TGMC:Defiler

This page is a part of the TGMC wiki. TGMC is a project based on the CM-SS13 codebase.

UNDEFINED XENO
Defiler	Difficulty: Medium Rank: Hatchling (Starting), Young (10hrs), Mature (25hrs), Elder (70 hrs), Ancient (175 hrs) Duties: Use your noxious gas to support pushes and harass marines, inject deadly toxins into marines to impair them, use Defile to finish off combatants. Guides: This is the guide. Quote: "Nice premed lol, sure would be a shame if someone purged it."

Statistics and Evolution Path

The Defiler is a Tier 3 and does not evolve further.

• Slash is the melee damage when the xenomorph is in harm intent and slashing marine. In the code, it's melee_damage.
• Melee, bullet, laser, energy, bomb, bio, rad, fire, and acid are soft armor values, not hard armor, which means that they reduce damage by a percentage rather than a flat value.
• Pheromone Strength determines how powerful some activities will be, such as pheromones themselves, as well as using abilities that heal.
• Speed is calculated inversely, meaning the lower speed value you have, the faster you are. Xenomorphs are always running, meaning they have a -1.0 boost added to their base speed. (Chart displays running speed)
• The last cloud is always the largest (4 tile spread), while the first two are both the same size (3 tile spread).

	Health	Plasma	Slash	Speed	Max Gas Radius	Melee	Bullet	Laser	Energy	Bomb	Bio	Fire	Acid	Pheromone Strength
Base	375	575	26	-2.0	4	45	45	45	45	0	40	40	40	2.6x

The Defiler

Evolved to counter the advancements in medicine that the tall-hosts have made, the Defiler strives to bring biological warfare to the immune systems of all humans. Using vaporized gasses to provide a smokescreen that blocks the line of sight for marines, as well as causing anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the smoke to inhale the deadly toxins. Injecting vile reagents directly into the bloodstreams of even the most biologically armored marines (except combat robots and synths... you're just going to have to cry when you see those). And finally, Defiling any marine unlucky enough to be caught in your grasp, causing rapid instantaneous death by toxins.

Playing the Defiler

Considered as a high-risk, high-reward caste due to its armor and health stats and demand of CQC, the many abilities of the Defiler are:

• Obscuring marines' line of sight with gas by being very, very close to marines.
• Going into vents and jump scaring marines by jumping out of un-welded vents and gassing them.
• Injecting toxins directly into marines with your spines.
• Purging all of the chemicals in a marine with defile.
• Bobbing and weaving to not die instantly.
• Weeding areas to provide space to WASD marines.
• Planting eggs for tactical gas to discourage marine pushes.
• Defiling marines after prep via toxins to instantly kill them.

The Defiler is one of the most difficult support caste xenos to play, due to its forced front line fighting, requirement of knowing reagent uses, and low armor and health compared to other T3 xenos. Your Defile sting is a powerful follow-up to neurotoxin spits from Praetorians, and the main counter to drugged-up marines. You can place weeds, and your Emit Noxious Gas ability can lay down a smokescreen to allow xenos to push on fortifications that include turrets. If you master the Defiler, you will be the thing marines have nightmares about when they sleep.

As a Defiler, it's very important to maintain in your mind that you cannot take as much damage as any other T3. Losing a Tier 3 Xenomorph is always a big setback for the hive due to Tier limitations and the time it takes to reach Tier 3 for any xeno. Your Emit Noxious Gas ability is extremely beneficial for xeno pushes, especially in the absence of a Boiler, start your channel out of marine sight, then run in as soon as your gas begins to vent. Reagent Slash can be extremely useful, if you know how to use it. Keep in mind Reagent Slash can be activated even while moving, so if you stay close to the target, you can get your full 3 slashes in. Your Defile sting is a brief channel that purges all chemicals in the victim while dealing toxin damage scaling by the total amount of reagents in them. This gets exponentially stronger if you pump them full of reagents, as each Xeno Toxin in their system multiplies the overall toxin damage.

Reagents

The Defiler has the ability to use four different reagents: Neurotoxin, Hemodile, Transvitox, and Ozelomelyn. Both Emit Noxious Gas and Reagent Slash abilities can use Neurotoxin, Hemodile, Transvitox, and Ozelomelyn as their reagent whereby Defile is the only ability to produce Sanguinal as a gas.

