Alien vs Predator

[chocolate_bickie]

So after watching xenos get butchered by predators, I was wondering what are the best strategies for fighting an angry predator? They can't be nested, seem immune to nuerotoxin (at least from sentinels) and recover from stuns ridiculously quick. The best strategy I've seen is getting warriors and ravagers to delimb the predator.

And don't tell me 'Just avoid them'. It dosen't always work, there predators, if they decide you die, you die. Do facehugger traps work on them, or is their helmet like the B18 specs, it can block a certain number of facehugger attacks before breaking? I'm looking for information on predator strengths and weaknesses against xenos. How do we stop half the hive getting wiped by plasma caster?

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

Acid Acid Acid Acid Acid.

Did I say Acid ? I mean Acid

[Dolth]

Get high brute damage slashes.

Some ancient lurker or a elite rav can just destroy it.
You just need to be better and it can be hard unless you face Dave.

Damn noobish Dave.

[Butlerblock]

acid or ravs. preds are stupidly strong for little reason. a really skilled elite lurker or ancient runner can solo one but if the pred is even equal or slightly below your skill level any form of 1v1 is out of the question outside maybeb a lucky rav limb slice

[Dolth]

acid or ravs. preds are stupidly strong for little reason. a really skilled elite lurker or ancient runner can solo one but if the pred is even equal or slightly below your skill level any form of 1v1 is out of the question outside maybeb a lucky rav limb slice

What he said
Really

[Earraigh]

Back in 2017 I had one of my best xeno rounds as an elite hunter.
I had a pred pissed off ICly and engaged in a fight while the rest of the hive were watching our duel. I was mostly hitting his head so I got the mask off pretty soon. As the whole hive started to gang up on him, he picked his mask up and activated his shaheed belt. The last thing this yautja heard was "You suck" coming from a xeno.
Once we all got ghosted by his pocket nuke, it appeared that I've chopped his head off right before the explosion. Good times.

The moral is: get robust and aim for the head.

[Madventurer]

IMO the only winning move for anyone in a predator round is to not play.

I've seen predators get boxed in a corner by the sheer mass of xenos pushing them, but yeah.

Remove predators.

[cre77]

Here's a bunch of tips that I wrote up, gathered from my experience over a year of lurker maining, messing with leaked code and playing predator myself on a bootleg russian DMCA.

Never fight it alone, it will almost always pull out dirty tricks when it feels like it's losing - traps, crystals and energy weapons/spike throwers, because this isn't an honor duel and most pred players just can't give it a rest. When ganging up, make sure to either have numbers, a mature/elite rav for delimbs, or a prae for his devastating close range acid SPIT, not spray, since the former absolutely wrecks a pred with huge burn damage and pain values.

When shit goes south they often pull a plasma caster, but it's more of a stunning tool, since low-med charges do almost no damage, and the high charge deathspheres have an insanely long charge-up period and can only gib low health xenos and t1s, with the pred finishing the xeno off with melee while they are stunned. It's important to juke and keep up the pressure after the shot's through.

Preds are almost impossible to safely contain after infection, but a predalien is absolutely worth it if the situation favors the infection. Your best bets are to make them lose an arm and wall them off, tacklespam with the whole hive occupying every single tile around them under powerful frenzy pheromones for bonus tackle chance, or just hope the predator player (since they're the ones who get the predalien larva) feels like wrecking some marine scrubs today and makes their predator "give up". Yeah, that happened a few times on my record.

And speaking of their tools, perhaps their most infuriating cheese is traps and smartdiscs. Unfortunately, you can't really counter those unless you quickly acid the inert items, but otherwise you can't prevent yourself from running straight into a thrown activated trap or getting critted in three hits by a manhack with a sprite only two times bigger than your mouse icon. Best you can do is knock down smartdiscs as fast as you can and drag trapped sisters out of harm's way.

Use tackles only as means of making it drop it's special weapon, and pounce only when it's running the other direction from you. They often frantically scramble for their weapon to pick it up with a macro, so a good idea is to either bodyblock to distract and let others land hits, or if you're a drone to wall it off for memes. Speaking of memes, fields of sticky resin are a good way to make a pred not go somewhere, since the slowdown is horrible even to them, and chopping up a whole field is just too tedious.

Mask has the most protection, but every hit is a small chance to smash it off for an infection/quick kill. Feet have the least protection, especially if it's not greaves, but a greaves and thigh plates sprite, since (unless patched out since code leak) the latter have less protection but cover the groin as well. Arms and hands are only viable if you're a delimbing rav. Just don't let it pick the bracers up, since it will immediately self-destruct upon realizing that they cannot be dropped from it's hand or put on due to a missing arm, therefore rendering the pred incapable of anything. Your ultimate bet to kill it is luring it into high numbers, deep into sticky resin fields, or baiting it into a queen's screech, since it is the longest pred stun the xenos have at their disposal.

Sometimes, if a pred 8roars at you during a major xeno push, it's a good idea to take one for the team and sacrifice yourself for the greater good. A hive will survive with one less xeno, but a major distraction like a pred fight may give marines an opportunity for a devastating counterattack, or even worse, give the pred and marines an IC reason to team up.

Another tip, don't try to emote back at a predator. I've had several pull a Han Solo on me as a Lurker over my stay on this server.

And a final one - expect to lose. Devs love these guys, and it shows. Queen Mother forbid they ever get a robust one.

BONUS: best way to trigger a predator is to kill their pet human(s). prepare ye the salt barrels.