As long as shotguns exist in their current form, Aliens will always be at a disadvantage
Merciless One
Join Date: 2012-11-08 Member: 168344Members
Join Date: 2012-11-08 Member: 168344Members
Shotguns are the bane of existence for Aliens. There is only 1 life form on the Alien side that can "negate" the Marine shotgun, and that is the Onos, and only the Onos because of their high HP.
Skulks, Gorges, Lerks and Fades are always at a disadvantage when fighting against a Marine with a shotgun.
It goes something like this:
Skulk - 1 shot
Gorge - 2 shots
Lerks - 2 shots
Fades - 2 shots
Shotguns make bad and average Marine players "feel" like they're good at the game, and great players god like.
And this is only talking about a single Marine vs an Alien life form. Now imagine 3 Marines sticking together for the whole match (which, if it was more common, there would be a lot more complaints) with shotguns, and you have a mini death ball.
We'll leave Jetpacks out of this equation, because it wouldn't be fair to beat the shotgun OP'ness to death. But we all know what a good Marine with a shotgun and a Jetpack feels like anyway.
Skulks, Gorges, Lerks and Fades are always at a disadvantage when fighting against a Marine with a shotgun.
It goes something like this:
Skulk - 1 shot
Gorge - 2 shots
Lerks - 2 shots
Fades - 2 shots
Shotguns make bad and average Marine players "feel" like they're good at the game, and great players god like.
And this is only talking about a single Marine vs an Alien life form. Now imagine 3 Marines sticking together for the whole match (which, if it was more common, there would be a lot more complaints) with shotguns, and you have a mini death ball.
We'll leave Jetpacks out of this equation, because it wouldn't be fair to beat the shotgun OP'ness to death. But we all know what a good Marine with a shotgun and a Jetpack feels like anyway.
Comments
(And Lerk for that matter too)
I can, the answer is zero.
I mean... maybe if we had an Exo with dual rapid-fire shotties.
While I realize it may *feel* this way, there is a certain mathematical requirement involved that can't be met by a single shotgun round.
Fade's got 250/100, which is an 'effective' 450 health.
Without Carapace, 250/50, effective 350 health.
Shotgun mathematically cannot achieve more than like ~250 damage per shot, with full pellet hit.
It is, quite factually, impossible, to die to a single shotgun hit from full health with a fade.
I know for great alien players it's different, but here's my experience doing what you suggest.
This is simply my experience and what I observe...not how it is for everyone, esp the really good skulks.
- whittle them down (you mean bite, run away, bite, runaway - right?)
Marines can just heal with a med pack or armoury, and the skulk is too slow to get in and out combat without losing most of its health if not all. The tactic only works well with the lerk.
- ambush
not many places where you can hide well. Skulks are large, so usually spotted, and the luminous skin mods don't help. Even with a good ambush your footsteps are audible far away and you're easily pin pointed. Best case scenario you get a bite, the marine activates space bar pogo stick - and only needs one shotgun hit. Skulks need 3 or 4 or 5? bites; so they need to be that many times better at landing hits than shotty rines. And ambushes are often impossible because of scans and observatories.
- charge in
footsteps instantly reveal your exact location to all rines in the rooms and adjacent rooms.
So you get lucky, or use silence, and they don't hear you. Well its not hard to kill a slow moving skulk. Don't think melee range gives you a special advantage. Rines seem just as agile as the skulks in close combat. Again, they need one hit. You have to get multiple bites in.
Loud footsteps, large silhouette, slow movement, that all makes sense if skulks are deadly up close. But they're not, and for whatever reason UW didn't implement Focus (alien damage upgrade evolution). Focus slowed your attack rate, but it actually let you ambush well. You needed 2 bites in most cases, as I recall anyway.
Bring back focus! Quieten skulk footstep noise by 1/3 - 1/2!
Slow shotgun fire rate?
Usually you just need a little coordination to bring down shotgunners in the field. I still see 20-res shotguns lost to 0-res skulks all the time. If you can't focus down a shotgunner with a couple buddies because the marines are moving in a large pack, use your mobility advantage and go around them, hit them where they are weak.
If you are unable to win frontal assaults AND you are getting consistently shut down when using guerilla tactics, you are probably just facing a more skilled team and the weapons themselves aren't going to matter that much.
A skilled marine with a shotgun can do a lot of damage, but ultimately that marine is still very fragile in the big picture. For every AG marine I come across with a 10:1 KD ratio in pubs, I see a half a dozen unkillable godmode fades going 30:1. Bring back focus and that will only get worse.
Look at every single comp game ever (and many pub games) to see how wrong you are.
Edit: Thinking a little about it, this argument can go both ways, I'm sure some mediocre/average fades feels badass after two hitting a bunch of a0 LMG players.
I think fades are fine, perhaps a slight hp buff is needed to make them not two shottable, but I think they are OK atm.
