They DO have the ability to do exactly as I said. Saying that lower divison players "can't" do something in terms of teamwork or communication is a bit narrow minded. I think you should be thinking along the lines of "most of them don't" but it's not because they can't.
I will agree that lower divison marines can't provide constant DPS to combat forms of regeneration but that's a mechanical limitation in their ability and NOT related to positioning or teamwork.
All it takes is basic communication and looking at your map.
Ridiculously good aim takes loads and loads of practice and some people just can't aim. I think that's more of the bit where "you have it or you don't".. Communication on the other hand and learning how to be in the right spot to coordinate teamwork and equate it to a frag is something that can be done at lower division play.
What "CAN'T" be done at lower level play is solo'ing a fade with a LMG or shotgun when their accuracy is on average below the level required to do so. That is the limits of the mechanical play at that level and that does limit what can be done in certain scenarios. But playing smart and using teamwork can be done at ANY level of play.
It doesn't matter how bad your aim is if you come in on a fade from a flank and he is black barred from overextending and you basically need 5% accuracy to kill him.
EDIT:
And as you said yourself, because lower division engagements last so long that gives the marines in that level of play even longer to get a solo LMG or shotgun into position to cut low lifeforms that are retreating from a fight.
You speak in absolutes in your post going on about how the engagements play out but really a lot of engagements are dynamic in NS.. premiere engagements are not always over within one reload.. and some lower division engagements are.
And personally I find the new metabolize extremely useful in premiere play at the moment. But I will repeat from my other post.. not opposed to tweaks.. merely defending the gameplay behind the ability and that it's not as overpowered as some people seem to think.
Even further.. this isn't even about pubs.
At any rate, I don't believe that "they can't" business.
I hope Advanced Metabolize + Regen will be addressed. Fades gain way too much HP from those abilities right now making it very hard to pinch a fade or even kill a fade in an extended fight. It's to the point where a hurt Fade never has to go to a hive once they have these abilities, seems a bit OP. Honestly if you want to make regen viable for Fade, I can't see how you can have Advanced Metabolize as an ability. I can't imagine it's possible to balance both of these abilities to make them acceptable by themselves and not broken when used together, I would suggest scrapping Advanced Metabolize and allow regen to stay a viable Fade upgrade as there's a legitimate trade-off between it an Cara right now if you are never going to get Advanced Metabolize.
Personally, I agree with this to a point. I think Advanced Metabolize needs it's health gain halved to 10 hp/use. The balance team has promised me they would keep a close eye on it.
Also Onos feels completely useless until he has Celerity and/or Charge and even then he probably needs Umbra support to not flash to 3 marines even with support. As is, it feels like a complete waste of 55 pres. At least make Onos 2 hit a1 marines again by making the damage 95, that way you don't 1 shot armorless marines, but you still 2 hit a1 marines.
So apparently there was a bug causing the onos' max speed to get reduced by 0.75. This was entirely unintentionally and will be fixed in the next patch. As @Fiskbit said, there is no way to make the onos 2-shot a1 marines without 1-shotting armorless marines as a1 marines have 200 eHP.
As for increasing the damage to 95, I could see an argument for it regarding more commonly 2-hitting a1 marines that have taken just a bit of chip damage (10 damage chip, rather than 20). But a 90 damage gore puts it in a nice place for armor 3 to actually have an impact, requiring one more gore without any medpacks. It would be nice to see people's opinions on these circumstances.
The metabolize and regeneration combination comes up at biomass 5 on 2 hives.
If you don't have weapons2+ by then you deserve to get lolsteamrolled by metabolize fades. If you do have weapons2 + then you just need to land your shots and the fades are kept at bay pretty reasonably.
You know very well that there are plenty of times aliens get on 2 hives/fades when marines only have 1/1 shotguns. We can't just balance the game for 'marines have to play perfect or they lose'. That's very boring gameplay and gets decided in the first 30 seconds, might as well gg after you lose the first fight.
If you think you deserve to frag a fade SOLO (just what I've been hearing as feedback in the reddit pugs) after hitting two full pellet shots then you are flawed in your mindset of the gameplay. Land your pistols on his exit if you want the frag imo.
Not the best example because Tane started walker fading once he got in [ I'm in no way bashing Tane here ]
but it shows how EASY it was to kill fades with the hp and energy that they have against W2/W3 premiere - ish level shotgun play.
-Video evidence-
Pretty sure I meatshotted him pretty good there too.
