Suggestion: Ice Traps, Skill Drain, and Scramblers

Suggestion: Remove Skill Drain From Ice Traps

Compensation: Have Scramblers do the following: Scramblers latch onto a target, and draining skills as they deal damage over time. On death, scramblers leave a (visible) skill drain aura in the area for x number of seconds.

Doing so would bring lvl 3 Ice Traps down to a reasonable level, as currently they snare you for 3+ seconds AND drain ALL of your skills to the point where they are still on cool down when the snare wares off. The snare alone is enough to kill pros in most circumstances, but allowing pros to use non-movement based skills would be nice (Tank's product grenade/gunner and tank's deploy/slam/ assault bomb/etc) and would add a bit more depth to the game. (Anything that brings more uses for both the gunner and tank's deploy is probably a good thing).

While we would be nerfing ice traps, Scramblers would see a huge buff, and might actually be worth spawning (as i'm sure most of the community agrees they are the least effective bot spawns in the game at the moment).

Personally i think that the duration of both the skill drain and the snare need to be reduced.

The duration is really disgusting too, your stuck for a very very long time.

The problem with this would be the complete elimination of upgrading to Lvl 3 trap, as simply getting one more trap would not be worth $400. I have no problem with the skill drain, because as you said, once they are snared, they are most likely dead anyways, and I don't really feel that getting your skills drained is OP in any way.

Additionally, it sounds like you had a frustrating night against a sniper, based on these 2 threads

I dont think I agree with this. Time is of the essence when your trapped. You could have a few options if your skills werent drained. Throw a bomb, Gunner Grapple/or Deploy, Product Grenade blind them, cloak [not that I think thats 100% useful] Throw a flak to push the player around the corner, or get in their line of sight throw an airstrike to make them stay behind the wall, etc. Not having skills drained makes a giant difference. I personally think he needs only 2 traps max. However, again, I like the depth you take in your suggestions.

Also on your scrambler suggestion, my mind thought of a scrambler taking a piggy back ride on them. Something does need to be done about the scrambler but that idea gave me that thought and now it wont leave lol.

This is how id "fix" traps

Because if you ask me, they are broken.


-Cut the freeze duration by like 2 seconds, at the moment it lasts at least 5 and although that doesn't seem like much it's actually an eternity in this game. Even the crappiest sniper in the entire game can line up a head shot in 5 seconds.

-Skill are not drained, but rather "locked" for the duration of the trap
-The drain doesn't effect any grapples, MAYBE skill grapples....maybe

Every game against a sniper is frustrating if they are good. I would know, I'm an obnoxious sniper half the time.

But your pretty far off, I was speaking with hudson and others earlier about how broken the sniper is (while loling my sniper *** into the enemy base and getting my EZ trap kills)

I don't believe lvl 3 Ice should drain normal grapples because it's simply not a skill. Red, Yellow and Blue are skills, that's why you can upgrade them. A normal grapple is not a skill so I'm completely confused on why it would be drained from skill sap.

Other than that I can semi complain about the sniper having three ice traps but then you can argue that other classes have three of something or what not so I can let it slip I guess.

I live through level 2 traps all the time. (Snipers that stand still to line up a head shot are easy to blind.) It's level 3 that is annoying, because it effectively becomes a 5 second snare and 5+ second silence. You can do very little in this circumstance unless your normal attacks can take the sniper from 100% to zero% before he gets off his almost guaranteed headshot.

I guarantee a good number of snipers would play 400 for 3 traps and faster trap regen.

I'd also have less of an issue with traps if they only snared the target within the AoE when it went off, rather than snaring multiple targets at different times after the first target is snared.

I'm not suggesting a huge nerf to the sniper, I'm simply suggesting moving his skill drain from his stationary (defensive/turtling) traps to his offensive (pushing) bots. His traps would still be strong (but not guaranteed death anymore), and his bots would actually be worth spawning.

Totally agree, love the whole "metroid" aspect for the scramblers, i remember we were playing on steel peel and for the hell of it spawning them, i got one kill from them off of a bad player, and the rest got wrecked so fast

Your threads are always informative, Hudson. Thanks for continuing the trend. Those new to MNC would do well to go through your posting history.

Agreed.

