Grapple Balancing Idea

From how I've noticed a lot of players using armor endorsements and also how that affects gameplay, I'd like to suggest that grappling damage should essentially ignore health upgrades. For example, no matter the armor endorsement a sniper or assassin has, an assassin should be able to grapple them from the front and secure a kill. Another example would be an assault using his charge level 3 grapple against an assassin being a kill as well if it finished. This would change grapples from as of right now a damage value to instead a percentage of the player's health.

The main point of this is to make it so armor endorsements affect bullet and skill damage, however if the skill is a grapple or the player uses a weapon's secondary grapple it would essentially bypass the armor endorsement for damage calculations and balance out any close quarters combat. Uber themselves would have a better idea of exactly what percentage these grapples from each class should do to the other ones so I'm not going to make any suggestions in that direction but instead just suggest changing grapples from damage to a health percentage.

Edit: To make things a bit clearer, this would be in part to make it easier for assassin players to read targets and appropriate ways to approach them. As of right now until they grapple a sniper for example, they have no idea whether that player has an armor endorsement or not and in that situation if it's easier for them to get a front grapple than back with where that player has set up, they could either have a successful kill or be stopped by an armor endorsement.

Editedit: Also consider assaults and gunners surviving back grapples based on armor endorsements.

Won't that just lead to a lot more idiot assassins who never push bot lanes and just pvp?

Armor is great for stuffing them. If they learn their place and do their jobs, it won't be an issue. Otherwise, you can continue to punish them for being a bunch of me-first jerkasses. I'm not sure why that's undesirable.

You should survive an assassin front grapple for the sole purpose of punishing said assassin for front grappling you in the first place.

The current system is fine.

First off, the assassin is a support character, not a lane pusher based on her skills and abilities. She IS designed as a player and jackbot handling character, the point is to take out lone players or key targets to help her team push while she supports that push.

Second, while the front grapple is frowned upon by players, there are times it is necessary or you have no other choice, and it should deal damage accordingly based on the class you're grappling rather than the armor endorsement that player is using. And this wouldn't solely apply to assassins, it would also even out grapple damage for other classes against one another rather than armor endorsements skewing the damage the grapples cause. Hence one of my examples in the first post being an assassin dying to an assault's level 3 charge grapple.

The assassin is probably THE primary lane pusher outside of the tank.

Any assassin shuffling around avoiding bots and chasing down pro kills should be violated in the nostril with a cactus.

As a full-time assault, charge3 1-shotting anything weaker then a gunner would be a little nuts IMHO.

Destroying the bots is not pushing a lane however. It's merely letting the bots get a bit further and given the assassin can't provide support to bots when they get on top of turrets very well her time is better spent elsewhere. She enables pushes rather than doing them herself.

The only class that can actively provide any "support" to pushing bots is the support himself, which is probably the single worst lane pushing class in the game.

The assassin can however keep an entire lane clear of enemy bots much better than most.

She's also again probably the best class for taking out those turrets, with the exception of the tank.

I don't know if Uber intended Assassins to be the premier lane-pushing class or not, but that's certainly what they are. If they decided that was a bad idea and rebalanced it to make grapples deadly more often, they'd pretty much have to rebalance the entire game. I mean, if it isn't obvious, anyone can play noobtrash and land assassin grapples all day. It's not exactly a mark of skill.

Good assassins try to focus on the sword because it's not nearly as easy to punish with a counter-grapple/charge/slam/teammate.

*demonstratively clears throat.* Gunner.

It could be that a level 3 charge would one shot a support with his base health. However I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't one shot a support with anything in support to upgrade his health through that passive skill. If it would, that could be something Uber would look into changing as well. The point would be it would still one shot assassins and snipers.

I'd argue against that but this is not the place for it and that keeps her away from her primary role which is dealing with key or lone enemy pros.

On some maps yeah, others, not as well.

Killing pros isn't the primary role of the class though, which is the point.

Try and push a lane that is being paid attention to and see how well that works. That clearly shows her role is not pushing lanes herself. She does not have the health, nor the skills or weapons to do it. Pushing a lane involves taking out an enemy player or two as well as the bots which she nowhere near excels at.

As an assassin player, they are meant to be pushing lanes. As they are the most efficient in destroying bots. (Next to tanks)

Most sins will go for pros if they are upsetting their lane. But will generally leave the killing to the gunners or assaults.

No class is going to be effectively pushing a lane solo if it's being watched.

But again, the class isn't a primary pro slaying class.

Flaren, what you are suggesting is basically a complete rebalancing of the whole game so the Assassin fits the role you would like her to have?

Would rebalancing the grapples be rebalancing the whole game itself though? First off, these grapple changes would not solely affect the assassin. Look at the sniper's or assault's grapple for an example. And I don't see how balancing the grapples, which require getting close to enemy pros would require a full rebalance of the game. You have to be on top of another player to initiate a grapple outside of the assault's, and as previously pointed out that may need to be changed slightly to deal with that, but I don't see how that affects any other skills, damages, or endorsements. Unless I'm mistaken a lot of the reason support, sniper, and assassins themselves take armor endorsements is to counter assassin grapples rather than soak up damage.

They take those armor endorsements because they are the weakest classes.

Try playing a default sin. You wont last 1 second in front of a gunner.

Exactly and I honestly don't see a problem with that. Why should every Assassin grapple - even from the front - be a one-hit kill? Grapple from behind and you are on the save side.

There is no reason to change a perfectly working system imo.

People take armor because there's no stopping power in this game. If you can't have increased damage output, then you take the next best thing: decreased damage input.

There are damage increasing endorsements though.