Archive for August, 2016


Wall ride with lucio!

ProfessorGanymede: Did you notice how much damage I took while I was wallriding?

It is a good example of where to wallride – that tall, narrow corridor thing with access from up the wall puts you above players line of sight from the get go and obscures you once you are there. You have another example on nepal and while you did not take damage (or took minimal) in that video either you were “open” to people shooting you from anywhere inside the main room. You were basically exposed to everyone entering the room.

Around 1 minute you are above the point on the Nepal video. You say you don’t shoot because you don’t want to draw attention (in more words) but if players really looked you would die.

Now, currently it might be legit to play in this manner as players across the board seem to not notice lucios behavior. This would either be because few players wall ride well or because the players heavy, obvious, wallriding works against are straight up unobservant. Personally I think that the playerbase has not matured to the point where they are comfortable with more vertical play and more specifically they are not used to a character like lucio being up on the wall. Players coming from modern fps can aim but do not cope with this sort of thing. A good parallel here is Pharah. Even at low-mid 60s I often had mccrees that did not shoot the enemy pharah. This does not make pharah a good pick (end of season 1 meta), it simply means players who should shoot you might not.

This smacks of gambling. The fortnite double pump shotgun is awesome.

I play with some older arena fps players and they do not struggle with lucio wall riding. “Lucio wall riding” *lucio proceeds to die*. You would have been dead in that nepal video very quickly unless the flags hide you in some way.

Compared wall riding to Lucio trying to dodge. Lucio with passive speed + adad spam is very hard to hit. His hitbox is small. His animations are pretty crazy. Making him straight up hard to track. Wall riding is almost identical to running in a straight line*, just not on the ground, which is why it is currently decent. Players can easily track an enemy running straight – thus players can track a lucio wall riding. They just don’t do it. This is similar to terrible target selection most players exhibit.

Now the question that really should be asked is “Am I harder to hit when I wall ride compared to when I adad spam with passive speed” and the answer should be obvious. The latter makes you harder to hit in most situations where as the former makes you inconspicuous to some players but much easier to shoot for ones that do see you. Going back to the gambling this is the point where you have to make your own call as to which to use. As the game matures I think we will see blatant out in the open wall riding reduce as lucio will just die when he does it.

If you can LOS most of the enemy by using wall ride, then excellent. This video is a great example of this behavior. The Nepal video in my mind is not

*If not worse because at least with running in a straight line you can drop straight into evasive action instantly rather than needing to drop (also easy to track) until you hit the floor.


And if you are on the ground strafing, good players WILL be able to hit you. ESPECIALLY hit scan characters like Mcree, Widow, and Tracer.

Moving in a predictable, straight line on a wall. Or even worse, stopping the wallride to bounce up the wall. Or dropping off the wall and falling a significant distance.

vs

Moving back and forth rapidly perpendicular to your opponents aim with passive speed.

The only way the latter does not work against those characters for the smaller hitbox characters is if the netcode is wildly broken. They will still hit you, however they will hit you at a significantly reduced % compared to walking in a straight line across a wall.

the enemy team did have a Tracer that was wrecking my team.

This is in hind sight after your positioning was pointed out. This sort of thing should be in the video. “I am here because the tracer can’t get me”.

There is no tracer in the video I linked.

But there are plenty of situations where it is more useful than strafing on the ground, making yourself easy pickings for hitscan characters.

When you are wall riding you are slower, more predictable and easier to shoot compared to when you strafe spam with passive speed. If you can position youself using wall ride to LOS these characters then that is superior to fast adad.. otherwise no.

I even agree that with the current player base wallriding like 1:00 in your nepal video is probably fine and you won’t get picked off. However flat out stating that wall riding makes you harder to hit is bollocks. It makes you easier to hit unless you can LOS your opponents using it. It doesn’t matter that you are up on the wall unless the wall you are on heavily effects your opponents LOS to you. Perhaps a series showing parts of maps like the kings row stairs would be useful to support this piece.

This is similar to players jumping when in fights to try to throw off their opponents aim. Does it? Yes. Does it as much as adad with passive speed? No. Because there are times when you are moving in a much more predictable manner.


Here is a relevant anecdote from another game I play(ed). During UT4 development Epic added a “sprint” feature. This is a passive that kicks in after a player runs forward for.. 3 seconds. The player speeds up until they stop running or jump or turn too sharply. In UT land players have the ability to dodge by double tapping their strafe keys, resulting in a quick movement left/right/forward/back. This is typically chained together for faster forward movement and has been a staple of the series since unreal1. Even though sprint is faster than chained dodges noone has ever specifically used sprint to move faster because the player is too predictable/easily tracked. The edge cases, where sprint is useful is not because it is faster but because it is quieter than dodging. Once again we see that running in a straight, predictable line is a bad idea.

Like wise when players are trying to dodge in quakelive they generally stay grounded so they can adad – jumping, even on the flat, increases your predictability.

I don’t know what your gaming background is but if it is modern fps like cs, cod and bf I fully understand why you would be skeptical of this idea of grounded strafing and unless someone comes forward with a rebuttal or a reason why (outside of “this is not the case”) then it will stand.

The one thing that could change this is the netcode.

I don’t even feel you can’t even really comment on how effective this is because.. you do not do it.