Dirty Wars 1: The Javelin Menace.

(Pumpkiller) #1

(Bring some drinks, this one’s pretty long)

Sorry for the somewhat clickbait title, i have no other idea for a good title.

So, after being bullied around by Javelins in games and finally getting my hands on her, crafting a -10% CD bronze card on her, and playing about 20 games with her in total, i have one big question:

Are the devs cashgrabbing?

For pepole confused about what Javelin can do,here’s a little rundown of it:

  • As long as you’re alive, you’re a walking ammo station that gives infinite ammo (even to other Javelins around you) without pressing any button and gets one free mag every 30 seconds.

  • You can launch, in one second of charging and without any warning whatsoever, straight/laser guided instant gibbing, fast 200 dmg rockets every 30 seconds. And given that you’ve got that -10% off your cooldown, you get both your ammo and your rocket every 27 seconds.

In other words, you can top score consistently without ever needing to manage anything, you can get teamwipes without any sort of game awareness: i’f a whole team crosses you, you could just whip out your tactical nook and just wipe them out.

You can throw the argument that Fragger, or even Stoker have that sort of panicky skills, but the thing is, even the best Fragger player can have an insane amount of predictability around his nades (3 seconds to blow and a distinct yet subtle audio cue), and Stoker launcing a molotov on a 90+ hp character doesn’t kill it instantly: you still have a chance to trade your life with him or just fall back nowadays.

(Notice how both of these characters use a bait&trap strategy around them and how Javelin does have that strategy in common with them, but how their tools are far inferior to hers.)

All of those problems will render coordinated Javelin stacking extremely overpowered once she gets used in ranked for a simple reason: as long as you’ve got two of them two medics and an engineer, everybody gets infinite ammo, rockets every 15 seconds and ez wipes.

I ain’t complaning without what i’d consider a solution though, here’s what i thought:

To her ammo printer:

  • Make a whole scavenging system where each gib, each ammo pack (of any size), and ammo caches/stations fills her metal gauge, she spawns with 30% ,and can raise up to 100% .

here’s how it goes:

Gib:10%
Small ammo pack: 15%
Regular ammo pack: 35%
Ammo caches: 15%/second
Ammo stations: 25%/Second

Metal cost:

Secondaries: 5%/Mag
SMGs:15%/Mag
Snipers: 15%/Mag
ARs:20%/Mag
Shotguns: 25%/Full Refill
Rifles:30%/Mag

This would make Looter viable on Javelin’s Gen 3 cards and give sometimes an option over cards with rocket launcher perks.

  • Your ammo belt activates upon hitting a button, once it is activated, everyone around you gets ammo, it acts like a passive ability as long as you don’t deactivate it.

The rocket launcher:

  • Rework how the rocket launcher works, the way i see it, the minimal wind-up time should be of 1.5 seconds, but would do about 79 of damage. meaning that it does not kill anybody by itself, however, the more you keep your rocket wound up the more damage it would make, it’s maximal time would be of 3.5 seconds for a 195 damage rocket.

  • Winding up a rocket slows you down like a conc grenade would. (No more peeking around corners like you’re holding foam)

  • Add a sound cue when winding up a rocket that gets louder every second. (she is supposed to be a loud girl, after all, you shouldn’t sneak up on pepole with a bloody rocket launcher)

  • Depending on how long you wound-up your last rocket, the cooldown would go from 25 seconds to 45.

  • Keep the rocket launcher on guided mode permanently. It would force clever use of it and not just be a braindead panic button.

  • Slightly slow the rocket down.

The way i thought of it, she would be how SD might have initially designed her to be: An aggressive push merc designed to keep everyone shooting without worrying about throwing packs and stations around in a fight. That is made more to intimidate than to be just a stupid replacement to every single Assault/Support merc besides Rhino.

EDIT: Please, do not move this topic into another thread, i do not want to see this topic into a place where nobody would check it or discuss about it, pepole need to think and discuss of ways to rework Javelin so the devs could take some notes.

