I decided to put up some neat hints on how to be a successful fade -> (I've been reading the forum pretty scarcely, so forgive me if I'm repeating someone)

1. Stay alive: Doesn't this feel like saying the obvious? I mean a dead fade is a useless fade right? Still this seems to be the hardest part. Let's think about this for a moment. Fade costs 50 res + with the alien res system getting another with 2 or 3 res is going to take a LOOONG time. On the other hand lmg marines cost nothing. So if you blink in to a marinegroup take out 3 marines then let the 4th kill you, it might look nice on the kill list but was eventually useless. As a fade you CAN'T complain to your team "Why didn't I have backup" Fade stays alive no matter what.

2. Hunt marines: With this I mean that fade should be constantly moving around the whole map looking for lone marines or marine pairs to kill. If you find marine RT signal a skulk to come eat it and move on. If not possible then you can slash it yourself, but it takes longer for a fade to kill RT then it does for a single skulk. And fade should always be looking for those under attack signals and always go there to help a friend in need (as in easy marines with empty clips)

3. Keep an eye on your armor: Always, when you don't, you die, simple. When your armor reaches 0 you are vulnerable, extremely, on my experience even an lmg marine can shoot you down then. So BEFORE armor reaches zero -> retreat, go to hive or to some vent to regenerate. Remember, whenever you attack with less then 40 armor or so you take a risk of getting killed.(When attacking a lone marine that is, attacking groups of marines without armor is simply stupid)

4. a: 1 Hive: You usually (hopefully) take a DC on the first hive, but most of these tactics work with other chambers as well. 2 possible choices really here, carafade or regefade. I prefer regefade, because it allows me to continually harass marines, go healing, attack, heal... But if you haven't played with the fade a'lot I suggest carapace, that way, you stay alive longer. On the downside you have to back to hive everytime someone shoots you(or near DC or some friendly gorge ).

b: 2 Hives: At this point you should have DC and MC, now I know some of you are saying "But, but, focus fade 0wnz m44n" don't believe them. It is true that with focus you can take down marines more easily, but focus is nothing compared to a celerity fade. You can blink around and around and even skilled players will have a hard time hitting you + you can escape easily if you just keep looking at your armor as I advised. Adrenaline is another option and some fades prefer it so that they don't have to constantly keep watch on their energy, but I find that the increased speed of celerity is much more important
I'm not saying much about 3 hives because at that point the game is usually solved and there many tactics you can employ then including acidrocket + adre or cele + focus

5.Fade acting as decoy: AKA the teamplaying fade: This is very effective against large groups of marines, the fade blinks from one side to another and takes the bullets from the marines while few skulks wait around the corner and few seconds later after the fade has entered the fray and everybody's aiming at him the skulks pounce at them behind the corner and chew them to pieces. Still remember that a skulk does more damage then a fade?

6. Fighting with fade: In the end it all comes to taking those pesky marines down. There has been a'lot of conversation about the blink + swipe and yes, it is an essential skill in fading, but you don't become a great fade just by learning how to do it. Taking down lone marines with fade is easy, just make sure they really are alone before taking them on. The harder part comes when there are 2 or more marines in a group. At that point the fade should really start thinking, what upgrades do they have? Are there any shotties or hmgs with them? So first just blink past them (Or if you get them by surprise, when blinking from rear for example then you should attack the marine on the rear, but always expect that he might turn around and blast you with and sg, so be ready to blink out as fast as you blinked in.). If it seems they just shoot you without any effect aka. not hitting anything, then let them waste their ammo clips and then move for the kill, hopefully they wipe their pistols out, and if you have even some basic evasive manouvers they won't be able to kill you. Because the basic reflex for any marine, when both clips are is to pull out a knife. then you can blink a little farter and regenerate, if the marine THEN starts reloading, just blink back at him and finish it.

7.Final hints: Eventually it will happen, even though you thought there was only 1 lmg guy you blink in the middle of an sg rush. You have about 0.5 seconds to act before they grind you into pieces. This is where I've found that the best reflex to get is to blink, up. Blink up and then to any direction you know is safe. For some reason people hit easily to horizontal movement, but when you blink up and then to some direction, you make it much harder for them to hit you. This brings us to our final tip. This is why good fades don't get killed: ALWAYS HAVE AN ESCAPE ROUTE. I cannot stress this enough, when you attack a marinesquad loose your armor, then blink away, only to find an sg marine behind the corner you were sure was safe with your energy depleted and armor whittled down to zero. There is nothing you can do, the mistake had allready been made.


-Whew, this was like my first post. I'm sure there must be some typos in it and you are free to disagree with me or make your own additions to it.

