Balance Problems

It's so strange to see all the Assaults demanding that the Assassin's lunge has to be nerfed. In case you didn't notice: She has to get close because she doesn't have a bomb she can throw or an AR she can use. Lunge grapple is basically like charge 3. If you can pull it off it's extremely effective. If you mess it up you are in a world of hurt.

And for all those complaining about the long cooldowns: The Assassin has this cooldown after EVERY SINGLE KILL. And she is highly vulnerable during the kill animation. It's basically impossible to approach a team of two good players. With gold armor endorsement she has less hit points than an armorless Assault, correct?

If Assassins are really so overpowered, why don't I see more good ones out there? I see a lot of Assassins who die like flies instead.

I'd say the skill ceiling got raised. As a whole new factor came into play. Namely, the time you'll let a bomb stay before you deem it useless. Bomb placements are vital now.

She's not really vulnerable during kill animation, but there's a small window after the grapple. It's 'cause of the huge armor buff all classes get when they grapple.

Bomb placements were ALWAYS vital. The change just lowered the number of ways that the bomb could be utilized.

"How much can a player theoretically improve their skill at this game before there is no way to get better?"
That is the definition of skill ceiling.

With the change it lowered the number of options and versatility that the bomb had, thus lowering how much skill it takes to use. The new factor put into play is an upping of a factor that already existed and was part of the class already. Bombs aren't instant to arm, and they fly relatively slowly. So its important to realize when it is time to detonate an older bomb. There is a much larger importance put onto this aspect of the ability, but it didn't add anything. However by removing something they lowered the skill ceiling because there will always be an "optimal" detonation time where NOT detonating the bomb before this amount of time has passed is simply a bad decision.

If you know how to use your shotgun, sniper rifle, have a minigun or jetgun and are at an appropriate distance from someone being grappled by a sin, you can kill her easily during the grapple, and if not you can get that last shot in right after. She only has a 50% damage reduction if I remember right. In addition you can pretty much place yourself perfectly to grapple her right after hers finishes in turn.

Im going to bring up something that i havn't seen brought up on the assault yet. Yes the nerf did hit him hard from his previous standing but it realy only hit the GENERARL ASSAULT builds hard. This update requires the assault to focus his endorsments on his play style
Examples:
If you like mobility then run Golf speed
If you like your skills then run Gold Skill
If you still like weps above all then run Gold Rof

This update basically just made it so that the assault must run endorsements other than just rof, armor, and acc to maximize the play style your accustomed to. This is my new thought towards how the update should be dealt with.

The assassin doesn't need a nerf. The assassin is the only class that needs to be within touching distance to kill you. She has no good long range weapons, and has the worst health out of those who need to be up close.

The lunge does not need a nerf. It is the only tool she has that allows her to take down opponents that she couldn't otherwise, and even then it's very easy to stop a lunge grab. Charge stops lunge. Slam stops lunge. Freeze traps stop lunge grabs if placed correctly. A shotgun to the face makes them pay for lunges, and even if its a lunge grab if you have decent armor to survive the lunge grab, the second shotgun blast will kill her. She's not the assault. She needs to be able to use her lunge as both an offensive tool and a defensive tool in the same fight, BECAUSE unlike the assault and his charge, shes practically WORTHLESS at midrange, while the assault is great at almost ANY range!

You know what? Sure. Nerf her lunge. But I want to be able to grab people out of the ******* air then without a glitch. I want to be able to jump as my opponent does and slam him into the ground and eviscerate him. Because, the relation between how much skill, and how difficult it is to grab a person, as opposed to the skill it takes to avoid being grabbed is SO out of wack.

What I have to worry about when trying to grab someone: My positioning, my range (if gauging lunge into back grab), my timing (because if I try a lunge grab and they're jumping when I reach them, all I've done is given them a warning that I'm trying for a grab) their team mates (because if I can't finish my incredibly long grab animation, I'm screwed and even if I do, I might die right after), the sounds I make (because almost every ability I have screams at them "THERES AN ASSASSIN BEHIND YOU"), PLUS the UI which MIGHT show them my name as a big warning, AND their latency. If a person is known to be laggy, I have factor that in to everything else. This, ALL to kill ONE person.

What do they have to worry about to make all the above SO much harder?

Spam spacebar, jets and occasionally look behind themselves.

I WONDER WHATS MORE DIFFICULT.

The issue isn't with lunge-grab so much as the fact assassin can use lunge basically as a mode of transportation. It is faster to constantly lunge than it is to walk and dash together. Also the problem was that the reasoning for the assault charge nerf was that he could use it as BOTH an attack and escape in the same fight. Assassin can do this too, but even easier as lunge is on a 2second cooldown. Noone wants to take away the ability for assassin to be able to run from a fight or enter a fight or both. But if an assassin lunges she shouldn't be able to immediately go "o crap I misjudged how strong they are here" and turn around and lunge away.

a 3-3.5 second lunge timer would punish bad assassins, but the ability to lunge in and out of combat pretty much at will would still be there, they just can't lunge in and out of stupid decisions at will.

