I will share my personal opinions when it comes to Lurkers and their balance and what could be done to address the problems I see with the caste!
So, Lurkers have been at the top of every Cast Tier list ever made and for good reason. They are insanely fast, have a lot of health, deal a lot of damage, can stun lock 2+ people reliably with their pounce and good disarm chance.
They can also go invisible, which is more or less useful depending on what tile they are standing on. On LV grass for example a Lurker is almost impossible to spot unless you are specifically looking for him.
Now my problem with Lurkers is just how good they are, they are so good they make most other castes obsolete. They are supposed to be an ambush caste but they work just as well in direct combat. A robust lurker can single-handedly wipe out an entire squad.
And since they are not a T3 you can have 8+ Lurkers in a Hive. If one robust Lurker can take out an entire Squad, then two or three robust Lurkers together can basically kill the entire Marine force.
The counter play is supposed to be just sticking together and not running around alone. But this only even really works if the Lurker is bald enough to pounce.
Now here are some ideas to make them a little bit more balanced:
- The pounce is insanely good because the stun is about as long as the cooldown which means you can stunlock Marines. Robust Lurkers, will move off a pounce stunned Marine as quickly as possible so they can walk back and forth, making themselves a much harder target to hit while slashing at the same time.
This technique allows Lurkers to harass even groups of Marines if their spacing isn't absolutely perfect and they all have buckshot.
My solution would be to remove the pounce stun from Marines as soon as a Lurker decides to move off of the Marines Tile.
- Speed, tackle chance and damage!
Truth is that good Lurkers don't even need the pounce. Lurkers have very good tackle RNG and even without tackle a Lurker has enough health, speed and damage, to just get directly in Marines faces.
They are arguably BETTER at direct engagements than their T3 brother the Ravager. Because they are faster, harder to hit and have "almost" the same damage anyways.
My solution to Lurkers going to toe to toe with entire squads in open combat would be to make them slightly slower at all ages! Especially with Frenzy a Lurker starts to move at Ancient Runner speeds. If they were slower it would be easier to hit them and a Lurker would think twice of just engaging multiple Marines head on and hopefully this would lead to Lurkers once again becoming more of an Ambush caste.
I would really like to see some changes like that, especially to the pounce!
It's getting kind of boring to always play a Lurker because it's just all the positives of the other Castes with literally no weakness. There is nothing a Lurker is bad at and it shows with single Lurkers decimating half the Marine force without them being able to really do anything against it besides having a robust Sadar player or getting a lucky Slug hit for a short stun and getting lucky enough for two people to simultaneously burst the Lurker during the stun.
Originally Posted by Heckenshutze
