Burrower Survivor Burrow meta

General Discussion
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Currently, when a burrower burrows under a human’s tile, it stuns them until the burrower emerges and for a little while longer after that.

This can be and is used to stun-combo survivors in holdouts, wherein the burrower will burrow, stomp, do 2 or so slashes before burrowing again, all the while survivors are not particularly* able to fight back. *(this happened on a round of LV-522, me and another FORECON survivor with M41s were not able to kill the burrower under constant fire before they were able to burrow again - even without the usage of stomp in some cases!)

I’m wondering - do you guys think that this feature should be included in the game? On one hand, the person who is being stunned can do almost nothing to stop it, however, the other survivors can attempt to stay out of the stomp range and use slugs to stun the burrower (although, the stun seems to be unreliable? when knocked back into a wall / another human, there seems to be no tile movement, hence the in-progress burrow isn’t cancelled), however this makes slugs and a shotgun much more necessary for survivors to have, as well as needing sufficient space in their holdout to maneuver around the burrower’s stomp AoE.

Also, it’s moderately mechanically challenging for the burrower to pull off.

tl;dr, burrower can permastun single humans, especially survivors in holdouts, requiring the other survivors to play very specifically using slugs to counter. thoughts?

@edith :
I don’t think you fully understand.
1: no matter what, at some point, you will stop moving in order to shoot xenos, generally, and there isn’t much space in the holdout to do much but run in circles - at some point, a burrower will hit your tile and you’ll be stunned. even taking the time to type will leave you stood still
2: stomp and wield delay combined make it relatively impossible to actually get a PB / close range buckshot hit on the burrower before they get back underground. also, reaction time (while a skill issue) should also be considered, and how distant the survivors are from one another.
3: you can’t flame the downed survivor under the burrower.
4: I’ve already explained that there were 3 (+ a synth in this case) in our holdout, and weren’t able to fend this off very easily (only because the burrower gave up)
5: again, what with stomp, this wouldn’t achieve anything, not the least because the sprite is mostly covered by the burrower
** in this case, the stun from being burrowed under isn’t a knock-down, but an actual freeze-in-place, similar to being rooted by a rav (i think that’s a thing)

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how to counter this
1: dont stay still, keep moving
2: shotguns/ buckshot pb
3: flames
4: dont be alone ((applies to 99% of xeno encounters))
5: shake stunned allies

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Burrower’s a straight up broken caste. So much so I would actually outright remove it.

The starcraft lurker burrower we had was a massive upgrade in as much that while it was still obnoxious it wasn’t anywhere near as obnoxious as the current burrower is.

You can come up with explanations to counter anything. You could have an M41 that 1-shot kills any xeno and still someone can come up with ways you could maybe theoretically beat a player with that.

This does not mean that the golden M41 is a fun or engaging thing to fight against, and likewise, the current incarnation of the burrower is not a fun or engaging thing to fight against either.

It’s a badly designed caste and it has always been a badly designed caste. Ever since burrowers could burrow past cadelines and solid indestructible defenses it completely subverted pre-existing “rules” of how the game flows.

The worst aspect of it is that the people who love burrower refuse to accept any changes, whether in counters or design. You just have to accept that they got something so awful into the game. Meanwhile your only counterplay options are incredibly ineffective for the vast majority of the playerbase (much to the delight of burrower players who cannot be honest with themselves or others about how absurd the caste really is).

I’d remove this caste in a genuine heartbeat. It subverts cades, map design, and sentries, has the shittiest highest effort lowest reward “counterplay” imaginable, and is just NOT fun to play against. If you defined a xeno caste as “only fun for the person playing it” - that’s the burrower, first and foremost of any caste in the game.

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I understand, partially, your gripes with the burrower caste - but this is off-topic to the discussion I want to have, about this specific tech. I’d recommend that you make your own discussion post for burrower as a whole :+1:

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the burrower will need superhuman levels of prediction/reaction times for it to burrower directly onto you as you’re running around in light/no armor, do you see why robusto’s almost always run light armor? they’ll want to maximize speed so they can run around, you never stay still if you’re a good player

you just stay close to your other survs, one hand PB exists as well, just spam your holster/pick up macro and instant PB the burrower.

you can definitely flame the survivor if you extuinguish them instantly and they’ll leave with around 90~ burn damage though

alright good, if none of them were packing shotguns to stun the burrower literally ontop of you… idk what theyre doing playing surv

i’ll give you props on this one here, but you can definitely just stay out of stomp range and shake a shotgunner (if you dont have one) to pb the burrower

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Its another “I died, please nerf/remove” thread.

