I enjoy playing lurker, but personally I’m not too sure how much impact the average lurker has compared to other T2s.
The average lurker can get a few kills or fractures, but they rarely turn in to caps, and since it’s in the backline nothings stopping bravo from sending 2-3 marines to retrieve it.
And if marines know what they’re doing it’s not that hard to make lurking extremely difficult. Stuff like instakill mines, random marine wearing grenadier armor, being good enough to spot you while invis, or just not going alone.
This is less of a salt thread, and more of a “I want my efforts as lurker to be validated” thread. Do my efforts mean anything to the front line?
The THREAT of lurkers is lurkers biggest impact. forceing IOs to work in groups instead of alone, forceing multiple comms guards, and forceing marines to travel in groups.
Even if you dont get kills, just haveing marines know you exist seriously impacts how they play.
I think the effectiveness of lurkers scales pretty well with the number of you working together in the backlines. One lurker can maybe get 2 or 3 easy picks off bald marines that are alone. A pack of lurkers with a carrier/burrower/drone is devastating and will force the frontline to retreat to deal with you.
Lurker is great, one of my favorite castes. Honestly surprised it hasn’t been nerfed. Has so much tech, like pounce dragging, landmining, invis bodyblocking, resting on top of dead marines, and more I haven’t mentioned. Frontline lurker can also be really good under right circumstances. You become a bone frac machine. The castes limitations are it’s lengthy cooldowns and it’s biggest counter is slugs. To increase effectiveness of lurker you pounce the John Fragger when you have the choice, and make that mf go limp his way to the surgeon. Always aim feet, and if you have bad ping don’t play it lol
If you’re frontlining and marines are deathballing, and there’s not a backline yet. Just go invisible and tailstab ppl from 2 tiles off cooldown. Almost no counterplay and you can do this every 7 seconds if you uncloak right before (the invis won’t go on full cooldown)… Though the latter tip is super sweaty and I wouldn’t recommend it honestly. If you can tailstab the same guy twice fast you can usually get a frac.
1 lurker can change the entire game loop. The fact that they can also become a ravager (only T3 in the game besides boiler) is also highly relevant. Many a time am I forced to pull back my entire front because 2 lurkers are fucking up my entire backline and FOB.
1 lurker is cautionary, 2 lurkers are dangerous and 3+ create a fucking doom scenario where, unless you happen to have a small doomguy squad patrolling the backlines as a hobby, you just have a 20%+ increased chance of losing, because you have no comms, no backline, no FOB, no supply lines, etc..