Eox's Fletcher feedback.

(Eox) #1

So yeah, pretty tricky subject to talk about to me. I used to see Fletcher as something legit before stopping playing him for a while (I got fed up of the unreliability of his primaries). I came back on him recently, and I must say that my opinion of him changed despite the nerf that increased his skill indexing.

I still see a lot of people complaining about sticky spam, both in game and on social networks, and how easy it is to score kills like that. I must say that I am not the kind of Fletcher play who just spams blindly while jumping on wall like an idiot. I am more the kind who attempts to be accurate. This said, I know what are Fletcher’s strenghts, limitations, and overall his place in the game. So is he too powerful ?.. Yes, now I think he is.

Fletcher is oftenly accusated to be an Engineer with an assault’s ability. Looking at assaults, most of them have the purpose of breaching through defenses (aside for Rhino who is better at holding objectives). Fletcher’s ability goes in the same way. This is both what’s making him different from other engies and the first reason about using him : he’s good at breaching defenses. However, he’s an engineer. It’s fine to be good at breaching, but he’s probably a bit too good at that. When I try to breach, I just send three meatballs where I should throw them. I don’t get the same result than a Nader would get, but it’s pretty close. So there’s definitely something to tune down.

Because he’s the most offensive Engineer around, he’s also the main pick in competition. This is probably why a lot of people are suggesting to make Fletcher much more defensive than he is in order to put him in line with other engies. Personally, I think this is a terrible idea for three reasons. First because his merc role call explecitly tells that he’s supposed to be able to use his stickies both offensively and defensively. There’s no primary use : they’re both viable. Second because it would ternish the Engineer’s diversity by removing the only offensive engineer in the roaster, while litterally killing Fletcher (I know some of you hate him to that point, but we don’t want a Phantom v2), third because playing by babysitting your traps is both stupid and boring. At this point, better play Proxy.

So here’s what I am suggesting, as someone who used to be a Fletcher main (now Sawbonez main) :

  • Decrease stickybomb’s RPM from 60 to 50. With less RPM, Fletchers shouldn’t be able to spam mindlessly that well anymore. The RPM is lowered just enough so traps aren’t made useless.
  • Increase cooldown from 8s to 10s. Fletcher has a 8s Cooldown. That’s just one more second than Nader. It’s just too low.
  • Reduce minimum damage from 30-ish damage to 15. Now that’s the biggest nerf ! While maximum damage didn’t got touched, missing your stickybomb should be even more punishing for you. With such a modification, the effectiveness of Fletcher who just bounce on walls and throw bombs at you should decrease a lot. You are still able to deal up to 85 damage if you are accurate without being accurate enough for getting the direct hit, but spamming mindlessly should be way less effective.

Those modifications however really lower the effectiveness of stickybombs when used as a trap. This is why I am suggesting that small tweak in addition to those nerfs :

  • 2 seconds after landing on a surface, sticky bomb’s damage gets their minimum damage value increased from 15 to 45.

The goal of those modifications is to effectively punish mindless sticky spam without hindering accurate players. If you’re the kind of player who is able to score direct hits reliably with him, you shouldn’t be affected too much. Those modifications will also reduce Fletcher’s effectiveness against groups, but it’s actually okay in my opinion : Fletcher should remain offensive and should still be able to breach defenses, but he shouldn’t do it as easly as an assault can.

I hope most of you will agree with the modifications I am suggesting, or at least find them interesting. :slight_smile:

(JJMAJR) #2

I honestly think that Fletcher should be redesigned as a defensive merc in spite of all this. Unless he gets a passive that doesn’t help secure a push so hard, he’s going to be a touch above all the defensive mercs in the game.

My problem with this game is summed up in three sentences. If you want objective specialist, you play Fletcher. It’s better to play an assault over an engineer if there’s nothing to blow up, repair, defuse, or capture. But as soon as something like that does appear then Fletcher’s much more powerful over someone like Nader.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he should be unreliable at medium range and serve no purpose in a defensive or offensive composition.

With the changes you suggested so far, I’d much rather give Fletcher a bow with explosive C4 charges. Those charges have an arming time of 5 2 seconds, but the actual projectile deals damage on contact, and can snipe enemies at 81 110 HP with a headshot. The C4 deals the same amount of damage as a sticky bomb does, but with the arming time and babysitting it’s rather fair.

This combined with his defensive arsenal and Fletcher is able to fill a defensive role at the same tier as an Assault while having the same killing power offensively as Sawbonez. Which is ideally what Engineers are supposed to do.