(HardCoreGamer44) #2

i like the new merc the rifle is what i like the most that and the axe hell with the launcher

(everlovestruck) #3

At this point victory is defined by the quantity of Javelin players on the team.
If Javelin stack is larger than 2 - victory is guaranteed.

CAN’T SAY SAME ABOUT FRAGGER.

(Noir) #4

How can one compare her to Fragger? This may be true in the hands on good players but I’ve been playing for 1 year and a half and I have never ever seen new players having several triples during a single game.

To me, it looks like SD knows exactly what they are doing. There’s a lack of player for the game to succeed and make money. BUT, the game is hard for new players who are outplayed by veterans. Let’s give them a cheap way to compete and farm XP for free (cause yes, earnign badges and XP just by standing is stupid, you litterally do nothing at all) and push the game to a more causal state so it appeals more players.

I am waiting for the next mercs to be out but I am afraid we might see more passive abilities.

We can’t all be tryharders but I play DB cause it’s not casual.

Edit: Guided mode only is actually a great idea. At least it would award great guiders and make a difference.

(bgyoshi) #5

TL;DR - “I play against bad low level players that haven’t yet figured out how to spread out against Javelin and have bad enough aim that I can panic fire a rocket without dying. That, or I only play 7v7 or 8v8. So she needs to be nerfed into absolutely oblivion to make it easier for noobs to fight against her. I’m thinking we make her rocket launcher literally worse than Fletcher stickies because it’s possible to stack mercs. Instead of advocating for the removal of merc stacking in Ranked which would render my changes pointless, I’d rather change the merc entirely.”

I’ve been playing Jav constantly since day 1 and can confirm that higher-skilled players spread out against Jav making her “panic button” rocket way worse. They also are good enough to shoot you down if you aren’t already charging up the rocket and it’s rare that I can launch a rocket under fire.

Javelin is very strong against merc packing and that’s the point; she busts the “crowd around the Aura station/pack in behind the Turtle shield” meta and forces teams to split up and stay out of the blast radius.

Contrary to popular belief, the rockets are not instagib and require an overkill just like every other bomb. I’ve had tons of players get revived after being nailed in the face by my rockets, they aren’t infallible.

Can also confirm that I’ve lost several games where we had more Javs than the other team, all of ours top scoring, and that I’ve won several games with no Javs on our team and 3+ on theirs. She’s not the end-all-be-all merc of the century.

Play smarter.

That being said, she fits into 6v6 perfectly. I will always come out and say 6v6 is the perfect team size for this game. 5v5 play relies on packing mercs together in a death ball and making coordinated attacks. 7v7+ is hell and it’s pretty impossible to spread out completely, you’ll always manage 2+ with any given rocket. But 6v6 leaves you enough room to spread out and gives you enough players to successfully flank and break into smaller teams, instead of staying in a death ball.

Counter Jav by spreading out, staying on the move, and CHARGE HER when that rocket launcher comes out and you know you can’t get out of the way. There’s nothing more satisfying than turning a triple kill into a one-kill suicide.

(BazBling) #6

Time to bring out your dusty Pineapple Juggler cards guys, works a treat and is funny as Heck :wink:

(ragnak) #7

I dont even know how to comment on a suggested rework where you expect someone to move slowly for 3,5 sec while generating loud sound and after all that time you even expect someone to get a kill with guided mode.

Should i remind you that most guns in the game have over 120 body dps ? Should i also remind you that fragger/nader/fletcher exists (and since you want the rocket to fly slower than current guided mode it would probably fly slower than nades) ?

You would want rocket launcher to charge for 1,5 sec while being slowed down that will produce less damage than a sticky or a grenade launcher ?

Its kinda tragic that you think its okay and wouldnt ruin the character, whats worse there are people that agree with you.

I do think that we need some slight changes (mostly better audio, at worse some more wind up time), but the things that people suggest on forum/social medias are so insanely random that i hope SD wont even see it, to avoid some silly thoughts.

(Cookie3) #8

So this is why there was a gen 1 crafting week…

(MarsRover) #9

I 100% agree with @ragnak. Nader’s egg launcher with capacity reduced to 1(!) nade is better than what you suggest.

