Honestly I can only see this working in pub, any competent marine would quickly figure it out and aim at the vortex ready with a shotgun right in your face. Every time you also go for a very predictable path straight down.
If this works in scrims, I'd be surprised.
But at least vortex isn't completely useless until you got stab.
Honestly I can only see this working in pub, any competent marine would quickly figure it out and aim at the vortex ready with a shotgun right in your face. Every time you also go for a very predictable path straight down.
If this works in scrims, I'd be surprised.
But at least vortex isn't completely useless until you got stab.
You don't always appear right where you put the vortex. And to add to that, you can shadowstep/blink right after being vortex'd making you appear nowhere near the same place as shown in the video.
I think there's some merit as to how vortex does constrict your tactical options. You're forced to teleport back to it after one swipe meaning that a marine can ignore you until you do swipe and be ready for the meatshot immediately after. You cannot NOT appear at the vortex after hitting once. You change the prediction game from "what is the angle of attack" to "when is the attack." Granted that this is a new trick and may be effective for a while, I don't see longevity in it due to extra energy costs and a sacrifice in unpredictability.
I ended up doing some stuff like this after playing around with vortex for a while (vortex as a long distance movement ability has some fantastic uses) but the energy cost is kind of prohibitively high for extended fights especially if you try to use it in conjunction with stab. I find myself lerking a lot more nowadays anyway, it just feels like the early pressure, then umbra and spikes later on vs. marine deathballs and the ability to actually solo kill extractors before the heat death of the universe is a bigger contribution to the team than being the guy with more hp and some fancy dancing.
It's almost like you're referring to this "fancy dancing" as if it was just for show.
In any case, every class has an important role to play, and to say that fades are less of a contributor than any other class is to speak with ignorance. Every role is important and while some roles may play a bigger part than others in certain situations/periods, you still cannot discredit the fade. Yes, this is just one fade playing but imagine a fadeball consisting of 4-5 players doing this.. Then see the results and the impact it will make in mid-late games.
i actually didn't read his statement as a critique of your playstyle, or ability. but as a critique of the efficacy of fades overall now. they might have nerfed fades enough, in terms of speed, energy and structure damage such that lerks may actually contribute more for less pres.
I love me some lerkage, but I'm not sure I buy that completely. It's a lot easier to make one stupid mistake and lose a lerk than it is with a fade, and this only gets more true the later in the game you go. You really can't get aggressive with a lerk once marines have upgrades and shotguns if you're playing against competent marines (at which point, if you still have the lerk, it's umbra support time). That alone isn't going to win the game, so you still absolutely have to bring out a fade at some point. It's nice to see that the lerk is getting used more, but it hardly replaces the fade.
Lerks are crazy strong right now and lerk bite may be too fast. We'll see how it pans out.
to be fair, I never said that the lerk could handle shotgunners. I was purposely ambiguous on that point. I was actually implying my doubt that fades could anymore either.
fades couldn't deal with 2-2 shotgunners since ever... now with stab and vortex they actually do have a chance (haven't done the maths, but 1-2 regular hits to destroy armor, then stab will probably 1-shot a medpack spammed marine).
please explain how they had a better chance in previous patches, which is what you appear to be claiming. against medpack spam you'd need like 9-10 hits...
the patch does make adrenaline upgrade pretty much essential to be fully effective, but surely that's better than having carapace as the only essential (therefore braindead) upgrade. if you run out of energy and die, then you're doing it wrong.
really, you shouldn't come at me with stab, not only is it third hive,it forces you on a fixed trajectory and eats up energy like nothing else. fades before had problems, and it had more to do with getting 2 shot than anything else. the better fades took celerity, because it meant mobility and better evading. but we've now got a nerfed speed, and energy gets drained faster it seems.
I personally usually went adren, because im rubbish at energy management. but a better fade than me said that celerity was better, as he was used to fading with the default energy, so the speed boost was just a plus.
Prior to the major fade movement change Celerity was OK. You spent at least SOME time on the ground, and it actually affected the shadowstep jumps for some reason. Shadowstep jumps were very light on energy, if you were good at using them with double jump they may as well have been free, so energy was just about how much you used in combat. A fade against an equally skilled marine at any level isn't going to stay in combat very long one way or the other, so it was unnecessary to have an ability dedicated to staying longer.
