Silence first
xen32
Join Date: 2012-10-18 Member: 162676Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Join Date: 2012-10-18 Member: 162676Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Ok guys, what are your opinions on silence first?
I find it to be pretty useful in early game, since it's not countered by anything, makes your team faster (even with cele you gotta press shift sometimes). I also heard that silent attacks does not give alerts to marine comm. Major downside is that your special structure is essentially useless. Another downside is that your team will keep calling you noob and/or asking for camo. The trick here is not to give them camo at all, or they will start crawling everywhere.
I find it to be pretty useful in early game, since it's not countered by anything, makes your team faster (even with cele you gotta press shift sometimes). I also heard that silent attacks does not give alerts to marine comm. Major downside is that your special structure is essentially useless. Another downside is that your team will keep calling you noob and/or asking for camo. The trick here is not to give them camo at all, or they will start crawling everywhere.
Comments
Personally, I LOVE silence first. The sound ques in NS2 are a major factor in any engagement. Nothing quite like running full speed up to 2 marines building an RT, and killing one before they know what happened.
One time, I killed 3 marines building an RT and they didn't get a single shot off. All they heard was "arg!" as their squad died to a single skulk they didn't know was there. This only happened once though.
I feel that we will see more silence openers once cloaking gets changed.
Would see even more shade openers in general if they brought back Scent of Fear** as a passive when inside the cloak radius of the shade.
**Basically gave vision on any enemy within a certain distance, even through walls, just in case no one played NS1**
Sounds promising mainly for skulks, however the shift hive does not mix as well with higher life forms when you get your second hive. In my opinion this is what the ideal upgrades are if you only have 2 hives.
I should note the bottom is majorly for pub matches. For Competitive play, if all players are good, then carapace or even a silence first is preferred. The below build order is more for breathing room for commanders to deal with when your team is not up to par in emergencies.
For Lerk the ideal upgrades are celerity and regen (for hit and run attacks far away from healing)
For Fade Celerity/adrenaline and regen (for hit and run attacks far away from healing)
For Onos adrenaline and carapace.
For Gorges adrenaline and carapace (the adrenaline with shift nearby to supply energy can help the gorge build a hive or hydras etc faster).
The shift hive upgrades like silence and cloak are nice to have but are less effective for most of the higher lifeforms if you are stuck on 2 hives only and struggling to get the third up from the marines.
I also prefer the shift hive first for the shift extra eggs in strategic locations to stop a marine rushing to control a room or the hive attempting to egg lock.
Sometimes crag hive first for carapace if I think it would help the team better.
Silence or cloak first would only be used if your team is much better than the enemy team and know how to use it to sneak up and bite them before they react, it becomes less useful the more marines there are in the room if they see you once. Cloak often times just makes new players slow to respond to marine taking crucial objectives and crawl at a snail pace to the marine building the phase gate on the other side of the room. Both gets less useful if the enemy builds an observatory in a strategic location or the commander scans.
So my build order is usually Shift > Crag > Shade hive or sometimes Crag > Shift > Shade.
Just my 2 cents.
Dude, silence all the way so much. Does this answer your question?
i like silence but celerity helps get skulks were they are needed unless you are sitting on 3 tech point locations fairly secure than i would always go for crag and shift
No.
Crag first, until build 240 anyway, is the best as far as efficiency, tactical use, and benefits. Carapace is ridiculously good. Shift is only good because the average player is a floorrunning skulk that doesn't know how to walk
Both have uses depending on the map location and team make up.
However the shift hive like i said earlier provides eggs which can prevent a room from being rushed by marines or the hive being early egg locked (it also helps gorge heal/build hydras up or to get the second or third hive up faster with adrenaline regen for gorge), which is more useful early game then a crag which just sits there and heals, which a gorge can replace with the adrenaline upgrade to heal things while remaining mobile at the same time.
Also useful for other high lifeforms if you dont have 2nd hive up yet, lerks (celerity for faster flying), gorges (adrenaline for more healing and building energy), fades (depending on skill celerity/adrenaline), and onos (adrenaline for more charge goring marines).
While regen and carapace are very good upgrades, the shift egg makers + upgrades balances out the equation by how versatile it is to prevent lockdowns and tactical usage.
Shift does the same, arguably better. Speed high growth and provide eggs in case of emergency.
If your team is good enough to take all 3 hive points early in the game (marines did not have enough good players), then it doesnt really matter what hive you start with. If you are stuck with only 1 or 2 hives, a shift/crag hive makes it easier for higher life form aliens to fight back for control of objectives.
