The underappreciated value of Hand Grenades thread
Yojimbo
England Join Date: 2009-03-19 Member: 66806Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
England Join Date: 2009-03-19 Member: 66806Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
Hi ladies and gentlegorges,
In this topic we shall discuss the effectiveness in the marine arsenal that is HAND GRENADES!
I'd say 7 out of 10 commanders that jump into the chair and get asked "Can you get hand grenades when you have a chance" they look at you as if you are some kind of moron!
Seriously the effectiveness of hand grenades are stupendous! for the price of 3 PRES, you can obliterate alien outposts (Gorge tunnels, Clogs, Hydras, Skulks, Gorges) and more!
A tactic that I use to full effect and is highly successful would be when a phase gate gets mined up but what happens when they are all blown up with minimal fatalities and you have 3 skulks chomping it down? Simples, grab yourself some clusters or even a pulse grenade, prime it before you enter the phase gate then throw it at your feet and hope to God it pops off before you get killed by the skulks 10 points if you blow yourself and kill all the skulks around it!
10 times more effective to throw a grenade behind a resource tower than running rings around it trying to shoot that skulk.
I seriously think the potential of grenades are undervalued and hope people see the same sense as I have.
Cousin benson I hope you can attest to this @Benson
What are your thoughts?
P.S Hand grenades >>>>> Mines
In this topic we shall discuss the effectiveness in the marine arsenal that is HAND GRENADES!
I'd say 7 out of 10 commanders that jump into the chair and get asked "Can you get hand grenades when you have a chance" they look at you as if you are some kind of moron!
Seriously the effectiveness of hand grenades are stupendous! for the price of 3 PRES, you can obliterate alien outposts (Gorge tunnels, Clogs, Hydras, Skulks, Gorges) and more!
A tactic that I use to full effect and is highly successful would be when a phase gate gets mined up but what happens when they are all blown up with minimal fatalities and you have 3 skulks chomping it down? Simples, grab yourself some clusters or even a pulse grenade, prime it before you enter the phase gate then throw it at your feet and hope to God it pops off before you get killed by the skulks 10 points if you blow yourself and kill all the skulks around it!
10 times more effective to throw a grenade behind a resource tower than running rings around it trying to shoot that skulk.
I seriously think the potential of grenades are undervalued and hope people see the same sense as I have.
Cousin benson I hope you can attest to this @Benson
What are your thoughts?
P.S Hand grenades >>>>> Mines
Comments
tl;dr - Nerve gas is cheap, fast arcs.
VEIL.
Common strat if nano is well-defended is to get the slow, expensive arcs out at east junction and spend 3+ minutes pumping out arcs, all while devoting a handful of marines to defending the PG and robo from destruction; by the point in the game your marines have a solid foundation of RTs, if the aliens still have nano they should be well on their way to bile and/or 2nd hive.
Nerve gas and a couple of marines costs a negligable amount of TRES and PRES, and takes half the time and in my experience has a higher success rate due to the speed with which you can prepare for your attack.
In fact, most situations where one could choose to use ARCs to take out an outpost, a few marines that know how to shoot and use nerve gas will do the job faster and less expensively.
Only time I prefer to use ARCs for seiging is when a) the aliens could easily rebuild should pushing cease in favour of claiming other locations + b) the ARCs can be kept safely out of range. Example of this would be keeping an arc or 2 in elevator transfer on tram to stop aliens expanding to mezz without mucho efforts.
CLUSTERS PLUS COMME LERKPACK-GET-OFF-MY-FRIEND-RIGHT-NOW
PULSE GRENADES PLUS COMME BILE RUSH THWARTED
Another strat I like to use is throwing nerve gas into shaded hives or other areas which reveal all their structures and even cloaked skulks.
Also clusters on arcs that are swarmed by skulks and pulse grenades on gorges bilebombing.
We need to stop giving our precious secrets away @meatmachine P.S. SCC this sunday?
Nerve gas might be just a bit too powerful, I usually prefer nerve gas to clusters, and pulse needs a buff.
Problem I found though cool is that commanders tend to opt for mines first in the early game which I just don't find as effective, they have their uses but only as static defense, they are immobile, easy to kill and most mines go to waste with exception of a few, only real use they have is vent denial and the occasional PG defense, grenades however are offensive and can accomplish the same thing a mine can if not more, the saying "The best defense is a good offense" springs to mind, only requires initiative and a pair of quick legs to use!
Offensively, even with CompMod, I find them pretty powerful early game. Imagine playing veil, running to nano with two marines, and dropping 3 mines each. If you position yourself on your comerades mines, for the price of 2 medpacks (one for each marine...), you get 6 almost guaranteed skulk kills, given they manage to get up close.
While I totally agree that grenades are underestimated and underappreciated, I also believe that mines are underestimated and too rarely used offensively.
Those 5 skulks that got blasted by that one cluster agree with you.
Totally shut down their counter push.
Agree with this however the last statement about mines I think too much reliance are placed on them for the amount they cost! They have their use though
Hell yeah cousin benson, I was livid when you stole all those kills haha
Oddly I end up using nerve grenades defensive by shutting down rushes. A well timed cluster will end a skulk rush. A well timed nerve gas will end an onos rush. Nerve gas is good on hive pushes but rarely do I have one available.
Just how I end up using these weapons.
Yeah.
I like grenades. I think people just don't realize their uses. They all have the names and visuals of effects which are non intuitive.
If I recall correctly each gas nade did 50 damage per second for 10 seconds. So two marines with gas nades can destroy all of a hive's armor in 10 seconds. Of course, in practice they will also start shooting at it. Just picture what FIVE OR SIX marines with nerve gas can do to a hive armor. Then it becomes much easier to destroy, plus, it destroys the armor of life forms that come in to defend.
Nerve gas is awesome.
On a separate note, I recently saw a guy clear a PG from 4 skulks with 1 (one) cluster granade.
As it is, if you dont use them, they are wasted.
To first see their value we need to see what role they perform.
Now given that you lose them upon death and usage it is a question how useful the rescost of 3 is versus the usage.
* cluster.
- Flushing enemies out of hiding.
- aoe damage if hit.
- flame damage.
- While the cluster surely does a good job at this, its best used on low health aliens and early aliens like skulk or lerks. A full health fade will not be impressed when hiding, when a cluster hits it. If you could shoot it, you'd have done so already. 'situational' at best.
- High chance on marine death early game by lack or armour. (So a wasted 3 res per handnade if you didnt use it). Weapon switch time. So in the time it takes you to throw this thing, you could have put bullets into multiple aliens. Again 'situational' at best.
- Does a better job on aoe damage when hit, but there is a higher risk due to weapon switch time.
- So to sum these up.. a low res, low usage weapon. Better to save the res for something more worthwhile.
- Burning structures dont do their job, but the flames last very short.
* nerve gas.
- The damage armour tick is brutal.
- Denies areas as aliens either stay out the cloud or take armour damage.
- decloaks.
- However depending on what structure (or alien) the damage it does vs armour INSTEAD of shooting the object is about the same. Meaning if I did not use up weapon switch time and throw the nade, but started shooting the object.. I would have done close to the same damage, including health damage. (Yes I tested)
- The area denial is a lot more useful but depending on still rather risky. IF used correctly it will however strongly improve the chances of pushing out or killing aliens as they still lose more armour. Best combined when the rest of the team is shooting due to the above reason. Its best to deploy this weapon before aliens hit due to above reason.
- scan is about as expensive and covers more ground, but is a different res pool.
- So may be worth said res.
Shock.
- Eats away alien energy.
- Can be used to 'energy trap' aliens by making them misjudge the energy left to flee, heal etc.
- Suited for hive rushes with healing aliens or defending aliens as a hive can not counter this.
- Less suitable close to shifts because of the shift.
- Basicly the most useful grenade. It directly prevents gorge healing, fade blinking, lerk umbra/spores, and onos charges and much more.
- No other marine weapon (minus the flamethrower) has the same effect. But the flamethrower takes away one combat marine for pretty much the entire time. Which in small teams is a nono for the flamer.
Area denial. No energy is less grinding, less escaping, less everything.
So there we have it. 2 out of 3 grenades can do certain jobs, but a marine with a free gun usually can do a similar job. Cheaper, often a tad slower. But 3pres saves is 3pres sooner to a shotgun or jp which will do the job a LOT better.
Shock nades fill a void for certain tasks. Best used on rushes and late games. Still the weapon switch time is... questionable for its usage. And if you rush a hive, shotguns and GL do just as well a job.
Making nades more expensive and giving them on respawn would fix the 'situational' problem of losing pres if you did not use nades. It makes them more spammy, but would give them a purpose.
Cluster grenades wipe out gorge forts. 2 nades will guaranteed pop all his clogs at least, depending on placements it might kill hydras, might damage the tunnel or the gorge himself (who will be exposed afterward due to lack of clogs). Situational, but you know in advance when and where you are going to use it.
The ability to de-cloak on the gas grenade is especially useful when going after hidden structures. If you are going to go rambo their upgrades you can toss a nerve gas where you think they are. Downside is that with as many things flashing red on the map the aliens are probably going to panic and rush you, of course that might be exactly what you want..
I didn't know shock actually reduced energy at all. As far as I knew it was just an attack speed debuff, flamethrowers are the energy killers. Haven't really been able to get much use out of it myself since even at half attack speed a fade can still kill you plenty fast, and probably exactly as fast as he would anyway if he moves around between snipes. Like all grenades they are situational, the problem is that unlike the other two I don't know when that situation is going to happen in advance.
Well perhaps they changed the shock nades.. it used to be energy at least.
@coolitic try here:
wiki.unknownworlds.com/ns2/Hand_Grenades#Cluster_Grenade
I always thought the wiki was dead lol.
Good thing someone keeps it up-to-date now.