Unless you want to troll your team and have a high chance at losing, then it's the best pick.
I saw it in a competitive game as a first hive choice and the team won. I personally find silence awesome, and the ability to turn invisible when standing still is useful for a clever player. You can easily throw off pursuers when wounded, and you can still ambush. I have a feeling people are a bit lazy/spoiled these days. It's not that the camo in the game is bad by itself, the game is just too fast, maniacal shooter on steroids that stealth has really a limited value here.
Right now, when you take cloak you basically have to play like you don't have it, except for how you ambush people.
Truth be told, I only take cloak if it is the only upgrade option for shade.
It simply depends on the lifeform and style you want to play.
You can be a fast offensive Skulk that runs around the map with Celerity, Silence and Carapace (aka the abilities that will help you most to win a given combat situation). Or you can be a more harassing and ambushing Skulk that picks it's fights and relies on a bit teamwork, chooses Adrenaline, Camouflage and Regeneration to leap around in combat, get some bites in and confuse the enemy so that they waste their shots while getting taken care of by the rest of your team and then retreats to some corner, cloaks and waits until it regenerated to full instead of running all the way back to the Hive, so it can keep biting RTs instead.
I also take prefer Camouflage on my Gorge when I help in team fights, so I am not a sitting duck if the rest of my team dies. Then I can wait for marines to walk by and cause some Bile trouble behind their back.
Right now, when you take cloak you basically have to play like you don't have it, except for how you ambush people.
Truth be told, I only take cloak if it is the only upgrade option for shade.
It simply depends on the lifeform and style you want to play.
You can be a fast offensive Skulk that runs around the map with Celerity, Silence and Carapace (aka the abilities that will help you most to win a given combat situation). Or you can be a more harassing and ambushing Skulk that picks it's fights and relies on a bit teamwork, chooses Adrenaline, Camouflage and Regeneration to leap around in combat, get some bites in and confuse the enemy so that they waste their shots while getting taken care of by the rest of your team and then retreats to some corner, cloaks and waits until it regenerated to full instead of running all the way back to the Hive, so it can keep biting RTs instead.
I also take prefer Camouflage on my Gorge when I help in team fights, so I am not a sitting duck if the rest of my team dies. Then I can wait for marines to walk by and cause some Bile trouble behind their back.
I'm still on the fence regarding celerity on a skulk, once you have leap.
Adrenaline is equal to it, simply because you get more leaps.
If celerity worked in combat, I'd use it all the time, as it is right now though...
I only use celerity if there's nothing else.
The way camouflage actually works for the moment should be changed into a passive means 70-80% invisibility while moving fullspeed. for the moment u do not want to use camouflage because on comp. games u r usually not able to pick out 2 marines as a lonely skulk so u wait anyway for some teammates.
changing camo like its called would change alot in alienplay (more viable). really wanna shoot some halfway invisible fades where marines just have to wake up and sit in front of their screens and touching those with their nose
this way was used in Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and it worked. still visible if you take a second look and most of the enemys did not or got already killed would like to see this in NS2 and shade will be my favourite
at this Video 0:26 thats how it could look like in ns2 too or 1:40 while in stealth you are still visible all the time but only if your enemy took a 2nd look for the corners
another idea of changing camouflage would be to set it up like the old one was but if a marine gets in the radius of a skulk he might get some heartbeats or heart racing
for the moment camouflage in my opinion is def. a upgrade you do not want wasted res for in midgame because over time it becomes more and more useless - the old one the way it was was just too overpowered and moved into a lot of baserushes wich had a lot of success all the time - would be nice to give camouflage a use for every single minute of the game wich can be done if you get stealth ALL THE TIME no matter wich speed you move or if you jump off some walls lowering the visibility to a 20 or 30% would be something very exciting and very special in NS2 for sure.
I don't see why people don't like camo as much anymore.
If you get camo and silence very early on, its easy to keep the marines contained in the early game by camping the marine spawn's adjacent extractors.
I like to get silence first, cause its simply better than camo in most combat scenarios.
