The Boiler

[MasterShakeEZ]

Regarding the "sniper is a counterplay" thing, it doesn't disrupt boilers as much as you think. I've actually had times where I ate a few bullets, fired a gas cloud, and then rested on the spot because I know whatever shot me is going to be backing off until the cloud goes away and I'll probably be healed up by then.

Regarding the SADAR, the Boiler can outrange the SADAR if zoomed out and any Boiler with half a brain would scream to their friends that the boomtube's coming and bolt, so I wouldn't call the SADAR a counter to the Boiler unless the Boiler's completely incompetent.

The Boiler being faster is an issue considering it means even it can escape a Mortar shell, CAS strike, or an OB unless it's unlucky.

I'll say this in case I forgot it earlier: when I started playing, I loved being Boiler. The problem is, with power creep it's become too easy for a single Boiler to change the round in the way the tank could. With wider gas the Boiler can clear half an FOB. The increased strength of all other Xenos makes it trival to break through a cade line. Barricades were nerfed so nobody can really shoot over a cade they aren't standing next to, but Xenos can attack Marines even over wired cades from what I've seen.

That's the crux of the issue: the Boiler's becoming the new tank in that many of the complaints against it that are around right now mirror the complaints many Xeno mains and some Marine mains had about the tank, while also not having the "can't fit through doorways or shoot behind it" weaknesses. That is what I mean when I say the Boiler's becoming the new tank: not that it can soak up an insane amount of damage, but that it's becoming everything Xeno players hated about the tank and more to many Marine players.

Ya you preface everything with "if the boiler is being a bitch at max range hiding behind all his friends" Of course you are gonna have trouble getting to him. If a sniper is being a bitch hiding behind all his friends at max range you gonna have trouble getting to him too. 90% of this game is about capitalizing on the other sides fuck ups so ya the boiler has to do something stupid, guess what alot of boilers do something stupid. Just like alot of RPGS do something stupid and get killed. Thats the nature of the game. All that power creep shit aint the boilers fault and nerfing the boiler aint gonna fix it. Cades will suck until they raise the cades hitpoints. Aint the boilers fault they made cades not beable to be shot over either. Doesnt matter what you do to boiler gas short of making it do nothing its going to counter the first line of cades every time. Doesnt matter how wide the gas is. If it doesnt disappate in 1.5 seconds then its gonna counter the first line of cades.

[Ketrai]

One of the reasons the boiler is so strong, and why folks find em so braindead rn, is because of the bug fix. Boiler gas is supposed to, for acid go 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 tiles with age. A bug had it so it was stuck at 5, until fixed. The thing is, it got fixed around the same time as mutators got added. So now you get 5 - 6 - 7 - 8. With each extra tile of range adding so much more area to it. I definitely think that the wider gas needs to be removed. It's a braindead choice, and the only choice. At least as any other xeno you can choose between tankiness and combat effectiveness. For a boiler though? If you don't take it, you might as well be griefing. It allows him to skip many age stages. A boiler taking speed and gas, is essentially a boiler with elder speed and mature gas. Sure, the gas doesn't deal as much damage yet, but you've immediately gone from that stage of being a young, not so impressive tier three, to a powerhouse mature tier three. And once you reach mature, you're elder. if you reach elder, you're ancient. The fact of the matter is, having a good cloud coming right from when you are born, completely dismantles the moment marines are the strongest. Namely when they land. On top of that, boiler gas doesn't start dissipating until it's fully spread. So you're not only adding width, but you're adding duration to your gas. An elder boiler can effectively hold down a choke alone if it gets time to set up, because the gas lasts longer, and his cooldown is less.

I can assure you, five tile gas before the bugfix didn't do nearly as much as now. I'm happy the boiler is stronger, but this is a case where it's TOO strong. Remove the mutator, replace it by something more interesting like. => Smaller cloud (-1 tile) but faster spread, and less damage, slightly less duration. This also offers an tactical choice. It's really good at injuring marines, or stunning them. But you'll cover less area, for less duration. You don't want to get it when young, because then you can't hold marines back and they'll kill you. Unless you want to play it risky.

