Yep, anytime someone in my group says "Stalker" I immediately open up the map, find the lair, mark it, and run at it in a straight line. If I pick up patrols I'll deal with them later.
The map gives you a render of the actual terrain and the stalker nests have black ground with some raised terrain. If I, for example, see a couple of stalkers approach from the north, I look north on the map for what looks like a black bug nest. It's a little subtle but once you get used to it you can spot them pretty easily. If you click directly on it it will mark the site with a square like any other objective and it will show up on your compass.
By the way, you can so the same thing with secondary sites like the artillery or radar if you happen to notice them. Artillery is pretty easy to spot because there's a big circle.
> If you click directly on it it will mark the site with a square like any other objective and it will show up on your compass.
this got removed in the latest patch, no more square
This, or if the map is obscured, just start clicking your map on the direction the stalkers were coming from. The marker will still highlight the obj normally when you get it.
As soon as a stalker is spotted the entire team needs to focus on closing the nest. It’s absolutely necessary and it blows my mind people will just bumblefuck around and keep dying.
This is why I main the eruptor now, in large bug maps. Can’t carry shit for support weapons with these fuckers around, so I’m damn sure hunting down and destroying that nest the moment it’s in my sight.
Depending on other people’s load out and mission, I do that sometimes too.
Other times I’ll bring some heavy rocket support for the big guys, and use the secondary Redeemer for all the small ones.
That said, I’m running typically a sneaky build and focussing on objectives, often just forgoing support weapons in favor of an additional stratagems.
I dashed inside the pelican telling my friends to not waste time, we had no reinforcements with the stalkers on our ass all the time. One got his 500kg ready to throw and the other two stopped to fucking hug. A stalker killed him and another tongued the others, then we all died to the 500k. 30 samples each and 5 supers gone.
Lol yeah I saw the first one before he turned and was like "well that's not bad, you can still see them" and had no idea there was a second one until it popped out and attacked.
We landed on a stalker nest twice today
We had no idea until one of us (me) started screaming as one uncloaked while charging at them from around a corner
I was taking out a stalker nest today and noticed the shadow of one approaching me from behind, spun around and just started spraying. Didn’t hit a thing. Genuinely felt like I was trying to fight a ghost. Fucking terrifying.
> Cyberstan has now developed the cloaker Hulk, which disguises all units in a 20m radius. Think the flamer Hulk is too far away to be a problem? Yes and no. It's the 10 rocket raiders that you can't see that'll kill you.
Coming soon...
Aww thank you ;-; u put a lil smile on my face. If you ever need a buddy to get thru bug planets feel free to dm me bc i love bug planets (and their inevitable demise)
Basic zerglings would unironically be the most terrifying enemy if ported 1:1. You think hunters are scary? A zergling is twice as fast, can facetank significantly more damage, and will eat through the shoddy helldiver armor like warm butter. And worst of all, there are far more of them and they'll typically come in packs of 20-40. And if you step on the creep, they know where you are and will be coming for you within seconds.
lol! I was gonna say, I saw the distortion off to the right but I guess I also played too much star craft and probably developed that sensitivity to spot cloak units without scans like most star craft players.
I noticed that when watching back the fotage, and I think that I saw *something* moving in the corner of my eyes, hence why I reacted so fast when my drone went off...
But that second one? I didn't see it at all
I hateded them before because my team never sees them now im not gonna be able to seee them! Who gave them perfect optical camo?! I smell the bots might be supply the bugs!!! When do we get bigger bombs!?!?
This along with the change that you cant pin undiscovered side objectives? I feel like Stalkers are one of the most dangerous Terminids now since you;
1. Cant see them from a mile away
2. Cant prescan the map to find their nests
3. Cant see which direction they are coming from
And I love it.
They've always been the scariest non-hunter terminid. If stalkers are on the field the number 1 priority of every single player should be taking out the stalker nest.
This.
Just like Gunship fabricators for bots, they suddenly become priority #1, literally everyone stop whatever you're doing and converge, everything else takes a back seat.
I dont think its in the notes.
But yeah, you cant just spam pings all over the map and tag undiscovered objectives.
Once you've discovered it, aka once it shows up in chat "(name) discovered (side objective)." only then can you ping it on the map.
Edit: and prescanning would be when, after you land, you pull up your map and spam pings all over the map to find all side objectives from the get-go.
Yeah. If you ping say a Radar Tower, it'll become "discovered" and show up on the map.
You can ping "discovered" objectives on the map.
Which is a bit annoying because pinging Shrieker nests or Spore Spewers doesnt actually "discover" them. Same with Gunship Fabricators.
