Lerks!
TheGlow
Join Date: 2002-11-22 Member: 9650Members
Join Date: 2002-11-22 Member: 9650Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Not like 1.04, but just as fun!</div> Any one have some good strats for the lerk?
I loved em in 1.04 but then I thought he was crappy. But now, again Im falling in love.
Prob is I play alot of co recently so im used to getting all the upgrades for him.
All 3 movements are just so nice for the lerk, I cant decide which is more important.
In 1.04, id spam fly, get close, umbra, and eat.
Now with the fly speed i need celerity to hit those speeds.
Silence is nice and if you wanna use umbra or gas, you need adren.
*sigh*
Anyone have some opinions on them?
I loved em in 1.04 but then I thought he was crappy. But now, again Im falling in love.
Prob is I play alot of co recently so im used to getting all the upgrades for him.
All 3 movements are just so nice for the lerk, I cant decide which is more important.
In 1.04, id spam fly, get close, umbra, and eat.
Now with the fly speed i need celerity to hit those speeds.
Silence is nice and if you wanna use umbra or gas, you need adren.
*sigh*
Anyone have some opinions on them?
Comments
Silence is nice but only if you intend to bitespam people. Most marines will see where the spore clouds are coming from..
Celerity... well, if you want to be a flying skulk *shrug*
Chill somewhere where the marines can't hit you and spore or umbra.
The lerk's primary job is to weaken the marines to the point where your teammates can come in to finish them off.
I seldolmly see experienced lerkers fly around biting(well. maybe only in combat). But when they do come out to bite, they either spore first + bite to make sure a marine dies or they umbra an area close to a marine and bite.
Again its really rare for people to actually melee with a lerk.
rt to be munched.
teh skulk
mister lerk
skulk 2 res
lerk 33 res
do the math. Who shall we alow to bite the rt and who will cover.
lets face it. Covering means KILLING the enemy. Spores are to slow, umbra block, not kills. I ment actually waste them.
Then I prefer a lerk does the wastinge while the silly rines target the skulk.
If no skulk is near you because they're all rushing some distant marine outpost, then get your backside over there and hand out the spumbra spam.
Too many lerk players get vent happy and decide its not their job to attacks rts. Which is criminal, considering Fade players are much more valuable and they can cheerfully stop to dice an rt.
Silence is also pretty nice due to the fact that well, you're flying around with the flapping noise makes it a bit hard to avoid marines. Not mention those godawful loud noises you make when you're in flight. Silence rids you of these problems.
Adren is nice for spore and spore spamming, hence support.
Make a pick. They're all pretty nice for the lerk actually. Personally, I'd pick Celerity because I'm too used to Sonic games where everything goes at really high speeds.
Silence is just a total waste of 2 points. So what if the lerk makes so much noise?IMO its better to have more energy or more speed to kill the marines or get away in time. Plus, the rines will pretty much know where you are once you start spore//umbra spamming from your little vent. On top of that, you consume more energy (recover energy slowly too) to not only spore//umbra, but to fly as well.
Maybe if you choose to melee lerk against a <b>single</b> marine, you can pull off kills using silence. But you'll definitely get raped if you go up against 2 or more because 1) if you miss, the marine behind the one or in front of the one you wanted to bite will see you and blast you away 2) you'll run out of energy from trying to bite + fly simultaneously so the marines will have a nice target laying on the ground//gliding in a straight line for a few seconds.
I would highly recommend getting regenerate instead of cara or redemption. Its just too risky to have the latter 2 upgrades as a lerk.
If you ever get wounded from gunfire + you have cara and you really need to heal, chances are that on the way to the hive, your are going to get killed by some marine happens to be wandering by.
Redemption is pretty self-explanatory.
Lastly, if you ever get sensory chambers, scent of fear should be your number one upgrade. The lerk's main job is to cover. However, because of his high level of mobility, his other job should be to scout out those pesky ninja marines by tracking them with SOF. In that way, he can alert team memberes of the marines whereabouts and also know where to lay his blanket of spores//umbra.