Disclaimer: Swapping reagents while using Reagent Slash or Emit Noxious Gas will NOT change the chemicals being used, if you are able to do this, it is a bug and unintentional.

Name	Description	Metabolism Rate
Neurotoxin ▮	A debilitating nerve toxin. Can cause jittering and vision problems if left to sit. Causes progressively increasing pain and stamina loss. Effects incrementing at the 20th and 45th cycle (40 second and minute and a half mark). Doesn't overdose.	0.4 units per tick
Hemodile ▮	Impedes motor functions and muscle response, causing slower movement. Causes heavy slowdown that gets doubled in the presence of other toxins. Intensity of slowdown greatly increasing with each unique toxin added to their system.	0.4 units per tick
Transvitox ▮	Converts burn damage to toxin damage over time, and causes brute damage received to inflict extra toxin damage, effectively increasing the damage of slash attacks. Every tick, converts burn damage to toxin damage equal to 1/4th the current cycle, doubling the rate for each xeno-based toxin in the bloodstream. Whenever damage is taken, additional toxin damage is taken equal to 1/10th the current brute loss or damage taken (after armor), whichever is lesser. This is multiplied by xeno-based toxins in the same way the burn conversion is. The toxin damage has a max of 180 total.	0.4 units per tick
Ozelomelyn ▮	Purges chemicals at a rate of 5u per tick and deals 0.75 toxin damage per tick. The toxin damage has a max of 40 total.	1.5 units per tick
Sanguinal ▮	Causes brute damage and bleeding, with different damage types being done by other xenomorph reagents inside the target (Stamina for Hemodile, Toxin for Neurotoxin and Burn for Transvitox).	0.4 units per tick

The target will have a HUD indicator next to their health bar in the form of a colored dot which shows if the target has a reagent in them or not. You can then examine them (with shift-click) to see what reagents are in them exactly. Note that this will only show you xenomorph reagents, not marine chems.

Defiler Abilities

Ability	Description	Plasma Cost	Cooldown
Toggle Bump Attacks	Allows you to toggle bump attacks on and off. This allows you to slash any enemy creature by running into them. The red arrow means it's on, you attack when on HARM intent; the green arrow means it's off, you push when on HARM intent.	N/A	N/A
Rest	Used to rest and get up. You heal faster when resting on weeds.	N/A	2 seconds
Psy Drain	This ability is used on dead Marines. For every Marine's psyche drained, the Hive will gain between 30 and 90 psychic points, depending on the number of Marines spawned; and 1/8 of a larva.	50	N/A
Cocoon	Devour your victim to cocoon it, then expel the contents of your stomach onto your tile after 3 seconds. Any Marine in a cocoon is still able to be revived, but the cocoon will give psychic points for 5 minutes. Yields between 1 and 5 psychic points per 5 seconds, depending on the number of spawned Marines.	100	N/A
Corrosive Acid	Expels acid onto an object or wall, destroying it after a while. If used on wall, a hole will appear after some time. Small xenos can climb through, large xenos can break the wall with the hole on it open. CTRL + click to interact with the acid hole. During the prep phase, all xenomorphs with this ability get strong acid. [Acid Strength by Caste] Drone and Sentinel, and Scorpion have the weakest acid. Takes 8 minutes to melt a hole in a regular wall. Cannot be used on reinforced walls. Hivelord, Shrike, Spitter, and Praetorian have common acid. Takes 3 minutes to melt a hole in a regular wall. Cannot be used on reinforced walls. Boiler, Primordial Hivelord, Queen, and King have the strongest acid. Takes 1.5 minutes to melt a hole in any type of wall.	75 if caste has weak acid; 100 for medium and strong acid	N/A
Plant Weeds	Plants a resin weed node, which will start growing resin weeds in a 3-tile radius that allows xenomorphs to heal and restore plasma while on top of the tile. Right-clicking the ability icon will allow you to select different types of weeds to plant. Placing a weed node on top of another will replace that weed node with the new type. During the prep phase, plasma cost to place a weed node is halved. [Weed Types] Default, does nothing extraordinary. Costs 75 plasma. Boosts health and plasma regeneration by 20%, and doubles sunder recovery for any xenos resting on them. Costs 150 plasma. Slows humans and vehicles a small amount, can stack with sticky resin. Costs 225 plasma.	75-225	N/A
Emit Pheromones	Toggles your pheromones, allowing you to select Recovery, Warding, or Frenzy. You only emit one at a time, and you can see which pheromones you are effected by in the Status tab. Emitting pheromones uses 5 plasma every regeneration tick. Strength of pheromones is tied to caste and increases the effects. More at Xenomorph Mechanics. [Pheromone Types] Recovery: Accelerates healing and sunder regeneration for resting xenos, increases the amount healed from healing abilities, and increases plasma regeneration. Allows for healing after taking damage without having to wait 10 seconds. Warding: Increases soft armor in all areas for each level. Frenzy: Decreases movement slowdown by 0.6 for each level. [Pheromone Strength by Caste] and Drone - 2.0 Carrier - 2.5 Defiler - 2.6, Hivelord - 3.0, Shrike - 3.0, Hivemind - 4.0, Praetorian - 4.5, King - 4.5 Queen and Pheromone Towers - 5.0	N/A	N/A
Emit Noxious Gas	Emit Noxious Gas begins a channel that after a short amount of time begins to vent the selected reagent as a gas from your dorsal ports, you can move once the gas begins to vent.	200	40 seconds
Defile	Purges all chemicals in the victim and deals toxin damage equal to half the total unit of chemical purged from the victim's system multiplied by 2 for each unique xenomorph toxin in its system. The victim also exudes a cloud of blood red Sanguinal smoke that scales in size with the amount of toxin damage dealt in this way.	100	20 seconds
Reagent Slash	Enables your slashes to inject toxins directly into the target. Lasts 4 seconds, allowing 3 slashes to inject 7u each, for a total of 21u.	100	6 seconds
Inject Neurogas	Inject an egg with neurogas, killing the facehugger, but filling it full with neurogas ready to explode.	100	5 seconds
Lay Egg	Makes you lay a hugger egg.	200	12 seconds