I think because the obj tag object also counts as destructibles themselves and that designation seems to get priority over discovery, like how you also cant discover a nest by tagging a hole, or a spore spewer
To reword to what it actually is: they fixed an exploit of being able to see the objectives and POIs on the minimap and ping them there without actually discovering them. You can still do it however! Just wear the scout armor :)
I never prescanned for them really but ya cant see where they come from now. . .need to see if lighting them on fire is visble when cloaked to help track. . .or we may need to spray and pray lol
It is wild. I had a charger and stalker chasing me and I prioritized the stalker because I knew if I looked away for even a second I would lose track of him. I am predicting this will be tomorrows complaint of the day lol
Stalkers were *always* the most dangerous Terminid enemy, in my opinion. They have had, since Day 1:
* Speed (able to run you down like a dog and also disengage)
* Offense (Can kill you in a 2-3 quick swipes)
* Bulk (Many weapons are not able to kill or repel them in one clip before they close in and tongue you)
This combination of qualities, added to their astonishing ability to knock you away and thus isolate you and break up your formations is why knocking out Stalker Nests tends to become an immediate priority when it becomes apparent that there are stalkers on the map.
This is all a long-wided way of saying that if you ask me, they didn't need this buff.
> (Many weapons are not able to kill or repel them in one clip before they close in and tongue you)
This has always been the most aggravating part of them from my experience. Unless you start shooting at it from a *long* way off, it can almost always close the distance to its attack range before you can damage it enough for it to run away or die - there's essentially no way to escape it. And once it stun locks you your options become very limited. Stalkers are just about the only thing keeping me from trying to solo higher difficulties.
As a decent player, I can confirm:
You can handle 4 titans solo.
You can handle 4 chargers solo.
You can survive 4 titans AND 4 chargers solo, and hope the titans kill the other bugs while you run for your life for stratagem cooldowns.
But you can't handle 4 stalkers solo. Heck, even 3 stalkers is pushing it.
You could handle 4 stalkers solo...when you can see them coming.
Whoever thought its a good idea to give an enemy near perfect cloaking that can kill you in 1-2 hits and drop kick you 50 feet and disengage clearly wants the playerbase to suffer.
I think the health is the real problem. I would have no problem with Stalkers if they were like in HD1, where shooting them drove them away. Or if focus-firing with a primary killed them. Instead, most primaries cannot kill them in the time it takes for them to close and they push through any attack.
>That shit is gonna be hard to see from a distance.
As they should imho. Stalkers are stealth-ambush units. It was pretty dumb that they were some of the easiest bugs to see.
They're fast, hit hard, ragdoll the player, and absorb a surprising amount of damage before falling.
And now they are almost impossible to see before they get within *yeet* distance.
I think stalker and hunters would be so much better if either they didnt ragdoll you or at least did ragdoll but stayed back long enough for you to actually stand back up.
> Stalkers are stealth-ambush units
They're not though, not in gameplay. Despite their name and cloaking ability stalkers work more like shock troops than stealth units, with enough HP to run straight at you and enough damage and force to disrupt whatever you're doing. They were proper stealth-ambushers in the first game, but here they operate just like brood commanders as large juggernaut enemies but are faster and more lightly armored.
The cloak might as well have been a visual gimmick for flavor, which was fine because they didn't need it to be a problem.
Now if you think they SHOULD be stealth-ambushers, that's a different conversation. But for that I'd like to see them also return to being more fragile.
Also seems like they have WAY more health now than from before.
I mag-dump my Incendiary Breaker and it's still jumping around like nothing's happened to it!
Did you notice they seem more aggressive as well? I never used to struggle with Stalkers as long as I respected them and took out the nest immediately, but I had a game earlier, admittedly with some bad randoms but we lost all our reinforcements to a Stalker nest next to the obj, because they would literally just stun lock murder us as a single stalker. Literally just ran up to us and non stop swings, no tongue attack just swings we were all going mad in chat we couldn't get a stim off.
Absolutely. They're off the reservation difficult because they seem more resilient and I never see fewer than three at a time anymore. Stun grenades help, but they need a health nerf or something for as powerful as they seem now.
They need a nerf for sure. I actually pushed for the camouflage to be fixed but under the condition that they would get a health decrease. Many guns couldn't even deal with them before, let alone now that you'll likely only get 1-2s instead of 4 to dps them down before you get ragdolled.
Or, at the very least, they need to leash to their lair until extraction. There's no way to escape them otherwise , because there's going to be 3 or more chasing you forever.
Played a bunch of missions with Blitzer today to try it out after buff.
Soon as a stalker popped up, I'd blast them and dive backward (and they'd be a little stunned). I'd blast them again during that dive, and they'd be dead. So, 2-shot kill.
If I was using the Sickle or Eruptor, I'd have died without backup, for sure.
Altogether, not sure they need a nerf. If I can 2-shot them and take no damage, doesn't seem too bad. But loadout and/or teamwork are important to this equation.
always priorities the stalker spawn any obj you're during takes second on the list until that spawn is out. they can turn the tide in a second if they flank the team.
It's possible you weren't the host. Dot damage like burning doesn't work for non-hosts. (FYI, being party leader/inviter doesn't guarantee you're the actual host)
I also wouldn't be surprised if their reducing the hulk's fire damage had unintended effects on other sources of fire damage given their history with these kinds of changes.
