Lurker Revamp (Insert vampire pun)

[nodnodnod]

This has nothing to do with vampire lurker, as a preface. It’s just a shitty pun title.

Please read the post thoroughly, as it covers what I perceive to be issues in the design and gameplay of the caste, and solutions to that. I shouldn’t have to say this, but often times, people just don’t read things thoroughly.

• Lurker, a history and overview of what it was, and what it is:

Lurker has, over the years, evolved into something it was not in the first place. It was initially an actual ‘lurker’, utilizing the (old and shit) system of the xeno equivalent of walking (stalking) to be invisible when moving. It lurked around, ‘sneaky’ and more reliant on waiting in ambush, though the old stealth was simply not as good as it is in modern CM.

As time has gone on, it has turned from that into more of an ‘assassin’ by having an actual invisibility ability that increases its already rather quick speed to a -very- quick speed to facilitate it actively crossing the map to hunt people down instead of ambush and lurk. In addition to this, the invisibility can be abused to push people around while invisible, to disarm tackle people while invisible, and to break barricades while invisible. None of this actually breaks the invisibility, and combined with the speed boost, this allows for very ‘gamey’ gameplay. It has now turned into a hit-and-run hyper mobile class with escape options, engage options, and meme-tier gameplay elements, and its strain is essentially the same thing, but with more speed, a little more fragility, and a very cracked out amount of crowd control options and self-healing.

• The Goal:

To return lurker to its role as an ambusher and improve its ability to move around in such a capacity.

• The Proposal:

-Remove lurker invisibility ability.

-Add a toggled ‘stalk’ ability.
–Stalk: Reduced movement speed. Slightly improved invisibility over current invisibility. Does not trigger MDs by moving. Does not trigger vent noises while moving. Does not trigger alerts when entering or exiting vents while stalking. Resting while stalking and not in a vent or tunnel reduces vision range by one tile, but allows for health regeneration while off weeds (unaffected by recovery pheromones), to further augment its role as a backliner and ambusher that operates in such environments. Lasts indefinitely, until toggled off, or until attacking, at which point it goes on cooldown for ~10 seconds.

-Crippling strike cannot be used to disarm, but still resets the global cooldown on clicking, allowing lurkers to maintain their lethality, but make it harder for them to secure captures utilizing crippling strike, which is ostensibly a harmful ability and not intended to be used for disarm tackles.

-Disarming will still not break invisibility, but due to the new function of stalking as invisibility, this should curtail the gamey gameplay of invisi-tackling people mid-combat or using invisibility to push marines five+ tiles in a direction before they can react, and then leaping away once the marine is out of position and grabbed by a warrior gang.

• In Closing:

Nothing else should change in my opinion, though I’m sure people will chime in with their thoughts and additional ideas. I understand that many will view this as a nerf, however, I feel vampire fills the niche of aggressive combat lurker, and this change will actually give the stealth/ambush role of lurker more of a spotlight and purpose, and provide an engaging and unique experience, and something to make marines fear the dark a little more.

EDIT: Typo.

[Erawh]

the main issue i can see with a change to lurker like this is that movement speed is such a massive part of both the game and combat, any changes to movementspeed is extremely volatile and difficult to balance.
Instead what could be more backliner ‘stalker‘ kind of lurker would be to make it a strain, swap out the regular lurkers empowered strike that gives you instant cooldown on a slash which makes capping as a regular lurker alot less likely and more difficult, and make a stalker strain designed around stalking and capturing instead of assasinating.
Maybe something oriented around causing large bleeding would fit the reg lurker more then the empowered strike, causing around a slash worth of damage but inflicting heavy bleeding for a bit and splashing it around, fits the assasin style aswell doing massive damage on a target before disappearing.

Something like:
Faster attackspeed but weaker slash hits, same ish dps but better tackle stats

Invis is now infinate, gives no movementspeed however standing completely still you start going more invis until something like sniper spec, no MDs trigger when invis but the cooldown when it breaks is longer then current lurkers, tackles still dont break it. The no sound stuff is cool aswell, stealthy vents and whatnot.

Pounce is swapped for a shorter distance pounce, without a stun but with a simple short knockdown, a small daze and automatically counting as one tackle.

Last is an ability that throws down a small healing node, it doesnt need weeds and can be placed anywhere, looks like a xeno marker thingy, goes away after a bit and feeds you health and plasma at a slow rate.

The thought would be to have one lurker thats assasin oriented, that goes hard on a single marine and fucks them up, vampires being able to do more combat in the open, and a final stalker lurker thats got less stuns, but with better capping potential and able to hold a backline without weed support.
As for pushing when invis since you move slower then reg lurker its not really more viable, caps are still possible like current with regular lurker but its overall less favorable.

[Butlerblock]

Lurker in the past was never been an ambush caste. While it did have its stalk ability that turned it invis, it was almost never used. Lurker before MOBA was more of an all around combatant that utilized old tackles and its pounce that did not require invisibility to stun in conjunction with its higher movement speed to be a devastating force in the backliner, or a quick hit and runner in the front lines.

Current iterations of lurker are about 95% cheese. Having zero armor, they can easily be shredded given certain conditions, which incentivizes them to exploit such cheese within their kit. They have a very long stun which allows them to cap, which may still be useable within your proposed iteration, but with extremely jank tackles(currently very reliant on rng with a 2 minimum and a 6 maximum), removing an extra tackle from their rotation without any compensation on the consistency side of tackles will just force them back into a murder caste, which is generally useless in moderation, especially in the back lines. Additionally, a lot of their capping and cheese ability stems from being able to push and tackle while invis, which this almost completely nullifies. As far as I can tell, this kit idea widens the niche backline in which they can fight in while taking away their ability to utilize the cheese to the best potential.

While I agree that lurker is currently a bit jank and cheese, I don’t believe that a weak ambush replacement is going to fix anything, and is just going to be even weaker cheese than before. Especially with how useless single target killing is.