Why is Shade hive always last?
MoFo
Join Date: 2013-09-09 Member: 188047Members
Join Date: 2013-09-09 Member: 188047Members
I find it extremely irritating that nearly all Alien commanders will wait until the 3rd hive for shade... even when their team is requesting it.
Shade is one of the most useful (possibly even overpowered) upgrades Aliens can get. Phantom makes skulks silently deadly, allowing you to run up and get 3-4 bites on a Marine before they even realize you're there. While Aura is literally an in-game wall hack that shows enemy health, allowing you to target injured Marines and take out groups easier.
I just don't get why this upgrade is almost always last in pub games. The silent skulk is without a doubt the deadliest thing in this game, and Aura is beyond useful for helping higher life forms stay alive and get kills. (especially for Lerks)
Instead commanders almost always go Shift first, which helps the Gorges I suppose, but leaves other life forms (especially Skulks) struggling. Sure Skulks can close the distance to Marines a TINY bit faster... but they also die a LOT more, which gives the Marines free time to expand. Plus whenever you rush them Marines can easily hear you, giving them plenty of time to turn and shoot... Unless of course you hold shift to walk, which actually makes you SLOWER than a skulk running with phantom would be.
The few times when the Alien commander saves Shift for the last hive are some of the easiest games to win. Regeneration + Aura can turn Skulks, Lerks, and Fades into unstoppable killing machines in the hands of the right player.
I just don't get it... why is Shade considered so crappy by so many players? What is it about Shift that everyone loves so much?
Shade is one of the most useful (possibly even overpowered) upgrades Aliens can get. Phantom makes skulks silently deadly, allowing you to run up and get 3-4 bites on a Marine before they even realize you're there. While Aura is literally an in-game wall hack that shows enemy health, allowing you to target injured Marines and take out groups easier.
I just don't get why this upgrade is almost always last in pub games. The silent skulk is without a doubt the deadliest thing in this game, and Aura is beyond useful for helping higher life forms stay alive and get kills. (especially for Lerks)
Instead commanders almost always go Shift first, which helps the Gorges I suppose, but leaves other life forms (especially Skulks) struggling. Sure Skulks can close the distance to Marines a TINY bit faster... but they also die a LOT more, which gives the Marines free time to expand. Plus whenever you rush them Marines can easily hear you, giving them plenty of time to turn and shoot... Unless of course you hold shift to walk, which actually makes you SLOWER than a skulk running with phantom would be.
The few times when the Alien commander saves Shift for the last hive are some of the easiest games to win. Regeneration + Aura can turn Skulks, Lerks, and Fades into unstoppable killing machines in the hands of the right player.
I just don't get it... why is Shade considered so crappy by so many players? What is it about Shift that everyone loves so much?
Comments
This ability allows you to echo an already built harvester to any infested location, while safely build the next one in your own hive (your natural RT should be safe, and the already built harvester will begin gaining resources as soon as it's echo'd, plus it'll take longer to kill for a marine compared to them finding one that's in the progress of being built
Then it's crag hive for the simple extra damage that can be taken, if you've ever faced people who can aim (not saying you haven't..) then you'll need to take extra shots as an alien, if you go shade then the marines will know this and they can begin to get aggressive because they know you'll die very easily to SGs and etc
Aura is a great ability, but I only find it useful on a fade/onos (or lerk) and by the time those are out it's already later in the game; phantom is nice but for an experienced player the cloak is pretty easy to see (if you do it right however, good location/don't move then you'll most likely get passed by) but in the real world, you'll be getting scanned or found and dying very quickly
I personally don't rely on the cloak aspect of Phantom much at all. It's the completely silent running and biting that makes it so incredibly deadly. As a Marine there's nothing I hate more than when Aliens go shade first lol.
Thanks for the reply though, I don't command so I didn't know about the echo thing. I guess that's why shift is almost always the first hive... Bummer
If you have any ideas to try and make each hive choice a viable path then feel free to share your opinion, it's an on-going struggle and it seems with each beneficial change to any area one hive choice becomes the dominant choice, it use to be crag first
sounds easy on paper to make 3 choices worth having, but in reality it's pretty hard
The reason I always go shift first NOW is celerity and storm. They both greatly help with the marine jumping bean problem and I've even found that pub skulks have a difficulty even CATCHING marines without celerity. Carapace might help them survive an extra quarter second but Celerity is what they need to actually get the kill. Meanwhile as many people have pointed out in the strafe jump threads Ambushing a marine only leads to 1 free hit now after which you are right back to the jumping beans, this time without a means to catch up.