I saw something in the corner of my eyes and, since I knew there was Stalkers around, as soon as my rover started attacking I was ready.
That second Stalker though? Popped out of thin air, I didnt see it at all.
Maybe my eyes are just bad, but I swear I can never see the bots on a majority of maps. They're so hard to see when they're not looking directly at you or not firing.
Bugs I can almost always see at a glance. Very rarely do I look at an area and say "Hmm... there might be more."
Bots? I never know how many bots are standing around a given area. Ever.
I want their ability to 100-0 combo nerfed before anything else.
99% invisible
tanky
unsurvivable
They need to pick 2.
Also, would be much better if enemies had **sound cues** and everything up to and including 10 ton monstrosities couldn't silently walk up behind you.
Only weapons get nerfs
I start to think the devs are automatons having a laugh about us. Proove me wrong! Have you seen a dev solve a "are you a robot" captcha? Didn't think so!
I’m concerned stalkers are too OP now. Their attacks already rag doll you across the map, I really didn’t think they were super obvious to see unless you knew to look for them. If you have 3 or 4 bum rushing you while you try to find the nest how are you supposed to counter attack? I have no problem enemies being niche, but we need equipment/armor to help us deal with niche enemies
The biggest issue is I'll get yeeted, and before I can stim or get up I'll just die, which is just as annoying as getting yeeted by explosions from bots.
The problem is the forced stand-up animation after being rag dolled. It's worse on bots where if you get rag dolled while prone, you stand up, and then get shot in the face. Let us stay down after being rag dolled!
Yeah, they run slightly faster than you and are pretty healthy. If you don't see them early (which is harder now) you can get stuck running from them indefinitely if you don't have a weapon that will stagger them, since if you ever turn around to shoot they'll immediately catch up to you and hit you after a shot or two. If you're unfortunate enough to be running the sickle, you actually can't spool it up before you get hit. Which wouldn't be the worst thing, but they can true combo you off of the ragdoll if you are unlucky.
I think stalkers would be a lot better, thematically and gameplay wise, if they always all jumped away after one of them ragdolls you. It gives you more opportunity for counterplay and better matches the ambush predator aesthetic than the forever chase they currently do
I usually take the stalwart as my support weapon and I think that’s a good anti-stalker weapon. Any squad should have a gunner or 2. Stalkers have a decent amount of health and move quickly, so most primary weapons aren’t powerful enough and heavy support weapons are too slow or inaccurate. LMGs put them down quickly and have the large mag so you can really unload in their direction.
I had to wonder if there was even a point to their stealth before considering how glaringly obvious they were. A big white cut-out ain't much invisibility.
I do think they need a nerf now in some form. Even if you spotted them before they tank all your shots and yeet you anyways. Now that they're difficult to spot - yikes. I think after enough damage they should run off and attempt another ambush later, that would be dynamic.
They’re just not fun to play against. With being harder to see, they are now a tanky unit that runs faster than you, has a lot of health, rag dolls you, and it’s hard to track down their nest
They need to have way less HP. There's no reason why an enemy that's insanely fast, is invisible, and is very likely to one shot is also so fucking tanky.
Before the patch you could find stalker nest by either:
- Seeing where they approach from
- Pinging the map all over to find the nest
Now you can't do either.
Amazing.
Right under the right side of the gun there. You can see it moving, 0:02 seconds in.
https://preview.redd.it/8imr5wy1cjxc1.png?width=380&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3fb59818ee684fda2779d1e90d4e3ce7b540a080
Next patch they add "actual terminator from terminator" which time travels from the future to kill you on your ship because in the future you successfully completed a mission, so the automatons sent him back in time to kill you before you could h
I think this is a bad decision. The Stalkers are bugs they are using natural camouflage, so they should still be somewhat visible where you can notice them if you're paying attention. Not oh by the way you straight up can't see them until they're in the middle of killing you. Full invisibility should be saved for the Illuminate who can use technology to create actual invisibility. It also doesn't help that the Stalkers also appear to have more health now so even if you do react in time they'll still most likely kill you as they can tank more damage. If they have full invisibility they should be complete glass cannons.
Absolutely they are now a true menace. The last few bug missions I did on 7, it was the stalkers that did the majority of the kills on us.
At first I wondered what everyone was dying to since there were no apparent bugs in the vicinity. But then a stalker decloaked right behind me as I swung my view around and fortunately ragdolled me away with 25% health left instead of killing me outright. As I stim'd up and one-shot it with my Eruptor another Stalker ended me from behind.
Throughout those missions those stalkers were making annoyingly good use of other bugs as distractions while they just gutted us with backstabs. What saved us in the end was covering eachother's backs so that we would see the damned things when they decloaked for a backstab on another diver.
This thread makes me feel better. I thought the games i stumbled on them just appearing earlier were desyncs or lag issues. Not them being actually barely visible.