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i can kinda think of what u mean

like a burrower popping into cades and if all the survs r noobs they wont be able to insta pb… so they can hold their tremor until they need to escape

force them to use tremor early and they can only get like 1 or 2 slash off before running. And at that point its just them draining supplies every 10 seconds… not exactly scary.

Spitter is the more scary t2 imo. and less risk involved.

it’s very much a stretch to call it meta unless someone develops the strategy more

i think it does not matter.
if sprite is covering marine that means it is easier to pb, since that means burrower is not moving. and since marine is standing still (Even horizontally), it’s not too hard to shake up.

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the only annoying thing is burrowers abusing south facing cades as it’s pretty much impossible to PB them due to the cade obscuring 90% of their sprite

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“i played survivor one time and no one brought shotguns so we got absolutely demolished by a burrower” i dont even know if i should take this seriously. Its not even a meta. You can counter that dipshit with another person with a SHOTGUN.

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Not only did I not die to this, we actually killed the burrower from them doing this. I don’t understand why you can’t just take the post for face value, I considered both sides of the argument equally and asked for your guys’ thoughts. Is it the negative connotations of the word ‘meta’? Help me out here. I only wrote that because it seemed like a particularly gamey strategy to get a couple slashes and leave.

@Sakuyoi I have about 20 hours in survivor, see what I’ve said above. Why do you need to be so hostile?

While I agree that it is theoretically and most probably easily practical to hit the PB with good reaction time and a good player, in this case, the guy with the shotgun was not. I’m glad that you’re both so opinionated on this matter, as that’s what I asked to hear.

@edith I don’t think it’s particularly practical to give your teammate 90+ burn damage in exchange for flaming a burrower once, lol. They’ll still get away.

Does anybody know the exact stun time for burrower stomp, and the time taken to burrow again? Perhaps we could consider potential lag and wield delay to see just how easy/hard it is to hit the PB. I’m pretty sure it’s possible to stomp straight away upon coming out of burrow, which will also make you drop your gun (I’m still not even used to using a pick-up macro, lol.)

@birb thanks for your serious and well-rounded commentary, I agree with you that it’s potentially more challenging to deal with spitters based on your gear and holdout position. What do you guys define as a meta, anyway? Not to digress.

@RainbowStalin below:
I’m not trying to bring it up as a ‘big issue’, I just want to discuss it. I was under the impression that, all the burrower has to is click on the human’s tile and they’ll be stunned the entire time that the burrower is digging over there, not requiring that somebody stand still for more than 5 seconds. I accept that the burrower is exposed during this, and I admit that I’ve not personally had the opportunity to see how easy it is to counter as the one with the shotgun nor the burrower. That’s why I’m asking for the exact times it takes to wield, and the stun time from stomp. I’ve attempted to demonstrate that I’m aware that a mini-stun will end this, hence why I tried to talk about the difficulty of needing to bring and load slugs, or get into the intricacy of the stomp stun-timer preventing a buckshot PB. All of this is only going off of my experience as a third party in the situation, without my own shotgun, watching one teammate seemingly be repeatedly stunned for 5+ seconds, while the other struggles to hit a slug in what should’ve been an easy situation - they even did manage to, which (would’ve) countered and killed the burrower, had they not hit a wall and not moved tiles, hence not cancelling the burrow and the burrower getting away. This is not a game-breaking exploit, nor a big issue, just a debate on whether it’s feasible to counter using buckshot, or, in the case that it’s not, whether it should be included and survivors need to bring a shotgun loaded with slugs.

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Going off this, burrowers are probably one of the most complicated perma stun casted there are. You have to hit a surv with whats essentially a projectile that takes 5 seconds, and hope they don’t move. and even if you hit it, you are then explosed to them to the point a single mini-stun will end your round. Its a very high risk, low reward you very rarely see, and this being brought up as a big problem just seems laughable to me.