(Dawnlazy) #3

It’s really hard to think of a proper way to balance the engineer class. I think Bush needs a few minor tweaks and Proxy needs some real buffs too. I’ve played engineer competitively at DBN cups for nearly a year now and Fletcher is just king due to the way he is designed compared to the others, simply because he has throwable explosives whilst the other 2 need the enemies to be kind enough to come over and setp on the mine/expose themselves to the turret. Add to that how you don’t really need an engineer on defense and it’s better to play something else even on a C4 objective and just switch after your team got wiped and the enemy planted, and the other 2 engineers become even more pointless since Fletcher is by far the best at retakes.

I don’t even know if I want Fletcher to be made more defensive or the other 2 to be made more offensive. Playing either Proxy or Bushwhacker in Chapel for instance is downright infuriating when comparing how useless they are next to Fletcher. I think maybe something like:

-allow Bushwhacker to rotate turrets, or even to a “slide deploy” like we see in the scrubs trailer

-buff Proxy’s HP to 100 and make her mines more consistent, maybe a bit easier to spot/shoot but also not triggerable through walls

-make Fletcher’s stickies only detonatable after they’ve stuck onto a surface, enough undodgeable mid-air bullshit. He already has enough firepower with his weapons, the Blishlok is really strong and he even gets machine pistols. He just has ludicrous entry-frag potential as it is, I’ve played enough matches as Fletcher to know this. There’s not even a reason to go for direct stickies, I just toss 1 in the enemy’s direction, immediately hit E as soon as it’s airborne, then switch to my primary and finish them off. The instant chunk of HP that they lose coupled with how much screenshake from an explosion can throw you off makes fights very simple and straightforward for him.

(watsyurdeal) #4

You want to balance Fletcher? Reduce the number of stickies, increase the damage from the sticky itself and the direct hit.

The problem is you can get away with just spamming them like crazy because you never run out of them, that and you can just spam jump and get rewarded for it.

I must be one of the odd ball Fletcher’s cause I never use my stickies in a fight, I strictly use them to get rid of mines, turrets, healing stations, and throw them at enemies that aren’t aware of me. The rest of the time I just use the Blishok.

(Szakalot) #5

only one change is needed - increase cooldown. 8->10sec is already 20% nerf fo fletcher sticky DPS.

thats a huge nerf, anything extra will break his back and we are back to bush-only era

(Eox) #6

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;c-216085”]You want to balance Fletcher? Reduce the number of stickies, increase the damage from the sticky itself and the direct hit.

The problem is you can get away with just spamming them like crazy because you never run out of them, that and you can just spam jump and get rewarded for it.

I must be one of the odd ball Fletcher’s cause I never use my stickies in a fight, I strictly use them to get rid of mines, turrets, healing stations, and throw them at enemies that aren’t aware of me. The rest of the time I just use the Blishok.[/quote]

Certainly not. This is even harder to balance. Also Fletcher shouldn’t one shot mercs above 100 hp, even with a single sticky bomb coming back every 8 seconds.

Aside from that, the way you are describing yourself playing is more or less the way you are supposed to play him in my opinion. Stickies are supposed to be dangerous to use in duels, but right now they can still wipe a lot of people a bit too average easly. That weakness probably needs to be more defined in my opinion, hence my nerf suggestions in the OP.

(watsyurdeal) #7

[quote=“Eox;c-216096”][quote=“Watsyurdeal;c-216085”]You want to balance Fletcher? Reduce the number of stickies, increase the damage from the sticky itself and the direct hit.

The problem is you can get away with just spamming them like crazy because you never run out of them, that and you can just spam jump and get rewarded for it.

I must be one of the odd ball Fletcher’s cause I never use my stickies in a fight, I strictly use them to get rid of mines, turrets, healing stations, and throw them at enemies that aren’t aware of me. The rest of the time I just use the Blishok.[/quote]

Certainly not. This is even harder to balance. Also Fletcher shouldn’t one shot mercs above 100 hp, even with a single sticky bomb coming back every 8 seconds.

Aside from that, the way you are describing yourself playing is more or less the way you are supposed to play him in my opinion. Stickies are supposed to be dangerous to use in duels, but right now they can still wipe a lot of people a bit too average easly. That weakness probably needs to be more defined in my opinion, hence my nerf suggestions in the OP.[/quote]

There’s only three ways to balance Fletcher

  1. Reduce the number of stickies
  2. Force the stickies to only arm when they attach to something, 1 second arm time normally, 75% faster if they attach to an enemy.
  3. Increase the cooldown between stickies by a good amount, so wasting 3 stickies leaves you vulnerable for a good period of time.

That is the only way you’ll stop sticky spam, which is essentially the equivalent of Nader with Air Burst.