Well my point was that fades are more useful hunting marines then killing RTs, elec RTs are an entirely different matter and fades should always strive to destroy them. I mean that if a fade is chopping down res then a skulk comes to bite it, fade should move on and find more marine prey. (When writing a post that long I'm bound to forget some things so thx for that post and keep those comments coming)

Fades are not RT-hunters. They are marine hunters. Good fades make moving in any number smaller than three impossible, crippling marine expansion by preventing marines from getting to their objectives. Killing marines is what the fade is best at until you get onos. A fade is wasting his time if he's doing anything that involves not killing marines or healing for more than fifteen seconds at a time. Using blink, the fade patrols hallways and chokes surrounding the exits to marine occupied space. Depending on the success of attacking, the fade can slow, or completely end marine thrusts into alien territory. If the commander is being a typical mid-level pubby com and electrifying with glee every RT he has, the fade's job is still to kill marines when they try to expand and get more RTs and hive spots. If the com is electrifying everything, the fade will have an easy time killing marines with very few upgrades if any, preventing them from getting anywhere while the second hive builds and gorges get bilebomb.

Fade slash also drains their energy faster than bite, so it takes you longer to take down RTs than skulks. Again, if you aren't killing marines or at least providing a roadblock, you're a waste of 50 resources.

Hunting mairines when marine rts are electrified all over the place is the #1 sign of the inexperienced fade. While fades indeed are better suited for hunting marines then killing rts, killing rts always takes priority early on - otherwise you get outteched in a matter of minutes.

Interesting. While i would agree with all the points above, i'm still divided between the rt/marine hunting theories. Can anyone tell me exactly what a fade should do, when he is slashing an electrified marine res tower, has it just into the red, and suddenly you hear "resource tower under attack". Should he -ALWAYS- respond immediately, or should he finish the res tower first and THEN respond?

Fades are for taking down electrified res towers - however, if they're uneleced, why bother? Send a skulk to do it. A fade on constant harrassing detail can make life *much* more difficult for marines, cleaning them out of places before they get set up.

-calldown

yeah i get annoyed when someone **** for the 1hive fade,and on the minimap i see him blinking past rine rts left and right
mainly when they are elec'd

Okay, salor, let me prove you the futility of electrifying.

Electrification of early nodes might seem necessary, but let me explain why it is a useless practice.

Essentially, you pay 45 res for a resource tower. That requires that same resource tower to work for 3 minutes to pay itself off.

By that time, we have fades about ready to take the eleced nodes off.

Without electrifying, you have res to upgrade. If a RT is under attack, just send a marine or two and take care of the problem.

Put pressure on THEIR nodes. That'll take heat off yours.

In agreeing with the majority of the posters, electrifying resource towers is useless and only should be done when the marine team has an ample amount of resources.

On the topic of Fade as marine-hunters, it's true that they are much more efficient killers than skulks, but if there is a electrified resource tower; that is your number one priority. Unelectrified resource towers should be killed also; however, as someone else pointed out, if there is a skulk around, let them handle it and move on.

Also, if an alien structure is underattack, I would almost always recommend the Fade assist in the situation. Why? Alien structures are hard to rebuild, because there isn't a single permanent builder for the Aliens. Many alien players are very reluctant to spend their resources to rebuild something. While on the other hand, the commander makes the decision for the entire marine team whether they feel reluctant or not; they have no decision.

Again, I'd say that is the key part of using a fade. Hell, I've seen fades do fine without blink. Blink-swiping and other tricks are fine, but the real 'skill' is using a fade is deciding where it's the most useful. i.e. Sure they may take out that second hive, but if you can take down the majority of their upgrades and *possibly* end the game? I'd say it's worth it.

-calldown

Elect is not really useless in clan scrims. Its a very good counter to sens or movement first.

in real matches elecs wont help asmuch as they costed

but in pubs,a elec rt will last a long long time untill the rambo fade gets bored

the reason is,any newb can chomp down a regular rt.While with elec it wont be touched untill a fade is there,or 2nd hive is made or bilebomb

A good fade will go from harassing marines to taking down rts and always be a pain in the **** somewhere.

What I've found effective is to attack marines/eleced rts, then while my health regens, attack a non eleced rt, or go back to the hive if that's better. Keeps always doing something.

Forgot a major point of ducking as a fade. The hitbox gets so messed up when the fade it ducked its almost impossible to hit compared to the normal hitbox.

a good fade imo never has less than 20% of his original armor, or more than 80%.
this relates to the idea of the fade being a quick assassin moving all over the map, hitting random spots, then healing a bit - not too much so you don't waste time, and not too little because as said before, armor is incredibly valuable.

Though i sometimes use ducking, to me its a little harder to correctly move / blink around. Just me, or not?

Its harder to master ducking while you are blinking but it definitly DOES make a difference. The thing is, the blinking fade doesnt change how the model looks while ducking and if you shoot the mid to upper section while its ducking you WILL NOT hit the fade. Only if you shoot the lower torso or feet will the hits register. Some marines duck because marine hitbox's also get smaller *ie they crouch* and it puts you in a good position to aim at the fades legs if it comes up to you.

They proabably are fixing this so the fade will change its appearence if the fade ducks but until then for practice I suggest putting +duck on in the console and playing as such. When u get the hang of it take it off and start blinking while holding it manually so when u get close u can take crouch off to walk over to them faster etc.

Gonna have to try that in co...

I love how we have co now to try stuff/practice without worrying about wasting res.

pub this, pub that.

