Games were great this morning, @Musicool #doughnutlords #campfirestories
#comparingcurves
Sorry if we got a little venomous at the end towards our monster foe but god. That's 25 minutes of my life I'm not getting back. I'll try to upload the vid soon.
Long story short for those who weren't there: we fought a player who first as Behemoth and then as Wraith evolved by at latest the 10 minute mark and then spent literally 15 minutes stalking around the Relay hoping we'd just hand him an easy strike or something. Like it's our job to hand him an easy abduction or tongue grab by standing in the open or chasing him to his latest hidey hole. In the first game he timed out instead of fighting to the end. In the second he dc'd out and left us to finish off an AI instead. The AI did a decent job too. With a couple of strikes here or there on our team he would have gotten some downs.
Monsters in this game are just so damn lazy.
Also, I totally domed that megamouth. That fucker was going nowhere. I may or may not have thought it was a Behemoth, I really don't want to say.
Yeah, the first game he rolled around us at about 100 meters out for something like 10 minutes, then got discouraged by the countdown timer and eventually just hid on the opposite corner of the map until he lost. Then he pulls out his Wraith, because fuck yeah Wraith, right? And its another 10-15 minutes of him poking us with his Decoy and trying to snag an Abduction -- which wouldn't have worked anyway, to be honest; he kept trying it on Hyde, and all he'd have to do is shield up, then run back into position.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I really really really don't think the Turtlerock devs ever really thought of the idea that the Hunters would just go right to the relay and wait there, thereby forcing the Monster to attack a fortified position every time. The tactic is obviously extremely effective but it also guts 90% of the point of the game, which is to have the thrill of the chase.
I'm not criticizing the use of the tactic at all, just saying that I don't at all feel like Turtlerock did a good job of making the gameplay stick somewhere between "chase the Monster fruitlessly for 15 minutes because it doesn't fight until S3" or "15 minutes of the Hunters standing around in the same spot". Both situations are awful to play against, and the devs should really have thought more about how to keep people from basically avoiding what the whole point of the game is supposed to be.
I really really really don't think the Turtlerock devs ever really thought of the idea that the Hunters would just go right to the relay and wait there, thereby forcing the Monster to attack a fortified position every time. The tactic is obviously extremely effective but it also guts 90% of the point of the game, which is to have the thrill of the chase.
I'm not criticizing the use of the tactic at all, just saying that I don't at all feel like Turtlerock did a good job of making the gameplay stick somewhere between "chase the Monster fruitlessly for 15 minutes because it doesn't fight until S3" or "15 minutes of the Hunters standing around in the same spot". Both situations are awful to play against, and the devs should really have thought more about how to keep people from basically avoiding what the whole point of the game is supposed to be.
I'd argue they did think of that.
There are at least two key ways the monsters can counter our strategy:
1) Get a good buff early. This is just a general guideline. If you're playing monster without getting a great buff early then I guarantee you can win more games just beelining for the Crowbill, Tyrant, or Armadon positions. The buffs let the monster crack the nut of a coordinated no-strike Hunter team. And once both sides understand this the game gets tactically interesting because both sides are fighting to control the buffs, and then reacting to who controls what.
2) Just stopping to find us at Stage 2, full armour. No seriously, that's the hard counter to our strategy. If you've realised by then that we are nowhere to be seen you should start looking for us. We're probably still trying to lock down the last buffs. Those buffs are just lying around, still not totally decayed. Fight us, or take one of those buffs, or ideally both. You now have 15 whole minutes to fight us. If you can't create openings and get strikes with all of the above in 15 whole minutes, you were never going to beat us to begin with. But taking the above advice and applying it to your monster play will make you a better monster player and it will give your opponents a more interesting game. I guarantee it.
Funnily enough though, we did actually chase the Behemoth for a while. We got him down to half health before the relay. We just didn't run hell for leather after him. Sometimes we'd let him go because he was full armour and we'd probably not chew through it in one dome. Sometimes we just locked him in one side of the map, and controlled the buffs elsewhere. Then we domed him right after an evolve. By that point he'd given us total map control: there were no buffs to save him.
I'm not really arguing with you I think, except to say that the game is well designed so that once both sides understand the game it becomes a very interesting game. The only problem is the human element: players don't or won't play the game that's actually in their disc drive. They're playing a made-up fantasy-land version of Evolve where running and feeding to Stage 3 is the killer strat.
2) Just stopping to find us at Stage 2, full armour. No seriously, that's the hard counter to our strategy. If you've realised by then that we are nowhere to be seen you should start looking for us. We're probably still trying to lock down the last buffs. Those buffs are just lying around, still not totally decayed. Fight us, or take one of those buffs, or ideally both. You now have 15 whole minutes to fight us. If you can't create openings and get strikes with all of the above in 15 whole minutes, you were never going to beat us to begin with. But taking the above advice and applying it to your monster play will make you a better monster player and it will give your opponents a more interesting game. I guarantee it.
See, but the issue is that the fight still revolves around the Monster assaulting the stationary Hunters, which nullifies the whole dang point of the game. The Monster fighting stationary Hunters is as tedious for the Monster as it is for the Hunters when they get stuck against Monsters that just run and don't fight.
Winning is all well and good, but it's not enough when games devolve into one side or the other being completely bored.
In a perfect world, monster players would constantly harass hunter teams, and try to force strikes throughout the game with a combination of stealth and brute force tactics. They would use their armor as a buffer, and when it ran low, they'd use their vastly-superior mobility to make space, then evolve to the next stage. And the process would repeat itself until one side or the other was defeated.
But we don't live in that world, unfortunately. We live in a world where monsters use their incredible mobility to hide and sneak their way up the evolutionary ladder until they're stage 3. At which point, they bring the fight to the hunters, who've been running fruitlessly around the map for 15 minutes or so.
Honestly, its a waste of everyone's time. The way we play now is that we basically just skip the stage where we run around for no reason for 15 minutes. Instead, we use our time to gather up powerful buffs, and basically allow the monster to free-farm. In this way, the games don't last nearly as long, because the monster isn't spending minutes at a time just trying to shake us off its trail -- it can feed and grow in relative peace, but the downside is that if he's truly not interested in engaging us until he's stage 3, he'll be up against a full team with food buffs and no strikes, and that's not great.
And, if I'm being totally honest, using this method has resulted in us catching the monster out with much greater consistency. We just kind of "bump into" enemy monsters all the time; earlier, we lost track of a Behemoth, so instead of running around trying to pick up the scent for a few minutes, we just cut a path as quickly as we could toward the nearest Tyrant spawn. We killed it, took its buff, and then the Behemoth rolled directly through the area we were in -- literally, he rolled within meters of me.
In a perfect world, monster players would constantly harass hunter teams, and try to force strikes throughout the game with a combination of stealth and brute force tactics. They would use their armor as a buffer, and when it ran low, they'd use their vastly-superior mobility to make space, then evolve to the next stage. And the process would repeat itself until one side or the other was defeated.
But we don't live in that world, unfortunately. We live in a world where monsters use their incredible mobility to hide and sneak their way up the evolutionary ladder until they're stage 3. At which point, they bring the fight to the hunters, who've been running fruitlessly around the map for 15 minutes or so.
Honestly, its a waste of everyone's time. The way we play now is that we basically just skip the stage where we run around for no reason for 15 minutes. Instead, we use our time to gather up powerful buffs, and basically allow the monster to free-farm. In this way, the games don't last nearly as long, because the monster isn't spending minutes at a time just trying to shake us off its trail -- it can feed and grow in relative peace, but the downside is that if he's truly not interested in engaging us until he's stage 3, he'll be up against a full team with food buffs and no strikes, and that's not great.
And, if I'm being totally honest, using this method has resulted in us catching the monster out with much greater consistency. We just kind of "bump into" enemy monsters all the time; earlier, we lost track of a Behemoth, so instead of running around trying to pick up the scent for a few minutes, we just cut a path as quickly as we could toward the nearest Tyrant spawn. We killed it, took its buff, and then the Behemoth rolled directly through the area we were in -- literally, he rolled within meters of me.
Ah, that Kramer entrance.
Everyone on either side completely dumbfounded that we'd just run into each other. It was hilarious.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
No, I totally agree, but I'm saying that it's definitely the game that's fatally flawed, not the players. The game is supposed to be about the chase, with shifting parameters for fights. However, the devs failed to properly test the game and realize that players won't stick to what the game is about because they're "supposed" to.
