Thoughts on the new Burrower?

[ThePiachu]

What does everyone think of the new Burrower class?

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I played one round with it, and can't seem to get a feel for it. I get some of its uses - sneak attacks, tunnel-and-attack, go through cades, make acid traps, etc. T3 going into vents is also neat. However, there are some things I think that could be improved:

- It doesn't entirely feel like a Drone T3. It can't interact with everything like a Drone would (eggs, nests, etc.), and doesn't have much of a Drone to it besides weeding
- It going straight into T3 from T1 can cause some balance issues, but that will even itself out sooner than later
- The burrow and tunnel ability being two different abilities makes it a bit wonky if you don't have macros. Perhaps it would be better as a single command that either makes you burrow, or makes you tunnel based on where you click. If you click on yourself or your own tile - you will emerge on it
- The acid trap, while interesting in theory, can be hard to execute correctly. If you're making traps, you want to make them in clever locations, but Praes or Boilers will have trouble finding those clever locations to fill with acid. Perhaps it would be best to give Burrower the option to fill their own traps, or even let anyone with acid do it, but the trap itself would do damage based on the kind of acid given - so you'll still want Boilers filling them, but in a pinch you'll be able to manage
- It doesn't feel like a combat caste at the moment, especially a T3. Since it could excel if it could do hit and runs or burrow-and-tunnels, perhaps it could use a boost to its combat prowess?
- Similarly, with low Plasma pool and slow walk speed, it doesn't seem to be useful in fighting

But it might just be me. How do you find the new xeno caste?

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

It's stats are too weak to be a T3. It's useful for its traps, scouting, and harassment; and that's it.

Since insta burrowing is fixed, I want it to have some more stats to actually make it worthwhile over other T3s. Between a good Burrower and a decent Rav or Boiler, which would you choose really ?

[kastion]

I haven't played it yet but its kit looks bad. Traps are useless except against bad players. It doesn't have the stats to actually fight, and it cant do anything that drones can do. I see it as the worst t3 by far and when im queen I will ban people from playing it most likely.

[misto]

the abilities should be shared out to existing classes, it being its own class feels unnecessary

for example, burrowing and moving underground could be given to runners to give them some kind of gimmick because theyre one of the lowest quality xeno classes right now

the acid trap making could be handed off to hivelords, carriers, boilers or praes. prae especially because it already has a pseudo-traplaying gimmick going on with its sticky spitting

[Linukas]

I played burrower like 7 hours after it came out and got to ancient and i will say it is genuinely quite underwhelming

(edited realised what i said belonged in the update thread and not here)

it's just overall kinda weak but still relatively fun

[xXen0zS1ay3rXx]

Short Answer: It's complete crap

Long Answer* It's complete crap, and it might get some changes to make it less crap. (maybe)

[FGRSentinel]

From what I'm hearing, the only thing that might be useful about them is their ability to burrow under a line and make a tunnel in some weird corner of the FOB that marines won't notice until xenos flood out, but even that seems iffy.

[Drackarus]

It's stats are too weak to be a T3. It's useful for its traps, scouting, and harassment; and that's it.

Since insta burrowing is fixed, I want it to have some more stats to actually make it worthwhile over other T3s. Between a good Burrower and a decent Rav or Boiler, which would you choose really ?

I didn't play with it and probally I will not play in the future with it, but I think it should be a T2, with less abilities, then it's evolution, bigger and more powerfull, could have some improvements, like a higher damage resistance.

[GoliathTheDespoiler]

It'd be good for siegeing a lowpop FOB.

...That's about it. Other than that it's really ineffective at doing anything else.

[x31stOverlord]

Might be a case of a few drones go burrower to deal with survivor forts and then get devolved bar maybe one who then gets paired up with a support drone and prae to lay the minefield in a checkerboard with sticky resin around the hive to slow marine pushes

It's a support T3 over a combat caste. Though a few ambushes on lowpop/undefended areas might be defended

[Saytkl77]

Thoughts on the mines:

The mines can be absolutely spammed, especially given boilers/praes dont have much to do for the first 30 minutes, played a few games on ICE where there were easily over 300 mines in the underground by the time marines arrived. The downside is that there are new players who drag a captured marine through 50+ mines setting them off one after another without seeming to care. I never got to see how effective the mines were though, because every single game where mines were spammed, the marines didnt even attempt to push. They just waited until xenos pushed them.

The thing is after fighting starts its hard to get a boiler/prae to come fill your mines as they would rather just fight. In order for the mines to be useful after the first marine push falters, you need to have a game that swings back and forth with the marines retaking areas you took and stepping on the mines. This doesn't happen much, most games xenos either steamroll or marines do. I would say maybe only 1 in 10 games, xenos push marines to the fob, fight for a while, then marines push xenos back to the hive. For a game design perspective a burrower/boiler combo dont want to spend some of the 45 min - 1 hour 30 min period filling mines, that in 90% of the games will go unused.

Thoughts on burrowing as support:

You can scout with burrowing, but it seems like a waste of a T3 slot, for something that can easily be accomplished with vents or flanking runners/lurkers. You can burrow into telecomms on several maps (Big Red, PrIson) and kill it which is very useful. You can go behind their lines and place weeds everywhere in their fob, especially on big red and prison, which is mildly useful.