Since the fade movement change you pretty much can't move on the ground at all, in combat or out. Blink eats energy like nobodies business, just tapping the blink button uses the equivalent of almost a full second of holding the button down instantly. Having to blink multiple times in combat between every swipe you are out of energy before you can even get 3 swipes in without adrenaline, to say nothing of higher armor, medspam, and missed swipes.
Nice video, but the fact that you can fight 3-5 sg marines without getting dmg at all looks like the marines where pretty bad shots.
I think using this in comp matches or vs 1-2 good aimers will not work, since experienced marines know where you might come from and just time their shots like they did before the patch with celerity fades, that to be honest also had a hard time vs good shotgunners.
I ended up doing some stuff like this after playing around with vortex for a while (vortex as a long distance movement ability has some fantastic uses) but the energy cost is kind of prohibitively high for extended fights especially if you try to use it in conjunction with stab. I find myself lerking a lot more nowadays anyway, it just feels like the early pressure, then umbra and spikes later on vs. marine deathballs and the ability to actually solo kill extractors before the heat death of the universe is a bigger contribution to the team than being the guy with more hp and some fancy dancing.
It's almost like you're referring to this "fancy dancing" as if it was just for show.
In any case, every class has an important role to play, and to say that fades are less of a contributor than any other class is to speak with ignorance. Every role is important and while some roles may play a bigger part than others in certain situations/periods, you still cannot discredit the fade. Yes, this is just one fade playing but imagine a fadeball consisting of 4-5 players doing this.. Then see the results and the impact it will make in mid-late games.
i actually didn't read his statement as a critique of your playstyle, or ability. but as a critique of the efficacy of fades overall now. they might have nerfed fades enough, in terms of speed, energy and structure damage such that lerks may actually contribute more for less pres.
I love me some lerkage, but I'm not sure I buy that completely. It's a lot easier to make one stupid mistake and lose a lerk than it is with a fade, and this only gets more true the later in the game you go. You really can't get aggressive with a lerk once marines have upgrades and shotguns if you're playing against competent marines (at which point, if you still have the lerk, it's umbra support time). That alone isn't going to win the game, so you still absolutely have to bring out a fade at some point. It's nice to see that the lerk is getting used more, but it hardly replaces the fade.
Lerks are crazy strong right now and lerk bite may be too fast. We'll see how it pans out.
to be fair, I never said that the lerk could handle shotgunners. I was purposely ambiguous on that point. I was actually implying my doubt that fades could anymore either.
fades couldn't deal with 2-2 shotgunners since ever... now with stab and vortex they actually do have a chance (haven't done the maths, but 1-2 regular hits to destroy armor, then stab will probably 1-shot a medpack spammed marine).
please explain how they had a better chance in previous patches, which is what you appear to be claiming. against medpack spam you'd need like 9-10 hits...
the patch does make adrenaline upgrade pretty much essential to be fully effective, but surely that's better than having carapace as the only essential (therefore braindead) upgrade. if you run out of energy and die, then you're doing it wrong.
really, you shouldn't come at me with stab, not only is it third hive,it forces you on a fixed trajectory and eats up energy like nothing else. fades before had problems, and it had more to do with getting 2 shot than anything else. the better fades took celerity, because it meant mobility and better evading. but we've now got a nerfed speed, and energy gets drained faster it seems.
I personally usually went adren, because im rubbish at energy management. but a better fade than me said that celerity was better, as he was used to fading with the default energy, so the speed boost was just a plus.
stab fixed trajectory? i've only played with it briefly, but it just seemed like a more powerful regular hit...
anyway, BURST DAMAGE is priceless. so you're completely wrong in writing off stab.
as for the point about celerity being good for evading, i disagree. both twitch and track aiming methods on good players will not be phased by the tiny speed boost of celerity. celerity is only good if adrenaline is useless (i.e. you don't use more than ~75% of your adren reserve), otherwise adrenaline is a nobrainer because retreating with blink or getting an extra stab is infinitely better than increasing your agonisingly slow-ass run speed by a marginal amount.
