I think the railgun effect looks stupid because it's the railgun effect, never really had a problem finding lerks before you just had to watch where structures/objects were being hit with spikes and trace it back in the general direction, don't think this will really nerf the good lerks just stop the annoying ones perching near sky boxes and AFK spiking things in crevice, central drilling, cargo, cave, etc.
In my opinion it’s a horrible change. It’s just another thing that was annoying to marines so they decided to nerf aliens again. Yes now it’s easier for marines to spot the lerk but it was one of the essential abilities for the lerk.
In my opinion it’s a horrible change. It’s just another thing that was annoying to marines so they decided to nerf aliens again. Yes now it’s easier for marines to spot the lerk but it was one of the essential abilities for the lerk.
Essential ability? Are you one of those Lerks that sat back and spiked away while the Onos died to chasing JPers when you had Umbra and Spore to cover him?
Being one of my favorite classes to play, the spikes on the Lerk were a joke. You could hold up an entire marine advance (Exos included) if you knew how to hit shins, backsides and heels without being spotted. It was an utter joke how easy it was to harass with the ability and I'm happy to see it being nerfed.
I do think perhaps they could make it more like tracers in modern bullets though. Have the graphic once every 2 or 4 spikes to remove screen clutter.
I do think that the smoke tracers make combat more difficult even when you have no intention of hiding your presence by perch-sniping, and this increased difficulty is largely attributable to the fact that they clutter your vision while also constantly signaling your presence/location. It is actually quite possible to dip in and out of vision on the regular while flying and spiking, but the trails diminish the efficacy of attempting that. Moreover, lerks can move so quickly that their coloration/the player's movements can make them very difficult to track when they're fighting - and that's purely skill-based. This makes it much, much harder to engage in sustained confrontations where you fly and spike (using the terrain to your advantage without giving up the attack), and I'm not sure it needed to be more difficult.
Really, even before this patch I found it to be easy to find a lerk spiking. Most times they are flying around which makes them easier to see but if they are hiding on that little nook it takes less than 1 clip of lmg to kill them.
What are they supposed to do early game? Fly in and attack and die in 1 round of sg? Except for the onos that’s the 2 main core ideas of the aliens, stealth and speed and both have been nerfed this patch.
That IS one role of the lerk's just so you know: harassment.
Good lerks harass you by killing lone res cappers, killing lone res harassers, whittling down marines with spikes before swooping in for the kill with the team, the spike trail doesn't change a good lerks play style at all and in fact makes them harder to hit.
Bad lerks harassing consists of perching in stupid areas while attacking a power node or obs from 1 1/2 rooms away or abusing sky box or black corners.
That IS one role of the lerk's just so you know: harassment.
Right. I know--if you were replying to me.
And insofar as harassment is a goal, and insofar as sustained combat of any kind is dependent on avoiding taking damage (since lerks are frail), having constant tracers spewing out of your body whenever you're dipping and weaving mid-fight isn't ideal. If you're zipping around a pillar, for instance, and changing your direction up mid-flight in order to disorient the enemy, your spikes now pretty much indicate where you are despite your best efforts once you begin shooting. This is a scenario that's totally independent of hide-perching and one in which the lerk is actually at great risk.
The argument may then be "use spikes less," but they're really a great supplement to any combat scenario. Yes, 75% of my kills are bite kills, but a solid 20% come from spikes.
My perspective right now is that while I don't really mind having lerks give away their location to some extent, I'd like the current visibility to be toned down. The tracers are over the top. It was never really that much of a problem before, and the current implementation affects spiking in contexts other than hiding in the shadows.
Lerk is a support class, the spikes are there to support skulk pushes. You fly behind the skulks and spike at the marines while they're dealing with the skulks that are chomping their ankles... when used correctly it wouldn't matter if the spike trails were neon yellow and said "FOLLOW ME TO NEAREST LERK" on them. Lerks will still be great at harassment, you should be gtfo'ing before the marines actually get to you anyways.
I've suggested a few times that perhaps silence and/or camouflage could lessen the opacity of the lerk's tracers or eliminate them outright. Meta-mechanics like that seem like an interesting way to boost shade tech traits without buffing the main aspect of the trait too much. Either way I don't really mind the tracer and I won't be bothered if they stay how they are. They're kind of nice just to watch how good a teammate or enemy lerk is with landing their spikes as you can see the shot distribution very clearly and get a pretty good idea of how skilled the player is at almost a glance.
