What Xenos Need

[Reuben Owen]

I get obscene amounts of lag when I first get shot during a round, this is a new thing too
it's always during the first shot, and its bad enough to freeze the game for 2 seconds (=death)

does anyone else get lag from being shot at lately?

[Herac]

I stopped playing xenos as soon as the nerfs rolled in, I'll say I'm just not a great xeno player but I was able to consistently get a few kills/captures. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up with the difficulty if it became mechanically harder though. It's a shame because playing xeno was really fun and a very different experiance that added to CM a lot whilst I gave it a try.

Coming at if from the other side though, playing marine has just been too easy for me. Even when I die I know that as long as I have a non-bald medic I'll get defibed. I'd really be interested in seeing the numbers on how many marines get defibbed before/after body dragging was removed. I haven't played much recently though so I can't really comment on what the current state of the game is, but I miss playing xenos and I miss being challenged.

[Garrison]

I'd really be interested in seeing the numbers on how many marines get defibbed before/after body dragging was removed. I haven't played much recently though so I can't really comment on what the current state of the game is, but I miss playing xenos and I miss being challenged.

Although I don't know the numbers, I do recall the days when this was a thing, even when cloning was still in the game for that matter. It was usually common practice for Xeno's to drag/hide your corpse in the hive or some isolated place so the marines had no hope of reaching their fallen comrade in time. Or Xenos collecting fallen marines in the hive so they could be gibbed by the queen later down the course of the game (in fairness, 90% of them were brain dead already, and armor lights didn't turn off when you died)

It was very meta/annoying for the Marines in my opinion. Which is probably why dragging dead marines was made forbidden.

Thinking back on then and now. Marines are also playing smarter and their gear is more reliable then ever before, with some exceptions of course. Heck, they even got had a tank that holds down the front line so well, that Xeno's are forced to not engage unless the marines make a critical error.

[zoboomafoo]

Tackle nerf makes xenos not worth playing. idgaf about the other nerfs gimme back my tackles so I can kill fools

[dasWurmtMich]

I stopped playing xenos a day after the nerf. There is something inherently wrong with caste balance when an ancient runner is worse at combat than ancient drones. You straight up miss 8 out of 10 tackles and even those tackles that do go off last for such a short period of time that it's laughable as runner. 1 vs 1 or even 1 vs 2 was super fun as elite/ancient runner and actually challanging, one of the few PVP activities in general that still gave me PVP shakes. Now you can just forget it because the balance is a fucking joke. Defenders and warriors are just useless. The only "frontline" xeno that can reliably 1 vs 1 is lurker because he can perma stun with his pounce


Revert the xeno changes, revert the tackle change, dont nerf marines and then go do xeno caste balance again from there.

[kastion]

games just not fun right now. A sadar can point blank himself and just get up and keep going but if a xeno gets hit even tier 3s get gibbed. A ravager can slash a marine in the head 8 times and not kill it but 2 shotgun blasts can kill pretty much any xeno. The game is just not fun.

[CABAL]

Once... A wise man said: Man up and deal with it!

Off Topic

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Joke... If you didn't get it

[Ruse]

> "you wouldn’t nerf all weapons assuming Harry Cowper and Lisa Taylor were every Marine."
> "Shotgun aim delay has been increased to account for the existence of the angled grip."


It was a thing. Few bald/normal xenos tried to "ambush" normal/veteran marines, but buckshot stunned them and then they died? NERF!
Few marines running holding two shotguns? NERF!
Raising "bare" stats will make bad xenos a decent xenos, but robust xenos a "god-tier" xenos.

T1's might indeed need few tweaks, slight buffs etc.

Yet I don't agree with getting more T3's and T2's. They are like xeno side "specialists" and PFC's aren't getting "abilities" to use RPG and Sniper rifle in time.

Another thing is "attitude" for xeno battles. They are NOT front fighters. Wars aren't really a xenomorph thing. Marines have range weapons, so it's logic they win in a frontal attack.

I thought Xenos were meant to be genetically engineered bio weapons meant to be the best at combat the perfect species or whatever maybe I’m just not remembering it right.

[Ruse]

But at this point they might as well be made of paper and not even fun to fight.

[CABAL]

I thought Xenos were meant to be genetically engineered bio weapons meant to be the best at combat the perfect species or whatever maybe I’m just not remembering it right.

