Monday Night Combat Title Update, DLC, and PAX Discussion

And the assassin will still be one of the strongest classes (if they play the role they should)

The fact is that 95% of the people in public games who choose the assassin dont know how to use it, or i should say use it for what its best for

Yes we play with a team, but we play vs other top teams, we rarely play public matches, so our team vs another team is fairly "balanced"

The point i was making is supports who camp their base wont win vs people who know how to play

Like i said, we play as a team, 3v3, 4v4, 6v6, it doesnt matter, and we play agsint other top teams and support camper only make it easier for a a good team to win, period

Like is said, if you think support camping is so effective, then guys some guys together and try it against us

The fact that all of your arguments can be condensed to:

"Learn to play"

says a lot about how weak your argument is. Weak anecdotes and no actual content. "My friend can do this - therefore it's fine". :roll:


Let's be totally frank this change will GUARANTEE that any support near a firebase will be a suicide mission kill for an assassin, or any class near a laserblaser for that matter. Any turtling class/player/team, therefore, is something the assassin can barely help with anymore.

This has nothing to do with the size of your epeen, which is obviously enormous as you are a GB player, this is a simple question of whether it is fair that a class which is already on the weak side if you don't have a sublime connection, can now not really attack anyone near a turret - which is the case for a support almost all the time, and the case for any turtling/defending team.

Please get some players together and play defensive support vs us

You are losing games because you teammates are incompetant, not because the other team has support players

You seem to be arguing that his point is invalid because it supposes a team that is coordinating its strategy. The issue is, your point also supposes a team that is coordinating its strategy (specifically a defensive Support turtle [oh noes]). I find your logic slightly flawed. Care to rephrase your objection to this change in less biased terms?

Back on-topic: Nice first update, Uber. Thank you for the attention to your community.

First: I love all the work you guys are putting into this game. Its incredibly polished, balanced, and full of greatness.

Second: I'd just like to voice my disagreement with removing the Assassin's ability to cloak during a grapple. I mainly play Sniper and Gunner, but the few times I jump in as an Assassin (usually because my team doesn't have an Assassin, which is rare, or because the other team is full of snipers), the only way to survive grapples most of the time is to cloak during them. Otherwise you are trading one for one on nearly every grapple.

Couple of scenarios:

• 
  1) Support is hanging out by their firebase. How do you kill them as an Assassin? Before you would get behind them, grapple, and took nearly 3/4 health damage before you re-cloaked while killing them in the animation. Now how does an Assassin get rid of a Support hanging out by their firebase?
  
  2) Sniper in the base near Laser and Rockit turrets. How do you kill them as an Assassin? Before you would maneuver around their freeze traps, grapple, and took nearly 3/4 health damage before you re-cloaked while killing them in the animation. Now how does an Assassin get rid of an entrenched Sniper?

In my mind, the Assassin was THE anti-Sniper and anti-Support class, able to infiltrate enemy lines and uproot their entrenched pros.

Now I am a little confused as to their role, because their matchups are as follows:

• Support: See scenario #1
  Sniper: See scenario #2
  Assault: They fly, ALOT, meaning grappling them is usually out of the question.
  Tank: They are made to survive Assassin grapples.
  Gunner: Prey for the Assassin.

So the Assassin's role (outside of killing bots when no other pro is around) is now to find enemy Gunners and kill them? It seems like they will be severely limited by this change, which will be bad because, as shown by your poll on this site, they were already considered one of the two most underpowered classes...


Again, Uber, your dedication to this game has made me a dedicated fan to your company. Whatever game you put out in the future will be bought by me without a second thought. Great work with the game and the quick updates to fix ALL the major issues.

And yet an average team that I play on, against an average team full of supports, is an impossible battle - even if their team defends all game. Do you not get this? I am not going to get 6 people together from my timezone to play your ultra-competitive selves - I don't know that many people who play MNC, nor care to. It would prove nothing important. At no point did I deny that YOU as 6 players can beat many supports. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you are a very capable team and maybe even an equal team which chose many supports wouldn't beat you - this has very little relevance to the way the game is most of the time, for most people. GB/MLG types always have a totally warped view of how games are, frankly.

The general state of the game, is that the more supports you come up against, the more trouble you are in. My team isn't any more likely to be incompetent (it's one of those words where, if you're going to use it, you should be able to spell it) than theirs, and actually, as I'm a significantly above average skilled player, on average my team will be better than my opponents' - but if it's a game where we fight 3 supports, we're utterly screwed - I can only do so much of the job. One way or another, this is indicative of bad balance - and making the assassin even weaker against the support is no way to improve it.

