No, the Support is NOT fine

Awesome post but i am worried that the people on the Support-class-is-overpowered camp will not read it....that would be really sad.

I think another issue is that people only look at this game as a shooter, they neglected the path design of the map and the importance of bots & turrets. This game need minimap!! (so they can see the bigger picture )

He started it.

Support is the only light class that can survive a backstab by an assassin. Doesnt seem right to me. Assault cant even survive a backstab but the support can? (not including the dash attack) Its so rare for an assault to survive a backstab that i cant be sure ive ever seen it happen. Yet support can?

Also while your arguement about the radius of the firebase might be valid, that would just mean that the support has to actually think about paying attention to his turret placement as well as paying attention to his turret itself. (Just as much as other people have to think about approaching the turret) Too many either babysit it, or expect it to get them free kills while no one pays attention to it. There has to be a weakness besides, get out your secondary and fire for what seems like an eternity while you are completely and utterly vulnerable. 180 degrees is a bit extreme, but so is complete 360 radius. There should be a small blindspot.

And while airstrikes arent particularly overpowered, their range is. They can launch that thing at LEAST twice, if not three times, as far as assault's remote mine. Not to mention they can throw three, 1-shot kills, simultaneously.

On the note about the sniper and headshots. That's what snipers do. They shoot people in the head, particularly people with big heads like gunners and tanks. Everyone expects snipers to be no less. No one expects the support class to have an area effect 1-shot solution to just about everything. (bots, players, turrets, firebases) You could catch them with the edge of the blast and still get the kill, theres no avoiding death via airstrike unless it completely misses. Even juiced pros die instantly. I completely wouldnt mind if it one shotted bots. That would give more incentive to help the team, not increase your kill/death ratio. Support is just what it says it is, Support. And when people do nothing but spam airstrikes, you become a 5-star General, not a support class.

Do I believe you're post is wrong? No, in fact i think you bring up a lot of good points. But you certainly arent right.

Support can survive backstab from assassins? Are you sure? Even my custom Support with Gold endorsement on armour could not survive a backstab from the asssasin...but a "frontstab", ya I think I can

Really...the airstrike by support is just a small radius. Most of the time you could get away from it easily. Besides that you can take cover in most of the location in the game. (eg. under the bridge)

The turret by support are only fantastic when it's hack but it's easy to take it out as well. This game focus more on teamwork as oppose to individual. Next time when you find the support is OP in the game, press "select" button and check out the K/D of your teammate and what are their selected class. That would help us analyze the game. A screen cap of the end game score would help too.

I have no problems dealing with support classes, firebases or their airstrikes. My main problem is how offensive they can be, instead of helping the team. Rarely do i see a turret in a place that helps teammates move forward, instead i see firebases places in spots to kill players. With the exception of my support friend who enjoys healing, i almost never get healed or overcharged from other support. And rarely do i ever see any support hack home-base turrets, instead i see juiced supports running up to the enemy base and getting a cheap hack to bring the moneyball down.

When it comes down to it, the support really is the only class that can directly help other pros and they just dont. Mostly because they're blinded by the temptation of an auto-turret and airstrikes. They focus too much on what they can do, and not what they should be doing.

So going by that you are trying to limit the play style of support?

1. Tell me, what position is the best position for the turret to help the team move forward? Could it be that the enemies just keep charging at the turret the wrong way thus giving everyone an impression that the turret is a pro-killer?

2. If you are complaining other support player for not healing you, then it simply means they are bad players. The same could be said to countless of assassins, sniper & whatnot. In fact I would like to highlight the Assassin in this case.

3. Why is hacking enemy turret...cheap?


Now let me ask you a question. How should one play a sniper? Any definition like he must be staying at the back of the base sniping and such?

As far as assassin vs. support, Cactus, you have to really look at each pro's strengths and weaknesses once again.