Then get camo shortly after to allows skulks to camp strategically important rooms.
The problem then becomes, can we captialize on our early game advantage and still remain effective into the mid-game (2 Hives) without Cara/Adren (depending on which Hive tech you choose for your 2nd Hive)
But 80% of the time, I go with Shift Hive first.
And like 10% of the time, I go Crag Hive first.
And 10% Shade Hive.
Shift Hive is just, usually, the least risky strategy to start with.
It also depends though on the size of the map and where the marines spawned.
Large maps, Shift. For celerity.
Close spawns, Crag. For cara.
Small maps, Depends. use your best judgement.
I only like Shade Hive for Silence. Camo is a joke, but it's pretty.
It's funny reading post from people who defend this state of Camo.
1. They all (except 1) seem to prefer Silence.
2. They say the previous Camo was OP.
3. They say the previous Camo made players moved to slow, hurting Aliens early game.
So, these players don't use the new Camo, consider the previous Camo overpowered, but feel that previous Camo made the Aliens play like crap? Ha!
Unless you want to troll your team and have a high chance at losing, then it's the best pick.
I saw it in a competitive game as a first hive choice and the team won. I personally find silence awesome, and the ability to turn invisible when standing still is useful for a clever player. You can easily throw off pursuers when wounded, and you can still ambush. I have a feeling people are a bit lazy/spoiled these days. It's not that the camo in the game is bad by itself, the game is just too fast, maniacal shooter on steroids that stealth has really a limited value here.
Most competitive games are the exception. It's full of people who know each other and play as a team. You research shade on a pug server and then ask the team to play stealth/ambush mode, you still have half the team kamikazing by running straight at the marines. Hence why you gotta pick tech that'll "work" with pugs.
The last sentence nailed it too. While you're sitting around waiting for a perfect ambush opportunity, the marines are expanding their map control.
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I personally love @Mestaritonttu 's idea to improve camo. Rather than having the visibility based on the alien's movement, have it based on the marine's movement, so a still marine can see all of the aliens, but a moving one can't.
I only like Shade Hive for Silence. Camo is a joke, but it's pretty.
It's funny reading post from people who defend this state of Camo.
1. They all (except 1) seem to prefer Silence.
2. They say the previous Camo was OP.
3. They say the previous Camo made players moved to slow, hurting Aliens early game.
So, these players don't use the new Camo, consider the previous Camo overpowered, but feel that previous Camo made the Aliens play like crap? Ha!
It was OP, but silence is still better because it's versatile.
Something can be overpowered without being "the best".
The reason the previous camo made aliens play like crap is because the vast majority of the playerbase is comprised of floor skulks, floor lerks, fades who don't use shadowstep/use blink exclusively, Onii who die instantly, and Marines who only want to use Exos.
The current iteration of Camo is fine, but again, silence is more versatile.
The current iteration of Camo(just like the previous iteration) slows down the pace of the game, whereas silence allows the skulks/fades/insert alien lifeform here to continue moving around the map without being detected(barring Observatories).
If camo was quicker to go into full invis, was quicker to let you go back into it after combat, and you stayed in the "shimmer" unless you were moving faster than the default movement speed(ie: Wall-Jumping, Not gliding, Shadowstepping/Blinking, or Charging) it'd be about as versatile as silence.
It has in no way shape or form any offensive abilities which makes it useless for trying to take areas that the marines dont hold.
Camo was never OP'd, it was made workable when you went 100% invis....but now it is just a waste of res.
You cant move at a decent pace or move undetected.
Ground skulks have not been remedied by having a nerfed camo (all thats happened is that entry level players have been made more inadequate), you still get people who walk around a map with the nerf cloaking.
Marines already had numerous counters for camo...and by mid game (unless marines were losing) would have obs up in their 2-3 bases which countered any cloaking effect and could easily afford to scan as needed.
This was why shade became an all in 1st hive option (as is a waste to go 2nd hive except for shits and giggles), as this was the only time in the game it was worth its cost.
The current iteration of camo requires situational awareness.
You hear marines coming, if they didn't see you, you hide, and then ambush them.
Silence is fairly offensive, because of the whole "Your base is under attack".
Carapace is better than anything though.
Celerity is pretty decent early-mid game, but once you have higher evolutions, you need carapace.
Shade first becomes Crag second, always.
Just like Shift first becomes Crag second.
Crag first is Shift second, as well.
Fairly limited strategies at the moment.
If Silence made you undetectable by Observatories(Scans would still have to reveal you, though), it'd be on par with Carapace or Celerity early game.
I for one welcome the merge of Silence and Camouflage into Phantom and hope it will be included in the main game soon. Then you also don't have to deal with comms who won't even research Camouflage and would rather let your poor Gorge die to any marine it comes across.
The merge is basically a straight upgrade to the existing Silence, making it a really viable first Hive choice and turning it into the arguably best upgrade for Skulks because it helps them win fights and stay alive.
And if they introduce Aura as well, one alien in a group (probably the Lerk, since he doesn't profit as much from Silence/Camo) can choose that trait instead and keep his team updated about incoming threats and use the target marker to pick the targets that are low on health.
I saw it in a competitive game as a first hive choice and the team won.
If we're talking about the same match, that was All-In IIRC who went camoflague since they knew that the opponents did not normally get an observatory instantly. They went camo early, went up to the marine base on Veil, ignoring the rines on the way and when they reached the CC the comm had just jumped out of the chair to build the observatory. They killed the comm and took down the CC so the game was over in ~2 minutes. If they had gotten there later when the obs was built and the commander was in the chair, it would likely have turned out differently. It was gambling, either win by rushing the CC or have a huge increased chance of losing later on. A tactic that you will likely not see in pub games.
Unless you want to troll your team and have a high chance at losing, then it's the best pick.
I saw it in a competitive game as a first hive choice and the team won. I personally find silence awesome, and the ability to turn invisible when standing still is useful for a clever player. You can easily throw off pursuers when wounded, and you can still ambush. I have a feeling people are a bit lazy/spoiled these days. It's not that the camo in the game is bad by itself, the game is just too fast, maniacal shooter on steroids that stealth has really a limited value here.
I wish the camouflage timer would kick in faster to be honest. It's definitely faster than with the old cooldown but I think it still takes a little too long before you can camouflage after taking damage. Faster camouflage would make it a lot more useful for escaping than it currently is.
I tried it once (instant Silence right from the start, Camo soon after) and my team really didn't like it.
I could totally understand why, they were right.
It was just bad.
I believe an issue is that while Silence and Camo are neat to have, they don't really help if there is a critical situation you *have* to respond to. At least Celerity gets you to the action quicker, and better general map control, so it helps a lot with defending stuff. And Carapace directly helps you in fight. (This might be the reason why hardly anybody uses Regen or Adren - they don't really help when you have to fight instead of harass).
With Camo visible while moving and regularly glitching (being visible), it's only good for ambushes so invisibility hardly makes a difference. You can just ambush without it.
And Silence is cool, but Celerity + SHIFT key for noiseless walking is essentially very similar.
To compare, the old Camo was very useful for holding territory/Tech Points/delay Marines/scare Marines/disrupt Marine strategy, so it was the useful, "critical" upgrade from the Shade path.
I saw it in a competitive game as a first hive choice and the team won.
If we're talking about the same match, that was All-In IIRC who went camoflague since they knew that the opponents did not normally get an observatory instantly.
No, that was a different match that developed into a normal middle game. I will try to look it up and post a link, but it's difficult since I usually don't remember the team names.
I've played a public gather (pug, not pub!) where we used silence first, which is cheap, allowing for an earlier second hive for cara.
We won the round, though it's difficult to say whether we would have won with other more unusual strats too.
I personally like cara then silence, but good luck finding some public server where your team will be man enough to try this... Too many people have the idea that celerity first is a must on public servers. In truth, if you have a team that's open minded and communicates, crag/shade or even vice versa is equally viable.
