The Way Of The Lerk
ShotgunEd
Join Date: 2004-01-02 Member: 24966Members
Join Date: 2004-01-02 Member: 24966Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Assault Lerk</div> There are two types of lerk. You have you support lerk, that gasses and umbras and generaly harrasses the hell out of the marines, then you have your assault lerk, built for speed and close combat. Since being a support lerk is relativly easy I'm going to discuss the assault lerk.
The general idea: The whole point of an assault lerk is to kill marines, not to hold them off or to harrass them, but to outright kill them. To do this you will need speed strength and accuracy. Learn to control the lerk, learn to fly in zig zags and spirals, straight lines will get you killed.
Should you spot a lone marine, don't immediatly spore. Has he noticed you? If not can you quietly glide in behind him and take a free bite? If you think you can, go for it. If you think he's spotted you, spore him. From here you have 2 choices, either fly in and head directly for him or try and fly a pattern to waste his ammo before moving in for the kill. If you go for the first option, do not go for more than 2 attempted bites, fly off and fly back in and bite him again, fly off and repeat. The second option can be difficult to pull off but it does allow you to judge the marines aim. If your taking a lot of damage then get out of there its that simple, heal up and try again
Fighting a group of marines is entirely different. It is unlikely that you will get a kill with your first pass. If you see a group I suggest you immediatly spore them even if they haven't seen you, or spore them as you fly into their backs for a quick bite. Groups can be hard to deal with but by no means impossible. You have to know where your coming from and how your going to get out, fly in, bite once maybe twice then evasive manouvers out of there. NEVER EVER fly in a straight line.
Should you have a 2nd hive up, don't forget to umbra once maybe twice as you fly in.
Upgrades: At one hive I recommend you take regen simply because the extra armour from carapace won't be that useful. At two hives, take carapace and celerity. Note: not adrenaline. Your only use for gas will be a small amount of umbraing and a little sporing to strip some armour before you move in for the kill. Should sensory become available I recomend focus.
Carapace is needed simply because you will ineviably take more damage over a smaller amount of time rendering regen useless.
Celerity is a must because without that extra speed you are a slow rat with wings that will be plucked out of the air with ease.
Focus, well your going to be doing hit and run, so if your only going to go for one bite, you may as well make it count.
General tips: You will need to know your surroundings and the maps well, especialy if you take carapace. Knowing how to get back to a healing post (a hive or DC's) is vital. The other reason is that your actual time in combat should be minimal so you need to know the best entrance and exit from each area.
Know what your flying into, take a look first, don't just blindly fly into the middle of a room you know is full of marines.
Glide. When you glide you make no sound.
This is a pretty general guide but it may help. The only way to learn properly is to practice. I've been having so much fun playing a lerk like this recently I thought I'd share my ideas. Its gotten to the stage where I'm out killing a reasonable number of fades :/
The general idea: The whole point of an assault lerk is to kill marines, not to hold them off or to harrass them, but to outright kill them. To do this you will need speed strength and accuracy. Learn to control the lerk, learn to fly in zig zags and spirals, straight lines will get you killed.
Should you spot a lone marine, don't immediatly spore. Has he noticed you? If not can you quietly glide in behind him and take a free bite? If you think you can, go for it. If you think he's spotted you, spore him. From here you have 2 choices, either fly in and head directly for him or try and fly a pattern to waste his ammo before moving in for the kill. If you go for the first option, do not go for more than 2 attempted bites, fly off and fly back in and bite him again, fly off and repeat. The second option can be difficult to pull off but it does allow you to judge the marines aim. If your taking a lot of damage then get out of there its that simple, heal up and try again
Fighting a group of marines is entirely different. It is unlikely that you will get a kill with your first pass. If you see a group I suggest you immediatly spore them even if they haven't seen you, or spore them as you fly into their backs for a quick bite. Groups can be hard to deal with but by no means impossible. You have to know where your coming from and how your going to get out, fly in, bite once maybe twice then evasive manouvers out of there. NEVER EVER fly in a straight line.
Should you have a 2nd hive up, don't forget to umbra once maybe twice as you fly in.
Upgrades: At one hive I recommend you take regen simply because the extra armour from carapace won't be that useful. At two hives, take carapace and celerity. Note: not adrenaline. Your only use for gas will be a small amount of umbraing and a little sporing to strip some armour before you move in for the kill. Should sensory become available I recomend focus.
