Aura Feedback - Great Character, almost useless heal

(k0k0nat) #1

General:

Aura feels awesome.

  • I love her movement speed together with her shotgun. I really feels fluent together with walljumping and I almost have the feeling that I am playing Unreal Tournament with a Flak Cannon. (Which is great btw)

  • She can break enemy strategies by running in with her MS like a beserk and take down single targets in seconds. Love her against heavies.

  • She’s the fastest medic

  • Because of her ammo capacity, the SG does not feel OP.

Health, Movementspeed

  • Health feels fair. 80 HP is okay for her MS and weapons.

  • MS is just awesome.

  • It can feel unfair for opponents, because of the problems we have with the spawnsystem.

Primary Weapon: Remburg 7

  • High damage in close range, good!

  • Can only carry 5 bullets in a single mag. - AND - Starts with only 5 / 10 bullets. Fair.

  • The fire rate also feels fair for me. Because of the low capacity of only 5 shots, spaming the SG is a high risk.

±- Recoil/Spray: Jump-Kills are easy for Aura. While in the air, the SG only slighty loses its accuracy. But this is also what makes Aura so strong.

Secondary: M9 Pistol

  • Feels fair. Nuff said.

Healing Station

Here comes the bad part:

The healing station is almost useless. There are situation on the public server where it can be usefull (sometimes), when there are crowds fighting at a single spot.

It also can be great for supporting Rhinos fat ass.

In comp. games, when there are only 5 people playing and each of them covering different areas: Useless.
It can be destroyed in no-time and has a very long cooldown, compared to the heal-output it gives.

Just when think you placed your healing station at the right spot, you will need to move it again.
NOBODY will come back to your healing station because the HoT (heal over time) is so low. I would just wait till my regeneration kicks in instead of moving to Auras station.

Solutions can be:

  • Decrease the cooldown of the healing station massively

  • Increase the HoT of the healing station massively.

  • Remove the healing station and give her a real healing Aura.

  • Don’t call her Aura and give her Medikits.

(Mustang) #2

Nice suggestions, but I say no to medpacks, for me it’s really nice that each merc can have unique abilities, I also say no to HoT buff, personally I think it’s already pretty fast, almost on the side of being imbalanced for a camping defense.

That leaves a real Aura (aka healing wave) which is what I originally thought the merc was going to have, I’m not majorly against this, but perhaps it’s just a little bit too sci-fi for this game and also unlikely to happen due to the extra effort required to implement it.

So I’d say the best option is to reduce the cooldown, I actually agree with this 100% and almost made a post saying the same thing with regards the ammo stations just the other day. A health/ammo station cooldown across the board would be welcomed by me.

Although there is the argument that this would make destroying them pointless, to which I’d like to suggest that we could make it so that destroying them adds extra cooldown to the owner, meaning that they are portable and situational enough to be useful for both attack and defense without having to run halfway across the map to pick it up, by which time the situation has is no longer relevant, but also that getting them destroyed by the enemy has a meaningful impact, which is also arguable not enough right now anyway.

(Bangtastic) #3

I have the feeling her shotgun is better than fletcher’s or proxy’s. I do a lot more one shots/finish ppl off with her.

(k0k0nat) #4

I’d rather see a “real” aura. Even Phoenix got his healing aura, and a merc named “aura” has this stupid heal stations.
Did you also consider, that you dont have to wait at ammo stations? In this case you just grab your ammo, which should last a decent time and run away. This takes maximum 2 seconds. Getting healed from almost zero to full hp takes much much longer.

This is why I said increase the HoT.
Would like to test both options on her. The increased healing station and a aura just like phoenix has.

I have the feeling her shotgun is better than fletcher’s or proxy’s. I do a lot more one shots/finish ppl off with her.

Definetly. Flechters Shotgun needs some love, while i think Proxys shotgun is still very strong.
I also didn’t compare the spray/recoil of each shotgun, but I did A LOT of jump-kills with aura, which is not that easy with fletcher ( because of MS ).
Proxy with auras shotgun would be a frag machine with mines :smiley:

(Ch4mpixx) #5

Totaly agree, the healing station seems useless (low HoT, low hp, small radius). Was speaking about that issue with a freind who also only play medic and we think that : For get heal you need to interact with the station, you get heal (showbonez medpack style) as long as you stay in the aerea of effect.

(PixelTwitch) #6

Opps double post! Read below!