(Pumpkiller) #10

@bgyoshi said:
TL;DR - “I play against bad low level players that haven’t yet figured out how to spread out against Javelin and have bad enough aim that I can panic fire a rocket without dying. That, or I only play 7v7 or 8v8. So she needs to be nerfed into absolutely oblivion to make it easier for noobs to fight against her. I’m thinking we make her rocket launcher literally worse than Fletcher stickies because it’s possible to stack mercs. Instead of advocating for the removal of merc stacking in Ranked which would render my changes pointless, I’d rather change the merc entirely.”

I’ve been playing Jav constantly since day 1 and can confirm that higher-skilled players spread out against Jav making her “panic button” rocket way worse. They also are good enough to shoot you down if you aren’t already charging up the rocket and it’s rare that I can launch a rocket under fire.

Javelin is very strong against merc packing and that’s the point; she busts the “crowd around the Aura station/pack in behind the Turtle shield” meta and forces teams to split up and stay out of the blast radius.

Contrary to popular belief, the rockets are not instagib and require an overkill just like every other bomb. I’ve had tons of players get revived after being nailed in the face by my rockets, they aren’t infallible.

Can also confirm that I’ve lost several games where we had more Javs than the other team, all of ours top scoring, and that I’ve won several games with no Javs on our team and 3+ on theirs. She’s not the end-all-be-all merc of the century.

Play smarter.

That being said, she fits into 6v6 perfectly. I will always come out and say 6v6 is the perfect team size for this game. 5v5 play relies on packing mercs together in a death ball and making coordinated attacks. 7v7+ is hell and it’s pretty impossible to spread out completely, you’ll always manage 2+ with any given rocket. But 6v6 leaves you enough room to spread out and gives you enough players to successfully flank and break into smaller teams, instead of staying in a death ball.

Counter Jav by spreading out, staying on the move, and CHARGE HER when that rocket launcher comes out and you know you can’t get out of the way. There’s nothing more satisfying than turning a triple kill into a one-kill suicide.

Since you’re taking the “i’m a sarcastic piece of shit” road, let’s do it too:

TL:DR - I’m advocating for what’s a combo between a fire support without any ressource management skills or subtlety needed and what could possibly be the best assault ability blended into one character, i do not care about support characters being all about area denial, timing and intimidation and instead think that my new main should basically one shot anybody and everyone nearly instantly every 30 seconds regardless of situations and characters.

/I stop

On my end of things, i saw the exact reverse of things: good players using Javelin as the only counterplay to other Javelins, because pepole popping out of corners like racing cars with rockets ready to shoot ain’t fun to counter or easy to dodge: you’re litterally one gibbing/downing them almost instantly because your Recon spotted them here or because “lol you shot blind”.

instant gibbings are so terribly easy on below medium hp characters because just shooting rockets at their feet can instagib -100 hp mercs and down the rest. How do you find both of these situations fair? For me, that just reminds me of what fragger used to be back then.

I’m for removing merc stacking in ranked, but c’mon, it hasn’t been confirmed by anybody at SD’s (correct me if i’m wrong), and even there, i won’t play against something that i have seen averaging 35 kills per match when their user aren’t even slightly good.

What’s even the point anymore of maining any other support or assault when you can both give ammo without doing anything and basically have a straight upgrade to a frag nade.

Just getting spotted by Recons will guarantee that your/their team will either get dunked or lose an insane amount of ground because she might appear and wipe you out from existence. Thing is, nobody can do anything besides escaping, because, apparently, lying down, and jumping in front of her face when she has her rocket ready is apparently the best possible strategy in the game against her.

I do admit that i went a tad overkill with the changes (at least with the rocket speed and minimal charging time), but face it, this merc ain’t above flaws and clearly, you’re not really supposed to be better than characters that are DESIGNED to be player killing machines (assaults) when you use supports, you can be decent at it sometimes, but you should NOT be better at instant damage output.

And stop trying to tell me i must be enjoying or ignoring Fletcher and other cheap mercs, because that isn’t the subject.

What i’m just asking is to make Javelin something that truly requires planning and careful usage and not something i’d find from a DLC made by EA and DICE. Basically, a fire support.