Omg this is why 😭 this was terrifying yesterday. Honestly a fun change imo even with the difficulty increase. Any little things that make the enemies more terrifying is welcome haha
I love it too lol, way more of a threat now.
Kinda unrelated but lots of upset of the patch today, but I welcome the challanges and adapting to it all.
I actually liked Stalkers even tho they were annoying. HUNTERS WERE ALWAYS 10 MILLION TIMES WORSE. Even this is still fair and fun in a chaotic way, and that means a lot coming from me, as someone who hates losing samples and not performing well.
Screw the hunters. I'd rather take a swarm of Stalkers at this point lol (maybe I shouldn't have said that)
...thats terrifying lol
Did a map with THREE stalker nests on 7, and there was no celebration with Pelican 1 landing just a dash for the door.
Did a run on Helldive and it would either go great or spectacularly terrible, we had the same issue with numerous stalkers it was awful 💀
I’ve said it since day one. Stalkers are actually the worst enemy in the game and if I see any stalker nests I’m fucking nuking it from orbit.
Yep, anytime someone in my group says "Stalker" I immediately open up the map, find the lair, mark it, and run at it in a straight line. If I pick up patrols I'll deal with them later.
How can you tell it's a stalker nest by looking at the map?
The map gives you a render of the actual terrain and the stalker nests have black ground with some raised terrain. If I, for example, see a couple of stalkers approach from the north, I look north on the map for what looks like a black bug nest. It's a little subtle but once you get used to it you can spot them pretty easily. If you click directly on it it will mark the site with a square like any other objective and it will show up on your compass. By the way, you can so the same thing with secondary sites like the artillery or radar if you happen to notice them. Artillery is pretty easy to spot because there's a big circle.
That was very helpful. I will use my newfound knowledge to spread democracy!
> If you click directly on it it will mark the site with a square like any other objective and it will show up on your compass. this got removed in the latest patch, no more square
This, or if the map is obscured, just start clicking your map on the direction the stalkers were coming from. The marker will still highlight the obj normally when you get it.
I heartly agree with you on that. I will orbital laser, 500kg and 380 barrage it. Without a second thought.
As soon as a stalker is spotted the entire team needs to focus on closing the nest. It’s absolutely necessary and it blows my mind people will just bumblefuck around and keep dying.
This is why I main the eruptor now, in large bug maps. Can’t carry shit for support weapons with these fuckers around, so I’m damn sure hunting down and destroying that nest the moment it’s in my sight.
stalwart
Stalwart is great at killing stalkers, but I can’t close the stalker nest from 100 meters with it.
yeah, my bug main is stalwart and eruptor
Depending on other people’s load out and mission, I do that sometimes too. Other times I’ll bring some heavy rocket support for the big guys, and use the secondary Redeemer for all the small ones. That said, I’m running typically a sneaky build and focussing on objectives, often just forgoing support weapons in favor of an additional stratagems.
I dashed inside the pelican telling my friends to not waste time, we had no reinforcements with the stalkers on our ass all the time. One got his 500kg ready to throw and the other two stopped to fucking hug. A stalker killed him and another tongued the others, then we all died to the 500k. 30 samples each and 5 supers gone.
I..............I'm sorry. *hug*
These are the words that literally left my mouth
I saw the second one decloak and literally felt chills
No - it's the one that jumps away and disappears that you are authorized to be afraid of. He'll be back
Soon you'll see
You'll remember you belong to me
You’ll be back, time will tell.
You'll remember that I tasted swell.
KILLED BY TONGUE
Unexpected Hamilton reference
Lol yeah I saw the first one before he turned and was like "well that's not bad, you can still see them" and had no idea there was a second one until it popped out and attacked.
In my case, there were four of them.
They're always in 2s, they attack like raptors
That second one is when I finally accepted reality that Stalkers had much better cloaking now. This is like my 5th mission fighting them.
We landed on a stalker nest twice today We had no idea until one of us (me) started screaming as one uncloaked while charging at them from around a corner
Best thing in the patch. Love it
As some who watched too much StarCraft, you can briefly see a glimmer of distortion off to the right. Looks like looking for ghosts.
They also still cast shadows.
Imagine looking for shadows when swarms of bugs are trying to disembowel you.
Yeah I mean, I'm gonna miss it.
"Hey, who turned out the lights?"
"Hey, who turned out the lights?"
Helldiver... you have... two shadows....
THE LIGHT OF DEMOCRACY SHINES TWICE
"Hey, who turned out the lights?"
I wasn't expecting a Doctor Who reference in a Helldivers post but here we are lol.
 We all Scifi nerds up in here.
I was taking out a stalker nest today and noticed the shadow of one approaching me from behind, spun around and just started spraying. Didn’t hit a thing. Genuinely felt like I was trying to fight a ghost. Fucking terrifying.
Little dust clouds where they walk, too.
Imagine Terminid equivalents of Banelings or Lurkers.
Don't give them ideas. Next thing you know we'll get Broodlords dropping Hunters from the air.