(PixelTwitch) #7

Actually… I am not certain but I have always seen Auras healing station as a mall boost of standard healing but most importantly it instantly kicks off the self healing process if I am correct… So you can take damage and still be healing at the exact same time… or take damage then in less then a second just run over the health pad and instantly be getting your standard regen back.

I do not feel it needs to be buffed…
I just feel that people are not using it correctly and/or placing it badly.

Giving her a AoE heal would be a cool thing to try maybe… However I dread having to stand next to teammates when Friendly Fire is on… Also having your heal on a character with such low HP seems worthless if she needs to be in the middle of the fight to be healing people.

(NeroKirbus) #8

I wouldn’t want her to have an aura based heal, since Phoenix already has one. It wouldn’t make the two characters unique at all, just characters with different load outs and MS.

(DJswirlyAlien) #9

Does anyone else get like that cartoon moment where you see the spread of the shots just fly all around the person you are aiming at and not hit at all? I get that all the time with Aura. Otherwise I really like her and I don’t think she needs tweaking.

(Bangtastic) #10

actually ppl can shoot you so fast, with her that you the model of aura is not facing in your direction when you die^^

(xdc) #11

healing station has been buffed since I last played it, it heals a lot quicker now but,
teammates don’t know a healing station has been planted, they don’t know where it is, until they are almost near death.
It would be ALOT more useful if the whole team could see the healing station, all the time, through walls, etc

couple more suggestions:
reduce cooldown,
able to plant 2 stations, but the heal over time does not stack

(AsKo_) #12

shotgun is way too strong compared to the other medic mercs.
strongest shotgun in the game for a medic while all the other medic weapons are pretty much the worst ingame doesnt make any sense at all.
you can hit 2 or 3 hs with first shots and still get 1-pumped , not even headshot needed.

(Erkin31) #13

strongest shotgun in the game for a medic while all the other medic weapons are pretty much the worst ingame doesnt make any sense at all.

Why shouldn’t exist differences of efficiency of weapons for a same class ? The balancing can work on differents elements (weapon, life, speed, abilities, etc.)

(Ch4mpixx) #14

The HoT of the healling station is fine but the radius need to be incressed, and allies need to be notified when deploy. Same for the location allies need to be aware of where the station is active.

(xdc) #15

another problem with the stations is that players don’t even know they are being healed, there should be a unique sound and effect - like a beam that connects the player to the station (similar to tf2’s ammo/health station). Currently the floor animation doesn’t help

(k0k0nat) #16

I totally regret writing this atm. :smiley:

Auras shotgun has almost 0 spread/recoil for a shotgun and is more effective than Sawbonez or Phoenix.
It feels like an insta-gib mod.

Together with Thunder/Other Heavies and the fact that every map has awesome camping grounds this gets ridiculous OP.
No need to move the healing station.

In contrast:
On a public server, where everybody runs around like a headless chicken the healing stations are still weak.

I would currently chose Aura + Heavy over all other combinations.

Close Range => Aura Wins - No Spread/Recoil High Dmg
Mid Range => Aura Wins - No Spread/Recoil High Dmg
Long Range => Every Medic sucks ass.

Healing with the station => Aura wins in healing heavies / Camping defenders
Healing in general => Sawbonez wins,but he still is totally weak in combat atm.

(tokamak) #17

I think the healing station should heal players to 120%. That would compensate greatly for the lower use of the much lower mobility. That way it would serve as a nodal point for teams to organise around and defend/strike. To make full use of it players would have to keep returning to the station to get this bonus.

In return it also makes the station something the opposing team really wants to get rid off and thus fight over (creating more points of interest in the game). Right now I must admit that I lazily ignore enemy healing stations.

(k0k0nat) #18

Having a medic with overheal sounds interesting, but it should be a buff over time and not a fixed number that stays until death.
This would maybe bring back the strength of medics in general and maybe stop the current " I rather kill myself than wait for a medic. 5 sec spawn lol" attitude.

(tokamak) #19

Oh yeah I like that. An overheal with a gradual fall off back to 100% (minus all damage taken). More incentive for players to keep returning to that point. More incentive for the Aura merc players to keep replacing this thing as the battle progresses.

(Protekt1) #20

I think you’re under rating it just a little bit. Is it ideal for every map? Probably not. But in certain circumstances just healing 2 people without having to pause is a boon. And you don’t even have to be there (and probably won’t be).

You have a point where people are spread out, and in fact this is a double edged sword for aura. You won’t be healing multiple people often, but you will be capable of healing people from a distance.