How I would rebalance this game (meta game discussion)

Tank - The tank is not a tank. He is really more of a secondary sniper, and with the exception of the times that you have them pinned back into their own base, he can't get close enough to good players to effectively utilize the deadly charge/death blossom combo.

Changes:
*Significantly increased health.
*Significantly reduced jetgun damage
*His jetgun now slows enemies it hits, enough that they cannot outrun the jetgun as long as he can keep the jetgun hitting them.

NOTE: The jet gun would still do just as much damage juiced as its juiced version does now. This would only effect non-juiced tank. The tank's jet gun and death blossom would still do as much damage to bots as they do now. The damage change would only effect pros.

This would turn the tank into an actual tank class. Reduced damage, more health, and a **** ton of stuns/slows. His role would be more of a front line support class, taking damage for the rest of his team and leaving anybody he hits vulnerable to attacks from the slayers.

Some might think the slow would be too cheap, but you would still be able to lunge/charge away from it, as well as use skills like bomb or airstrike to get him off of you. If your skills were used up, however, you may be in trouble.


Gunner: The primary slayer. Still should have this role. However, the gunner is right now hands-down the most important class in the game, and generally, whoever has the best gunner wins unless the other team has an excessively weak link. He should be the primary slayer who slaughters anybody in close range, but not an overbearing character that shreds anybody instantly.

Changes:
*Slightly reduced minigun damage
*Increased health recovery
*Massive increase on how much pre-spinning your miniguns costs you, and reduction of jump jets if you begin to pre-spin while in mid-air.

The reduced damage isn't too significant. He should still be able to outgun anybody from close-mid range. But he already has the jump jets, meaning a clawing gunner has such a significant advantage over any other class that even slightly reduced damage would make for a much more balanced gunner in private matches.

But perhaps the most significant difference would be the increased health recovery. Now, he wouldn't depend on the support to leash him 24/7, and while he has reduced damage output, could now take more liberty to push on his own.



Support - Right now, the meta game requires a support to run around behind the gunner, hold down LT, only stopping to throw airstrikes and drop a firebase if the gunner gets juice. Not fun to play, at all. But teams cannot win without this crucial role. I would like to see support become more of a team support than a gunner support.

Changes:
*Decreased health
*Increased movement speed/jump height
*Reduced shotgun damage but increased spread and damage to bots
*Removal of hack skill for turrets. It would instead be replaced with a skill that is like hack for pros...it would maybe temporarily increase damage output for any pro it's used on. The catch, however, is that the pro would have to stand still during the duration of the hack.
*Significantly increased airstrike recovery (though not quite to where it was originally)
*Upgrading firebase now increases attack speed and range, although it will never be able to reach the same potential as the current 3.3 firebase
*Ability to drop a firebase without disrupting your heal

The increased movement speed would make the support more mobile, giving him the ability to reach allies in need. Because of the gunner changes, the support would be more of a mobile support unit than a leashing class. This would make the support require more skill and strategy as you would now need to plan when to heal who and how to make pushes.

The most interesting balance change would be the pro hack instead of the turret hack. You'd still have your firebase, but now it would be used as more of an offensive pushing tool than a way to hold down one part of the map for ages. The pro hack would make all skills and weapons do increased damage for anywhere from 5-30 seconds...just depending on hack level and balance testing. This would be an interesting concept for pushing, and I believe it would make the support still just as useful, but much more fun to play.

Lastly, the decreased health would be as a result of the increased mobility...he would now be a bit more squishy, but have the ability to use airstrikes and his mobility to get away. The reduced shotgun damage would be necessary, as he now has increased mobility. Without the reduced shotgun damage, he'd be an imba slayer (maybe not though with the reduced health...it would take some balancing).


Assassin - I like her role as bot pusher. There's not too much I would change aside from glitching, but here's an interesting idea.

Changes:
*Reduced grapple damage. A sword back grapple now does not one hit kill anybody. However, grapples now stun whoever they hit. The stun length would be dependent on the weapon used, and whether it was a front grapple or a back grapple (sword back grapple would be the longest stun; dagger face grapple would be the shortest).
*Increased smoke bomb blind duration

What this would do is make grapples more of an escape mechanism than an offensive attack. With the stun, you could still get a kill off of a back grapple by slashing somebody to death, however you could now use grapples to get away from people who are chasing you. It would also make an assassin vs. assassin fight a little better (right now they have too much luck/whoever has the better connection based on them.