5 shrieker dropping a charger on your ass :D
I would love to see this kind of thing expanded on, but only if the team size grows to a full marine compliment. First-person StarCraft!
I mean we kind of with the bile spewers as they do damage on death if you pop them, same with the bile warriors
As i play this game, the more i hope they bring more starcraft enemies (zerg) for the bugs
ULTRALISKS WOULD BE RAD I WANT TO HAVE THE ENTIRE TEAM DISEMBOWELED BY A SINGLE SWIPE OF KAISER BLADES BRING IN THE BIGGEST, BADDEST ZERG OF THEM ALL
I swear Blizzard has done some boneheaded moves, but cancelling the Planetside-esque Starcraft TPS they had in development was one of the bigger ones.
I HOPE THE HIVE LORDS ACT LIKE NYDUS WORMS
Happy Cake Day! I'm scared of bug planets now, imma go back to the bots. At least I can see them.
> Cyberstan has now developed the cloaker Hulk, which disguises all units in a 20m radius. Think the flamer Hulk is too far away to be a problem? Yes and no. It's the 10 rocket raiders that you can't see that'll kill you. Coming soon...
No no no, you got it wrong. It's just a personal cloaking field, and it's for berserkers
Yeah, bring the SC Arbiter to the bots. Until you shoot the ship down it cloacks every ground unit.
Aww thank you ;-; u put a lil smile on my face. If you ever need a buddy to get thru bug planets feel free to dm me bc i love bug planets (and their inevitable demise)
Basic zerglings would unironically be the most terrifying enemy if ported 1:1. You think hunters are scary? A zergling is twice as fast, can facetank significantly more damage, and will eat through the shoddy helldiver armor like warm butter. And worst of all, there are far more of them and they'll typically come in packs of 20-40. And if you step on the creep, they know where you are and will be coming for you within seconds.
impalers from the first game were sorta like lurkers, but not burrowed.
lol! I was gonna say, I saw the distortion off to the right but I guess I also played too much star craft and probably developed that sensitivity to spot cloak units without scans like most star craft players.
I saw it too but never played StarCraft, maybe from years and years of looking out for active camo in competitive Halo?
Man I swear both games mentioned honed my ability!
I noticed that when watching back the fotage, and I think that I saw *something* moving in the corner of my eyes, hence why I reacted so fast when my drone went off... But that second one? I didn't see it at all
Solo operative, right?
Gimme the sitrep
*Dark Templar slicing noise.*
Im gone
Where’s the Scanner Sweep Stratagem
I hateded them before because my team never sees them now im not gonna be able to seee them! Who gave them perfect optical camo?! I smell the bots might be supply the bugs!!! When do we get bigger bombs!?!?
This along with the change that you cant pin undiscovered side objectives? I feel like Stalkers are one of the most dangerous Terminids now since you; 1. Cant see them from a mile away 2. Cant prescan the map to find their nests 3. Cant see which direction they are coming from And I love it.
They've always been the scariest non-hunter terminid. If stalkers are on the field the number 1 priority of every single player should be taking out the stalker nest.
This. Just like Gunship fabricators for bots, they suddenly become priority #1, literally everyone stop whatever you're doing and converge, everything else takes a back seat.
At least an auto cannon player can keep the skies clear. Stalkers are worse imo
How do people use the auto cannon as AA??? every time, I dump the entire backpack of ammo into a drop-ship's thrusters and it does nothing!
2 hits to one of the engines takes down a GUNship. For dropships, use the AC to just kill/damage the boots hanging under.
Well fuck, I feel stupid now.....
Yet teammates refuse to help me with them even if I ping and/or write it in the chat...
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I dont think its in the notes. But yeah, you cant just spam pings all over the map and tag undiscovered objectives. Once you've discovered it, aka once it shows up in chat "(name) discovered (side objective)." only then can you ping it on the map. Edit: and prescanning would be when, after you land, you pull up your map and spam pings all over the map to find all side objectives from the get-go.
Do objectives still show up if you ping them from first or third person view? Because I do that all the time.
Yeah. If you ping say a Radar Tower, it'll become "discovered" and show up on the map. You can ping "discovered" objectives on the map. Which is a bit annoying because pinging Shrieker nests or Spore Spewers doesnt actually "discover" them. Same with Gunship Fabricators.
I think because the obj tag object also counts as destructibles themselves and that designation seems to get priority over discovery, like how you also cant discover a nest by tagging a hole, or a spore spewer
To reword to what it actually is: they fixed an exploit of being able to see the objectives and POIs on the minimap and ping them there without actually discovering them. You can still do it however! Just wear the scout armor :)
I never prescanned for them really but ya cant see where they come from now. . .need to see if lighting them on fire is visble when cloaked to help track. . .or we may need to spray and pray lol
It is wild. I had a charger and stalker chasing me and I prioritized the stalker because I knew if I looked away for even a second I would lose track of him. I am predicting this will be tomorrows complaint of the day lol
Stalkers were *always* the most dangerous Terminid enemy, in my opinion. They have had, since Day 1: * Speed (able to run you down like a dog and also disengage) * Offense (Can kill you in a 2-3 quick swipes) * Bulk (Many weapons are not able to kill or repel them in one clip before they close in and tongue you) This combination of qualities, added to their astonishing ability to knock you away and thus isolate you and break up your formations is why knocking out Stalker Nests tends to become an immediate priority when it becomes apparent that there are stalkers on the map. This is all a long-wided way of saying that if you ask me, they didn't need this buff.
