Shade hive cannot really be countered... per say. Yes you can counter cloaking but those skulks still have silence. Higher lifeforms are still very effective with aura and hallucs no longer pop with scans. Shade hive is definitely viable now.
I haven't had a chance to try it in a comp game, but I can see Shift->Shade as an extremely aggressive first 2 hives. Phantom + Enzyme =
Did skulks sound get ninja fixed last build? Either that or I have just become accustomed to it.
It is fixed in the CHUD mod (now called NS2+), so maybe you've been playing on servers that make use of the mod - which are actually quite a few by now because that mod is basically the community's fix for many NS2 issues that should have been taken care of ages ago.
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Personally, I think they should make the shade chamber a little... different. ie instead of 3 veils for max, maybe only 2... or maybe all 3 are cheaper. All the other chambers have some benefit with say... only having 1/3 spurs or 2/3 shells... but with shade, until you get that 3rd veil, it's pretty useless.
I have to agree with the OP... Shade hive is by far the most useful out of the three, the problem is that people just don't realize why it's so good.
Sure celerity and shell is nice to have, but nothing gives the aliens more of an edge than being silent (or having aura for higher life forms) - Any decent player should be able to do WAY more with shade than with shift or crag. I'd even go so far as to say if you "need" shift or crag then you are not a good player.
When you are silent you don't need extra speed or health because you can get right on top of them before they even know you're there. When Marines can no longer hear running from two rooms away, it removes their ability to always be facing the right direction when aliens appear.
It actually surprises me that people don't realize just how much sound gives them away, and how easily good marine players use sound to obliterate the alien team. I've seen Marines that go 40-50 kills with under 5 deaths because they can hear skulks coming so easily. Give aliens shade and those same players are suddenly struggling to stay alive because they can no longer hear incoming skulks.
Oh and phantom Gorges are insanely OP when it comes to getting up sneaky tunnels and doing bile rushes. Sneaking up a tunnel if your team is behind is insanely difficult without phantom. (because Marines can hear you "building" from so far away.
One would be foolish to say that Shade is a cool ride. On the 1on1 topic it probably feels better as the skulk can sneak from anywhere. But on the strategic plan... not so easssayyy.
With proper opponents (good shots) the alien team has to be much more aggressive to push where they need to. And clean up places in order to make sure no obs will be built. Not including scan. A decent com will surely spend one scan instead of 5 medpack... cost effectiveness and stuff.
So if one thing goes wrong, the game is turned upside down in favor of the marines. Time becomes critical as a hive shouldn't be delayed too much.
Shade isn't played much as the videos testify in competitive play. On pub it's the same but for the reason it needs more teamwork and a little less 1on1 after all (The everlasting struggle between Fun and Organization).
Shade is used in competitive, last example would be saunamen vs
Imagine. I think it clearly showed how shade hive is used for choosing engagements rather than surviving them
I switch from cele lerk to adren probably sooner than most players. Even at 1/1 shotguns, going in for bites when not in a big pack is just a no no.
It is so easy to run out of energy as lerk when spiking, and especially when baiting or stalling marines, and if you're playing carefully against good comp marines, quite frankly cele doesn't help you survive all that well. Early game esp vs lmgs, sure cele all the way. But once shotguns are out, it's better, in my view, to use the lerk to bait marines out of position, and to spike heavily to drain armour and use up tres from medpacks. Then you've got structure biting to do once the fades pop. Someone already mentioned umbra, too. For all of these reasons, I find adren the better ability in the early-mid to late game.
Careful positioning and scouting are of course essential in any case, and I'm really only talking about comp games here.
I hate shade. Its not a bad hive, its ok for for rookies that dont know a good spot to hide and ambush. Standing still in a middle of corridor is just not fun. Shade hive makes aliens less agresive. To much camping allows marines to take more area. 5 minutes later if you don't secure 2 techpoints you are s..... Its realy hard to take back a techpoint with OBS and PG in it (mines seal the deal). Shade as second hive is ok but not as first...
I hate shade. Its not a bad hive, its ok for for rookies that dont know a good spot to hide and ambush. Standing still in a middle of corridor is just not fun. Shade hive makes aliens less agresive. To much camping allows marines to take more area. 5 minutes later if you don't secure 2 techpoints you are s..... Its realy hard to take back a techpoint with OBS and PG in it (mines seal the deal). Shade as second hive is ok but not as first...
Shade making people defensive is exactly the point why its bad for rookies; Also, I think you underestimate aura.
I don't understand the "shade making people defensive" mentality...
I tend to play more defensively with spur or shell because marines can pinpoint my location through sound SO easily... Plus since I have to walk to remain silent, I'm actually slower with spur.