I didn't use the old camo because it encouraged people to play passively. I don't use the new camo for the same reason, plus you still see the occasional onos crouching along with camo... Lol!
I've started going for Silence over Celerity for my 2nd Hive upgrade in matches, and it's working EXTREMELY well.
The nerf to Skulk speed makes Celerity pretty much useless, and if we're doing well enough to be able to get a 2nd Hive location locked down, being able to spawn forward eggs is redundant.
The only thing my Lerks and Fades miss is Adrenaline, but they're growing to love the changes.
camo is worthless now, sure camo had its problems, but now its pretty much a non feature, might as well remove it from the game.
Also dont listen to these scubs who tell you camo was OP. For starters they probably dont even know the definition of overpowered, secondly they probably played the game for a week or two after the old camo changes, concluded camo was OP based on the fact that marine meta game had no answers to camo (yet) and then they stopped playing the game and have been on the forums ever since, unaware that camo stopped being an i win tactic a long time ago.
Thirdly, it was quite obvious that skilled alien players did not like camo 1st, you would often see them complain and ask for silence instead.
The real problems with camo was that its implementation wasnt right, it was also too easy to defeat, hence why we hardly ever saw it in competitive games except for the really rare occasions.
As far as Shade hive is concerned
Ink needs better implementation/bug fixes
Hallucinations are kind of worthless, perhaps needs a better implementation/better ai/lower cost or free or bring back energy ? or just remove them
I think as far as silence/cloak is concerned, combining the two (needs some balancing) and renaming it 'stealth', and then adding a new ability (focus?) would be a much better idea that would solve alot of issues
I think that evolution are not really the problem. Shade has 1 amazing evolution (Silence, which I consider the second best evolution in the game, after carapace), and one horrible one, same as Crag and both Shift evolutions, while not that valuable, can still be useful in many situations.
I see the main issue with the Hive buildings: Crag is extremely useful, and vital for defense and establishing forward bases, Shift is excellent at expansion and map control and is outright mandatory in large games and Shade.... is unnecessary luxury at best and useless easily countered garbage at worst.
You get more than carapace with Crag Hive and a LOT more than celerity with Shift Hive, while with Shade, the silence is really the only useful thing it has to offer.
For that reason I think that finally fixing Ink so that it can counter ARCs would help a lot, more than any buff to camo.
Silence is pretty useless on anything but skulk and fade to be honest, which is another reason why it's a risky pick for first hive (you'll need to secure three hives if you don't want to get into trouble later on, yet the advantage silence gives is not convincing enough to warrant this risk) and completely useless for second hive pick. (Unless the third hive is already dropped or absolutely secure)
I think that evolution are not really the problem. Shade has 1 amazing evolution (Silence, which I consider the second best evolution in the game, after carapace), and one horrible one, same as Crag and both Shift evolutions, while not that valuable, can still be useful in many situations.
I see the main issue with the Hive buildings: Crag is extremely useful, and vital for defense and establishing forward bases, Shift is excellent at expansion and map control and is outright mandatory in large games and Shade.... is unnecessary luxury at best and useless easily countered garbage at worst.
You get more than carapace with Crag Hive and a LOT more than celerity with Shift Hive, while with Shade, the silence is really the only useful thing it has to offer.
For that reason I think that finally fixing Ink so that it can counter ARCs would help a lot, more than any buff to camo.
I don't think that would be enough to "fix shade". I think we need Focus or something similar back to evern begin to discuss it as anything other than the last upgrade chosen.
I feel like part of the problem is also that the Shade structure doesn't really do much. Sure it has ink cloud and passive cloak, but ink cloud barely does anything and aliens already have the camoflauge upgrade.
But before I go on making assumptions about what the shade does, I need more info.
Could somebody answer these Questions for me?
Does the Shade's passive cloak give 100% without transparency dependent on movement?
If so, does the passive shade cloak override the camoflauge upgrade when you are within range?
Does the shade still have the distortion effect?