While I think it's perfectly fine, even necessary, to balance around the higher end of the skill spectrum (Div1/Premiere), we can't lose sight that most of the players fall in the mid-lower end. At that point, they're not going to be doing 300 damage to a fade with a rifle every engagement. This is where I think the regen/adv. metabolize combination is far too strong. The fade comes in, lands a swipe, exits, and returns at full health before the marines can reload and weld.
I think that it's not super OP (it being the metabolize ability), it could be nerfed slightly on energy/hp recovery but let's not forget so quickly how gimped Fades felt and were in the late game vs ye old ROFL 2 shot weapons 3 shotgun and relying mostly on a dice roll in engagements that two shotgunners didn't land consistent shots on you. At least with metabolize and regen/cara now you have a better chance of surviving those late game engagements and you have more up time.
It should probably tweaked a small bit so that the Fade can't regenerate as much as he can when mucous + regen and metabolize all stack but I'm not sure how that can be addressed personally. Maybe just reducing the amount the advanced metabolize heals..
I think the energy part of metabolize is in a pretty good spot, we still see fades running out of energy sometimes when they spend too much in an engagement. The health is the thing that probably needs to be tweaked the most.
It does force better marine play.. but I don't find that a bad thing.
What the lower divisons lack in aim they can make up for in positioning and teamwork; if the Fade is low.. cut him quickly and get the frag before he can regenerate @ hive or nearby!
This, I agree with. Even if you struggle to keep up in the aim department, map positioning and teamwork are something that you can improve on greatly. It's amazing how much time you have to shoot if you maintain good room positioning and your teammates let you know when something is coming.
uhhhh. no. no they can't. That's why they're lower divs. You should know the biggest difference between the many 'premier level shooters' and actual premier players is the speed at which people do things which is directly related to their general gamesense/decisionmaking. It only gets worse the lower div you go. That's why there's all these 40-50 min stalemates in low divs.
Making fades better the longer an engagement goes on via regen and metabolize doesn't make them that much better at a premier level, but makes then rediculously op at a low level. A premier level fight is over after the first reload. Lower div fights usually go on for 2-3 reloads. Even further, regen is king of pubs where noone can hit a fade so they never need to back off and heal.
The way it scales just doesn't work.
Sure, lower division players tend to do everything slower. But I don't think you can make the argument that those players are incapable of improving that part of their game a reasonable amount. I think what Locklear was trying to say is just that - if you can't get the aiming part, then try to focus on contributing in other ways via faster/better positioning, calling.
I don't think it's fair to say lower div fights go on for 2-3 reloads. The times that occurs are few and far between. I do agree that engagements last longer, and therefore regen has more of an impact during fights at the lower divisions than it does at the higher. This is why we need to look at all levels of play when balancing.
Your example is a joke Locklear. Of course a fade is going to die when he walker fades with a shotgun right next to him. That's no better than the video someone posted saying how bad Onos is because they soloed an Onos that couldn't hit a single gore.
Just so we're clear, I think regular metabolize is fine. It adds even more skill to Fade movement and energy management, which is definitely a good thing.
However Advanced Metabolize seems completely unnecessary. Why should Fades have an upgrade that just gives them a 2nd way to regenerate health to the point where they never have to heal at a hive? You're removing any benefit to hurting a Fade enough to make him leave a fight because he just goes around a corner, spams Advanced Metabolize while regenning and he's back at you 10 seconds later. This allows Fades to dominate solo cappers because even if the Fade doesn't kill the capper on the first fight, he quickly heals and goes back in against a low armor marine while he's at full HP. I see no reason to have the ability in the game other than people want to remake this game into NS1.
You shouldn't be able to solo a Fade 1v1 but it should be possible to force a Fade to disengage from a fight and have to go back to his hive to heal. Instead, even if the Fade doesn't win he mashes his shift key until he's at full HP again.
It doesn't matter how bad your aim is if you come in on a fade from a flank and he is black barred from overextending and you basically need 5% accuracy to kill him.
Except that Fade won't stay blackbarred for long if he has the right upgrades. It's a lot harder to pinch a 200 hp Fade that's been spamming metabolize and regening health than a 50 hp Fade.
.. Communication on the other hand and learning how to be in the right spot to coordinate teamwork and equate it to a frag is something that can be done at lower division play.