Another option, would be crowd control focus. Instead of one giant glob, you can fire multiple. When you activate bombard, you may click up 5 spots to fire at. The more globs you fire, the smaller they get. You can still fire one glob, just click once, do nothing for three seconds, and the gas will charge n fire. (the time spent aiming is deducted from the chargup, so it remains consistent with vanilla gas) For a mature boiler, the normal glob being five tiles. Firing 2 and 4 globs is impossible, to balance the gas size. If you fire three globs, you'll only cover 3 tiles diameter. IF you fire five, each only covers 2 tiles. You can use this to hinder large pushes, or lay down surpressive fire You can also cover more area, but only in small, tight spaces. This ability should come with an additional tradeof of a bigger cooldown timer.

Lastly, thermodynamic gas. You get augmented gas. Unique chemical composition makes it so that it can absorb heat effectively, the boiler boils the gas before firing it. The gas is a new type of gas gets a blue? colour to make it visually distinct, works only for acid gas. Any marine who gets caught in the gas has their temperature raised to the point they start taking damage, if they stay too long. So when they get out of the cloud after taking damage, they need to take their armor off and cool down. Make it so you can use fire-extinguishers to cool marines down as well. Marines who try to shoot flames through the cloud whilst in the cloud get lit on fire themselves, as well as anyone or anything nearby in the cloud at that time (you HAVE to get in the cloud to do this) . The cloud itself is transparent, letting you see xenos in it. It does however carry with it that +1 wider gas range, being wider than neurotoxin gas by one tile. And it lasts longer. The area covered isn't effectively denied. Marines can see the threat behind it, and choose to rush through the gas if they choose to. Going through a few tiles will have you take burn damage, yeah. But you can still attack the xenos behind/in it before that damage racks up for a while. You can even use it against them with the AOE flamer ignition, so boilers have to assess the threat before using this gas. You can also defend the FoB whilst in the cloud. It'll wear you down, but you can sacrifice a few marines to defend the cades whilst they're coated in the gas. Staying for a long duration will burn you due to temperature, just not long enough to kill you. Hence this gas is mostly a tool that will get marines in the long run. Slowly wearing down kelotane supplies, and leaving marines without armor vulnerable to quick strikes from xenos.

Oh, and I would also nerf boilers so they need at least 70+% health to start charging their gas. Going under 70 doesn't stop you from firing, but you need to recover first to be able to fire at all. This stops defenders from just absorbing enough bullets that a boiler can just slowly heal behind it whilst firing a few more gas blobs. And it makes harassment more effective.

[UntoldTactics]

Well now stat Mutators are gone, boilers are back to 'normal'but the recent kit update has MASSIVELY boosted the amount of marines that use rail scopes on their weapons, boilers are becoming much harder to defend and without an ancient defender or similar strong caste defending a boiler, they are forced to retreat very quickly.

[Justicer3792]

Well, the key point with boilers being seen as overpowered comes from them being 1 of 2 initiators. The other is the queen, and Lord knows how many complaints we have also had about that.

Yet the boiler is balanced. It is a support role that can be killed by even a solo marine if it is unsupported. So boilers may seem way too powerful, but xenos need them to actually attack anywhere.

[themaskedman2]

Boiler is exceedingly strong but I feel like if you nerf it Xenos would be in a completely shit position, they rely on the Boiler. I admit way too much, but it's still exceedingly needed for most Xeno actions, defense or offense.

[Boersgard]

Boiler is exceedingly strong but I feel like if you nerf it Xenos would be in a completely shit position, they rely on the Boiler. I admit way too much, but it's still exceedingly needed for most Xeno actions, defense or offense.

Xenos really need crowd control like boiler but to a smaller degree. Right now there is a ton of reliance on boilers, to the point that not having one in a hive = you lose.

I just really don't have any idea how you can add additional crowd control without it getting obnoxious for marines to deal with.