Assault - Still needs to be the mobile assassin slayer. Honestly, he's fine as is, for the most part. Even the repeat bombs and quick bomb cooldown. The only thing I would change:

Changes:
*No longer has the ability to fly out of ice traps

Might have just been a glitch in the first place, but whatever. Stupid Y button is stupid. Other than that, I really do think the assault is fine, and will be even more balanced with the rest of the balance changes I'd make.


Sniper - actually wouldn't change anything about the sniper



New meta game:

Assassin - bot pusher
Assault - assassin and support/secondary slayer
Gunner - Offtank primary slayer; still has the most weapon damage
Sniper - Long distance, high damage squishy
Support - Team support with heals and other offensive supporting abilities
Tank - Actual tank. Absorbs damage and ccs so that other teammates can bring home the kills.

You forgot to mention that gunner grapple should be buffed. I want atleast a post-grapple stun effect for level 1&2, give me more damage for level 3.

this is actually a pretty cool post with some innovative ideas, id safely say your best post ever snarf. i feel the game however IS pretty balanced as it is, and any ideas like this would be better implemented for a sequel rather than trying to fix something that really is not broken (the meta game). its the other things with mnc that have been discussed to death (new maps, matchmaking, PM settings etc) that hold this game back. most issues or ideas proposed while innovative really are not "balancing" the metagame, but more adjusting it to suit particular things of certain classes to make it easier on lesser skilled players (by lesser skilled i only mean any step below the known best player/players per class). in a full 6v6 with the very best available players on each respective class the gameplay is incredibly fast paced, balanced, and the game cannot be won without at least a decent-good outing from every class.

i would actually like to try out sometime with a thick enough lobby (thick as in very good lobby of mostly the best players) is no juice/bot buying, no OT, 30min game. OT deciding a game is even worse than juice chaining deciding it, and i would rather result in a tie.

Well, the gunner/support combo kinda sucks, and I do think the quality of the game would be vastly improved if Uber implemented my ideas to those two classes. It would just make the game more fun for all the other classes...especially support. It would even make the game more fun for gunner, IMO, as it would be more challenging.

The rest of them are just ideas that would significantly change the meta game and I think would be really fun.

Of course, it's all pretty much fantasy at this point, as we all know this game will never be updated again

there is so much more to support than meets the eye in terms of judgement, firebase use, airstrike use, and crafty survivability. i feel like there is a wave of "spongebob supports" coming that needs to be adjusted. by spongebob support i mean reference to the episode where squidward tells him to forget everything except fine dining and breathing. i feel there are supports who play support and only know to heal the gunner and breathe, and have no thought of appropriate actions with firebase placement to hinder the enemy in crafty or sometimes obvious spots that are hard to get bc of map control, airstrike use to help with bots and pros alike, and what to do when your gunner is on respawn. these are mindsets that are tough to teach, but as the meta game develops more and privates keep occuring regularly, things like "put the worst player on support" and "the tank just railguns bots and players" and "the assault just chases the sniper" are becoming quickly outdated and one weak link on any class can cause a team to lose no matter how good the other 5 players are

Sucks that you couldn't think this way six months ago when I begged you guys to see another side to the support. Please do not flip out and act like this is a troll.

the same still holds from 6 months ago, gunner is still the supports most important priority, now its about what else can you do at the same time while babysitting the gunner and best use of time while hes on respawn.

i would actually reduce the amount of time in a ice trap by 1 second

thats if assaults cant fly out anymore and if sins cant lounge out

yes and every time I would talk about other things you can do, you guys would blow me out with "just leash the gunner" or "firebases are a waste of time" What about when you would laugh at me and dismiss me as a bad kid when I would try to explain things like how to bottle-neck lanes with useless firebases that can't be destroyed. Yeah it was a big joke to you when I said my support has tactics and I don't just follow, you even made a sweet little cartoon about it. You said I was crap because i would not run back to the base and re-leash gunners that are dying every 10 seconds. You mocked and laughed at people like Xenonox and Feedle when they would talk about my support techniques. It is just ridiculous how much of an enemy you made me in to and now you are saying the same things I was trying to tell people six months ago.