(bgyoshi) #8

You know, when I suggested increasing sticky cooldown, I got a hoard of Disagrees and people whining that it would murder the class.

Seriously, this class has been disgustingly OP since release. I really don’t know what kind of skill indexing people always talk about with Fletch. I picked up the class within minutes. I guess it’s because I played Demoman in TF2 for years, because I’ve always used Fletcher stickies in the same way I used Demo stickies… except I never ran out with Fletcher. They’re twice as easy to use as Demo stickies and way more powerful in context. Giving him a quick weapon switch and a shotgun was just unreasonable; giving him a sniper rifle (BLISHLOK WHY) was madness. As Dawn said, one sticky and one shotgun shot kills almost every Merc in the game.

Once I figured this out, I quit Fletcher for good.

(GatoCommodore) #9

[quote=“MidnightButterSweats;c-216120”]You know, when I suggested increasing sticky cooldown, I got a hoard of Disagrees and people whining that it would murder the class.

Seriously, this class has been disgustingly OP since release. I really don’t know what kind of skill indexing people always talk about with Fletch. I picked up the class within minutes. I guess it’s because I played Demoman in TF2 for years, because I’ve always used Fletcher stickies in the same way I used Demo stickies… except I never ran out with Fletcher. They’re twice as easy to use as Demo stickies and way more powerful in context. Giving him a quick weapon switch and a shotgun was just unreasonable; giving him a sniper rifle (BLISHLOK WHY) was madness. As Dawn said, one sticky and one shotgun shot kills almost every Merc in the game.

Once I figured this out, I quit Fletcher for good.[/quote]

when i said fletcher is OP people would just ignore me…

(Eox) #10

[quote=“MidnightButterSweats;c-216120”]You know, when I suggested increasing sticky cooldown, I got a hoard of Disagrees and people whining that it would murder the class.

Seriously, this class has been disgustingly OP since release. I really don’t know what kind of skill indexing people always talk about with Fletch. I picked up the class within minutes. I guess it’s because I played Demoman in TF2 for years, because I’ve always used Fletcher stickies in the same way I used Demo stickies… except I never ran out with Fletcher. They’re twice as easy to use as Demo stickies and way more powerful in context. Giving him a quick weapon switch and a shotgun was just unreasonable; giving him a sniper rifle (BLISHLOK WHY) was madness. As Dawn said, one sticky and one shotgun shot kills almost every Merc in the game.

Once I figured this out, I quit Fletcher for good.[/quote]

It depends how much you suggested I guess. If you suggested a value close to 15 or above, I guess that was just way too high. Nerfing too much a single value is not a good solution.

@Watsyurdeal @Dawnrazor Stickies only able to explode upon touching a surface won’t work at all. Most of Fletchers already wait the stickybomb to touch a surface before detonating, and those who don’t will just change their way of playing slightly just by aiming at the ground rather than at people and go back to make people cry with spam. At best, you’ll just reduce the versatility of the sticky bomb by preventing some Fletchers from busting a few people camping MGs on Terminal, which is not a good nerf idea in my opinion.

Reducing the number of sticky bombs carried is also not a good suggestion in my honest opinion. Sure it’ll tune down spam, but it’ll also harm the defensive part of the character. In the end, it’s harming Fletcher’s versatility. We can get to the same result with bigger cooldown and reduced RPM on Stickybombs as suggested in the OP.

What you guys as well as most of people are getting upset about is mindless spam. We want to punish mindless spam, not “smart” use of sticky bombs.

(bgyoshi) #11

I suggested 10 seconds, same as you. Though I worded it “30 seconds for all three, each one individually like Proxy mines” and not “10 seconds each”.

Honestly, increasing the cool down to 10 seconds each, limiting detonations until it’s stuck on a surface, reducing minimum damage to 15, and increasing arm time to 1s would fix a large majority of Fletcher’s problems. It just needs to be absolutely impossible to spam stickies and the shotty/nade combo needs to be way less effective than it is. He’s the ONLY class with long-range nades AND a shotgun.

(Eox) #12

I suggested 10 seconds, same as you. Though I worded it “30 seconds for all three, each one individually like Proxy mines” and not “10 seconds each”.
[/quote]

That’s your issue. Poor wording. People understood “30 seconds for each bombs”. :stuck_out_tongue:

[quote=“MidnightButterSweats;c-216134”]
Honestly, increasing the cool down to 10 seconds each, limiting detonations until it’s stuck on a surface, reducing minimum damage to 15, and increasing arm time to 1s would fix a large majority of Fletcher’s problems. It just needs to be absolutely impossible to spam stickies and the shotty/nade combo needs to be way less effective than it is. He’s the ONLY class with long-range nades AND a shotgun.[/quote]

As I said earlier, forcing stickies to land on a surface before being detonated won’t work (refer to my last post for the few arguments against that). Reducing minimum damage and CD increase are two decent ideas that are already in the OP. This said, I am totally against increasing arm time for stickies since it would hinder trapping way too much (stickies have a rather small radius after all). Reducing spam shouldn’t prevent defensive use of Sticky Bombs : we have to preserve Fletcher’s versatility.