Carapace is needed simply because you will ineviably take more damage over a smaller amount of time rendering regen useless.
Celerity is a must because without that extra speed you are a slow rat with wings that will be plucked out of the air with ease.
Focus, well your going to be doing hit and run, so if your only going to go for one bite, you may as well make it count.
General tips: You will need to know your surroundings and the maps well, especialy if you take carapace. Knowing how to get back to a healing post (a hive or DC's) is vital. The other reason is that your actual time in combat should be minimal so you need to know the best entrance and exit from each area.
Know what your flying into, take a look first, don't just blindly fly into the middle of a room you know is full of marines.
Glide. When you glide you make no sound.
This is a pretty general guide but it may help. The only way to learn properly is to practice. I've been having so much fun playing a lerk like this recently I thought I'd share my ideas. Its gotten to the stage where I'm out killing a reasonable number of fades :/
Comments
One hint: don't try this against the professionals unless you're supporting at the same time with other friendly units, or kiss your 30 resources goodbye
But taking melee-ing Shotguns will just get you insta-killed every 1 in 10 times, so unless your Lerk is remotely expendable, its not a good thing to try. Once you're talking about a large battle though, the Lerk can use its speed to not be targetted in time and finish off kills the Skulks tried for with a quick swoop and 2 bites.
Not to mention, you retain all your sporing/umbraing abilitys which are great for groups.
Carapace on the other hand is a double-edged sword - the most common ways of dieing as a Lerk are either an instant kill from a Shotgun blast, or a finish-him kill after running past the whole marine team, and getting unlucky on the way back to a heal. Either way, you've got a fatal weakness - Carapace is probably better, as it encourages you to patrol the Hives, which you need to be doing regardless.
Distracting the rines with spore while a group of skulks comes from behind is fun times too. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
mine are; celerity, adren, silence, SoF, cara, regen, focus and unlock next ability...
whats urs and y should some newbie use them if they wanna stay alive?
p.s. gud guide man... <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
mine are; celerity, adren, silence, SoF, cara, regen, focus and unlock next ability...
whats urs and y should some newbie use them if they wanna stay alive?
p.s. gud guide man... <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
...The only things you didn't get are Primal Scream and redemption
There really isn't much you can do to customize the lvl10 upgrade composition of a lerk.
The real question is: what order do you get your upgrades in.
But that's already had a thread devoted to it, and not to mention this thread was never intended to talk about Combat (I think).
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you can't have that. that's 11 points, you only get to spend 9.
I've been playing lerk all day today and thought I'd add a bit more of what I've learnt.
A note on 1 Hive DC upgrade. This is quite dependant on your hive position. For example cargo hive on veil allows you to take carapace without difficulties because its near the centre of most of the fighting. If however you had genreator hive for example on caged then it might be wiser to take regen. So before you choose your upgrade, think about where the hive is, are there any healing stations about or are your gorges pretty spot on with the healing. At 2 hives and above take carapace always.
A note on flying. You don't need to flap your wings madly to get to top speed. You need about 2-3 quick taps to get to top speed and then maybe 1-2 more every time you change direction significantly. The rest of the time you should be gliding by holding your jump key down. This will help you conserve your adrenaline for biting and gas.
Pick your targets wisely. 2 reasonable shotgun shots will kill a carapace lerk, so a room with 4 sg's in is probably instant death unless your very lucky. You can still assault shotguns but you got to learn to fly in quite erratic patterns, and don't think about it unless you have celerity. Should shotguns be handed out when you only have 1 hive, sorry but your going to have to resort to being a standard lerk, or else your dead, though ambushing can still be effective.
A very valuable partnership that has worked well so far is that of a gorge and a lerk. A lerk can provide significant protection whilst a gorge can heal you. The gorge can also be handy as bait =) <!--emo&::lerk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/lerk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='lerk.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::gorge::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='pudgy.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
And I'll have you know, I actually tried being a celerity lerk instead of an adren lerk today, and I must say it works wonders getting to those hotspots on spread-out maps. The only time I wished I had adren was when I was biting down an rt. But lerks shouldn't be the ones biting rts anyway right, that's a skulk's job.
one thing i saw was you said "dont spore immediatly if they dont see you,and fly in for bites instead from behind"
i tend to do much much better if i fly in,spore,then switch back to bite,because there will only be about .04 a second between the spore sounding and your bite sound