I know you can survive a grapple at level 2 passive, and backstab at level 3 passive (or perhaps it's the other way around), and this is playing with lvl 2 armor endorse. At level 1 passive you can't survive either. That being said, I don't know if I would specifically call support a "light" class. I might say Support and Assault are 'medium' classes. Also, remember what we're talking about in this case. Your issue is that you can't always 1-shot instakill someone who can't see you coming... Also remember that the support has to upgrade his skills to survive any of this, and it's pretty much all his passive does. Each level increases health, and first upgrade gives the support aura. Neither of these directly helps him offensively. Assault gets damage/crit or whatever, which helps him do his job.

Regarding the firebase, and I'm guessing you play as an assassin most of the time, you can simply cloak past it, or jump over it with your escape. It shouldn't be an issue for you really. The only thing is don't try to grapple a support who's standing next to his firebase. I see assassins do this all the time and they die without getting a kill.

I also think you're overlooking the downsides of the airstrike that I pointed out. Namely the giant warning you get, and the fact that it can be mitigated by simply standing under a bridge. Not to mention the fact that if it's not stuck on you, just dash out of range, or use the escape and jump.

I think as well you're overlooking the whole thing about snipers. A sniper gets instakills and nobody bats an eye, fine. An assassin gets instakills and nobody bats an eye, fine. (In fact, you complain when you don't get instakills) The support has to throw his beacon in the right spot, and hope the enemy doesn't die/leave/hide in the 3/whatever seconds it takes the bomb to fall, despite the fact that there's a big giant glowing symbol that says "death here". This is also usually after the support has purchased full upgrades in the skill (or that's been my experience). Assassins and Snipers get their instakills for free. That's what they do, fine, but it makes it harder to try and say support instakill is overpowered when he has to have a specific set of circumstances happen for it to work. My suggestion, next time hit your dash, or escape-jump, or go hide under a bridge. These things all can completely negate the airstrike. Problem solved. Also I think you overestimate how useful one of these "offensive" supports is really. A support who's just going for kills likely isn't helping his team much, if at all. This is, to me, a bad support player, and he should be easy to deal with.

If supports are being baddies like that, how is that overpowered or a problem really? Let them be bad, and you can win. If they're on your team, well, there's nothing to stop them being a bad gunner or bad assassin, so why pick on the support?

It sounds like you've got one of two problems. Either you're unhappy because your assassin can't steamroll a support every time, or you want support nerfed so hard that they can only play specifically the way you think support should be played. Neither of these are good reasons to nerf support. If it's the former, then you just need to put more thought into your engagements. If it's the latter, you're basically trying to take away the support's versatility, and take away some of the fun of the class, which is a bad idea all around.

The problem with the support is that it gets better the more you have. It's one thing dealing with one, or two, but when you have four and you can consistently firebase every exit from a base in an awkward place to deal with?

Some classes are effective against firebases - but if you have a balanced team the chance is that you simply won't be able to deal with the amount of firebase/airstrike/gapshot which comes at you from 4/5 supports. 4/5 of any other class will be a very weak team, but the supports simply get better and better.

The boost they give to bots is considerable, and it means taking them out takes a lot longer. Their airstrikes make it hard to move and hard to stay still to do much. Their firebases massively slow you down from moving.

There is very little wrong, if anything wrong at all with ONE support. The problem is that a LOT of them is totally, totally unbalanced. I played a game just now which was 5 v 5, and they had 4 supports and an assassin, who changed to being assault late game. We had a team with every class but tank. We simply could not destroy their firebases, gapshots, and bots fast enough - becuase it took a fair while to destroy one by which time another could be put up. If two supports heal something, you're completely fucked.

If, I suppose, you could get onto the front foot you could probably do them, but on the back foot it was impossible - and I don't care how many people are going to say I don't know what I'm doing - I do. I don't want to hear your imbecilic 'tactics' of how to stop them - I was doing everything I could and I FAR AND AWAY beat everyone on their team and my team in dollars - and my team wasn't half bad either - but the fact that they could have 4 firebases up at anyone time and that we had nigh on no way of predicting where they'd be made it impossible.

