A SERIOUS discussion about lurkers

[Stan_albatross]

Disclaimer - no shitposting please

So, lurkers. They have long lasting invisibility (30s) of 25 alpha with only a 15s cooldown, and they will only decloak before that timer is up when they attack someone or land a pounce. They have a flat 20% speed boost while invisible and by themselves are very fast, not runner level but still one of the fastest xenos nonetheless. Their slashes consistently do 35 damage and will as a result of this fracture a leg/foot fairly easily in three slashes or even delimb if they're lucky. They also have a 2-6 tackle which lets them solocap (with no counter other than avoiding the intial pounce) if they're lucky. The pounce itself has a ridiculously small cooldown at only 6s which means they can easily escape anything.

As it stands, it's hard to argue that the lurker is not one of if not the strongest t2. It will always win a 1v1 when it lands its pounce (which is easy). If it pounces a marine in a group, most of the time they will be able to dodge anything fired at them by simply running over the marine they pounced and using directional slash - because their pounce freeze is negated if they slash, effectively giving them zero freeze upon their pounce. This is coupled with their "crippling strike" ability that lets them ignore slash delay once, effectively giving a lurker who can set up a simple macro and press a keyboard button once a way to nigh-immediately slash you twice (the second time for extra damage) which gives them a pretty good chance of breaking your leg or foot. A lurker can pounce you right in the middle of a group of marines, slash you a few times, then run or pounce away. Unless a marine with a buckshot shotgun is standing directly next to you when you're pounced to PB and block the lurker, it will live, you will get fracs. And no lurker with half a brain will ever take that fight. Due to the changes to slugs you can't slug lurkers to disable their abilities anymore, meaning that unless they're bodyblocked (never gonna happen since the lurker won't take those fights or will just bring backup) or they're greedy, they will be able to escape and disengage every single time.

So we have laid out the groundwork : lurkers slaughter lone marines, lurkers break the bones of marines in groups and slaughter marines trying to save/help other marines that they have killed, lurkers can escape or disengage from any fight with ease, and can often kill entire squads/fobs if nobody's good with a shotgun. They camp directly outside of the LZ to rush the fob once the main force has left and kill bravos or get shipside and cause even more chaos.

A group of lurkers is even worse as they have no mechanics that work against them grouping up, which makes it even easier for them to take down large groups of marines and even entire fobs.

Common lurker defender arguments

"just group up" - the lurker can disengage so easily that even if it pounces you in a group of marines, nine times out of ten it will break one of your bones and get away. Unless you're in a group of people all with buckshot shotguns who can land their shots, have good ping, and are close enough to you when the lurker pounces it will not die. And yet again lurkers simply just won't take this fight.

"PB/slug it" - it can simply run away and disengage as slugs don't disable abilities anymore.

Since open source was released lurker has recieved NOTHING but buffs. (coupled with all the other xeno powercreep)

https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/colonial-w...e_requests/338 - lurker plasma cost lowered

https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/colonial-w...e_requests/352 - lurker health regen buffed

https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/colonial-w...e_requests/363 - pounce freeze removed, slashing upon pounce negating it

https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/colonial-w..._requests/1406 - lurker invisibility increased, partially reverting an MR that reduced it

https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/colonial-w..._requests/1416 - lurker invis always applies a speed boost (buffs lurker gangs)

closing statement: lurkers are hard and unfun to fight against due to their high level of unkillability (they can disengage from every fight with ease and if they think you pose a large threat to them they won't engage you in the first place), nerf lurkers

[CABAL]

Slug was never good against Lurkers in the first place. Slug never consistently disabled abilities, just didn't allow them to change it for something else for a second. So currently if they are invisible, its no brainer that they have pounce picked up before a fight. So it doesn't matter, on top of lurkers being fast enough that you couldn't hit them with slug in the first place.

I see lurkers as perfectly fine besides one point.
Pounce escape - Make so that pounce works like warrior's Lunge, which means that you have to click on a marine in order to pounce. This would stop lurkers from using pounce as a mean to escape, literally whole screen.

If lurker gets outplayed, or makes a big mistake, he can no longer use his "get out of jail" free card.
Fixed.

