Balance Problems

These are my opinion, but as one of the highest ranked PC players, I feel that I am capable of knowing something isn't right vs just being a noob.
Assault
No longer good at anything except moneyball damage, which is usually only good for 2 minutes of a 17 minute game or 1/2 a minute of a 3-5 minute game. Not to mention he has been nerfed specifically in that, with the already nerfed bomb now doing nerfed damage (halved from before) to the moneyball.

Greatly lowered mobility due to many players considering charge 3 is bad (because it is, if you charge out of combat and hit anything you go through the grapple animation and will get killed) and cooldown being lengthened on 2. Additionally, armor nerf has made bomb jumping very risky, as it takes roughly 1/3-1/2 your health with silver armor and keeps it down for at least 10 seconds before it recharges again.

Suggestion: Allow it to recharge while in play, and just keep the moneyball damage nerf. Nerfing everything about the assault is just too much, he needs to get something back.

Assassin

Too mobile. Assault mobility was nerfed, assassin should as well to keep things balanced. Increase lunge cooldown by a second or two should fix it.
Note: I'm not saying assassin shouldn't be the most mobile class, I'm saying it shouldn't be as mobile as it is. Link with dash or 3-4 second cooldown.

Too squishy. Without armor endorsement, can be instagibbed by many abilities in the game. Same goes for sniper. Perhaps buff base health so armor isn't an absolute necessity.

Face grapple damage needs to be nerfed. lunging into someones face and grappling them doesn't sound very assassin like, they shouldn't be rewarded with a kill against a full health player unless they are stealthy and actually assassinate them. Also, cloak 3 lunge face grapple and then a single slash is capable of killing a silver armor medium class. Assassin shouldn't be capable of getting easy kills from the front, the whole concept of the class is that it is sneaky and stabs you in the back. Back grapple should kill anything but fully overhealed/juiced players and gold armor tanks.

Tank

Charge needs to be fixed (level 3). The assault charge doesn't have the upgraded effect on midair targets, therefore the tank one shouldn't either. Also, knocking down someone above you just doesn't make any sense.
Note: It doesn't make sense to stun and knock down someone who is flying to the point where they have to stand back up. perhaps if it knocked (assault specifically, while flying) them either to the ground (but they stayed standing) OR had the daze effect, but both is a bit too strong, and uncounterable.

Death blossom occasionally hits midair targets while used on the ground. Should be fixed. (bug)
Note: also occasionally misses ground targets. Also should be fixed.

Gunner

Deploy is too powerful mid-long range. People farther away move across the screen slower and are therefore easier to hit, they shouldn't also be heavily slowed by someone who has increased damage and acuracy, it is just overpowered. as the damage drops off, the slow effect should as well. a gunner on the far side of the map who is deployed and hits you for a sliver of damage shouldn't incur a massive slow.

Mortar is a bit too powerful against turrets. It takes like 5 seconds to kill a level 1 rockit, that is rather reduculous. Should more time/shots to do. They should still be able to outdamage a support healing the turret, though.
Note: unjuiced. Juiced is fine, but i think it should take more than 4 shots to kill a level 1 rockit. That's around half a clip, it's just a bit too effective unjuiced IMO

Sniper

Needs armor back. possibly add something to make it slightly more difficult to aim.
Note: recoil or sway. Recoil makes it so that if you miss the first shot you can't just hold down mouse1 and get a hit while adjusting it, you have to actually aim each shot, instead of being spammy.

Skill drain needs reworking. It drains a bomb or product grenade skill (which recharges quickly) at the same speed it drains hack/firebase (skills which recharge slowly). Instead of being percentage based, it should be cooldown time based. Not really fair to drain a 1 minute cooldown as quickly as it drains a 10 second cooldown. This applies to both traps 3 and scramblers.

Support

Honestly, I feel support is a very well balanced class. They should be rewarded for overhealing pros more though, if for no reason other than that it decreases the fun you have when you watch your team support overheal that slimbot while you are standing next to them burning to death begging them in chat to heal you until you die a fiery death as that slimbot still gets 1 hit killed by anything.

should give a lot more juice/money for overhealing burning/low health players, and slightly more for high health/overhealing.
By a lot more, I mean compared to what it is now. It still shouldn't be a significant amount.

Possibly consider a slight nerf to firebase accuracy vs players.
Note: Perfect trace with no spread through a charge is a bit iffy. It should miss at least some, much like rockit turrets do.

