What Xenos Need

[Simo94]

One - Two praes... I'm sure PFC's will be so scared that they won't even try to PB T1's and T2's.

I didnt say only prae should get ranged attacks, it was an example. carrier was a ranged counter too once.

also thats the point of counters, shotguns would be good vs something, but countered by something else.

[Swagile]

One - Two praes... I'm sure PFC's will be so scared that they won't even try to PB T1's and T2's.

spitter acid buff

gg pb shotgunners, death by a dozen pain cuts((spit))

[CABAL]

Limit xenos range abilities to 4 titles, otherwise it will be used against pulse rifles and slug shotgun, or the whole purpose of countering shotgun will be just an excuse to buff xenos against everything.

[kastion]

Limit xenos range abilities to 4 titles, otherwise it will be used against pulse rifles and slug shotgun, or the whole purpose of countering shotgun will be just an excuse to buff xenos against everything.

um even at 6 tile range it stil wont counter anything except shotguns. Every other weapon including pistols have like 15-20 tile range. Ya you cant see that far but you can easily outshoot 5-6 tile distances especially if you scope it. I find it really dumb that a tier 3 has a 3 tile range on its acid spit. Lets make rpg only have a 3 tile range and see how good that is. Praetorian should be scary as hell its a tier 3.

[Gnorse]

I'm not even going to bother refuting your range statement.
as for praetorians, they're pretty much a tankier spitter with a much more damaging (and painful) acid spit. As I said before, if you're going to up the damage on acid, you should probably lower the amount of pain it deals.

now that I think about it, I've seen praetorians do some risky plays lately, rushing it to get that spit off. I'm not sure if it's one really dedicated prae main or a bunch of different people, but it's been working really, really well.

[CABAL]

um even at 6 tile range it stil wont counter anything except shotguns. Every other weapon including pistols have like 15-20 tile range. Ya you cant see that far but you can easily outshoot 5-6 tile distances especially if you scope it. I find it really dumb that a tier 3 has a 3 tile range on its acid spit. Lets make rpg only have a 3 tile range and see how good that is. Praetorian should be scary as hell its a tier 3.

Try to hit anything outside your vision range without loadout maxed for accuracy and scopes. It's dark everywhere, it's outside your vision range everywhere, any xeno can reach you in seconds... Where besides LV river and few parts of Big red/Ice colony we are fighting on open fields? At 6 titles range you counter slugs like scissors counter paper. Give it offscreen range, it won't counter pulse rifle for sure.

It's clearly idea to bullshit buff xenos. Acid spit? More like garden acid snake hose sniper. At this point giving few xeno castes a gun would be the same. From melee xenos to sniper xenos. Scrap the xeno idea and let's have only HvH.

Marines like 90% of the time are fighting xenos in rail flashlight range and closer, becouse this is as far as you can get when pushing new area. Let xenos shoot from darkness and be faster than marines so they can maintain darkness adventage all the time.
I would agree to something like that only if we would shift rounds to day where we have 100% vision.

[Reuben Owen]

guns at 0 tile away never fail (as long as you're holding them properly)
so when you're playing "around the corner" games with a marine even if you're peak performance w/ your tackle it still has a chance to just fail
while the shotgun/guns don't

also yknow even without the stun... and the delimbing... and the bone breaking...
marines still win 1v1s dmg output wise

imagine you had a xeno and a marine standing right next to each other
no xeno abilities or fancy attachments
neither of them moving
and the marine is just shooting at the xeno point blank and the xeno is slashing
who wins?
marine nearly every time
is this fair and/or right? i dunno

[TheMaskedMan2]

Praetorian is a T3 and already does good damage with acid, what they need is range. There's usually only 1-2 Praes in a hive, 1-2 castes that can act as a support from the back lines, providing pheromones and some ranged damage sounds good to me.

[Reuben Owen]

Praetorian is a T3 and already does good damage with acid, what they need is range. There's usually only 1-2 Praes in a hive, 1-2 castes that can act as a support from the back lines, providing pheromones and some ranged damage sounds good to me.

so give its acid spit old range, why was it reduced in the first place?

[TheMaskedMan2]

so give its acid spit old range, why was it reduced in the first place?

That's up to the devs. I'm not sure why it was reduced, I believed they wanted to make Praetorian more unique and a close combat caste, but I really don't think it works out like that.

[digitalattack]

On the topic of giving prae back it's ranged for acid spit, I also think it should be moved back over to the senti line, considering it would be the ultimate (ATM) at single target ranged harassment it would make sense that it evolves from THE ranged caste.