Primordial Evolution

Once the hive has enough psychic points, your Queen has the option to unlock powerful primordial evolutions for each strain. Primordial evolutions grant additional abilities for the relevant class.
For the Defiler, this primordial ability is Tentacle.

Ability	Description	Plasma Cost	Cooldown
Tentacle	Allows the Defiler to grab a tallhost from range and bring them towards the Defiler. Forcing them to drop their weapon, and pulling them over unwired cades.	175	20

Defiler Guide

Disclaimer: Below is a very straight-forward and literal guide to basic strategies to employ as Defiler. Whether or not these will be of use to you is a matter of how you play. Be warned that this info may be liable to becoming (or already being) out of date because of this. I recommend you try and get a hang of Defiler first before you try jumping into tactics like these, as trying to pick up every single bit of Defiler at once can quickly leave you overwhelmed. Don't be afraid to experiment with your own experiences and find different ways to play Defiler. Because the fun comes from the variety of reagents and ways you employ them, don't just force yourself to stick to just half your kit.

• Firstly, setup a hotkey to cycle through reagent selection. Defile only cares about whether a xeno reagent is inside, not the amount of it, so defiling 20u hemo + 1u neuro results in as big of a defile cloud as 1u hemo + 1u neuro + 19u bica. As a result, there really isn't a reason to not juggle different reagents for emitting gas and reagent slash.
• Ideally, you should have frenzy pheromones on when engaging. Most of the time, the Queen's going to be on Recovery, so you'll have to emit Frenzy for yourself.
• Neurotoxin isn't immediately useful. It takes time for the effects to kick in, and in the meantime, it can be purged by four different medications: dylovene, ryetalyn, synaptizine, and not to mention, hyronalin. You can disperse a much larger amount of neuro than a Praetorian, so if marines are bald enough to not know how to purge chems, you can make it work.
• Ozelomelyn is decent if you're not very confident in landing a defile, you can run into the ungaball and force the medics to remed their patients, it's super annoying.
• If you want to be really greedy, delay defiling until the last moment to give the medics a headache.