General:

I have been noticing damage problems recently. Things not registering for the right damage.
One example is sniper body shot hitting me for roughly 3/4 or 2/3 of my full HP as silver armor assault. I know it wasn't a headshot, because it didn't kill me, and body shots aren't supposed to be doing that much damage. It happens with other things, but this is the most glaring example.

they fixed the air damage on charge 3, so it's actually good now

Considering the low HP on Assassins, I say it's fine. The Lunge is the only real tool to help escape if, for example, an Assault pursues you, Support with Shotty, or a Gunner. Also, it is my favored method to put some distance between me and a Tank's jetgun, and is also useful to dodge his Charge. The smokebomb is very situational in comparison, and is quite unreliable and predictable.

I have presented my reasons the Lunge should not get a nerf in terms of mobility. As for it's offensive purposes, I am willing to compromise with a nerf to effectiveness against Pros, perhaps put the grapple on a 2 second cooldown with the Lunge's use, but the Lunge should remain as the bot killing tool of choice.

Whoops, hit quote by mistake instead of of edit.

I find many of your points to be fairly incorrect, with the exception of the assault.

Assault: Lost too much utility this patch. He would have been balanced perfectly had he perhaps just had a longer cooldown on EITHER the bomb or charge, preferably charge. However, at this point he's lost a metric ton of usefulness. With the extreme charge distance nerf, in combination with the cooldown nerf, he can no longer traverse the map quickly. Because he can no longer deploy bombs quickly, another damage outlet is lessened. I also suspect there was a minor assault rifle damage reduction but I can't really confirm or deny that.

Assassin: Just because the Assault was nerfed does not mean the Assassin should be too. It's supposed to be the most mobile class to begin with, so your point is really silly. Armor buff is necessary however.

Tank: lulululTHEASSAULT DON'T GOT IT SO TANK SHOULDN'T EITHER. Woops, I think we should make every class act exactly the same. No. Also DB is fine.

Gunner: Deployed slowdown effect should slightly be lessened, either in terms of the modifier or the time it takes for it wear off. His mortar is fine.

Sniper: Agreed on armor, agreed on skill drain sort of.

Support: If you touch him go die.

Really, none of the assault's nerfs would even be required (maybe damage tweaks on charge/bomb) had people not bitched about armor so much. There was honestly no real problem with any class, but after constant complaints I guess Uber just tried to find a way to balance it for the masses which, I think, inadvertently ended up lessening some of the fun of the game.

Best case scenario: We go back like 6 patches to pre-armor modification but keep all of the great Gear + taunts + all added stuff like that. I'd be a happy camper again.

My counteropinions.

Assault

Never play assault, nor do I really notice assaults all that much on the battlefield, no opinion here.

Assassin

1.Assassin should be the most mobile, the lack of armor justifies it.

2.Balanced by mobility/grapple damage output.

3.If you lunge at someones face they should have done a significant amount of damage to you by then, squishyness makes up for the facegrapple damage.

Tank

1.The tank is significantly less effective in the air than the assault, the tank gets an all-around charge boost whereas the assault gets something to help out of his element(on the ground)

2.Death blossom also sometimes misses on the ground targets while on the ground, bug, should be fixed.

Gunner

1.That is the the whole point of deploying, becoming more useful at mid-long range.

2.That is the whole point of mortars, turret rape. The gunner is SUPPOSED to be better at it than other pros. Juiced gunners are one of the few things that can take out a base full of 3.3 rock-its effectively.

Sniper

1.The high long-range damage output makes this balanced. It's still a bitch-and-a-half taking out good snipers, armor buff unnecessary. And making aiming difficult for a sniper defeats the purpose of the class.

2.The skill drain does more damage to those with more valuable skills. I consider this fair.

Support

2.Balanced. The juice builds fast enough, no boost needed.

3.The firebase gets destroyed easily enough, it needs to be useful against players as it lasts.

tl;dr You seem to want to nerf strengths and buff weaknesses. Specialization is what makes the game balanced.

Are you trying to make every class behave the same? Most of these things aren't needed.

I'm mixed on the update.

The assault charge nerf I feel is in a good place, any more would have been too much but it was an incredibly versatile tool that was simply available too often.

The bomb nerf went in entirely the wrong direction, all it needed was a nerf to its damage against the moneyball and it would have been fine.

