Switch to PC benefits three classes to detriment of others

I wasn't aware this game was balanced around the 360 controller.

Oh wait, it wasn't.

Every day we have this same argument, just with a different title. Could you just play the damn game for a while?

You'll realize soon enough Assassins are no problem. Every class except maybe the Support has a direct counter to them, and he has an extremely high-damage shotgun. If an assassin gets more than 15 kills you or your team are doing it wrong.

This thread borders on the bottom feeder end of SPUF quality... Which is saying a lot.

First, all classes are good at killing players and bots as long as you know what you're doing... Which you clearly don't.

Gunner has the highest (by far) DPS in the game at close and medium range. With the right endorsements he can have both 1000 health (second only to Tank) and 1700 DPS. 1700! That's 0.3 seconds to mow down an assault at close/medium range! Half second will kill everything but two classes (Gunner and Tank). One second will wipe out anything.

The mortar is a high yield large radius explosive that's hands down the best turret destroyer in the game, and does one hell of a number on pros and bots alike.

On top of that, that "Slam everyone avoids" is one of the best tools you have at your disposal, provided you know how to use it (shock, you don't). At lvl 3 it has 1024 units of radius. The exact same radius as the Support's shotgun, 360 degrees around you. It does an instant 275 damage, stuns you, and can knock you out of the map easily. If you're stupid and do it straight off a grapple or right when an enemy can see it coming, then yes, it'll be avoided. Be smart about it and you'll make a lot of pancakes.

On top of that his grapple is one of the most powerful grapples in the game, and is usually a ringout.

Tanks have the best and most accurate weapon in game second only to the scoped rifle for long range engagement. At close range they're a powerhouse due to their ability to almost insta-kill most classes due to charge+death blossom. Charge is also almost sadistic at close range, seeing as it sends people back, knocks them down, AND stuns them, leaving them open to a jetgun finish.

The product grenade can stun a large wave of bots or the jackbot or turrets and blind enemies. Leaving them vulnerable to jetgunning.

Death Blossom also instantly kills an entire wave of bots without a lvl 2 support passive. With it, it "only" wipes all the Slims and more than halves the Blackjack's damage.

Support on the other hand, has a limited range of fire. It's compensation for how he can single handedly shut down an area. Hack turns average turrets into death traps, and the firebase into a massive area of denial tool. The shotgun does the second highest DPS in the game second only to the Gunner's. Except for a Tank, you can kill any class you get the first shot on before they can do anything to you. 2 hits are generally enough. Support also has one of the most powerful weapons in the entire game - Airstrike. It's always a one hit kill and it has a large radius.

Conversely, Assassins are relatively easy to deal with once you know what the **** you're doing. Listen to the hum. Learn about how to play assassin, and what makes you a vulnerable target, then avoid doing it. Yes, good assassins will kill you sometimes. As will any other good class.

In short, every class has a huge potential, it's all about whose hands are at the controls.

Hate the playa not the game

Oh man, you are just begging to have your smug face be absolutely wrecked by some of the damn good assault/sniper/assassin players I've seen.

Here's something I noticed: several people here, in their recommendations in dealing with assassins, have said relatively the same thing, "just listen for the hum". You know who runs around with their cloak on, trying to get backstabs all the time? Bad assassins! You know what good assassins do most of the time? Clear bot waves faster than any other class can possibly hope to achieve, even tanks, and shuriken-snipe turrets without any danger because she's overloaded with all kinds of escape abilities that make her almost impossible to catch in the hands of a good player, especially with gold armor.

These supports that "shut down" areas of the map you're talking about? Are dealt with by using either a single assault bomb in order to separate them from their firebase and take him and it out at the same time in about 3 seconds, or smoke-bombing as assassin and wrecking them in about the same amount of time. And hacking any turrets to make them actually useful takes time, in both use and recovery for the ability, and the former makes you vulnerable, especially if you're out in the field trying to do it to your firebase. Don't even get me started on how absolutely screwed you are if an enemy sniper has you in their sights.

And snipers? Insta-kill headshots are a given, and something you can deal with, but do they really need such a wide array of abilities that can destroy any players that get close? Most notably the flak grenades and almost-guaranteed ring-out grapple? And while their juice isn't nearly as powerful as the other classes, any decent sniper can get theirs full in no time flat, making them even more impossible to take out once you've finally gotten close enough.

