You just proved my point. Because currently ranged is stronger than melee as it is much safer as marines have lots of time to shoot you and then buckshot you when you finally get into melee. Then you are stunned and killed. So, marines are too strong in close range if there is a group so only ancient T3s even try it. In other words, while xenos are a primarily melee faction the marine strong close range firepower and the weakness of aliens to hurt them quickly in melee results in their primary power being greatly weakened. As such, they have to fall back on things that work, such as boilers.
Additionally, marines can safely hide behind cades where the majority of xenos cannot get to them. This further makes boilers and other ranged castes necessary, which therefore necessitates defending them.
Have you not played the game?
If you're really trying to tell me the xeno faction are primarily ranged, rather than melee but screwed by nerfing and wider gameplay mechanics, then please give me a xeno that can equip marine ranged weapons. It would be amazing. I would love to snipe, sadar and shotgun marines.
Talking about buckshot at this state of MOBA is pointless.
Defender eats PBs like a candy, drone doesn't fight, sentinel hits 3 shoots and then just keep stunning, runner doesn't even get critted from PB and is fast with pounce.
Hivelord and Carrier have enough HP and doesn't get stunned from buckshot, also they aren't really supposed to fight. Warrior has enough HP, speed and abilities to deal with marines from range, like lunge that isn't really ranged attack, but more of a teleport to a marine, just like runner has, but better. Lurker has speed, invisibility and pounce, no problem in here. Spitter has armor, acid and neuro, it is ranged beno.
Queen heals fast enough to eat PB each 10 seconds. Prae has multiple ranged abilities and HP Armor that needs multiple PB to do anything. Rav has shields and multiple ranged abilities, speed, HP, armor and such. Boiler is ranged beno that isn't supposed to appear on marine screen.
Each and every beno either isn't supposed to combat at all, or has atleast one direct counter against atleast one marine with buckshot shotgun.
At this point only the truest benomains could complain about PB being too good. If anything, I would argue that slug is better now against Defenders, sentinels, warriors, spitters and drones than buckshot is, despite slug's worthless status and no changes to buckshot/slug itself.
The real question is why was instant stun nuero too strong but instant stun shotguns not?
Instant stun neuro was easily able to stunlock marines while sentinels slashed them in between, though. Additionally, the neuro sentinels had was akin to the range shotguns have when using slugs. Your insinuation would probably be more comparable if slugs could easily chain into other slugs and stun longer. There's also the fact that PBs also do some damage to their user in the form of the acid blood, which is mostly negligible but worth mentioning.
Going back to the slug comparison, slug stuns have actually been reduced several times strictly because people did not want marines to be able to chain their slugs.
Last edited by Corocan; 05-10-2020 at 11:17 PM.
Yeah, i'm sure, runners are made of paper nowadays, 1 M4 bullet is like 20-25% of the health, If the devs had concern for the runners they would address the laughable tackle, most of my runner kills its when they try to capture and I just get up while they spam disarm, quick-equip shotty buckshot and PB, never seen a runner survive that, even those I didn't hurt before they got me on the floor.