As a result, either Hunters end up facing annoying, fruitless chases for ages, or Monsters end up facing annoying, fruitless drug-out fights at the relay because the Hunters aren't chasing. Definitely not the sort of thing that makes for fun games.
You guys are all talking about coward monsters, but seriously.... Those are bad monsters. I've been top 1k with 3/4 monsters (don't like wraith) and I harass the humans every single time I have full armor.
If you can't hold the monster in place for serious damage you need to work on some placement and cutting the monster off. Not every dome is a good dome. Are your teammates close enough to capitalize on it. Are there not many places for the monster to hide. Are there no environmental hazards or hostile wildlife inside etc etc. Also your assaults job is to put damage on. If they can't keep in the monsters face with predictive jetpacking, theyve got to work on that.
They probably just need to refine their matchmaker or have some sort of skill balancing per matchrole or something similar. I'm not sure how it currently works, or if there's a large enough playerbase for it, but it could help
In L4D they had a timer where if the tank didn't do anything for awhile, they lost control of it.
They obviously can't do that, being only one monster player, but there are things you can do along the same line of thought. Let the hunters scan areas or send out tackle drones or something.
I'm sure it'd be a balancing nightmare but as it is I'm seeing a ton of complaints about "most of the match is doing nothing".
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I would regret buying it, but I still got enough time and fun out of it to justify the purchase. The game was a blast when Monsters actually fought and Hunters actually hunted, but that dropped off sharply after a while. Got a fair number of hours of fun out of before that happened, though, so it doesn't bother me in terms of wasted money or anything.
Oh, Hunters still hunt. That's actually the problem. Monster players can still get by and have relatively good win rates by just running and hiding to Stage 3. If Hutners showed them why this is a failing strat Monsters would have to adapt and become interesting again. So most monster players stagnated and just got used to the same old tricks working.
You guys are all talking about coward monsters, but seriously.... Those are bad monsters. I've been top 1k with 3/4 monsters (don't like wraith) and I harass the humans every single time I have full armor.
If you can't hold the monster in place for serious damage you need to work on some placement and cutting the monster off. Not every dome is a good dome. Are your teammates close enough to capitalize on it. Are there not many places for the monster to hide. Are there no environmental hazards or hostile wildlife inside etc etc. Also your assaults job is to put damage on. If they can't keep in the monsters face with predictive jetpacking, theyve got to work on that.
They probably just need to refine their matchmaker or have some sort of skill balancing per matchrole or something similar. I'm not sure how it currently works, or if there's a large enough playerbase for it, but it could help
We've talked about this. We don't struggle to find and fight monsters. We can beat Stage 3s from 100% health to zero, we're pretty fucking competent. And yes, we've done our dash of all the cutting off and chasing nonsense. Fighting isn't the problem. It's that we have limited time with which to enjoy games and too many monster players want to waste that time on our behalf.
Hell, we can so consistently track and dome monsters that sometimes our other neat trick after buff control is just to wait for the post-evolve dome. It's very doable, and we've done it.
If you play the way you say, great! You're the kind of monster we'd love to see out there in the wild. You might even learn a new style of playing when facing us - ie, buff control. But there aren't enough of you out there to be worth our precious free time.
As an example, there was a pub match I played without my team. We were on this Goliath's tail for 20 minutes. Literally, he hadn't evolved to stage 3 before the end match timer had started. That's when I domed him. With my usual team this would have been a simple fight. No armour and a full health hunter team: simple. But pubs being pubs, they threw away the fight with poor positioning and needless aggression. This is the kind of monster out there. They are only technically competent: they know how to sniff, they know how to juke, they know how to run. But they don't know how to win. They rely purely on Hunters giving them a bad fight. They are the Steven Bradbury of monsters.
They just skate in a circle until the other four guys trip over each other. It's fun to watch a few times, but you can't have a sport that works like that.
Got a vid for you guys of Team Buff Control. We didn't light campfires at the relay, but the mentality of knowing thattime was on our side is what won us the game. It glitched out at the final fight, but I'm pretty confident we had him. Match starts at 4:00ish:
The Hunter's first job on Aviary is to clear the Relay area. It's too dangerous to fight at otherwise. Kill the Tyrants, kill the blitzleopards, kill the mammoth birds. Now you can win the Relay fight. Job 2 is to control the Tyrant buff - in the relay moat or the Tyrant pond nearby. It's incredible we've never seen a monster take it, considering it's at most 100 metres away from them at the start of the game. Job 3 if you have a Griffin is for Griffin to set up his sound spikes while the other Hunters guard the Tyrant buff. A monster with Tyrant buff iis dangerous, because they can fully commit to one or two fights at 100% without care for their health bar. So don't let that happen. My sound spike placement was ok but in hindsight there's a better set-up. Obviously, the basic idea is to cover all the doors to the snow rooms. And placing them above the door ensures that a monster coming in from outside HAS to trip the sensor even if they sneak: there's no way to destroy it from long range. But I should have placed 5 sensors down: one on each "outside" door for each snow room - the most likely door for a doughnutter to enter - and then a 5th tocover the middle doors of the bigger snow room. I was thinking of saving a spike for whatever came up, but in the end I think that's not as important on Aviary.
Job 4 was technically to control the Armadon buffs, though considering where the monster ended up being I'm thinking it should beat out even setting up sound spikesas te priority. That match would have gone very differently if Behemoth had gotten a lucky Armadon buff.
The monster first slipped up by going to the smaller snow room with no relevant buffs. This is what I mean when I say monsters don't actually know how to win and hunters give away too many wins. That snow room is a death trap - IF the hunters just wait oustide it. At some point Behemoth had to leave through those doors, and we were waiting for him. He still almost escaped, because I committed to the wrong door for too long. But the principle stands: I doubt a single hunter team before now showed this monster player that the small snow room is a death trap, so he's never learned otherwise. he had access to MAYBE one good buff - one of the 3 Armadon positions, but otherwise, we had cut him off from everything, and the Tyrant was decaying while we waited. If he'd gotten lucky and found the Armadon we probably would have refused to fight. Not worth giving him strikes. It's his job to earn them. Instead we would have loosely tracked him and saved the dome for when he evolved. Even with Armadon buff that's a painful fight. If he refused to evolve, then he would have run out the timer on his Armadon buff. Either way, we win.
The fight itself was a little sloppy. I misused my jetpack sometimes, our Assault and Medic are newer to the game and hence got out of position, I didn't use the harpoon at a couple of key points. But honestly, it only proves the point more: Hunters can do everything right and secure a great dome in the perfect area, but if the monster has full armour hunters are still taking a MASSIVE risk for potentially no reward. So why rush into every dome you can find? Luckily this monster liked his chances and stayed around and we finally got the chance to actually punish him. A whole minute of shooting and only once the dome went down did the fight matter for diddly. We should have campfired: this guy gave us the win.
Then it was a matter of getting another safe dome while he was low-ish armour and we won. We still might have lost with a 2 strike Assault, but I think we would have been alright. Still, that risk is why the relay is so beautiful: if you watch where the game glitched out, our Assault was right next to a Mammoth bird and could have been quarter health before the fight even started. It's the monster's job to earn their strikes, and to many hunters are giving them away for free. Likewise, we should have killed that Armadon even before we dropped the first dome. Domes are WAY more dangerous to Hunters than to monsters. I think it should become standard hunter policy to murder all the dangerous animals within a dome before bothering to fight the monster.
Another tactic I've invented is this: sometimes you want to shoot the monster on the chase. You want to see the state of their armour and if they have a buff. Then you can decide whether you even want to bother doming them. Or whether they still haven't taken a particular buffs from the areas they just passed.
Got a vid for you guys of Team Buff Control. We didn't light campfires at the relay, but the mentality of knowing thattime was on our side is what won us the game. It glitched out at the final fight, but I'm pretty confident we had him. Match starts at 4:00ish:
The Hunter's first job on Aviary is to clear the Relay area. It's too dangerous to fight at otherwise. Kill the Tyrants, kill the blitzleopards, kill the mammoth birds. Now you can win the Relay fight. Job 2 is to control the Tyrant buff - in the relay moat or the Tyrant pond nearby. It's incredible we've never seen a monster take it, considering it's at most 100 metres away from them at the start of the game. Job 3 if you have a Griffin is for Griffin to set up his sound spikes while the other Hunters guard the Tyrant buff. A monster with Tyrant buff iis dangerous, because they can fully commit to one or two fights at 100% without care for their health bar. So don't let that happen. My sound spike placement was ok but in hindsight there's a better set-up. Obviously, the basic idea is to cover all the doors to the snow rooms. And placing them above the door ensures that a monster coming in from outside HAS to trip the sensor even if they sneak: there's no way to destroy it from long range. But I should have placed 5 sensors down: one on each "outside" door for each snow room - the most likely door for a doughnutter to enter - and then a 5th tocover the middle doors of the bigger snow room. I was thinking of saving a spike for whatever came up, but in the end I think that's not as important on Aviary.