The other 3 classes have their application for use, the problem is that the 3 current overpowered classes are the most often-picked by newbie players and the people who completely dominate the other classes with them are obscured by hordes of idiots trying to play team deathmatch.

Yeah, those same uncloaked assassins are pretty easy to, ya know... See. They have considerable anti-machine abilities because quite frankly they suck at killing Pros. With players of equal skill and awareness the Assassin is the least reliable to kill.

Since we aren't including bad players in this equation, the Support isn't so easy to kill. The offensive Support's ultimate goal is to keep map dominance that his team has already established. A smart player won't go running into your spawn hacking a firebase. As for taking out a Support and turret in 3 seconds... Lol. Going for one and not the other will accomplish nothing unless you are playing a 1v1, and you can't kill both with teams of competent players.

Snipers I must agree are on the powerful side, but the more maneuverable classes kill him so easily, not to mention a Gunner who knows his Mortar. What happens now is people will try to ignore the snipers because they don't have a complete understanding of long-term goals. Getting grappled is a fair punishment for not being able to take out a class with such pathetic armor at the range where your weapons do the most damage.

As a career Gunner, I have to confess I disagree sharply with this assessment. On almost every map, the best sniper lanes are either right in your base or right outside of it--GrenADE III is really the only arena where you're likely to find a sniper more than a hundred paces from his spawn, and even then only when he's pushing his lane past the neutral arc (if it happens at all--many stay in the base lane or on that lip facing the middle to kill enemy pros even when his bots are pushed). While the Sniper has tremendous offense, his strategic purpose is generally a defensive one: I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of snipers I've seen get more than halfway to my base at any point in any game. Hell, on Steel Peel they can snipe effectively at all of ten feet from their spawn.

I guess you could be correct in the sense that it's easier to punish a sniper for a particularly stupid mistake because of their relatively low survivability, but it's much more uncommon for a sniper to make those mistakes because his job (from a motion economy standpoint) is a lot easier than the other classes. The sniper generally stays near his spawn, where a safe reheal is always a possibility. He has constant bot cover if he's any good, and barely has to move. You might get punished for making them at some point, but it takes a special kind of stupid to make big positioning/tactical mistakes as a sniper. Just stand in one spot, strafe every once in a while, and rack up the kills. Boom.

As a Gunner, on the other hand, I can be punished very easily by choosing the wrong pathway--since I have virtually no mobility I also can't extract myself very easily from a failed firefight. Same thing with Supports: they can't really self-heal effectively (if you're that close to use the beam you might as well use the shotty anyway) and neither Gunner or Supports have any kind of escape mechanism/ability.

That said, I think the OP has a point about some of the classes--when it comes to pro killing nothing beats the sniper (who needs to be taken out of scope when he jumps, btw--kinda surprised that wasn't in the patch actually) and he's also a baller bot pusher too. Sins are great bot pushers and average or slightly above-average pro killers. An assault in the right hands is an amazing asset to your team in terms of pro lockdown, but it's difficult enough to pull off with consistency, so I think the Assault is pretty well balanced. If anything, I'd look into tightening his base accuracy just a tad. I don't think I've ever used an AR that was as inaccurate as MNC's.

I don't really think anything is OP or UP enough to warrant a nerf/buff, as the OP mentions. But he does make some good points about niches and game functions, and I do agree that Gunner and Support are among the "weakest" classes although they're close enough that I can't see any glaring change that needs to be made. I'd consider giving the gunner his jetpack back--or at the very least, boost his base speed a little or something. But I'm biased.

No offence, but I have been playing this game since xbox and on steam...

Why do I find sniper's current nerf strong enough, they can barely kill a bot wave with their current clip size? That leave players choosing EITHER bot control of pvp.

Why do I find assassins still easily bulldozed by tanks? Their juice preventable to a large degree.

Why do I find assaults quite nifty at killing bots with their wide explosive area grenades, BARRING that it takes a long time with such low damage and a support heals anything faster than an assault hurts? On bots, it takes a support passive 1 as well as gold rate hhgun, but still, assaults can't kill bots with a bomb. If they HEADCRAB a bot, it might kill THAT bot.

Snipers are getting very good at headshots on PC, but I just played SIG|\/|AR today on xbox, and I just noticed he got about as fast of headshots about as consisitently as the top 30% of pc snipers. Very very few people are that good at sniping on console (only 5%), but the nerf more than makes up for 5x more good snipers. It caps the sniper's strength plenty.

