Hey all, I'm absolutely loving monday night combat so far, and I've already clocked up 110 hours (mostly crossfire) since I bought it. One thing that concerns me is how some endorsement seem to be MUCH stronger than others. The main two being armour and rate of fire FAR outclassing the rest. I was wondering what other people thought about this issue; is it okay to have 'useless' endorsements like juice or reload speed? Or perhaps something could be changed/added to existing endorsements to make them a more viable choice. Note: These are just my opinions and as as such I could be completely wrong here, I welcome everyoen to post their feedback on this idea. Endorsements and proposed changes/additions: Armor: No change required Clip Size: Apart from bronze for some classes (i'm a fan of it on gunner/assault) it could probably use a larger increase on the silver/gold level. Critical Shot: Sees use in all slots situationally for gunner deploy builds or assault crit builds, probably okay, numbers could always be increased to make it a viable choice for classes that don't get innate crits. Heath Recovery: Yet another bronze slot wonder, perhaps increasing the benefits of silver/gold? Juice: As an endorsment that immediatly becomes worthless after you juice for the first time until you die, I feel like the change would make more sense to give a percent base increase to juice gain. I do hesitate to reccomend this though, as I feel like there is too much juicing in the game as is (especially with the recent increase in bot numbers). Reload Speed: I've never honestly seen anyone seriously using this, and I have no interesting suggestions for this apart from just increasing the numbers. Rate of Fire: No changes Skill Recovery: No changes to what I personally belive to be the 3rd best endorsment. Speed: Perhaps instead of giving the equivalent of 1/2/3 boot pickups, this endorsement might give an increase to base speed of the pro (so it would work along with speed pickups) so a speed 3 pro with 3 boot pickups would be faster than a nospeed pro (although this could cause issues with some classes being TOO fast, but numbers can be tweaked). Weapon Accuracy: While it's probably okay as is, I wouldn't mind if accuracy gave an increase in range before damage fall-off occurs. I.e bronze would give 10% more distance on your weapon or similar along with the recticle tightening. - - - While some of my ideas might be stupid/prone to balance issues, I'd really much rather that every endorsement be a viable choice as opposed to running some combination of rof/armour/skill on damn near every class. Please post your thoughts!
Reload speed can be pretty hilarious for the tank just running round spamming death blossoms like a madman.
This. Times infinity. Also, Statement, I've played against you a lot. Only ever seen you Assault and the Support just the once. I daresay your views only apply to that one class. Speed and Reload are great for the Tank but not for Assault. That's because Tank is slow as Molases in Nebraska, and can dump an entire clip with Blossom.
I do play a lot of assault, but I do play all other classes, but yes my views may be a little biased towards that. You still can't say that all endorsments are equal in value, though, and while deathblossom spam as a tank might be fun, you're still probably better off going armour and rof in gold and silver (preference) and bronze skill to get the most out of all your weapons and abilities. I'd just like to see them all be viable choices. I mean, who wants to be the red headed step child that is the juice endorsment? Also, bullet, you should add me on steam, always looking for more people to play with that aren't mentally challenged which can be difficult due to the lack of aussie servers (add 'randomstatement')
I think you're looking at it from a counter-Pro perspective - which is the Assault's domain. RoF would be best against other Pros, and turrets, because they can stand up to a Blossom. A Tank should only ever go up to a turret if he has L2+ Ball or L3 Deploy, and against a pro. the Tank has to get the drop otherwise he's screwed. Giving the Tank more ammo. isn't really going to help him against a turret; he'll either die from the returning fire, or he'll have L3 Deploy in which case ammo. is infinite. Reload is incredibly good for pushing an entire lane by yourself - that's Tank's forte. My point is: you've identified the endorsements that benefit Assault and to a lesser extent Gunner (I once got messed up by a Gunner who had ammo. I was waiting around a corner waiting for him to reload - the bastard just stopped shooting, and managed to spin-up before I reached him. *sad face*). Not all endorsements benefit all classes, and I reckon it's going to be nigh impossible to have every endorsement of equal use for every class. [PS:] Add me. You're in my MNCAus Steam Group. ;P
I quite like the fact that there are your basic great for everyone endorsements, then a whole bunch that are very situational or class specific, it'd be boring in a way if they were all equally as good. It's also good that some endorsements are much better for bot killing than pro killing. It means there's always the temptation there to deviate from the tried and tested builds and tinker with something stupid or amusing.
Bronze reload on a gunner is quite vital, helps his long minigun animation a lot. Fire rate is so much better then crit chance that one of the two needs a tweak, maybe crit hits could do a little more damage when they trigger to help balance the loss of attack speed power.
The only endorsement that needs buffing and or removal is juice. It is pretty much useless. Speed could be reworked so that speed + drops makes you faster than no speed + drops. The rest work great for their purposes. Crit being buffed any further would make crit + rof so insanely powerful on gunner and assault. (it already is).
Clipsize: silver/gold should be buffed Skill regen: silver should be buffed Crit: higher crit chance for slow firing weapons Accuracy: increase effective range Crit and Accuracy definitely needs a buff to make them viable on more weapons.
I think the only change that is needed is to buff Juice. It's useless. Maybe increasing base juice, where using juice will return you to that base juice, not 0%.
It would make sense for accuracy to push out the falloff range for the AR, minigun, and SMG.. though I would hate to see a return of the sniping gunners
I think buffing juice wouldn't send a good message. I think that endorsement just needs to leave, since it adds nothing of value for the players.
I like the option where "Everything is balanced". I don't think I could disapprove of any endorsement at the gold level and not being useful in some way. Depends on your playstyle. However, it seems like everyone goes with the "typical" builds out there. I'm currently running a gold speed gunner and I <3 it. Accuracy can kiss my ***. :lol: I don't see myself using rail gun as tank so ROF is not my option. Rather have armor and speed for those really intense 1v3 battles that happens so often as tank. I might even take skill so I can get that product grenade and charge faster but I don't tend to rely on it. Some people need armor gold, some silver... some don't feel it deserves any more of a spot than bronze so that they can KILL FASTER. Armor will save you, but not if it keeps you on the battlefield longer to kill your opponents and to prevent them from chasing you down. tl;dr: it's all good. Just play it the way it's presented to the game and adapt your playstyle with the given endorsements as they are. You'll find something you like eventually.
I'm not sure that juice is an inherently weak choice; it just implies a certain play style I would never really want to partake in. I do think the speed endorsement could use some help, given the frequency of the drops on the speed pickup (I'd like 50/100/150 for the endorsement). I think reload speed could possibly use a little more actual speed, but it's pretty good (30/40/50?). Health regen might need to cut the delay by 30/40/50 here too? I think armor and accuracy are currently the best choices for a lot of weapons/classes. I think crit should stay where it is along with RoF. Messing with these things really goes a long way towards changing big-picture class balance with damage output changes. Overall I think the endorsements are fairly balanced. I just really feel sorry for the poor people playing default assassin with speed being its gold and speed being as bad as it is.
Not having armor for the assassin certainly makes it a different sort of class. I think it is semi-acceptable to play this way if you focus on bot farming into juiced attacks on the enemy base and basically never engaging players without juice or lots of help. You just have to think about it a lot differently (and try to never kill too much near an ejector!).
