Nerf Warrior

[ChainsawMullet]

You get hooked by a prae. Not so bad. You can at least try and crawl away from the frontline.

If you get Prae hooked you're dead, unless the Prae literally sucks ass. My experience playing it is that 99.9% of the time, barring exceptional circumstance, a landed hook is a guaranteed crit, kill, or cap, while being much safer than Warrior's Lunge.

Of course, this is expected from the T3 evolution of Warrior.

Now, the reason why you're always seeing Warriors comes down to a large combination of things, but I'll list some here that I think are the most impactful (but in no particular order of how impactful):

1) Several good players have taken up maining Warrior, and are frequently doing well with it, which leads to more people trying it.

2) Warrior is the only T2 in the game that stands a chance fighting on the frontline, because it is the only T2 designed with the intention of being able to survive there.

3) Warrior is the only Xeno that evolves into TWO T3s, and if you account for strains, that two jumps up to six, since all the Praetorians play differently.

4) This thread, and people in the Discord, Dchat, OOC, starting to bring up Warrior again, showing extreme levels of salt towards it, etc. are all pushing people into trying it. "Well, if it's making that guy mad it must be fun as hell." Or some other variation of thinking, people are drawn to play it more because of that salt it's generating.

Personally, I think the only reason it's in the limelight now is because multiple good players are running around with it popping 20-30 kills every couple of rounds, which is decent but not significantly impressive. If we're talking purely in terms of the 1:3 ratio of xenos:marines, the marine equivalent is a 10 kill round. That's also not accounting for, in a 30 kill round, a significant majority of those kills will be on the same player multiple times, it's never 30 different people, it's usually 10 or 15 different people killed repeatedly, at best.

I truly believe that if people were playing Base Prae, Vanguard, Oppressor, Base Rav, and Berserker as much as Warrior was getting played right now, you'd see similar kill facts popping up for those castes.

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This was as a Berserker like half a year ago, and the caste hasn't changed in pretty much any sense since then. Is it an extreme example? Yes, but 40% of that is definitely achievable on a regular basis in normal rounds.

[c4xmaniac]

Lunge is a boring ability that is fun for no one other than the warrior. It has a low cooldown, long CC duration, and requires 0 thought to use. If I can rack up 10-12 kills as a warrior, anyone can. Additionally if you ever make a mistake you can just fling the person away and just walk away. If you get PBed you get knocked back and have a window to fling the marine away before the can chungus you. Its an incredibly forgiving caste that people like to pretend is difficult. The aggravation that warrior generates is that it: Removes your agency by CCing you, and requires no effort to play.

Warriors complain about their frontline caste (literally called warrior btw) has to sit behind doors waiting for a marine to ambush. That does not sound like either a frontline caste, or a warrior. The caste needs a major overhaul. The xeno frontline caste should not rely on CC chaining you to hell after ambushing you, that is the job of an ambush caste, not a frontline caste.

[Spider]

Warriors complain about their frontline caste (literally called warrior btw) has to sit behind doors waiting for a marine to ambush. That does not sound like either a frontline caste, or a warrior. The caste needs a major overhaul. The xeno frontline caste should not rely on CC chaining you to hell after ambushing you, that is the job of an ambush caste, not a frontline caste.

There it is. I was looking for the words to nail down what exactly rubbed me the wrong way. Warrior is not a real frontliner. It's just a lurker that was given more health and CC. A ravager has a more 'warrior esque' playstyle if it goes into the hedgehog strain. Hell, I'd be all for bringing back stuff like Momentum crusher. Since Momentum put the crusher at a huge risk when it charged.
The problem with Warrior is when you play it right (Which isn't THAT hard to do) it's almost riskless for an insane reward. (Nearly guaranteed cap). What's worse is the previous caste, Defender, DOES FRONTLINER COMBAT WELL. Especially when specced into it's shielder mode.

Warrior should be able to pick up shit and YEET it at cades. Or form a frontline. Not stunlock people into a corner.

[BazookaBoy]

they may be a tad powerful I mean I killed one guy in a powerloader while another person jumped in the powerloader and I broke 3 of her bones before i died

[derpymcderpderp]

nerf bastion

[Usnpeepoo]

maybe ill be lurker

[BeardedWall]

The caste needs a major overhaul. The xeno frontline caste should not rely on CC chaining you to hell after ambushing you, that is the job of an ambush caste, not a frontline caste.

Yes BUT NO because who will do it? The devs idea of balance when it comes to xenos makes me tear my hair out.

I don't warrior to be stuck broken and "redone" for months(read years) like my boy Crusher.

Every DAY I look at the berserker strain ravanger run past my 0 strains crusher, out tank me, while being fireproof.. and just ask.. why?

Never forget Acid Blood tech was a t4 unlock equivalent to the tank for over a YEAR and never got touched.

[Nunk]

It's blatantly apparent that Warrior is substantially more powerful than other T2s, and easily better than some T3s.
There's about a dozen triple letter warrior mains, and each time they log on they heavily tilt the round towards a Xeno victory.

Anyone with a functioning brain can see that Warrior is punching way above its weight. Its kit is downright overloaded with tools that no other caste has:
- 160 shield in 4 (four) slashes. Factor in the fact that shields block way more damage than raw HP, and competent players are immortal against the typical counters (slugs, chungus, explosive chainstunning)
- ability to gib via ripping off heads
- ability to perma marines via fling comboing them 8 tiles away. Oppressors can't even do this as effectively due to their windup
- completely unreactable corner lunges where you're dependent on the closest marine having a shotgun. And even then you'll likely get a fracture.
- no windup on any abilities (unlike Oppressor)
- boxer encourages the use of third party macros, where you press a button to run the piano on a poor bozo

However to keep Xeno mains playing the game, certain castes must remain overpowered to others. You can see examples where Boiler is braindead to play yet completely zones out marines whilst making sieges 10x easier. Or Queen on lowpop, where the entirety of groundside marines get stunned in one screech. Or Lurker, which is a whole other can of worms.

From a design perspective, it's perfectly acceptable to continuously nerf Marines (see: throwing knives, M39, flamers, Mou, SADAR). People will continue to play Marine regardless of perceived strength because they'll always see it as the more engaging faction.

On the other hand, Xenos must remain slightly overpowered and have a slightly higher winrate than Marines. They're the faction whose gameplay hinges on giving players a power fantasy. There is no RP, there's no player interaction -- you only smash MMB, hit ability keys, and frag. And if you don't give Xeno players that power fantasy, they will stop playing.

[OestErreich]

Marine mains in this thread clearly haven't played against Old Warrior that only had to drag you back like 3 spaces with Lunge which you basically couldn't break out of and then devoured you to get a free cap by himself (never forget rounds with Old Warrior where i would get like 20 captures in one life just by spamming lunge)

Current Warrior actually requires the Warrior to put himself in a risky position and then make a well placed Fling to put the marine out of position for other Xenos to help capture, even then the marine can still get away if they react quick enough to the lunge, or even if they do get flung it's not hard to just run away if the Xenos suck

Basically what I am saying is if you're out of position and have shit a reaction time and a Seeker of Xeno Majors punishes you for it that's a skill issue

[GDIS Pathe]

Woyer is fine