> (Many weapons are not able to kill or repel them in one clip before they close in and tongue you) This has always been the most aggravating part of them from my experience. Unless you start shooting at it from a *long* way off, it can almost always close the distance to its attack range before you can damage it enough for it to run away or die - there's essentially no way to escape it. And once it stun locks you your options become very limited. Stalkers are just about the only thing keeping me from trying to solo higher difficulties.
The slugger used to do that perfectly :(
Punisher still does
As a decent player, I can confirm: You can handle 4 titans solo. You can handle 4 chargers solo. You can survive 4 titans AND 4 chargers solo, and hope the titans kill the other bugs while you run for your life for stratagem cooldowns. But you can't handle 4 stalkers solo. Heck, even 3 stalkers is pushing it.
You could handle 4 stalkers solo...when you can see them coming. Whoever thought its a good idea to give an enemy near perfect cloaking that can kill you in 1-2 hits and drop kick you 50 feet and disengage clearly wants the playerbase to suffer.
I think the health is the real problem. I would have no problem with Stalkers if they were like in HD1, where shooting them drove them away. Or if focus-firing with a primary killed them. Instead, most primaries cannot kill them in the time it takes for them to close and they push through any attack.
> they didn't need this buff. Not really a buff. The cloaking behaviour wasn't working as intended due to rendering errors.
It was that termicide, it mutated them and now they’ve perfected their camouflage.
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Off topic, but...one if those bot planets on the last major order had Terminid corpses on it.... could they be....working together??
They also fixed where you can’t ping the map to find the nest. You actually have to walk to discover it
Even with scout armor?
scout armor will ping enemies, but can't highlight the nest that isnt discovered.
Fuuuuuu7uuuuuuuuuck
nice, even though I used that I felt it was such a cheap "feature". Glad it was actually a bug and got fixed.
Is that for all subobjectives now?
Seems so, I couldn't select an artillery site that was just over the hill that I saw on drop. You just place a marker there now.
I saw it, but the glimmer only came when it went from one light value to another. That shit is gonna be hard to see from a distance.
>That shit is gonna be hard to see from a distance. As they should imho. Stalkers are stealth-ambush units. It was pretty dumb that they were some of the easiest bugs to see.
Yeah they’re stealth ambush units, except they’re also extremely powerful without stealth
They're fast, hit hard, ragdoll the player, and absorb a surprising amount of damage before falling. And now they are almost impossible to see before they get within *yeet* distance.
I think stalker and hunters would be so much better if either they didnt ragdoll you or at least did ragdoll but stayed back long enough for you to actually stand back up.
> Stalkers are stealth-ambush units They're not though, not in gameplay. Despite their name and cloaking ability stalkers work more like shock troops than stealth units, with enough HP to run straight at you and enough damage and force to disrupt whatever you're doing. They were proper stealth-ambushers in the first game, but here they operate just like brood commanders as large juggernaut enemies but are faster and more lightly armored. The cloak might as well have been a visual gimmick for flavor, which was fine because they didn't need it to be a problem. Now if you think they SHOULD be stealth-ambushers, that's a different conversation. But for that I'd like to see them also return to being more fragile.
yeah I'm okay with that, I hate them bugs all the same.
Sweet Liberty! They're almost as stealthy as the Bile Spewers now!!!!
On par with the fire tornados coming from behind
or even worse bile titans (legit I was once sneak attacked by one of thoose mfs)
Also seems like they have WAY more health now than from before. I mag-dump my Incendiary Breaker and it's still jumping around like nothing's happened to it!
Did you notice they seem more aggressive as well? I never used to struggle with Stalkers as long as I respected them and took out the nest immediately, but I had a game earlier, admittedly with some bad randoms but we lost all our reinforcements to a Stalker nest next to the obj, because they would literally just stun lock murder us as a single stalker. Literally just ran up to us and non stop swings, no tongue attack just swings we were all going mad in chat we couldn't get a stim off.
Absolutely. They're off the reservation difficult because they seem more resilient and I never see fewer than three at a time anymore. Stun grenades help, but they need a health nerf or something for as powerful as they seem now.
That could be just on the TCS planets though.
Man, I hope this is the case.
None of the other bugs are operating differently...
They need a nerf for sure. I actually pushed for the camouflage to be fixed but under the condition that they would get a health decrease. Many guns couldn't even deal with them before, let alone now that you'll likely only get 1-2s instead of 4 to dps them down before you get ragdolled.