I completely disagree. The biggest difference that I see between divisions is gamesense, communication, and speed. Most of these teams haven't been together long enough to really build the communication, speed, and gamesense that's shown by premier teams and some of the div 1 teams. Yeah, there's also a dramatic skill drop off from each division, but there's been some extremely skilled teams that have existed the last few seasons and failed because they didn't communicate well. If some of the div 2 and lower teams had good enough communication they could be div 1 quality based with ok skill and good to great communication/teamwork.
Your example is a joke Locklear. Of course a fade is going to die when he walker fades with a shotgun right next to him. That's no better than the video someone posted saying how bad Onos is because they soloed an Onos that couldn't hit a single gore.
You really fail to see the point I think. I'm not ego tripping about this frag or some garbage. And Tane wasn't missing tons of swipes. It was W2/A2 with medpacks. He wouldn't have been able to get a pick if he hadn't stayed on him due to the energy restrictions pre-metabolize.
It seems like this remark is just trying to say I'm wrong for the sake of argument instead of trying to see the point. At premiere level it doesn't really matter if he is walker fading or not.. the accuracy is so great that even fades that are blinking will take shots (damagewise) like those.
I even stated that he was walkering and it's not the best example. Thanks for reiterating that my video isn't the greatest example as I said myself but I'm not going to bother finding a better one from our personal VODs that displays how quickly a Fade melts to a shotgun in premiere play..
Giving the aliens the tools they need to end the game faster and also compete with higher tech that the marines can bring out is exactly what bringing metabolize to Fades does. The Fade should be dominating LMGs regardless of having metabolize or not as you said.
I think this is mostly an initial reaction from people experiencing the ability and it needs more time to be tweaked and people need more time to learn to deal with it properly in terms of positioning and teamwork play overall.
It shouldn't be insulting.. I'm not saying "lol you're bad" I'm just giving food for thought for lower division players to think about.
You say there's a pretty big difference but we've yet to see ANY real matches played with it yet. A dozen or so scrims is not completely indicative of how it's going to play out. This is purely theorycraft / observations and feedback given from pick up games and likely less than two dozen scrims.
They can play as a team and they can perform teamwork in this manner.. it's just a matter of practice and knowledge of it in the first place. Which is something I think only comes from watching high level teams play and learning it (and then applying it) the easy way or learning it the hard way in scrimmages. It would be nice if there was a guide or video on the NSL that covered some of the basic plays like that though.. "How to cut a Fade" etc.. and see how teams played in lower divisions with that knowledge in hand.
I can agree with what Ironfist said. The current Adv. metabolize / regen combination for Fades is pretty frustrating. I have trouble with Lerks as it is, but I know if I can get a good engagement and deal 120 damage to that Lerk before I'm out of bullets I can be assured he'll either back out back to the hive(or nearest crag) allowing me to continue my push since he did a bad engagement, or he'll dive on me and risk dying.
With the current Fade, this is a lot more difficult. Doing 200 - 300dmg as either an LMG or shotgun doesn't feel as rewarding when they go into the next room to heal and come back. Leaving little down time to continue pressure(or capping).
I think a good middle ground would be increasing the cooldown of Metabolize while scaling the energy gained, without increasing the health regenerated. This way, Fades won't have to press Metabolize as much while roaming(Doesn't feel as comfortable as Lerks spamming spacebar) and reduce their regen overall from the ability.
There is no overall goal to make NS2 an exact copy of NS1 here, let me make that abundantly clear now. However throwing out 10+ years of knowledge and testing of abilities/mechanics from a near-identical game is extremely shortsighted. Find me a better ability for the fade that doesn't fit some ridiculous niche role, and I'm pretty sure anyone would be open to considering it. Fact is not one person has been able to ever suggest a better suited ability, and many have tried.
Metabolize health regain is a difficult balance, as you can argue fades wishing to exert prolonged pressure can select regen. However the general limiting factor of fades is health and or energy, so having metabolize offer the ability to regain both is a logical step. The overall goal is to not make any upgrade mandatory, something even NS1 failed at. Making sure that both metabolize and regen used together and metabolize/regen individually are worthwhile/not OP will take some time, especially for all skill levels.
Its important to note that currently the skill levels to effectiveness is extremely varied, and you need to look much further beyond specific situations. The further down the skill tree you look, the further away from 1v1 balancing you get. Its not because things cannot be balanced in those situations, its more because of how wildly someones ability with specific weapons/classes compared to potential opponents varies. In this regard you need to consider the balance of the individual and the balance of the team. If a regen fade is strong in 1v1s and killing cappers, group play might be its weakness. The fade cannot stay in combat as long and needs to retreat to heal, allowing you to push out the rest of the team easier. When the fade returns hes alone and cannot commit.
Find me a better ability for the fade that doesn't fit some ridiculous niche role, and I'm pretty sure anyone would be open to considering it. Fact is not one person has been able to ever suggest a better suited ability, and many have tried.
THE BIG(ish) PATCH is now a part of the live CompetitiveMod.
The healing stacking is something we're aware of and trying to decipher how best to address. For now we've made the following changes, hopefully this can alleviate some of the issues:
-Reduce Regeneration rate from 8% → 7% (this will make fade regen ticks go from 20 → 17.5)
-Reduce Improved Metabolize heal from 20 → 10 (this is now about 50% of the regen upgrade rate, instead of equivalent)
A bug with the onos speed has been found and fixed as well, he had somehow lost 1 speed from the live version (he was running at 6.5 instead of 7.5). The Onos is something we're continuing to keep a close eye on- he just received some significant energy management reductions yesterday and we want to see how those pan out.
Find me a better ability for the fade that doesn't fit some ridiculous niche role, and I'm pretty sure anyone would be open to considering it. Fact is not one person has been able to ever suggest a better suited ability, and many have tried.
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited April 2014
Random thought: What if Vortex is kept, and improved?
Vortex could trigger when Blink is maintained for 1 second (instead of triggering after Fade's first attack), making it a more worthwhile mid/late game upgrade.
Then there won't be a need for two separate Metabolize researches.
That should be removed, then the counter for advanced metabolize is killing the second hive. And that's sorta what this games about, eh? eh?
As it currently stands, rushing in to kill that 2nd hive would make it much easier to drop the Fades, since they'd be losing 3 levels of biomass for quite an extended period of time, as well as (potentially) losing 3 levels of an upgrade.
You know how lifeforms retain their abilities if they learn them?
That should be removed, then the counter for advanced metabolize is killing the second hive. And that's sorta what this games about, eh? eh?
I don't really like that idea personally. Losing a 2nd hive should be a blow but if the lifeform can manage to keep himself up I think he should hold on to his abilities.
Loosing that 15 HP as a fade is gamebreaking... Personally I do think that aliens should loose abilities if you loose the hive, since it tends adds more value to the hive. However in most games you see marines breaking and killing a hive post fades, its hard for aliens to retake and regain that anyways as they are usually at a pretty significant disadvantage to loose the hive. NS2 play in general is much more static, leading to hive battles usually being drawn out.
As for vortex, it suffers the same problems that shadowstep did. It offers a movement mechanic that is solely evasive, and as such requires either a high risk/reward setup, or has to be accounted for with other tradeoffs. If movement and attacking could be as smooth and calculated as NS1, vortex could offer interesting bait switch plays without becoming horribly overpowered, but we must make do with the limitations we have. That leaves us with a lower energy cost/less effectiveness, which tends to make the ability pretty pointless. What makes vortex not all that useful currently is not the swipe activation, but more the utility - its a one way trip. However loosing the swipe requirement turns it into a pretty overpowered ability - as it almost guarantees any fades survival, for little planning or skill requirement. Any time you're in danger you simply return to the hive. The swipe limitation forces the effectiveness of that to only landing a single swipe.
I always disliked aliens keeping their abilities once the hive goes down. Abilities don't behave like every other upgrade in the game. I think I have been pretty vocal about how annoying it is to kill a hive only to be greeted by one hive umbra onos.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Why would shadowstep be only evasive? Its a short range instant teleport into melee range, perfect for finishing any marine off. Come from any angle to prevent getting meatshot.
As for changing abilities.. (lets assume im still against because I am) but I will think along.
I did suggest a while back to change stab to a faster equivalent (like swipe) and then make it restore energy and/or health on hit.
* The better the fade player, the more you hit, so it scales upwards per division.
* A fade outside combat (running) isn't getting anything, allowing it still to get pinched.
Why would shadowstep be only evasive? Its a short range instant teleport into melee range, perfect for finishing any marine off. Come from any angle to prevent getting meatshot.
Because blink costs less energy and closes the distance just as well
I see people complaining about meta+regen too OP because it lets the fade regen too fast. Well that's the whole point?
To me it looks like saying cara is OP because it gives you more armor or cele is OP because it gives you more speed.
Getting regen+meta doesn't make you survive a lot longer in teamfights, unless you play accordingly (aka blinking around not swiping) wich reduce your dps. It is really useful only if you survive, and you traded cara for regen, so you will die quite easily or be pushed away before doing a lot of damage. In return you can go back in faster, but again you don't have cara so you are weak. You are basically gambling every time you decide to go in and stay for the kill, or you have to play the safe in/out playstyle without doing much damage. Seems fair to me.
Nerfing regen again to isn't the solution, especially since it touches more than the fade. Neither is nerfing meta so hard. If the numbers are really out of proportion ok, but 50% reduction ????
It's still a topic of debate, and consideration for lower skill levels. Personally I think metab/regen might have been a /little/ too quick before, but we'll see. In the future, perhaps we can find a middle ground if the current numbers don't work out.
The goal for regen should be viable field healing while not being good enough to be able to tank well in combat.
The goal for Adv. Metabolize should be to help the fade scale a little bit into the mid/late game, via an additional minor in-combat HP gain.
Personally I think metab was a bit overnerfed, I don't see it being horribly useful at only 10 per tick, but I agree that it was causing issues when stacked with other sources of healing. The regen nerf should not be terribly noticeable, it was very minor (2.5hp difference for fade).
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Who was saying anything as having step as a way to prevent meatshots? I was saying 'dont go in a straight line, use step and expect to survive a meatshot' as ya know, us lower div folk sometimes need to be stated the obvious.
What I ment to say initially is that rather then blink its instant so you close the distance better. So its not 'only evasive'.
If its worth the energy is a different point entirely. :P
Perhaps look into the sources of the issue with the heal stacking.
The source is that there are too many sources. It takes time to find out exactly which branch to prune though, and to come up with viable alternatives. (for instance imo muccous and crag heal wave are totally unnecessary. But what would you replace them with that would still be useful?)
Remove mucous and replace it with an ability that gives a temporary max hp boost maybe? It doesn't actually give HP but temporarily gives a a higher max HP pool? 70 vs 73 hp on a skulk for example.. Idk how it would play out in a real game, just a random thought as an alternative to the current ability which is really redundant. It's like having a temporary biomass 3 skulk for an engagement that can help tip the favor but doesn't become spammed due to how it would work. (doesn't replenish any HP)
I really think mucous being a mobile HP commander spammed ability is too much with regen becoming viable again. It's really redundant.. Even with 2 Tres it can just be dropped once with lifeforms that have regeneration.. and the crag heal wave is definitely redundant.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
I would just like to add my 2 cents to the conversation here. I have been following this and as someone who put forward the idea of a separate 'Pro' mod back in Beta days, I am very interested in seeing how this turns out.
As many of you are aware of the balance and nature of NS2, you know how everything is intertwined together. I just want to make this perfectly clear to everyone involved in this:
There is no simple way to balance NS2.
NS2 has too many layers to make a change here, make a change there and expect to have a balanced game. If you really want to balance this, and make some of the changes that have been suggested, I want you to realise, that the game you end up with will be massively different to NS2.
NS2 is in the state it is in because of the awkwardness of getting the myriad of features working successfully alongside each other. With every change you make to the gameplay, there are numerous additional side effects, and these will cause the two modes to become incompatible.
If you think the current NS2 competitive community is strong enough to keep on going, even though you risk cutting out the supply line of new players, then go ahead. Just think very carefully about what you are doing, and the effects it will have on the current and future communities.
Bear in mind, when I suggested the mod, I was expecting a playerbase of around 1500-2000 concurrent players, not 500. For a playerbase the size of NS2, I just think this is going to bring round a faster end of the community.
Comments
They DO have the ability to do exactly as I said. Saying that lower divison players "can't" do something in terms of teamwork or communication is a bit narrow minded. I think you should be thinking along the lines of "most of them don't" but it's not because they can't.
I will agree that lower divison marines can't provide constant DPS to combat forms of regeneration but that's a mechanical limitation in their ability and NOT related to positioning or teamwork.
All it takes is basic communication and looking at your map.
Ridiculously good aim takes loads and loads of practice and some people just can't aim. I think that's more of the bit where "you have it or you don't".. Communication on the other hand and learning how to be in the right spot to coordinate teamwork and equate it to a frag is something that can be done at lower division play.
What "CAN'T" be done at lower level play is solo'ing a fade with a LMG or shotgun when their accuracy is on average below the level required to do so. That is the limits of the mechanical play at that level and that does limit what can be done in certain scenarios. But playing smart and using teamwork can be done at ANY level of play.
It doesn't matter how bad your aim is if you come in on a fade from a flank and he is black barred from overextending and you basically need 5% accuracy to kill him.
