On The Need To Remove The Magic Shade

[TheAtrocity]

I've talked with some of you and I've tried very very hard to be open minded about this specific boss. I was adamantly against this boss, as it made no sense within the zs-gameplay of any server. I have given it a lot of time, reasonably speaking, to see where this would go. It went under a series of nerfs, but as of yesterday after assurances that I would "come to like it" and that it is "balanced", I experienced again firsthand as the cader.

 

I believe Cain can testify. We were doing very fine until wave 5, when the boss was finally picked. Being the traditional cader, the cade had multiple buffers and a final structure in case the zombies made it through the main cade structure. In 10 seconds,the magic shade opened a big whole to the inner part of the cade.

 

Let's stop here and explain the scenario:

 

As most cades of this level go, you cannot simply re-nail the unnailed props, as it would mean going outside the cade. Zombies inevitably camp this area so going out would mean death.

The magic shade can, of course, act like a shade and throw the props away from me - even finish the kill as would a shade by throwing the prop(s).

With the props unnailed, the zombies bypass the front shell and hit the secondary buffer. This is akin to cat control on CS:GO's Dust II map:

(T's can go to A-long, camp mid and do either a mid->B push, or mid->A push through CT, go to B through lower, go back and push Long (or A-split), or even head back to T-spawn for a B push.)

 

The secondary shell usually gives zombies multiple options: they can continue hitting the inner structure in front, hit the final structures on the side, hit the top inner or final top props, or call a shade in to block the bullets throughout the entire cade and render most weapons ineffective.

 

 

By the end of wave 5, the cade is nearly finished. The secondary shell is close to being destroyed and the side props designed to funnel the zombies are at dangerously low HP and repair HP.

 

Another magic shade at wave 6 is all that is needed to quickly unnail the final buffers and have the rest of the horde rush en-masse. This includes zombine, which explode at the final barrier to damage defending humans, additional bosses such as the DPS-mare, or a tank-shade.

 

 

The magic shade almost completely gets rid of the need to cade at all. Multiple nails don't even help. Once a core prop is unnailed, the cade inevitably caves in on itself. What could have been a close human win is now overwhelmingly in the zombie's favor. Why is such a boss in the server? It makes no sense whatsoever within the ZS gameplay. It is broken not only at low populations (which is usually the case for HG ZS) but for high and medium population as well. This is ridiculous. I've tried to be open minded and patient, but it needs to go.

[knifes_96]

+1

[EngineTrap]

What the man said.

 

I understand the introduction of a cade-destroyer boss, but it was made the wrong way.

Unnailing the props is not fair.

Cade destruction in ZS is based on damaging props, not magically making them disappear.

Until you decide to remove/replace it by another boss, please make it unnailing nails instead of the whole prop.

This way you wouldn't discourage the caders to do their job, and their job is important in ZS.

 

You could start thinking about a new boss zombie replacing the magic shade.

For example a tank ala L4D2 sprinting then crushing in the cade, dealing huge damages to the prop which was directly hit, like 40% of the prop HPs, not touching the nails or the repair HPs.

You could make the ground to shake when it hit the cade prop.

 

A New boss like that would be certainly nice

[Ablation]

Yeah it can be annoying I will agree. But at least it's not like the shade where it only takes flashlight damage. I've played as a magic shade before around wave 5 or 6. And I tried to approach the cade to un-nail some shit, but I got completely blasted away by the bullets, and it only took them around 10 seconds to kill me. So with enough people inside the cade, magic shade is not a problem. But on a low pop server, this is easily a problem. So maybe instead of removing it, we could find a way to balance it out .