Engineer Rebalance

([WAR]Larknok1) #1

At the moment, Fletcher is king – and it’s really silly to the degree that he is now king.

Proxy has been useless for eons now. This newest patch to decrease the radius of her mines is a slap in the face. She just needs a fundamental buff to bring her up to speed with the other two engis. I would suggest: replace mines with some other very strong and unique ability, or simply increase her health to match the other engis (while maintaining her incredible movement speed.)

Bushwacker used to be interesting and fun, but he’s been nerfed into the ground. The Kek was king, now it’s meh. His turret was strong, now it’s meh. His health is standard, and his movement was never anything to write home about. The fix here is to either make him a little tankier (120 hp), or simply undo the DPS nerfs to Bush (buffing the Kek would make Bush viable again.)

Fletcher is way, way too str0nk at the moment. The Ahnuhld can now do 140 damage in two shots in a very short time – at pretty much any reasonable distance. Having an Empire-9 secondary means he can finish people off extremely easily. Tack on 3 Sticky grenades that he can detonate mid-air with no start-up time (unlike Fragger) that do NINETY damage each and ONE HUNDRED damage with sticks – and just toss in +10 movement above Bush, and you’ve got yourself the best Engi, if not the best merc in the game right now.

Fletcher needs some nerfs on all fronts:

  1. Decreased damage on stickies (60 - 70 damage stickies are far more reasonable than 90.)

  2. Increase refresh rate on stickies to 10 seconds – refreshing every 8 seconds is crazy.

  3. Decrease damage output of the Ahnuhld on each shot. The distance and rate of fire guarantees that in most situations you can land 2 shots consecutively with relative ease. Currently this gives him a quick 150 damage output. Nerfing the max single shot damage to 60 brings this down to a quick 120 damage output – far more reasonable.

  4. Nerf his movement speed buff to match Bush’s. There’s really no reason a character with this much health (110) and damage output (massive) deserves a movement bonus.

(Amerika) #2

The Kek got a paper nerf. It’s still amazing and it definitely wasn’t “nerfed into the ground”. His turret is also still amazing despite losing a bit of HP. It’s still an extra player on the map when used intelligently. Fletcher is pretty good now that people have wrapped their heads around how to play him intelligently (which isn’t my style of play personally) but Bushwhacker is still considered the best engineer in many situations with Fletcher being rotated out to for others. Proxy is fun to play but her high speed/low HP is easily countered by seasoned veterans and their aim and her mines are pretty awful compared to a turret or stickies.

Proxy is the only one who needs the help. And if Turtle ends up only having that small wall without any other enhancements to go with it (like area of effect that reduces damage taken by a % for a while) then he’ll be even less likely to be used.

(Naonna) #3

The removal of gibs indirectly nerfed proxy’s mines as well. A medic traveling with any merc who dies to one nullifies the mine’s effect, and may even boost the downed merc’s current hp with fully-charged defibs.

(JJMAJR) #4

Proxy should have more powerful defensive abilities since she’s more specialized as an offensive merc. Her mines alone couldn’t do that since she’ll be buffed offensively with any further changes to them. Maybe she could have a fence or something that would be hard to deal with if she tends to her defenses.

(Amerika) #5

I’d honestly like to see her get an option to get an invisible mine that doesn’t kill but traps somebody. It would be annoying but it wouldn’t be super cheap since it isn’t an instant kill/massive HP loss and would only stop a player from moving. So you could setup a trap you know exactly where they are. Let her throw either kind and it helps out her utility a bit, makes one of her mines a bit more useful, can be used intelligently and won’t be super cheap. I’d also like to see her gain at least 10 more HP.

(Naonna) #6

Wouldn’t that run the risk of being too spam-y with multiple proxy’s on the same team in pub-play blocking off the objective? How would one destroy the ‘invisible’ mines? :neutral: - Otherwise, good idea.

(Apofenas) #7

Hello!

Proxy is my most played mercenary. And yes she is the worst engineer than any other and needs some kind of buff.
I’d suggest a couple things:

  1. is less noticable mines which aren’t showed to enemy team with red light and don’t make sound of detonation unless player gets an augment for that.
  2. is giving her a better engineer ability to plant/defuse and repair faster or overdo these and add extra 25% bar to C4 or EV and allow her to redo it if defusing wasn’t finished or EV wasn’t disabled. Like fletcher defused 25% of Proxy bar and 95 of C4, but couldn’t finish it, next time he will come to defuse, he will have to defuse Proxy bar again and finish c4.
  3. is giving proxy an additional ability not to be marked with red color when she is immobile and sits behind a corner to make her a mercenary dedicated to set up traps and sneak into enemy territory, plant C4 and hide.
(Eox) #8

If Fletcher is the king, why is Bushwhacker much more played in competition ?

In serious games, Fletcher’s weapons are crap. Shotguns are not ranged enough to compete with the KEK-10 (curiously the most played of Bushwhacker’s weapons) or the M4A1 (another overplayed weapon that you can find on Fragger and Skyhammer), and the Blishlok is just downright outperformed by everything, shotguns aside. The only thing that keeps Fletcher efficient are the Stickybombs, that are far from being unavoidable and much less ranged that Nader’s grenade. Remove that, and Fletcher will be even worse than Proxy.

Also the cooldown of a single stickybomb is already 10 seconds.

If anything, the only Engineer that needs love is Proxy.