Assassins do NOT have a free escape when they mess up. If they mess up and you charge, they might smokebomb. If they begin relying on this too much, start secondary-weapon-grappling instead of charging. You will grab them out of smokebomb, they will not have another smokebomb, you can then charge them. It's a mixup game, you take a guess and if your right they die. They don't have a completely safe escape, stop letting them escape.

Assaults grenade launcher and bomb could use moneyball damage nerf, not a lot but just a bit. If it did 30% less damage, it wouldn't do 2x more damage than any other pro does to the moneyball. The shotgun could also maybe use a 20% nerf to moneyball damage, but thats not what i'm talking about right now. The assault bomb could use a regen nerf, so it wont completely regen while another bomb is out, and could use moneyball damage nerf, but he is easily taken care of by supports and overhlealed heavies. I played an assault that got pounded the following game after doing well the first game, because he instead went against heavies and supports.

Since I just discussed all the counters for everything people have said about balance issue... why do people still keep bringing them up. I'm not even amazing, i just know every class's weakness. It isnt hard, just read this and use it. Problem solved, nobody needs a nerf.

I have no direct problem anywhere here. My only problem is how indirectly complaining to the devs has created nerfs that may have been needed, but the problem was exaggerated so the nerf was MUCH BIGGER than necesary. When a nerfhammer gets swung, its swung too damn hard and ends up ****ing up the game. You aren't creating more game balance, you're breaking the balance currently existing in the game. Don't do that. Don't nerf too hard. Don't nerf absolutely everything. Everything has a solution ingame so far, that means nothing is broken.

the pc community itself needs to spend more time playing the game, its still relatively new on pc so take some time to learn it, as a lot of people have said the skill cap on this game is rather high compared to others, people need to read some guides, not cry about something because it keeps happening to them. step back look at what happen, how it happen and how you can prevent it from happening next time, you will become much better at the game.

(watch this get trolled)

No actually, at least I don't. If I don't kill a tank, gunner or an assault, because I accidentally face-grappled, I don't use my bomb. I jump to the side (because most of them are stupid and immediately charge) and depending on his health I finish him off or I use the bomb.
Using the bomb immediately is IMO too risky.

I accuse you of not having played good PC Snipers, sitting in spawn is very detrimental to your frags per minute meter, you can quickscope all classes point blank. Why stay in base?

A better position would be shortly behind your bots on the high ground (eyes on the side-entrances) and allows you to shoot about everything and still not do "those mistakes"

I may come off as a little opinionated (I love the game =D) sure, but even I can't really find anything to really rage about balance wise.

Er... to keep your deaths down? I'm sure career snipers take pride in their KDR's. I don't think they care as much about KPM, not when the decent ones can have it be two or even three kills per minute just chilling in their spawn (especially on Steel Peel). Pushing an enemy's base as a sniper might see a nominal increase in KPM if you're good and the other team isn't, but in most cases it should also result in more frequent deaths which will damage your KDR, and KDR is king when it comes to sniping (or, well.. pretty much anything else, really).

I don't really understand why you're saying snipers should push when they can shoot enemies in/around their own base without being anywhere near it on every map except Spunky Cola and LazerRazor. The most "dangerous" sniping positions relative to your own spawn are probably the ones on Ammo Mule--and even then only if you choose to snipe from the bridges up top. Most snipers (*feigns shock*) stay right next to their spawn and snipe pros as they come up that incline in the center.

The only time I see a sniper leave his base to attack ours is in OT or when he's juiced. Every sniper I've ever seen go above like 3:1 stayed in his spawn or close. I don't really know how "good" they are, but even the ones who seemingly kill my entire team at will stay in or around their bases.

EDIT: I misread your remarks about quickscoping at first, but I'm not sure how it's preferable to the SMG at close/mid range as I don't play sniper. But I think if I saw a sniper pushing and one-shot noscoping left and right (which he would have to do in order to increase his KPM versus just sitting in the spawn, unless the other team is fully pushed and he has no choice) I'd be a little suspicious.

The reason you move in is because you want to press the advantage, the SMG is too slow to engage any bigger target close-range. Just shoot the gunner straight in the face point blank, nothing suspicious about that.

Also nothing suspicious about jumping quickscopes on floating assaults or anything like that, you need to press the advantage. A Sniper kills stuff and that's what he should do.

