Difficulty of new monsters

Some other things to think about when facing gnats:

They grow according to the amount of health they take, not according to the damage they do. So, if you try to keep your shields maxed, when the gnat hits, most of the damage comes off the shield, so it will not grow as fast.

Since it is a blood sucker, if you can stop it getting to you, you have more chance. Hide in areas difficult to get to, or where they have to attack from one direction.
Also, remember in some vehicles (goliath, paladin, leviathan) the driver is hidden inside the vehicle. Against these vehicles, the gnat will only do minimal damage and will not grow.

So, Engineers don't do too badly against them, because they can have high shields and vehicles. In particular, sentinels rock - no blood.

As Ratar said, the lightning bolt ignores the speed problem.
Or put the globe on, so they can't feed. If there are lots of them, a redeemer helps at your feet (with the globe of course).
Use null entropy or freezing mini guns. If you work as a team, one person can freeze with a mini, then others can take out with flaks etc.

Using the booster just gives them more health to take. Same for healing spheres. Same for a medic flak/RL - unless you hit them. Might be better to translocate away and regroup. Keep at a distance and use weapons like minis. When they get too close, translocate away and start again.

But mainly, get them as soon as they appear.

Yeah, that seems to be the best tactic. Also i found out that the lightning gun works much better than something like a flak, if you have the chance to take careful aim of course. But even with the flak and jumping around like crazy, they seem hardly impressed.

Then again, the 190 ping might be affecting my aim..

Actually running backwards, particularly through archways to where they have to get closer to the ground, and lobbing flak balls near them tends to be a decent tactic for me.

But then I have like QF 4.

If you aim right a good shock combo will get them every time, but when they attack you and chase you I frantically try and lob flak balls at them.

I love the new monsters and the difficulty they present, I personally just think the mosquitos could be a little slower, or perhaps as they feed they become slower. Or am I dense and does that already happen?

Just got done playing over lunch here and the Gnats owned us...

I did the nuke trick, but it went too slow and they all left the area before it went off. They are just a bit too quick. Nothing was working for us, unless you got a lucky hit with the Avril with them bunched a bit and took 2-3 out at once. We were playing BR-Canyon.

One thing I'm noticing, is that the gnats are much easier to shoot when they're attacking someone else. Help out a friend, if they have a gnat on them, shoot it! If they're at a distance, they're cake. In your face, they're the essence of destruction. When they're attacking someone else, they're usually at a distance.
Adren masters also have a much easier time with them, so maybe the red swarms will force people to use more balanced "parties".

DrkSlayer wrote:

For those of you with an ATI card, the new driver's were just released, 7.2, and results show that ATI card's have higher fps with all the eye candy on (so turn it all on ATI users!).. mac, your card should have no problems.

I updated my drivers and turned every up. I must admit, it seems to be running smoother. My drivers weren't that old(december)

. Of course it takes longer for me to load, but I guess I could just get another raptor and raid it up. Kudos Drk

I like it when I turned up all my settings the announcer guy says HOLY POOP!

FogRaider(_MM) wrote:

One thing I'm noticing, is that the gnats are much easier to shoot when they're attacking someone else.

Agreed. You also feel like you have more time to aim accurately.

FogRaider(_MM) wrote:

Adren masters also have a much easier time with them, so maybe the red swarms will force people to use more balanced "parties".

All types have their own strengths. LW have vampire , the redeemer and the avril. LA have the globe and lightning bolt. Medics have the medic flak, which is great in corridors.
But you really need engineers as well.

As one of the higher level LAs on the server, I would like to say that the red menace is not any easier for me than anyone else. Yes, I may have globe and the bolt, but unless I have an energy weapon to keep them powered (amazing how rare it is to have folks share those now, particularly the flak or RL which I favor for my energy and piercing weapon), it is not long until I am toast. And without vamp or regen, I do not recover, and am soon toast. Worse, when I am using the globe or bolt, it is almost impossible for me to make decent weapons (like piercing weapons to share), max weapons for others, etc. Of late, unless I have been very lucky, I am still trying to make my few good weapons even at wave 12 or later. And without those, I can hit them all I want, and they are not going to be dying all that fast in the later waves when we generally end up with the lower levels out and the bugs are level 80+.

BTW... What is the max damage the vamp razor flies and the other part of the Red Menace, the Lava Skarrj do? I know I have a few times gone from 450 to 0 in what seems like 3 or 4 good hits.

Szlat is right for the most part in that it is going to take teamwork to take care of these bugs. But at the later waves, they are still perhaps a bit more powerful than they should be.

Spacey wrote:

BTW... What is the max damage the vamp razor flies and the other part of the Red Menace, the Lava Skarrj do? I know I have a few times gone from 450 to 0 in what seems like 3 or 4 good hits.

yeah, i swear I've been taken out with one direct shot by those lava skarrj. 300+ health.

if I had to choose to be attacked a pack of vampire gnats or lava skarrj, I would definitely choose the gnats.

Meh. Maybe it's just my playstyle on my AM, and not the class, which made it easy. I don't usually use MWM except for maybe one or two favorite weapons, and also for changing negative weapons. So i usually have enough adren to crack off a few bolts.

Holy Poop is always good to hear! Glad it helped you!

Spacey wrote:

BTW... What is the max damage the vamp razor flies and the other part of the Red Menace, the Lava Skarrj do? I know I have a few times gone from 450 to 0 in what seems like 3 or 4 good hits.

The Vampire gnat takes a random 8%-12% of the victims health. It adds on an extra 1% for each kill it has made. This is then capped based on how big the gnat is. On startup, when the gnat has 40 health, the damage is limited to between 5 and 35. As the gnat's size increases, the limits increase accordingly. So when the gnat reaches 200 health (the max before splitting), it will have a range of 25-175 damage. This of course is then adjusted according to DB/DR.

The Lava Skaarj essentially fires red bio goop. As such, each shot should do 30 + (19* size of glob). The glob defaults to a size of 2, so the damage should be 68. This of course gets adjusted for DB/DR. So, it ought to be about the same as a warlord's rocket. However on the floor, globs can merge together, then they do a lot more damage.

Szlat wrote:

The Vampire gnat takes a random 8%-12% of the victims health. It adds on an extra 1% for each kill it has made. This is then capped based on how big the gnat is. On startup, when the gnat has 40 health, the damage is limited to between 5 and 35. As the gnat's size increases, the limits increase accordingly. So when the gnat reaches 200 health (the max before splitting), it will have a range of 25-175 damage. This of course is then adjusted according to DB/DR.

is that 8 to 12 % of current health or max health?

Does this mean that 4 vampire gnats could kill a level 70 character in a single second...Is this right?

I don't make magic weapons to share so much anymore, I would like to, I just have to keep the resources to use in protection, Lightning Rod for the new monsters and booster to heal me.

Szlat wrote:

The Lava Skaarj essentially fires red bio goop. As such, each shot should do 30 + (19* size of glob). The glob defaults to a size of 2, so the damage should be 68. This of course gets adjusted for DB/DR. So, it ought to be about the same as a warlord's rocket. However on the floor, globs can merge together, then they do a lot more damage.

Is that per single shot, or per double - as they tend to fire two globs at a time.

THAT is where the massive damage on later waves is coming from.