[Auron]

Boiler on defence is killable, on offence it isn't that hard, but on siege it is unstoppable.
Let's just not act like boiler is a caste that should be considered as lone wolf. There are always benos around boiler, especially up front. You can't even flank boiler. Mature is faster than a marine in armor, there are always weeds to slow down them even more, not even talking about sticky. Boiler just have to spot you and run in a straight line, while flanking requires going around somethibg, slowing rines even more. Then the thing about benos detecting any mob on their screen. Boiler that is alone sucks, but any decent one aways have a company nearby.

To balance boiler:
Remove wider gas.
Make gas more transparent.
Make the gas ball respond to gun fire, where it could explode early.
Make the gas ball have a chance to explode while flying trough beno. Small chance, but still.
Make boiler slower and remove its x-ray vision while "scoped".
Make boiler way slower for few seconds after "going out" of "bombard" mode.

Yeah these suggestions would make the boiler really bad, thats not good balancing at all.

[CABAL]

Yeah these suggestions would make the boiler really bad, thats not good balancing at all.

- Shit on the idea - Don't propose anything... - ... OWWWWWWWW YEAH!

[MasterShakeEZ]

Xenos really need crowd control like boiler but to a smaller degree. Right now there is a ton of reliance on boilers, to the point that not having one in a hive = you lose.

I just really don't have any idea how you can add additional crowd control without it getting obnoxious for marines to deal with.

make spitter acid spit not garbage. Having xenos with a real form of ranged combat combined with outhealing marines means they can push back against marines with lower numbers. Even if burns are easy to heal it still puts people out of combat temporarily. Also give sentinel acid spit.

[Damarik]

Boiler on defence is killable, on offence it isn't that hard, but on siege it is unstoppable.
Let's just not act like boiler is a caste that should be considered as lone wolf. There are always benos around boiler, especially up front. You can't even flank boiler. Mature is faster than a marine in armor, there are always weeds to slow down them even more, not even talking about sticky. Boiler just have to spot you and run in a straight line, while flanking requires going around somethibg, slowing rines even more. Then the thing about benos detecting any mob on their screen. Boiler that is alone sucks, but any decent one aways have a company nearby.

Alright, as someone that's played both Boilers frequently and Marines, I can say this:

The boiler is, without a doubt, becoming the next tank, if not worse.

Why is this? Let's look at the individual issues with the Boiler compared to the many complaints and factors regarding the tank, positive and negative:

1. Offscreen killing ability:
Boiler: At present, the Boiler fires a glob of neuro/acid gas from beyond the edge of the screen that, in the case of acid globs, inflict massive burn damage on impact, enough to paincrit or even instakill any Marine unfortunate enough to be hit in the face with it. On top of that, Elder Boiler gas with wider gas is able to cover a screen from edge to edge, making a massive area uninhabitable for Marines and making it dangerous to recover bodies inside the gas, which still take burn damage. And god help you if you're in a small FOB at the LZ on LV or Ice and it gets gassed since you're forced out into the open or can't get out in the first place.

Rebuttal: For starters, unless a Boiler is firing in a straight line, it has a very difficult time bypassing any obstacles in front of it. Even sandbags will block diagonal shots most of the time. And by diagonal, I mean one tile height/width difference than the lane of tiles the boiler is facing. Wider Gas just makes it easier for the Boiler to hit its target, provided the shot isn't blocked.

The Boiler has a shit time aiming, due to RNG Object Blocking and Gas Blob Drift while it's in the air. I've fired in a straight line, only for the blob to hit a wall directly next to its path and falling a significant distance short of its intended target because the blob decided "Hey, I'm gonna drift at the last tile of this wall right into it because RNG." Unless you've got the Railgun Mutator which gives you perfect accuracy (which negates wide gas anyway and neuters your usefulness to taking out defensive structures or single players at a time), you're gonna be somewhere near a 60% chance of hitting your target. Better than 1 out of 2 shots, but still no where near as accurate as a solid marine weapon.