Sorry i’f i pass off as somewhat pissy, but COME ON, i’m around 35 games with Javelin and i got below the 2.5 KDR mark only thrice on objective mode.

(Sorotia) #11

@bgyoshi said:
TL;DR - “I play against bad low level players that haven’t yet figured out how to spread out against Javelin and have bad enough aim that I can panic fire a rocket without dying. That, or I only play 7v7 or 8v8. So she needs to be nerfed into absolutely oblivion to make it easier for noobs to fight against her. I’m thinking we make her rocket launcher literally worse than Fletcher stickies because it’s possible to stack mercs. Instead of advocating for the removal of merc stacking in Ranked which would render my changes pointless, I’d rather change the merc entirely.”

I’ve been playing Jav constantly since day 1 and can confirm that higher-skilled players spread out against Jav making her “panic button” rocket way worse. They also are good enough to shoot you down if you aren’t already charging up the rocket and it’s rare that I can launch a rocket under fire.

Javelin is very strong against merc packing and that’s the point; she busts the “crowd around the Aura station/pack in behind the Turtle shield” meta and forces teams to split up and stay out of the blast radius.

Contrary to popular belief, the rockets are not instagib and require an overkill just like every other bomb. I’ve had tons of players get revived after being nailed in the face by my rockets, they aren’t infallible.

Can also confirm that I’ve lost several games where we had more Javs than the other team, all of ours top scoring, and that I’ve won several games with no Javs on our team and 3+ on theirs. She’s not the end-all-be-all merc of the century.

Play smarter.

That being said, she fits into 6v6 perfectly. I will always come out and say 6v6 is the perfect team size for this game. 5v5 play relies on packing mercs together in a death ball and making coordinated attacks. 7v7+ is hell and it’s pretty impossible to spread out completely, you’ll always manage 2+ with any given rocket. But 6v6 leaves you enough room to spread out and gives you enough players to successfully flank and break into smaller teams, instead of staying in a death ball.

Counter Jav by spreading out, staying on the move, and CHARGE HER when that rocket launcher comes out and you know you can’t get out of the way. There’s nothing more satisfying than turning a triple kill into a one-kill suicide.

Someone use tactics in dirty bomb? How could you suggest something as insane as that?!?

The game is all about the pew pews and racking up as many kills as you can and huddling around a health station any time anyone on your team is playing Aura!

What you suggest is complete blasphemy!

It doesn’t bother people getting blown up while running over mines that they almost never have time to even avoid anymore and at times can be quite buggy. It doesn’t matter that a Fragger that peaked from behind a doorway just killed three people with a single nade which has a faster cooldown. It doesn’t matter that a well placed molly or airstrike can not only clear a area but keep it clear for more than a second or two…

It’s the first ability since Stoker that can flat out kill people and you know what…I remember people complaining about how OP Stoker was when he came out too…how the molly needed huge nerfs…people complaining about panic tosses…just like now too.

People love to complain about things that kill them…

(bgyoshi) #12

@Pumpkiller said:

! > Since you’re taking the “i’m a sarcastic piece of @$!#” road, let’s do it too:
! >
! > TL:DR - I’m advocating for what’s a combo between a fire support without any ressource management skills or subtlety needed and what could possibly be the best assault ability blended into one character, i do not care about support characters being all about area denial, timing and intimidation and instead think that my new main should basically one shot anybody and everyone nearly instantly every 30 seconds regardless of situations and characters.
! >
! > /I stop
! >
! > On my end of things, i saw the exact reverse of things: good players using Javelin as the only counterplay to other Javelins, because pepole popping out of corners like racing cars with rockets ready to shoot ain’t fun to counter or easy to dodge: you’re litterally one gibbing/downing them almost instantly because your Recon spotted them here or because “lol you shot blind”.
! >
! > instant gibbings are so terribly easy on below medium hp characters because just shooting rockets at their feet can instagib -100 hp mercs and down the rest. How do you find both of these situations fair? For me, that just reminds me of what fragger used to be back then.
! >
! > I’m for removing merc stacking in ranked, but c’mon, it hasn’t been confirmed by anybody at SD’s (correct me if i’m wrong), and even there, i won’t play against something that i have seen averaging 35 kills per match when their user aren’t even slightly good.
! >
! > What’s even the point anymore of maining any other support or assault when you can both give ammo without doing anything and basically have a straight upgrade to a frag nade.
! >
! > Just getting spotted by Recons will guarantee that your/their team will either get dunked or lose an insane amount of ground because she might appear and wipe you out from existence. Thing is, nobody can do anything besides escaping, because, apparently, lying down, and jumping in front of her face when she has her rocket ready is apparently the best possible strategy in the game against her.
! >
! > I do admit that i went a tad overkill with the changes (at least with the rocket speed and minimal charging time), but face it, this merc ain’t above flaws and clearly, you’re not really supposed to be better than characters that are DESIGNED to be player killing machines (assaults) when you use supports, you can be decent at it sometimes, but you should NOT be better at instant damage output.
! >
! > And stop trying to tell me i must be enjoying or ignoring Fletcher and other cheap mercs, because that isn’t the subject.
! >
! > What i’m just asking is to make Javelin something that truly requires planning and careful usage and not something i’d find from a DLC made by EA and DICE. Basically, a fire support.

Sorry i’f i pass off as somewhat pissy, but COME ON, i’m around 35 games with Javelin and i got below the 2.5 KDR mark only thrice on objective mode.

I’d hardly ever consider Jav a main of mine as I don’t really like playing with explosives all that much. But there’s no better way to learn a merc’s limitations for effective counter play than to play the merc itself. I’ll always prefer Phoenix and Turtle over anything with a bomb as playing with explosives is generally brainless. If you want to see an actually overpowered merc just look to old school Fletcher. The recent changes to shotguns and raising his cooldown helped A LITTLE BIT but typically speaking no class has been easier for me to kill with than Fletcher, and I haven’t seen domination videos half as good and Fletcher dominations. Maybe it’s because I’m an ex-demoman from TF2 so delay timing is natural for me by now, but I really get bored of him within minutes. But there’s a reason why he completely outclasses every single obj specialist and is generally considered a second assault.

Honestly if you’re playing against people that just keep it in standard straight fire and they’re somehow dominating with it, your opponents are not that good. At all. She’s really not hard to play against. You only get “accidentally” wiped out if you’re not paying attention or you’re just playing the “pack up and wait” 5v5 death ball style. You only need to charge her if you know you can’t get out of the way. But most of the time I see another Jav, it’s easy to tell if they’re going for the rocket or for the gun. I’ll duck around a corner and give myself space just in case they try to time a rocket at me, or I’ll ready a shield. But in any case, separating yourself from the pack is the best defense.

Despite there being rockets involved, it’s not rocket science. Javelin is changing up how people play, and that’s good. If you want more of the same, then get some friends and play offline only.

Once you pay attention more, you won’t get “random” gibbed nearly as often. And once you play against actually good players, you’ll notice the rocket really doesn’t work as a panic fire weapon. Guided mode is the only strong way to use the rocket; learning to hook it around corners, over walls, and truly surprise the enemy, that’s the core play of rockets. The “dive from around a corner and blind fire into a pack” worked for about 3 hours after Jav’s release, and now it doesn’t anymore.

Than again, I can’t speak for servers packed with low level brand new players because I don’t play on them.

As far as other supports go, SkyHaggis will always be better at destroying the EV and assaults like Fragger will always be just plain better. Haggis has a burst weapon too and tossable ammo, plus throwing an airstrike down is effectively unavoidable by an EV. Fragger has a throwable rocket that works on a timer, +30 HP, subjectively stronger weapons, and usually has a buttbuddy medic healing him all the time. Even Fletcher has far more utility than Javelin, as he has THREE throwable rockets that can stick to the enemy and detonate at will. Plus he has access to the all-godly shotguns, or maybe the full auto sniper rifle called BLSHLOK.

So she doesn’t outright replace an entire class like Fletcher does, and she has a lot more limitations than, say, Fragger. Or even Thunder.