Job 4 was technically to control the Armadon buffs, though considering where the monster ended up being I'm thinking it should beat out even setting up sound spikesas te priority. That match would have gone very differently if Behemoth had gotten a lucky Armadon buff.
The monster first slipped up by going to the smaller snow room with no relevant buffs. This is what I mean when I say monsters don't actually know how to win and hunters give away too many wins. That snow room is a death trap - IF the hunters just wait oustide it. At some point Behemoth had to leave through those doors, and we were waiting for him. He still almost escaped, because I committed to the wrong door for too long. But the principle stands: I doubt a single hunter team before now showed this monster player that the small snow room is a death trap, so he's never learned otherwise. he had access to MAYBE one good buff - one of the 3 Armadon positions, but otherwise, we had cut him off from everything, and the Tyrant was decaying while we waited. If he'd gotten lucky and found the Armadon we probably would have refused to fight. Not worth giving him strikes. It's his job to earn them. Instead we would have loosely tracked him and saved the dome for when he evolved. Even with Armadon buff that's a painful fight. If he refused to evolve, then he would have run out the timer on his Armadon buff. Either way, we win.
The fight itself was a little sloppy. I misused my jetpack sometimes, our Assault and Medic are newer to the game and hence got out of position, I didn't use the harpoon at a couple of key points. But honestly, it only proves the point more: Hunters can do everything right and secure a great dome in the perfect area, but if the monster has full armour hunters are still taking a MASSIVE risk for potentially no reward. So why rush into every dome you can find? Luckily this monster liked his chances and stayed around and we finally got the chance to actually punish him. A whole minute of shooting and only once the dome went down did the fight matter for diddly. We should have campfired: this guy gave us the win.
Then it was a matter of getting another safe dome while he was low-ish armour and we won. We still might have lost with a 2 strike Assault, but I think we would have been alright. Still, that risk is why the relay is so beautiful: if you watch where the game glitched out, our Assault was right next to a Mammoth bird and could have been quarter health before the fight even started. It's the monster's job to earn their strikes, and to many hunters are giving them away for free. Likewise, we should have killed that Armadon even before we dropped the first dome. Domes are WAY more dangerous to Hunters than to monsters. I think it should become standard hunter policy to murder all the dangerous animals within a dome before bothering to fight the monster.
Another tactic I've invented is this: sometimes you want to shoot the monster on the chase. You want to see the state of their armour and if they have a buff. Then you can decide whether you even want to bother doming them. Or whether they still haven't taken a particular buffs from the areas they just passed.
Great stuff, and it's this sort of strategy that makes me hopeful that Evolve gets bigger and becomes a valid option when it comes to 'spectator e-Sports'. The MOBAs are great and all, but compared to a team of hunters vs a huge hulking monster, they're fairly obtuse to understand and appreciate what's happening. Evolve on the other hand, you have big smashy thing and progress is clearly delineated by strikes and permanent health loss.
Do you have any sort of resources where someone can learn the ins and outs of each map? Or is it just through learned trial and error? I'd love to jump in but I feel that I'm well behind the curve at this point so I'd rather brush up on theory before getting my ass handed to me on a platter without a hope of improvement.
Got a vid for you guys of Team Buff Control. We didn't light campfires at the relay, but the mentality of knowing thattime was on our side is what won us the game. It glitched out at the final fight, but I'm pretty confident we had him. Match starts at 4:00ish:
The Hunter's first job on Aviary is to clear the Relay area. It's too dangerous to fight at otherwise. Kill the Tyrants, kill the blitzleopards, kill the mammoth birds. Now you can win the Relay fight. Job 2 is to control the Tyrant buff - in the relay moat or the Tyrant pond nearby. It's incredible we've never seen a monster take it, considering it's at most 100 metres away from them at the start of the game. Job 3 if you have a Griffin is for Griffin to set up his sound spikes while the other Hunters guard the Tyrant buff. A monster with Tyrant buff iis dangerous, because they can fully commit to one or two fights at 100% without care for their health bar. So don't let that happen. My sound spike placement was ok but in hindsight there's a better set-up. Obviously, the basic idea is to cover all the doors to the snow rooms. And placing them above the door ensures that a monster coming in from outside HAS to trip the sensor even if they sneak: there's no way to destroy it from long range. But I should have placed 5 sensors down: one on each "outside" door for each snow room - the most likely door for a doughnutter to enter - and then a 5th tocover the middle doors of the bigger snow room. I was thinking of saving a spike for whatever came up, but in the end I think that's not as important on Aviary.
Job 4 was technically to control the Armadon buffs, though considering where the monster ended up being I'm thinking it should beat out even setting up sound spikesas te priority. That match would have gone very differently if Behemoth had gotten a lucky Armadon buff.
The monster first slipped up by going to the smaller snow room with no relevant buffs. This is what I mean when I say monsters don't actually know how to win and hunters give away too many wins. That snow room is a death trap - IF the hunters just wait oustide it. At some point Behemoth had to leave through those doors, and we were waiting for him. He still almost escaped, because I committed to the wrong door for too long. But the principle stands: I doubt a single hunter team before now showed this monster player that the small snow room is a death trap, so he's never learned otherwise. he had access to MAYBE one good buff - one of the 3 Armadon positions, but otherwise, we had cut him off from everything, and the Tyrant was decaying while we waited. If he'd gotten lucky and found the Armadon we probably would have refused to fight. Not worth giving him strikes. It's his job to earn them. Instead we would have loosely tracked him and saved the dome for when he evolved. Even with Armadon buff that's a painful fight. If he refused to evolve, then he would have run out the timer on his Armadon buff. Either way, we win.
The fight itself was a little sloppy. I misused my jetpack sometimes, our Assault and Medic are newer to the game and hence got out of position, I didn't use the harpoon at a couple of key points. But honestly, it only proves the point more: Hunters can do everything right and secure a great dome in the perfect area, but if the monster has full armour hunters are still taking a MASSIVE risk for potentially no reward. So why rush into every dome you can find? Luckily this monster liked his chances and stayed around and we finally got the chance to actually punish him. A whole minute of shooting and only once the dome went down did the fight matter for diddly. We should have campfired: this guy gave us the win.
Then it was a matter of getting another safe dome while he was low-ish armour and we won. We still might have lost with a 2 strike Assault, but I think we would have been alright. Still, that risk is why the relay is so beautiful: if you watch where the game glitched out, our Assault was right next to a Mammoth bird and could have been quarter health before the fight even started. It's the monster's job to earn their strikes, and to many hunters are giving them away for free. Likewise, we should have killed that Armadon even before we dropped the first dome. Domes are WAY more dangerous to Hunters than to monsters. I think it should become standard hunter policy to murder all the dangerous animals within a dome before bothering to fight the monster.
Another tactic I've invented is this: sometimes you want to shoot the monster on the chase. You want to see the state of their armour and if they have a buff. Then you can decide whether you even want to bother doming them. Or whether they still haven't taken a particular buffs from the areas they just passed.
Great stuff, and it's this sort of strategy that makes me hopeful that Evolve gets bigger and becomes a valid option when it comes to 'spectator e-Sports'. The MOBAs are great and all, but compared to a team of hunters vs a huge hulking monster, they're fairly obtuse to understand and appreciate what's happening. Evolve on the other hand, you have big smashy thing and progress is clearly delineated by strikes and permanent health loss.
Do you have any sort of resources where someone can learn the ins and outs of each map? Or is it just through learned trial and error? I'd love to jump in but I feel that I'm well behind the curve at this point so I'd rather brush up on theory before getting my ass handed to me on a platter without a hope of improvement.
In terms of buffs and starting paths, boom. I don't totally agree with all these paths, but they're pretty solid.
If you've faced a Wraith recently you might have met the most recent variant: the skywraith. They warp right into the sky if domed and do aerial abductions and other whacky shenanigens. The skywraith - when played aggressively - I have no problems with. It's the afk skywraiths. The ones who use it to survive early domes. If caught they'll just bolt to the sky and hang there with warp blasts, abductions and their traversals and it's damn near impossible to hit them up there. They ride out the dome then scamper away.