The distortion effect warps vision and causes marines to hallucinate hearing nearby aliens.
Without knowing the answers to the following questions, I still feel like Shades should have more applications.
Shades could auto-spawn hallucinated skulks when a marine is in range. The same kind of hallucinated skulks that are in the Forsaken mod. When the hallucinated skulks are shot and die, they release a small cloud of ink.
Or the shade could simply cost less T-Res because its not nearly as useful as the crag or shift, especially after the nerf to its effective passive cloak range.
Maybe 8 T-Res or a nice round 5. The decrease in cost would follow the thematic ecnomical choice of Shade Hives. Economical because shade upgrades don't cost as much as crag or shift upgrades, allowing for a quicker 2nd Hive which is desperately need if a Khammander decides to go Shade Hive first.
The crag and shift provide so many benefits but the shade simply doesn't compare.
-crags heal, important for forward bases and base defense.
-shifts heal adrenaline and spawn eggs, important for locking down forward bases or securing hive rooms or allowing gorges to speed build hives more efficiently or defending hive rooms.
-shade cloaks, farts ink, spawns useless hallucinated AI units.
As for the Shade's upgrades, camo is fine. Silence is great. But as discussed in previous threads, the merger of camo and silence would be amazing. Maybe Scent of Fear could be the other upgrade.
I'm just throwing out some ideas though.
I hope somebody answers my questions and has comments on my suggestions or opinions.
Silence is pretty useless on anything but skulk and fade to be honest, which is another reason why it's a risky pick for first hive (you'll need to secure three hives if you don't want to get into trouble later on, yet the advantage silence gives is not convincing enough to warrant this risk) and completely useless for second hive pick. (Unless the third hive is already dropped or absolutely secure)
Wait, what? Silence on lerks is amazing, and I usually pick silence on the gorge so marines can't hear my fat arse waddling through the map from 3 rooms away. Silence on the onos is pointless except against newbies, but then so is camo!
Silence is pretty useless on anything but skulk and fade to be honest, which is another reason why it's a risky pick for first hive (you'll need to secure three hives if you don't want to get into trouble later on, yet the advantage silence gives is not convincing enough to warrant this risk) and completely useless for second hive pick. (Unless the third hive is already dropped or absolutely secure)
Wait, what? Silence on lerks is amazing, and I usually pick silence on the gorge so marines can't hear my fat arse waddling through the map from 3 rooms away. Silence on the onos is pointless except against newbies, but then so is camo!
Agreed!
Silence on Fades is also quite nice. Marines not being able to hear swipes or LOUD ASS BLINK SFX comes in very handy.
Babblers must first and and foremost babble, I haven't notice they'd do any other useful thing, and when you put silence on them, pray tell me, good man, how would they babble then?
It's one of them, whatchacallit... contradictio in adjecto.
Sure, silence is great, but the overall suite of shade abilities seems weak. As the game progresses, shade abilities experience rapidly diminishing returns.
I agree with several other comments that reinstating passive radar (aka scent of fear, aka aura) would be appropriate.
The shade tree is ultimately an ambushing tree. It assists lifeforms in sneaking up or getting the drop on a unsuspecting marine. This is extremly effective in normal sized servers (6v6,7v7,8v8). Super-sized servers (20+ players) shade becomes weak since everywhere you turn on the map, there are large clusters of marines. Camo/Silence loses some of its shine if you are constantly combating a 6 marine pressure team.
Comments
I saw it in a competitive game as a first hive choice and the team won. I personally find silence awesome, and the ability to turn invisible when standing still is useful for a clever player. You can easily throw off pursuers when wounded, and you can still ambush. I have a feeling people are a bit lazy/spoiled these days. It's not that the camo in the game is bad by itself, the game is just too fast, maniacal shooter on steroids that stealth has really a limited value here.
It simply depends on the lifeform and style you want to play.
