What Xenos Need

[Madventurer]

The problem with warrior is that Lunge is very very unreliable and they don't have anything else really going for them.

In general, warriors really are an oddball caste in that they have a stun similar to Lurkers, without any of the stealth, or the speed. They're also much harder to play, have harder time disengaging and in general don't have the easy one-ability kill Lurkers have.

So in essence, they're a Lurker without the stealth or speed, but they might have some potential if you bother to learn them. I don't intend to.

[Onearmy]

I remember the short period when warriors were first introduced where they could just stun-lock you and you were absolutely screwed. Then they were nerfed into the ground. I think you're right to an extent, warrior is an oddball caste that is really hard to play. You don't have stealth, you don't have speed, and you don't have the defensive ability that defenders do. Really at the moment I just see warrior as a stepping stone to crusher.


I don't think they need to be buffed, but perhaps a changeup of abilities/mechanics are in order. Because currently warriors are jack of all trades, master of none. I would play any other caste in preference to warrior.

[Madventurer]

Warriors do have heavy emphasis on the Master of None part of Jack of all Trades.

[TheMaskedMan2]

In my opinion Warrior has always felt like it just had a very flat skill ceiling, for example, a good lurker is much better than a good warrior, but a bad lurker is much worse than a bad warrior.

No matter how good you are at the game, there is only so much you can actually do as a warrior, but if your terrible at the game, you can actually be fairly decent as a warrior. Anyways I only go warrior to get to Prae.

[Drackarus]

At the moment the two largest problems I think xenos suffer right now are larval spawns and the tackle reduction.

The sheer fucking clumsiness of having to observe to play xeno, only to find out the queen was de'ovi'd and now you have to wait upwards of 20 minutes when you could have quite easily just pressed the 'Join the USCM' button instead.

Join The Hive is a pointless button now, and I think what it should do instead is this:

If there are burrowed larvae, pressing the button instantly spawns one.

If you are observing, every 1.5 minutes a new larva will unburrow with an observer inside (If their preferences are on), ignoring the 5 minute death timer because frankly it's pointless and was meant to be used when larvae weren't buried.

I agree with every point you made, but I think that the burrowed larva should take 2 to 3 minutes, not 1.5

[Drackarus]

Pretty much all the above. The recent explosive update isn't helping, with the bug that stuns both crushers and queens for upwards of 10 seconds via a direct RPG hit. The xeno stuns are slowly being nerfed while marine stuns are quickly being buffed. Claymore stun time is practically doubled now with the recent explosive update, aka anyone who wasn't even actively watching the claymore can go grab a snack, piss, then come back and walk over to where you tripped it and unload a 100% accurate burst from a m41a into your face.

Speaking of the m41a, the recent buffs have made it sickeningly overpowered. It's burst is 100% accurate, and can extend off screen and hit any xeno in it's path. So body blocking is a bigger issue than it's even been. Shotguns basically never run slugs now since buckshot is king, killing most things in a MELEE FOCUSED ARMY in one shot. Xeno numbers being near unreplenishable at a certain point, mainly down to xenos just not wanting to deal with the overwhelming amount of marines that could be captured, forcing some poor sap to sit around until one guy who will inevitably have a shotgun with a mag harness will kill them and waste their time even more so. The inability for sents to de-nest has made prisoner management a nightmare, especially when another xeno decides to put a new captured host 10 miles away from the ones you were guarding, so you have to BREAK THE NEST to let them out and drag them where you actually want them, wasting a nest in the process. That doesn't even begin to match the annoyance of not being able to un-nest corpses, which is the most annoying thing in the sentinel's current gameplay. Not to mention sentinels can't even keep a marine stunned long enough to nest until they're mature.

This isn't even beginning to get into how squishy t3s are and how punishing their gameplay is. Boiler doesn't need to worry about the tank but they do need to worry about the rpg with a range scope attachment, CAS right under them, snipers constantly setting them on fire, scouts dealing 75% of their health from a burst shot, and having their gas rarely do anything given it doesn't deal damage while it spreads. (Bug) Ravagers having to rely on layers and layers of rng to get anything done. You slash. Does it break armor? Is the damage just low? Did it break a bone? Did it delimb? Did it clean cut? There's so much rng when it comes to a simple slash, and not aiming for arms and legs is a fruitless endeavor given just how absolutely insanely tanky the marine body armor and helmet is sometimes. Praetorian who is basically a pyrospec with a slug shotgun and green flame. They're ironically the best t3 at the moment given their acid is the one tool xenos have on demand that halts marine pushes so a boiler can drop a gas cloud. Crushers...How the mighty have fallen. With buckshot ignoring armor at PB, you better never try to fight a marine ever. I've been a mature crusher with queen warding and 2 pb buckshots have taken me out while TEN tackles were missed trying to knock the guy down, given crusher slashes are real shit. The stomp doesn't even do that much damage compared to most other castes just slashing. Yeah it'll occasionally delimb or something but right now the stomp feels pretty shit. Also where did the momentum meter go for crushers? Lasly on the topic of crushers, everything that's meant to stop crushers is doing it way to well. What with blue flame pyros in chokes, buckshot at chokes, and now RPG at chokes....Playing a crusher is like playing a battering ram made of paper mache.