I know I sound super snarky and bitchy but I’m really sick of people complaining that everything is OP the moment it comes out. Yes, rockets are powerful, that’s the point. You’re exaggerating their strength and acting as if they’re the best thing ever. Complaints like this are why Bushwhacker and Stoker are so weak. Complaints about the OP turret got it nerfed into the floor. Complaints about the molotov made it something you can just walk over. Release Molotov was perfectly good and I personally felt it needed a direct damage buff so that hitting players in the face did more damage. But instead we have what we have now, a relatively ignorable secondary.

Give it a few weeks for play styles to shift and people to talk. Get settled in with the “OP” weapon first and see if it still performs this good in a few weeks.

(TepidJesus) #13

@Pumpkiller The problem isn’t that she is OP it is that people have no idea how to play against her yet, everyone seems to think it is a wonderful idea to hide behind a turtle shield or by an aura station with there friends, even when a Javilin is on the other team. The simple counter to her is, don’t stand In a group, because when I play Jav I don’t want to use something on a 30s cool down (with the chance to miss) on just one person, but the moment i see four people standing together “Fire In The Hole”. Only time will tell as to the balance of Jav.

(GatoCommodore) #14

the thing is you can easily counter javelin by staying far away from each other,
but then SD made the maps (like dome, dockyard) with chokepoints that are hard to push thru if they dont appear in the chokepoint together…

SD made this happen, not us.

(Sorotia) #15

@GatoCommodore said:
the thing is you can easily counter javelin by staying far away from each other,
but then SD made the maps (like dome, dockyard) with chokepoints that are hard to push thru if they dont appear in the chokepoint together…

SD made this happen, not us.

Well when you go people whining about complex maps and we get Dome Redux…it’s SD and the players faults.

Ironic…old Dome would of gone to combat being clumped up…at least on that map. But people were to stupid or have to short of a attention span to watch both sides because if they have to sit somewhere for 10 seconds without unloading hot lead on someone they get bored.

(jjpdn) #16

I’ve never been so happy to see that these new characters are restricted from ranked - oh wait, I don’t play that because queue time takes forever anyways.
I’ve actually not had much problems with Javelin (though haven’t had a swarm). I’ve been trying to get my sniping skills up and its always fun seeing a Javelin poke her head out.

(bgyoshi) #17

@Sorotia said:

Ironic…old Dome would of gone to combat being clumped up…at least on that map. But people were to stupid or have to short of a attention span to watch both sides because if they have to sit somewhere for 10 seconds without unloading hot lead on someone they get bored.

Well the old Dome was changed because few people liked it and it was generally too big to defend anything but the first obj. Even in 8v8, there weren’t enough people to fill up the map effectively.

At least it’s playable now

(Sorotia) #18

@bgyoshi said:

@Sorotia said:

Ironic…old Dome would of gone to combat being clumped up…at least on that map. But people were to stupid or have to short of a attention span to watch both sides because if they have to sit somewhere for 10 seconds without unloading hot lead on someone they get bored.

Well the old Dome was changed because few people liked it and it was generally too big to defend anything but the first obj. Even in 8v8, there weren’t enough people to fill up the map effectively.

At least it’s playable now

Had no problems defending it…it used to take tactics and was a challenge…now it’s just another boring generic map…because people can’t handle defending more than one spot.

Few people liked it because it was to hard for them…why do you think Chapel is one of the most enjoyed maps? Because it is the absolute most boring straight forward map Dirty Bomb has to offer…

(-BigRed) #19

@sorotia are you talking about 5v5, the competitive mode of this “competitive fps.” You cant really defend old dome with 5 people. The second and third stages are still hard to defend because there are so many routes and so little people. The first stage still has 3 entry points, which requires strats to defend. The second stage has so many pathways, you’d have to split up a team of five pretty good to cover them.

(Sorotia) #20

You can if you work together and communicate…but like I said…using tactics in Dirty Bomb? Blasphemy!

This game is all about the kills! Having the enemy team having to funnel through one small area makes it so easy to spam mines, nades, stickies, and rockets to rack up all of those kills!