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youre wrong btw

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they need to make the amount of time for burrower to fuck off longer when he’s off weeds i am tired of magdumping them to 1 hp and see them leave like the little rats they are

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Burrowing should cost plasma tbf

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have you tried not being alone?

skill issue

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This seems like one big “I died so it’s broken” post; I doubt you consistently play Burrower so you have no clue how difficult/impossible it can be to even do this in the first place - the counter to this is literally just walking around/not standing still for long periods of time.

You also mention this happened against a survivor;

  • Survivors should be grouped up next to each other to the point the Burrower can’t just appear and pick you off without punishment; if you as a survivor are alone after enough time has passed for a Drone to evolve to a Burrower and you get picked off by that Burrower because you couldn’t just stay mobile then sorry to say but that’s a you issue.

  • Shotguns are more than plentiful on most maps, even for survivors, they are not hard to get - ammo for shotguns is similarly not particularly uncommon on most maps.

  • Teammates/other survivors should be making use of the fact they can usually click two buttons (1 + LMB) to shake you up from most stuns just in general, not even specifically Burrower.

  • Some maps have holds where you’d be hard pressed to not see the Burrower before it even started burrowing to attempt to burrow over and knock you down, for example East Comms on Fiorina that’re south of the LZ; even if you can’t directly see it then you should be anticipating that it may try to do this against you.

  • Burrower’s burrow makes a sound, you should be hearing this sound and anticipating that it may be coming towards you, at that point it’s as simple as moving one tile to negate this stun if they were even trying to go for it to begin with.

After writing all this I can’t wait for your response saying something along the lines of “You’re a main of (insert caste being coped about*), you don’t get an opinion on (insert caste being coped about*).” as all you seem to want to do is cope.

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I’m not sure if you’ve read what I’ve said at all. Please go back and try again

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I gotta ask, what is your main driving argument to keep this thread going? I’ve read most of your comments up top, but none of it has any standing except “This happened to me, and I don’t think its balanced”. Like, is the stun from hitting the “skill shot” burrower strike too strong? Is the tremor stun too wide/too long? And if they are, what is your fix for them? Do you just want to argue against the “Its balanced” people, or do you just want to argue generally?

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Again, I’ve already said this. The discussion that I wanted to have was whether it was feasible to hit the PB after getting hit by the tremor. The 1 handed PB is an interesting idea, for sure, but I’m still wondering about the actual wield fire delay on the HG pump shotgun, compared to the stun timer of tremor.

Some people have given interesting comments, such as the idea of flaming the downed survivor, shaking the downed survivor (which I personally don’t see the point of), and other unrelated discussions like the sprite of burrower being covered by south facing cades.

The people that I’m responding to, a lot, have nothing meaningful to contribute whatsoever, seemingly, like yourself. I’ve already tried to talk about some points that people have given, which has lead to some useful results like from edith. Other people, continue to repeat what other people have said, or say pointless crap like ‘erm you’re just coping’. I’ve already demonstrated how I’m not doing that, so clearly, some of you aren’t even reading my messages.

Before we can discuss potential solutions, I want to make sure that it’s an actual problem first, and discuss the actual technicalities of it.

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Well I can first of all say that the Wield delay on the HG is essentially 0 if all you wanna do is PB. As all you need is to one hand it, and sprite click (Ask any runner if they ever got 1 frame PBd by a shotty). This combined with the tremor stun not lasting as long as the casting for reburrow, makes it ideal to just run at them with a shotty in your storage, so you can instantly PB them.

Seeing as there are quite simple solutions to this “meta”, I don’t think there is a prioblem with it. Especially since the tremor has a CD of like 10-15 seconds.

And I do have plenty of meaningfull contributions to this topic, as what i asked for you to clarify made your point much easier to answer. And how i clarfified how the “Unburrrow Strike” is a very nieche stun that can happen in certain situations.

And if you don’t want people to think its a cope thread, don’t lead a discussion with something similar to “This happened to me, and I don’t think its balanced/counterable. Thoughts?”.

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