I kind of disagree at the whole "marines will aim where you place vortex" thing because in truth, marines aim at YOU and try to keep you in their peripheral the whole time. If I was facing 3sg's, they would be aiming at me when I am going for the swipe, not when I appear out of a vortex in the middle of the air. But that's just my logic. Some marines will mindlessly wait and aim at a vortex but they will find it's not so easy to aim at.
I kind of disagree at the whole "marines will aim where you place vortex" thing because in truth, marines aim at YOU and try to keep you in their peripheral the whole time. If I was facing 3sg's, they would be aiming at me when I am going for the swipe, not when I appear out of a vortex in the middle of the air. But that's just my logic. Some marines will mindlessly wait and aim at a vortex but they will find it's not so easy to aim at.
Were talking comp, not dumb pubs. It's not like you have a choice not to appear at the vortex either, so there's no fakeouts. Best you can do is put it high enough that a shotgun blast isn't too much of a threat, but you'll probably be out of energy by your second swipe if you are blinking that high.
I kind of disagree at the whole "marines will aim where you place vortex" thing because in truth, marines aim at YOU and try to keep you in their peripheral the whole time. If I was facing 3sg's, they would be aiming at me when I am going for the swipe, not when I appear out of a vortex in the middle of the air. But that's just my logic. Some marines will mindlessly wait and aim at a vortex but they will find it's not so easy to aim at.
Were talking comp, not dumb pubs. It's not like you have a choice not to appear at the vortex either, so there's no fakeouts. Best you can do is put it high enough that a shotgun blast isn't too much of a threat, but you'll probably be out of energy by your second swipe if you are blinking that high.
What I'm saying is that comp players would wait for you to swipe before they blast you with a shotgun because that gives the best chance to inflict the most damage. Why any competitive player would give up a chance like that to instead wait to aim at a vortex is beyond my comprehension.. And if you do it correctly and fast enough, the marines won't have the time to shoot point blank at a fade AND ALSO shoot at where he appears from his vortex location; I can completely guarantee you that. So if made a choice between shooting at a fade up close or shooting at a fade popping out of vortex, I think it's a no brainer...
And a rifle is really no different because you need to have constant tracking of a fade in order to actually hit all your bullets (if that's your intended goal)... In which case the minute I swipe, you're gonna have to have use twitch aim to aim back at my vortex and possibly lose sight of me for a split second (and in theory, losing some DPS). It's easier to aim at a fade blinking UP than it is to shoot at a fade suddenly in your face and the next second in mid air.
This is the same strat as swipe > blinking up > blinking down > swipe > blinking up > blinking down except when you swipe you are automatically are sent back up without having to use blink for that.
And trust me, I will definitely be using this strat in comp play at a Division 1 level. Obviously I'll make a few adjustments because in the video I personally chose to over-use vortex for the simple fact that it looks better for the audience when viewing. When making a few minor adjustments to this game play, it can yield some positive results.
If you want to get into competitive your best bet would be to do some pugs. Download mumble and join this server 74.86.55.132. There's at least 2-3 pugs a day, mostly in the evening. Join the ready room and wait for 12 people.
It's not like you have a choice not to appear at the vortex either, so there's no fakeouts.
Well, you can always place a new Vortex. This way, you can keep the Marines guessing if you'll come out of the current Vortex, or if you'll Vortex and Swipe at your current location, with maybe an additional SS or Blink thrown in.
Not sure how viable this is regarding energy management, but it's an option.
Also to further add to my last post which I forgot to mention is.. By swiping and blinking up/away you are within the enemies point blank range for a longer period of time. Whereas with vortex, if I slash you before you shotty my ass, you've already missed your chance at a point blank shot since vortex will INSTANTLY teleport me right after my swipe animation.. thus creating a bigger 'panic' situation for you as you must now time your shot before my swipe.
If anything this video only proves how futile it is to complain about Marines jumping...
