Exos & Onos complete waste of res now?
joederp
Join Date: 2012-11-02 Member: 165992Members
Join Date: 2012-11-02 Member: 165992Members
Has anyone else noticed that Exos & Onos are the fastest way to waste a whole bunch of res real fast? They can be somewhat useful in some situations, but generally speaking, a marine team is MUCH more effective with jetpacks with w/a upgrades + shotgun, flamer etc. Exos are gimped now, when firing the dual mini seizes up, and it overheats in exactly no time, the dual rail WAS pretty bad ass until they added a ridiculous cooldown feature that makes it almost useless when you find yourself ambushed by a couple skulks at your feet as you simply CANNOT fire quickly enough, you might get 2 or 3 shots off by the time you are dead but since your rails were not charged, the shots take 2 hits to kill each skulk so you won't be able to kill both in time. And thats if you don't miss at all. In this case you are actually better off with the single rail so you can at least punch at your feet repeatedly.
And the onos.. good lord. Without half the team supporting you at all times you are nothing but a big fat liability. A single jetpacker can take you out no problem if he has comm support. And god forbid you come around a corner and there are more than 2-3 marines looking back at you - your health will be critical in less than a second and since your khamm probably does not have charge yet there is nothing you can do except crouch down into the amazingly awesome "Invincible face" position, which of course eats up stamina and just delays the inevitable death when you try to turn and escape since the marines have reloaded during the invincible face display and closed their position on you.
The fade also seems to have taken a moderate nerf, with no upgrades it is extremely slow and easy to hit during blink, and it runs out of energy very fast. What used to score me multiple kills as a fade now ends up getting me damaged to the point I need to escape almost immediately after entering combat. It seems like no matter what I do even mediocre shooters can just track me with their LMG no problem. Granted I am not a very good fade but I could at least last more than 1 second in combat before I had to bail.
So why have they nerfed the high end life forms so badly? What was so wrong with reaping the rewards of buying a dual minigun exo, or a fully upgraded onos and just mopping the floor with the base level skulks / marines? I do not see the logic here, the game will undoubtedly always end up being Jetpackers vs fades / lerks.
Summary: Revert the exos to their previous glory, buff the onos hp / armor, and maybe increase the speed of blink. Everyone will have more fun, I promise.
And the onos.. good lord. Without half the team supporting you at all times you are nothing but a big fat liability. A single jetpacker can take you out no problem if he has comm support. And god forbid you come around a corner and there are more than 2-3 marines looking back at you - your health will be critical in less than a second and since your khamm probably does not have charge yet there is nothing you can do except crouch down into the amazingly awesome "Invincible face" position, which of course eats up stamina and just delays the inevitable death when you try to turn and escape since the marines have reloaded during the invincible face display and closed their position on you.
The fade also seems to have taken a moderate nerf, with no upgrades it is extremely slow and easy to hit during blink, and it runs out of energy very fast. What used to score me multiple kills as a fade now ends up getting me damaged to the point I need to escape almost immediately after entering combat. It seems like no matter what I do even mediocre shooters can just track me with their LMG no problem. Granted I am not a very good fade but I could at least last more than 1 second in combat before I had to bail.
So why have they nerfed the high end life forms so badly? What was so wrong with reaping the rewards of buying a dual minigun exo, or a fully upgraded onos and just mopping the floor with the base level skulks / marines? I do not see the logic here, the game will undoubtedly always end up being Jetpackers vs fades / lerks.
Summary: Revert the exos to their previous glory, buff the onos hp / armor, and maybe increase the speed of blink. Everyone will have more fun, I promise.
Comments
I still think the only good exo is the duel minigun exo, just because it's damage is worth the risk, again, use it properly, it's not front line, it's not a tank.
I oppose to the "pay to win" concept - just buy exo and mow down everything, it's not fun for those who stay behind, all the highest lifeforms should require support.
Exo: glass cannon to the max, if they go front line and get surrounded, it will go down really fast (was Khamm in biodome when our team surrounded 2 unsupported Exo in main hall and took them down in about 1-2 secs (1 fade, 3-4 skulks (didn't count) and 1 gorge). If they stay in the back and let the marines bait or block = insane dps (for the mini dual), and great for holding back gassing lerks and bileing gorges (rail). Don't let your Exo in the front line, they are there to support and hold a position for you.
Onos: Haven't seen a creative use of bone shield yet, but I can see imagine you get the marines to waste ammo on your bone shielded onos, and let the skulk hiding behind you come out to chomp marines while they are reloading (that's I tactic I can think of where it is useful. (Imagine if you can put a shift next to an onos to shield your crag nest :-). They can't be damaged while their health is being healed. The onos is still useful in cracking a marine position (particularly if there are sentries and pg), you really want the onos to draw fire and help take down the pg while the gorge biles.
Dual rail could use a little redesign, the firing just feels massively uncomfortable and clunky. I'm sure some uber pro will wreck absolute death with it, but I can't see myself using it effectively anytime soon, if ever: Imo, I would LOVE to see dual-rail railguns have TWICE the rate of fire, but HALF the damage of a 1 rail exo. Then you would no longer need to lock the recharge of the 2nd gun, as double rail whammies would only make 1 rail exo worth of damage - but with twice the rate of fire. It would LOOK awesome, dual rail whammies all day long or 1st and 2nd gun taking turns with double rate of normal fire, PEW PEW PEW PEW!
