“What if sentinel traded all its abilities, but instead its spit actually had neurotoxin in it” (an upgraded version of Slowing Spit)
The idea:
Sentinel loses all abilities except corrosive acid
Sentinel has its’ tackles buffed (from 4-4 to 2-4)
Sentinel gets an extra max tacklestrength (from 5-5 to 5-6)
Sentinel’s slowing spit is upgraded to “neurotoxic spit”
The plan is for this sentinel will be much more capable of actually doing things on its’ own, and have actual solo-cap capacity against targets that have a shotgun.
Neurotoxic spit on its own will be quite weak, and will actually travel slower and have a tile less range than slowing spit.
However, in exchange, it’ll apply stacking status effects on marines.
In the following order, the effects on consecutive hits will be:
Superslow
Daze + Superslow
Knockdown for 3 seconds
Finally, if the sentinel continues spitting at a knocked down marine, the marine will be knocked out for 30(!) seconds, easily securing a capture.
with these changes, sentinel should be able to:
support the frontline in closed positions
reliably cap marines
be able to function in 1v2s like a better drone, spitting at one marine while attempting to (riskily) CQC the 2nd marine with their tackles
I’m currently making a PR for this strain myself, it should be ready in a around a month or so!
xeno strain makers really sometimes go on the deep on of “they were too focused on if they could that they forgot to ask, if they should”
superslow is already a giga nerf to any marine, SS13 is a game that relies on movement speed first, anything else second, i dont think this needs to be explained if you have experience in the game in general, or even just CM13 itself
a three hit combo which applies a super slow on the first one is extremely horrible to begin with, no matter how slow your projectile is, as long as youre already debuffing the marine on first contact, it’s pretty over
ranged “support” gameplay like this shouldnt be supported either, youre doing fight changing things from a safe distance as a T1 instead of needing to be in the action like a runner, drone or defender
on top of that buffing the tackle to 2-4….
the strain doesnt make this different from a normal sentinel, it makes it outright better and makes the base sentinel look like a clown instead, maybe focus on making the base sentinel more useful and more importantly, fun, instead of making these weird heavily one sided suggestions with no counterplay except “just dodge, shoot and grenade the sentinel”, there should always be “pro” and “con” to anything, what is the con here? i fail to see it, unless the sentinel is going to become fat and slow and easier to hit and track
lastly “the marine will be knocked out for 30(!) seconds”…
Make the spit the same speed as normal senti, but give it the range of old despoiler and it could honestly work. You’d have to get into buckshot range to hit anyone.
Yeah no this sounds miserable to fight, nothing should ever have a 30 second stun for a start and especially not a t1, superslow is already ending rounds as when you cant run from xenos you tend to die very quickly, adding daze to the mix is just questionable considering its almost as if you wouldnt want the marine fighting back as they literally cant callout their location ontop of a visual debuff, and then after that you get ranged stuns, against anyone, as a t1.
If you do want to change sentinel, do a full rework, it was basically just a thing to watch over the hive when nest resisting was a thing, forget the stunning gimmick make it a weaker spitter