[Swagile]

yeah no idea whats up with the design decisions by devs

why make warrior caste?

why put pratorian under the primary DEFENDER caste, which has 0 ranged abilities?

why add burrower and remove a lot of hivelords utility and waste a T2 slot for a extremely niche role with very low usability outside of it, hence making no one want to go burrower unless they want to be carrier?

and why can't a hivelord evolve to a carrier when its 10000x more useful than a burrower 90% of the time (with 10% being the one time you need tunnels such as being flanked by marines)

why remove old spit ranges and make acid even more useless, with acid being lowered even more to the point that even at Elder Spitter its a joke?

why nerf tackle chances so hard without a replacement?

so many bad decisions that, by themselves, wouldn't make xeno unfun but all of them together? you get the current situation of terribad xenos that absolutely DEPEND on a good Queen to keep xenos from dying 90% of the time, with the other 10% being niche cases, like a good Crusher on Prison Station, and thats about it

[GoliathTheDespoiler]

If Cuckshot is deemed too strong, nerf the damage. Please don't make it shitty to use. And the fact that you can accidentally drop your weapon while clearing weed one-handed really feels like shit.

Das what knives are for, my dude

[CABAL]

yeah no idea whats up with the design decisions by devs

why make warrior caste?

why put pratorian under the primary DEFENDER caste, which has 0 ranged abilities?

why add burrower and remove a lot of hivelords utility and waste a T2 slot for a extremely niche role with very low usability outside of it, hence making no one want to go burrower unless they want to be carrier?

and why can't a hivelord evolve to a carrier when its 10000x more useful than a burrower 90% of the time (with 10% being the one time you need tunnels such as being flanked by marines)

why remove old spit ranges and make acid even more useless, with acid being lowered even more to the point that even at Elder Spitter its a joke?

why nerf tackle chances so hard without a replacement?

so many bad decisions that, by themselves, wouldn't make xeno unfun but all of them together? you get the current situation of terribad xenos that absolutely DEPEND on a good Queen to keep xenos from dying 90% of the time, with the other 10% being niche cases, like a good Crusher on Prison Station, and thats about it

Some of those even I can answer with good probability of being right (answers in order):

Warrior caste was introduced with defender as xeno response to tank. First few weeks it was the best xeno there was. Clickspam, stealing marines from behind cades, live shields from marines. That was some grade A unbalanced bullshit. Then it get nerfed to the ground.

The same reason crusher is in the same "branch" of evolution. He was previously evolving from runner. After crusher lost his ability to AoE stun I guess nobody wanted to pick him instead of Rav, so they shifted it somewhere else. It makes a little sense becouse defender "branch" could be called "armour" since all previous xenos are designed to be tanky. I guess Preatorian is more appealing to evolve for spitters than boiler so this could hurt hive a little bit. Xeno castes like attachements are nearly pure "balance" oriented, "logic" is not considered much.

Pretty much yes. It was something like "jury-rigged" fix, becouse nobody wanted his abilities.


Your thrid question is the answer to this question

To not counter guns? Imagine spit having full vision range and dmg that could paincrit marine in 3-4 shots. 3/4 of T2's would be consisted of spitters. From melee to ranged in one update.

I was against previous state of tackles becouse it could be easly spammed. To the point of young runner being able to vore a healthy marine. Now it's not possible, runner has to slash his victim a bit to capture. Tactic? Abilities? Anything? No. Just click "2" and click repeatedly on the marine untill you will swallow that marine. I guess this is a reason. In my opinion it was nerf to balance xenos from their 75% to 50%. This is why you didn't get anything in exchange.

Xenos are in concept unfun and boring. You can only have fun from killing marines and not dying yourself.

[Swagile]

Some of those even I can answer with good probability of being right (answers in order):

Warrior caste was introduced with defender as xeno response to tank. First few weeks it was the best xeno there was. Clickspam, stealing marines from behind cades, live shields from marines. That was some grade A unbalanced bullshit. Then it get nerfed to the ground.

The same reason crusher is in the same "branch" of evolution. He was previously evolving from runner. After crusher lost his ability to AoE stun I guess nobody wanted to pick him instead of Rav, so they shifted it somewhere else. It makes a little sense becouse defender "branch" could be called "armour" since all previous xenos are designed to be tanky. I guess Preatorian is more appealing to evolve for spitters than boiler so this could hurt hive a little bit. Xeno castes like attachements are nearly pure "balance" oriented, "logic" is not considered much.

