Support + Gunner balance suggestions.

For those averse to lots of text, there's a tl;dr at the bottom.

First off, the game's awesome. I'm seriously impressed with it, really didn't expect to get so much game for so little money. Also, Pit Girl's accent is amazing. It's also really great to see Uber employees getting so involved on the forums, it's something you don't see very often, and I love it. I wouldn't bother with this thread unless I thought you guys would take a look at it.

Overall, I think the game's amazingly well balanced. These two classes are the only one that I think need tweaking a bit. I'll deal with the biggest issue first, Support. I don't think it's quite as bad as most make out, but he is a little two powerful. I'll just list my suggestions below.
The firebase: In terms of damage, I think it's fine, it's only really dangerous when hacked. I think either it needs a little less health, or you shouldn't be able to overheal it. A support healing a hacked, level 3 firebase that's also healing him is nigh unstoppable.
Airstrikes: Why on earth does the Support class get to throw down 3 airstrikes that can one hit any class regardless of endorsements? The fix is simple here, either lower the damage, or only let him throw down one at a time. There's no reason for three of them, Assault can only throw down one bomb, Tank can only launch one grenade, Support should not be able to chuck three portable nukes at a time.
Other than that, I think he's fine.

Now, on to the Gunner. I think he's basically fine, just his minigun could do with toning down some. I think it's too powerful at long range. I'd suggest either raising the damage fall-off at longer ranges, lowering the accuracy a touch, or, preferably, removing the annoying slow down effect it has. Can't really understand why it needs that.

These two minor issues aside, the game is absolutely fantastic, and Uber's attitude towards the community is rapidly making them one of my favourite developers.

Tl;dr: Lower firebase health, limit support's airstrikes to one per charge, remove Gunner's minigun slow down effect, game is brilliant, Uber is amazing, Pit Girl's accent does things to me.

I completely agree with everything posted here. This guy has some great ideas on how to balance the game. I do have one thing to add, though:

Another option to fix the gunner is to make his minigun less accurate (forcing many good Gunners to use Accuracy as their gold endorsement, opening themselves up to assassin backstabs), and/or making a delay before starting the gun and firing it, similar to the way TF2 handles the Heavy and his minigun.

Also, I too, am VERY impressed with the game. I've put an insane amount of time into the game since I bought it the day it came out, and I'm still loving it (aside from these balance issues).

Keep up the good work, Uber.

Both great ideas. I think there's loads of options for Gunner tweaks that would all do the job. There's honestly not that much wrong with him, he's just too good a range. A lot of the times when people (including me) get destroyed by him is because they ran straight at him at close range. If you do that you should absolutley be punished for it. Gunner is meant to be vulnerable from the flanks, but his effectiveness at long ranges limits this somewhat.

I also think in tweaking the Support they should adopt the healing someone when they get a kill being an assist mechanic from TF2. This would further encourage people to actually heal and be supportive (I know unheard of) while playing the Support. I love playing the Support in a more defensive manner and actually supporting my team the only issue is the absolute lack of reward for doing so.

Edit: Also not sure if this is a glitch or not but there doesn't really seem to be that much of an impact on healing when juiced. If healing rate was given a more noticeable increase while juiced it would even further give reason to use the Support in a more team oriented role. Sort of like Ubercharges in TF2 but simply a boost to heal rate rather than immortality.

In regard to nerfing Air Strike I'd probably prefer being able to throw 2 Air Strikes at half damage, with instant kill on a stick, than 1 at full damage. Simply because I like to use them as a way of manipulating my opponent's position rather than just a form of damage. Perhaps nerfing it down to 2 per charge at 50% current damage, instant kill on stick, and the ability to still 1 hit firebases would be an appropriate change?

This is actually a really interesting idea. I do still think the support needs a direct nerf of some sort, but I like how this idea works. Rather than limiting the Support's abilities and thereby forcing people to play him a specific way, offering an incentive like this one is a much more positive and encouraging way of doing it, and would help limit the inevitable cries of 'OMG, y u nerf support, now hes usless!!!1'.

God, that hurt to type.

I don't find the firebase that strong but changing airstrikes to 1 per charge I can swing with, three with a recharge rate of about 15-20 seconds is too much.

In terms of damage I think the firebase is fine, in my opinion it just has a little too much health. When placed well, a firebase can completely shut off half of your bot supply, as well as preventing your team from advancing down that lane. I reckon it would just balance it little beter, as well as encouraging players to think more about the placement, if it didn't require so much firepower to get rid of.

Good, thoughtful suggestions. I saw in another thread where someone had suggested limiting the firing radius of the firebase (e.g., a firebase could only fire 180* rather than the full 360*). Trying to find a small niche on the map where I can hit a 3.3 firebase and it can't hit me gets a little ridiculous.

I was also surprised to see that Gunners had a slow effect. I'm glad you brought it up.

The minigun is pretty inaccurate at long range. Chances are, if you're getting ripped up at long range from a gunner, it's because he custom classed it and put Accuracy as gold endorsement -- which to me is balanced. It's what I have to do currently.

If you're going to change the gunner, I would say remove "deploy" and replace it with something else or make deploy more worth doing.

I can't imagine using anything other than gold reload [intelliclips]. It takes forever to reload on no sponsors! :roll:

Sure, it's accuracy isn't amazing, but with the slowdown effect it has you're under fire for long enough to take serious damage. I think removing the slowdown would probably fix any problem that people have with him.

I agree on deploy though, it really doesn't seem useful. Don't know what you'd replace it with though.