I agree with this, the change itself only really helps low skill marines so I'm all for it, but the change also makes silence completely pointless for spikes.
I too mostly lerk and to say that only bad lerks spike snipe is silly, I assume this was done to avoid phase & power node sniping more than anything.
If that's the reasoning I would suggest instead having tracers work in reverse but only on structures, so instead of a little puff of smoke on the structure, replace that effect with one that designates the lerks location.
Hell you could do the same thing against marines & spike would behave as it normally would have against a single marine but a second marine or more can use the the impact marker to pinpoint your position.
The change is garbage, I mean why do we have roost function for a lerk?
A silent lerk had a chance to occasionally roost as marines had a hard time working out where you were.
Now they can just look for the tracer and follow it back.
This was totally unrequired...the lerk gets 1 shotted by a level 3 SG, is light work for a LMG and all round useless.
Now he cant even roost off in the distance and try to sneekily snipe...a tracer is just not needed.
The change is garbage, I mean why do we have roost function for a lerk?
A silent lerk had a chance to occasionally roost as marines had a hard time working out where you were.
Now they can just look for the tracer and follow it back.
This was totally unrequired...the lerk gets 1 shotted by a level 3 SG, is light work for a LMG and all round useless.
Now he cant even roost off in the distance and try to sneekily snipe...a tracer is just not needed.
Roost is extremely useful for finding odd angles of defending when defending, or simply ambushing marines from the ceiling. You don't neccasarily need a tent to make use of roost and spikes.
When level 3 LMG is around you are better off sporing and using umbra than spiking due to marine armor. Don't fly from obvious angles at obvious times to do a spore run.
The change is garbage, I mean why do we have roost function for a lerk?
A silent lerk had a chance to occasionally roost as marines had a hard time working out where you were.
Now they can just look for the tracer and follow it back.
This was totally unrequired...the lerk gets 1 shotted by a level 3 SG, is light work for a LMG and all round useless.
Now he cant even roost off in the distance and try to sneekily snipe...a tracer is just not needed.
Roost is extremely useful for finding odd angles of defending when defending, or simply ambushing marines from the ceiling. You don't neccasarily need a tent to make use of roost and spikes.
When level 3 LMG is around you are better off sporing and using umbra than spiking due to marine armor. Don't fly from obvious angles at obvious times to do a spore run.
Umbra is only around at 3rd hive..spores need you to fly past those L3 SG's and LMG's...1 lucky shot your dead...2 unlucky shots your dead.
The lerk had few things in his favour...his ability to roost and silently attack was one of them...now you have a line pointing to you so it makes less sense to roost as opposed to fly around.
This was an unnecessary nerf on lerks...its not like we see many of them even before these changes...this will just mean we see fewer lerks and more ppl simply saving for onos.
Never had an issue finding or killing sniping Lerks before; the red hit marker and burst fire made it simple. Now it's easier. Sitting Lerks extremely vulnerable (up from very vulnerable). Wont effect my Lerk play. This may the first time I see something in the game as "visual clutter".
the tracers for the lerk makes roosting useless, even with silence, lerk does not benefit anymore with silence/camo as much as it use to, shade hive first will be bad for early lerks. i also understand that yes, sometimes when a player was spiking from a distance it was annoying, however i was never frusterated trying to find one roosting, they are fairly easy for me to spot, if it gets too difficult, you always have options
#1 scan
#2 ignore and move on
anyone who sits around a room for a minute looking for 1 lifeform is foolish, period, if you dont realize your wasting your time looking for a lerk that will probably fly awayi dont know what else to tell you, its not hard to go around a corner and wait for the foolish lerk to follow you while you blast him with a shotty around the corner.
one more thing if there is an annoying lerk roosting somewhere attacking the node, why not stand in front of the node get hit so you know where its coming from, everytime i do this i always find him and shoot him away, a lerk is like a fly, its annoying and harrasses, its normal learn to deal with it, its not that hard.