Pretty much yes. It was something like "jury-rigged" fix, becouse nobody wanted his abilities.


Your thrid question is the answer to this question

To not counter guns? Imagine spit having full vision range and dmg that could paincrit marine in 3-4 shots. 3/4 of T2's would be consisted of spitters. From melee to ranged in one update.

I was against previous state of tackles becouse it could be easly spammed. To the point of young runner being able to vore a healthy marine. Now it's not possible, runner has to slash his victim a bit to capture. Tactic? Abilities? Anything? No. Just click "2" and click repeatedly on the marine untill you will swallow that marine. I guess this is a reason. In my opinion it was nerf to balance xenos from their 75% to 50%. This is why you didn't get anything in exchange.

Xenos are in concept unfun and boring. You can only have fun from killing marines and not dying yourself.

crusher is trash outside of niche cases; he used to be good but now p much everything counters crushers outside of 2x2 hallways.

im more scared of a Rav than a crusher

nerfing it if it was that op is ok, but not to the ground where all the alternatives are better, because why add the castes in if it doesn't add any / very little value? defender is a good addition since even with the nerf its tail swipe and headbutt add decent value, but warriors value can be better done by other castes

xeno is fun BECAUSE your primary job is combat, the same reason why marine is fun; because you get to shoot xenos

90% of the playerbase plays to either kill marines or kill xenos; only 10% actually RP at all, and its mostly shipside where RP happens since there is time for it to develop.

tackles were absurd, yes, however nerfing tackles without giving a xenos a alternative (disarm slowing down, insteadd of stunning, would solve most problems the lack of tackle brings), but now we're stuck with a hard nerf

it feels like the Devs took the Overwatch philosophy of design; add in OP mechanic without testing, then completely nerf it to the ground without putting in a good alternative because enough people complained, then buff it to OP status again, then finally debuff it either with a decent alternative, or no alternative at all and instead add in a new OP mechanic for people to complain about, then rinse and repeat

[xXen0zS1ay3rXx]

crusher is trash outside of niche cases; he used to be good but now p much everything counters crushers outside of 2x2 hallways.

im more scared of a Rav than a crusher

nerfing it if it was that op is ok, but not to the ground where all the alternatives are better, because why add the castes in if it doesn't add any / very little value? defender is a good addition since even with the nerf its tail swipe and headbutt add decent value, but warriors value can be better done by other castes

xeno is fun BECAUSE your primary job is combat, the same reason why marine is fun; because you get to shoot xenos

90% of the playerbase plays to either kill marines or kill xenos; only 10% actually RP at all, and its mostly shipside where RP happens since there is time for it to develop.

tackles were absurd, yes, however nerfing tackles without giving a xenos a alternative (disarm slowing down, insteadd of stunning, would solve most problems the lack of tackle brings), but now we're stuck with a hard nerf

it feels like the Devs took the Overwatch philosophy of design; add in OP mechanic without testing, then completely nerf it to the ground without putting in a good alternative because enough people complained, then buff it to OP status again, then finally debuff it either with a decent alternative, or no alternative at all and instead add in a new OP mechanic for people to complain about, then rinse and repeat

Well written but I think you are giving them too much credit with the OW philopshy. I think is is just a rookie case of not noticing or caring that constant subtractions form one side have a compounding effect when the other side is also recieveing a constants stream of buffs.

[kastion]

Well written but I think you are giving them too much credit with the OW philopshy. I think is is just a rookie case of not noticing or caring that constant subtractions form one side have a compounding effect when the other side is also recieveing a constants stream of buffs.

What really happened is they kept nerfing the fun out of xenos. Xenos are still competitive (although I think they are on the weaker side overall), but the compounding factor is once the fun was lowered all the great xeno mains quit playing. So you have nerfs ontop of losing all your best players = xenos turn to shit real quick faster than they could adjust for. The other problem is they don't seem to realize this and do anything about it. I think they wanted the burrower to make xenos better but they just shit the bed on it and have been trying to patch work it since. I really think if they just gave us usernames then this shit would self correct because the xenos would form a real community and bring fun back to the game and probably attract a lot of the veterans back too. But marine mains know this and make up stupid excuses for it not to happen because they don't want xeno players to be on a level playing field.

