A New-ish Lerk

PsiWarp

<div class="IPBDescription">More close combat involved!</div>While sick in bed, I have thought of a different play style for Lerk, one which brings it even closer to the fight and more in-your-face.

Mind you these aren't exact stats, but bear with me:

<b>Primary weapon - Spikes</b>

Spikes has been a ranged weapon all this time, with others wanting Bite back and others shunning the idea of a flying Skulk. What I have in mind is an almost melee, lancing attack, where the Spikes extend from the tubes at lethal stabbing speed; the Spikes will retract if no target is hit.

A successful "spiking" would lodge the spikes into the Marine, and when combined with gliding at a speed threshold, the Lerk would knock the Marine out of the way (similar but weaker to Onos' Gore.) You will not lose momentum, so you can double back and spike again. In fact, the Spikes take a brief second to regenerate, so double-backing is needed somewhat to do knockback to the Marine.

Maybe Spikes could do minor DPS to Marines. It helps tip the scales in your favor and works great in group alien tactics (Skulk distract, Lerk swoops in and Spikes, knocks Marine over and Skulk moves in for the kill!)

<b>Alternate attack - Spores (Umbra)</b>

Spores currently are great for creating smokescreens for escape/advance, but as some have pointed out, blocking vision is not a good gameplay mechanic (at least IMO). In truth, it does nothing to help a Lerk close in on his target, especially against shotgunners. But, Umbra does.

Change the damaging spores to Umbra spores, which gives the Lerk Umbra on-demand and produces very temporary trails to provide cover for other aliens. It should be as translucent as Crag Umbra to be less vision obscuring. Also, the Umbra should only have effect within the cloud (not sure if they will keep Umbra buff on Crag when player is outside of cloud), so the Lerk will have to keep spewing spores for bullet blocking.

Putting Spores in alt-fire lets a Lerk quickly protect himself and others, while making it great to use in conjunction with Spikes.

<b>Secondary attack - Fury (Reworked)</b>

Rest in peace Fury, as the Whip no longer possesses the ability. It saw little use then because of the short range and almost negligible damage boost. But what better way to increase Lerk's support role than another support ability?

Fury in this version is somewhat of a blend between Primal Scream & Stomp. Instead of sitting in the middle of a group screaming at the top of his lungs, the Lerk has to scream AT a Marine. Using Fury, the Lerk will see a cone-shaped distortion/wave in front of him as he screams, and the ability has some range so you don't have to go nearly point blank unlike Spikes.

What Fury does is up for grabs, but I'm thinking of damage boost (with visuals for other aliens too) since Melee upgrades are removed, which makes the Lerk the damage booster. Perhaps Fury should be unlocked by 2nd Hive, it might be too powerful early game as a core ability...

With Spores as alt-fire, you can use Fury at the same time but it would quickly use up your energy. Spores + Fury should have good synergy for close range support.

So yeah, those are my thoughts on my ideal Lerk class for now. How do you find this half-brained concept? I know it's not exactly new, and really like NS1 Lerk with some twists~

ogz

Fury -> (change hte name) but basically the ability could be a temporary removal of armor for a duration of time
(ie all dmg goes towards health)

to balance it you can make armor only absorb 1/2/3/4 pts of dmg instead of whatever the usual is.

Twiggeh

Soooo... what is the lerk supposed to do against, say structures? How does it fare in 1vs1 situations?

PsiWarp

@ogz: Not bad. It could reduce armor resistance to 50% of its current level, so armor upgrades still have some effect against this. "Fury" sounds nice for screaming at people, don't you think?

@Twiggeh: Since Spikes is the only true damaging ability, I suppose it could be made to deal structural damage (x2 normal dmg). The Lerk isn't going to be a good structure destroyer, so I'd leave that to Skulks, Gorges and Oni.

In 1vs1, it depends. With some skill, knockback, and Spikes DPS, you can keep a Marine down while the DPS finishes him off. Spores is essentially Umbra so you can close distance while taking minimal damage.

Of course, this calls for ways to combat the knockback in 1v1 as Marine:

<b>Assault Rifle</b> - Rifle-butt should knockback the Lerk, as well as kill some of his momentum if he was gliding towards you.

<b>Shotgun</b> - If the Lerk is using Spores, a meatshot should deal 90 damage (180 normally). 2-3 shots should do the trick; the Lerk shouldn't have a lot of energy to maintain Spores and use Spikes.

<b>Grenade Launcher</b> - You can always try lobbing a grenade at the Lerk- Spores won't do sh*t against explosions (or fire) :P

<b>Flamethrower</b> - They deserve to die if they attack in plain sight.

<b>Exo-Suit</b> - Definitely no knockback, no worries!

<b>Jetpack</b> - Hmm, this is actually an interesting matchup. Perhaps even more knockback against a Jetpacker as a downside to you being almost as mobile as a Lerk.

Kouji_San

2x damage vs structures? So 3 lerks go into a base and completely obliterate important structures, sounds like a bad idea. you always have to keep in mind how people will use such things and how they work when multiple players use it at the same time. Think about the current VERY effective lerk rushing only then x2 ;)

twiliteblue

Schimmel created Lerk mods to test Umbra, and Blinding Sting. Too bad they were't added into the beta.

PsiWarp

@Kouji: Only when Spikes is a machine-gun attack; the idea is that Spikes become a semi-melee attack (with cooldown like Bite) with minor DPS (like Spores), but x2 damage against structures.

If anything, the damage will need to be increased to compensate for this change :)

@twiliteblue: Sounds cool, I might give that a try :D