[Nihad7]

https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/colonial-w...e_requests/363 - pounce freeze removed, slashing upon pounce negating it

I might be wrong but I think this actually made it easier to play lurker if you think about it. Without pounce freeze, lurkers can just pounce on a marine, slash them a few times and when one of the other marines tries to get close to lurker to shot'em with shotty, they can just run away easily unless the said marines were literally standing next to each-other. When we had the pounce freeze, lurkers were afraid to attack any group of marines as they'd be literally be frozen for about 4 seconds when pouncing on someone, which is more than enough time for an average marine to do take their shotgun from their back, approach the lurker and PB them.

I see lurkers as perfectly fine besides one point.
Pounce escape - Make so that pounce works like warrior's Lunge, which means that you have to click on a marine in order to pounce. This would stop lurkers from using pounce as a mean to escape, literally whole screen.

Seems like a good idea if I have to be honest.

[BeardedWall]

Lurkers are good in a few players hands.

Most of them get buckshotted and die immediately.

Nerfing an entire t2 because of a few instances of them dominating seems silly

Especially with xenos being so undesirable to play games often have tons of pooled with 100+ players on

[Heraclitus]

Lurkers are good in a few players hands.

Most of them get buckshotted and die immediately.

Nerfing an entire t2 because of a few instances of them dominating seems silly

Especially with xenos being so undesirable to play games often have tons of pooled with 100+ players on

Hardly unusual, they nerfed runner tackle just because of TKO.

[Stan_albatross]

Lurkers are good in a few players hands.

Most of them get buckshotted and die immediately.

Nerfing an entire t2 because of a few instances of them dominating seems silly

Especially with xenos being so undesirable to play games often have tons of pooled with 100+ players on

they nerfed double MOU beause of a few instances of players dominating with them

It's hardly most lurkers, I have very little experience with xenos and can still kill a ton of people with just a few macros set up. And if there's a fight I don't think I'll win, I'll just not take it - a luxury marines do not have.


Also there are tons of pooled because of the 1/3 latejoin ratio

[SuprisedBaby_]

I would much rather see a change to sentinels or warriors then lurkers, I can count on my fingers how many times I've died to a lurker, and even with 10 hands I wouldn't be able to for warriors or sents. Lurkers are fine in their current state.

[ChiChii]

Full stop. Nerfing something because like 3 people are good with it is stinky.

What is the point of getting good at a caste or with a weapon if its nerfed constantly when you finally figure it out? What encourages us to get good at anything if we know in the end it will be nerfed because we "got good." When does it stop?

[Pigeon]

Full stop. Nerfing something because like 3 people are good with it is stinky.

What is the point of getting good at a caste or with a weapon if its nerfed constantly when you finally figure it out? What encourages us to get good at anything if we know in the end it will be nerfed because we "got good." When does it stop?

That just every competitive game ever

[lmwevil]

this is emblematic of the big issue, that lurkers and other t2s get way more focus while things like drones, hivelords and carriers get literally ignored for months with token changes. the biggest change ever for drones and hivelords was the special structures from techwebs and now those are gone with no re-implementation in sight (god i miss acid pylons to put out friendlies).

eggsac is cool don't get me wrong, but they have a slower plasma regeneration than pretty much every other caste in the game and thus can't make pylons in any time shorter than 2 minutes and can barely make eggs, letalone being literally incapable of weeding with any effectiveness. also eggsac implementation really shows just how bad base carrier is, since you really could merge them and it wouldn't change much besides more irritating hugger traps that barely work (place egg, take out hugger, put in trap if merged)

t2s really need to be standardized as better than t1s, since drones are somehow better than all their t2 evolutions at plasma and can emit pheros (that burrowers cannnot) etc

on lurkers specifically, i see them like a marine with a PB shotgun, they can be garbage or literal gods. this is a fine place for them to be, honestly. any proposed changes wouldn't stop the best lurkers from murdering you, since a robust player can kill you as any caste pretty much (and has been proven with literally every lurker change ever made). also they're a t2 caste and thus should be a bit spooky, stop fighting shit alone in a team game