Before anyone doubts the utility of this document, this is merely a product of my egotrip-tastic enjoyment of the Lerk. Likely there is no useful information contained herein, and you may just laugh at me.
1. 3.0 Lerk flight
Lets first get the basics out of the way. Lerk flight currently has 3 effective modes :
Propulsion -
Works only forward and upwards, not backwards or in any strafe direction. Costs energy - about 2-3 consecutive flaps will get you towards maximum speed, where either an artificial maxspeed or drag stops you. No idea what it is.
Glide -
While holding the Jump key, you will keep most of your momentum - the higher your initial speed, the more momentum you will loose when gliding (simulated drag). Hence its either used when topspeed isn't absolutely necessary, or regenerating energy at low speeds - its still faster, safer and more fun than walking.
Freefall -
Release the jump key and don't hit it anymore, and you fly the same way a Skulk does - via screwmeister 2000 HL physics that should let you strafeturn et cetera. Just good to know that this is a viable alternative to gliding the last few meters to the target, where you might have to touch down anyway.
Note that the most common way to drop out of flight is by smacking a solid object infront of you - marine, alien or static, it doesn't matter. Any part of the Lerk bounding box that latches onto anything will instantly drop you - in which case you want to aim up at 45-80 degrees and flap again. Be aware of spots with bugged entitys that might not be visible (Tanith satcom weldable, Origin laser drilling) and of course.. stairs.
2. Evading with a Lerk
The easiest thing to use a Lerk for is to hang back and Spore anything that moves for your teammates. Its mildly irritating for the Marines, and thats about it. It can however in keyspots provide vital delays - usually at a higher risk though, because unlike by hanging back and sporing the same spot over and over you're going to get shot at.
First thing is to make sure your Sensitivity is high enough to turn 180/360 fast and flap the hell out of there. Next, you need a basic plan - unlike a Skulk, the main way to survive probably isn't to kill all marines in sight, but to always plan your aproach and escape.
//too specific
So if for example Aliens in ns_ayumi have Pressure Control, and Hamasaki is going up. Marines are building up in Cold Turn, and have AE35. You're trying to attack Cold Turn. It would now be silly to sit with your back turned towards either AE35 (Eastern Entrance), or to flee in that direction. Instead, you'd want to approach cold turn from either the Hamasaki or Pressure side, and whenever a Marine starts pointing a gun at you, turn, flee, regen and come back. Its important that you don't wait for him to fire and gauge your damage - lerks die fast.
//
For those that don't know the map, in a nutshell : Know where you'd like to run roughly ahead of time, and make reasonably sure you won't run into more marines there. Once you get Hive 2 and Celerity, this becomes less important and harder to do - still try to play around with the map and find all those nice little escape routes. The Hive1 Lerk needs them - alot.
From there on, support Lerking is simple. Fire Spores into the mass, run when they shoot at you. Rinse, repeat.
Notes :
- Glide against the top of any unobstructed ceiling, leaves you with more momentum and an uncomftorable spot to aim at
- Keep looking/listening around for marines you fly past, don't turn around in their line of sight though, makes you very easy to blast out of the sky.
- Just to repeat it, stay UP. The floor has so many disadvantages to an evading Lerk, its just painful - teammates will knock you onto the ground, small ground structures will stop you and changes in elevation can immediately ground you too.
- Use 2/3 flap bursts and glide. Try to keep it a regular rythm, even under fire - allows for more uptime due to having more leftover adrenaline. And you might not always have that much after sporing.
- Experiment with a secondary jump key that you can push faster, even at the expense of a bit of strafing. It helped my lerk speed alot.
3. Killing stuff, or trying
Okay, so the first to chapters here were fairly crappy. Now lets try to kill things with a Lerk. The rules really stay the same - figure out the way in and out as thoroughly as possible. Remember all the rules from evading.