EDIT:
And as you said yourself, because lower division engagements last so long that gives the marines in that level of play even longer to get a solo LMG or shotgun into position to cut low lifeforms that are retreating from a fight.
You speak in absolutes in your post going on about how the engagements play out but really a lot of engagements are dynamic in NS.. premiere engagements are not always over within one reload.. and some lower division engagements are.
And personally I find the new metabolize extremely useful in premiere play at the moment. But I will repeat from my other post.. not opposed to tweaks.. merely defending the gameplay behind the ability and that it's not as overpowered as some people seem to think.
Even further.. this isn't even about pubs.
At any rate, I don't believe that "they can't" business.
Personally, I agree with this to a point. I think Advanced Metabolize needs it's health gain halved to 10 hp/use. The balance team has promised me they would keep a close eye on it.
So apparently there was a bug causing the onos' max speed to get reduced by 0.75. This was entirely unintentionally and will be fixed in the next patch. As @Fiskbit said, there is no way to make the onos 2-shot a1 marines without 1-shotting armorless marines as a1 marines have 200 eHP.
As for increasing the damage to 95, I could see an argument for it regarding more commonly 2-hitting a1 marines that have taken just a bit of chip damage (10 damage chip, rather than 20). But a 90 damage gore puts it in a nice place for armor 3 to actually have an impact, requiring one more gore without any medpacks. It would be nice to see people's opinions on these circumstances.
You know very well that there are plenty of times aliens get on 2 hives/fades when marines only have 1/1 shotguns. We can't just balance the game for 'marines have to play perfect or they lose'. That's very boring gameplay and gets decided in the first 30 seconds, might as well gg after you lose the first fight.
Pretty sure I meatshotted him pretty good there too.
While I think it's perfectly fine, even necessary, to balance around the higher end of the skill spectrum (Div1/Premiere), we can't lose sight that most of the players fall in the mid-lower end. At that point, they're not going to be doing 300 damage to a fade with a rifle every engagement. This is where I think the regen/adv. metabolize combination is far too strong. The fade comes in, lands a swipe, exits, and returns at full health before the marines can reload and weld.
I think the energy part of metabolize is in a pretty good spot, we still see fades running out of energy sometimes when they spend too much in an engagement. The health is the thing that probably needs to be tweaked the most.
This, I agree with. Even if you struggle to keep up in the aim department, map positioning and teamwork are something that you can improve on greatly. It's amazing how much time you have to shoot if you maintain good room positioning and your teammates let you know when something is coming.
Sure, lower division players tend to do everything slower. But I don't think you can make the argument that those players are incapable of improving that part of their game a reasonable amount. I think what Locklear was trying to say is just that - if you can't get the aiming part, then try to focus on contributing in other ways via faster/better positioning, calling.
I don't think it's fair to say lower div fights go on for 2-3 reloads. The times that occurs are few and far between. I do agree that engagements last longer, and therefore regen has more of an impact during fights at the lower divisions than it does at the higher. This is why we need to look at all levels of play when balancing.
Just so we're clear, I think regular metabolize is fine. It adds even more skill to Fade movement and energy management, which is definitely a good thing.
However Advanced Metabolize seems completely unnecessary. Why should Fades have an upgrade that just gives them a 2nd way to regenerate health to the point where they never have to heal at a hive? You're removing any benefit to hurting a Fade enough to make him leave a fight because he just goes around a corner, spams Advanced Metabolize while regenning and he's back at you 10 seconds later. This allows Fades to dominate solo cappers because even if the Fade doesn't kill the capper on the first fight, he quickly heals and goes back in against a low armor marine while he's at full HP. I see no reason to have the ability in the game other than people want to remake this game into NS1.
You shouldn't be able to solo a Fade 1v1 but it should be possible to force a Fade to disengage from a fight and have to go back to his hive to heal. Instead, even if the Fade doesn't win he mashes his shift key until he's at full HP again.
Except that Fade won't stay blackbarred for long if he has the right upgrades. It's a lot harder to pinch a 200 hp Fade that's been spamming metabolize and regening health than a 50 hp Fade.
I completely disagree. The biggest difference that I see between divisions is gamesense, communication, and speed. Most of these teams haven't been together long enough to really build the communication, speed, and gamesense that's shown by premier teams and some of the div 1 teams. Yeah, there's also a dramatic skill drop off from each division, but there's been some extremely skilled teams that have existed the last few seasons and failed because they didn't communicate well. If some of the div 2 and lower teams had good enough communication they could be div 1 quality based with ok skill and good to great communication/teamwork.