That's why I think Marines need faster reload times, seems like even if you do get lucky and hit a fade, then you have to reload... You would figure hundreds of years in the future that they would have figured out how to load the first round into the chamber without doing it manually. Pop old clip out, pop in a new one.
Still too high energy cost and a lot more predictable, the second you drop a vortex you're not much a threat as DPS will go down and no fakeouts so either a single swipe or leave, neither which are a concern for medspammef marines. You wont comfuse anyone either as any at div 1 will track u and see your vortex the secomd u drop it.
Prove me wrong. Record a video Of this at div 1 level, id love to see it.
I ended up doing some stuff like this after playing around with vortex for a while (vortex as a long distance movement ability has some fantastic uses) but the energy cost is kind of prohibitively high for extended fights especially if you try to use it in conjunction with stab. I find myself lerking a lot more nowadays anyway, it just feels like the early pressure, then umbra and spikes later on vs. marine deathballs and the ability to actually solo kill extractors before the heat death of the universe is a bigger contribution to the team than being the guy with more hp and some fancy dancing.
It's almost like you're referring to this "fancy dancing" as if it was just for show.
In any case, every class has an important role to play, and to say that fades are less of a contributor than any other class is to speak with ignorance. Every role is important and while some roles may play a bigger part than others in certain situations/periods, you still cannot discredit the fade. Yes, this is just one fade playing but imagine a fadeball consisting of 4-5 players doing this.. Then see the results and the impact it will make in mid-late games.
i actually didn't read his statement as a critique of your playstyle, or ability. but as a critique of the efficacy of fades overall now. they might have nerfed fades enough, in terms of speed, energy and structure damage such that lerks may actually contribute more for less pres.
I love me some lerkage, but I'm not sure I buy that completely. It's a lot easier to make one stupid mistake and lose a lerk than it is with a fade, and this only gets more true the later in the game you go. You really can't get aggressive with a lerk once marines have upgrades and shotguns if you're playing against competent marines (at which point, if you still have the lerk, it's umbra support time). That alone isn't going to win the game, so you still absolutely have to bring out a fade at some point. It's nice to see that the lerk is getting used more, but it hardly replaces the fade.
Lerks are crazy strong right now and lerk bite may be too fast. We'll see how it pans out.
to be fair, I never said that the lerk could handle shotgunners. I was purposely ambiguous on that point. I was actually implying my doubt that fades could anymore either.
fades couldn't deal with 2-2 shotgunners since ever... now with stab and vortex they actually do have a chance (haven't done the maths, but 1-2 regular hits to destroy armor, then stab will probably 1-shot a medpack spammed marine).
please explain how they had a better chance in previous patches, which is what you appear to be claiming. against medpack spam you'd need like 9-10 hits...
the patch does make adrenaline upgrade pretty much essential to be fully effective, but surely that's better than having carapace as the only essential (therefore braindead) upgrade. if you run out of energy and die, then you're doing it wrong.
really, you shouldn't come at me with stab, not only is it third hive,it forces you on a fixed trajectory and eats up energy like nothing else. fades before had problems, and it had more to do with getting 2 shot than anything else. the better fades took celerity, because it meant mobility and better evading. but we've now got a nerfed speed, and energy gets drained faster it seems.
I personally usually went adren, because im rubbish at energy management. but a better fade than me said that celerity was better, as he was used to fading with the default energy, so the speed boost was just a plus.
stab fixed trajectory? i've only played with it briefly, but it just seemed like a more powerful regular hit...
anyway, BURST DAMAGE is priceless. so you're completely wrong in writing off stab.
as for the point about celerity being good for evading, i disagree. both twitch and track aiming methods on good players will not be phased by the tiny speed boost of celerity. celerity is only good if adrenaline is useless (i.e. you don't use more than ~75% of your adren reserve), otherwise adrenaline is a nobrainer because retreating with blink or getting an extra stab is infinitely better than increasing your agonisingly slow-ass run speed by a marginal amount.
yeah, you can't change direction after initiation. which means you can't evade while stabbing. you can fall on someone to stab them, which is why I.didnt say sitting duck, but you're a sitting duck. I've been shotgunned to death from a bad blink in the middle of a fastball before. I was dead almost before I realized I'd messed up. any decrease in mobility is nonviable.
