The Carrier update doesn't really effect me as I don't really touch carrier.
All it's really good for now is placing traps and moving eggs, Yeah it can work with a warrior for easy captures but that'll happen rarely, and promoting the queen screech? You expect carriers to idle about until the last 20 minutes of a round to get stuck on cades while the queen screeches.. yikes...
Combat hugging can be pure BS sometimes, I'll give you that. But before speed mutations and mutations in general, you could always just kill the poor drone in like 2 normal bursts (pre-rebalance damage btw) or 1 Buckshot blast into 1 Bayo stab (or 1 PB, or 1 BC blast). Let alone Hivelord and Carriers, while can't be stunned, can still get dunked on so quickly. And those 2 don't even have anti body block now to cheese push marines.
While I'm sad that it's nerfed, it's not completely gone, just the pure form of "running up and tapping a marine with hugger in hand" will be.
Does the carrier's throw even work? I've seen it land once. Will it work now or do marines need to be lying doing for that too?
Carrier throw doesn't work. It's been dead since the murder of hugger combat era.
carrier throw should be able to insta hug downed marines
I understand wanting to place a greater emphasis on teamwork, but I've seen several people say 'just go in with queen screech lol' and I think that's the wrong attitude.
The queen is already really important to the xenos, as many people say she's too important. Making the carrier even more reliant on her is a bad move IMO. If you're going to remove placing hugs on standing mobs then at least buff carriers tackle or something.
Everything else looks good though.
Reminder that the other carrier/drone tactics like exploiting eggs to hug from 5 tiles away and throwing them with boiler gas still exist... boo-hoo, I can't insta knockout anyone without needing any skill. Plus there are tackle mutators if you want to make hugging easier, which actually slightly makes mutators more than free stat boosts.