You can be a fast offensive Skulk that runs around the map with Celerity, Silence and Carapace (aka the abilities that will help you most to win a given combat situation). Or you can be a more harassing and ambushing Skulk that picks it's fights and relies on a bit teamwork, chooses Adrenaline, Camouflage and Regeneration to leap around in combat, get some bites in and confuse the enemy so that they waste their shots while getting taken care of by the rest of your team and then retreats to some corner, cloaks and waits until it regenerated to full instead of running all the way back to the Hive, so it can keep biting RTs instead.
I also take prefer Camouflage on my Gorge when I help in team fights, so I am not a sitting duck if the rest of my team dies. Then I can wait for marines to walk by and cause some Bile trouble behind their back.
I'm still on the fence regarding celerity on a skulk, once you have leap.
Adrenaline is equal to it, simply because you get more leaps.
If celerity worked in combat, I'd use it all the time, as it is right now though...
I only use celerity if there's nothing else.
changing camo like its called would change alot in alienplay (more viable). really wanna shoot some halfway invisible fades where marines just have to wake up and sit in front of their screens and touching those with their nose
this way was used in Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and it worked. still visible if you take a second look and most of the enemys did not or got already killed
at this Video
another idea of changing camouflage would be to set it up like the old one was but if a marine gets in the radius of a skulk he might get some heartbeats or heart racing
for the moment camouflage in my opinion is def. a upgrade you do not want wasted res for in midgame because over time it becomes more and more useless - the old one the way it was was just too overpowered and moved into a lot of baserushes wich had a lot of success all the time - would be nice to give camouflage a use for every single minute of the game wich can be done if you get stealth ALL THE TIME no matter wich speed you move or if you jump off some walls lowering the visibility to a 20 or 30% would be something very exciting and very special in NS2 for sure.
If you get camo and silence very early on, its easy to keep the marines contained in the early game by camping the marine spawn's adjacent extractors.
I like to get silence first, cause its simply better than camo in most combat scenarios.
Then get camo shortly after to allows skulks to camp strategically important rooms.
The problem then becomes, can we captialize on our early game advantage and still remain effective into the mid-game (2 Hives) without Cara/Adren (depending on which Hive tech you choose for your 2nd Hive)
But 80% of the time, I go with Shift Hive first.
And like 10% of the time, I go Crag Hive first.
And 10% Shade Hive.
Shift Hive is just, usually, the least risky strategy to start with.
It also depends though on the size of the map and where the marines spawned.
Large maps, Shift. For celerity.
Close spawns, Crag. For cara.
Small maps, Depends. use your best judgement.
It's funny reading post from people who defend this state of Camo.
1. They all (except 1) seem to prefer Silence.
2. They say the previous Camo was OP.
3. They say the previous Camo made players moved to slow, hurting Aliens early game.
So, these players don't use the new Camo, consider the previous Camo overpowered, but feel that previous Camo made the Aliens play like crap? Ha!
Most competitive games are the exception. It's full of people who know each other and play as a team. You research shade on a pug server and then ask the team to play stealth/ambush mode, you still have half the team kamikazing by running straight at the marines. Hence why you gotta pick tech that'll "work" with pugs.
The last sentence nailed it too. While you're sitting around waiting for a perfect ambush opportunity, the marines are expanding their map control.
It was OP, but silence is still better because it's versatile.
Something can be overpowered without being "the best".
The reason the previous camo made aliens play like crap is because the vast majority of the playerbase is comprised of floor skulks, floor lerks, fades who don't use shadowstep/use blink exclusively, Onii who die instantly, and Marines who only want to use Exos.
The current iteration of Camo is fine, but again, silence is more versatile.
The current iteration of Camo(just like the previous iteration) slows down the pace of the game, whereas silence allows the skulks/fades/insert alien lifeform here to continue moving around the map without being detected(barring Observatories).
If camo was quicker to go into full invis, was quicker to let you go back into it after combat, and you stayed in the "shimmer" unless you were moving faster than the default movement speed(ie: Wall-Jumping, Not gliding, Shadowstepping/Blinking, or Charging) it'd be about as versatile as silence.
It has in no way shape or form any offensive abilities which makes it useless for trying to take areas that the marines dont hold.