Sure, it wouldn't make much sense that having 2 of the same gun would alter the guns properties -Oh no wait, nanites.
And how long does it take to figure out not to shoot the boneshield? I see an onos duck down I'm not going to keep firing, I'm going to start reloading or maybe running. They aren't invincible like that either, if you get behind or above them you do full damage.
Also, nerfed dual rail? STOP WITH THE ******* NINJA NERFS ALREADY! If you're going to nerf something, put it in the patch notes.
In addition the boneshield is a MUST against exosuits/level 3 weapons which kinda makes sense I suppose although boneshield is a 'tier 2' ability which is fine since aliens are kinda sitting with the advantage if they do get a 3rd hive up 'nd runnin' which will give you the stomp ability of course (which is friggin' awesome to watch in action as it cracks the floors in a line.
For instance here recently I've started to use boneshield to provide cover for gorges bilebombing the power node in marine bases, works like a charm although you run out of energy after chewing through all kinds of firepower (bullet based firepower) but it's awesome to just hunker down and have them gorges take cover behind ya since you essentially become a wall of bone 'nd flesh! ';..;'
Despite the boneshield I still feel as an onos you're having a hard time taking on single armed minigun exosuits unless you really get the jump on 'em, as in I feel the onos shouldn't drop dead in 5 seconds when charging into combat head-on.
Heck I've stopped using carapace this time around since you only get 200 additional armor which just cease to matter in what seems less than half a second, besides regeneration heals during combat at times don't know if that's intended or what but it's worth more than the carapace upgrade for the onos.
Note: Boneshield 'only' blocks bullet based damage, still recieves damage from grenades, railguns and flames!
Shouting my battlecry "Hail your Onos Overlord!"
The constricted movement, like you're stuck in some chest high mud is not all that fun to me (and I'm assuming probably to a sizable number of other players). It feels like a soft-stun. I hate stuns, all types, and I especially hate them in FPS.
Perhaps instead of movement speed nerf a direct nerf to damage? How about increasing rail gun charge time and increasing minigun heat generation? etc...
And the exo is not only made of glass, but now as those rubber banding skulks dance around your feet and you fire wildly at them, you can't hit them effectively thanks to the railgun cooldown / delay fire, and the dual mini overheats so fast its a joke.
As for balance, they are somewhat balanced now, between eachother - but they are not balanced vs marines / skulks. 2-3 0 res units should have a very very hard time killing a 40-80 res unit. If not, why bother buying these expensive units if they can so easily be killed by the 0 pres units? That pres is much better spent on jetpacks, shotguns, lerks, gorges & fades.
Try not to go by that logic or else everything will seem weird and funky like:
Why is it when I pump 10 bullets into a skulk they're not hindered at all? How does a skulk even climb walls, the friction compared to the weight wouldn't work at all. If the commander can drop ammo and meds, why can't they drop live grenades in the alien hive? Why isn't there any friendly fire? If a hive is supported by 4 limbs, won't shooting the limbs collapse.... etc.
As for aliens vs vanilla marines... we'll see where the balance stands in a week or two. There's a LOT of rookies playing so balance is a complete mess at the moment.
My advice when playing exo, yell "WELD ME!" in voip.
I have to agree though that the dual railgun is not worth the extra cost. I would love to have to option to equip 1 minigun and 1 railgun.
Its more frustrating than ever when you get killed by a single skulk because youre out of support for a moment and theyre dancing around you and you have no idea where they are due to that ridicoulus FOV you have inside exos (current rubberbanding in lategame does not help) My suggestion would be to add something like peripheral dots (example arma) that shows me the rough direction of a skulk when it is very close to me.
I just find it a bad joke how a single skulk can basically wipe out an exo if he gets lucky in a matter of seconds. Another thing that amuses me greatly when i play alien is how ridicoulesly quickly an unsupported exo dies to lerk spikes.
It's rather a gorilla/unicorn.
Can't argue with that.
Though debatable, I believe the Fade still needed a nerf. It was too powerful last go around. Even now, I'm seeing people do really well with Fade, so it's not a lost art. It just takes more skill and adaptation now.
I still almost never use dual exos because I strongly dislike the penalty to movement speed now that they have other penalties as well, and the limited mobility of the exo is already their chief weakness so I'd rather not make it any worse than it already is.
It is kind of frustrating when you finally get your onos and then realize the commander hasn't researched the upgrade yet, as you're basically unable to engage until he does for lack of charge and/or boneshield. That's a player/team coordination mistake, though, so it's fine... just annoyingly common.
Every time I have bought a dual in this version I end up regretting it, its much better to get singles with earlier armor / weapon upgrades. Or better still, have the whole team buy jetpacks and dominate since the new jetpack is incredibly powerful for 15 pres.
Not likely.
Edit: You do play in PUBS, right?
Onos HP might be a bit on the low side. I think the onos can be better balanced by giving it some more manoeuvrability then just directly buffing its hp though.
Charge is so crucial for escaping and since now you don't start with it and onos upgrade is the last thing researched you rarely have it.