Far too many of you distill this to a 1v1 situation, "Can an assassin beat a support" - that is NOT what monday combat is about. MNC is a team game, and for me, the number of advantages the support has and the few disadvantages it can't cover for, are just too many.

They make the bots better, just by standing with them
They have by FAR the best spawnable bot
They have solid health
They are a nightmare to snipe
They don't NEED to stay in view to be extremely dangerous
They have an incredibly powerful attack in the airstrike which is an instakill if it hits
Their firebase is awesome, can be put anywhere and will kill light armored classes almost immediately if they stumble upon it
They get juice easier than perhaps any other class
With juice they can easily kill any other class
They can overheal their own turrets - and two people healing the same turret make a turret nigh on invincible
Some characters can't kill the firebase as fast as it is healed by one person

And what disadvantage do they have? No personally held decently ranged weapon. That doesn't make up for it - and the fact alone that a 4 support + 1 assassin/assault combo is so hard to defeat is fairly solid proof of the problem.

Frankly, the word which describes MNC without the supports being at least tweaked, is a shame. It's a shame for a game to be ruined by support spam - but it's becoming more and more prevalent, as I predicted it would. Ridiculous that you see 80% of a team being a class which is probably the least attractive of teh group.

The firebase is a pain in the *** to kill. Three firebases are nearly impossible. The only counter to support right now is another support, because they can toss their airstrike and destroy all three of those firebases. The range on airstrike is insane, and as long as something is within that radius, even on the cusp of it, it'll die in one hit. No other class has an AoE insta-kill. If that was all the support had that'd be fine, but they can also self-heal (though it's not very useful comparitively), one shot most things with the shotgun, overheal other players and bots, set down a firebase behind a wall in an area that you have to pass through, effectively closing down that side of the map, and they can hack their own and enemy turrets. They also spawn the longshot for what it's worth.

The other classes are stuck to being useful in a single category, while the support exceeds all of the categories, even out-AoEing the assault and gunner.

The only part I don't like about the support is the one-hit juice shotgun.

They shouldn't get juice from holding the left trigger on something that's not moving in their spawn. They should have to shoot and kill pros and bots to unlock juice. Not a turret in their spawn.

As i've said. I have absolutely no problem dealing with support classes or their tricks. I completely agree that Assassins grappling Support in front of their turrets when they're all alone is beyond stupid. (And no offense but i know how to avoid an airstrike) My problem is the way its being played or exploited even.

Lets see how these three classes instakill-

A sniper has to line up a headshot from however far away, lots of characters move very fast, and he needs to fight through lag. And let's face it, if you were standing still you probably deserved it. I think you're underestimating how difficult it is to be consistent with headshots. That or you're the worlds best MNC Sniper.

An assassin has absolutely the worst life bar, you can hear the cloak hum, you can see the footprints from dashing, you can see the wriggle effect of cloak, and you have to be up close and personal. (Not complaining, but these are facts) Then you have to be so fortunate to not have grapple freak out on you while you're pretending to hug someones back. You can also die while grappling. It happens... So this is really no different from your airstrikes. The only difference is that assassins dont one-shot everything. (Only some things)

Support need only strafe a bit and spam the B button 3 times, hope for the best, and wait for the very short timer to be back up. Yeah we can see it coming probably, but you can see an assassin coming too, theres no difference there. Heck most of my assassin kills are just from listening. The cloak hum is LOUD. If you cant admit that three consecutive 1-shotting airstrikes are unnecessary for the support class then give me a reason why assassins shouldnt be one shotting everyone with a backstab every 20-30 seconds...

So no, my problem is not that i cant steamroll a support, cause most the time i do anyway. And my problem isn't how people are playing it or how i expect people to play it, its how the abilities of the class emphasize the way it should be played and abilities that just dont... Namely airstrike. Its hands down one the the most powerful abilities in the game and that cannot be argued. Its useful vs bots, players, turrets, and the moneyball.... coupled with the fact that you can use it 3 times in a row! And the cooldown is extremely short. This ability contributes nothing to the team as its class name implies. SUPPORT!