This is a very good idea. I've seen Scramblers make it to the Moneyball twice out of two thousand plus matches. The ineffectiveness of their bots contributes to Snipers being one of the most selfish classes.

I think traps should be destroyed by heavy ordinance like air strikes, bombs, and explosive rounds. I've often found myself suiciding into them just to clear doorways for my team.

Pics or it didn't happen.

*Blush* Thanks bud. From what I remember of your posts I could say much of the same thing about you.

Why are we not friends on XBL (Or are we and I'm just being silly?)

I'm fairly certain they already are. Unless you are referring to not even leaving ice behind when getting hit by those things.

I still don't see the purpose of eliminating skill drain. Despite Hudson saying otherwise, I just don't think anyone would purchase the Lvl 3 upgrade if skill drain was removed. Not necessarily a convincing argument to keep it in, but still a noteworthy hypothetical effect.

While I think discussion of these changes are good, I'm not sure if any of them will even be considered anyways. Uber is not just taking into account the needs and wants of the forum community, but also of the community who probably never even considers coming on here. If you look at the Sniper as a whole, he really only becomes OP to a certain degree when someone with fairly good aim is using him. Uber also has to account for those people who are not so good at this game, and the Sniper might very well be unplayable to some people if you start removing AOE on shots or skill drain on traps.

What you propose creates even more of a balance issue, because if their intention is to compensate for people that can't aim by giving him loads of AoE damage, it only makes the people who CAN aim that much more powerful.

The class would not be unplayable, just would have a more demanding technical skill curve (IE: Assassin, Tank).

The sniper would hardly be unplayable with one of the best grapples in the game, slightly toned down explosive shots, 1 shot kills at long ranges, and 3 ice trap snares, ESPECIALLY if you buffed his bots.

Oh, not to mention his ability to build juice extremely quickly in relative safety, mow down people with the juiced SMG, and melt the money ball faster than every other pro in the game.

(See...when I start listing his strengths, this starts becoming a typical SNIPER IS OP thread. )

Again, I wasn't talking about playing for certain people, but simply that the devs are accounting for more people than just the ones who are good at this game. Additionally, I think you probably know my stance on what I think of the sniper grapple.

Also, the Sniper may build juice the fastest, but in my mind has the worst juice. It does almost nothing to increase his ability to destroy turrets, and he still has fairly low health when charging the ball. He can do damage to the ball very fast, but the ball must be down before he can use this.

And the problem with a steep learning curve is that people who are not as good will simply abandon the class early on and not attempt to learn, thus limiting the class's overall playability. And I do not think Assassin or Tank have an especially hard learning curve, its just that people don't think about how to improve very often. Edit: This is meant o imply that the sniper learning curve would be more twitch skills based, such as aim, as opposed to differences in utilization.

And while increasing the quality of the bot could be good, I have a feeling that a bot that ran around and drained pro's abilities effectively would be much more OP than traps that were stationary and needed to be triggered. Maybe not, but it is easy to talk in hypotheticals when we cannot see the immediate effect. In this case, I trust that the devs did due diligence when creating the scrambler, and decided to underpower it because it would just be insanely lame otherwise.

Let me translate Hudson's posts for y'all:

"I'M CAUGHT IN THIS TRAP AND I CAN'T STICKERZ OR CHARGE OR STUFF MY FACE WITH BACON, I HATE YOU ALL!!!" /DEATHBLOSSOMDEATHBLOSSOMDEATHBLOSSOM /shame spiral

Yeah, that's about right.

Okay, you saw right through me.

Level 3 trap is a bit powerful with the skill drain and all, but Sniper has much better things to spend money on, like level 2 grapple, more powerful and annoying flak.....and level 3 passive. :3

I agree with the removing of skill drain on level 3, though. Of course, if you see a sniper camping in spawn picking off people for effortless kills, you should try to flank him or jump into their base to devour him at close range and avoid his level 3 traps (you know he has them).

fer srs yo, buff Scramblers a bit and many Snipers will start buying bots with their hard-earned cash, which will take away money that could be used to upgrade awesome skills and will also reduce overall Sniper effectiveness online. Everyone wins!

Full disclosure: mintycrys does not purchase level 3 traps nor do his views represent thread OP's.

"Overpowered class should remain overpowered so bad players will keep playing it."

Summed it up for you

"Completely missed the point and tried to seem smart."

Summed it up for you.