Usually, when trying to attack something, you want to scout it out first for that very reason. Because you have to know what you're up against, and how you're going to pull it off. Otherwise every engagement comes down to luck. So say for example you were in the same scenario on ns_ayumi as before, but this time you were the first person to hear "Ressource Tower is under Attack". You fly near Cold Turn, preferably from the Hamas side (where you have the ramp down to escape), peak in and fly through if you need to take a closer look. If you're not even shot at or noticed, you can often just swoop in and take a first one down - the more you're shot at, the more you might want to consider not going in there after all, or waiting til some Skulk backup is near.
Scouting all over the place is really 80% of getting some decent Lerk kills - nothing like cherrypicking those marines while they're fighting Skulks, or distracting marines while Skulks chomp them to death. Or finding that poor little loner that never even gets a chance to turn around. It also allows you to easily keep otherwise impractical spots clear - say veil northloop. Keep looking around, informing your team and going in for those absolutely skilless kills :p
Once you decide to actually stick around and duke it out, its fairly simple. Try to get a high spot to get a good view of who you're going to attack, try to attack from around corners or otherwise leave very little warning/approach towards your victims - Lerks die almost as easily as Skulks if you let them get that fire in, but they can more easily access any place on the map. Don't forget, you can for example hover in a vertical cutout while marines walk past and then fall down on them.
Once attacking, theres 3 basic ways of doing it :
Drop down -
Easiest, just drop out of flight near him and chomp. Good for doing some damage when you're fairly sure he won't notice. Allows for a pretty easy escape if you have some Adren left.
Joust -
Similiar to dropping down, but you try to overshoot him and have as much momentum as possible - if he uses Knockback to his advantage, you should be closer to him. If he just sidesteps a bit (usually still getting hit), you can just charge at him again with a new jump and 2 flaps. Keep going at him with alot of speed and keep him off balance, 1-2 bites per joust. This will often kill the guy before he gets his bearings.
Its not too great if he has friends, as they'll have easy shots - but pretty useful for short attacks or picking off good loners. Good aim is half as dangerous if he's just confused as all hell.
Glide -
The hardest, and most rewarding. The problem with glide attacking for more than one bite is, if you don't match knockback, your glidespeed and your hits together right, he'll either get a bit of time to shoot at you (if you're too slow), or more often you'll just drop out of the air (if you're too fast). Generally, the glide is very useful though - and can also be done as a single-bite, where its alot easier.
Just approach an upper body part of your target marine, get a bite in and veer off. Be sure to not approach straight, avoid his gun level if possible and try to not have them look at you while in the approach. Remember, especially once Marines are teched, only luck stands between a Lerk and instant death if he lets them get a bead on.
Notes :
- Use lots of temporary cover, like objects to put between you and the firer. Keep moving, keep people confused and don't be shy to use excessive evasives - thats what the Lerks good at after all.
- Don't be afraid to pull out occasionally when you have doubts, things didn't go as planned or more people showed up than you invited to your little party. Pulling out too early barely costs any time, pulling out too late is usually fatal.
- Feel free to mix any of the 2 basic manuevers, evading and attacking. You can bait marines into going for you by sporing, you can wear them out by evasively flying around them several times before attacking.
- Not mentioned anywhere else, as this is a Hive1 or Hive2/Cel Lerk based text is Umbra. Its useful for any Lerk build, but remember its limitations - it costs a good bit of adren, its not nearly bulletproof and takes away most elements of surprise. Preferrably use it as support for others, when attacking HAs or to tank-up tight hallways/vents. Don't kid yourself into being able to take on large weaponry in groups with it. And Adrenaline Lerks are unattractive for that reason - it doesn't make for great tanking in all but a few places, and Celerity is pretty powerful.
- Focus makes 1-hit glide approaches much more powerful, even vs HA. You can pick apart an entire train easily with the right terrain (Cel/Regen assumed).
4. Summary
SaltzBad is slacking off on monday again. He also is really proud of his ability to run from/drive mad anything or anyone that poses a serious threat. All applaud him.
Topic: How To Suck As A Lerk (Read 8105 times)