And no, i dont complain about not getting instakills, everyone has their weakness. Assassins weaknesses are exposure and failing to finish a surprise attack. (Assassins have very little room for failure, which is why i like playing one) Namely tanks and anything that reveals them. Traps, flak, being set on fire, grapple launchers, etc. As it stands, support have very little weakness in comparison to most classes, which is a problem.

Should assassins instakill everyone? Absolutely not. Should supports? Nope. Give airstrike a damage recall and some kickback. Thats all it really needs to be fixed. It can one-shot bots. Hell, i think it should.

Please, dont put words in my mouth. Its shady.


To the gentleman(PrivateJohn) that doesnt seem to know where to put his turret i'll number them to follow your questions:
#1)
-Not in front of another supports turret, my god i see this too much. Its deliberately screwing over your team
-Near choke points (This means not in the spawn area!!!! You know who you are!)
-And did you know that you could actually PICK UP your turret and move it? What a concept right? How about picking it up and following a tank, gunner, or assault (or any combination of the three) overshielding, then while they do their thing, lay your turret down to secure the position and get back in the fight. What an idea! You dont always have to have it down every second of the game. You're allowed to carry it!

2) This is true. But this thread is about support. There are soooooo many bad assassins, it hurts my head to think that they could be on my team. *shiver* But there are also lots of good ones

3) I didnt say hacking was cheap. I said getting juice, running in like an idiot and hacking a turret was a cheese move. (I didnt say cheese but its the same thing) You could be using juice to help your team push forward-- Oh wait, you can probably just use airstrikes. I take back my cheese statement.

But seriously, its not cheap, not in the slightest. Suicide hacking is, but im more of a team player. Acting on your own belittles the team overall and doesnt make progress is what i think. So to answer your question: its not.

*phew* That took a while. And my name is CausticSushi, not Cactus.

This. Thank you. You said what i somehow could not. Lol.

Yay let's remove all the damge from Airstrike so it won't even be worth spending a single $ in it.

Just wanted to comment on Support bomb vs. Assassin or Sniper instakill. The two aren't even comparable! I have died ONCE from a bomb...and that's because it was stuck to me. I have had numerous attempts that fell short and I simply WALKED away from the bomb...no need to dash.. On the sniper and assassin side.. I die from headshots (or snipers in general) FAR more than from a bomb attempt...that being said, unless it's a headshot, I deserve to die, as I was probably shot by the same sniper several times. With the assassin, the cloak makes all the difference in the world. Add to that the 75% effective instakill of the assassination attempt (the other 25% is from a combination of "sensing" an assassin near, or a failed attempt followed by a charge on my part...or the occasional "special ed" assassin who doesn't know what they're doing).

In any event, the bomb from the support is in no way comparable to the sniper or Assassin instakill...it's nowhere near as consistent.

Quite. It's not enough to say 'support isn't over powered because this guy can kill him or this technique can be used'. You can't look at individual things have to look at it as a whole, and see if, when taken as a whole, the Support seems to have too much advantage/power and too few weaknesses to counterbalance.

For example, for the class I tend to play, a Tank, I can point to the strengths: high damage at close range, strong against assassins due to high health, great abilities against bots and moderately effective long range weapons, for example. Then I can see that this is balanced by being big, slow and easy to hit, rubbish against gunners and poor-ish against assault in a fight, and weak at mid range due to having weapons tuned for close and long range.

The argument being made is that all the Support's abilities taken as a whole give it advantages against everything and not too many holes. Its modest armor defense isn't THAT bad, and is offset by them being built to be supporting other units or building turrets to defend. They have an impressive range of ways to kill things from the firebase which will shred most things at mid range, the bombs as an avoidable 1 hit kill weapon and the very powerful close range shotgun. They seem to have much less problem getting juice than most other classes which makes them doubly deadly and very problematic in overtime. Indeed their only major weakness seems to be that (like most other classes aside from the tank) they need to look out for stealth assassins, and they don't have brilliant armour. And, I suppose (again, like most units) they aren't much use at long range.