2. Difficulty to kill
Boiler: the Boiler may lack the tank's immense durability, but it's still tricky to take down if it's competent. Frontal charge? It's probably spitting a glob of acid in your path before it runs off. Try to flank it from the side? It's a Xeno and can see through walls, therefore making it nearly impossible to flank it without it knowing you're there. Try to used the darkness to you're advantage? It's a Xeno and can see in the dark. Get close? Acid spray. I suppose you could try moving around it while you fight it, it's smaller than a ta- oh wait, it has anti-bodyblock, so all it has to do is bump you once so you can't move, acid spray you, and slash you to death. And that's before we get into...

Competent Boilers are hard to come by. Xenos are as plagued by Balds as Marines are, just because they think that being a Xeno gives them free reign to Murderbone and Rambo. Despite AHelps and changes to the system, we still have Xenos that disobey the Queen and are either purposely trying to sabotage the Hive (Salty Marine Mains) or are just garbage at the role. Next up, your points.

Frontal Charge - If a Boiler is so threatened that it has to use its bombardment to get away, chances are A. All of its defenders have abandoned it, and B. that the single glob it lays down will give it just enough time to slowly crawl its fat ass to the edge of the screen. All you have to do is know the layout of the terrain, catch up and pin it down with suppressing fire before it has time to turn around, dig in and start lobbing again. Boilers, no matter what age, are still squishy as shit when it comes to overwhelming firepower. They can't tank shots from medium to close range worth a damn, no matter their maturity. So...this comes down to Marines knowing the terrain and using it to their advantage. You need to always be aware of alternate routes to your target. This is not a Boiler problem.

Flanking from the side - If the Boiler is getting flanked from the side, it's because its Hive is either A. Bald (likely the case), B. The Boiler is a moron (also a good case), or C. it's so absorbed in its bombardment that it forgot to pay attention to its surroundings while in wide-range view.

That last one is a LOT more common than you might expect. Even for competent Boiler players, it's easy to get lost in trying to line up that perfect shot. So much so that getting out-flanked can happen very easily. Just because it has the ability of sight-range over most Marines doesn't mean it isn't going to fall for something so simple as being its own kind of Rambo in a last stand scenario (Gotta hit that cloud just right, ya know. Gotta be the hero no one asked for.). So...yeah. Just because we can see through walls doesn't mean we're infallible.

Boilers also only have extended sight in the direction their facing, and causing them to startle and change direction cancels that. They're pretty well effectively as single-screen limited to any side they're not facing as any Xeno is.

Dark-Strikes: You're a Marine. You're not meant to fight in the darkness. If you got rekt because you tried to be Wall Shadow and sneak around in the dark, making yourself blind...that's your own damn fault. Xenos have always been able to see through walls and darkness...so if you want to think that neutering your own sight and abilities by 'sneaking up on us in the dark' is a valid ploy? Be my friggn' guest.

Also: with Xenos no longer having the ability to toggle Dark-Sight, darkness doesn't matter to us anymore anyway, to a certain extent. It used to be that we'd viciously hunt down APCs and lights, breaking them with abandon. Now that you can't tell if you're lit up...darkness isn't really our friend anymore. Yes, we still burn flares and smash lights...but it seems like that's more out of habit on the part of the old players, and the new guys start doing it because they see us doing it. No Darksight Toggle means that you being in light or dark doesn't matter. Not that it ever did...so this is a moot point regardless.

On top of all this: Boilers are the bane of their own existence in darkness...because they glow. They literally cannot hide in the dark. A dedicated Sniper can still mutilate a Boiler if they just give it a little effort, considering they can see farther than the Boiler can.

Acid Spray Defense: A Boiler can only spray in a single direction at a time and it takes somewhere up to 5-10 seconds before it can spray again. Also: spraying diagonally is a bitch and a half; you've more chance of missing your target than hitting it, depending on the angle, and at best - this is a delaying tactic. In those 5-10 seconds, a group of good, competent and dedicated marines can take down a Boiler and its defending retinue with some difficulty and maybe a casualty or two. Still totally doable, and the loss of a Boiler hurts the hive a lot more than 1 or 2 marines. Especially if said Marines were bald to begin with.