You know, some pubs are actually decent and have great commanders. So just because you're in a clan supposidly means that you're suddenly so much more superior than everything else? This attitude leads to icon arrogance (kekek i'm a vet, look at my yellow medal, i r leeter than yuo). And while vets being leeter than pubbers are usually the case, its not a justified reason to shun all public servers to be "nub". Get over it. Where do you think clanners and vets play when not scrimming or having a match?

Yes fading is mostly about evaluating situation correctly and deciding.. then you need good keyboard handling/switching and good spatial orientation nothing more..

- yes use crouching, especially behind buildings or even during escape blinks, it helps a bit, but dont count on it
- when fighting, try to circle around marine, trying to get on his "back", you can disorient him with swipes and hopefully avoid hits at all.. If you do it properly you don't need to fear shotgunner or even hmger
- if you need fade for hive defense, go carapace, you will encounter more enemies during hive defense and you have hive near for healing
- on RTs - try to kill RTs, even if you just kill rines around and allow skulks to come, its very usefull, if there is skulk you may leave, but if it's remote - hard to reach or electrified RT, kill it alone
- even though RT's are important, always respond to warnings written by other players about rines close to hives, you are fade, your team invested into you, other players built RT's, DC's and possibly hive just for you, so your responsibility is to defend and respond quickly to any threat to hives
- i recommend carapce fade during 2 hives, at that time marines are upgraded, usually have shotties or hmgs and it's very easy to die with regen fade (regen fade is of course ideal for game begging)
- don't hesitate to die if it's worth it.. say you are sitting behind PG during desperate hive defense and swiping it, you know you must leave now or you will die, but PG is red - try to kill it, even if you die, lucky skulk might finish it, if you leave now, you might not have another chance

Well, theres an endless list of contingencys and no hard rules when it comes to 'attack the RT or not'. It can be really useful to swipe an unelectrified RT - like say its their last node, or to bait a few shotgunners out of their safer campspot into your turf.

On the other hand, it can also be a total waste to swipe electrified RTs, if for example the marines are pressuring at that very moment. The only solid rule you can give is 'get as much done as you can' - don't camp in places doing nothing for 3 minutes. So their base is full of shotgunners, you go swipe at the powerbanks elec RT a bit. You hear your team say theres 3 of them in heating room, you go kill those. You hear supply way is under attack, and go kill a lone rambo and laugh in his faec. Then you go check if their base is empty, and if it is take down a few structures.

Being useful as a fade is really quite easy, you can just keep flying around and doing whats going to benefit your team most - and unless they're on the offense somewhere, killing marines isn't terribly useful (compared to the risks). Fades are like energizer bunnys, they keep going and going and going with more options than you can shake a stick at. Unless you have a really big stick of course.

They are good tips. I'm rarely fade, but I am going fade more often. I am usually better off saving for a hive while a person that can play fade/onos saves their res for fade. I don't think theres ever going to be a complete guide to being a fade, because as strategies develop, people learn to counter. Do the unexpected, that to sounds cliche, but it helps to keep it in mind. I've only seen two people who can charge head on into a squad of heavily armed marines as a fade, take at least half of them out, heal, and come back for the second half. Fades can use vents too, its tricky to get into them sometimes, but blink/crouching does the trick.

As for the RT attacker, one game recently (this time it happened to be an onos, but I've seen it with fades too) we just got the second hive up, were dropping our 3 MCs (we had DCs already) when our first (DC) hive gets charged by the marines, who set up a phase just around the corner. Meanwhile the guy who horded his res for onos 8 minutes into the game was sitting there goring away on the UNELECTRIFIED restowers, completely ignoring the voice saying "your hive is under attack/dying" and the entire team yelling/typing "ONOS GET OVER HERE NOW OUR HIVE IS DYING." Finally about a minute after the hive died, our happy little onos shouted into the mic "WTH HAPPENED TO MY STOMP?" seconds before he died to gunfire.
Morale is, RT attacking while ignoring everything else is bad. Adapt to what is around you and stay on your toes.

elect rts dont work once the fade is out..as wat defic had said, fades attackin a rt shld call out some skulk or bile bombin gorge to attack it and the fade shld move on..

imo, fades are natures way of saying 'there u are... HERE I AM!' so id have to say fades should take out anything that is upgraded slightly (i.e. marines with gl's or elected rt's) but then again, if a hive is in danger, forget everything and help, since all it takes is one sneaky marine to build pg and then the hive is nearly as gud as dead...

crouching does help while blinking to safety, but its totally usless if ur a regen fade going up again a HA train... so i say cara (u can blink to a hive in a matter of seconds, but u loose the fade then ull have to wait for 5 mins on most games... c my point?)



a fade can keep an area secured from constant marine attacks if he has the right uppys, like in mess hall once, i was a fade with focus and regen (sc was nearby to provide cloaking) and a marine came... stabbed him in the bak... more marines came... killed them quikly... after a thrid wave of marines with fairly decent weapons they stopped coming... rt secured for the whole game... simple no?

sorry about the double post, but one very gud strat that someone mentioned slightly once is to attack rt's and wait for uppyed marines to come then wipe them and rt out... OR do what i do... wait in a room with res node and when marines come (make sure they cant c u) wait until the comm puts down a rt, then slash them and the weak rt... comms wasted res, plus marines...