I think the assault's charge WAS too fast a cooldown, now its too long.

Also: Shuriken launcher is an extremely effective weapon. It has very high damage, no drop off, fast flight, and quick reloads. Even at optimal range for the assault, the shuriken launcher has nearly the same DPS.

Sniper needs a nerf.

A lag time between scoping and shooting is probably all thats needed.

Against a good sniper, your team is screwed. Freeze bombs all over the place draining skills and the sniper jumping and shooting because of a dot colored on his screen and a macro to zoom/shoot at the same time.

And since the assault charge speed/distance has been decreased, closing that gap to get that awesome sniper is almost impossible.

=(. You think we use a dot and macros? SRSLY? it is not hard to right click left click quickly...

Just because you can't kill a sniper or fly over an ice trap doesn't mean that snipers need a nerf. I'm really hope that the devs do not listen to garbage complaints such as yours.

Someone doesn't know how to use the shuriken launcher
That thing has the highest long range DPS of any weapon
Long lifespan, no damage dropoff(even after ricochets), 100% crits with a lvl3 Cloak and you can punch out 10 per second on the base firerate

Yea, no long range...

Man and to think it was far greater when the XBox version first released...

Sorry I didn't feel like reading through 6 pages just to say that.

Sniper does need a nerf.

I've mained sin for about eight months. I played NOTHING but sin for eight months.

Then I played Sniper. 10 games in - DING! Uber Streak. lolwut. I am a GODAWFUL sniper. My ability to home in on heads is incredibly poor, yet all I heard was that wonderful bell while spamming shots. I'd actually managed to pull my right bicep a few days before getting the achievement; my hand was shaky at the time as a result. (I can hear the jokes now lololololol)

Sway after a shot, bolt-action rifle, remove quickscoping. Any one of those could potentially fix the issues. Replace quickscoping with a minor (~.5 second) duration during which accuracy slides from its base to 100% while the scoped view comes up. A bolt-action effect could (and likely would, based on the concept itself) include that, and would also lessen headshots thanks to spam. Sway after a shot wouldn't need either of those two, but could potentially reduce headshots due to spam. It could also increase headshots due to blind luck, though the sway mechanic could be designed to induce sway upward and gently away from the head of a target in the scope.

There are numerous ways to mess with it, but spamming a potential OHKO from a range that leaves you quite safe (safe enough to earn an Uber Streak with no skill whatsoever) is a problem that needs to be addressed.

EDIT: Yes, there were assassins. Why I get an easy ring-out AND the ability to freeze the buggers in place is beyond me.

Must have been god awful assassins then as well as a bunch of Tanks and Gunners for easy pickings. I myself do not have a steady hand at all, so I rarely play Sniper.

But as a Sin, it's easy to harass Snipers with the Shurikans. A lot of noob Assassins don't realize that harassing a Sniper will severely hinder his ability to get kills as opposed to putting oneself at great risk going for the grapple. Also, it's fun to smokebomb jump on top of a glass wall next to a Sniper and watch them spam grapple in random directions.

Going to quote Kotay now:

:twisted:

On a serious note:
"No assaults on your team to take care of the enemy sniper? Is your team filled with free-kill assassins? Is your team going downhill? FEAR NOT! For you can simply camp your spawn to deny the opponent any kills and lose the game knowing that you wanted to!"

Point is:
You had bad opponents if you found it that easy.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... 831902635/?

Got the achievement to match. :\

Looking at the stats there, yeah - plenty of awful players, but 10 games into Sniper with crap for aim and I should -not- be getting 25-kill streaks. Were it not for the spamtastic rifle, it wouldn't have happened.

EDIT: The other MNC screenshot is also thanks to spam.

quick scoping is indeed BS.

QFT. Perhaps add sway-on-scope? Zoom in, sway is applied that fades over a second or so. Also apply sway on every shot, lessened with passive skill.

Heh, came across a guy running Sniper that liked to gripe about pretty much everything, including other snipers that were using jumpshots
Funny part is this guy also likes to gripe about how bad his team is while he's sitting as far back as possible
Came across him on AmmoMule and he decided to be a hypocrite by using jumpshots to peg me. I commented about it and he griped that it was the only way to hit me because I was cowering behind the hump of the botlane

My thought: "Ok, so it's lame unless you're using it?"


Anyway, it is a bit rediculous that the Sniper maintains that full accuracy while jumping and I'll agree with the idea of a ~1 second delay between scoping and full accuracy

Now that that's out of the way: Yeah the spam rifle is rediculous but it's required unless you want to rob him of his bot killing ability. Unless the devs make his SMG an ultra bot-killing gun then I doubt we'll be seeing a rifle change soon. : /