Camo was never OP'd, it was made workable when you went 100% invis....but now it is just a waste of res.
You cant move at a decent pace or move undetected.
Ground skulks have not been remedied by having a nerfed camo (all thats happened is that entry level players have been made more inadequate), you still get people who walk around a map with the nerf cloaking.
Marines already had numerous counters for camo...and by mid game (unless marines were losing) would have obs up in their 2-3 bases which countered any cloaking effect and could easily afford to scan as needed.
This was why shade became an all in 1st hive option (as is a waste to go 2nd hive except for shits and giggles), as this was the only time in the game it was worth its cost.
You hear marines coming, if they didn't see you, you hide, and then ambush them.
Silence is fairly offensive, because of the whole "Your base is under attack".
Carapace is better than anything though.
Celerity is pretty decent early-mid game, but once you have higher evolutions, you need carapace.
Shade first becomes Crag second, always.
Just like Shift first becomes Crag second.
Crag first is Shift second, as well.
Fairly limited strategies at the moment.
If Silence made you undetectable by Observatories(Scans would still have to reveal you, though), it'd be on par with Carapace or Celerity early game.
The merge is basically a straight upgrade to the existing Silence, making it a really viable first Hive choice and turning it into the arguably best upgrade for Skulks because it helps them win fights and stay alive.
And if they introduce Aura as well, one alien in a group (probably the Lerk, since he doesn't profit as much from Silence/Camo) can choose that trait instead and keep his team updated about incoming threats and use the target marker to pick the targets that are low on health.
If we're talking about the same match, that was All-In IIRC who went camoflague since they knew that the opponents did not normally get an observatory instantly. They went camo early, went up to the marine base on Veil, ignoring the rines on the way and when they reached the CC the comm had just jumped out of the chair to build the observatory. They killed the comm and took down the CC so the game was over in ~2 minutes. If they had gotten there later when the obs was built and the commander was in the chair, it would likely have turned out differently. It was gambling, either win by rushing the CC or have a huge increased chance of losing later on. A tactic that you will likely not see in pub games.
I wish the camouflage timer would kick in faster to be honest. It's definitely faster than with the old cooldown but I think it still takes a little too long before you can camouflage after taking damage. Faster camouflage would make it a lot more useful for escaping than it currently is.
I could totally understand why, they were right.
It was just bad.
I believe an issue is that while Silence and Camo are neat to have, they don't really help if there is a critical situation you *have* to respond to. At least Celerity gets you to the action quicker, and better general map control, so it helps a lot with defending stuff. And Carapace directly helps you in fight. (This might be the reason why hardly anybody uses Regen or Adren - they don't really help when you have to fight instead of harass).
With Camo visible while moving and regularly glitching (being visible), it's only good for ambushes so invisibility hardly makes a difference. You can just ambush without it.
And Silence is cool, but Celerity + SHIFT key for noiseless walking is essentially very similar.
To compare, the old Camo was very useful for holding territory/Tech Points/delay Marines/scare Marines/disrupt Marine strategy, so it was the useful, "critical" upgrade from the Shade path.
No, that was a different match that developed into a normal middle game. I will try to look it up and post a link, but it's difficult since I usually don't remember the team names.
We won the round, though it's difficult to say whether we would have won with other more unusual strats too.
I personally like cara then silence, but good luck finding some public server where your team will be man enough to try this... Too many people have the idea that celerity first is a must on public servers. In truth, if you have a team that's open minded and communicates, crag/shade or even vice versa is equally viable.
I didn't use the old camo because it encouraged people to play passively. I don't use the new camo for the same reason, plus you still see the occasional onos crouching along with camo... Lol!
The nerf to Skulk speed makes Celerity pretty much useless, and if we're doing well enough to be able to get a 2nd Hive location locked down, being able to spawn forward eggs is redundant.
The only thing my Lerks and Fades miss is Adrenaline, but they're growing to love the changes.