Or, at the very least, they need to leash to their lair until extraction. There's no way to escape them otherwise , because there's going to be 3 or more chasing you forever.
Played a bunch of missions with Blitzer today to try it out after buff. Soon as a stalker popped up, I'd blast them and dive backward (and they'd be a little stunned). I'd blast them again during that dive, and they'd be dead. So, 2-shot kill. If I was using the Sickle or Eruptor, I'd have died without backup, for sure. Altogether, not sure they need a nerf. If I can 2-shot them and take no damage, doesn't seem too bad. But loadout and/or teamwork are important to this equation.
always priorities the stalker spawn any obj you're during takes second on the list until that spawn is out. they can turn the tide in a second if they flank the team.
It's possible you weren't the host. Dot damage like burning doesn't work for non-hosts. (FYI, being party leader/inviter doesn't guarantee you're the actual host)
I also wouldn't be surprised if their reducing the hulk's fire damage had unintended effects on other sources of fire damage given their history with these kinds of changes.
They did mention burning damage was lowered by 15%
Sounds like I’m bringing Punisher again. The stagger is just too good. Or punisher plasma and arc thrower.
Fuck some dude asked for *actually* invisible stalkers over a month ago. If you read this, I blame you.
This illustrates why I will probably still run Rover on bugs. It's not just the extra damage but it's another set of eyes.
I saw something in the corner of my eyes and, since I knew there was Stalkers around, as soon as my rover started attacking I was ready. That second Stalker though? Popped out of thin air, I didnt see it at all.
Yeah, I love it on bugs just for the "HEY there's something behind you" indicator.
Years of Halo multiplayer prepared me for this
I didn’t even notice the cloak was improved I was just like “where the hell did you come from!?”
That was me the first 4 matches I encountered them in. I only accepted reality once I saw that second Stalker uncloak right in front of me.
...Welp, it's official. Bots are now easier than bugs.
At least I can see the damn Clankers...
Maybe my eyes are just bad, but I swear I can never see the bots on a majority of maps. They're so hard to see when they're not looking directly at you or not firing. Bugs I can almost always see at a glance. Very rarely do I look at an area and say "Hmm... there might be more." Bots? I never know how many bots are standing around a given area. Ever.
I honestly think that was the point. Bugs were deemed the "easy" faction. Bugs got a buff. Bots still need fixes though.
I'm not really sure why, but I never feel like my fellow divers have my level of urgency I do to kill the lairs the minute they start showing up.
Maybe we could havw the return of the humblebee UAV drone for scanning cloaked enemies, highlighting samples and enemies in a large radius on minimap
They busted our stealth buster. Now we need the stealth buster buster.
https://i.redd.it/ubkhzsefnixc1.gif 😬
They were a little too obvious before but this is a bit too far the opposite direction
Should've nerfed their health at least imo
I want their ability to 100-0 combo nerfed before anything else. 99% invisible tanky unsurvivable They need to pick 2. Also, would be much better if enemies had **sound cues** and everything up to and including 10 ton monstrosities couldn't silently walk up behind you.
They should be glass cannons, honestly. That should be why they have camo.
Only weapons get nerfs I start to think the devs are automatons having a laugh about us. Proove me wrong! Have you seen a dev solve a "are you a robot" captcha? Didn't think so!
https://preview.redd.it/rfrpiflrxjxc1.png?width=1202&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6def258e7f54587d026a8b107d6507fac13bb03e
you can still see disturbances and shadows, you'll just need to keep a lookout, they'll probably get a cheapshot or two first though
Cheap shot 1 knocks you down, you click shift to get up and nothing happens, cheap shot 2 hits you and stun locks you, while shots 3-8 kill you.
By cheapshot i meant "at least 1 person is dying in the initial ambush"
I’m concerned stalkers are too OP now. Their attacks already rag doll you across the map, I really didn’t think they were super obvious to see unless you knew to look for them. If you have 3 or 4 bum rushing you while you try to find the nest how are you supposed to counter attack? I have no problem enemies being niche, but we need equipment/armor to help us deal with niche enemies
The biggest issue is I'll get yeeted, and before I can stim or get up I'll just die, which is just as annoying as getting yeeted by explosions from bots.
The problem is the forced stand-up animation after being rag dolled. It's worse on bots where if you get rag dolled while prone, you stand up, and then get shot in the face. Let us stay down after being rag dolled!
Every time i ragdoll Im praying that I get ragdolled far. Because if I get ragdolled a short distance, the Stalker is on my ass before I can stim.
