How is the Tail Attack, in this state, a 'balanced' ability?

I've seen lots of commotion about Xeno being a fair killer so this should be a easy question to answer.
Pyramid Head has a similar ability but he has a sound cue AND a whole animation before he's able to release his ability. Nemesis can't injure people with his tentacle unless they're infected beforehand and this also has a animation and a sound cue. Huntress also has a sound cue and animation when she brings her hatchets out. Deathslinger also has a sound cue and animation. Remote Flame Turrets can be scattered around the entire map but Xenos will always be in Crawling Mode 24/7 due to how weak the turrets are. The ability has no cooldown. The ability can guarantee a hit for any animation-locking action. The Crawling Mode allows easy mind-games and when a survivor loses one, it's a guaranteed hit with the ability (lose/lose). The Crawling Mode recovers way too fast for how much turrets it is worth. The ability can go over smaller loops rendering them useless. The ability makes destroying pallets unnecessary. The ability can hit over pallets. The ability can hit over vaults. A person did the math calculations that proved you literally need to predict the attack because you won't be able to react in time.
A common argument I can predict is about hitbox. That's irrelevant. Realistically, no one will get 50ms ping or less every game thanks to the terrible servers. Absurd hits are bound to hit no matter the hitbox.
Give Xeno mains more time to practice their tail attacks and your opinions will change, especially once they stop falling for vault/pallet baits. The argument that Xeno has only been out a couple of days doesn't diminish their potential for a high skill ceiling. For the meantime, please show me your perspective on this situation. I'm not implying that the ability needs to be nerfed to the ground before anyone calls me a survivor main, but the least BHVR could do is add a cooldown.
Best Answers
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He needs to have a hit cooldown back. Something more punishing than what he has now. Maybe revert to ptb or nerf it so the cooldown is 3-3.5 seconds long. What we have is a little ridiculous.
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At least prenerf deathslinger had to reload, xeno just has infinite whips + no cooldown. Feelsbadman
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Wow, where will I find the nearest flame turrets placed by my team? In the corner of the map?
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Y’all will really defend anything huh? Anyone who is objective can see that the hitbox is beyond dumb and then add the fact there’s basically no penalty/slowdown for missing. It isn’t balanced and will be changed. Count on it.
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They have no argument. They know it's OP which is why all they can muster is "lol git gud!". This is the go to argument people use to defend anything that is OP. I am eagerly awaiting the tears when they give the tail a reasonable nerf that is fair for both sides. People have put together extremely reasonable arguments for why the tail is problematic and some killer mains just don't want to hear it.
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You can't learn to play against the tail attack. Since on the survivor side the tail attack has no mechanical skill to counter play. All you can do is to predict when the killer might be using his tail attack. But since you play against a human, or better say multiple humans, there is no strategy you can come up because every match will be different.
The tail attack itself is not overpowered and for sure needs skill on the killer side but when a killer has mastered its use. There is not much a survivor can do. It's like running a nurse, you rely on killer mistakes. That's not healthy at all for the game and that's why survivors complain. Because they feel like they can't achieve a won chase by themselves.
The turrets. Yes they can come into play and I think they are currently balanced how fast they kick the killer out of power. But they can't be something you have to use in a chase to have a chance since they have a setup time. Therefore you have to plan beforehand and everyone on the survivor team has to understand your plan. That's nothing you can achieve in soloQ. Swf on the other hand can even setup new turrets mid chase.
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you mean they should buff soloQ?
edit:
"hold W" ... that means there is nothing else a survivor can do.
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i hear that argument a lot and its simply worng. there is no counter to the tail attack since there is no reaction time to the tail attack. there is only some predictions a suvivivor can make but that is more or less just gamble and has no skill level.
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I play killer 25% of the time and I have ran Xeno and it is really overpowered - I'm just Tail Whipping over loop terrain and if it's in pallet drop distance, regardless if they fake it or not, it's a instant tail whip shot because the distance between the gap to get stunned by it and faking it cannot stop the length of it's current projectile.
If you argue "well then duck" - the graphic delay to duck and stand up and run against is lost travel time between the survivor and the xeno. Currently, there is minimal to no tail whip delay, so survivor cannot create distance on killer mistakes. If anything you lose distance to crouch and stand back up and initiate run again - requires more time distance loss for a missed tail whip because the killer is still holding W.
If you argue "well Turrets help" but the time return for setting up and then the movement impairment for carrying one and placement restrictions cause so much wasted time. Ontop of that, they are limited and they have to burn the alien long enough to remove the tail ability which is like 3 seconds of constant burn.
If you want first-hand experience, run survivor and I'll be happy to 1:1 you in a private lobby and track the actual survival time you can actual stay up. I assure you - it won't be 90 seconds net total from 3 hook chases.
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What I have learned on this forum is that if Killer players say something a new Killer can do is balanced, that it is at least slightly too good.