If you are going melee lerk, focus is a great idea. Combined with celerity it makes any lerk a quick killer.
Oh and don't get cloaking...its almost as useless as silence is for lerking.
And in response to the lerk chewing the structure issue...if its absolutely necessary and your teammates are not killing any nodes, then, by all means, go for it. Otherwise, its the responsibility of all non-lerk aliens to take out the rts. Lerks should never have to bite <b>anything</b> on ns_ maps.
Maybe in pubs you could go around biting whatever you want. but in competetive games its not a really good idea, considering how well the marines will respond to you before you have the time to react to fly away to safety.
In pubs, its a common occurrence. Everyone has to pull their weight.
Second, lerks have teeth for a reason.
Since i believe that the soul job of the lerk is to act as support to back up his teammates...replace the teeth with spikes?
my personal favorite is to go under the ramp to landing pad in NS_hera , dang those marines try to shoot at you forever and the only way for them to kill you is to jump off the land pad and shoot you before they fall to death (I've seen many marines perish trying to kill me )
not really that hard to dodge 1 marines worth of bullets, but add like 2 more marines to that and youd best wait for a distraction
...
I just suggested teamwork! I R GRILLED!11!
Skulk with wings? Celerity + Carapace
RT destruction/ambush? Celerity + Regen
Sporehappy/umbra support? Adren + Regen
In any case, you'll want SoF. Know thy enemy and all that.
I'm a pretty good CO lerk, of the crazy wheeling melee variety. Never really get the chance in NS, as I'm usually the guy who gorges to help the team instead of reswhoring.
if you wanna do more than just sit and spore all day,you still always wanna spore almost anything before you attack it...and if you notice it is taking a bit to long to take out 1 rine..and your still catching a few bullets,just go to hive,and comeback
whenever your in a vent,and there are 2+ rines going past,spore them first,and wait,spore again untill there comm says "damn noobs forget about the lerk sitting there in the vent,your not gonna kill him" and when they begin to leave fly out,spore them again,and get bites in
if they are setting up seiges,either spore from far away,or fly in,umbra the ground next to you,and just try and kill 1 rine,then fly away(make sure to zigzag)
aslong as your on a server with FF you have better changes of people no just spamming there gun all over the place
-avoid shotties! if you see someone with a shotgun,try to spore him down asmuch as possible before you fly in,and when you do...try to come from behind(or be a damn good lerk)
i for one am tired of people constantly saying "Lerk is for support only" and i would enjoy seeing a few more people take interest in battle-lerking(if youd call it anything)...just because your getting kills with bite,it doesnt mean you cant umbra the fade...but if theres only 1 rine he doesnt need umbra mostlikely
I have the hardest time taking down a marine when biting (even after sporing once or twice) and I don't know exactly why this is. I have two guesses...
1.) I just plain suck at biting them enough times without missing every other bite
OR
2.) I'm using celerity causing me to fly by in a hurry getting only one bite off.
However, it is when playing CO, or when a gorge accidently drops Sensory first, in Classic, I become a self proclaimed king. I grab myself focus and killing the marines is like second nature. And I become even more deadly with celerity because I would do a fly by, bite, turn around, bite again, etc. Even small squads of marines are managable. No problems.
So what is my problem when not using focus? Am I applying focus tactics into my non-focus lerk causing me to get a few too many LMG bullets up my behind? What is the basic, or not so basic idea, when it comes to successfully biting a marine to death?
I have the hardest time taking down a marine when biting (even after sporing once or twice) and I don't know exactly why this is. I have two guesses...
1.) I just plain suck at biting them enough times without missing every other bite
OR
2.) I'm using celerity causing me to fly by in a hurry getting only one bite off.
However, it is when playing CO, or when a gorge accidently drops Sensory first, in Classic, I become a self proclaimed king. I grab myself focus and killing the marines is like second nature. And I become even more deadly with celerity because I would do a fly by, bite, turn around, bite again, etc. Even small squads of marines are managable. No problems.
So what is my problem when not using focus? Am I applying focus tactics into my non-focus lerk causing me to get a few too many LMG bullets up my behind? What is the basic, or not so basic idea, when it comes to successfully biting a marine to death? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Marines outrun lerks that are walking. The most likely reason you can't kill anything non-focus is they still have armor and you're trying to walk and bite them. Don't do this. Weaken marines as much as possible, have about half an adren bar, and swoop in for the kill. Bite once or twice then go straight up, get a good angle on them, and swoop in again for 1-2 more bites. Continue until you need to run or marine is dead. Keep up with adrenaline, don't waste bites or flaps if you don't have to. I prefer cara/cel/focus, because it's the best combination for combat lerking. Support lerks like regen/adren/sof, and the two upgrade sets can be mixed and matched. I prefer cara over regen mostly because 1 shotgun hit will kill a lerk. Most good lerks will die entering or exiting combat itself, not trying to flee back to the hive/dcs/fatty to heal. I think I've died maybe 10 times in the past 3 months actually trying to find a place to heal, and almost all of them were because I was impatient and didn't want to wait out a marine. Most deaths for lerks are when you're ambushed or make a mistake while trying to kill a marine, which is when cara would help, especially against anything more than lvl0 lmgs. I prefer celerity because while often a death results from low adrenaline, the extra speed from celerity helps far more than faster adrenaline production does. Celerity lerks are insanely hard to hit, and can move around the map faster than almost anything else in the game. I can outrun fades as a celerity lerk, and that comes in handy for both retreating and for running back to the hive to help out. It also forces you to manage adrenaline a lot more. Lastly I use focus in every situation because it's incredibly useful as a lerk for taking down everything from walker la marines to jps. The only thing it's not really useful on is HA, but you can usually get a bite in on a HA, even when he has support. Just time your fly-by correctly and you can get in close without taking fire and take shots as you fly fast as hell out (because you have celerity, harhar). Also note that silence is an awesome upgrade for lerking using the method I mentioned at the top of this massive paragraph, diving for a bite then going back to the ceiling. Marines have a hard time tracking something they can't hear. Just remember that surprise and constant movement are your friend with silence, because you can neither bitespam nor fly away very fast.
never in the middle of hallways. if you need cover, you should be able to duck into it INSTANTLY. your escape flight should be 100% safe and should never be exposed to enemy fire. unless the marines are actively trying to flank and hunt you, this should be possible ALL the time (with appropriate foresight).
almost every room has some sort of vent/line of sight that has immediate cover (example: waste doorway, two vents in reactor room can cover all of reactor room. any one of these positions can cover at least 2/3 of reactor room. you don't need to see them to spore them)
although everyone knows spores can explode on walls and ceilings, i still see a lot of people only attempting to line-of-sight spore on marines. for example, as marines come down a hall at you, you can duck out of their line of fire and spore at the wall ahead of them. this also works for elevation changes, like sporing from the ramp just east of waste hive (shoot at the ceiling).
with a good idea of how quickly marines move (+ good ears!), you can get 1-2 more spores in than you would if you ran away immediately. 1-2 spores in a thick shotgun pack translates out to a lot of medpacks and a lot of armor lost.
i can't combat lerk because i fly like cement
if a sc drops first,i will most likely choose SoF,because its just a better version of cloaking
the best hiding spots arent sitting invisible,they are where you cant be shot
if your having trouble getting kills with bite just keep working at it,and try not to superlerk on CO,because it will spoil you as a ns lerk
normally after i fly in and bite,i kinda just keep hopping around them,or fly around the room for a second and head back at them
one thing is that most people tend to always walk backwards while shooting if something is running at them
always stay as high in the air as posible and swoop down at the last minute(i dont know why but its harder to aim while looking up
spore is your friend,dont spore all day...just spore enough untill they ignore you