Anti-BodyBlock: If you're THAT close to a Boiler...you probably aren't alone, and if that's the case: WHY THE HELL AREN'T YOU SHOOTING IT FROM CLOSE TO MEDIUM RANGE? Why would you EVER want to get within Physical Contact range of a Boiler that isn't downed in PainCrit? Hell, why would you want to get close to one that was? Are you LOOKING for an Acid Bath when the Boiler erupts in death? If you die to that? That's on you.

Ergo: all of your points are sufficiently invalid enough to set them to the side for now. Let's focus on the rest of your post.

3. Friendly support
Boiler: Name one time a competent Boiler didn't have at least three xenos with it. I'm not talking about the ones that wandered around or sat there like idiots as the Marines swarmed their location. I'm talking about ones that moved to where the hive needed them and fired their offscreen murdergas at Marines that can't do anything to stop it. From my experience, a decent Boiler that's able to provide enough of a threat to the Marines to warrant trying to take it out specifically will have at least three Xenos around it if the hive is doing bad. From my experience, it's entirely common for the bulk of the hive to either be clustered around the Boiler to protect it/recover or ahead of it engaging Marines it's firing on. Good luck sniping that Boiler while an Ancient Defender is sitting in front of it.

If you're saying that the Boiler is OP because it has a support crew of it's own, then I'm not even gonna bother arguing this one. It's just plain idiocy. Next.

4. Adaptability when being flanked
Boiler: it's a XENO. Flanking a Xeno is an exercise in futility. Boilers are small, can see Marines coming in the dark and through walls, and, often, post-mutator Boilers can outrun fully-armored Marines. The fact is, if you can see it, it's already seen you and is either setting up its escape or pulling out if it's smart. Not only that, but a Boiler is capable of firing directly behind itself without turning while dug in.

I beg to differ. Compared to the tank, EVERYTHING is small, except the dropship and the structures. Compared to a Marine, Boilers are fuckin' Massive, as are all T3 Xenos. They cannot effectively 'hide' behind vertical walls in a lighted area, due to their sprite being visible on the other side of the wall. They often even have trouble hiding behind horizontal ones in some cases. You will 90% of the time know a Boiler is there when it's on-screen.

Now, I can't argue the fact that a competent Boiler (faster with mutators) will be packing up the moment it senses a threat. However, what I can argue is that using a bombardment to fire 'behind' the Boiler is point-blank ridiculous. A Boiler should NEVER have to fire behind itself if it's quote - competent - unquote, because it won't have let itself get flanked. Whether or not it can doesn't factor into this argument. You're not meant to see artillery. Artillery is supposed to be on some far flung hill, out of sight of the main battle.

The key here is to cramp the Boiler into a position where it has nowhere to run. More to come in the next section.

5. Counterplays
Boiler: The Boiler is actually harder to counter. Its abilities don't slow the hive's advance like the tank's flamer does to the Marines, while being as hard as any other Xeno to flank. In theory, the Boiler has four hard counters: snipers, mortar fire, CAS strikes, and OBs... But a sniper can't kill it before it wanders out of range to heal. Not only that, but when you look at the other three counters you realize something: Xeno mains complained so much about offscreen kills, the kind that a Boiler can provide, that all named Marine options have a low chance to hit their target, let alone kill it, unless it's very specific instances. All of these weapons require a laser designation that Xenos can easily see, giving them more than enough warning to clear the area. The Mortar is inaccrate and makes a whistling sound near the point of impact. CAS can only fire at spots with a nice red dot up and helpfully creates a blinking green dot to show exactly where the CAS will hit, while again making a noise that gives all but the slowest/most reckless xenos time to get out of the area unless it's a Keeper. The OB makes a loud noise that can be heard from several screens away more than five seconds before it lands, giving every Xeno time to bolt and making OB only useful if you guess where the Xenos will run and/or fire incendiary warheads. In all these cases, a Boiler without speed mutators is able to get out of the blast area without much issue, leaving the Boiler with no true hard counter if they have a brain. Not only that, but it gets worse: According to info Neth has shared with people on Discord, the Boiler will be getting an Anti Air ability as part of the CAS rework, making it the hard counter to something that's generally unable to effectively counter it unless the PO's lucky.

