Looking For Exceptional Lerk Players
Sarisel
.::' ( O ) ';:-. .-.:;' ( O ) '::. Join Date: 2003-07-30 Member: 18557Members, Constellation
.::' ( O ) ';:-. .-.:;' ( O ) '::. Join Date: 2003-07-30 Member: 18557Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">to enrich a guide I am working on.</div> If you consider yourself to be a very good Lerk user and would be willing to contribute to my current project - the comprehensive guide to Lerking - please respond here.
I am looking to exchange information about a variety of different strategies, spanning from flight & navigation to upgrade use to combat style. The guide's first version is currently 5/8 complete. I'd like to get more than my own opinions for many of the sections.
This is a very detailed guide. I know that few players know how to use the Lerk well, so this is my call out to those that do. The Lerk is an important unit that is too often left unused in games. Through this guide I am hoping to make the Lerk more popular, and hope that as a result more people will start using it.
I may look for demos of good Lerking, exchange of information through text or voice, diagrams, etc.
If you're interested, reply.
I am looking to exchange information about a variety of different strategies, spanning from flight & navigation to upgrade use to combat style. The guide's first version is currently 5/8 complete. I'd like to get more than my own opinions for many of the sections.
This is a very detailed guide. I know that few players know how to use the Lerk well, so this is my call out to those that do. The Lerk is an important unit that is too often left unused in games. Through this guide I am hoping to make the Lerk more popular, and hope that as a result more people will start using it.
I may look for demos of good Lerking, exchange of information through text or voice, diagrams, etc.
If you're interested, reply.
Comments
ask the HAM guys theyre extremely good lerks.
also =ng18=ziggy was the craziest lerk bite user in 1.04 with midair jetpacker bites that seemed nigh on impossible. not sure what he thinks of the 2.0 lerk tho.
Lerking isnt hard however, but if you feel it would help the community by writing a guide, go ahead, but i personally believe people learn through experience rather than reading guides.
I also know [ReD]Dean was a very good lerk in 1.04. Haven't seen him since. I think he quit.
The prefered lerk order dc, mc , sensory.
One of two things are needed for a lerk to survive well. A defensive upgrade of your choice, or SOF. without either the lerk will be ALOT less efficiant. Then you may ask, why not sensory first. Well sensory totally owns when used correctly but the tiniest slip us and you have a problem. The marines super turret a hive up and a base. Sensory is useless for assaulting heavy bases unless if the have an observatory near by. Mcs are CRUCIAL FOR assaulting bases for lerks and fades who worship adrenline and a defensive upgrade is an absolute must for a lerk to survive. To sum it up, scs are good as first hive, but if marines lock a hive down, assaults are a thousand times more efficiant with a defensice upgrade and adrenline. For a skulk an mc is perhaps a better first chamber, but for lerks dcs are. They die way to fast to risk 30 res without a d upgrade or SOF.
Most recomended combos,
With 1 hive
Dcs first: In 2.0 the lerks does not gain as much carapace and carapace only lets you take 20% more damage. Not much. I would personally recomend regen. Regen heals 11 health per tick and in 3 ticks you earn a little more health back than the boost cara would have given you. Redempt recommended if your team is poor. Lerks are pretty expendable if your res flow is decent. Carapace will more likely save your **** if ambushed because direct shots against a regen lerk it will instantly die, however if you keep moving you'll usually gain much more health back than cara would have given you. The only time i recommend carapace is if the entire team is outfitted with hmgs. Those shoot a million bullets per second, and it only takes about 4 level 3 to kill you, you usually wont heal more than one tick. However if you have one hive and they got hmgs, you can kiss your **** goodbye.
MC first: I myself prefer to use adrenline, 2 reasons. 1. If i don't die before next hive up, i going to be wishing i had it, and 2. Adrenline just kicks ****. So many more spores and spikes while flying. However silence is very viable also. Very few use celerity. Celerity is my second personal choice. The ability for the lerk to escape and dodge bullets as 1 hive alot for lerk survivability. With one hive, as crucial as a survivability upgrade is for a lerk, i would still recommend adrenline over celerity because although the ability to survive is almost none, the ability to assault or harass marines is greatly increased. Plus the ability to pump out spores everywhere can help you survive to which counters some of the celerity usefullness. Celerity is my number one choice if your team is poor and your survivability is more crucial.
SC first: Pheremones sucks. Enough said. My number 1 recomendation is scent of fear. Ranges weopons combined with a wall hack is very deadly. Plus you'll never be ambushed. Cloaking can help you survive and suprise rines but scent of fear does both better.
With 2 hives:
DC and MC first: Simple, Adrenaline and Regen. Nothing tops that. At this point you should start assaulting and or supporting at a high rate. Nothing increases the efficiancy of a lerk more than that. Adrenaline is a must if you want to use umbra with even the slightest efficiancy. Celerity is cool is you are terrible at flying cause you can run around super fast. Celerity is also good for attack marine squads but not turrets cause you can dodge rines, but not turrets. Learn to fly so you can use adrenline instead. Its much better. Silence not recomended at this point. Silence may be useful for a lerk who picks off rambos, but for heavy assault and support Adrenline and Regen are by far the most useful. One again cara maybe against hmgs, but if your teamates are around, get regen and pray no one concentrates hmg fire on you. Plus if your in umbra you may acually survive direct hmg fire. If your the biggest thing to shoot at agains Hmgs your screwed anyways. The ability to use weapons constantly and stay in battle for long periods of time makes the regen, adren lerk by far the most effective at two hives.