With shade I play way more aggressively because I can run without being heard. Plus being able to stop and cloak means I don't have to get to a "hiding spot" to ambush incoming marines.
I also tend to see a lot of mindless rushing when spur is up, as if people think the extra speed will allow them to "juke" and cause marines to miss. Unfortunately the result is usually a lot of dying with nothing to show for it.
1) Shift is the most important IMO (celerity for skulks, adrenaline for lerks, echo
Who in their right mind would ever not choose celerity for the paper-lerk??
You are being sarcastic right?
Being a pro lerk, enlighten us to why adrenaline is better than celerity?
Pro is kind of strong word. More like uses lerk to rek every pub game =D.
I use it to fill 3 rooms with spores repeatedly (grants great deal of cc). With umbra I haven't found a need for celerity as lerk usually survives w/o needing it.
Also, I tend to prioritize flamer marines, for obvious reasons. If marines decide to get flamers repeatedly and en masse, well, my teammates won't find it too hard to kill them.
for the one time a month I play lerk, I usually use celerity early on and switch to adrenaline later when they get armor. (use too much energy at that point spamming spacebar for strafing and spiking)
i really dislike biting as lerk, as I prefer to use my tracking aim and just out-aim the marines with it instead of aiming a 45degree(?) bite. however you can't quite do this anymore against good players with the (relatively) new shitty spikes that aren't a 100% accurate laser to your crosshair, which is why I don't play it anymore. i hate when I miss despite flawlessly tracking a marines center mass because of the built in spread at range.
My main problem with a shade start is that it needs to be executed perfectly to be on par with the other two options. shade upgrades are borderline useless while below lvl 3 so you either pump out the structures asap or squander any early game advantage they may give. Another issue is large servers. Silence is great, but when you have 11+ marines prancing about, someone is bound to be looking in your direction, making the upgrade a lot less efficient then it would be in a 6v6. Cloaking just makes for boring games, you either cheese a marine that can't see you when you're standing still or get spotted and die instantly, no fight involved.
Its also the weakest of the three for higher lifeforms. Great as a supplement to either chamber but, in my opinion, weak as the only available set of upgrades.
Its also the weakest of the three for higher lifeforms. Great as a supplement to either chamber but, in my opinion, weak as the only available set of upgrades.
I'd argue with this point; A fade is a lot more effective if he can be sure - through aura - that his next encounter will kill the one vulnerable marine.
Its also the weakest of the three for higher lifeforms. Great as a supplement to either chamber but, in my opinion, weak as the only available set of upgrades.
I'd argue with this point; A fade is a lot more effective if he can be sure - through aura - that his next encounter will kill the one vulnerable marine.
@F0rdPerfect
I'm going to have to disagree. Extra armor can compensate for the lack of extra speed by letting you take a little more damage. Extra speed can compensate for the lack of extra armor by making you harder to hit. Aura does not compensate for either, and with medpacks potentially lurking over a marines head a fade can never be 100% sure its getting the kill on its first swipe. Aura is great as a supplement, but if that's all you have then you're pretty much fighting vanilla.
If you only have one upgrade chamber when you're fighting with fades for any extended period of time, chances are you're going to lose the game either way.
Its also the weakest of the three for higher lifeforms. Great as a supplement to either chamber but, in my opinion, weak as the only available set of upgrades.
I'd argue with this point; A fade is a lot more effective if he can be sure - through aura - that his next encounter will kill the one vulnerable marine.
@F0rdPerfect
I'm going to have to disagree. Extra armor can compensate for the lack of extra speed by letting you take a little more damage. Extra speed can compensate for the lack of extra armor by making you harder to hit. Aura does not compensate for either, and with medpacks potentially lurking over a marines head a fade can never be 100% sure its getting the kill on its first swipe. Aura is great as a supplement, but if that's all you have then you're pretty much fighting vanilla.
I always thought that knowing which marine to hit and kill faster is better than evading his bullets/surviving more of his shots.
useless while below lvl 3
This is funny, but I consider shade to be the only upgrade that has benefits on level one. I consider level one crag/shift upgrades a waste of resource and even a waste of time in case of skulk (cara is exception). Yet one veil gives you at least camo.
Extra armor can compensate for the lack of extra speed by letting you take a little more damage. Extra speed can compensate for the lack of extra armor by making you harder to hit. Aura does not compensate for either,
BTW, I have funny suggestion to further improve shade:
Camo is most effective very early, when marines have no idea you got shade. Once marines are sure you got shade, it takes more effort to trick them. What if khamm could spend some resources to disguise shade hive and veils, so they look like other upgrade? Say, you hit a button on shade hive and pick shift or shell, and your shade hive is displayed as Shift or Crag hive, and all your veils get spur or shell model.