it seems to me that when UWE makes changes to things to make it "easier" everyone loves it, but when its harder everyone hates it, usually i disagree with what know pain has to say about things but ofcourse his entitled to his opinion although he got it spot on in terms of lerk tracers to me in this thread
EDIT: one more point i would like to make is roosting lerks is asking to get killed when seen, it only takes 1 clip or less of lmg to kill roosted lerk which takes about 5 seconds to empty, usually the lerk wouldnt know what hit him when he dies, i have seen this MUTLIPLE times from my POV, i pretend i usually dont see the lerk in the dark corner, i know hes there, im not gunna look directly at him, i will get into a better position train my eye and bam aim and shoot, dead, most players will shoot on sight which is not the way to do it if you want to suprise attack a lerk
That IS one role of the lerk's just so you know: harassment.
Good lerks harass you by killing lone res cappers, killing lone res harassers, whittling down marines with spikes before swooping in for the kill with the team, the spike trail doesn't change a good lerks play style at all and in fact makes them harder to hit.
Bad lerks harassing consists of perching in stupid areas while attacking a power node or obs from 1 1/2 rooms away or abusing sky box or black corners.
to me it does not sound like a bad lerk but a smarter carefull lerk, the skybox thing is a joke, i agree, but instead of adding tracers why not remove roosting on skyboxes? wouldnt that make more sense?
I'm sorry but lerks being easily spotable before is utter and complete bullshit.
Of course you could kill those morons hiding in obvious places but a competent Lerk made places like crevice IMPOSSIBLE for marines. Spikes do 13 dmg per shot after all.
Also, a lerk camping some place you cant see as marine and spiking away is really really unfun gameplaywise, kind of like camo with ranged attack.
Like people said it does not change the play of good lerks who rely on surprise attacks and erratic flying so it is a really good change.
Lerks were really good at holding off exos, they could roost in some dark corner and hit them with spikes- almost like defensive fire batteries that needed to be cleared out by ground troops before the direct fire support could move in. Some spots were unbelievably easy to defend using this tactic, especially Sorting which has a very long approach and a nice, dark vent to sit on. As much fun as I had holding off exos with a solo lerk I don't think uwe ever intended the lerk to be used in this way.
I'm sorry but lerks being easily spotable before is utter and complete bullshit.
Of course you could kill those morons hiding in obvious places but a competent Lerk made places like crevice IMPOSSIBLE for marines. Spikes do 13 dmg per shot after all.
Really? If a Lerk was hiding, once you found them, you could almost immediately take out half their health or kill them. The spikes don't hit immediately, so it wasn't that easy to hit and kill strafing marines. I never had an issue dealing with Lerks in dark corners. I can move to dodge their fire and kill them easily once found. If the Lerks attacking structure from a dark corner, it wasn't a big deal, because of the low damage; 5 seconds of welding.
With the new spike trails all shade upgrades are now useless on lerks. Camo sucks outright and silence doesn’t work when as soon as you use spikes to take out some health marines instantly know your coming.
Comments
Essential ability? Are you one of those Lerks that sat back and spiked away while the Onos died to chasing JPers when you had Umbra and Spore to cover him?
Being one of my favorite classes to play, the spikes on the Lerk were a joke. You could hold up an entire marine advance (Exos included) if you knew how to hit shins, backsides and heels without being spotted. It was an utter joke how easy it was to harass with the ability and I'm happy to see it being nerfed.
I do think perhaps they could make it more like tracers in modern bullets though. Have the graphic once every 2 or 4 spikes to remove screen clutter.
What are they supposed to do early game? Fly in and attack and die in 1 round of sg? Except for the onos that’s the 2 main core ideas of the aliens, stealth and speed and both have been nerfed this patch.
Good lerks harass you by killing lone res cappers, killing lone res harassers, whittling down marines with spikes before swooping in for the kill with the team, the spike trail doesn't change a good lerks play style at all and in fact makes them harder to hit.
Bad lerks harassing consists of perching in stupid areas while attacking a power node or obs from 1 1/2 rooms away or abusing sky box or black corners.
And insofar as harassment is a goal, and insofar as sustained combat of any kind is dependent on avoiding taking damage (since lerks are frail), having constant tracers spewing out of your body whenever you're dipping and weaving mid-fight isn't ideal. If you're zipping around a pillar, for instance, and changing your direction up mid-flight in order to disorient the enemy, your spikes now pretty much indicate where you are despite your best efforts once you begin shooting. This is a scenario that's totally independent of hide-perching and one in which the lerk is actually at great risk.