DC and SC first: Regen definatly. Scent of fear over cloaking for same reasons previously stated. Being able to keep your distance from enemies means you'll never get shot faster than heal. It's a shame you won't be able to have adrenline because not assaulting or supporting for a long period of time will be difficult.
SC and MC first: I don't have a personal recomendation for this. Perhaps scent of fear and adrenline. But the thing is by this, without a defensive upgrade it may be somewhat difficult to stay in a battle long enough to make much use out of adrenline. Maybee cerlity and scent of fear and provide light support. This is a tricky situation to pick abilities from but I'd still probably go with adrenline because with umbra you can umbra yourself as your defense upgrade substitute and keep your teamates in umbra which will be your main focus since your teamates don't have a defense upgrade either.
With 3 hives:
DC, MC and SC: Simple. Regen, Adrenline, and scent of fear. You now are super uber battle lerk. The only flexibility on upgrade choice here is maybee adren for celerity since primal scream gets you energy back faster anyways. But then again, primal scream also makes you faster. So your choice. Upgrades like cloaking, silence, redempt, and pheromons are entirely obsolete at this point.
Other upgrade tips
-cara may be taken over regen if dcs are always near by but remember, a regen lerk can stand in front of a turret indefinatly with regen and with umbra several turrets and with teamates near by usually only stray fire hits you so you'll be able to fly around in battle indefinatly so those dcs wouldn't be needed.
-redemt if your poor. Like really poor.
-Celerity good for those who can't fly good yet.
The most important thing as a Lerk is to stay alive. Flying around all over the place can even confuse the person doing it at times, but as long as it keeps bullets away from you, it's more important than hitting the person whose bullets you're avoiding; and anyway, it doesn't harm your accuracy <i>that</i> much, or so I find.
Obviously the best Lerk upgrades are Regeneration/Adrenaline/Scent of Fear under normal circumstances, though the ninja assassination Lerk makes good use of Silence (provided it's used properly; which, to many's disappointment, means reduced sporing, as observant Marines will <i>see</i> where the spores came from).
It need not be stated that you need to keep an eye on your energy bar at all times. Many people say that if it runs out in combat, you die; not always in my experience, as I often find that if I do run out of energy, I do so at the same time as my Marine opponent runs out of ammo in a 1v1 (though the Lerk is back in action faster than the Marine, even without Adrenaline, so if this happens you've probably actually won), and against multiple opponents... well I don't expect to win against a group which has its collective focus on me, but the survival priority should mean that at least you don't die instantly if caught in such an unfortunate situation (just resist the temptation to spore as soon as you regain enough energy to and you're halfway there). Careful rationing of energy can reduce the need for Adrenaline to the level acceptable for other chambers to be viable first for the Lerk (Regeneration is better than Adrenaline as the only upgrade, but only if you monitor your energy well).
That's all for now.
Uzguz
At this time I am documenting the combination of other Kharaa with the Lerk for dealing with specific situations.
It enables u to identify targets and spore them with very little risk, and also protects u from surprise attacks,
With scent of fear you will be VERYhelpful towards the team both as a scout and a damn annoying harasser.
Since its not though, I want to keep saying that if you're a lerk, you need to know when to Umbra, and when to Scream, and that spores dont kill HA.
On the servers, the lerk class DOES attract interest, but late game most people are going Fade or Onos, especially in the face of HA trains. Early game LA harassment is the most common use of Lerk.
Scent of Fear - Scouting, spotting targets
Adrenaline - Gatling gun spiking or mass sporeage
Regen - Sit in a vent all day, nothing to worry about until GLs.
When to harass: Any time marines are too fortified to assault alone.
When to assualt: Anytime there is light marines with no teamates near by. Or when there is mulitiple shotgunners and grenade laucher. Try and take those out from a range before your team assaults them up close.
When to support: Anytime there is teamate alien near by. This includes skulks. Umbra is often neglected on skulks but it is very efficiant with them.
If you have adrenline you may assault and support at the same time.
Well that was an obvious section. Next How to harass, assault and support and weopons detail.
I totally agree with <b>Lt. Hendrickson</b>: Adrenaline, Regeneration and Scent of Fear is awesome.
My best game as a lerk was, when I managed to stop a troop of 4 or 5 marines, which had already established a base with TF, PG and turrets in front of the Power Supply Hive just behind the corner for about 10 minutes.
Nerfing the vanillas with Spores and even spiking some Heavies (I wonder why they kept on weldering the turrets instead of themselves <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> ) it was just fun.
Guerilla tactics like hit, run and hide own with the lerk.