You're totally right though, fades should be able to take 4-5 shots before dying, this would balance the game.
I hope. If they use the camo/silence combined skill from Sewlek's mod AND throw in Focus as the second ability they could kill 2 birds with one stone.
I think the major problem is most people from what I've seen don't really know how to play aliens that well.
You should almost never engage a shotgunner if he's next to an armory unless you have backup or are confident in your skills.
As a skulk, you should parasite them before engaging. Often times you may not even need to do this (marines light up when they take damage), since the goal is to be able to see where they are and what direction they're looking at, or if they're busy reloading. You should be walking around anyway, since good players always use sound to know instantly where you are. The key is to catch them off guard. You can even use this to your advantage, for example, by letting them see/hear you set up an ambush on one side of the ceiling of a doorway, then walk (so they don't hear) to another spot. When they peek in to where they THINK you are, you can kill them easily.
As far as charging in, it's a necessity to know how to walljump. You don't need to be great at it, but the key is to not give the marine enough time to react to the sound of your footsteps. This means walking the whole way, and only walljumping once or twice to close the gap. Hit him in the back, then circle around (since they will do a 180), and finish him off. Of course, you have to be able to hit your bites. When fighting a group of marines, whether you're alone or in a group, you should always go for the guy in the back of the pack, as it's least expected and more often than not the surprised marines will end up shooting their own buddies instead of you. After finishing him off, run away and repeat the process until they're all dead.
If you're having trouble landing bites, maybe you should experiment playing at a higher sensitivity (I use double my sensitivity on aliens vs. marines)
As a lerk, use glide/ground lerking to be completely silent (but of course you have to be careful and try to know where the marines are). Bite the shotgunner once or twice, fly to a safe distance and finish him off with spikes. Since they won't be expecting you, it's safe to do major damage by biting, and spiking them down after that is really easy.
As a fade, there really is no easy way to be sneaky besides using the shadowstep + jump + jump or some variation of that to close the gap quickly and catch them unaware. The general rule I follow is one or two swipes and then get the hell out of there. Sometimes the smart thing to do is to shadowstep through the marines, see how many people fire shotguns at you, so you can better decide how difficult the engagement is (rather than charging and swiping, not knowing beforehand). While fighting, do a shadowstep + swipe and the majority of players will miss (even pros) if you catch them off guard.
TLDR: Most people are bum rushing shotgunners expecting to live, and aliens really shouldn't be played like that.
Source: THE GODDAMN BATMAN
You could imagine a focus fade getting enzymes just before they rush a base, It would be terrifying.
As for shotguns the only real change I could agree with them getting is a spread increase. It's very easy to deliver 60-80 damage to a Fade or Lerk in open rooms or long corridors. (Both of which are very common in NS2.) They could do this in a few ways, to reduce the effective range of the shotgun via increasing their spread (specifically the inner most pellet grouping) or by altering the shotgun's spread pattern again, which I would rather not see.
Another possible solution would be to make shotgun pellets damage drop off exceedingly after they pass a certain distance from their firing point. (Like Lerk spikes, but much steeper!)
It's getting better than it was, it just needs a little fine tuning.
I do feel that a fade should require 2 1/2 shots though to give a little leeway for the 100ms interp thing
I don't want focus because double damage and half attack speed is boring. The only lifeforms that really need it are the Skulk and the Fade anyway, why not allow leap and blink/shadowstep to apply additonal damage when used? Add in a special animation (to act as a cool down), and any attack in that time frame will deal bonus damage. A heavy attack will have an extra energy cost to balance it out, aliens will be able to 1 shot unarmored marines. Focus would just be another another carapace-type upgrade that reducing the viable choices of the Kahmm (the kind that people yell at you for not getting ASAP)
Let me turn this around...
The fade is a 50 res weapon, and since it's only effective at short range, it should be able to one shot marines up close imo....
Now does that make sense? I didn't think so.
That's like comparing apples to oranges... NS2 is asymmetrical and you can't just do a direct comparison like that. 1 Fade is infinitely better than 1 marine with a shotgun, because of it's movement capabilities
I can see increasing the cost to be reasonable, but requiring an advanced armory is just too much. What happens when aliens do a lerk rush? It would be OP'd since the marines wouldn't be able to get shotguns out fast enough to counter
I don't even understand what you're trying to say?
I'm not saying you could toss this change into the game as is without balancing it, but I do feel there is potential. I'd rather see slightly later powerful shotguns, than earlier nerfed shotguns that are weak and are garbage in the middle/end game.
Sure you can blink around and never be hit, but that doesn't really go anywhere.
Right now the fade is the weakest lifeform as soon as marines have lvl2 upgrades. He can survive and pick up some lonely marines, but he can't fight.
There are no real arguments against focus. Numbers can be tweaked.