The argument may then be "use spikes less," but they're really a great supplement to any combat scenario. Yes, 75% of my kills are bite kills, but a solid 20% come from spikes.
My perspective right now is that while I don't really mind having lerks give away their location to some extent, I'd like the current visibility to be toned down. The tracers are over the top. It was never really that much of a problem before, and the current implementation affects spiking in contexts other than hiding in the shadows.
I agree with this, the change itself only really helps low skill marines so I'm all for it, but the change also makes silence completely pointless for spikes.
I too mostly lerk and to say that only bad lerks spike snipe is silly, I assume this was done to avoid phase & power node sniping more than anything.
If that's the reasoning I would suggest instead having tracers work in reverse but only on structures, so instead of a little puff of smoke on the structure, replace that effect with one that designates the lerks location.
Hell you could do the same thing against marines & spike would behave as it normally would have against a single marine but a second marine or more can use the the impact marker to pinpoint your position.
... except that there are rules.
A silent lerk had a chance to occasionally roost as marines had a hard time working out where you were.
Now they can just look for the tracer and follow it back.
This was totally unrequired...the lerk gets 1 shotted by a level 3 SG, is light work for a LMG and all round useless.
Now he cant even roost off in the distance and try to sneekily snipe...a tracer is just not needed.
When level 3 LMG is around you are better off sporing and using umbra than spiking due to marine armor. Don't fly from obvious angles at obvious times to do a spore run.
The lerk had few things in his favour...his ability to roost and silently attack was one of them...now you have a line pointing to you so it makes less sense to roost as opposed to fly around.
This was an unnecessary nerf on lerks...its not like we see many of them even before these changes...this will just mean we see fewer lerks and more ppl simply saving for onos.
#1 scan
#2 ignore and move on
anyone who sits around a room for a minute looking for 1 lifeform is foolish, period, if you dont realize your wasting your time looking for a lerk that will probably fly awayi dont know what else to tell you, its not hard to go around a corner and wait for the foolish lerk to follow you while you blast him with a shotty around the corner.
one more thing if there is an annoying lerk roosting somewhere attacking the node, why not stand in front of the node get hit so you know where its coming from, everytime i do this i always find him and shoot him away, a lerk is like a fly, its annoying and harrasses, its normal learn to deal with it, its not that hard.
it seems to me that when UWE makes changes to things to make it "easier" everyone loves it, but when its harder everyone hates it, usually i disagree with what know pain has to say about things but ofcourse his entitled to his opinion although he got it spot on in terms of lerk tracers to me in this thread
EDIT: one more point i would like to make is roosting lerks is asking to get killed when seen, it only takes 1 clip or less of lmg to kill roosted lerk which takes about 5 seconds to empty, usually the lerk wouldnt know what hit him when he dies, i have seen this MUTLIPLE times from my POV, i pretend i usually dont see the lerk in the dark corner, i know hes there, im not gunna look directly at him, i will get into a better position train my eye and bam aim and shoot, dead, most players will shoot on sight which is not the way to do it if you want to suprise attack a lerk
to me it does not sound like a bad lerk but a smarter carefull lerk, the skybox thing is a joke, i agree, but instead of adding tracers why not remove roosting on skyboxes? wouldnt that make more sense?
Of course you could kill those morons hiding in obvious places but a competent Lerk made places like crevice IMPOSSIBLE for marines. Spikes do 13 dmg per shot after all.
Also, a lerk camping some place you cant see as marine and spiking away is really really unfun gameplaywise, kind of like camo with ranged attack.
Like people said it does not change the play of good lerks who rely on surprise attacks and erratic flying so it is a really good change.
Really? If a Lerk was hiding, once you found them, you could almost immediately take out half their health or kill them. The spikes don't hit immediately, so it wasn't that easy to hit and kill strafing marines. I never had an issue dealing with Lerks in dark corners. I can move to dodge their fire and kill them easily once found. If the Lerks attacking structure from a dark corner, it wasn't a big deal, because of the low damage; 5 seconds of welding.