play in these kind of strategies since the main deterrent to fades are shotguns early game and the onos can be tweaked as a result. I'm all for diversity of strategies and simply removing this kind of "all-in" strategy would be bad, but in its current state, it could be too much.
However, if the UWE numbers are correct, and it's 50/50 winrate with the early Onos strat every game, then think of how bad Aliens would be doing without it.
Dunno. It certainly makes the game bland. But it can't just be plucked out and nothing else be done.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
IMHO the problem appears if the marines can lock down 3 hives with phasegates/armouries/shotguns/observatories:
- the lerk/gorge/skulk/fade would require a large amount of luck (or large skill imbalance) to capture one of those hives.
- if the alien commander has picked stealth, it becomes worse.
- if the marine commander puts a MAC factory against the powernode(s) that seems to be another problem.
- without hivesight the ability for aliens to prevent this situation is lower than it would have been in NS1.
Ironically, even if aliens DO get the 3rd hive, they are still left with the task of attacking marine hives, to which they are still extremely unsuited. (although some locations are easier than others)
The onos is simply the solution to that problem. The imbalance is that the problem is so acute, and so important that nothing else matters but the onos... which does not make for an interesting game.
IMHO:
- the 6 minute onos should disappear 'somehow'.
- the onos needs to be less important to the alien team. (this could involve shotgun/GL changes, observatory changes, fade changes, lerk changes, armory changes, power changes, making the onos more expensive/other lifeforms cheaper, hivesight returned, building location changes etc - there are lots of little things that all hurt).
- like in NS1, the stealth hive needs to have a combat effect.
>Second hive
>Second/third RT
>Onos
>Upgrades
>Lifeforms with extra res
>High chance of winning
It's usually not viable to go like this
>second/third RT
>Specialize hive (Crag/shift/shade)
>Upgrades(shell/spur/veil)
>Second Hive
>onos/T2 abilities
Simply because your main attack class (Skulks) aren't as useful without leap, which is an extremely important upgrade. Plus you can be egg locked easier since you only have a single hive.
One of the ways to solve this would be to give reasons to specialize your hive early on and buy a handful of crags/shifts/shades/whips.
They also need to move Spores to 1Hive research (Available right away to research, but costs res) I'd personally also recommend they move bilebomb to 1Hive research (This way if the aliens lose their second hive mid-game, they will still be able to deal damage to marine structures)But I could see why they wouldn't.
Specializing your hive should also give you a passive ability as well. Such as crag hives and eggs having more armor, Shade hives cloaking everything around it passively/only cloaking structures passively. And Shift hives having increased egg spawn speed or increasing movement speed to all aliens within 'x' radius of the hive.
Small things like that can really add up and increase the viability of choosing to specialize your first hive rather than instantly dropping your second hive. Moving Spores and bile bomb to 1Hive research also means lerks and gorges are extremely useful early on, and are still useful mid to late game.
Personally i'd also like Umbra to be moved to Tier2 so it's used more often, but I can see why that wouldn't happen as well.
TL;DR: Revamp alien tech tree so it's more viable to specialize your hive instead of going for a fast hive and onos/leap
really? because the title is 'onos nerf' and not 'nerf the ability to get an onos in 6 minutes'.
also, what's too early? if it's pushed back to 10 minutes etc then alien <i>could</i> be too weak to stop a <10 min marine push etc.
balance tweaking is probably the most difficult thing in the entire game, and the thought of balancing a completely asymmetrical game like NS2 is horrifying.
i think krovakon makes a good point about losing your second hive and thus losing KEY upgrades (especially leap and spores), in addition to whatever tech structures you had in the other room.
without leap and spores, how the hell are you meant to stop upgraded marines? if you lose your second hive it's basically GG already.
would it be imbalanced if aliens 'kept' their extra unit abilities even after losing additional hives? (still lose carapace, adrenaline etc if you lose structures - only keep the essential hive upgrade stuff like blink, spores, leap etc which gives aliens a chance against marines).
i haven't thought about it much... but attacking the final hive as marine is facepalm boring - it's not even funny.
Nice ideas, personally I'd like to see something like the ability structures and abilities decoupled from specific hives, but you have to pay increase costs like for example in case you have a crag hive and want celerity or keep the costs but reduce the effectiveness of said abilities (that might be too complicated though). Amount of upgrade slots is dependent on the amount of hives. But this way, if you went with a shade hive, you're not totally screwed if marines denied you any other hive locations.
Anyway, getting a bit of topic here.
If the ability to field onos so early remains then they need to have a scaling system in place. The end game siege unit coming out at 7-10 minutes and being spammed to 3-4 onos by 15m in pubs is just asinine. It's unfun to both play against as marines and rely on as aliens.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree with you that the biggest problem is the timing, but I also think the Onos is too strong even in the late game. Consider that the marines in NS1 had more firepower (HMG) than the marines currently do in NS2, yet the Onos was still balanced with almost 1000 less effective HP. That's not to say that the values need to be similar, or that they should be, but the difference fits well with what I've been seeing ingame; that the alien team is nigh-unbeatable once they obtain critical Onos mass (30-50% of the team as Onos).
Personally I think the problem needs to be solved through scaling, rather than hard caps such as locking it to the third hive, and I feel the same applies to the two hive limitation as well. An unlocked tech tree makes for much more interesting choices, but of course it needs scaling to be balanced. I have solid idea, at least I think it is solid, on how to do just that, and I will be writing a monster post on it in the not-to-distant future.
But marines get exos, which chew through Oni. Also, if an alien team can afford to get 50% Onos, they probably deserve the win for holding all the RTs on the map for so long.
That will never happen and for good reason, that would make Aliens unplayable.