BTW, I have funny suggestion to further improve shade:
Camo is most effective very early, when marines have no idea you got shade. Once marines are sure you got shade, it takes more effort to trick them. What if khamm could spend some resources to disguise shade hive and veils, so they look like other upgrade? Say, you hit a button on shade hive and pick shift or shell, and your shade hive is displayed as Shift or Crag hive, and all your veils get spur or shell model.
Spotting the upgrade chambers is not really the way you find out which upgrade they got, though. If its shade, usually one guy gets eaten out of nothing and yells "Watch out boys they went shade!", cue every marine being extra cautious.
Its also the weakest of the three for higher lifeforms. Great as a supplement to either chamber but, in my opinion, weak as the only available set of upgrades.
I'd argue with this point; A fade is a lot more effective if he can be sure - through aura - that his next encounter will kill the one vulnerable marine.
@F0rdPerfect
I'm going to have to disagree. Extra armor can compensate for the lack of extra speed by letting you take a little more damage. Extra speed can compensate for the lack of extra armor by making you harder to hit. Aura does not compensate for either, and with medpacks potentially lurking over a marines head a fade can never be 100% sure its getting the kill on its first swipe. Aura is great as a supplement, but if that's all you have then you're pretty much fighting vanilla.
I always thought that knowing which marine to hit and kill faster is better than evading his bullets/surviving more of his shots.
This is funny, but I consider shade to be the only upgrade that has benefits on level one. I consider level one crag/shift upgrades a waste of resource and even a waste of time in case of skulk (cara is exception). Yet one veil gives you at least camo.
Disagree here. I think lvl1 Cara is not worth the time evolving. I've never seen (intentionally) less than three shells up, and I wouldn't want to; Now, two spurs I can live with, they already give you a noticeable boost.
For veils it depends; for aura, perfectly fine, for phantom, less so.
BTW, I have funny suggestion to further improve shade:
Camo is most effective very early, when marines have no idea you got shade. Once marines are sure you got shade, it takes more effort to trick them. What if khamm could spend some resources to disguise shade hive and veils, so they look like other upgrade? Say, you hit a button on shade hive and pick shift or shell, and your shade hive is displayed as Shift or Crag hive, and all your veils get spur or shell model.
Spotting the upgrade chambers is not really the way you find out which upgrade they got, though. If its shade, usually one guy gets eaten out of nothing and yells "Watch out boys they went shade!", cue every marine being extra cautious.
If you use aura, they won't figure it out this easily.
If you use phantom level one with caution, they will have hard time finding it out as well.
Now imagine comm scanning or marine scouting and founding out that there is the only one hive and it is crag. That'd be confusing as hell. Which is what shade path is all about.
i usually take a deep breath when i see the shade upgrade, but it isnt until late game when we are losing everything due to no cara sitting on 2 hives that i start getting annoyed at the com. shade can work but if you dont get 3 hives in an even game you will eventually lose
a shade first on veil however is almost always an instant facepalm, you cnat go shade first on a 4 tech map.
i would go as far as to say only mineshaft really works with shade first hive and that is because it is the easiest map to acquire 3 tech points due to central taking most of the marines attention
Comments
I haven't had a chance to try it in a comp game, but I can see Shift->Shade as an extremely aggressive first 2 hives. Phantom + Enzyme =
It is fixed in the CHUD mod (now called NS2+), so maybe you've been playing on servers that make use of the mod - which are actually quite a few by now because that mod is basically the community's fix for many NS2 issues that should have been taken care of ages ago.
Sure celerity and shell is nice to have, but nothing gives the aliens more of an edge than being silent (or having aura for higher life forms) - Any decent player should be able to do WAY more with shade than with shift or crag. I'd even go so far as to say if you "need" shift or crag then you are not a good player.
When you are silent you don't need extra speed or health because you can get right on top of them before they even know you're there. When Marines can no longer hear running from two rooms away, it removes their ability to always be facing the right direction when aliens appear.
It actually surprises me that people don't realize just how much sound gives them away, and how easily good marine players use sound to obliterate the alien team. I've seen Marines that go 40-50 kills with under 5 deaths because they can hear skulks coming so easily. Give aliens shade and those same players are suddenly struggling to stay alive because they can no longer hear incoming skulks.
Oh and phantom Gorges are insanely OP when it comes to getting up sneaky tunnels and doing bile rushes. Sneaking up a tunnel if your team is behind is insanely difficult without phantom. (because Marines can hear you "building" from so far away.
With proper opponents (good shots) the alien team has to be much more aggressive to push where they need to. And clean up places in order to make sure no obs will be built. Not including scan. A decent com will surely spend one scan instead of 5 medpack... cost effectiveness and stuff.
So if one thing goes wrong, the game is turned upside down in favor of the marines. Time becomes critical as a hive shouldn't be delayed too much.
