The Art of a Fade -Sword?

[w@flz]

Sword - I was watching you blink around yesterday... your pretty dam good with a Fade.

Share your knowledge

 

[Sword]

I go adrenaline and carapace, the shade hive upgrades are negligible and can be fit to the situation (Although I will always go camo because then you turn into the predator).

Reasoning for adrenaline: you need that energy to blink and swipe more during a fight, celerity actually becomes a liability because it makes precise movement during a fight almost impossible due to the amount of distance you cover in one shift step. As far as the argument for faster travel time goes, that's what shift step and blink are for.

Reasoning for carapace: Carapace gives you more armor, meaning you take more damage before being killed, meaning marines waste more bullets, meaning you have more time in between reloads to carve them up. Then there's regeneration... You have 4 ways to heal in this game as an alien: Sit near your hive, sit alone in a corner with a thumb up your ass, solicit a gorge for sex, and finally, crags. You will never, EVER, have a need to go regeneration in a proper match.

I tend to only fight no more than 4 marines at once, but if the group has shotties or it's late game and upgrades are up I'm far more cautious. However, numbers don't really matter if they are separated by a few corners as those buy you a lot of time for hit and run attacks. Always go for the straggler first, the guy who is farthest away from the group, then move your way up the line. You should always initiate the fight by attacking the back unless its one or two marines and you feel confident. You should use blink to get into the fight, and to get out, while using your shift step to move between and around targets during the fight. For the most part you just have to make a few on-target slashes, then dance around for a bit, just being tricky and not getting shot (Step 1: draw a circle, Step 2: draw the rest of the owl).

If you are fighting lmg marines it's alot easier to sit still and swipe while only dodging between kills, whereas shotties you should swipe once, shift sidestep, swipe again. I don't really encounter flamethrowers that often so I treat them the same as lmg's since the burn damage takes too long to snowball and actually kill you. Grenade Launchers are an absolute joke and I go out of my way to get in their face and let them know they should feel bad about their weapon choice.

Keep an eye on your health in the bottom left corner, once you drop to ~100 it's time to blink out. Basically if you're getting hit at all you should already be at 100, and if you wait any longer you'll be dead, don't think you can round a corner with 40 hp and live because the server will prove you wrong when you get killed safely behind that wall.

When fighting jetpack marines I step my game up a bit. You basically need to use blink to stay midair at all times, you should blink directly into the marine, swipe him, then let him fly away a bit while you fall, blink into him again, swipe, repeat till he's dead. Just picture yourself as a dog on a leash and the floor is lava. Your energy (with adren) will allow you to keep doing this until the marine is dead. Of course it's important to not miss swipes or you can get screwed over. It actually gets extremely twitchy in practice since stuff gets chaotic but here's an example timeline to get the point across of just how fast this shit needs to go down (probably exaggerating but that's what it feels like when I'm doing it):

0.00s: First Blink
0.50s: First Slash
1.00s: Second Blink
1.50s: Second Slash
2.00s: Third Blink
2.50s: Third Slash
3.00s: Celebrate

When fighting exos it gets even more tricky. You have to keep moving at all times, you need to dance! Use your movement keys and keep running circles around the exo as close as you can get to him, always stay on his back and keep him turning. If he's terrible then this strategy alone will net you the kill, if he's twitchy enough to have aimbot then you need to mix in a few shift side steps on the opposite side of him back and forth so that he is forced to turn 180 degrees constantly without ever seeing you, then swipe, dance a bit, and repeat. If the guy is too good to be dodged and is making you his bitch, blink out, then back in and swipe a few times, then blink back out, don't give him a target to shoot. Guerrilla attacks like that take longer but if no one's there to save that 75 res tin-can you might as well play it safe and get the job done. It's pretty much impossible to take on two exos at once, but I've been in situations where I've killed 2 out of 3 exos in a group simply because the clowns weren't watching each other while they were shooting at some skulks, so sometimes you just get lucky.

Finally, you need to have the frame of mind where the possibility of you screwing up and not killing the marines doesn't even exist. You need to go in there like they are already dead, you're just going through the motions.


Random Bullet Point Time for Readability:

• Use the 'c' map, it's maphack #1
• Use your ears, they are maphack #2 and #3
• Thanks to maphacks 1, 2, and 3, you should never be in a situation where you don't know exactly where your enemy is. This is 90% of consistently getting kills while minimizing deaths.
• When in a fight, keep a mental image of where every marine is around you so you can swipe before you even fully finish turning.
• Always be using shift step to travel around the map, only use blink if you need to change elevation. You need to conserve energy in case a fight breaks out.
• Don't kill buildings unless you're the only alien in the room, the room is empty, and it's a phase gate or an obs. Otherwise haul ass to the nearest fight.
• Crags/Hives/Gorges will heal you, shifts will replenish your energy. Know where these things are and blink to them in-between fights.
• Fades can double jump... there will never be a situation where this is preferable to blinking since you gain minimal air and just look silly while you're getting shot.
• You don't need blink until marines start getting upgrades or shotties (shift step is all you use during early-game fights anyway), so don't be scared to evolve early.
• Don't miss swipes. If you do miss, blame the server tickrate or connection, and keep the confidence at an all time high.
• Always track how many bullets each marine has fired (Listen, and go Rainman on that shit). Turn this into a John Woo movie. Get used to doing this and eventually you know EXACTLY when to pop out of that corner and catch the clowns desperately trying to reload while you carve them up.
• Notice the complete lack of vortex anywhere else in this post. I can only ever see it being useful to lock down a phase gate and an obs in tandem with another fade. Until comp play starts, don't bank on seeing this ability get any love.
• Improvise.

TL-DR: Use a picture of Han Solo as your crosshair, inhale some bath salts, eat people's faces off.

 

[w@flz]

Nice, I was pretty good at fade before, but this post will help, Thanks man

- I have added this to the Tips and Tricks Post

 

[Angry Child]

TL-DR: Use a picture of Han Solo as your crosshair, inhale some bath salts, eat people's faces off.

^

 

[Chickenbomb]

Good god, I didn't think Sword posted ever. It just blew my mind.

 

[Silent]

I play with Nexzil and that's pretty much what we all do.
L2PNS2 - YouTube
Just throwing out the link for added info.

Fade Movement: Single jump > shadowstep > double jump > shadowstep. (Crouch during if you have the coordination to do so)
DO NOT rely on Blink for moving. Wastes too much energy. Its your GTFO skill and height gain.

 

[HeatSurge]

Actually, if you shadowstep and THEN jump (before the shadowstep ends), you maintain the shadowstep speed through the first jump. If you then jump again, you maintain that speed through the second jump too. (that's how I do it anyway).

If you learn the maps and get some perfect strafes and turns, you can actually move very very quickly around the level on very very few shadowstep hits (i.e. infinitely).