EDIT: Chronicle,that is all that I want to say about this, i don't want a flame war, i just wanted to point that out. Go ahead and make your big essay or whatever you are going to say to make me seem like the jerk here and let's move on.

nope not interested in bring up a flame war, you simply just didnt heal the gunner as much as u needed to, that was all. the other things are good but gotta keep the number one priority in order while hes alive moving forward, its when hes not gunfighting etc you can do the rest, that is all

I like these ideas even though I love the game as is. The one thing I would change however is the earnings - lets take a team of identically skilled players each with a different class; at the end of the match the assassin will come top of the earnings while the support will come bottom, assuming each class played their role. Seems the support gets the sh1tty end of the stick while the sin gets MVP for slaying bots and downing turrets. Every role is equally important and I think earnings should reflect this.

I think different classes should get more / less money depending on what they are doing. Gunner's should get lots of money for kills and little for bots, assassin should get lots for bots and little for kills etc. This way people are influenced to play the class how they should be played.

Meleeing bots should net a lot less juice. Infact I think juice should be harder to earn overall. If you made it overall that you can juice every 5 minutes, people will actually use juice to push rather than kill whore (I know I would anyway ).

Turntables - nobody likes the fact that the support is the leashed gunner. Everybody will openly admit it's boring. But it IS what works best, and it's been proven countless times, whether we like it or not.

Playing offensive line in football is boring. But that doesn't mean its not necessary, and just because the center isn't scoring touchdowns doesn't mean he's not a crucial part of the team.


Another idea for support: If somebody gets a kill under the following conditions:

-They have any overheal
-The support's heal beam is actively concentrated on them (even if they have less than 100% health)
-They have an active pro hack on them

The support would get an assist.



The money system in this game is broken; assassin and gunner need their money the least, and they get the most. Assault, tank, support,and sniper actually need all of their skills (especially tank and sniper), and they have a much harder time generating income.

This would be perfect.

Also I saw a thread once many moons ago about the shaveice turret - it should give the owner an assist if someone gets killed while under it's effect. I like the thought of this.

Yes DEAR GOD YES! I was surprised they didn't implement this in the first place, since they are "assisting" their team-mate.

I wouldn't say assassin doesn't need their money (cloak 3 and smokebomb 3 helps alot). Gunner's need that money for juice though :lol: Most assaults out-earn me, simply because they melee bo-- charge away if they are about to get killed, keeping their earned juice and kill streak high. Tank, Sniper and support don't usually earn a lot, but they don't need that much money to do well (you don't need to check the scoreboard to see if the support has done for example).

Yeah I take that back - support doesn't need money after level 3 airstrike and level 3 passive. Although having level 3 hack does allow you to drop a quick hack without losing your gunner.

When I play support in privates, I actually do try to get level 3 hack relatively quickly (after airstrike) because if my gunner dies or if I just have a second where there's no contact, I can drop a firebase and hack it quickly enough to be able to catch up with my gunner again before he starts getting hit again. Also nice for when gunner has juice.

Even level 3 firebase is nice just for the cooldowns. Love just casually dropping it wherever, knowing that if it dies I'll have it again in like 15-20 seconds.


Tank and sniper need their skills more than anybody else, IMO. Product grenade 3 and charge 3 are crucial, and figuring out how to balance those while still having a clutch passive can be tricky. Sniper needs his skills more than anybody else - flak 3 is almost imba and necessary if you have an agressive assault. Ice trap 3 can completely **** over everything for the other team, and explosive shots are explosive shots.


Obviously theoretically, all tank needs is a rail gun to shoot at the gunner, and all the sniper needs is a sniper rifle to shoot at the gunner, and all support needs is a heal beam to stick up the gunner's ***...but that doesn't mean the extra stuff can't be a game changer.

1 - bot streaks
2 - bullseye disappears if u melee him
3 - tanks can break out of ice traps
4 - supports get assists off whoever they're leashing
5 - assassin juice gain rate turned down
6 - juice lasts 6 seconds + price goes up by 150$ each time you buy

Lol these changes just sound like SMNC, but with different changes. Essentially they did this in Super.

Just juice-no full health regen when you pop it...
I don't like the guessing games...

What do you mean?