Staying in base is only a viable option if you're team hasn't pushed mid and you can't risk moving out - if that is the case though you already lost.

Aggression wins this game, staying in base kiling those simple people who keep on running into your scope won't win a game but will only make it stale and boring.

Hello, my name is grimbar and I don't give a damn about KD/R (yet I still pull off 40+:0 often enough)

I guess my point is that based on how I've seen them played, the sniper's role is nearly always static and defensive. If amazing snipers routinely do otherwise, I haven't seen it. I've seen some roaming snipers (none of them particularly good), but as a general rule the he is generally not seen in pubs, or maybe just the ones that have low ping where I am, I dunno. Perhaps playstyles differ from region to region or what-have-you, as I never play on anything above 80ish ping and there are plenty of servers in that range.

Anyway, I'm not saying the sniper is OP or anything, but the... um... the OP (heh) is correct that the skill ceiling for the sniper is silly high. It will be in any PC FPS game because if you have anything less than one-shot kill headshots, your sniper is basically gimped. I remember trying to snipe in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and the sniper rifles in that game had ludicrous kickback and little actual strength--some (or most, with the right team composition) classes could survive headshots so there were relatively few snipers to be seen.

EDIT: The above is one of the big reasons why I'd like to see a FPS developed that used sniper support in more of a strategic (i.e., realistic, or at least more realistic) capacity. I'm not saying I always want to play hyper-realistic games, but it would be nice to play a shooter where some insanely talented sniper won't take your head off in or around virtually any outdoor or open area of the map. One of the things I liked about Enemy Territory: Quake Wars was that the best/highest performing players in terms of kills and k/d didn't always play sniper as is often the case in other games. It was still lethal, but the game had enough different options to encourage other equally devastating playstyles. This game did that too, with the notable exception of symmetrical (and superior) gameplay balance.

It seems obvious that Monday Night Combat was balanced for play on a controller. This is developer-confirmed, because they changed balance considerations long before release specifically due to the existence of a mouse and keyboard.

It is equally obvious that even with these changes, it is far, far easier to be a sniper in this game than in many other games. In terms of long-range combat, bodyshotting to death even high-health classes with armor endorsements is trivially accomplished, which may have been necessary when people were restricted to controllers but isn't any longer. Snipers are stronger in close-range combat in terms of relative strength, especially with the existence of freeze traps, a decently powered SMG and absolutely no quickscope protection. And to compound that, snipers in other games don't get to hide in a base bristling with level 3.3 Rockit Turrets while they ply their craft.

Sniper players have confirmed that they can perform absurdly well in this game even with no serious prior experience as a sniper or history of being able to play one in other games. Even *I* can perform at a reasonably decent level as a sniper in this game, and I am a terrible sniper.

It is a given that the conversation surrounding this will not be productive. People will be accused of being bad players, the word "pubbie" will be tossed around, and other such non-constructive kerfluffle. It's to be expected.

None of this changes the fact that it is well-established that the difference between aiming and control on a kb/m and a controller is absolutely massive, enough so that even middling kb/m players can absolutely dominate the top-skilled controller players.

It can't be denied that this difference will disproportionately affect certain classes, and it can't be denied that a balance force that large and that blatant probably won't be perfectly handled on the first pass-by. Further tweaks will be required. Those counseling that we need to "Just wait until people improve" as if only the sniper carries a static overall skill level amongst players is merely delaying the inevitable.

I commend the MNC Team for treating forum whines with skepticism. I've seen what can happen to games when the shift and ebb of player complaints are taken as a basis for balance tweaks. However, there are some very clear anomalies that have occurred in the translation from console to PC, especially with the sniper, and I hope that Uber Entertainment will look to some of the sniper-control mechanisms present in other games to bring things to a more reasonable level. They could get away with ignoring them on the XBox, but the PC is a whole different beast. If these mechanisms are not put into place, then the lack of them will absolutely be abused with greater and greater regularity as more and more people realize that the skill floor for snipers is far lower and the skill ceiling far higher than in other games of this type.

My $0.02.

agreed.


Its a hard arguemnt, because many people who come to the fourms to defend sniper, are quite good at it, and they feel as if their skill is being attacked, when we say snipers are no balanced.