You can have an army of skilled Ninjas, but on the open and in the light they will lose to much smaller army of regular soldiers with guns. Xenos have to relly on tricks, darkness and other stuff to win. Yet you say that becouse they are bio weapons they should "magicaly" beat every opponent by brute force when they are outnumbered 3x.

To achieve it, xenos has to be buffed to be a bullet sponge again, becouse no other way will grant them wins without using brain. How do you imagine a melle army could beat something like modern army in pure frontlines, no tricks involved? Fast and brutal bullet sponges.

[Rafar9]

I feel like this entire situation is pretty well symbolized by the average LV post fog push.

Once the fog drops, marines push hard, and the xenos just don’t have the skill set to resist such a concentrated force. If they try to get to melee range to attempt to tackle or slash, they get destroyed by PB barrages and because they don’t have any way to run or stun the marines, they die. If they try to play defensive and bombard the marines and play the long game, they can’t deal enough damage and eventually succumb to sheer numbers, and they die. A lose-lose situation really.

In the end the buffs to xenos don’t need to be insanely game changing, but they are needed. Xenos need a reverse on the tackle nerf at the very least, and additionally either need the stats to compete with the marines on large pushes, or a way to skirmish and capture/kill small groups more successfully.

[CABAL]

I feel like this entire situation is pretty well symbolized by the average LV post fog push.

Once the fog drops, marines push hard, and the xenos just don’t have the skill set to resist such a concentrated force. If they try to get to melee range to attempt to tackle or slash, they get destroyed by PB barrages and because they don’t have any way to run or stun the marines, they die. If they try to play defensive and bombard the marines and play the long game, they can’t deal enough damage and eventually succumb to sheer numbers, and they die. A lose-lose situation really.

In the end the buffs to xenos don’t need to be insanely game changing, but they are needed. Xenos need a reverse on the tackle nerf at the very least, and additionally either need the stats to compete with the marines on large pushes, or a way to skirmish and capture/kill small groups more successfully.

Or a new caste made just for that purpose. Introducing "Puncturetor", an alien that shoots thorns like a pulse rifle at burst. Good at halting pushes by 50% of fear and 50% of actual wounds. One, or two of those T3's would halt any push, but at a cost of not having another boiler. Balance it's thorns so it wouldn't kill marines that easly, but would make a lot of bleeding wounds and also... FF for xenos! A punisher for a snowflake without armor and helmet.

Yes, xenos don't have the skill set to resist it, becouse marines are a force "shaped" like spear, they hit hard at the tip. This is marine's advantage and like in Scissors-Paper-Rock you have to use counter... Use counter. Don't cry that your paper is cut by scissors so devs have to make paper out of metal. Use rock instead.

Besides, on LV xenos nearly always retreat to the caves and then send runner and sentinel packs to harass road from nexus to hydro and from hydro to caves, then, when the marines lose momentum... Full Evac.

[Reuben Owen]

right now xenos have to rely on their special abilities because tackle is derped

the nesting changes are just annoying
warriors are not good

defenders are a better choice right now, because they can both damage and knockdown without relying on the bad tackle chance, but warriors are bad...really I only use them to punch because 1v1 they're worse than lurkers and 2v1 if you try a lunge you move so slow you always gotta drop the marine before you get shot up, praes are bad (SPIT RANGE INCREASE WHEN), and crushers aren't bad, but they can't tackle stomp anymore so their whole caste is getting less usage...when defenders came out, there were more defenders than runners in a round but now theres more runners/lurkers again, which are inherently more fragile... unrelated to the tackle nerf but just a lot of differences that stacked up I guess

less sentinels/ranged types lately
at the same time more drones (who aren't exactly fighters)

and I think marines rush faster now that the tank is gone, I mean before they pushed really fast up to a point with tank, but then they kinda just chilled behind it/didn't advance that way til it broke, moved or killed tons (which all of those took a lot of time)

[Herac]

It was very meta/annoying for the Marines in my opinion. Which is probably why dragging dead marines was made forbidden.

I'm going to give this post a preface and a disclaimer, the disclaimer being that it's pretty off topic so ignore if you're only interested in talking about the topic at hand.

PREFACE: I'm only speaking for myself, I don't represent anyone else who plays this game but me. CM is lucky to have a lot of different people who approach the game with different goals, some people really value a challenge and other people might just want to have a more casual experiance. That's fine, there are roles which are very challenging and there are roles that are very unchallenging.