Similarly, I've tried all different orders and I've found the most consistent success drifter-microing early game with enzyme and storm together. Mucus is GREAT when onos and fades are on the field, I've had onos manage to stay in combat in a marine base until their health was <20% and still have 100% armor (I had to tell him to watch his health and explain what was going on), but it doesn't really do anything for skulks and lerks. I keep wanting to use hallucination early on but the times I try shade first I don't have much success with it. Had some great laughs hallucinating hives though.
Meanwhile when I'm NOT khamander I tend to go lerk ASAP and for lerk I would personally LOVE to have aura first. I recognize the problems the rest of my team are likely to have without celerity though so I still tell the kham to go shift first when asked, even though shift is near useless to lerks until spores.
But all in all I think the 3 upgrade paths are equally powerful.
Maybe just try a new server. On some of them the local community is heavily biased to one upgrade path and spread hate when other things are tried.
If my team is really, really, really against it, I go shift first and shade second.
On rookie servers or in games with a lot of low-skilled players shade may be not the best upgrade, as they tend not to use it/use it wrong.
I prefer shade and shift to crag because they add new abilities (shade) or vastly improve your movement (shift). Also, shade counters Arcs and Shift gives you echo. (Didn't play around with drifter abilities yet)
Crag is imo mostly useless. The cara bonus only let's you eat a few more bullets, and if you rely on cara to survive, you should've retreated sooner anyway. I value regen, though; especially on Lerks it can help you to stay in fight a lot longer.
If I'm not commander, I mostly try to convince the comm to go shade first
And I really can't stand people who go shift first and crag second (no offense). It may give you a worthwile HP boost in early game, but later it doesn't have that much of an impact, imo, while shade remains useful (especially) in late game.
edit: And it makes waiting for shade sooo painful, especially when you can't get a third hive up
And if you have a phantom-celerity-skulk you just don't need those extra hp.
Shift/crag- both increase survivability for fade/Ono/lerk(none of these need cloak). Silence is handy for onos so they don't all hear you comming, and aura is good for threat detection. But cara/celerity will allow you to get in and out faster and take more hits doing it(this is vital because you can't rely on them missing or being surprised even noobs get lucky)
*shameless plug
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/132231/skulk-sneak-attack-damage#latest
What irks me is when people go shade/shift for 1st & 2nd hive tho. Playing the entire game without cara or regen is not fun if the marine team is any good.
"Because actual pub players don't know how to use shade upgrades correctly ?"
A lot of pub players are actually rookies (remember the free week end ?) and think phantom will make them win. But no, it just makes them camp, calling for cheating if you see them moving, and don't make them understand that you have to bite marine resource towers (camping for another marine after killing one is way more fun than chewing a structure for 30 seconds).
its all asbout the players ability & understanding of the game.
That's not true, at higher levels only certain paths are viable to an extent; you'd put yourself at a disadvantage going one path over the other (however I'm sure there's a team that can prove this wrong)
Shift upgrades will allow to go farther on the map, so you can bite marine rts and then come back defend your rts easier and faster.
Crag upgrades will allow you to tank more, and suits more on a gameplay like tram (when you spawn north) or veil. The upgrade choice is situational... You will get carapace when you are in a configuration (map + spawn + ennemy playstyle) that gives a lot of close combats.
Shade upgrades will not make it in high skilled matches, since it slows down aliens too much (phantom) or doesn't give combat advantage at all. Scans will be used and silence will be useless.
Anyway, we can't really talk about competitive and public plays in the same topic, since these are too much different.
To conclude, I agree with joohoo_n3d, who said that upgrades should be made by the commander after more reflections.
In my opinion, in pub and in matches, shade first is a disaster, and isn't really viable. However, it's great on a second hive.
Shift
Shade
Crag
Shift is definitely the most useful at the start, unless your players kind of suck and would need the health boost of crag.