Well, my team of mad scientists have devised a response. It's pretty dirty and I wouldn't suggest this against legit skywraiths: just the afk skywraiths who are essentally refusing to play the game as intended.
Against the next of these afk skywraiths we're going to Take a Break. The whole point of afk skywraithing is to take advantage of the difficulty we mere humans have at shooting things high up in the air with our poor controllers and KBAMs. Well, if they want to fight dirty, we'll do just the same. Take a Break. Leave the heavy lifting - and the shooting - to the robots.
We haven't tested this theory in the wild, but I tried it out in a private lobby against a full team of bots. The results were fairly promising. I lost one and a half bars of health from full armour in the first dome, and 2 bars in the next one. It's not confirmed though: I'm a pretty shite skywraith. Oh, and even if this does turn out to work, remember to go back to controlling your dude if the Wraith decides to fight like a man again.
@bertinrow , me and the gang devised a new team comp for anyone who can scratch together a team of 4. It actually makes Laz good!
Lazarus, Hank, Abe, Torvald. Everyone with health regen except Laz who can take any perk that keeps him survivable.
This is Team Punisher. The basic idea is that Laz's strength isn't the revive but the threat of the revive. Monsters will corpse camp like crazy to just get one strike against that bastard Laz and his team. So when someone gets downed you don't send Laz in. You punish the monster and wait it out. Laz should paint markers on the monster. Torvald should get a scatter nade on the monster then mortar the crap out of him. Shotgun too. Hank should shield the body to buy more punishment time, or engage with his Laser and Orbital when the shield is inappropriate. But he should save his orbital for a good time. The orbital is like Laz's revive: the threat of it is almost as effective as the real deal. Abe should use all those brand new markers to get x1.5 damage with every shot. Seriously, with the natural scatter on his gun and the number of markers you're painting, Abe will get 1.5x damage more often than not. So no matter who's downed there's at least two hunters who are painting and/or hitting markers for extra damage. And the monster cannot afford to just sit pace around the body or fire will rain down onto them from on high. They have to engage in a more dynamic kind of zoning - one which leaves them much more liable to slip up and let Laz in for the cheeky revive.
The key is to never bunch up and to keep LoS with Hank's shield. With Health Regen on everyone, Hank becomes your team's bargain basement Val replacement: for as long as he's shielding he is effectively healing as well. But if you bunch up then Hank can't shield everyone who needs the heals and Laz's burst heal can only do so much. As much as this team deals with downs pretty well, it still doesn't want them.
Interestingly, this team comp changes which wildlife buffs you really want. Damage is still great but it's not as absolutely necessary: your team composition is the damage buff. The Armadon buff is still fantastic but the megamouth buff comes really close to edging it out. Putting Laz's heal burst on an even faster cd is great. Giving Hank more cloaks is great - for himself and to save Laz's own cloak for emergencies. Getting the Assault more personal shields - to prevent the damage Laz can't heal as well as Caira - is great. And the Tyrant, while still nice, sort of makes your own perk a wasted slot, so you can afford to go for other utility buffs.
You can also do the comp with a Hyde instead of Torvald. Throwing a stink bomb on the downed play is pretty much a guarantee that the monster will move, SB's do too much dmg to sit in them.
I'd also be keen to see how whether Hyde's chaingun becomes respectable while hitting Laz's damage markers. Hyde suffers from kiting more than any other Assault, so if you can make his chaingun worthwhile downtime between flame bursts that'd be just neat.
In my experience, I don't think Hyde or Abe really benefit all that much from weak points. About the only ones who do are Val and Cabot, but Val never gets a chance to shoot, so that leaves Cabot. Even Parnell struggles to make good use of weak points, since his damage is divided among many shots. It's better to just aim for the head.
In my experience, I don't think Hyde or Abe really benefit all that much from weak points. About the only ones who do are Val and Cabot, but Val never gets a chance to shoot, so that leaves Cabot. Even Parnell struggles to make good use of weak points, since his damage is divided among many shots. It's better to just aim for the head.
I...totally disagree. Sorry!
Val and Cabot are the absolute worst hunters for using weakspots short of hunters who just don't fire projectile-based weaponry at all. Single-shot weapons with comparably long reload times. Every single time you miss a marker with those weapons drastically decreases your ideal DPS. High fire rates and high spreads: those are the features of guns that love weak points.
Maybe it's a controller vs KBAM thing. Here in console-land, there's just no point aiming specifically for a weak point with low fire rate weapons. You can reasonably expect to hit the monster with those guns but anything else is a bonus.
Makes sense to me in console land. With KBAM, characters like Markov and Cabot with high-accuracy weapons can really do some serious damage with weak points.
Makes sense to me in console land. With KBAM, characters like Markov and Cabot with high-accuracy weapons can really do some serious damage with weak points.
Oh Markov. Markov is perfectly fine even in console-land. The AR's fire rate is great. We aren't total plebs down here in the console slums!
Also, people don't seem to understand that assuming perfect accuracy the AR's DPS is basically the same as the Lightning gun for as long as both are continually firing - ie, for the length of the AR's mag. There are moments when Markov's AR is the higher DPS option if you're confident you can hit the right spot - a good Val marker or two, a landed Kraken or one using Lighting or Aftershock, a whole face full of Laz weak points, a slow-rolling Behemoth, that awkward range where the lightning gun struggles to stay locked, etcetera, etcetera. Markov is one of the coolest Assaults because each of his weapons can be important in any fight. Playing him feels more interesting decision-wise.
Yeah, I'm primarily a PC player and it's just so sweet to land that headshot & weakpoint combo...
While I don't play Val or Laz much, I do play Torvald a bit and always throwing out grenades in between mortar barrages. In summary stats, though, I never seem to get much above 100-200 bonus damage in a round. I've played with Slim and Abe and Griffin and all sorts of hunters, but it always seems to be a really low amount of bonus damage. Maybe summary stats are bugged?
Yeah, I'm primarily a PC player and it's just so sweet to land that headshot & weakpoint combo...
While I don't play Val or Laz much, I do play Torvald a bit and always throwing out grenades in between mortar barrages. In summary stats, though, I never seem to get much above 100-200 bonus damage in a round. I've played with Slim and Abe and Griffin and all sorts of hunters, but it always seems to be a really low amount of bonus damage. Maybe summary stats are bugged?
There's not a doubt in my mind. Even with the punisher team - a team specifically built to abuse weak points - you'll get obscenely low weak point stats. I wouldn't give a damn except those stats are directly related to your unlocks, which give you straight up buffs to your hunters, which can be the difference between winning and losing. A 3-starred assault starts the match with 2/3 of the 3 star damage increase perk before they've even selected a perk at all. It's fucking obnoxious how important the grind can be on some hunters, Assaults in particular. Have you ever lost a close game of Evolve? Trick question: of course you have. Was your assault below 3 stars? OTOH, was the monster 3 starred? If the answers are no and yes respectively, then that's why you lost.
The star system really shouldn't affect stats. I would have grinded just to fill up bars. Bars that aren't filled must be filled!
This is from a recent esportsy thing. I'm not too sure how matches were set up, but it definitely seems like monsters who know what they're doing simply dominate matches. I'm pretty sure that's without buffs, too.
I was going to comment that Hyde might not be as good for the comp due to Flamer not taking advantage of WP's, but I guess I just totally forgot about the Minigun at the time. I really should play Markov more.
Yeah I'm not surprised the win rate skews monster at high levels. The problem is coordination: if the two factions are theoretically equal in power and the players are essentially equally skilled then the monster still has an advantage simply because he has no weak member and no need to communicate and organise. His 'teamwork' works at the speed of thought. Also, monster mistakes are less devastating than hunter mistakes. Lost your armour and a little health in a bad dome? All good, you've got a minute to eat up before they can dome you again and do any subtantial health damage. Oh they did that too did they? Never mind, Evolve up, get the tyrant buff and you're back in action. Personally I think TR should rethink the game's whole balance and slide things slightly towards the Hunters generally. It depends how the meta shifts as Hunters get more and more experienced.
So this is a cool way to hunt. It's basically a better planned version of how the trapper should be trapping anyway, but it seems to have the whole thing down to a science. Me likey. Choke-point chasing.
I was going to comment that Hyde might not be as good for the comp due to Flamer not taking advantage of WP's, but I guess I just totally forgot about the Minigun at the time. I really should play Markov more.