Should the support be able to make himself invulnerable to assassins by standing near a firebase... in my opinion the answer is no. If you think the answer is yes, I think you've lost your mind about what balance is. Maybe if you played a few more games in the situtaions that most people play them in (ie, in v.small groups if a group at all) you'd understand what the issue is. The level of coordination to beat the tactics is already way higher than the coordination required to employ the tactic - and the assassin is now another class which won't be able to help.

Since it is based on a percentage of the clip left, that means that having a clip size endorsement will not affect it's total damage, correct?

Correct. We went back and forth on it and decided to not have clip size endorsements affect the damage done for a very good reason: We couldn't get it to balance nicely.

That said, AmmoMule does make the clip size larger, thus flattening the damage curve, meaning you can use the gun longer before the spin and still have it do the same amount of damage as using the same percentage before the spin with a smaller clip.

Im not here to argue with you personally like you are trying to make this, i am just arguing the fact that defensive support does not work if you have teammates who push with you, let say the enemy team has 2 supports camping their base, so that means they only have 4 players out there to try and take your base, your 6 guys should'nt lose your money ball to 4v6, yes their base may be harder to take down, but they sure as hell have a disadvantaged in trying to take ours down unless their team comes to help take yours down, so how are you losing games if they arent getting your $ ball? If you are losing games its most likely because your team didnt push lanes and control bots like they should have, not because the enemy team had support players

Also 98% of people dont realize that single pro kills is probably the least important thing to focus on to win a match, if you, whatever class you have, is having problems killing 1 single player then perhaps you should focus on something else like pushing lanes

As i said, im not gonna argue with you anymore, i personally think things are very well balanced, perhaps not perfect? but support players are defiantly not overpowered, not because of how good i think i or my team is, but we have play hundreds od matches and scrimmages against other top caliber teams/players and we have seen all different kind of strategies, and honestly a team with defensive support players are easier to take down

The only point im trying to make is what you consider "unbeatable" is far from that

Use the smoke bomb to disable the turret(s). Plus, nothing beats teamwork. One class shouldn't 100% of the time beat any class one-on-one in any situation, but if one guy is being troublesome for the whole team, try to have a teammate come help. If your teammates suck or don't believe in coordination, better luck next time.

Assassin is my #1 class, and I don't think the cloak nerf is really a big deal. I didn't use it when grappling others in general; either deft bladework, or smokebomb & away. Sometimes I would use it when grappling near turrets or taking down jackbots, but I luckily never grew to rely on it.

If you want to take down someone in an entrenched spot, it just takes some thinking. Shurikens are deceptively damaging, and when well-aimed will bring down a turret or pro quicker than you might think.

As an assassin, I've never been afraid of supports or tanks. Soften him up from range, let him fire a few shots at you. Run away, let him think he scared you off with his big bad rail gun, then maneuver behind him and deliver the fatality. Or if he's doing a poor job getting out of the way, just shuriken him to death.

I'm not a great assassin player. But risk-free grapples are few and far between, so I'm trying to learn to create opportunities.

Well I'm going to park at benaroya, and I don't relish the idea of making a special trip from the convention center down there and back just to drop stuff off. I think the show floor closes long before I'll be heading from tabletop down to benaroya for the concerts, but yeah buying them towards the closing time for the show floor is probably what I'd do.

But the Supports and Snipers can now beat Assassins (or at least guarantee the Assassin dies after they get killed) 100% of the time due to this change. Just hang out near a turret/firebase and you are good. Or did you mean to say "Assassins shouldn't 100% of the time beat any class one-on-one in any situation"?

Smokebomb isn't instant and alerts everyone to your presence, before you can grapple. Also, I've tried smokebombing a support before killing him. The firebase comes back online in the middle of the grapple and kills you. As far as a Sniper near turrets goes, it won't work either because they will be running away through freeze traps. Smoke bombing is not an option.

Finally, on certain maps, there are powerful places for snipers or supports to camp (in view of lanes) that they can only be removed by another Sniper/Support or a skilled Assassin. This change makes it so that only Snipers/Supports can kill other Sniper/Supports in those situations. Not good for balance, imo.

From what I understand, there are shipping options at PAX. So you can buy stuff and ship it to yourself.

I forgot all about PAX this year, tickets are already sold out.. Oh well. Cause naturally we will eventually be able to buy the figures and shirts online or something.. right? :mrgreen:

It's been mentioned that if they have stock left after PAX, they will sell it via their website. Personally, I think they need to open an Uber Store anyway. THey may not sell like Jinx shirts, but it would sell pretty well IMHO.

Hell, they could have a contest for a T-shirt design!

If anyone wants to go to pax and forgot to get passes, there's a thread on the penny arcade forums where people can post if they have a ticket/need a ticket:
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=123814

Face value only, no scalpers, etc etc.

I love you guys.

You guys are AWESOME. Just so you know, I would gladly pay for my DLC. I know your efforts take time and money.

Uber, you guys kick ***.