In terms of pure speed, shift can't possibly be better considering the higher cost, especially if eggs are needed.
shift first is the worst by a landslide. cara is most consistent and is the best overall upgrade for the entire game. camo is great for instant wins on pubs against bad comms and works pretty well even against better players sometimes
silence first is the apparently the newb hipster choice of upgrade
In my opinion, the best 2 upgrades if you could only have 2 for lerk, fade and skulk are carapace and silence. Celerity is potentially still useful on lerks, but not on skulks or fades, and as these three classes are what win games at higher level play, they are the most important upgrades.
I completely understand that many people will disagree with what I just said. That's fine, but know this: until I started to learn to play more seriously (very recently, and I'm still not great but definitely improving), I thought that shift first was the best. I know from experience now that I was wrong.
(On a random pub, I'll just take what I'm given as it makes it more of a challenge and it's often pointless to argue against popular opinion!)
Cara if you ignore the benefits of shift in tactical game saving uses. Celerity and Adrenaline are arguably less useful than carapace, but the emergency eggs more then make up for it when you balance it out.
But both are reasonable choices for first hive, but calling shift as "worst by a landslide" is exaggerating in normal pub play. Competitive play is a different matter where cara/silence is a preference.
signed, someone much better than you
If you are including pubs, shift is a must on many of them. Especially as the player counts go up. What you said is true for smaller games.
It depends on res flow, yes. But assuming no upgrades and shifts/shades at each expansion the cost difference is 10 tres (will be 0 in B240). You can grow your hives much quicker via shift and eggs cost nothing if you don't need them. Eggs are nice to have. The point is to get 3 hives quickly, losing one because you couldn't get reinforcements there in time would be a major set back.
If you are talking about competitive matches then, shade first with silence or carapace first becomes more useful as you expect the players to use it more effectively. In pub play however, you cant always depend on players so the extra eggs is for just in case scenarios (which is surprisingly often).
Shade makes it much easier to take territory by force, and hold it once gained due to the overwhelming offensive power it gives you. After all, the team that fights on enemy ground is winning, and its easy keep marines on the defensive if they can't hear/see you. Constant RT pressure (denies upgrades) and marines losing most engagements (Denies Territory) gives the Kahmm enough breathing room to easily get a third hive.
If the team is good enough to take 3 hives without the offense boost shade gives, they were going to win anyway and starting chamber doesn't matter, shade just makes it easier to do, but gimps higher lifeforms if they can't manage to keep marines on defense long enough
Shift does allow for egg bases and faster hive growth, but at 5 tres for 2 eggs, it will slow down a third hive to use that as a defense, so it would be better to settle in to two hives with shift/crag and better to focus on getting 3 hives with shade.
While you have some good points, the ability to scan and place and observatory can really break the usefulness of cloak/silence first. Unless your team is really good to make use of it effectively.
Also, if your team loses the second hive (the most important) which is the most important mid game and marines are able to lock down because you did not put a shift in to spawn reinforcements during a crucial fight, it doesn't really matter if you have enough res for a hive as you cant build it.
Shift first is a very win hard or lose hard strategy in pub play.
The shift provides more breathing room for the team commander without gimping higher lifeforms early if the marine commander is good with scans and have the map locked down.
Also I think you kind of supported my point with
"If the team is good enough to take 3 hives without the offense boost shade gives, they were going to win anyway and starting chamber doesn't matter, shade just makes it easier to do, but gimps higher lifeforms if they can't manage to keep marines on defense long enough"
Correct. Every hive has its uses, it depends on the overall team skill/number of players (as you can easily get egg locked as aliens when you have alot of players, that die often) and how effectively they can make use of those upgrades in the beginning that should dictate what you choose as first hive.
Also I'll take silence over adrenalin on my fade any day. Silent fades are op.
For ALL lifeforms though (except perhaps lerk) carapace is the #1 upgrade. If you had to pick one, that's the one you'd want, lerks that spike may not need cara but if they like to get bites off then it's for the best.
Silence is the toss up depending on player skill in most cases, but remember if you go silence early game you have a shade hive over a shift/crag hive, losing regen/cara for your other teammates or the commander loses shifts to make eggs which can be a deciding factor in early pub games.
If you are playing a lerk properly you should not be taking too many direct damage at once (e.g. biting when they are not looking and avoiding direct shotgun damage), then when the damage stacks up and you only have cara, you have to fly back to hive to heal which takes away precious time away from killing marines/controlling map. Regen helps to keep them in the battle longer especially if they are far away/difficult to reach a hive/crag/gorge to heal up.
Depending on how far you are to healing sources, as fade you can go cara or regen. I prefer regen as I am often alone deep in enemy territory being chased around without any healing sources.