Lerks (and skulks) can even "transport" gorges into ducts, but I won't tell you how <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
And I have a question about umbra: Does it affect all bullets flying through the cloud area, or is the affect just applied to aliens that are detected as being "in umbra"? It would affect the usefulness of umbraing turrents or putting a cloud in the middle of the hallway.
1. The Art of Flight and Navigation
2. The Art of Survival
3. Lerk Abilities and Uses
4. Lerk Speciation (Upgrades)
5. Advanced Lerking : Attacks
6. Advanced Lerking : Combinations (The Lerk and its fellow Kharaa)
7. Advanced Lerking : Defensive Maneuvers
8. Advanced Lerking : Advanced Flight
I'd also appreciate suggestions on what you people would like to see in this guide. Any additions needed in the table of contents?
Thanks for the responses so far.
[edit: this is just the text portion of the guide. I am still planning to add demos, diagrams, and pictures to make it easier to understand.]
Okay, I finally understand what you meant now. The reason why I am going for this extra step of asking for feedback is because my guide is going to be quite big. So far I have ten pages of good text, made easy to read with organized paragraphs and formatting where it matters most. The text in the guide has so far been my own, with some additions of opinions that I have received so far about upgrades and general play, made by Lt. Hendrickson, Uzguz, sej, Necrosis, deathst4r (<i>thanks for the boosting reminder, although it is difficult to achieve with a non-adrenaline lerk</i>), and SecretFire (<i>atmosphere is important, so is moralle - the lerk can affect these tremendously, there is nothing that plays on marine's nerves like a lerk that can't be killed</i>). I'm looking to add as much information as possible from as many sources as possible - this is a good strategy that is used by many writers to make their work more credible.
Now think about how that **** lerk is sporing you, but you don't see him often. Think about how you can either run away, or go onwards. If you run away, the lerk is doing what he wants, blocking off a route. If you go onwards, your also doing what he wants, trying to chase him. The lerk is always out running you, and when he is seen, he's tough to hit! At least skulks rarely flee, but lerks, these **** thrive on being cowardly.
It's not just spores either, they can range attack you, and you KNOW that they can and will easily escape you, to torment you a little later.
Ok flashback is over, now it's your turn, evolve to the lerk and remember how much you hated him! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Flying. Since i think you got most that covered ill give my couple tips only
-learn to fly without gaining any altitude at all. This is possible except off initial flap.
-learn to hover when fighting, your harder to shoot and can escape lots faster and easier if already flying.
- to turn corners real fast, bounce off the walls.
-keep low.
-be very careful when leaving rine spawn in eclipse. very easy to get stuck on ceiling there.
Flying. Since i think you got most that covered ill give my couple tips only
-learn to fly without gaining any altitude at all. This is possible except off initial flap.
-learn to hover when fighting, your harder to shoot and can escape lots faster and easier if already flying.
- to turn corners real fast, bounce off the walls.
-keep low.
-be very careful when leaving rine spawn in eclipse. very easy to get stuck on ceiling there. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I've found ways to make the liftoff without gaining altitude. All you need is a surface that is higher than another. You just need to be off of the ground when you make your first flap to keep the Lerk flying straight instead of jumping up. I've added this yesterday, currently working on my first revision.
edit: forgot to put an example. Run off of a box with the Lerk, then flap - and there you go. You go straight forwards.
1. THE ART OF FLIGHT AND NAVIGATION
2. THE ART OF SURVIVAL
3. ABILITIES AND USES
4. LERK SPECIATION (UPGRADES)
5. ADVANCED LERKING : ATTACKS
6. ADVANCED LERKING : COMBINATIONS
7. ADVANCED LERKING : DEFENSIVE MANEUVERS
8. ADVANCED LERKING : ADVANCED FLIGHT
9. ADVANCED LERKING: MAP ANALYSES
10. ..?
I'm going to look for help specifically for #9.
#9 will probably be extensive and may become a seperate guide, since each map has a lot of unique Lerk features (which can help or hurt a Lerk)
#10 I've decided to throw out the original idea for 'things you most likely don't know' because they are already spread out through the guide. Will find something nicer to put in.. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
edit: and, of course, it would be unfair if I left out a glossary of commonly used terms, and a changelog. Lots of refinements being made.
-learn to hover when fighting, your harder to shoot and can escape lots faster and easier if already flying.
<!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
You mean like <b>Hovaring without flapping</b>?
JK
I have to agree with you on all your points.
I have a few tricks <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Flying. Since i think you got most that covered ill give my couple tips only
- to turn corners real fast, bounce off the walls.
-keep low.
-be very careful when leaving rine spawn in eclipse. very easy to get stuck on ceiling there. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
nice tips
Basicly always try to stay low. much easier to go up very fast. than to go down.
also if ur on the ceiling it can be very hard to exit the room quik because many times the exit is much lower.
Dont bounce unless u are safe, or u are desperate, and u have to emergency leave the place.
You can get bounced behind edges on the walls or on ceilings easily. bouncing often goes wrong if ya try to do it to quik.
Some places are more bounce friendly than other.
my apoligise already for my bad english
ty in advance