Yeah, I think the minigun would still be a bit weak compared to the AR, but it could be passable - especially with Laz's weak points. More spread = hitting more markers! Plus he makes up for that with the stink bomb and flamer being fantastic zoning tools if the monster refuses to leave the body's general area.
And yeah, give Markov a try! I personally think he and Torvald are the most effective Assaults* because they just can't be kited. Parnell has super soldier but when it's off cooldown he can suffer. Hyde hates kiting and he only has a long-CD stink bomb to fight against it. He's very team comp dependent in that sense. He might work well with Team Punisher just because monsters will willingly hang around a body and set up the flamer for him.
Edit: Also-also, guys try out health regen perk Slim. He's pretty legit. He sacrifices some healing of his allies by not taking reload speed but I'm not certain he really does if he can keep regenning by way of shooting. But health regen increases his survivability massively. His self heal is terrible, but now every second he jukes the monster in his spore cloud is more damage he's undoing. The key to any medic is the ability to survive a monster's undivided attention: it's why Val is still trash.
Right now, I definitely feel as though mistakes are punished too much for hunters. That's the big disparity between hunters and monster right now. A monster that gets caught at Stage 1 might take quite a bit of damage, but after a stage up, that punishment hurts much less (especially if the monster stages up to 3). Strikes are permanent.
Also, your link to choke point chasing just goes back to the games and technology board?
If you have time today, watch the live stream! It'll be at 3PM PDT. We'll be talking about the how and why of what's coming in future balance updates. This does not include balance changes that involve code changes or bug fixes, etc. These are only balance changes that may be in future micropatches.
Specifically we'll be demoing a build with the following changes. Please note that these changes are still in testing so final values may change, be removed, postponed, etc.
Hunt Mode
Sudden Death forgiveness timer reduced to ten seconds (was fifteen)
Hunters
Hyde
Toxic Grenade
Removed Hunter slow effect (and the crowd goes wild!!!!!)
Parnell
Multifire Rocket Launcher
200% more accurate for long range destruction!
Torvald
Shrapnel Grenades
Increased proximity detonation radius to help vs airborne targets
Val
Heal Burst
Increased self heal by 50%
Slim
Spore Cloud Launcher
Radius decreased 20%
Sunny
Mininuke
Increased proximity detonation radius to help vs airborne targets
Shield Drone
Hit points of the drone decreased by 40% (easier to destroy)
Jetpack Booster
Provides 50% less thrust boost on jetpack dodges
Monsters
All Monsters
Melee Stamina
Goliath, Kraken and Wraith melee stamina auto fill time now set to 3 seconds (Was quicker before though it varied per monster. This controls how quickly another heavy hit can be used when pausing between melee attacks. This will have no affect on what attacks are used when constantly melee attacking.)
Armor Regeneration
Starts six seconds after damage taken (was 10). This helps make the armor regeneration perk more responsive.
Kraken
Lightning Strike
Moves at a constant speed (used to move faster on the far plane initially, then slow down. Now it always moves at its final speed)
Character Perks
Damage Bonus (M & H)
Reduced to 5%, 7.5% and 10% (was 7.5, 10, 15)
Armor Regeneration (M)
Increased to 50%, 75%, 100% (was 25, 38, 50)
Cooldown Reduction (M)
Decreased to 10%, 15%, and 20% (was 15, 23,30)
Movement Speed (M & H)
Increased to 15%, 20% and 25% (was 10, 15, 20)
Stamina Bonus (M)
Reduced to 20%, 30%, 40% (was 25, 35, 50)
Climb Speed (M)
Increased to 50% (was 30)
Reload Speed (H)
Decreased three star to 25% (was 30)
Jump Height (H)
Increased to 300% (was 200)
Elite Wildlife Buffs
Armadon Bull
Hunter and Monster damage reduction now 25% (was 35%)
Crowbill Sloth
Hunter and Monster damage bonus now 25% (was 35%)
Mammoth Bird
Monster Ability cooldown now 35% (was 50%)
Hunter Reload/Recharge bonus now includes electronic devices.
Megamouth
Monster Pounce damage bonus now 50% (was 100%)
Hunter class special cooldown reduction now 35% (was 50%)
Nomad
Hunter jetpack recharge bonus now 50% (was 100%)
Monster traversal stamina bonus now 50% (was 100%)
Tyrant
Monster duration reduced to 2 minutes (was 5, the new value gives the monster ~two bars of health back)
Hunter duration reduced to 3 minutes (was 5)
Hunter health regeneration rate reduced by 20%
Elite Wildlife
Armadon Bull
Health increased 33%
Blitzleopard
Health increased 25%
Speed increased 38%
Canyon Strider
Speed increased 38%
Cephaladon
Health increased 40%
Crowbill Sloth
Health increased 34%
Mammoth Bird
Health increased 70%
Speed increased 30%
Marsh Strider
Speed increased 38%
Megamouth
Health increased 34%
Nomad
Health increased 34%
Obsidian Grub
Health increased by 100%
Reaver
Health increased by 150%
Speed increased by 23%
Steamadon
Health increased by 150%
Speed increased by 15%
Tyrant
Health increased by 37%
Venomhound
Health increased by 190%
Speed increased by 15%
Mastery Adjustments
Reduced the requirements for the following masteries
Skilled Tongue Grab
Grab 10 creatures with tongue grab
Skilled Shrapnel Grenade
Allow 160 Bonus Damage (from weak spots)
Skilled Rock Wall
Deal 5500 damage with the wall
Skilled Fissure
Deal 13000 damage
Skilled Leech Gun
Do 20000 Damage
Expert Spore Cloud Launcher
Keep the Monster in smoke for 5 seconds (20 times)
Expert Shield Drone
Shield 19000 total damage
Expert Tongue Grab
Grab Hunters 25 times
Expert Lava Bomb
Hit multiple creatures 20 times
Expert Healing Drone
Revive 10 teammates with a Healing Drone
Elite Shield Drone
Shield 2000 damage in a single round 20 times
Elite Healing Drone
Heal 20 teammates from 80 meters away
Elite Tongue Grab
Grab Hunters in mid-air 30 times
Elite Fissure
Deal damage to multiple Hunters 30 times
Elite Spore Cloud Launcher
Smoke Revive 10 teammates
Increased the requirements for the following masteries
Expert Rock Wall
Trap a creature between the wall and you 60 times
Elite Stasis Gun
Enable the team to do 110000 damage while the monster is slowed
Elite Lava Bomb
HIt multiple Hunters 100 times
Award Adjustments
Tuned requirements for more consistent XP awarded between characters
Hyde increased requirements for RPS Beast
520 damage
Hyde increased requirements for Noxious
525 damage
Griffin decreased requirements for Close Quarters
630 damage
Val decreased requirements for Quick Fix
2000 health
Torvald increased requirements for Obliterated
1800 damage
Torvald increased requirements for A Thousand Cuts
5 hits
Crow increased requirements for Stop Motion
slow for 12 seconds
Sunny increased requirements for Power Aid
Thoughts:
Hyde for best assault! Throw them stink bombs with impunity. Now if only they got rid of Parnell's health sacrifice.
Val has a li'l bit more survivability! Yay!
Movespeed perk is now OP! 25% extra movespeed is amazing. I expect monsters to consider this, too, since it also affects sneaking speed.
Wildlife buffs are nerfed! They're still really powerful, though.
Elite wildlife are buffed versions of normal wildlife! If you thought an ordinary Mammoth bird was annoying, wait 'til the Elite one panic-runs at you 30% faster!
Things that still need working:
Flying monsters still avoid punishment too easily (Kraken, Sky-Wraith). Hunters that mess up or otherwise get punished have no way of making a comeback, they just wait to lose.
Hunt is still the best mode. The others are complete side shows and the chance for an anti-climactic ending is huge.
Man those wildlife buffs terrify me. Not so much the big creatures - although doming yourself in with an albino is going to be so much more dangerous now - it's the smaller stuff. Personally I hate the Reavers and Mammoth Birds more than anything else in this game. Ticking damage you just can't seem to kill fast enough in a fight or on the run. I like the wildlife as a concept and I'm glad they exist, but as a Hunter I want to murder every last fucking piece of fauna I find.
Hunt is still the best mode. The others are complete side shows and the chance for an anti-climactic ending is huge.