Also dont listen to these scubs who tell you camo was OP. For starters they probably dont even know the definition of overpowered, secondly they probably played the game for a week or two after the old camo changes, concluded camo was OP based on the fact that marine meta game had no answers to camo (yet) and then they stopped playing the game and have been on the forums ever since, unaware that camo stopped being an i win tactic a long time ago.
Thirdly, it was quite obvious that skilled alien players did not like camo 1st, you would often see them complain and ask for silence instead.
The real problems with camo was that its implementation wasnt right, it was also too easy to defeat, hence why we hardly ever saw it in competitive games except for the really rare occasions.
As far as Shade hive is concerned
Ink needs better implementation/bug fixes
Hallucinations are kind of worthless, perhaps needs a better implementation/better ai/lower cost or free or bring back energy ? or just remove them
I think as far as silence/cloak is concerned, combining the two (needs some balancing) and renaming it 'stealth', and then adding a new ability (focus?) would be a much better idea that would solve alot of issues
I see the main issue with the Hive buildings: Crag is extremely useful, and vital for defense and establishing forward bases, Shift is excellent at expansion and map control and is outright mandatory in large games and Shade.... is unnecessary luxury at best and useless easily countered garbage at worst.
You get more than carapace with Crag Hive and a LOT more than celerity with Shift Hive, while with Shade, the silence is really the only useful thing it has to offer.
For that reason I think that finally fixing Ink so that it can counter ARCs would help a lot, more than any buff to camo.
I don't think that would be enough to "fix shade". I think we need Focus or something similar back to evern begin to discuss it as anything other than the last upgrade chosen.
But before I go on making assumptions about what the shade does, I need more info.
Could somebody answer these Questions for me?
Does the Shade's passive cloak give 100% without transparency dependent on movement?
If so, does the passive shade cloak override the camoflauge upgrade when you are within range?
Does the shade still have the distortion effect?
The distortion effect warps vision and causes marines to hallucinate hearing nearby aliens.
Without knowing the answers to the following questions, I still feel like Shades should have more applications.
Shades could auto-spawn hallucinated skulks when a marine is in range. The same kind of hallucinated skulks that are in the Forsaken mod. When the hallucinated skulks are shot and die, they release a small cloud of ink.
Or the shade could simply cost less T-Res because its not nearly as useful as the crag or shift, especially after the nerf to its effective passive cloak range.
Maybe 8 T-Res or a nice round 5. The decrease in cost would follow the thematic ecnomical choice of Shade Hives. Economical because shade upgrades don't cost as much as crag or shift upgrades, allowing for a quicker 2nd Hive which is desperately need if a Khammander decides to go Shade Hive first.
The crag and shift provide so many benefits but the shade simply doesn't compare.
-crags heal, important for forward bases and base defense.
-shifts heal adrenaline and spawn eggs, important for locking down forward bases or securing hive rooms or allowing gorges to speed build hives more efficiently or defending hive rooms.
-shade cloaks, farts ink, spawns useless hallucinated AI units.
As for the Shade's upgrades, camo is fine. Silence is great. But as discussed in previous threads, the merger of camo and silence would be amazing. Maybe Scent of Fear could be the other upgrade.
I'm just throwing out some ideas though.
I hope somebody answers my questions and has comments on my suggestions or opinions.
Wait, what? Silence on lerks is amazing, and I usually pick silence on the gorge so marines can't hear my fat arse waddling through the map from 3 rooms away. Silence on the onos is pointless except against newbies, but then so is camo!
Agreed!
Silence on Fades is also quite nice. Marines not being able to hear swipes or LOUD ASS BLINK SFX comes in very handy.
Oh, oops.
Well... just to add to the discussion...
I wish upgrading silence for gorges, made your babblers silent aswell.
Cause they're kind of loud.
It's one of them, whatchacallit... contradictio in adjecto.
Sure, silence is great, but the overall suite of shade abilities seems weak. As the game progresses, shade abilities experience rapidly diminishing returns.
I agree with several other comments that reinstating passive radar (aka scent of fear, aka aura) would be appropriate.