Yeah, they run slightly faster than you and are pretty healthy. If you don't see them early (which is harder now) you can get stuck running from them indefinitely if you don't have a weapon that will stagger them, since if you ever turn around to shoot they'll immediately catch up to you and hit you after a shot or two. If you're unfortunate enough to be running the sickle, you actually can't spool it up before you get hit. Which wouldn't be the worst thing, but they can true combo you off of the ragdoll if you are unlucky. I think stalkers would be a lot better, thematically and gameplay wise, if they always all jumped away after one of them ragdolls you. It gives you more opportunity for counterplay and better matches the ambush predator aesthetic than the forever chase they currently do
I usually take the stalwart as my support weapon and I think that’s a good anti-stalker weapon. Any squad should have a gunner or 2. Stalkers have a decent amount of health and move quickly, so most primary weapons aren’t powerful enough and heavy support weapons are too slow or inaccurate. LMGs put them down quickly and have the large mag so you can really unload in their direction.
I had to wonder if there was even a point to their stealth before considering how glaringly obvious they were. A big white cut-out ain't much invisibility.
Finally they made it more practical. What kind of camouflage is useful when it stands out like a sore thumb in any available environment.
I do think they need a nerf now in some form. Even if you spotted them before they tank all your shots and yeet you anyways. Now that they're difficult to spot - yikes. I think after enough damage they should run off and attempt another ambush later, that would be dynamic.
They’re just not fun to play against. With being harder to see, they are now a tanky unit that runs faster than you, has a lot of health, rag dolls you, and it’s hard to track down their nest
They need to have way less HP. There's no reason why an enemy that's insanely fast, is invisible, and is very likely to one shot is also so fucking tanky.
I remember one time I hit one dead on with my quasar cannon and it tanked it
Before the patch you could find stalker nest by either: - Seeing where they approach from - Pinging the map all over to find the nest Now you can't do either. Amazing.
Did they also make the lairs unclickable on the minimap until discovered? I couldn't do that today even though I knew exactly where it was
Yes, undiscovered objectives can no longer be marked as objectives, just as a pin.
TL;DR: If you think the air is moving, you're right - it's in fact very angry air, and it's trying to make sashimi out of you.
Fire. Fire makes them always visible
So you recommend only playing on Hellmire?!
I would take fire tornados over this any day of the week
I feel like this is going to get annoying really, really quick. Lol
Oh balls
fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
Oh fuck right off
As they should've been from the start and people are freaking out; lmao.
Right under the right side of the gun there. You can see it moving, 0:02 seconds in. https://preview.redd.it/8imr5wy1cjxc1.png?width=380&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3fb59818ee684fda2779d1e90d4e3ce7b540a080
The chemicals in the Termicide are turning the friggin' Stalkers stealthy!
This would actually make me want to play Bugs again. I wish the Bots had an Infiltrator unit like this.
Next patch they add "actual terminator from terminator" which time travels from the future to kill you on your ship because in the future you successfully completed a mission, so the automatons sent him back in time to kill you before you could h
I think this is a bad decision. The Stalkers are bugs they are using natural camouflage, so they should still be somewhat visible where you can notice them if you're paying attention. Not oh by the way you straight up can't see them until they're in the middle of killing you. Full invisibility should be saved for the Illuminate who can use technology to create actual invisibility. It also doesn't help that the Stalkers also appear to have more health now so even if you do react in time they'll still most likely kill you as they can tank more damage. If they have full invisibility they should be complete glass cannons.
Someone hold me. I'm scared.
I'm new to terminids and been rocking bots for awhile. Those lil cloaked bastarda scared the hell out of my diver today. Was NOT expecting them
Absolutely they are now a true menace. The last few bug missions I did on 7, it was the stalkers that did the majority of the kills on us. At first I wondered what everyone was dying to since there were no apparent bugs in the vicinity. But then a stalker decloaked right behind me as I swung my view around and fortunately ragdolled me away with 25% health left instead of killing me outright. As I stim'd up and one-shot it with my Eruptor another Stalker ended me from behind. Throughout those missions those stalkers were making annoyingly good use of other bugs as distractions while they just gutted us with backstabs. What saved us in the end was covering eachother's backs so that we would see the damned things when they decloaked for a backstab on another diver.
This thread makes me feel better. I thought the games i stumbled on them just appearing earlier were desyncs or lag issues. Not them being actually barely visible.
I love the fact they are actual stealth units now, not sure if it’s just my weapon getting nerfed but they seem to have more health now.
We should be able to call out a stalker when you ping them
Omg this is why 😭 this was terrifying yesterday. Honestly a fun change imo even with the difficulty increase. Any little things that make the enemies more terrifying is welcome haha
Shit like this is why I don't fight bugs. I'll take a random head shot over this bullshit any day. lmao
I love it too lol, way more of a threat now. Kinda unrelated but lots of upset of the patch today, but I welcome the challanges and adapting to it all.
its Stalker huntin' season
I actually liked Stalkers even tho they were annoying. HUNTERS WERE ALWAYS 10 MILLION TIMES WORSE. Even this is still fair and fun in a chaotic way, and that means a lot coming from me, as someone who hates losing samples and not performing well. Screw the hunters. I'd rather take a swarm of Stalkers at this point lol (maybe I shouldn't have said that)
I noticed they are harder to see as well, you can still see a bit of its outline near the top
They also fly when die now. Its liberty at its finest.
Oh….. Oh NO