Arguably dogshit even! Long post incoming.
This is not a post arguing for 7 tile lunge, or really asking for warrior to be buffed in any significant way. I imagine it’s a really hard caste to balance given its purpose and mechanical makeup. I really just want to talk about Warrior’s design intent and where it’s mechanically lacking and confusing, and my personal experience with it.
Warrior as a caste is advertised as an evolution on Defender’s frontlining capabilities, featuring better engagement abilities, higher slash damage- able to fracture easily using punch, and most notoriously, being able to disable single marines with lunge- a (not so) far reaching pounce that instantly puts an enemy in a chokehold for about 3 seconds. If that’s not enough, you can also fling marines 6 tiles away… using fling. This all sounds good. You can in fact, create a combo using this ability to send single marines far away from the frontline, often with enough damage to kill them outright when you do.
In exchange for these new abilities, you lose your (incredibly useful) AOE tackle, steelcrest benefits, 3 tiers of armor value, 3 tiers of explosion resistance, and with your crest and fortify abilities gone- these list of things;
- Ability to neglect full-stuns and explosives from a variety of sources.
- Ability to full-damage APCs and destroy ledges incredibly quickly.
- Nigh-unpunishable bodyblocking.
- Remove walls.
This is a lot of support and hivebuilding power gone. But that’s okay, you wanted to be a warrior, you wanted to frontline. So how good are you at it?
Warrior excels most when supported by an (egg) carrier/builder duo. Your ability to snatch marines from behind doors/walls/corners combined with the ability to immediately infect and incapacitate marines is unparalleled in terms of ensuring marine numbers dwindle quickly. Another common pairing is with the Oppressor, who’s ability to tailgrab marines from far away often leaves them too far to effectively restrain, which you can make up for by lunging at them.
Now, what if you’re alone? Where are you best? Well…
Warrior sucks at fighting more than 1 person at once. Defender is honestly far better suited, being able to engage multiple marines and use the tackle ability to separate and disable crowds firing at you. As a warrior, you can only incapacitate one person at once, and you sacrifice your mobility to do so. When alone, your goal on the frontline is to target marines who are close to dark areas/corners but are also separated from their squad and especially separated from shotgunners and smartgunners. Why? Shotgunners should be obvious, but smartgunners circumvent your only solution to marines coming to punish you lunging on their squad-
… because Warrior is the only caste in the game that can take a marine hostage. This is how you handle 1v2 engagements, generally, though it’s pretty easily circumvented by the offending marine navigating around your chokehold, or having basic trigger discipline. Any more than two marines in the area and your problems start piling up fast. A dedicated MOU user ignores your very-very-very basic armor capabilities, or chain-stuns you with slugs- smartgunners absolutely ignore your ability to abuse firing lines, and if marines rush you after you lunge (as they should), you better have a frontline T3 to support you, your health is not saving you. From a balance perspective, this is all fine, mostly. Defender often has an easier time doing what Warrior wants to do, because it has better survivability on the front, and is also quite capable at flinging stunned marines, and is immune to CQC stuns that often hurt your ability to bodyblock, but Defender has trouble separating marines the way Warrior does. The flaw in doing this as defender is that Defender cannot lunge. There is another caste that can, though.
Lurker.
I’m so evil. This is the actual hot take of this long ass shitty post. Lurker is Warrior+.
Hear me out. Warrior’s gameplan is to identify separated marines on the front and bring them behind enemy lines so it can minimize the risk to engaging a marine solo. Doing this often results in good captures. Its primary deterrents in this effort are stuns, marine response to your lack of mobility on capture, and the proximity to marines necessary to hit a lunge, and the proximity cover needed to facilitate your combo. Lurker’s gameplan is almost entirely the same, but only shares one of these weaknesses, in stuns- and it affects them the least of any of the frontliner castes. Lurker has the mobility to minimize targeted marine fire on their position, can go invisible in order to attack from practically any angle at a marine, and while it doesn’t have an AOE/crowd control tool either, is entirely capable of escaping situations using pounce as much as it is entering them. Lurker also stuns for longer, meaning while they’re not much better at fighting 1v2, it is not at all uncommon for a good lurker to come out of a 1v2 engagement with one marine dead with multiple fractures, or even missing limbs, and often escaping with very little health lost. Lurker being fast also allows them to do this;
The obvious response to this would be to say that this is objectively worse than the Warrior combo- but compare and look at the positioning.
If the warrior wants to disengage this combo, they have to release lunge, immediately unstunning the captured marine, often while positioned between the lunged marine and the squad that’s firing on them. The lurker doesn’t have this problem, as they can immediately let the marine go, and within 5 seconds of pouncing- immediately abuse the burst of movement to escape the situation. This is especially potent if the lurker does get stunned, as it means they have an effective burst of movement they can abuse immediately to prevent chainstuns.
Here’s an example of this in a real match, though the AMR spec came in to spook them. I’m notably dragged too far for SGOs to respond, and I’m fairly certain if a Warrior had performed the same lunge in the same situation, they would have been a far worse position, and would probably be dead if both SGOs lasered them.
Now, is Lurker better in every conceivable way? No… They have worse health, no explosion resistance and no armor, instead of just tier 1, and the lack of an ability to fling prevents Lurkers from securing every lunge they get into a capture.
But Lurker’s benefits do genuinely outweigh Warrior’s in a lot of situations, and especially alone. The faster speed and higher base slash damage means they’re often capable of engaging multiple marines without fear of being chased down, alongside being able to do hit and run tactics on marines that manage to survive the first combo, something Warrior is laughably bad at if they don’t fling a marine to create space.
It also helps Lurker doesn’t have to sprite-aim pounce to get the incredibly lucrative fullstun. You can just… aim in any direction and if the marine is in the way, they get fully stunned. Moreover- Lurkers aren’t punished for missing a pounce if they do, as they keep their invisibility, only losing it if they walk into a marine, this means actually performing your gameplan is laughably risk-free, compared to the 4 tile limit of lunges- and how frequently they fail if you move, and don’t patiently wait for the sprite-aim.
A few examples of what I’m talking about. This happens about twice for every round I play warrior. Often this encourages sitting still behind a fortified position and punishes Warriors for openly skirmishing… or… frontlining.
And if you think it’s my fault for not using the tools right, that’s fair- but it gets really egregious at times.
TL;DR
Lurker Good, Warrior Bad. Always Lungecap, or Tachyon Shunt your superintelligence into a better caste.