Man those wildlife buffs terrify me. Not so much the big creatures - although doming yourself in with an albino is going to be so much more dangerous now - it's the smaller stuff. Personally I hate the Reavers and Mammoth Birds more than anything else in this game. Ticking damage you just can't seem to kill fast enough in a fight or on the run. I like the wildlife as a concept and I'm glad they exist, but as a Hunter I want to murder every last fucking piece of fauna I find.
So glad they removed the Hyde toxic grenade slow. Fear of snaring a teammate for the monster or helping it get away has stopped me from using it in so many good situations.
So glad they removed the Hyde toxic grenade slow. Fear of snaring a teammate for the monster or helping it get away has stopped me from using it in so many good situations.
It was never such a whizbang area denial tool that the Hunters needed to be punished for hiding in it. Meanwhile, there was no slowdown for standing in a field of Markov's mines...
So while I was in a custom lobby grinding out some stars with friends I noticed something. On console the autoaim points you to centre of mass UNLESS you're aiming substantially closer to the 'head'. I'm talking shoulder height and even slightly over the target. So if you're firing a single-shot weapon like Val's sniper rifle or Cabot's railgun on console, don't be afraid to aim slightly above the head from hipfire then quickscope in for a headshot.
Posts
#comparingcurves
Sorry if we got a little venomous at the end towards our monster foe but god. That's 25 minutes of my life I'm not getting back. I'll try to upload the vid soon.
Long story short for those who weren't there: we fought a player who first as Behemoth and then as Wraith evolved by at latest the 10 minute mark and then spent literally 15 minutes stalking around the Relay hoping we'd just hand him an easy strike or something. Like it's our job to hand him an easy abduction or tongue grab by standing in the open or chasing him to his latest hidey hole. In the first game he timed out instead of fighting to the end. In the second he dc'd out and left us to finish off an AI instead. The AI did a decent job too. With a couple of strikes here or there on our team he would have gotten some downs.
Monsters in this game are just so damn lazy.
Also, I totally domed that megamouth. That fucker was going nowhere. I may or may not have thought it was a Behemoth, I really don't want to say.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
I'm not criticizing the use of the tactic at all, just saying that I don't at all feel like Turtlerock did a good job of making the gameplay stick somewhere between "chase the Monster fruitlessly for 15 minutes because it doesn't fight until S3" or "15 minutes of the Hunters standing around in the same spot". Both situations are awful to play against, and the devs should really have thought more about how to keep people from basically avoiding what the whole point of the game is supposed to be.
I'd argue they did think of that.
There are at least two key ways the monsters can counter our strategy:
1) Get a good buff early. This is just a general guideline. If you're playing monster without getting a great buff early then I guarantee you can win more games just beelining for the Crowbill, Tyrant, or Armadon positions. The buffs let the monster crack the nut of a coordinated no-strike Hunter team. And once both sides understand this the game gets tactically interesting because both sides are fighting to control the buffs, and then reacting to who controls what.
2) Just stopping to find us at Stage 2, full armour. No seriously, that's the hard counter to our strategy. If you've realised by then that we are nowhere to be seen you should start looking for us. We're probably still trying to lock down the last buffs. Those buffs are just lying around, still not totally decayed. Fight us, or take one of those buffs, or ideally both. You now have 15 whole minutes to fight us. If you can't create openings and get strikes with all of the above in 15 whole minutes, you were never going to beat us to begin with. But taking the above advice and applying it to your monster play will make you a better monster player and it will give your opponents a more interesting game. I guarantee it.
Funnily enough though, we did actually chase the Behemoth for a while. We got him down to half health before the relay. We just didn't run hell for leather after him. Sometimes we'd let him go because he was full armour and we'd probably not chew through it in one dome. Sometimes we just locked him in one side of the map, and controlled the buffs elsewhere. Then we domed him right after an evolve. By that point he'd given us total map control: there were no buffs to save him.
I'm not really arguing with you I think, except to say that the game is well designed so that once both sides understand the game it becomes a very interesting game. The only problem is the human element: players don't or won't play the game that's actually in their disc drive. They're playing a made-up fantasy-land version of Evolve where running and feeding to Stage 3 is the killer strat.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
See, but the issue is that the fight still revolves around the Monster assaulting the stationary Hunters, which nullifies the whole dang point of the game. The Monster fighting stationary Hunters is as tedious for the Monster as it is for the Hunters when they get stuck against Monsters that just run and don't fight.
Winning is all well and good, but it's not enough when games devolve into one side or the other being completely bored.
But we don't live in that world, unfortunately. We live in a world where monsters use their incredible mobility to hide and sneak their way up the evolutionary ladder until they're stage 3. At which point, they bring the fight to the hunters, who've been running fruitlessly around the map for 15 minutes or so.
Honestly, its a waste of everyone's time. The way we play now is that we basically just skip the stage where we run around for no reason for 15 minutes. Instead, we use our time to gather up powerful buffs, and basically allow the monster to free-farm. In this way, the games don't last nearly as long, because the monster isn't spending minutes at a time just trying to shake us off its trail -- it can feed and grow in relative peace, but the downside is that if he's truly not interested in engaging us until he's stage 3, he'll be up against a full team with food buffs and no strikes, and that's not great.
And, if I'm being totally honest, using this method has resulted in us catching the monster out with much greater consistency. We just kind of "bump into" enemy monsters all the time; earlier, we lost track of a Behemoth, so instead of running around trying to pick up the scent for a few minutes, we just cut a path as quickly as we could toward the nearest Tyrant spawn. We killed it, took its buff, and then the Behemoth rolled directly through the area we were in -- literally, he rolled within meters of me.
Ah, that Kramer entrance.
Everyone on either side completely dumbfounded that we'd just run into each other. It was hilarious.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
As a result, either Hunters end up facing annoying, fruitless chases for ages, or Monsters end up facing annoying, fruitless drug-out fights at the relay because the Hunters aren't chasing. Definitely not the sort of thing that makes for fun games.
If you can't hold the monster in place for serious damage you need to work on some placement and cutting the monster off. Not every dome is a good dome. Are your teammates close enough to capitalize on it. Are there not many places for the monster to hide. Are there no environmental hazards or hostile wildlife inside etc etc. Also your assaults job is to put damage on. If they can't keep in the monsters face with predictive jetpacking, theyve got to work on that.
They probably just need to refine their matchmaker or have some sort of skill balancing per matchrole or something similar. I'm not sure how it currently works, or if there's a large enough playerbase for it, but it could help
They obviously can't do that, being only one monster player, but there are things you can do along the same line of thought. Let the hunters scan areas or send out tackle drones or something.
I'm sure it'd be a balancing nightmare but as it is I'm seeing a ton of complaints about "most of the match is doing nothing".
We've talked about this. We don't struggle to find and fight monsters. We can beat Stage 3s from 100% health to zero, we're pretty fucking competent. And yes, we've done our dash of all the cutting off and chasing nonsense. Fighting isn't the problem. It's that we have limited time with which to enjoy games and too many monster players want to waste that time on our behalf.
Hell, we can so consistently track and dome monsters that sometimes our other neat trick after buff control is just to wait for the post-evolve dome. It's very doable, and we've done it.
If you play the way you say, great! You're the kind of monster we'd love to see out there in the wild. You might even learn a new style of playing when facing us - ie, buff control. But there aren't enough of you out there to be worth our precious free time.
As an example, there was a pub match I played without my team. We were on this Goliath's tail for 20 minutes. Literally, he hadn't evolved to stage 3 before the end match timer had started. That's when I domed him. With my usual team this would have been a simple fight. No armour and a full health hunter team: simple. But pubs being pubs, they threw away the fight with poor positioning and needless aggression. This is the kind of monster out there. They are only technically competent: they know how to sniff, they know how to juke, they know how to run. But they don't know how to win. They rely purely on Hunters giving them a bad fight. They are the Steven Bradbury of monsters.
They just skate in a circle until the other four guys trip over each other. It's fun to watch a few times, but you can't have a sport that works like that.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
But.
Bert and me and the gang just chased a monster for 5 minutes to finally kill it off with 1337 Crow 360 no scope charged shots.
How should I feel about this?
A friend promised me a six-pack of my choice if I did it, but now he demands that I edit it into one of those quickscope montages to earn the beer.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
With commentary, if you're interested.
Job 4 was technically to control the Armadon buffs, though considering where the monster ended up being I'm thinking it should beat out even setting up sound spikesas te priority. That match would have gone very differently if Behemoth had gotten a lucky Armadon buff.