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lol the amount of times I get caught out of position because I have this stupid turret in my hand and between activating the turret station, actually grabbing it, then walking a few steps to place it meanwhile this xeno is halfway out of the tunnel and there's just not enough time to drop it and run somewhere safe and tada free hit
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If you want, there are no turrets that can't be M2'd before they get you out of power. Just focus M2 instead of M1 for turrets and tell me if you ever lost your power. So far I lost it once to double-turret where I forgot that cooling off takes some time.
I agree that you need strong ability to warrant counterplay. But counterplay that does nothing means it's not counterplay. It's waste of time.
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you know what is the biggest difference? If I am playing Xeno, I think about if it's worth to break that strong pallet (shocking - but even if it's shack). If I am playing ANY OTHER of those killers, I DO break them (talking about strong pallets only). Because Xeno can hit over most loops and thru every pallet.
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Its not balanced at all. Ducked behind the side of the hood of a car on Haddonfield. Killer on opposite side of the car. Tail still hit by flicking it to the side after fully extended. Killer powers should all have an easily executable counter. Not necessarily that itll work every time, but not something that requires thousands of hours in the game and reflexes faster than most humans are capable of to execute. Most of the playerbase is not the top 1% of elite survivors and as an 85%ish percent of the time solo queue player this is honestly making the game boring and unplayable as my teammates drop so quickly that its impossible to win. Ive even resorted to Overcome/Lucky Break to ensure I never get caught. And tbh thats an unfair survivor perk combo.
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Small changes I think Xenomorph needs:
• Better Visual and Sound for Tail Attacks on Survivor Side.
• More punishment for missing M2s (a good example is Demogorgon).
• Let Survivor run with and place the Turrent wherever they want. But makes it take a little longer than currently and punish them for it, a downside effect while carrying it, can be Hindered basekit like Wesker's Infection (similar Pinhead mechanic). Addons can apply Exhaust, Blindness, etc.
• Make Crawling Mode a power you should earn for playing well (like it is for Oni), teleport will increase it by a small % to get it while getting M1s will increase a really good amount (basekit). Add-ons make it faster to get the power.
Those are changes I think that would make it even more enjoyable to play as and against perhaps. That's my opinion and my suggestions, you are all free to disagree.
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Just give it a few weeks. They all come out the gate too powerful, BS hitboxes, and so on and so forth, and after the hype has died down a bit they get nerfed into the ground or to a normal degree. Same as they did with Wesker. But first, they need to make enough money on their license :)
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Answers
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This is exactly what I mean! Glad I'm not the only one that thinks that.
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The cooldown is 3 seconds long. There seems to be a bug where she doesn't always lose movespeed during the cooldown like she is supposed to.
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The tail attack is fine. The flame turrets aren't weak, there's just a massive difference between survivor teams who use them effectively and survivor teams who barely put them down. Just holding W to the nearest turret will buy you time.
At tiles, drop the pallet. Drop it earlier. Don't wait until you're going to be animation locked in front of the killer to drop it. Don't try to loop something until you're in a lose-lose. And this should go without saying, but don't animation lock yourself in a vault right in front of the killer.
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That's your argument?
Flame turrets are weak in solo queue and that makes up like 70% of games worldwide if not more. I can't see how you could argue they're strong.
Holding W to the nearest turret doesn't do anything. You'd be lucky to even get the Xeno out of Crawling Mode but you also need to take into account that turrets are placed near people working on gens. That's a silly strategy.
Pre-dropping pallets way ahead of chases shouldn't be a strategy. Just shows that the killer is too oppressive and that little bit of distance the dropped pallet gives is more valuable than actually looping.
You can't move onto new pallets before you're lose/lose. Xeno won't let you. No killer would let you if they had an ability like that where they HOPE you drop the pallet.
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This person here is absolutely right, you need to learn how to play against that killer instead of crying for nerfs.
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So tip stop putting turrets right next to gens unless you only want them as a early detection mechanic because those are never going to burn a Xeno out of it's power. There's also the fact that as a cereal user all you're doing is telling me what gen you're working on. Place them more at loops or hidden and I imagine that would be much more annoying.
In addition predropping is also the strategy against Clown and Doctor are you going to claim they're too oppressive as well?
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I never pre-drop against Clown or Doctor. Doctor is my favorite killer to loop actually. I'm good enough to not rely on that. Also, you do realize survivors are hindered massively whilst carrying the turrets that spawn NEXT to the gens?
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I'm aware but that's the trade off of getting higher value turrets, if you're gonna do the equivalent of knocking the turret out of the control panel and onto the floor then it's pretty unreasonable to expect that to knock Xeno out of their power 100% of the time.
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I only use them as a early detection mechanic as I don't like wasting time, especially in solo queue. I don't expect it to knock him out of his power, the problem is when I have two (in close proximity) at seperate loops and they don't do anything apparently. Yes, they were both active at the time I was looping.
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Yeah I know. It's sometimes just nice reminding them that they didn't provide a single argument to back their point. Had to make this discussion after people kept saying Xeno is balanced and doesn't need any changes. It's shocking that I still haven't received a solid answer ha ha.
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Do you know if they were using e-helmet or star chart by any chance?
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Yeah, once Xenos master aiming its ggs and back to the lobby.