The suggestion is not to nerf them massively, but just to make their offensive capabilities just a little less robust to encourage them back where they are meant to be, as a supporting unit.

Now, it might be that because people are still settling into play styles it'll all settle in the end and things will look a bit balanced in a week or two. But it looks so far that the offensive capabilities of the support MAY need light pruning in one or two spots. We don't have the detailed data on this that Uber have, we just have our own anecdotes, so I'm quite happy to leave them to figure out what does and doesn't need to be done.

i only read the first post.

Now, I agree the Airstrike should 1 hit kill something it is stuck too, but at the same time i dont. The reason so many people run to the front lines with the Support is because they have a 1 hit kill skill that they have 3 of. Most people use this to take out all the other teams turrets, walk into their base and set up shop.

So make the Airstrike do less damage against turrets.

The firebase needs more health in my opinion. Everytime i set it down, fully overheal it, and walk away it dies before i turn the corner to heal my base's turrets. Every class can out range a level 3 firebase with a level 3 hack on it except the Support himself.
As for the turn radios, i agree it should only have a 90 to 180 degree rotation. BUT the issue with that is, no matter how you throw the firebase out it always faces North on the map (i dont know if its really north). Unless they want to set up another way to set down the firebase it will not be possible. if they want to add the turn radios it will mean a menu will have to pop up so you can choose the direction it will face..

The shotgun is fine, If the Support gets that close to a Tank to use it (twice) then the Tank deserves to die.

P.S. i am sick of Supports charging my base and setting up shop after Airstriking my level 3 firebase and Lazerblazers. I am a defensive Support, the way he should be played.

STarted reading this thread and gave up

All anyone seems to care about is how many kills they can get. Has everyone missed the point?

Assasin is awsome at tearing through bot after bot after bot, and can grapple a jackbot!! Is there tons of threads complaining about this? No, because it doesnt affect your precious K/D ratio. Most the assasin complaints i see are about how they are underpowed because they cant kill more people with grapples!

Seriously go play some COD team deathmatch or something and leave this game to people who understand you can have twice as many deaths as kills, still win the game, and have a great time in the process.

The Support is not nearly OP enough (not at all in my opinion) to be calling for a nerf this soon. The game has been out a week, so playstyles and strategies are just starting. You do realize that to be able to throw 3 airstrikes in quick succession that you have to spend $550, right? That's money that has to be used for airstrikes instead of health, a better turret, and a better way to improve turrets, as well as turrets, bots, jump pads, ejectors, juice, and the like. You know that it can only be used at medium range effectively, makes a loud noise, and lights up, right? If you're static (sniping, deployed, hacking a turret, whatever) then it's no different than getting sniped for an insta-kill, except the Support is more vulnerable. If you're moving, then the Support smacked you, get over it.

Every class has some sort of ability or weapon to help them destroy turrets, and the support has airstrikes. As for as anti-personnel, it's a medium range one-shot with plenty of warnings. It's easier to evade than a level 3 charge from an Assault that one hit kills a few classes and tends to get ring outs or make finishing kills ridiculously easy.

In all honesty, the only way a nerf now would be necessary was if everyone used Support and it was ridiculously dominant. And that's not the case. Hold off on the whining because a good Support wrecked you in a pub for at least another 2 weeks, until trends start really forming and balance can be addressed. What I want fixed is that assassin speed glitch. It's retardedly easy to do, and makes the assassin completely ridculous, and allows you to get out of the map. Fix plz.

You know I see a lot of arguments being thrown about that things are this way or that way, but I see very little in the way of hard evidence and clear directions in what people are claiming they want.

Balancing a class against scenarios where there are 5 of the same on one team is not a good idea, because 5 of any class will make the gameplay disproportionate to the regular gameplay. If you nerf support because 5 of them are strong in defense, then having only 1 or 2 makes the team weaker. This scenario shouldn't become a problem if you change your playstyle for attacking their weaknesses. Longshot turrets in the base, maybe a couple of supports on your own team. Tanks can cause huge problems for support, especially with their product bomb and jet charge. Learn the support's weaknesses and exploit them.