Still too high energy cost and a lot more predictable, the second you drop a vortex you're not much a threat as DPS will go down and no fakeouts so either a single swipe or leave, neither which are a concern for medspammef marines. You wont comfuse anyone either as any at div 1 will track u and see your vortex the secomd u drop it.
Prove me wrong. Record a video Of this at div 1 level, id love to see it.
So far I've played a Div 2 team doing this strat and it worked wonders. And yes they had sgs W3 and I did go into big groups as well. I'll report in against Div 1 team soon.
True that a marine will aim at you, especially if he doesn't know you have vortex, but if I were to see you place vortex I do have the option of waiting for you to swipe and then clicking on the vortex immediately after instead of waiting for you to come near and aim at you.
With vortex:
My window of opportunity is now simply time-based. I aim at a static object and wait for the right time to click. My object is exactly where I was aiming. (my proposed method)
-Or-
My window of opportunity is time and aim based. I am at a moving object and wait for it to come near and then click. If I miss the time window at all, I likely do zero damage since the object has been displaced significantly. My object is nowhere near I was aiming. (expected method)
Without vortex:
My window of opportunity is time and aim based. I aim at a moving object and wait for it to come near and then click. If I miss the time window, I get a glancing hit based on how much I was off. My object is near where I was aiming. (traditional method)
These all assume that the aiming is the same in each. The instant displacement may throw some people off, but after each swipe I'd expect a competent player to immediately twitch back to the known vortex location (assuming he wasn't already looking at it or using my proposed method).
Now, you're absolutely right about rifles - immediate displacement is impossible to track compared to plain fast movement. But when it comes to shotguns I feel that vortex gives the marine more options and you less because you've already made your decision coming into the engagement. I haven't seen vortex used enough to practice each method against it, but this does sound like a reasonable theory to me.
Hm.... looks like the same things fades used to to before the mobility nerf with blink and shadowstep. Swipe, blink above them, shadowstep down behind them and keep dodging vertically. You can do some more tricks with this but if a rine pays attention they know exactly where you're going and where to pre-fire after you come in.
edit : since this is the only post talking directly about the new fade; I might add that the structure damage is ridiculous; 37½; while draining insane amount of energy. Bringing it back to 50 would still appear weak to me, but being more reasonable from the dev's perspective I think (wtf 37½).
Comments
If this works in scrims, I'd be surprised.
But at least vortex isn't completely useless until you got stab.
You don't always appear right where you put the vortex. And to add to that, you can shadowstep/blink right after being vortex'd making you appear nowhere near the same place as shown in the video.
Still, very cool video!
really, you shouldn't come at me with stab, not only is it third hive,it forces you on a fixed trajectory and eats up energy like nothing else. fades before had problems, and it had more to do with getting 2 shot than anything else. the better fades took celerity, because it meant mobility and better evading. but we've now got a nerfed speed, and energy gets drained faster it seems.
I personally usually went adren, because im rubbish at energy management. but a better fade than me said that celerity was better, as he was used to fading with the default energy, so the speed boost was just a plus.
Since the fade movement change you pretty much can't move on the ground at all, in combat or out. Blink eats energy like nobodies business, just tapping the blink button uses the equivalent of almost a full second of holding the button down instantly. Having to blink multiple times in combat between every swipe you are out of energy before you can even get 3 swipes in without adrenaline, to say nothing of higher armor, medspam, and missed swipes.
I think using this in comp matches or vs 1-2 good aimers will not work, since experienced marines know where you might come from and just time their shots like they did before the patch with celerity fades, that to be honest also had a hard time vs good shotgunners.
stab fixed trajectory? i've only played with it briefly, but it just seemed like a more powerful regular hit...
anyway, BURST DAMAGE is priceless. so you're completely wrong in writing off stab.
as for the point about celerity being good for evading, i disagree. both twitch and track aiming methods on good players will not be phased by the tiny speed boost of celerity. celerity is only good if adrenaline is useless (i.e. you don't use more than ~75% of your adren reserve), otherwise adrenaline is a nobrainer because retreating with blink or getting an extra stab is infinitely better than increasing your agonisingly slow-ass run speed by a marginal amount.