[AverageSpitter]

Try to hit anything outside your vision range without loadout maxed for accuracy and scopes. It's dark everywhere, it's outside your vision range everywhere, any xeno can reach you in seconds... Where besides LV river and few parts of Big red/Ice colony we are fighting on open fields? At 6 titles range you counter slugs like scissors counter paper. Give it offscreen range, it won't counter pulse rifle for sure.

It's clearly idea to bullshit buff xenos. Acid spit? More like garden acid snake hose sniper. At this point giving few xeno castes a gun would be the same. From melee xenos to sniper xenos. Scrap the xeno idea and let's have only HvH.

Marines like 90% of the time are fighting xenos in rail flashlight range and closer, becouse this is as far as you can get when pushing new area. Let xenos shoot from darkness and be faster than marines so they can maintain darkness adventage all the time.
I would agree to something like that only if we would shift rounds to day where we have 100% vision.

"Bullshit buff xenos" Oh fuck off, You are talking as if praetorian was the most OP caste back then, it was pretty well rounded IMO, i mean, it's a god damn t3 for gods sake, and after playing plenty of prae roudns back then, trust me when i say it's pretty easy to get overwhelmed if marines get tired of your shit and decide to rush you

Also APs fucked me pretty easily back in the day

[Swagile]

prae was easily one of the most balanced castes back then

it had siege breaking potential (pain crit from acid and neuro for stunning a small detachment), pheremones to keep most xenos around it alive, and resin spit to slow down an advance on weeds.

it could be SADAR'd and sniped, and it only had decent armor, so you still had to be a skilled player to play prae

now Prae is the literal PB buckshot of xenos. you have to use a high cool down, buckshot acid spray at point blank to stun a group of marines reliably (which puts you into too much firepower to be reliable at all), acid spit is nerfed so bad that you might as well play spitter, and its pheremones are the only decent thing left about prae, but even THAT is nerfed as getting Leader role and then Queen's pheremones is more preferable than a Prae

so Prae is now a completely neutered caste that has lost all its balanced aspects

its ranged spit gone (the entire reason for its usefullness) and given a PB shotgun acid spray that puts it into MORE DANGER of death than a Ravager (since Ravagers are given speed + a lunge to compensate for their squishyness while Prae's don't)

another caste just like Crusher that is relegated to meme / niche status at best, in the ONE moment it shines, instead of a overall terror to face like ALL T3's should be, considering their the only thing keeping a marine push at bay unless Queen is forced to de-ovi (which is exactly what she's forced to do most of the time)

[Simo94]

Back in hugger combat days, Praetorian was actually considered too slow and weak, and ppl made fun of you for choosing it instead of more Crushers or Boilers, lol.

[Swagile]

Back in hugger combat days, Praetorian was actually considered too slow and weak, and ppl made fun of you for choosing it instead of more Crushers or Boilers, lol.

yeah but when combat hugging was nerfed, prae became a good pick

but then again, combat hugging made even a T1 young runner a unstoppable threat since you could hug up to 2 marines with one click to induce a 2 minute + long stun, so wasting a T3 slot on Prae wasn't good value

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

Das what knives are for, my dude

Took like a year.

You really don't want to have your knife out only to fat finger it when xeno's around dude. The damage is nearly the same if you have bayo on your gun (which is the situation I'm describing), but you get to actually react and fight with your gun out.

[flying_dice]

Took like a year.

You really don't want to have your knife out only to fat finger it when xeno's around dude. The damage is nearly the same if you have bayo on your gun (which is the situation I'm describing), but you get to actually react and fight with your gun out.

In fact, I kinda suspect that the bayonet actually does more damage than the boot knife, because IIRC it takes fewer hits for it to clear weed nodes, sticky resin, &c. If you're on PFC and ROs won't give you a third attachment, bayonet is the way to go every single time.

[Swagile]

In fact, I kinda suspect that the bayonet actually does more damage than the boot knife, because IIRC it takes fewer hits for it to clear weed nodes, sticky resin, &c. If you're on PFC and ROs won't give you a third attachment, bayonet is the way to go every single time.

dunno exact numbers but yes, a bayonet on a pulse rifle / shotgun does more damage than a boot knife, with the added benefit of being able to shoot with the gun its attached to as well

[Sleepy Retard]

yeah but when combat hugging was nerfed, prae became a good pick

but then again, combat hugging made even a T1 young runner a unstoppable threat since you could hug up to 2 marines with one click to induce a 2 minute + long stun, so wasting a T3 slot on Prae wasn't good value

A young runner would only be able to take out a single marine.

Normal helmets had one hugger block.
SLs had two.