Shade isn't played much as the videos testify in competitive play. On pub it's the same but for the reason it needs more teamwork and a little less 1on1 after all (The everlasting struggle between Fun and Organization).
Imagine. I think it clearly showed how shade hive is used for choosing engagements rather than surviving them
You are being sarcastic right?
no?
Adren is useful in the late game, when shotguns and w2/w3 mean that it's safer for lerks to stay back and use spikes and umbra.
Are you?
It is so easy to run out of energy as lerk when spiking, and especially when baiting or stalling marines, and if you're playing carefully against good comp marines, quite frankly cele doesn't help you survive all that well. Early game esp vs lmgs, sure cele all the way. But once shotguns are out, it's better, in my view, to use the lerk to bait marines out of position, and to spike heavily to drain armour and use up tres from medpacks. Then you've got structure biting to do once the fades pop. Someone already mentioned umbra, too. For all of these reasons, I find adren the better ability in the early-mid to late game.
Careful positioning and scouting are of course essential in any case, and I'm really only talking about comp games here.
Shade making people defensive is exactly the point why its bad for rookies; Also, I think you underestimate aura.
I tend to play more defensively with spur or shell because marines can pinpoint my location through sound SO easily... Plus since I have to walk to remain silent, I'm actually slower with spur.
With shade I play way more aggressively because I can run without being heard. Plus being able to stop and cloak means I don't have to get to a "hiding spot" to ambush incoming marines.
I also tend to see a lot of mindless rushing when spur is up, as if people think the extra speed will allow them to "juke" and cause marines to miss. Unfortunately the result is usually a lot of dying with nothing to show for it.
Pro is kind of strong word. More like uses lerk to rek every pub game =D.
I use it to fill 3 rooms with spores repeatedly (grants great deal of cc). With umbra I haven't found a need for celerity as lerk usually survives w/o needing it.
Also, I tend to prioritize flamer marines, for obvious reasons. If marines decide to get flamers repeatedly and en masse, well, my teammates won't find it too hard to kill them.
i really dislike biting as lerk, as I prefer to use my tracking aim and just out-aim the marines with it instead of aiming a 45degree(?) bite. however you can't quite do this anymore against good players with the (relatively) new shitty spikes that aren't a 100% accurate laser to your crosshair, which is why I don't play it anymore. i hate when I miss despite flawlessly tracking a marines center mass because of the built in spread at range.
Its also the weakest of the three for higher lifeforms. Great as a supplement to either chamber but, in my opinion, weak as the only available set of upgrades.
I'd argue with this point; A fade is a lot more effective if he can be sure - through aura - that his next encounter will kill the one vulnerable marine.
@F0rdPerfect
I'm going to have to disagree. Extra armor can compensate for the lack of extra speed by letting you take a little more damage. Extra speed can compensate for the lack of extra armor by making you harder to hit. Aura does not compensate for either, and with medpacks potentially lurking over a marines head a fade can never be 100% sure its getting the kill on its first swipe. Aura is great as a supplement, but if that's all you have then you're pretty much fighting vanilla.
I always thought that knowing which marine to hit and kill faster is better than evading his bullets/surviving more of his shots.
This is funny, but I consider shade to be the only upgrade that has benefits on level one. I consider level one crag/shift upgrades a waste of resource and even a waste of time in case of skulk (cara is exception). Yet one veil gives you at least camo.
Camo is most effective very early, when marines have no idea you got shade. Once marines are sure you got shade, it takes more effort to trick them. What if khamm could spend some resources to disguise shade hive and veils, so they look like other upgrade? Say, you hit a button on shade hive and pick shift or shell, and your shade hive is displayed as Shift or Crag hive, and all your veils get spur or shell model.
Spotting the upgrade chambers is not really the way you find out which upgrade they got, though. If its shade, usually one guy gets eaten out of nothing and yells "Watch out boys they went shade!", cue every marine being extra cautious.
Agree here
Disagree here. I think lvl1 Cara is not worth the time evolving. I've never seen (intentionally) less than three shells up, and I wouldn't want to; Now, two spurs I can live with, they already give you a noticeable boost.
For veils it depends; for aura, perfectly fine, for phantom, less so.
100% pubbing here.
If you use aura, they won't figure it out this easily.
If you use phantom level one with caution, they will have hard time finding it out as well.
Now imagine comm scanning or marine scouting and founding out that there is the only one hive and it is crag. That'd be confusing as hell. Which is what shade path is all about.
a shade first on veil however is almost always an instant facepalm, you cnat go shade first on a 4 tech map.
i would go as far as to say only mineshaft really works with shade first hive and that is because it is the easiest map to acquire 3 tech points due to central taking most of the marines attention