So yeah that's my opinion on the matter, agree or don't, it's just my feelings on the current state of the game.

I agree to your first two points, but I can't give a real answer to the third, as I didn't had the chance to play as a crusher since I started to play this game again a few days ago.

[Drackarus]

As per the past, and as it seems like it always shall be, the queen is way too important for the xenos to win.

Should the queen be important for the hive? Yes, of course, losing a queen should be bad. Should it be required to win? No, not at all. Most of the rounds I find the queen ahelps and says "I'm new." For whatever reason, xenos also lose that round. Then, I go onto the next round and the queen is also bald or new. Watch every marine major. The first queen, more likely than not, you'll scratch your head on who the fuck that is.

Here's a solution, like nachocheese suggested, bring the stats down a few maturity levels. Elder and Ancient are when you get retards amount of power. Barring t3s, as their elders are fucktarded strong, T1/T2s NEED to be mature strength from the go. Does that make them OP? No, it gives them a fighting chance. From there, mature should = inbetween old mature and elder. elder = slightly ahead of old elder. ancient = less than old ancient, but more than the last maturity.

For t3s, the same system doesn't work as well given how strong elder is for them. But nonetheless, their strength needs to follow the same sorta dealio. Shave strength off the top tiers and pass it down, making the upgrading power scale much more gradual without losing much power in the end. The only time this would effect you is if you're hitting ancient, as current ancients are fucking retarded strong. Definitely should be weaker with the upside of making lower upgrade levels stronger.

Both marine and xeno have the same problem with time. Assuming you both join round start, what do you do for twenty five minutes? If you're a xeno, you can go grab a monkey or two. Not really fun. If it's LV, unless you're a lurker or runner, you're sitting on your ass for fifty minutes. With these changes, it would make it more accessible for xenos to fight earlier, and effectively.

You made some very good points, I agree with all, but I played sometimes as a warrior, and I would like to ask one thing, the lunge button should have the same capacity of the ambush line, just slight stronger than the lurker and with a small chance of breaking and/or cutting the targeted limb of, and what I mean by "the same capacity"? I mean it should be able to lunge everywhere, not just on a marine, I mean, it's a shitty ability that only functions on living beings, while the ambush line "pounce" can work also as a mean to escape.

[Drackarus]

Queen's death is too devastating to the Hive.
Tackle Changes, nesting changes. - Just dumb as fuck lets be honest there.
Lurkers reveal themselves after pouncing makes it difficult to be that stealthy.

A single xeno can't reliably capture a marine anymore thanks to terrible foresight and tackle/devour reworks.

Please stop making the game worse with these dumbass changes.

Yeah, when I played this game months ago, the queen's death was almost like another xeno dead, with the addition of the stopped evo, as for the tackle and nesting changes... they should never be changed, every xeno should be able to nest, with the exception of the crusher and ravager, for obvious reasons.

[Drackarus]

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.

I agree with the first one, but the defender should have more health than warrior and the warrior shoud damage more than the defender.

I agree with the second one because I think xenos should be more vulnerable when they are young, but highly more dangerous when they mature, like sharper claws, harder exo, those things.

I don't even need to say why I agree with the third one.

I can't agree or disagree with the fourth because I rarely play as the ranged caste.

[spookydonut]

I agree with the first one, but the defender should have more health than warrior and the warrior shoud damage more than the defender.

I agree with the second one because I think xenos should be more vulnerable when they are young, but highly more dangerous when they mature, like sharper claws, harder exo, those things.

I don't even need to say why I agree with the third one.

I can't agree or disagree with the fourth because I rarely play as the ranged caste.

This is not the way to go about getting your forum post count up.

[Butterrobber202]

Right, ancient ass oldfag here but whatever.

Warriors - are MEH, thats about all there is to it. You kinda slightly suck at everything. I'd be happy if their four leg mode got a buff to its speed, and a minor buff to their armor or health.

Burrowor - It's a joke. They can't do anything useful. No drone skills, outside of weeds. Can't plant eggs, burrow and tunneling is useless, and your attack is about as good as a wet noodle hitting a steel beam. You're a T3, but you have the stats of a T1.

In a game where we have around a hundred players, even during deadhour, we need to increase the amount of slots in T2, please.

[BobatNight]

This is not the way to go about getting your forum post count up.

This is off-topic, please stay on-topic or contribute to the discussion as the poster you quoted has. Thanks for your continued professionalism.



I just don't even understand the direction anymore, Tackle is still unreliable as all hell but we get more Larva per-capture? Why..Why not just re-buff tackle? What's the point of having these ridiculous larva numbers that we lose once leaving the planet?