I never had any issue as a marine with body dragging, I always felt that people calling it meta were about as sincire as the xenos saying they only did it because they wanted to hide the lights, except that made sense in game. You could easily justify it from a meta perspective by saying that the xenos saw colonist using defibs during the inital battle, or just treat it the same as vent welding but that's not why I dislike the changes around it.

Dying as a marine used to feel like more of a death sentence, but when I've played since dragging was removed it has just felt like an inconvience because if you have any competent team mates and a medic that knows how to defib you're not dead (assuming you didn't rambo off alone). You don't even need to go to medbay sometimes, just slap a splint on your chest. The result being that people can take suicidal risks with very little consequences, and consequences are what make CM interesting for me. Before I took a break the only rounds where Iperma died were the ones the marines lost.

Onto the actual topic, like I said I wish I had the numbers but I'm going to bet that marine revivals are more common now than they were before, which means more marines in the round. To make this harder for the xenos: spooky has moved the capture dynamic to 'captures are really hard, but escape is next to impossible' which ironically I think has backfired slightly, because now so many people ghost when captured there is less of a need to guard nests so break outs aren't really as impossible as the difficulty of captures warrents.

I would love to see all that reverted honestly, make captures easier, get rid of 'face huggers turn off lights', make bodies dragable again so dying carries more risk and you will see players adapt to it, just like it was before.

[Grubstank]

I don't want to go back to the old days of xenos casually putting marines into stunlock with a few disarms. I found that style of combat to be extremely boring personally, and in general I find the changes to stats and dragging to be extremely refreshing (my xeno perspective mostly).

Removing agency with stunlocks is boring for both sides and lowers the skill ceiling. If we buff xenos I would be in favor of a flat damage increase across all castes -- and perhaps increased bone-break odds as well. These crazy marine unga-rushes we see at the start of every round should be a battle of attrition. More often than not, the only significant marine casualties are some bicaridine pills and a few defib charges.

[misto]

what xenos need

crowd control abilities other than screech(possessed by only a single high value player) and boiler clouds (posessed by only a handful of players in any given match, demand significant setup time, proper terrain, etc.)

crusher charge is not crowd control unless the crowd is in single file lineup

defender tailsweep is not crowd control because it hits in too tiny an area

prae spray was actually crowd control but got hit with nerfs for being a worthwhile ability

[Saytkl77]

The tackle nerf really hit crusher, whenver I charge in as a mature crusher, I seem to miss about 4 tackles for each one that hits. Before it was something like a 70-80% chance of tackling.

[KingPhilipIII]

The problem is we need to figure out a better compromise than the one we have right now because it isn't working. Marines have overwhelming firepower, numbers, and xenos are supposed to be incredibly powerful individually and be incredibly self sufficient(Rapid, easy healing) but the problem is they are no longer strong enough individually for their whole shtick to work.

No side likes to get ganked without chance, but it's difficult to find a medium because of how each side is armed that doesn't piss the other off.

[Winter]

What a beno needs, what a beno wants~ Whatever makes benos happy sets you free~

[Garrison]

Playing a few Xeno rounds (in both high and low pop), and reading peoples thoughts on this topic, I'm changing my propositions to fixing this, in addition to adding reasons to them.

A. Give Warriors and maybe defenders more health.
They are supposed to be the front line combatants, first ones in, last ones out, and they should be given enough resilience to do such. Keeping this to warriors would probably help ensure that the marines will still be able to stop a defender caste oriented push, even on low pop rounds.

B. Shortening the amount of time T1's need to reach Mature and Elder, but increase the time it takes to get to Ancient.

Although it makes sense at the start of the game. if the hive as suffered heavy losses, it can be difficult for the hive to recover unless the marines are unable to press their advantage. In other instances, Xeno's have a rough time in this moment because their replacement T1's simply do not have the maturity, and by extension, the strength and HP, to push a determined coordinated assault of marines back away from the hive. Speeding up their initial maturity will give replacement T1's a fighting chance against whatever is thrown at them. However, I think it would be appropriate to slow down the growth to Ancient to keep T1's power in check so they don't get too powerful too fast.

C. Increase the number of T2's that the hive can support.

The xeno's need to have an effective arsenal to combat Marines when they know what they are doing. Robust T3's are indeed arguably overpowered, but what happens when they all die? The hive falls apart most of the time. Giving the Xeno's more T2's will help ensure Xeno's will have enough special roles to adapt their strategies when the queens plans don't go as intended, and not get instantly steam rolled as a result.