I don't really have any problem killing other team's firebases either. Firstly, it's usually pretty easy to avoid them. This negates their usefulness quite a bit. An airstrike will, of course, take them out. You can also use product bombs, assault bombs, gunner mortars, so on and so forth. It may take a while, but if you absolutely feel you have to take this firebase head on, that's your decision. If a support is healing it, kill him first. Don't try to get in a damage fight with a healing support. As far as I know, support's have no way to self-heal besides having a lvl 3 firebase. Might I suggest a product bomb (stun both turret and support), followed by a Jet Charge and the JetGun alt-fire? (Jet Spin is it?) That should take out the support quite quickly, as well as giving a good bit of damage to the turret. Unfortunately not every class will be able to take a firebase head-on. That's not the way the game works, and you just have to find a way around your obstacle.

I think one of the main things that people are overlooking is the fact that support's strengths really come out in a more positional way. They are great at defending specific areas, but the fact of the matter is that the map is pretty wide open, and there are generally more ways to get into a base than there are supports to defend them. Add to the fact that it's not too hard to out-range a support, and you take away some of their effectiveness. The trick isn't to try and beat the support at his own game, it's to make him play your game.

The "overpowered"-ness of the airstrike can definitely be argued, because it's much easier to avoid than any of the other instakills. I don't know why some people think it's on a short cooldown, because even with the 3x skill recharge endorse it's still a decently long recharge, much longer than any of the other support skills, or things like product bomb or in fact probably most skills. Also, you will, by /far/, get killed way more often via a sniper or assassin than you will an airstrike. A smart player will rarely, if ever, get hit by an airstrike, but people overlook how easy it is to avoid.

Caustic, you might wanna review the grammar before you start saying people put words in your mouth, but considering you've already made insults and comments like "He started it" in this thread, I don't hold much hope. In addition, you actually are saying that you want support skills (like airstrike) nerfed because it allows players to play in a manner different to the manner that you think they should be playing in. I think you need to come to grips with the fact that the support's skills, namely airstrike, allow it a degree of versatility, and that is why people play it in different ways. People shouldn't have to sit and be a heal bot if they don't want to.

All these "advantages" that people are touting the Support has are very nebulous accounts. In addition, most of them are able to be countered if you put your mind to it. The strengths of the support aren't as strong as the strengths of the other classes, but by contrast it's weaknesses aren't quite so weak. The support really is a 'middle of the road' type character in my eyes. Think about the 3 ways people seem to be complaining about being killed by supports; Shotgun, Airstrike, and Firebase. These are all easily avoided if you simply move out of the area. Don't go next to a support, no shotgun death. Don't stay in the airstrike radius (or hide under something), no airstrike death. Don't hang around by the firebase, no firebase death. These aren't hard deaths to avoid.

I feel like this thread has, or needs to, become something other than "support is broken". There are conflicting reports of people who think they are and aren't broken, and most of the problems seem to be solvable by "this is how you counter that situation" rather than "nerf support".

It seems to me that this may be a leftover of the whole MW2 "rambo" mentality, where people just want to run in and gun everything down. Players still in that mentality have a huge problem dealing with a class that is strong in defending a localized point. It's not the game that needs to be changed, it's your mentality. You can't simply batter down every obstacle, sometimes you have to go around it. This is a different style of gameplay than the traditional team deathmatch, and sometimes it may require you to alter your strategy.

Finally, for the people who complain about problems they may be having deal with enemy support players, just remember that the enemy team may be having the same problems with your team's support players. Also, there's nothing to stop you from using the same tactics they use.

If you absolutely have to nerf something, nerf the juice gain rate for support. Some people seem to have an issue with it, and while I think it's fine, I don't think it makes a huge difference either way in the long scheme of things. Or at least that's been my experience.

lol you can definitely tell which people play support in this thread..