In some ways they are right, we are saying that the class requires far less skill than it should, but that doesnt mean you aren skilled.. maybe you would be getting those head shots regardless of rof spam, maybe youd be fine. But that doesnt change the fact that its a problem

have you ever seen a Clipsize/Rof/Amor sniper? spam 7 shots into an area non stop.. talk about fatal funnel.. with explosive round and penetrating rounds.. all you can do is wait for him to reload and try and get by lol.. thats pretty bad.. I mean you can run by and hope.. but chances are you are gonna take one to the chest at best, head at worst.. thats pretty bad.. and Gold RoF/clipsize snipers are worse.. they can fire like machine guns.

The problem is the meta game demands sniper has ROF to deal with bots..

uber will think of somehting.. but until than we need to relax on the subject, because all it does is stir up crap.

Snipers and Sins need adjusting from console to PC IMO.. and for very easy to see and hard to argue reasons.

1) sniper: Kb/mouse makes aiming far easier, and fast ROF + even mediocre aim with KB mouse a bit too much

2) Assassins: Back grapples are far to easy to get with mouse and keyboard, they werent seeing this on Xbox because the speed with which an assassin could turn his view was drastically slower, making it impossible to lunge past someone, turn 180 instantly and catch their back whlie flying by lol. And thats the drastic side of the coin, the less drastic side, is that good assassins can almost ALWAYS negotiate their way to your back, because of their natural speed plus how easily you can turn your Field of view using a mouse.. You could argue that you could turn to keep them away from your back just as easily, but you dont have huge speed increases and a lunge, and you geting their back isnt an instant kill..


Both will be addressed i'm sure. But until they are, lets just be greatful that there arent that many amazing snipers/sins floating around, and that a majority of the time we are dying to the class's it isnt because of the op mechanics, its because we made a mistake.

Also, try not to get total tunnel vision, the Sniper/Sin arent the only class's who made out, I dont think any one anticipated how OP the Assault bomb would become, when a good KB/Mouse user could put it exactly where he wanted, instantly in the middle of a fight.. we probably see way more headcrabs on PC than Xbox, same for gunners who dont miss at all....

there are a lot of things to consider at play here.. I think we pick on sniper/sin, my self included, because no one likes not having a chance to fight back.. and those two class's do instant kills.. it feels cheap, even if there was skill behind it, you cant see it because as far as you are concerned, it was total BS lucky BS BS headshot/backgrapple.. lol

So we tend to blow it out of proportion.. the only GAMEBREAKING thing i'm seeing at all is the new technique of landing the lunge damage and than instantly canceling into a grapple.. its like a fighting game cancel or some thing, its so fast.. and it is scewing up the meta game, as it is now possible for a sin to one shot a gold armored assault with a lunged face grapple.

but it could be lag/glitch/exploit.. ive only started seeing it recently.. than again maybe its just becoming more widely known.

I completely agree with this. What I don't want to see is a situation like WoW where whichever forum faction shouts the loudest gets what they want. We all have to remember that you're never, ever going to convince a player that mains an unbalanced class that at least part of their performance can be attributed to something besides themselves, even if they openly admit (as we've seen happen) that their performance in the role is unique to Monday Night Combat. That doesn't mean that less-invested people aren't watching and listening, though.

So while I believe that sniper needs changes, and will get them, I'm glad that Uber is playing it cautious and moderating the debates that occur in the meantime. The balance issues I and others have noticed are not so detrimental to players' enjoyment of the game that it necessitates being fixed until a well-considered solution can be found and adequately tested before implementation.

I completely agree. I think all the classes became overall more effective with the advent of kb/m. This is to be expected because every class aims. It's just that the sniper (and to a lesser extent the assassin) received this benefit disproportionately, even with the adjustments made prior to release. In the instance of the sniper, the advent of a kb/mouse adds an entirely new and extremely powerful mechanic in the form of quickscoping, which simply cannot be reliably done on a controller.

I should probably disclose here that I do not believe the assassin needs any adjustment at this time. This may be a "I'm paper and rock is totally balanced" thing, though, because I main a Gold-armored Gunner and don't feel particularly threatened by an assassin unless they're juicing up and wrecking my turrets. And, y'know, I'm not in a position to criticize them for that.

careful though, if you say bad things about sniper/sin people will label you as a noob who knows nothing.

like when they justify being able to combo 250 bakc lunge dmg, into a 450 dmg face grapple for

700 dmg instantly, even if you react to the lunge by turning to face them.. and if you dont its 1250 dmg..