Why are the nesting restrictions still a thing?

[CABAL]

Why are the nesting restrictions still a thing?

I bet it's against power/metagaming xenos who would unnest robustos just before their timer of "resist" expiries. I experienced it myself, those benos with omniscent hivemind know exactly how much tallhost needs time to escape nest so every sentinel would just unnest you few seconds before, spit and nest again. If you have shotgun with magharness and sentinel saw it, you could be sure that you will be unnested that way. Now they have to destroy nest and find another, this tactic isn't realible becouse you need drone to make another nests and logs are clear for admins. Even staff won't ignore your 10'th destroyed nest becouse you wanted to abuse "escape" mechanic from the point of nearly impossible to just impossible.

Tackle rate changed the way of capturing hosts. You are no longer able to capture a healthy soldier, you have to damage him first a bit, thus giving him slight chance.
I think it is slight "mindset" buff for nesting. Healthy marine is a problem, becouse you need to guard him. Perma paincrit marine is like a monkey and it's not hard to achieve since nest works nearly as good as stasis bag at stabilising pain level (aiming at paincrit), bleeding and such.

This gives idea for caste/ability for xeno/s to punch instead of slashing. Punching would cause less damage, but wouldn't cause any bleeding besides slight chance for IB.

[xXen0zS1ay3rXx]

Benos need buffs across the board, badly, but given the current state of changes coming in (lmao burrower) I don't see that happening any fucking time soon lol.

[kastion]

Xenos really need queen and t3 nerfs and buffs on t2 and t1. When bad players get t3 its game over you have no chance cause they are the ones that have to blunt the marines until the odds are evened. Crushers 90% of the time die young because the worst players rush to crusher. It blows my mind how t3 die in the first 10 minutes of each engagement. Queen needs nerfed so that people who just want to be the strongest xeno and go run around murdering everyone will quit playing it. It needs to be a tactical role like CO. It needs more ability to support the hive and less combat ability like screech.

[Avalanchee]

they need less retards more competent xeno mains

[Novus Luna]

So, while there have been a few people that disagree with it (and frankly, fuck 'em), most people I've spoken to seem to agree that in a one-on-one scenario, where the Marine is on their own, a single Xeno should always be able to win against them. Yesterday I was a captured Sniper specialist on the Alamo (crashed into west side of Requisitions), minor wounds to my arm, chest, and leg, but no where near pain-critical. I was able to bust out, walk through a field of sticky resin, walk east and into the east entrance to Charlie Preparation, accidentally stumble into my own preparation room because of a lag spike, and still stand there for about a minute as a runner tried to tackle me down where I couldn't move anywhere. I was unarmed at the time as well. There was an Elder Runner and Mature Burrower both trying to capture me and it took them almost 5 minutes.

[CABAL]

So, while there have been a few people that disagree with it (and frankly, fuck 'em), most people I've spoken to seem to agree that in a one-on-one scenario, where the Marine is on their own, a single Xeno should always be able to win against them. Yesterday I was a captured Sniper specialist on the Alamo (crashed into west side of Requisitions), minor wounds to my arm, chest, and leg, but no where near pain-critical. I was able to bust out, walk through a field of sticky resin, walk east and into the east entrance to Charlie Preparation, accidentally stumble into my own preparation room because of a lag spike, and still stand there for about a minute as a runner tried to tackle me down where I couldn't move anywhere. I was unarmed at the time as well. There was an Elder Runner and Mature Burrower both trying to capture me and it took them almost 5 minutes.

Be able? Sure. Should have to despite skill? No.

Also... In this situation you were standing in one place and xenos took 5 minutes to tackle you? They weren't just playing like xenos like to do with unarmed humans when they are winning?

[Gnorse]

Nah. You can miss me with that "bad xeno should always win against a good marine in a 1v1 scenario" shit.
if they have similiar skill levels, then sure.

[Novus Luna]

In a case where both participants are of equal skill, the xeno should win every time in 1v1.

[BobatNight]

My biggest issue is still this tackle change, I usually end up having to kill Marines I could other-wise capture because it's so incredibly unreliable.
I don't understand the change to tackle and then larva, I feel as though most players disagree with both.

[z a n e b o t]

better players

[Butlerblock]

incentive

[Drackarus]

Be able? Sure. Should have to despite skill? No.

Also... In this situation you were standing in one place and xenos took 5 minutes to tackle you? They weren't just playing like xenos like to do with unarmed humans when they are winning?

"890 AND 179, DON'T PLAY WITH THE FOOD!"

[Gnorse]

I feel like they made capturing harder but then they also gave capturing better rewards.
So you're capturing less marines, but you're getting more larvae from each marine.

On that note, if a marine and a xeno with similiar skill levels find themselves 1v1ing, I'd say the xeno should have a 75% chance to win, give or take RNG.