You really fail to see the point I think. I'm not ego tripping about this frag or some garbage. And Tane wasn't missing tons of swipes. It was W2/A2 with medpacks. He wouldn't have been able to get a pick if he hadn't stayed on him due to the energy restrictions pre-metabolize.
It seems like this remark is just trying to say I'm wrong for the sake of argument instead of trying to see the point. At premiere level it doesn't really matter if he is walker fading or not.. the accuracy is so great that even fades that are blinking will take shots (damagewise) like those.
I even stated that he was walkering and it's not the best example. Thanks for reiterating that my video isn't the greatest example as I said myself but I'm not going to bother finding a better one from our personal VODs that displays how quickly a Fade melts to a shotgun in premiere play..
Giving the aliens the tools they need to end the game faster and also compete with higher tech that the marines can bring out is exactly what bringing metabolize to Fades does. The Fade should be dominating LMGs regardless of having metabolize or not as you said.
I think this is mostly an initial reaction from people experiencing the ability and it needs more time to be tweaked and people need more time to learn to deal with it properly in terms of positioning and teamwork play overall.
Or did you? Golden the RT destroyer.. hue hue hue.
There is a pretty big difference in the effectiveness of regen/metabolize between premier and div 3/4.
saying div 3/4 can avoid these issues if they just played better is kinda insulting. Should still somewhat balance for lower levels.
You say there's a pretty big difference but we've yet to see ANY real matches played with it yet. A dozen or so scrims is not completely indicative of how it's going to play out. This is purely theorycraft / observations and feedback given from pick up games and likely less than two dozen scrims.
They can play as a team and they can perform teamwork in this manner.. it's just a matter of practice and knowledge of it in the first place. Which is something I think only comes from watching high level teams play and learning it (and then applying it) the easy way or learning it the hard way in scrimmages. It would be nice if there was a guide or video on the NSL that covered some of the basic plays like that though.. "How to cut a Fade" etc.. and see how teams played in lower divisions with that knowledge in hand.
With the current Fade, this is a lot more difficult. Doing 200 - 300dmg as either an LMG or shotgun doesn't feel as rewarding when they go into the next room to heal and come back. Leaving little down time to continue pressure(or capping).
I think a good middle ground would be increasing the cooldown of Metabolize while scaling the energy gained, without increasing the health regenerated. This way, Fades won't have to press Metabolize as much while roaming(Doesn't feel as comfortable as Lerks spamming spacebar) and reduce their regen overall from the ability.
Metabolize health regain is a difficult balance, as you can argue fades wishing to exert prolonged pressure can select regen. However the general limiting factor of fades is health and or energy, so having metabolize offer the ability to regain both is a logical step. The overall goal is to not make any upgrade mandatory, something even NS1 failed at. Making sure that both metabolize and regen used together and metabolize/regen individually are worthwhile/not OP will take some time, especially for all skill levels.
Its important to note that currently the skill levels to effectiveness is extremely varied, and you need to look much further beyond specific situations. The further down the skill tree you look, the further away from 1v1 balancing you get. Its not because things cannot be balanced in those situations, its more because of how wildly someones ability with specific weapons/classes compared to potential opponents varies. In this regard you need to consider the balance of the individual and the balance of the team. If a regen fade is strong in 1v1s and killing cappers, group play might be its weakness. The fade cannot stay in combat as long and needs to retreat to heal, allowing you to push out the rest of the team easier. When the fade returns hes alone and cannot commit.
The healing stacking is something we're aware of and trying to decipher how best to address. For now we've made the following changes, hopefully this can alleviate some of the issues:
-Reduce Regeneration rate from 8% → 7% (this will make fade regen ticks go from 20 → 17.5)
-Reduce Improved Metabolize heal from 20 → 10 (this is now about 50% of the regen upgrade rate, instead of equivalent)
A bug with the onos speed has been found and fixed as well, he had somehow lost 1 speed from the live version (he was running at 6.5 instead of 7.5). The Onos is something we're continuing to keep a close eye on- he just received some significant energy management reductions yesterday and we want to see how those pan out.
I'll see if I can think of something.
[edit] @xDragon a suggestion (try and keep most feedback to that thread)
That should be removed, then the counter for advanced metabolize is killing the second hive. And that's sorta what this games about, eh? eh?
Vortex could trigger when Blink is maintained for 1 second (instead of triggering after Fade's first attack), making it a more worthwhile mid/late game upgrade.