The monster first slipped up by going to the smaller snow room with no relevant buffs. This is what I mean when I say monsters don't actually know how to win and hunters give away too many wins. That snow room is a death trap - IF the hunters just wait oustide it. At some point Behemoth had to leave through those doors, and we were waiting for him. He still almost escaped, because I committed to the wrong door for too long. But the principle stands: I doubt a single hunter team before now showed this monster player that the small snow room is a death trap, so he's never learned otherwise. he had access to MAYBE one good buff - one of the 3 Armadon positions, but otherwise, we had cut him off from everything, and the Tyrant was decaying while we waited. If he'd gotten lucky and found the Armadon we probably would have refused to fight. Not worth giving him strikes. It's his job to earn them. Instead we would have loosely tracked him and saved the dome for when he evolved. Even with Armadon buff that's a painful fight. If he refused to evolve, then he would have run out the timer on his Armadon buff. Either way, we win.
The fight itself was a little sloppy. I misused my jetpack sometimes, our Assault and Medic are newer to the game and hence got out of position, I didn't use the harpoon at a couple of key points. But honestly, it only proves the point more: Hunters can do everything right and secure a great dome in the perfect area, but if the monster has full armour hunters are still taking a MASSIVE risk for potentially no reward. So why rush into every dome you can find? Luckily this monster liked his chances and stayed around and we finally got the chance to actually punish him. A whole minute of shooting and only once the dome went down did the fight matter for diddly. We should have campfired: this guy gave us the win.
Then it was a matter of getting another safe dome while he was low-ish armour and we won. We still might have lost with a 2 strike Assault, but I think we would have been alright. Still, that risk is why the relay is so beautiful: if you watch where the game glitched out, our Assault was right next to a Mammoth bird and could have been quarter health before the fight even started. It's the monster's job to earn their strikes, and to many hunters are giving them away for free. Likewise, we should have killed that Armadon even before we dropped the first dome. Domes are WAY more dangerous to Hunters than to monsters. I think it should become standard hunter policy to murder all the dangerous animals within a dome before bothering to fight the monster.
Another tactic I've invented is this: sometimes you want to shoot the monster on the chase. You want to see the state of their armour and if they have a buff. Then you can decide whether you even want to bother doming them. Or whether they still haven't taken a particular buffs from the areas they just passed.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Great stuff, and it's this sort of strategy that makes me hopeful that Evolve gets bigger and becomes a valid option when it comes to 'spectator e-Sports'. The MOBAs are great and all, but compared to a team of hunters vs a huge hulking monster, they're fairly obtuse to understand and appreciate what's happening. Evolve on the other hand, you have big smashy thing and progress is clearly delineated by strikes and permanent health loss.
Do you have any sort of resources where someone can learn the ins and outs of each map? Or is it just through learned trial and error? I'd love to jump in but I feel that I'm well behind the curve at this point so I'd rather brush up on theory before getting my ass handed to me on a platter without a hope of improvement.
In terms of buffs and starting paths, boom. I don't totally agree with all these paths, but they're pretty solid.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Well, my team of mad scientists have devised a response. It's pretty dirty and I wouldn't suggest this against legit skywraiths: just the afk skywraiths who are essentally refusing to play the game as intended.
Against the next of these afk skywraiths we're going to Take a Break. The whole point of afk skywraithing is to take advantage of the difficulty we mere humans have at shooting things high up in the air with our poor controllers and KBAMs. Well, if they want to fight dirty, we'll do just the same. Take a Break. Leave the heavy lifting - and the shooting - to the robots.
We haven't tested this theory in the wild, but I tried it out in a private lobby against a full team of bots. The results were fairly promising. I lost one and a half bars of health from full armour in the first dome, and 2 bars in the next one. It's not confirmed though: I'm a pretty shite skywraith. Oh, and even if this does turn out to work, remember to go back to controlling your dude if the Wraith decides to fight like a man again.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Lazarus, Hank, Abe, Torvald. Everyone with health regen except Laz who can take any perk that keeps him survivable.
This is Team Punisher. The basic idea is that Laz's strength isn't the revive but the threat of the revive. Monsters will corpse camp like crazy to just get one strike against that bastard Laz and his team. So when someone gets downed you don't send Laz in. You punish the monster and wait it out. Laz should paint markers on the monster. Torvald should get a scatter nade on the monster then mortar the crap out of him. Shotgun too. Hank should shield the body to buy more punishment time, or engage with his Laser and Orbital when the shield is inappropriate. But he should save his orbital for a good time. The orbital is like Laz's revive: the threat of it is almost as effective as the real deal. Abe should use all those brand new markers to get x1.5 damage with every shot. Seriously, with the natural scatter on his gun and the number of markers you're painting, Abe will get 1.5x damage more often than not. So no matter who's downed there's at least two hunters who are painting and/or hitting markers for extra damage. And the monster cannot afford to just sit pace around the body or fire will rain down onto them from on high. They have to engage in a more dynamic kind of zoning - one which leaves them much more liable to slip up and let Laz in for the cheeky revive.
The key is to never bunch up and to keep LoS with Hank's shield. With Health Regen on everyone, Hank becomes your team's bargain basement Val replacement: for as long as he's shielding he is effectively healing as well. But if you bunch up then Hank can't shield everyone who needs the heals and Laz's burst heal can only do so much. As much as this team deals with downs pretty well, it still doesn't want them.
Interestingly, this team comp changes which wildlife buffs you really want. Damage is still great but it's not as absolutely necessary: your team composition is the damage buff. The Armadon buff is still fantastic but the megamouth buff comes really close to edging it out. Putting Laz's heal burst on an even faster cd is great. Giving Hank more cloaks is great - for himself and to save Laz's own cloak for emergencies. Getting the Assault more personal shields - to prevent the damage Laz can't heal as well as Caira - is great. And the Tyrant, while still nice, sort of makes your own perk a wasted slot, so you can afford to go for other utility buffs.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
PSN: Bert_Bertinrow
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
I...totally disagree. Sorry!
Val and Cabot are the absolute worst hunters for using weakspots short of hunters who just don't fire projectile-based weaponry at all. Single-shot weapons with comparably long reload times. Every single time you miss a marker with those weapons drastically decreases your ideal DPS. High fire rates and high spreads: those are the features of guns that love weak points.
Maybe it's a controller vs KBAM thing. Here in console-land, there's just no point aiming specifically for a weak point with low fire rate weapons. You can reasonably expect to hit the monster with those guns but anything else is a bonus.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Oh Markov. Markov is perfectly fine even in console-land. The AR's fire rate is great. We aren't total plebs down here in the console slums!
Also, people don't seem to understand that assuming perfect accuracy the AR's DPS is basically the same as the Lightning gun for as long as both are continually firing - ie, for the length of the AR's mag. There are moments when Markov's AR is the higher DPS option if you're confident you can hit the right spot - a good Val marker or two, a landed Kraken or one using Lighting or Aftershock, a whole face full of Laz weak points, a slow-rolling Behemoth, that awkward range where the lightning gun struggles to stay locked, etcetera, etcetera. Markov is one of the coolest Assaults because each of his weapons can be important in any fight. Playing him feels more interesting decision-wise.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
While I don't play Val or Laz much, I do play Torvald a bit and always throwing out grenades in between mortar barrages. In summary stats, though, I never seem to get much above 100-200 bonus damage in a round. I've played with Slim and Abe and Griffin and all sorts of hunters, but it always seems to be a really low amount of bonus damage. Maybe summary stats are bugged?
There's not a doubt in my mind. Even with the punisher team - a team specifically built to abuse weak points - you'll get obscenely low weak point stats. I wouldn't give a damn except those stats are directly related to your unlocks, which give you straight up buffs to your hunters, which can be the difference between winning and losing. A 3-starred assault starts the match with 2/3 of the 3 star damage increase perk before they've even selected a perk at all. It's fucking obnoxious how important the grind can be on some hunters, Assaults in particular. Have you ever lost a close game of Evolve? Trick question: of course you have. Was your assault below 3 stars? OTOH, was the monster 3 starred? If the answers are no and yes respectively, then that's why you lost.
The star system really shouldn't affect stats. I would have grinded just to fill up bars. Bars that aren't filled must be filled!
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
This is from a recent esportsy thing. I'm not too sure how matches were set up, but it definitely seems like monsters who know what they're doing simply dominate matches. I'm pretty sure that's without buffs, too.
PSN: Bert_Bertinrow
So this is a cool way to hunt. It's basically a better planned version of how the trapper should be trapping anyway, but it seems to have the whole thing down to a science. Me likey. Choke-point chasing.
