this is acid goop in a serious discussion
lurkers can take the damage from the buddy unless he throws a grenade at you but thats not good for anybody
If the lurker is a real cheeser he knows how to make you enter paincrit in 5 seconds. Nothing you can do about that. You gotta trick the noobish ones.
Lately when wandering alone, i’ve had success acting like I enter pain crit shortly after the first pounce. They start thinking you can be capped and start dragging. You get up and BLAM. Then they tailstab you and your guy has an aneurysm before falling over.
Or it had low enough health and you just made it fall for the oldest trick in the book, and may thus feel super good about yourself for fragging a lurka. Then you enter paincrit
5 Likes
My lurker gameplay for the last few years have been standing at containers staring at the 5 most robust marines on the force. So if you nerf the lurker further to cater towards it not being a threat even to complete baldies, those most robust marines would have a field day, this would lead to lurker being even more dead and it becoming the “I wanna grief the hive” kind of caste. And in turn, those robust marines would have nobody to fight against.
I think CM is not celebrated enough for it’s gameplay actually forcing the proper roleplay on the playerbase. You either learn your role and play by the rules, or you ignore them and just die. Even if you play by the rules you often die anyway. CM is a horror RPG. Sure, there are many players who dislike that and just want to be catered to, but there are just so many other games that cater to your basic power fantasy. Those games even have way better engines.
8 Likes
I think poster should get to elder lurker working the frontlines and then tell us if their opinion has changed. I do backlines as a lurker because the frontline is a mess and you will be body blocked to hell if you are stealthed. If you are on the backlines you are very weak and if you get slowed by shotgun, grenades, or catch on fire you are finished. Maybe they do have elder but I doubt it.
2 Likes
Did you stare menacingly?
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I think a lot of marines over-estimate just how durable they really are. You should either be directly next to a marine who you know can shake you up or be ready to suffer the consequences.
Lurker is kinda stupid tho in that it can just instafrac you from one pounce, very little skill involved and it takes not even a second to do so. Im not a big fan of the whole crippling strike not having a slash cooldown, takes a lot of the risk away and in many scenarios you are basically impervious unless you are unlucky enough to stumble into a marine who has insane reflexes with his shotgun.
3 Likes
Very true. You are not in fact Rambo just pretending to be. Accept the risk and have fun.
1 Like
I don’t agree with how you’ve presented scouts in this.
Scouts are amongst the best equipped to fight off lurkers alone, given they have long-ranged stuns, incend, a god-tier bayonet if you put it on their gun, and the ability to cloak forever.
Scouts might be fucked 9/10 times after a lurker pounces them sure, but a lurker is also fucked 9/10 times if a scout manages to stunlock them, after hitting incend, and while making use of their bayonets.
Something-something he who strikes first wins sun tzu art of war quote 
2 Likes
something something lurkers will fuck almost anyone if they’re alone, and scouts are usually alone
scouts will fuck any t2 or t1, even if they’re with teammates. It takes skill sure, but it’s still busted and nigh uncounterable.
1 Like
What else lurker is supposed to do if not give fracs? Imagine pouncing someone, then having to disengage because only PVTs walk alone, and then marine just takes a sip of unga and outheals all the damage you dealt. Fracs at least give lurker some sense of accomplishment.
1 Like
Yeah I mean you’re right in that sense and maybe I wasnt clear that I do think that lurker as a caste has to be “overtuned” (not saying u said that) at least in comparison to the normal xeno otherwise it stands little to no chance to fight in the backline. That isnt some 4d move from me to try justify a rework of lurker or anything, im just saying its really stupid that all a lurker has to do to frac you is pounce you, frac twice, your teammates have no counterplay for the most part as the lurker is gonna get out of dodge faster than most people can react.
I just wish it was designed differently, the tactic of pounce insta-doubleslash yields almost no risk. Idk how much adding a cooldown for slashing on crippling strike would change lurker gameplay other than not being able to get free fracs on people you should definetly not be pouncing, once you reach a certain point of skill, at which that tactic becomes moreorless uncounterable.
2 Likes