Then there won't be a need for two separate Metabolize researches.
As it currently stands, rushing in to kill that 2nd hive would make it much easier to drop the Fades, since they'd be losing 3 levels of biomass for quite an extended period of time, as well as (potentially) losing 3 levels of an upgrade.
I don't really like that idea personally. Losing a 2nd hive should be a blow but if the lifeform can manage to keep himself up I think he should hold on to his abilities.
As for vortex, it suffers the same problems that shadowstep did. It offers a movement mechanic that is solely evasive, and as such requires either a high risk/reward setup, or has to be accounted for with other tradeoffs. If movement and attacking could be as smooth and calculated as NS1, vortex could offer interesting bait switch plays without becoming horribly overpowered, but we must make do with the limitations we have. That leaves us with a lower energy cost/less effectiveness, which tends to make the ability pretty pointless. What makes vortex not all that useful currently is not the swipe activation, but more the utility - its a one way trip. However loosing the swipe requirement turns it into a pretty overpowered ability - as it almost guarantees any fades survival, for little planning or skill requirement. Any time you're in danger you simply return to the hive. The swipe limitation forces the effectiveness of that to only landing a single swipe.
As for changing abilities.. (lets assume im still against because I am) but I will think along.
I did suggest a while back to change stab to a faster equivalent (like swipe) and then make it restore energy and/or health on hit.
* The better the fade player, the more you hit, so it scales upwards per division.
* A fade outside combat (running) isn't getting anything, allowing it still to get pinched.
It's instantaneous movement and very gimmicky imo. It's good that it is gone.
Because blink costs less energy and closes the distance just as well
To me it looks like saying cara is OP because it gives you more armor or cele is OP because it gives you more speed.
Getting regen+meta doesn't make you survive a lot longer in teamfights, unless you play accordingly (aka blinking around not swiping) wich reduce your dps. It is really useful only if you survive, and you traded cara for regen, so you will die quite easily or be pushed away before doing a lot of damage. In return you can go back in faster, but again you don't have cara so you are weak. You are basically gambling every time you decide to go in and stay for the kill, or you have to play the safe in/out playstyle without doing much damage. Seems fair to me.
Nerfing regen again to isn't the solution, especially since it touches more than the fade. Neither is nerfing meta so hard. If the numbers are really out of proportion ok, but 50% reduction ????
The goal for regen should be viable field healing while not being good enough to be able to tank well in combat.
The goal for Adv. Metabolize should be to help the fade scale a little bit into the mid/late game, via an additional minor in-combat HP gain.
Personally I think metab was a bit overnerfed, I don't see it being horribly useful at only 10 per tick, but I agree that it was causing issues when stacked with other sources of healing. The regen nerf should not be terribly noticeable, it was very minor (2.5hp difference for fade).
What I ment to say initially is that rather then blink its instant so you close the distance better. So its not 'only evasive'.
If its worth the energy is a different point entirely. :P
The source is that there are too many sources. It takes time to find out exactly which branch to prune though, and to come up with viable alternatives. (for instance imo muccous and crag heal wave are totally unnecessary. But what would you replace them with that would still be useful?)
I admit it is a bit of a stretch, but it is an idea for something that would make the Heal Wave and Mucus different.
Also Onos feels much better, a lot of it was the missing 1 speed.
I really think mucous being a mobile HP commander spammed ability is too much with regen becoming viable again. It's really redundant.. Even with 2 Tres it can just be dropped once with lifeforms that have regeneration.. and the crag heal wave is definitely redundant.
As many of you are aware of the balance and nature of NS2, you know how everything is intertwined together. I just want to make this perfectly clear to everyone involved in this:
There is no simple way to balance NS2.
NS2 has too many layers to make a change here, make a change there and expect to have a balanced game. If you really want to balance this, and make some of the changes that have been suggested, I want you to realise, that the game you end up with will be massively different to NS2.
NS2 is in the state it is in because of the awkwardness of getting the myriad of features working successfully alongside each other. With every change you make to the gameplay, there are numerous additional side effects, and these will cause the two modes to become incompatible.
If you think the current NS2 competitive community is strong enough to keep on going, even though you risk cutting out the supply line of new players, then go ahead. Just think very carefully about what you are doing, and the effects it will have on the current and future communities.
Bear in mind, when I suggested the mod, I was expecting a playerbase of around 1500-2000 concurrent players, not 500. For a playerbase the size of NS2, I just think this is going to bring round a faster end of the community.