On a separate note, I really like the idea of hallucinations and I've tried using them effectively, but I've had relatively little success. It seems that every time I create them, they just sort of run away in some random direction.
Not really "tank". More like "not being killed by the last bullet that hits you right before you are around the corner".
Too shorten this and have a more useful and handy term in future discussions, let's call it "NBKBTLBTHYRBYAATC".
Also great with onos because they are just so damn big. The hallucination will absorb bullets or block line of sight even if the marines know it's not real. I think hallucinations probably have the same bullet penetration property as drifter, but it still makes it hard to see what's going on.
Anyway, I would still rather have storm and mucus. Storm is probably my #1 most use drifter cloud, great for the approach, the getaway, and the engagement itself.
I disagree with that. There is no problem with phantom and a newb-team. If they start camping, you can simply tell them over the mic to get moving. And that they need to destroy RTs. This has the nice side effect, of educating them so they don't make the same error in the future. Srsly, I get the feeling that half the forum doesn't use their mic when playing NS2.
And on the topic of hallucinations a tip: After creating them, double click one of the hallus to select all and send them at the marines. (You should have a hotkey for your drifter set, so you can select it again fast.) Most aliens will use their opportunity and follow the hallus, engaging marines with empty magazines.
Shade allows your team to see ambushes and pick off weaker Marines, ambush them, and be silent which allows for easier first/second hits.
Crag and Shift upgrades are less dependent on player skill to be fully utilized compared to shade, since they're just linear upgrades. If I'm commanding a team that has several players I know are good, I might go shade first. If I don't know any of them, or know they're bad, I'll go the safer route.
I use the mic plenty, repeat just about everything 3 times and sometimes end up shouting loud enough my neighbors can probably hear me. Doesn't get people to listen of course.
We must play on different servers or at different times or something. I do use my mic in public play, fairly often in fact. I attempt to give orders and advice as both a commander and as a field player. New players rarely respond to what I tell them, though. For one anecdotal example last night I was playing a game on veil as aliens and the marines were being too aggressive (quite a rare thing to see on pubs, usually it isn't aggressive enough) and sending literally their entire team to sub in order to take down the hive. I kept telling my team through the mic not to try and fight them in sub, that by doing that we would only lose the game. I told them that the marines were out of position, and that if we would just walk through west junction (which was wide open) we could hit their base and win the game. Eventually I got tired of no one listening to me and went to do it myself. I was able to get the power down to about 10% before one marine respawned and chased me off. If just one skulk had listened to me, we would have won that game.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. Thanks for the drifter tip, I will try it out next time I play.
Granted. Not every green will listen. And on some servers it is really bad. But in my games, I found most of them responding, if one explains things nicely.
I think many people here overestimate the power of Crag.
Carapace let's you 2 (two) more bullets. Two. If you rely on those two bullets, the encounter was screwed anyway.
edit: As skulk, obviously. But we're talking about the first upgrade here.
I'd rather give my players a huge speed bonus.
Given that you have very good players on marine team, phantom I find is a bigger risk compared to the other two. It isn't consistent. There also seems to be the case that players are more passive with shade, especially phantom. Aura is great for the higher lifeforms but now that cara was buffed on fade and onos, it's a difficult compromise to make if you can't get 3 hives.
4 bullets for vanilla marines. 20 armor = 40hp+ vs rifles and shotguns. 80hp+ vs pistols. Vs most players, 4 bullets is huge.
It's not about getting there - it's about winning the engagement. But of course celerity helps with this as well.
Shade hives are sort of risky, since it depends on the situation. If it is large game, being cloaked usually wont help you destroy a large group of marines that much (at least in the beginning and mid-game), but in small games, it helps you pick out marines or launch surprise attack early (surprise attacks dont help as much for large groups). Also, it depends on the general skill level of your team and their ability to make use of the shade hive.
Shift hives are useful for supporting large teams and can let you move faster. Crag hives give more survive-ability and thus lessens the need for more eggs. Shift+Crag is generally used because it lets you have continued assault in team-fights with good survive-ability and lets them respawn quickly.
Shade hive is more technical/advanced, and is hard to explain here.