Yeah, I think the minigun would still be a bit weak compared to the AR, but it could be passable - especially with Laz's weak points. More spread = hitting more markers! Plus he makes up for that with the stink bomb and flamer being fantastic zoning tools if the monster refuses to leave the body's general area.
And yeah, give Markov a try! I personally think he and Torvald are the most effective Assaults* because they just can't be kited. Parnell has super soldier but when it's off cooldown he can suffer. Hyde hates kiting and he only has a long-CD stink bomb to fight against it. He's very team comp dependent in that sense. He might work well with Team Punisher just because monsters will willingly hang around a body and set up the flamer for him.
Edit: Also-also, guys try out health regen perk Slim. He's pretty legit. He sacrifices some healing of his allies by not taking reload speed but I'm not certain he really does if he can keep regenning by way of shooting. But health regen increases his survivability massively. His self heal is terrible, but now every second he jukes the monster in his spore cloud is more damage he's undoing. The key to any medic is the ability to survive a monster's undivided attention: it's why Val is still trash.
*Hyde is still the most fun.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Also, your link to choke point chasing just goes back to the games and technology board?
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
If you have time today, watch the live stream! It'll be at 3PM PDT. We'll be talking about the how and why of what's coming in future balance updates. This does not include balance changes that involve code changes or bug fixes, etc. These are only balance changes that may be in future micropatches.
Specifically we'll be demoing a build with the following changes. Please note that these changes are still in testing so final values may change, be removed, postponed, etc.
Hunt Mode
Sudden Death forgiveness timer reduced to ten seconds (was fifteen)
Hunters
Hyde
Toxic Grenade
Removed Hunter slow effect (and the crowd goes wild!!!!!)
Parnell
Multifire Rocket Launcher
200% more accurate for long range destruction!
Torvald
Shrapnel Grenades
Increased proximity detonation radius to help vs airborne targets
Val
Heal Burst
Increased self heal by 50%
Slim
Spore Cloud Launcher
Radius decreased 20%
Sunny
Mininuke
Increased proximity detonation radius to help vs airborne targets
Shield Drone
Hit points of the drone decreased by 40% (easier to destroy)
Jetpack Booster
Provides 50% less thrust boost on jetpack dodges
Monsters
All Monsters
Melee Stamina
Goliath, Kraken and Wraith melee stamina auto fill time now set to 3 seconds (Was quicker before though it varied per monster. This controls how quickly another heavy hit can be used when pausing between melee attacks. This will have no affect on what attacks are used when constantly melee attacking.)
Armor Regeneration
Starts six seconds after damage taken (was 10). This helps make the armor regeneration perk more responsive.
Kraken
Lightning Strike
Moves at a constant speed (used to move faster on the far plane initially, then slow down. Now it always moves at its final speed)
Character Perks
Damage Bonus (M & H)
Reduced to 5%, 7.5% and 10% (was 7.5, 10, 15)
Armor Regeneration (M)
Increased to 50%, 75%, 100% (was 25, 38, 50)
Cooldown Reduction (M)
Decreased to 10%, 15%, and 20% (was 15, 23,30)
Movement Speed (M & H)
Increased to 15%, 20% and 25% (was 10, 15, 20)
Stamina Bonus (M)
Reduced to 20%, 30%, 40% (was 25, 35, 50)
Climb Speed (M)
Increased to 50% (was 30)
Reload Speed (H)
Decreased three star to 25% (was 30)
Jump Height (H)
Increased to 300% (was 200)
Elite Wildlife Buffs
Armadon Bull
Hunter and Monster damage reduction now 25% (was 35%)
Crowbill Sloth
Hunter and Monster damage bonus now 25% (was 35%)
Mammoth Bird
Monster Ability cooldown now 35% (was 50%)
Hunter Reload/Recharge bonus now includes electronic devices.
Megamouth
Monster Pounce damage bonus now 50% (was 100%)
Hunter class special cooldown reduction now 35% (was 50%)
Nomad
Hunter jetpack recharge bonus now 50% (was 100%)
Monster traversal stamina bonus now 50% (was 100%)
Tyrant
Monster duration reduced to 2 minutes (was 5, the new value gives the monster ~two bars of health back)
Hunter duration reduced to 3 minutes (was 5)
Hunter health regeneration rate reduced by 20%
Elite Wildlife
Armadon Bull
Health increased 33%
Blitzleopard
Health increased 25%
Speed increased 38%
Canyon Strider
Speed increased 38%
Cephaladon
Health increased 40%
Crowbill Sloth
Health increased 34%
Mammoth Bird
Health increased 70%
Speed increased 30%
Marsh Strider
Speed increased 38%
Megamouth
Health increased 34%
Nomad
Health increased 34%
Obsidian Grub
Health increased by 100%
Reaver
Health increased by 150%
Speed increased by 23%
Steamadon
Health increased by 150%
Speed increased by 15%
Tyrant
Health increased by 37%
Venomhound
Health increased by 190%
Speed increased by 15%
Mastery Adjustments
Reduced the requirements for the following masteries
Skilled Tongue Grab
Grab 10 creatures with tongue grab
Skilled Shrapnel Grenade
Allow 160 Bonus Damage (from weak spots)
Skilled Rock Wall
Deal 5500 damage with the wall
Skilled Fissure
Deal 13000 damage
Skilled Leech Gun
Do 20000 Damage
Expert Spore Cloud Launcher
Keep the Monster in smoke for 5 seconds (20 times)
Expert Shield Drone
Shield 19000 total damage
Expert Tongue Grab
Grab Hunters 25 times
Expert Lava Bomb
Hit multiple creatures 20 times
Expert Healing Drone
Revive 10 teammates with a Healing Drone
Elite Shield Drone
Shield 2000 damage in a single round 20 times
Elite Healing Drone
Heal 20 teammates from 80 meters away
Elite Tongue Grab
Grab Hunters in mid-air 30 times
Elite Fissure
Deal damage to multiple Hunters 30 times
Elite Spore Cloud Launcher
Smoke Revive 10 teammates
Increased the requirements for the following masteries
Expert Rock Wall
Trap a creature between the wall and you 60 times
Elite Stasis Gun
Enable the team to do 110000 damage while the monster is slowed
Elite Lava Bomb
HIt multiple Hunters 100 times
Award Adjustments
Tuned requirements for more consistent XP awarded between characters
Hyde increased requirements for RPS Beast
520 damage
Hyde increased requirements for Noxious
525 damage
Griffin decreased requirements for Close Quarters
630 damage
Val decreased requirements for Quick Fix
2000 health
Torvald increased requirements for Obliterated
1800 damage
Torvald increased requirements for A Thousand Cuts
5 hits
Crow increased requirements for Stop Motion
slow for 12 seconds
Sunny increased requirements for Power Aid
boost for 24 seconds
Hyde for best assault! Throw them stink bombs with impunity. Now if only they got rid of Parnell's health sacrifice.
Val has a li'l bit more survivability! Yay!
Movespeed perk is now OP! 25% extra movespeed is amazing. I expect monsters to consider this, too, since it also affects sneaking speed.
Wildlife buffs are nerfed! They're still really powerful, though.
Elite wildlife are buffed versions of normal wildlife! If you thought an ordinary Mammoth bird was annoying, wait 'til the Elite one panic-runs at you 30% faster!
Things that still need working:
Flying monsters still avoid punishment too easily (Kraken, Sky-Wraith). Hunters that mess up or otherwise get punished have no way of making a comeback, they just wait to lose.
Maybe Hunt is the wrong mode to play.
Man those wildlife buffs terrify me. Not so much the big creatures - although doming yourself in with an albino is going to be so much more dangerous now - it's the smaller stuff. Personally I hate the Reavers and Mammoth Birds more than anything else in this game. Ticking damage you just can't seem to kill fast enough in a fight or on the run. I like the wildlife as a concept and I'm glad they exist, but as a Hunter I want to murder every last fucking piece of fauna I find.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Totally valid strategy. Especially three + meats
It was never such a whizbang area denial tool that the Hunters needed to be punished for hiding in it. Meanwhile, there was no slowdown for standing in a field of Markov's mines...
So while I was in a custom lobby grinding out some stars with friends I noticed something. On console the autoaim points you to centre of mass UNLESS you're aiming substantially closer to the 'head'. I'm talking shoulder height and even slightly over the target. So if you're firing a single-shot weapon like Val's sniper rifle or Cabot's railgun on console, don't be afraid to aim slightly above the head from hipfire then quickscope in for a headshot.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk