Babblers are useless
Wingflier
Join Date: 2013-03-07 Member: 183769Members
Join Date: 2013-03-07 Member: 183769Members
Even after the small buff.
Their pathing is kind of bad, the bug bait is kind of weird, but mostly their damage is just too small.
I've literally had a situation as a Gorge where I kited a Marine around for about 45 seconds, constantly healing in his face, with an army of Babbles attacking him, and I still died before he did.
In the last game I played (as Marine), it was the first time I ever encountered Babblers. I literally walked up to one on purpose, just to see how much damage the little guy would do. Without any armor upgrades, I think it did 2 damage to my health and 3 damage to my armor. It was freaking pathetic.
The fact of the matter is that Gorge's don't NEED them. Gorges were doing just fine before the Babbler came along, so now you've given them a skill which wastes their own resources, and which they can contribute just as well without anyway. If Babblers are to become useful, Gorges are going to have to WANT them, and for that to happen, their power has to increase dramatically.
I wouldn't make this post if I didn't care, but I LOVE the concept of the Babblers, the execution is just severely flawed.
Their pathing is kind of bad, the bug bait is kind of weird, but mostly their damage is just too small.
I've literally had a situation as a Gorge where I kited a Marine around for about 45 seconds, constantly healing in his face, with an army of Babbles attacking him, and I still died before he did.
In the last game I played (as Marine), it was the first time I ever encountered Babblers. I literally walked up to one on purpose, just to see how much damage the little guy would do. Without any armor upgrades, I think it did 2 damage to my health and 3 damage to my armor. It was freaking pathetic.
I agree with this guy's suggestion. Make Babblers a 2-Hive upgrade, and make them much more powerful.I can understand why they could have been intentionally made weak to prevent it from becoming to powerful a tactic for the early-game combat, but in their current form they are just too useless. I would rather they be another purchasable hive upgrade and become much more violent and damaging. A good example would be the 'Narks' or 'Nerks', whatever they are called from the original Half life. Those little bastards had moderate damage but it was mainly the fact that they would always be right up in your face biting that was their main strength.
The fact of the matter is that Gorge's don't NEED them. Gorges were doing just fine before the Babbler came along, so now you've given them a skill which wastes their own resources, and which they can contribute just as well without anyway. If Babblers are to become useful, Gorges are going to have to WANT them, and for that to happen, their power has to increase dramatically.
I wouldn't make this post if I didn't care, but I LOVE the concept of the Babblers, the execution is just severely flawed.
Comments
Also, Flamethrowers actually serve a purpose. Babblers serve no purpose.
Also you should be able to combine them all into one giant super-babbler that has bombard whip pubic hair and on death explodes with the force of a neutron bomb
try it before you spout crap.
You clearly haven't, because you have no idea what you're talking about. Babblers don't do 90 DPS against extractors, in fact I'm quite sure they don't even attack once per second, and that's not even factoring their subpar pathfinding, and their hyper-passivity, even in the midst of a heated battle surrounded by Marines.
You literally have no idea what you're talking about. In the time it took you to plant 3 Babbler Eggs, then hatch them, then send in the bug bait to the Extractor, you would LOSE DPS against the Extractor that you could have just spend those 10 seconds Bile Bombing it.
Please just stop talking.
please compare the effectiveness of tier 0 and tier 2 upgrades more, it is obviously a very useful comparison.
You don't start with bile, which makes that a silly argument. "Yeah, well the two hive upgrade is better than the starting ability!"Duh...
They cost 3 res for 9 of them. They shouldn't be anything more than a distraction. They can help a lot when used as armor as long as the blocked primary attack bug is actyally fixed.
Or, even better, instead of babblers only attaching to aliens, have them attach themselves to marines as well. Make babblers do something like 3 damage a second when attached to a marine, and each babbler slows the marines move speed by 3%. This should be the only way that a babbler can attack a marine, and it should attach itself when it successfully does that jump attack animation. This would make it easy to dodge, so long as you are concentrating on dodging all of them. If all 9 babblers attached themselves to a marine, he would take 27 damage a second, and be slowed by 27%. To remove babblers, a marine should have to use his knife or welder, which would require switching out his weapon (assuming no other marines are around to simply shoot them off), or he can use his LMG butt if he has one.
Personally I feel like they are a waste of p-res in most situations, they do still have a purpose. That purpose just isn't DPS.
On that note, I feel like if they had faster more erratic pathing towards marines and did a little more damage they would be harder to hit and a bigger threat to force marines to expend ammo on them... but also as was pointed out PvE is not the point so buffing AI may not make sense, so maybe instead of DPS we could focus on the babblers soaking up more bullets increase health slightly and make them even faster (241 saw an increase in babbler speed). Or maybe give them a speed bonus when targeting a marine.
Your argument is invalid.
You also don't need to go gorge or buy babblers. Your arguments are invalid.
A Gorge's role early on is not to kill Structures, it's to defend key positions and assist building Hives. You don't go Gorge early game for killing structures, nor should they even be that close to the front lines until you start getting Fades and Onos, at which point you'll already have Bile Bomb...
I think you are just proving that you don' lt know how to gorge. You don't even try to support your team. You are also expecting far too much from something that has 1/9th the cost per unit compared to hydras. Hydras aren't very good either. I don't know why you expect an even cheaper unit to be better.
Blabblers should be like this --> http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/128875/suggestions-to-make-blabblers-useful#latest
Agreed - they should not be a competent offensive unit. It would be stupid if the whole alien team went gorge and marines kept dying to a swarm of babblers .. they should buff them to be a defensive unit, just like the gorge. They should be able to act as an armor buff, adding an extra 50 armor to a player until they are shot off. They should be able to attack but it should be useless , like they are now.
It would be cool of the gorge could attach them to a player either as defensive (add armor) or regenerative (slowly heal the player similar to regeneration).
They should buff the gorge, but they should not replace the gorge in combat.
Actually, a passive regen when being covered in Babblers might be kind of cool
As defense, they detach too fast, expire after 2 mins, or get shot off in seconds. As offensive unit 9 of them cant kill a lvl 0/0 marine. Until they can do either of those things and justify my 3 res i'll just keep my res for something useful.
Make them explode near marines like little bile bombs that wear armour off marines only and not structures.
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They are a tad bit bit clunky to attach them to youself or your aliens buddies, though...
In fairness though, my willingness to blow PRes on them is kind of skewed by the fact that I'm typically perma gorge if I have teammates actually worth healing.
I hate gorges. And I love it that I hate gorges.