The assassin and sniper both need their BASE health raised and a small additional nerf to the armor. I've suggested this before. They are too heavily reliant on taking the armor endorsements, however with armor endorsements they are in a good spot health wise. The base health increase should be equal to how the armor endorsement nerf would work to give them effectively the same health as they currently have when taking the endorsements, but allow them to have a little bit more health when NOT taking the endorsements.

The assassin's lunge DOES need a cooldown nerf. She can still be (and should be) the most mobile class. Nerfing her abilities doesn't remove her from that unless they over nerf it. Even if the cooldown was 5seconds she'd STILL be the most mobile class in the game(granted 5seconds imo would be too long.) an increase from the current 2seconds on lunge to 3 or 3.5seconds would still leave her as by far the most mobile class in the game and still allow her to use it to enter and escape fights at will.

Slowdown on gunner's minigun should be affected by damage drop off, long range minigun fire should not slow down people at all. His mortar is extremely powerful, however I feel its balanced fairly well. Perhaps adding some damage drop off would be a good idea (I can mortar turrets on ammo mule from the middle of the map in near safety.)

I think Tank's mid air charge should daze but not knockdown a person who is in mid air, UNLESS they hit the ground while flying. Getting knocked down and performing the stand up animation is rather silly while in mid air.

Obviously I'm biased but the Assault nerf was too much. He wasn't broken, he was just really solid. Charge would have been fine, but the bomb nerf was too much.

In fact, all he really needed was a moneyball damage nerf.

Lunge needs either being linked to dash and no cooldown change or a cooldown of 3-3.5.

Pick one.

I don't see much of a problem with the change to charge or bomb on paper. A bomb sitting around only exists as a deterrence and is not all that useful as a weapon. Quick dets are generally more effective, though I think the recharge time is identical with quick dets now. That would not be so hot.

I still probably won't use charge 3. It's probably going to require doing air charges if you want to use it though you only get 1/2 the distance with an air charge sometime (always?) for some reason in the last patch. I'd expect that will continue but I've not tested.

Seems that they reduced money ball damage via bomb attach a lot as well. I don't think attach damage ever mattered though, otherwise a bomb attach would have done 7,667 (76%) damage pre-patch and 3,450 (34%) after.

Now only 4.5% I believe compared with 10% before.

Well at least you can do 37.5 damage to the core with charge now!

EDIT: Also support needs to wait 2.2 seconds (1.5 with gold recovery) before tossing the third airstrike from a full level 3 bar.

Support gives damage reduction to bots instead of doubling their health (same thing I guess, but makes it faster to heal them up I think).

Looks like there is an error with gunner grapple with mortar (or a special case): 75 damage to players, 20 (!) to bots.

Hmm... Seems the core takes 25% extra damage during OT. No wonder it feels so squishy then.

That's all I see that looks different, though I don't have a diff program to see others.

The moneyball always took 25% additional damage during OT.

The moneyball damage for bomb was indeed nerfed. I believe it used to be 3x, its now 1.5x dmg. So instead of doing 900dmg, it only does 450. Its still strong but certainly noticeable. Would be fine if they hadn't also nerfed his bomb in otherways.

Updated to include input from some replies mostly.

I wouldn't have minded the slower recharge of the Charge if the speed was left alone

care about the balance, just give modtools so we can create our own balance :twisted:

To all complaining about Assassin lunge: no. You may have had a slight amount of reasoning for it before, but now that she has ABSOLUTELY NO SURVIVABILITY, there's no excuse to nerf her anymore. Stop it.

With those other details showing up (Assault bomb damage nerf and such), I'm not seeing any real point to play assault. Nerf just seems too severe for it.

And I still think the AR was nerfed too.

Pretty much this, nerfing the cooldown on the cooldown on the Assassin is a no-no. In fact, I feel I can't use it often enough, especially when a Gunner or Two lumber from around the corner.

Your defense of lunge would hold weight if you want a class that can escape from everything. Assassin already can escape 90%+ of situations and you want it to be even easier.

Are you insane?

At what point should you effectively fail? "I'm in a completely awful spot for my class, oh let's use one of my 1209 escape skills and survive." vs. any other class just dying.

Lunge is the main skill to escape. Smoke bomb is mostly used to get in the clear after you escaped.
So yeah...

I don't deny I am insane. :lol: