Xeno change: "Comm, I've come to bargain!"

Mouse

From the skulk's perspective, the most annoying thing about xeno is that it kills you. This means that you have to spend 20-30 seconds respawning & getting back to the front line.
One way to address this would be to make the initial activation of xeno drop a spawn point. Then, after you xeno, instead of dying you reappear at that spawn point on 1HP & without any energy.
This will keep you out of the fight for a while but save you from needing to make the journey back to the front line. Admittedly it would also increase the how often you could use xeno, but it's a 3rd hive ability and should be powerful.

Kasharic

There are other ways to fix it.

You could make it instantly spawn and egg and remove your respawn timer, so you spawn back at base on full health + energy almost immediately after detonation.
Or you could make it Drain all of your energy instead of killing you, you could also scale the damage it causes based on the amount of energy it consumes

The most annoying thing for most people that I've seen is that quick switch will swap to Xeno once its been researched, so they end up accidentally killing themselves by accident and having to wait to respawn for no reason other than "you've just gained the strongest ability the skulk gets"... Xeno is supposed to be a game ender, or help to win a round... apparently the best way to win in NS2 is to Kill yourself... Nice.

Honestly, I hate Xeno, always have, I think it would be better to replace it, i've literally used Stab more often than i've ever used Xeno.

pSyk0mAn

Xeno is already very powerful and should be a hive 3 ability.

But I do agree that it is annoying to wait for respawn and keep running to marine base again.
Of course alien comms can echo eggs to the front and a tunnel might help too, but the former rarely happens.

So reducing the spawn timer after dieing from Xeno could help with that without entirely changing this ability.
Considering that there are still stalemates against hive 3 Aliens, and some Alien teams just can't get it done, this might actually be a nice suggestion to increase the pressure on Marines and make Xeno more fun.

Mephilles

Kasharic wrote: »

Or you could make it Drain all of your energy instead of killing you, you could also scale the damage it causes based on the amount of energy it consumes

This. Rename it to xenobomb then

.trixX.

Kasharic wrote: »

Or you could make it Drain all of your energy instead of killing you, you could also scale the damage it causes based on the amount of energy it consumes

Draining energy would be insufficient imo... you have to take some health off the exploding/mass-shedding skulk.

Nordic

Stab is just bad. Advanced metabolism is useful but lame. Stomp is really really good, but annoying for the marines and a bad mechanic. Xeno is kind of good but annoying for you. All of these T3 abilities could use a replacement with something better.

Mephilles

As lerk player I'd like to have one in the first place

The_Welsh_Wizard

It is really time to make spores stronger and put them to Hive 3.

.trixX.

The_Welsh_Wizard wrote: »

It is really time to make spores stronger and put them to Hive 3.

Spores are less useful at the end-game... Marines are either holed up in rooms with armoury/pg, or have exos.
Maybe switch the order, and make umbra the tier3 ability and buff it?

Mephilles wrote: »

As lerk player I'd like to have one in the first place

I'd love to see lerk-lift as tier3 ability

Nordic

What if lerk spores filled a 4x larger area? Would that be T3 strong?

The_Welsh_Wizard

I would rather see a damage increase.

twiliteblue

I think Xeno should destroy the weapon marine is carrying if the marine dies from the explosion. It would help ending the endless weapon recycling.

Mouse

twiliteblue wrote: »

I think Xeno should destroy the weapon marine is carrying if the marine dies from the explosion. It would help ending the endless weapon recycling.

That's one of the annoying parts about trying to break a marine turtle. Even though you're killing the marines over & over, they're still recycling the same weapons. Their only real pres sinks are JPs & Exos.