Early Lerk?
Gecko_God_Of_Dooom
Join Date: 2004-02-10 Member: 26353Members
Join Date: 2004-02-10 Member: 26353Members
<div class="IPBDescription">valuable or not</div> Ive asked people about early lerks before. some say their useless, and some say thier great.
I think there vary valuable, but theres a bigger differance between pub play and clan play.
(given variable: Lerk plays gas support lerk, and hardly ever bites; knows pancaking, etc.)
Pub: In pub play I have noticed that an early lerk can mean the diffrence between a alien team win or lose. (10vs10 or greater) Due to the fact that it makes marines take longer to pull into an area, and you can usualy get the marines to waste a couple of bullets on you. The lerk becomes liek a rez waster for marines. and since there are more marines, the comm has to spend more medpacks on his marines if he wants them alive. That is considering they have a comm that pays attention.
Clan: in clan play, i have noticed it varies, liek some maps are like required to have an early lerk, and some maps are the death of a lerk.
opinions.
I think there vary valuable, but theres a bigger differance between pub play and clan play.
(given variable: Lerk plays gas support lerk, and hardly ever bites; knows pancaking, etc.)
Pub: In pub play I have noticed that an early lerk can mean the diffrence between a alien team win or lose. (10vs10 or greater) Due to the fact that it makes marines take longer to pull into an area, and you can usualy get the marines to waste a couple of bullets on you. The lerk becomes liek a rez waster for marines. and since there are more marines, the comm has to spend more medpacks on his marines if he wants them alive. That is considering they have a comm that pays attention.
Clan: in clan play, i have noticed it varies, liek some maps are like required to have an early lerk, and some maps are the death of a lerk.
opinions.
Comments
The thing is, you can hang onto your resource towers a little bit longer. Imagine some random rt, perhaps acidic on Tanith. Imagine 2-3 marines vs 2-3 skulks. Marines should win. Now, imagine a lerk in there with a pair of skulks, and you'd need some serious aim and reflexes to be able to kill them all (and the rt.)
1 lerk into the vent above messhal usually ends with a 50 to 4 score for that lerk.
A good lerk early on can have more of a devastating effect than a early fade can.
But it's no good if the lerk just dies. You might as well have saved for fade. Going lerk really early, and having no upgrades, is a quick way to waste res.
Lerks actually get more and more useful as time goes on. The higher the armor level of the marines, the better gas is. Two hives means umbra, plus extra (vital) upgrades. A third hive is gravy.
So, it might not be wise to <i>rush</i> lerk unless the marines are encamped, but you definately want one covering your butt.
4-5 marines prepare to take a 2-node area. 3 skulks go in, all are shot to pieces. A lerk starts sporing, marines panic, lose their armour, try to run out of gas and out of position. The same 3 skulks proceed to own all 5.
A group of marines are likely to move from res node A to your hive area to siege. Spore them all the way to deplete their armour. The 1-2 skulks that try to rambo-ambush actually kill a marine instead of dying after biting twice.
Marines begin to siege your hive. Spore them while they are building the PG, spore them while they are building the TF, spore them while they are building the sieges. Skulks go in, massacre.
Early sporing lerks are really good in maps with extensive vent networks that allow them to move safely. But maps with poor vent systems will force the lerk to fly in the open and brave marine fire. The only way the lerk can be viable, safely, in this case is to have a team that can at least secure an area minimally.
Spore is awesome for chip damage alone, and is a great way to "bleed" marines so that your skulk teammates can get some kills in. If you've a substandard team then clever sporing will allow them to get enough res to drop hive, nodes, etc. In combat it also allows them to get more upgrades, which is always nice. If they go focus first then you can really have an early finish.
Back in Classic, the lerk never really stops being useful. Umbra is great for assisting in base breaking or countering marine trains. Primal is good for a blitzkreig finish when you want to rush in and nail the IPs or CC. On most servers the comm won't have time to react before he's staring a loss in the face.
The only real downside to lerk is that some players go on a killfrenzy and forget that the bulk of the lerks abilities are geared for support. Maybe back in 2.0 when the lerk was the sniper class it'd be different, but in 3.0 the lerk is definitely geared for support. Stick by that and you'll win more than you lose, even if you're not top of the scoreboard.
I'd like to see lerks used more in games.
Just another day <u><b>_one_</b></u> lerk completely obliterated our team by sporing.... I relocated near mineral processing(dont remember map name)
Spore drains your res.
spore in base ruins building.
lerk can swoop in base to harras arms
rines try to shoot lerk
Those 4 things are the doom....
ALlways triple check your base cant be spored
Like the previous points posted, the lerk will suck up the rines res and greatly slow them down, you need at least one early lerk and lerk that will be lerk the whole game if you want to have really good chances of winning.
This isn't nearly as much of an economic drain on the alien team as lerking with your starting res, which essentially costs the same as a hive or a fade. You should also have DCs up by then, as opposed to when you lerk with your starting res. You're still almost always in time for the moment when you're most needed as a lerk, which is the second hive being sieged as it's going up.
I prefer carapace personally, and adren at second hive.
I noticed that it helped to just fly around in the open sometimes and let the marine empty a clip or just be a distraction so the skulks could B-hop a them unscathed.
I was being very very carefull. i accidently got to risky and they got me down to 5 health.
I think more people should try it on pubs.
I went around on a couple of Classic pub servers and noticed most of the pubs didn't have a lerks running around early.
And the person that said primal helps you finish the game: If you have 3 hives in the first place, you pretty much won the game
And the person that said primal helps you finish the game: If you have 3 hives in the first place, you pretty much won the game <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Still, you rarely get SoF before third hive. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I also think the spores help cause I know it annoys and pisses people off. thus they may not play as well. I know how annoying it is when im a marine and have to constantly ask for a medpack because of that sutpid !@#$ing lerk.
also noticed. 2 early lerks, 2 early fades, 1 early onos. is like the win on a 10vs10 server. also noticed 5 people rushing fade works well tooo.
[edit] broser messed up and double posted, so I just added somehting in
also, even if the marines only have armor 0 and getting their armor down really doenst matter yet, it still takes a little bit of focus off the skulks. as in the marines will be slightly focused on this whole gas thing and their losing health and that damn freaking lerk in the vent that wont freaking die god damnit, rather than your skulks. also it forces the com to drop medpacklets which wastes res.
my money cent stuff.
Just another day <u><b>_one_</b></u> lerk completely obliterated our team by sporing.... I relocated near mineral processing(dont remember map name)
Spore drains your res.
spore in base ruins building.
lerk can swoop in base to harras arms
rines try to shoot lerk
Those 4 things are the doom....
ALlways triple check your base cant be spored <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> so u r saying <u>one</u> person rushing lerk would completely disrupt the marines?
how come i don't seem to see early lerks every game?
I'd like to see lerks used more in games. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
*cough* |s| Goddy *cough* <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> (played lerk a lot)