Defiling

• When it comes to securing kills with defile, your bread and butter are hemodile and transvitox. The strength of the defiler is that while it is strongest in a 1v1 situation, you can artificially create one using your smoke, driving the other marines within the ungaball away.
• Firstly, you emit hemodile gas, and once you've started emitting, you run into the edge of the ungaball on help intent, trying to pick out a marine that's appreciably far enough from the center. While you're doing so, you cycle your reagent into transvitox, and activate reagent slash. You shuffle the marine behind you, switch to harm intent, and get at least one slash on using Reagent Slash. Now, you switch back to help intent, and shuffle them in preparation for defile (the shuffling is so that you have an accurate gauge on their next movement tick, and they might panic try to run into you). Important: Don't try to defile before giving your target another reagent in addition to hemodile, you'll waste your defile, and by the time the cooldown resets, your gas cloud will have dispersed, and you'll probably have run out of plasma. Simplified, it's emit hemodile --> slash transvitox --> shuffle and defile.
  • If your target is at about full health, and wearing LIGHT armor, then you'll have to determine the case if you want to hit a defile.
    • If you don't think that you can take a prolonged engagement (such as aim mode marines firing into the smoke), you can diagonally shuffle and try to get a theoretically (I think?) guaranteed defile, but the margin of error is very small. In such cases, I usually find it easier to cardinally shuffle and then hope that they keep trying to run through your body.
    • Otherwise, this is the benefit of transvitox reagent slash, you keep shuffling and slashing them until they either scream or your gas is about to run out, at which point you cardinally shuffle and then defile.
  • If your target is wearing medium, heavy, B18, Tyr, Valk, Surt, is at orange or red health, has another xeno toxin in their system, is wielding their gun (especially one with a high slowdown), or has run out of stamina, you can get away with immediately cardinally shuffling them and then getting a guaranteed defile.
• Don't target marines with jetpacks, as they can jetpack away, and don't target marines with access to stagger, as that interrupts your defile, interrupts your gas cloud, and generally paints a target on your back for the ungaball. I believe that the threshold for stagger is about two tiles for buckshot, and three tiles for slugs, Leicester shots, and Martini shots. Rocket sledge adds a 1 second stun to the mix, and pepperballs are actually really annoying because the aforementioned sequence consumes most of your plasma, so it might lose you your defile.
• Unless your target's neck-deep in premeds, ozelomolyn usually increases the potency of the defile, for any drones / shrikes out there.
• Ditto for neuro, if you can convince a Praetorian friend to tag along, it greatly enhances your killing power, especially for those without meds in their system.
• You can tag along with a stun caste (prae, shrike, queen, bull), and take advantage of their stuns. Personally, it throws me off my rhythm, as stunned marines, upon getting up, can instantly move, regardless of hemodile or stamina or whatever. Therefore, I find that attempting to land a cheap defile often results in it being wasted, but your mileage may vary. Usually, I use these situations to engage and to initialize the sequence detailed above, with the added benefit that my target's already a bit bruised.
• Gas stops turrets from targeting anything in the gas, so pop gas and get free turrets kills.

TGMC Roles
	TerraGov Marines Ranks	Command	Captain, Field Commander, Staff Officer, Pilot Officer, Transport Officer, Mech Pilot
		Vehicle Crew	Assault Crewman, Transport Crewman
		Engineering and Supply	Chief Ship Engineer, Requisitions Officer, Ship Technician
		Medical	Chief Medical Officer, Medical Doctor, Researcher
		Marines	Squad Leader, Squad Smartgunner, Squad Engineer, Squad Corpsman, Squad Marine
		Civilians	Corporate Liaison
		Silicon	Combat robots, Synthetic, AI
	Xenomorphs Playtime	Tier 0	Larva, Minions
		Tier 1	Drone, Runner, Defender, Sentinel
		Tier 2	Hivelord, Carrier, Hunter, Wraith, Bull, Warrior, Puppeteer, Spitter, Pyrogen
		Tier 3	Gorger, Defiler, Widow, Ravager, Warlock, Behemoth, Crusher, Praetorian, Boiler
		Tier 4	Shrike, Queen, King, Hivemind
	Others		Zombie, Emergency Response Teams, Sons of Mars, Survivor