Were talking comp, not dumb pubs. It's not like you have a choice not to appear at the vortex either, so there's no fakeouts. Best you can do is put it high enough that a shotgun blast isn't too much of a threat, but you'll probably be out of energy by your second swipe if you are blinking that high.
What I'm saying is that comp players would wait for you to swipe before they blast you with a shotgun because that gives the best chance to inflict the most damage. Why any competitive player would give up a chance like that to instead wait to aim at a vortex is beyond my comprehension.. And if you do it correctly and fast enough, the marines won't have the time to shoot point blank at a fade AND ALSO shoot at where he appears from his vortex location; I can completely guarantee you that. So if made a choice between shooting at a fade up close or shooting at a fade popping out of vortex, I think it's a no brainer...
And a rifle is really no different because you need to have constant tracking of a fade in order to actually hit all your bullets (if that's your intended goal)... In which case the minute I swipe, you're gonna have to have use twitch aim to aim back at my vortex and possibly lose sight of me for a split second (and in theory, losing some DPS). It's easier to aim at a fade blinking UP than it is to shoot at a fade suddenly in your face and the next second in mid air.
This is the same strat as swipe > blinking up > blinking down > swipe > blinking up > blinking down except when you swipe you are automatically are sent back up without having to use blink for that.
And trust me, I will definitely be using this strat in comp play at a Division 1 level. Obviously I'll make a few adjustments because in the video I personally chose to over-use vortex for the simple fact that it looks better for the audience when viewing. When making a few minor adjustments to this game play, it can yield some positive results.
If you want to get into competitive your best bet would be to do some pugs. Download mumble and join this server 74.86.55.132. There's at least 2-3 pugs a day, mostly in the evening. Join the ready room and wait for 12 people.
Edit: oh god how do i quote?
Well, you can always place a new Vortex. This way, you can keep the Marines guessing if you'll come out of the current Vortex, or if you'll Vortex and Swipe at your current location, with maybe an additional SS or Blink thrown in.
Not sure how viable this is regarding energy management, but it's an option.
That's why I think Marines need faster reload times, seems like even if you do get lucky and hit a fade, then you have to reload... You would figure hundreds of years in the future that they would have figured out how to load the first round into the chamber without doing it manually. Pop old clip out, pop in a new one.
Prove me wrong. Record a video Of this at div 1 level, id love to see it.
New seasons starting so I'll do my best ^^
yeah, you can't change direction after initiation. which means you can't evade while stabbing. you can fall on someone to stab them, which is why I.didnt say sitting duck, but you're a sitting duck. I've been shotgunned to death from a bad blink in the middle of a fastball before. I was dead almost before I realized I'd messed up. any decrease in mobility is nonviable.
With vortex:
My window of opportunity is now simply time-based. I aim at a static object and wait for the right time to click. My object is exactly where I was aiming. (my proposed method)
-Or-
My window of opportunity is time and aim based. I am at a moving object and wait for it to come near and then click. If I miss the time window at all, I likely do zero damage since the object has been displaced significantly. My object is nowhere near I was aiming. (expected method)
Without vortex:
My window of opportunity is time and aim based. I aim at a moving object and wait for it to come near and then click. If I miss the time window, I get a glancing hit based on how much I was off. My object is near where I was aiming. (traditional method)
These all assume that the aiming is the same in each. The instant displacement may throw some people off, but after each swipe I'd expect a competent player to immediately twitch back to the known vortex location (assuming he wasn't already looking at it or using my proposed method).
Now, you're absolutely right about rifles - immediate displacement is impossible to track compared to plain fast movement. But when it comes to shotguns I feel that vortex gives the marine more options and you less because you've already made your decision coming into the engagement. I haven't seen vortex used enough to practice each method against it, but this does sound like a reasonable theory to me.
edit : since this is the only post talking directly about the new fade; I might add that the structure damage is ridiculous; 37½; while draining insane amount of energy. Bringing it back to 50 would still appear weak to me, but being more reasonable from the dev's perspective I think (wtf 37½).