D. "slightly" increase the Accuracy of Neurotoxic spit for Sentinels.

I don't know if I was just unlucky when trying them out, but I seem to miss my spits a lot when I desperately need them to hit, yeah, I still get some successful shots and ruin a marines day. But I feel like I should be landing those shots slightly more often then current. My main idea here is that Sentinels would accompany Lurkers or runners and help keep their targets pinned for capture or easy kills. Restricting this to sentinels would ensure the queen can't just spit her way to victory and people will be less salty when they can't be spitters.

[Build_R_]

If explosions did less damage to xenos or did a little more friendly fire damage to marines, hell if they even just had a stun time less than around 6 seconds that may help to improve the poor current xeno winrate.

[Madventurer]

I do have to agree that in 1v1 basically any xeno should win if they get a drop on the marine. This goes double since most marines already know to not fuck off on their own in the first place.

Runners are not exactly fit for combat at the moment, considering their twitchy playstyle which makes landing hits on non-downed marines unreliable at best and near-impossible at worst against buckshot marines.
Lurkers are probably the only caste that I would say is NOT too weak, if for nothing else then for their pounce. They can reliably knock a marine out of the round for 30 mins + even if they have friends close, and outright kill or capture if they're alone.
Ravagers are surprisingly decent because of their ability to charge, but they're paper tank even after maturing, so without support they're not great.

Defenders are actually a fairly solid T1 at the moment, at least in their given role and with proper support. Their killing power is lackluster and abilities are okay, but they're good at their job, taking bullets for squishier xenos or even stronger when they really need it.
Warriors are just okay at best. Sure, you can insta-stun one marine at range, but your drag speed is dogshit, and there's not really nothing much else going for them. Less tank than defenders from what I've seen.
Crushers are T3 defenders that move their points in attack to defense. That's it. You're a glorified moving barricade. I would argue that a crusher's best attack is the acid blood spatter that goes on marines from getting PB'd.
Praetorians are actually pretty good as mentioned, spam that acid spray.

I don't really play sentinels, so I have no strong opinion. Not in a great spot though.
Spitters are just sentinels with acid spit. So that's nice for pissing off marines and slowing them down, but probably not killing.
Boilers are ever-necessary support. But they have too many counters: CAS, Sniper, SADAR can all kill them from beyond visual, and if they get caught in B18 grenade spam, it's over for them.

Drone-castes are all pretty solid, since they're not frontliners anyways.

[blingx3]

To put words in a simple form, through reading most of what everyone wrote:
1-Stuns throws the whole xeno marine into unbalanced form.
2-pounces for runners should be buffed into original form.
3- warrior are god awful ( I agree because I play xeno 95 % of the time)
4- lurker rush be damned.
5- 1v1 marine is trash for xenos.

[Reuben Owen]

crowd control from a non t3

in other words, something that can actually handle defending the hive as a t1/t2

even if a t3 is very very good at crowd control, t3s are still way too rare to have more than 1 or 2 of the type, and it takes them forever to grow up (making them usually have to deal with the toughest situations early on while still young) and when you lose them they're very hard to replace

a hive of t1/t2 + queen (i.e. all t3 dead) relies way to much on the queen to stem marine pushes, because none of the others can reliably handle halting a group of marines, even if they are a group

defenders are still the closest we have to t1/t2 crowd control but its more the fact that they can take a hit than anything else...a group of defenders would come the closest to halting an advance compared to a group of any other t1/t2

the other thing is that with group marine vs xenos its usually very uneven, so its not 10 sentinels and 10 spitters vs 20 marines, its 3 spitters and 3 sentinels vs 14 marines or something...

but defenders are generally the rarest t1, mostly because people who play them aim for higher and they can't really go out and 1v1 like a lurker/runner/warrior making them undesirable offensively (but hella good defensively)... though defenders are still cool

[Ruse]

Okay after playing xenos more often I can confirm their doing fine you just need to be more mindful that your not quite a weapon of mass destruction and as cobal said play it more stealth and another thing I’d like to point out warriors are not trash in fact their one of my favorites when it comes to decimating marines with their combo of lunge slash slash then punch and fling if you have time or aren’t about to get mowed down but xenos arnt super underpowered you just need to work as a team yeah 1v1 is hard but remember your using claws and tail and their using very deadly weapons you need to consider your caste and their pros and cons and do what their good at