Hard Counters this. Hard Counters that. I've seen that everywhere in this thread, and no one seems to really understand that defeating a Boiler isn't about "hard counters". It's about strategy. To defeat something you cannot see, you don't throw your most massive weapons at it and merely hope to hit it.

When your enemy is mobile, difficult to hit and has protection, you need to be able to strip it of these things. You need to be able to out-think and surprise your opponent. Larger firepower than your enemy is not always the best option. Fighting fire with fire is stupid. It just makes the situation worse. You don't fight fire with more fire. You fight it with water (or the proper class of extinguisher, given the material that's burning). How do you know to do that? YOU LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE.

So let's break this down, Counter by Counter, yes?

1. CAS - After the first instance of CAS, Xenos automatically get to meta the CAS as "Skyfire". So they will always be on the lookout for it. The key to hitting a Boiler with CAS is about boxing it in. Making sure it has nowhere to run. Like in any real war, you have to be able to locate and pin down the artillery before you can destroy it with an air strike. And, since CAS can hit through metal, if you have line of sight on a building you know it's in, surround the place, get eyes and guns on every exit you can, then bomb the FUCK out of it. Even if you don't hit the Boiler itself, chances are high that you're going to deal a shit-load of damage to the Hive, or the retinue that was guarding the Boiler itself. The key is trapping it in a building small enough to guarantee a hit, which, with the correct application of Force Deployment, should be easy enough to accomplish. This is a Chain of Command and Logistics problem, not a Boiler problem.

2. Snipers - Last I knew, Snipers were able to load incendiary rounds. Granted, this was a while ago, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here. But fire still does a boatload of damage to Xenos. A good sniper, combined with a coordinated forward attack on the known location of a boiler will press the bastard into a retreat, if not out-right kill it. Especially if you throw a Spec Flamer, or even just a few regular flamers on the front to surround and cut off enemy retreats. Boilers may be able to spit and douse a fire in a single direction, but if those flames are backed by firepower - where does it have to run but back into your circle of death?

3. Mortars - Admittedly, I don't know much about mortar mechanics here. I've seen them in action, but I don't know their blast radius, nor do I know the time it takes for them to load/aim/fire, so this one, I can't really argue much about...except that mortars serve the same function as Boilers. So...counter your rival with artillery of your own. Again, you have to make sure it has nowhere to retreat. That's the main goal here.

4. Orbital Bombardment - I've seen OB's completely obliterate entire hordes of Xenos before. Like...an entire hive's worth of T3's downed in paincrit or dead from 1 strike. The OB has to be timed and aimed just right. If it's not hitting, then it's on both the operator and the one tossing the beacon. Your best bet here is to hide the beacon like you do landmines. Xenos can't avoid the beacon if they can't see it. Set it up pre-emptively once you know where the front lines are going to be. Have a sniper or a scoped marine watch the area for the Boiler. Once it's in place and digging in, call in for the strike, giving the coordinates for a direct hit. I'd ask how hard that is...but if it's in the heat of battle, it can be mildly difficult to keep your cool and align just right. Still doesn't make it impossible.

Again, the main focus of these 4 points for countering here is that there's only ever been 1 tried and true method for countering artillery throughout all the history of warfare. You have to make it as stationary as possible. Mobile artillery is as good as gone before you'll ever get a chance to take a shot at it. If you can't keep it from moving over distances...don't even bother trying to take it out. With a good Drone/Hivelord, the Boilers will have terrain advantage in wide open areas...but in corridors or tight quarters where they can't move and their blobs are affected more severely by drift, wider gas or not makes no difference. A trapped Boiler is a dead Boiler, and as I've described above: trapping one is a relatively simple matter.

What this all /boils/ down to is how coordinated your Marines are, and how bald the Boiler and its Hive are.

If this doesn't help you or anyone who reads it take out a Boiler...then I don't know what will. I've basically just given you the keys to a successful assault or siege on any Boiler guarded hive. Make the best of it.