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No sorry, I just go next when I die usually. If you're saying they probably had those add-ons then I won't deny that they could have.
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"B-b-but it's smaller than Nemesis' tentacle!" 😡
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If you're lucky lmao
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It is what it is... 😔
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With time you'll learn how to counter the killer. The killer just released a few days ago
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Don't put the turrets right on top of a working gen. Put them near the tile you're going to run to after Xeno emerges and the turret comes off cooldown. What's the point of putting the turret on top of a gen when they're on cooldown immediately after exiting the tunnel? I get that solo queue sucks. I play it regularly. But I've played against plenty of teams that use the turrets effectively since Xeno's release. You don't need to pull it out of Crawler mode to make distance. I have held W all the way across Suffo Pit because of turrets on survivor. You can absolutely gain distance.
Pre-dropping>looping is not a problem unique to Xenomorph. That's how you play against Clown, Freddy, Trapper, Blight, PH, Trickster, etc, in an optimal setting. Every killer whose power can guarantee hits on greed or animation locks should be pre-dropped against.
Xeno is like a lot of other high tier killers. If they're good, the focus is distance management, not looping.
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See this person is absolutely right as well.
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With time the killers will aim better. That's when the forums will flood and I'll be laughing.
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Distance management is good against all killers. The problem is you have to loop when a killer is nearby. Sometimes you can't just hold W.
Bold of you to assume I put the turret on top of a working gen but it's whatever.
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I played a fair amount of the Xenomorph (prestige 3 at the moment).
In my opinion, it feels very balanced. This killer is extremely oppressive in chase. It can lose Mindgames and therefore lose time. If played right, it wins the chase very fast. To counter this and slow it down, there are the turrets. Placing them smartly can turn the table and slow this killer down a lot. If used badly this killer can snowball very hard. The tail attack, from what I can tell, is this strong because it can be disabled completely. Nemesis, Huntress and Pyramid head always have their power ready. Exception is Huntress but she can do cross maps and long distance shots on top of that, so it balances out. I lost a good amount of games due to survivors spreading out and playing well against it's power meaning using turrets in a smart way to counter me at loops or make me lose distance.
This killer is not overpowered or busted.
They are strong with unique counterplay.
It baffles me that players complain about Xeno when nurse exists. A killer that literally leaves you with 0 counterplay if played right.
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Is it just me or is the Xeno tail kinda difficult to use if you play with a controller? (Even though I play on PC, I'm just not a mouse and keyboard gamer). I think it is, because I could hit barely anyone with it. Felt a lot like my Trickster and Huntress games, to be honest. Lots of misses and not a lot of hits.
But with accuracy and skill, feels like the Xeno could be the second best ranged killer after the Huntress (albeit as a very short ranged killer like the Trickster). In some situations possibly even better than Huntress, since you're a full speed killer with no lullaby and the option for quick basic attacks.
I'm treating them like a ranged killer anyway. A good Trickster and Huntress feel like they have no real counter play either. If they are accurate, you're just dead and that's that.
So just hope you get more console Xenos and less PC ones, I guess?
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Controller players are always suffering 😔
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His Tail Attack cooldown is already 3 seconds.
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Lose mind-games? When you're in crawler mode? Turrets slow the killer down for a second max. The tail attack can be disabled for a couple of seconds lol.
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The cooldown is 3 seconds. Problem is the speed seems bugged because I can tell you with certainly that you're much faster than the stated 2m/s.
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Now thats exaggeration.
If the Xenomorph loses its power due to a turret, it's disabled for a long time. Might as well go back to the tunnels to recharge, ending any form of chase in the process.
And yes. You can mindgame the tail.
I know it's dumb when I say it but: look up YouTube videos of survivors playing against it. They do just fine. Same as the survivors I play against.
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Go against the Xenos I have and I promise you some YouTube video of survivors going against a new killer won't help.
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Do you have video material?
Would love to learn something from these god-tier xenos.
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So when the Tail attack can be easily dodged and missed attacks slow the Xeno down for long enough to escape, and the Tail attack is no better or worse than the Special attack from other killers like Demo, Nemo, etc.
...what will be the point of Turrets?
Why would a mediocre Special attack need a counter that removes the killer's ability to use it entirely?
Why would survivors need to waste time interacting with Turrets when they can just dodge the Tail attack?
Tail attack is supposed to be unforgiving, so that survivors are pressured to use Turrets, so that Xeno doesn't have 100% uptime. Yet Turrets have to be counterable, otherwise Xeno's power would have 0% uptime like Singularity.
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Tail attack easily dodged? What type of Xenos are you going up against lol?
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... I'm talking about when the tail attack gets nerfed due to all of these complaints.
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You will experience it yourself in the coming weeks if you decide to get out of low MMR. Good luck. :)
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We aren't seeking a nerf like that, as I made very clear in my argument. Does it hurt that bad to just read?
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Do you recognise the irony in what you just said?
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Your statement wasn't entirely clear though, was it? How was I meant to know that's what you were inferring about if it's not mentioned you're talking about stuff after a nerf. That's your fault not mine.
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Console xemos?
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