Thoughts on burrowing for combat:

In terms of combat you are fairly slow and have no leap/charge ability. Combat consists of unburrowing next to a marine, getting a lucky tackle, slashing them 5-6 times and then burrowing again. One of the major issues with combat burrowing is abilities hitting you after you have burrowed. I have had lots of times where I burrowed, clearly have the "invisble" sprite, and then half a second later a marine melee's me or fires a burst of shots that hit me. Because you have no leap or charge and are slow, burrowing is your escape that you need to rely on, but the getting hit while apparently burrowed makes it very unreliable. Maybe make the burrower immune to non-explosive damage while burrowed,to avoid the bugs?

The burrow/tunneling seems a bit clunky, especially given how you can't see whether the tiles you click to tunnel to, are walls or not, but you are blocked if they are walls. My suggestion is to give a burrowed burrower, x-ray vision so it can see where it is tunnelling to.

The biggest problem however, that makes burrowers pretty non viable for combat is shotguns. Because you are slow and have no leap/charge, the only way to escape is to burrow, to burrow you need to stand still and wait while you burrow, if you are hit by a shotgun during this time you are standing still as a big fat target, your burrow goes on cooldown and you are screwed. A combat burrower popping up behind the marines lines doesn't really work, because after doing it for 5-10 minutes, sooner or later someone with a shotgun slug will run into your field of vision, and as soon as they see you stop and the "burrowing" circle appear above your head, they shoot you as a now stationary target, you get stunned and its over.

I've watched alot of people try to combat burrow behind lines, and everyone of them seems to die within 5-10 minutes or doing it, either because of being stunned out of burrowing by a shotgun, or by being mysteriously hit by attacks while burrowed.

Overall:
The burrower seems quite strong early game laying tonnes of mines for marines to step on, but once the combat starts it feels like there isn't a clear goal for useful stuff you can do, other than slash telecomms, or try and beg a boiler/prae to fill more mines instead of fighting.

[Cr3ye]

Just gotta say carriers are gonna have a hard time making traps

[Hughgent]

Maybe give the Burrower a devastating "drag them under" ability. yes this would basically delete the marine, however we give it counter play by having said marines screen shake.

This ability would work well when attacking a cade/firing line as the marines will be shooting their guns and some screen shake would be expected. It would not work well if the marine in question isn't firing a weapon, as the screen shake would happen, and the marine would just step off the tile.

[ThePiachu]

I'd almost dig for the Burrower to make temporary, short-range tunnels - enough to let a few xenos jump into a FOB and wreck havoc.

[spookydonut]

I'd almost dig for the Burrower to make temporary, short-range tunnels - enough to let a few xenos jump into a FOB and wreck havoc.

I had considered that but wanted to put in what the team had decided on like, 3-4 months ago for the burrower. I think something like that could be done.

[Linukas]

to burrow you need to stand still and wait while you burrow,

to burrow you don't need to stand still, just click the ability and while moving a few seconds later you disappear

[spookydonut]

to burrow you don't need to stand still, just click the ability and while moving a few seconds later you disappear

Oof thats a bug, thanks.

[Linukas]

Oof thats a bug, thanks.

Ah fair enough makes sense, is being able to be melee attacked while burrowed intentional as i painfully discovered that on the day burrower came out?

[Frans_Feiffer]

I’m putting it here now. I haven’t gotten to play it yet, but i’ve seen it in action. It’s meh at best, however it’s orange and I like the design. I’ll come back here and give my two cents probably monday-ish, as I want to play the ever loving crap out of this thing during the weekend and find out what it do best.

[Frans_Feiffer]

Ah fair enough makes sense, is being able to be melee attacked while burrowed intentional as i painfully discovered that on the day burrower came out?

Sounds like a big glitch to me. May want to gitlab it.

[spookydonut]

That particular bug was fixed.

[Linukas]

That particular bug was fixed.

Ah good that was uh, really annoying

Sounds like a big glitch to me. May want to gitlab it.

and uh i dont have a gitlab account that works so i just told a dev when i discovered the bug

[MattAtlas]

Burrower is currently a T2 at best. Even by gutting abilities out of other castes it still feels like a T2. It's just not strong.

Yeah sure, you can spam traps. That's about it, what else are you gonna do? The traps aren't guaranteed to be a kill either - spam too many and marines will expect them, spam too little and you'll be out of traps with the fuckhuge amount of explosives marines have.

Flanking as a burrower is a literal joke, burrowing is yet again another joke as you die in 4 rifle rounds at mature plus burrowing is useless to the caste itself.

[Vampmare]

Burrower is gimmicky at best.

Most games end up with Marines rushing the hive and winning or the xenos rush the marines and win. The first one doesn't give the Burrower time to setup all his traps. The second one makes the Burrower useless as it is not a combat focused unit and therefore won't be much of a help here.

There are those rare games where marines and xenos end up in a stalemate and the marines then push the hive. This is probably the only scenario I see the Burrower doing good in, but why waste a T3 slot on a rare scenario?

Its a cool xeno mechanically wise and it sounds good on paper, but it just doesn't work. I think allowing it to fill its own traps and reducing the cost of traps would be a nice step in the right direction.

[spookydonut]

Burrower is gimmicky at best.

I think allowing it to fill its own traps and reducing the cost of traps would be a nice step in the right direction.

Maximum gimmick!

But that's also the conclusion I've reached.