For years I have been screaming that it should be a crusher strain… then you could light it on fire to combat it.
Why does the ravager need a tank spec
It is the only thing lurker can evolve into, so it is nice to have some variety available.
Lurkers are deviants. They shouldnt have choices
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The spikes do infact, do dmg. Lots of it. They slow too - so its a 3 tile or so slow that hedge can use to get a free kill/frac.
And hedge rav has explo immunity. It being vulnerable to ap rockets means nothing when theres only 1 sadar in a whole round. Plus, if they play it safe, they can just press invuln button and get away from anything. Still tho, balancing by amount of hard counters is stupid and makes the game less fun anyway.
Saying slash dmg is just 35 is also forgetting that they have multiple dmg abilities. They make up for the 10 slash dmg lost because they have slowdown on spikes and 1 click invuln, plus the spikes deal heavy dmg too. If you’re good at Hedge you can score many fracs, kills, assists, etc. 35 dmg is no joke.
Still, it’s not as powerful as the other rav strains which can frag squads with good play. But it’s still powerful just bcus it has ranged slows which combo with other nearby Castes, and they can use 1 click invuln at any time to get away from many situations. It’s an impenetrable defensive tool if you play right and leverage it with good positions.
Since hedge is slow, it’s main danger to a marine is the shrapnel hitting u, slowing you down and leading to fracs. That makes it unapproachable in most positions. Most hedges are n00bs tho and just overextend constantly. The only danger u have is if you overextend. Not to say hedge can’t be aggressive, but picking good fights is necessary.
it’s a very easy caste to not die as. That’s why i say annoying. All it takes is 1 random person rolling beno to become hedge and be the most annoying mf ever. They have like 50 armor baseline (with full shrap stacks) so an invuln button is unnecessary imo.
It is good to have a strain that is easier to play as its more approachable for new players/more relaxing to play for older players.
A good base/zerker player can do more damage to marines compared to a good hedge player. Getting rid of the shield would make hedge not worth playing anymore as they would become the worst T3 in value to the hive and also more boring to play.
Currently hedge is a very approachable T3 strain and is a good starting point for players who want to get into rav.
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What is this cope then? Yeah, hedge has a lot lower skill floor, but ceiling too. You can get away from many situations, but that’s it. You’ll never get in fun facts if there is any other competent combat caste.
As for shrapnel and combat abilities, you have only one offensive ability, which is shard spray. You can deal lots of damage on PB, but otherwise it’s only useful for slowdown, but even if you slowed the target, worst thing can happen to the target is your 35 slash damage. 10 dmg difference is huge, because it also affects organ damage, delimb and frac chances. This ability is your only way to approach anyone with your slow speed, otherwise they’ll just run.
Next ability is shield. While it’s an invul button, it lasts only two seconds, which is good, but crusher shield lasts longer iirc. This ability does no damage unless you’re being shot at, and usually marines quickly learn to not shoot you, seriously limiting your damage output. Also, some weaponry like aimed shot can break through your shield. Saying hedge doesn’t need shield because he got armor from shards is an insane take when we have MOU mains, tons of AP ammo and M46C that kills crushers in 3 seconds (and hedge have slightly less hp). Only really good thing about shield is pretty low cd, unlike crusher’s.
Third ability is shard shed, which is just a noob trap. Just don’t use it. Only reason to use it is the short speed increase, it can let you run away in some situations. But you lose all your armor from shards and get 15 seconds (actually more, as you need to regen shards to use your abilities) downtime, so this is a questionable trade-off. Damage output from this ability is also questionable and from my understanding not worth the downtime. Plus to max out the damage output you need to overextend, and losing all your armor in this position is not a good idea.
So no, you have one damage ability, which you will mostly use to slowdown enemies (PB is rare because it’s hard to approach a not slowed enemy). Shards are weak on their own and deal permanent damage only with a chance when moving. But usually marines scare ravager off and just dig shrapnel out with knives.
Overall, yes, hedge is a brain-dead easy low risk mid to low reward caste. You can hold a choke, you can slowdown a push, but you cannot just get out and wipe an entire squad, unlike zerker. I think hedge is alright and doesn’t need any heavy nerfs. And we need combat T3s with low skill floor, so new people can get into combat T3s.
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Highkey true
From my experience, the sheer volume of muppets who shoot the shield leads to frequent mass casualties.
Be hedgehog, run into marines. Whenever a hedge is in play, I often see the shield being procced so hard by idiots that the poor marine next to it just dies instantly. Run away and repeat. It only takes a few muppets to fuck over everyone with shrap, and there are a LOT of muppets. Marines not shooting at a shield whatsoever is the exception, not the norm.
I think you’re understating how effective shrapnel is, too- A lot of marines just instinctively try and get the shrapnel out ASAP and just drop what they’re doing, so the hedgehog can severely delay marine pushes or at the very least, take out a significant portion of marine firepower (who will get our their knives and press Z, flouride staring at the marine getting dragged away)
It’s ridiculously easy to avoid dying as hedge relative to other castes, making you a constant pain in the ass. Yeah, your DPS is significantly lower than the zerker, but combat slowdown and shrapnel is a massive contribution to the hive’s effectiveness, and that’s why hedgehog is so despised. If I could choose between fighting a zerker or a hedge on the frontline, I’ll always choose the zerker.
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Maybe. But who would you attempt to solo? It’s easier to dodge the shard spray because range of the spray is just a few tiles. Just don’t shoot shield, stay away from slow rav and you will win EVERY time.
My point is that hedge excels only on the defense, it’s good to stale an advance to a degree, but other than that this is questionable. Even in murderball zerker is a lot more useful, because he can deal insane amount of damage to marines, especially during screeches. Will you really prefer zerker + queen combo to hedge + queen combo? I doubt it.
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one time i was next to a shielding rav, 6 people opened up on that thing and the shrapnel instakilled me 
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I didn’t say solo, I said on the frontline, like in a standard push with marines against a bunch of xenos. In that case, the combat power of the zerker is outshone by the utility of the hedge.
The advice for not shooting the shield is great and all, but the problem is that there are some marines who simply don’t get that information and keep shooting the shield regardless of how much you scream at them. In practice, the shield will be shot and nothing the marines do will stop it outside of PBing that guy.
I agree that hedgehog excels on defence whilst it’s rather lackluster on the offence, but in a scenario with the queen, that defence matters far more that offence, imo.
The weakness of a queen push is the immediate counterpush afterwards, not the fact that the xeno push was too weak- I’d argue a runner that lightspeed drags a marine during a screech is doing more than the zerker is, unless the zerker can guarantee permas.
Queen screeches are an open invitation for the entire marine force to hellpush and kill the queen- A zerker might rush in and get a free eviscerate, but it falters badly when the infinite unga hellblob is full-charging. A hedgehog on the other hand, need only shit out shards at the marines, and their feeble minds immediately shut down, press CTRL+E and Z and dull the push badly. That 2 seconds of invincibility is invaluable to stop counter-attacks against the queen.
Does the zerker bring something to the table during a queen push that wasn’t already there? Imo, not really. All the xenos can run in and kill/cap marines, the zerker just increases the murder rate by a bit, and then marines drag all the dead back for necromancy.
The hedgehog on the other hand, dulls the marine counterpush significantly, which imo is the greatest threat- Most other xenos can only bodyblock and soak up damage, whereas the hedgehog can slow and force marines to stop dead in their tracks, even causing 80% of them to stop shooting for 2 seconds.
That, in my opinion is a far greater contribution.
Its not well communicated to a player that shooting a hedgehog rav is dealing no damage. Someone may notice the shards but think they are still hurting the xenomorph so they’ll keep firing.
This feels less a policy issue and more just a development one.
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The fact its even posted in policy shows how much of a development issue it is IMO.
also ‘people tend to learn to not shoot shield ravs’ literally when and who. Literally almost everytime I see a hedgehog shield, its getting shot. Some players mag dump it, some players shot shooting after 70% of the ability is through.
Also literally 35 damage a slash for a free invincibility ability? Maybe youre having troubles doing damage as Hedgehog because youre going in solo as opposed to going in with teammates and drawing fire because “HOLY FUCK HUGE RED REVENGER SHOOT IT” while you spray marines with shrap and your teammates finish them off.
Everyone is talking about Hedgehog like its a strain that gets deleted from the server while there is 2+ xenos on the hedgehogs screen.
The more xenos you have going in with you, the more the marines are gonna panic and shoot you while youre shielding.
hogcels seethe over zerkerchads
Two seconds invul ability. Which is not bad, but I am gonna remind you about this anyway. And chances are, if you don’t wanna die, you are going to mostly use this ability to disengage (because the other disengage ability is a noob trap), depending on a situation of course.
All xenos capitalize on teamwork, hedge is not exceptional here, quite the opposite. More targets on screen > lower the chance you are getting shot. Again, claiming Queen + Hedge combo is stronger than Queen + Zerker is just batshit insane. Zerker gonna kill, delimb, organ damage and frac. Hedge just can cover a retreat. I wonder who is going to turn the tides.
If you ever played hedge, you’d notice how after about third time people learn and stop shooting you. And so shield becomes nothing but a 2 sec invul ability, which is not bad, but your damage output becomes insignificant. If anything, this can be a development issue because hedge so heavily relies on people shooting it, not the other way around.
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If people stop shooting me that is cause I’ve gone back and forth in that area too much solo and its time to rotate and go to a new batch of marines.
Not only having a caste rely on getting shot, but punishing marines for shooting it (or usually, punishing their teammates) is really something that shouldn’t be a part of CM.
Final note: For everything that hedge is, imo the role it provides isn’t noteworthy. If hedge was axed, the only thing that would be missed is its sprite being slightly cooler than the standard Rav.
The niche of ‘the easy t3’ would just move on to the next easiest T3 caste, hedgehog is almost entirely designed around its single key ability, an ability that is a fundamental game design flaw. What else does hedgehog really provide?
You really need to elaborate how forcing people to not mindlessly shoot is a flaw. If anything, it forces marines to think and time their shots. You probably really hate pigling in Darkest Dungeon, because you need to avoid attacking him before you kill the big boss 
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Ignoring the entire aspect on the constant inflow of new players and how new players mag dump hedgehogs everytime they see them because why wouldn’t they.
Getting killed by new players FF’ing is silly but requires the new player to make an obvious mistake. Getting fracced and IB’d and organ fucked by new players doing the one thing the game teaches them to do feels bad.
The solution is to allow SEAs to join the front so they can NJP and Drill Instructor the hell out of the PVT that kept shooting the Hedgehog
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True.