(JJMAJR) #13

No comment about my suggestion huh…

(Eox) #14

I wanted to wait a bit more before giving my opinion. I’m still thinking about it in order to pull out an answer as constructive as I can, but I guess I will have to give my thinking earlier than I thought.

I will be honest, I’m not fond of it. First it feels like too much work for something that in my opinion could have been fixed with a few value tweaks. Furthermore, 5 seconds arming time feels way too long no matter what kind of FPS you are playing : Proxy mines have an arming time was shorter than that and can still be detonated early by shooting at them, which is also a common complaint. You somehow kept the idea behind the direct hit mechanic, but now it requires an headshot to reach a damage value that isn’t even the same than a stuck sticky bomb. Sure, if you count the detonation as well, it goes above the 100 hp treshold. It’s absurdly OP on paper, but you counterbalanced that with a drawback so big that it’s not worth playing at all. In the end, that rework really feels wrong on a lot of angles in my opinion. Better keep the stickies and tweak the current mechanics.

(JJMAJR) #15

I wanted to wait a bit more before giving my opinion. I’m still thinking about it in order to pull out an answer as constructive as I can, but I guess I will have to give my thinking earlier than I thought.

I will be honest, I’m not fond of it. First it feels like too much work for something that in my opinion could have been fixed with a few value tweaks. Furthermore, 5 seconds arming time feels way too long no matter what kind of FPS you are playing : Proxy mines have an arming time was shorter than that and can still be detonated early by shooting at them, which is also a common complaint. You somehow kept the idea behind the direct hit mechanic, but now it requires an headshot to reach a damage value that isn’t even the same than a stuck sticky bomb. Sure, if you count the detonation as well, it goes above the 100 hp treshold. It’s absurdly OP on paper, but you counterbalanced that with a drawback so big that it’s not worth playing at all. In the end, that rework really feels wrong on a lot of angles in my opinion. Better keep the stickies and tweak the current mechanics.[/quote]

I forgotten what exactly a direct hit did in terms of damage, but my intention was to make the headshot damage deal exactly that, or higher if need be.

The arming time is too long, but it should have an arming time nonetheless so that it’s much more effectively used as a trap instead of an RPG-7.

Both of these changes are my attempt to reach all of our goals with Fletcher more effectively.

(Herr_Hanz) #16

increase draw speed of stickybombs?

(GatoCommodore) #17

I wanted to wait a bit more before giving my opinion. I’m still thinking about it in order to pull out an answer as constructive as I can, but I guess I will have to give my thinking earlier than I thought.

I will be honest, I’m not fond of it. First it feels like too much work for something that in my opinion could have been fixed with a few value tweaks. Furthermore, 5 seconds arming time feels way too long no matter what kind of FPS you are playing : Proxy mines have an arming time was shorter than that and can still be detonated early by shooting at them, which is also a common complaint. You somehow kept the idea behind the direct hit mechanic, but now it requires an headshot to reach a damage value that isn’t even the same than a stuck sticky bomb. Sure, if you count the detonation as well, it goes above the 100 hp treshold. It’s absurdly OP on paper, but you counterbalanced that with a drawback so big that it’s not worth playing at all. In the end, that rework really feels wrong on a lot of angles in my opinion. Better keep the stickies and tweak the current mechanics.[/quote]

I forgotten what exactly a direct hit did in terms of damage, but my intention was to make the headshot damage deal exactly that, or higher if need be.

The arming time is too long, but it should have an arming time nonetheless so that it’s much more effectively used as a trap instead of an RPG-7.

Both of these changes are my attempt to reach all of our goals with Fletcher more effectively.[/quote]

arming time 0.8 sec would be viable enough for good fletcher.
i hate fletcher but nerfing him too far would ruin the merc like how Sparks turned out right now.

(bgyoshi) #18

I really can’t see a defensive scenario where stickies absolutely have to arm more than twice as fast as Proxy mines. Mines are more damaging, so it makes sense that you have a longer arming time. But you can detonate them with your gun if you need them to go faster on defense. The same thing applies to stickies; if you need them to detonate faster, shoot them. But considering they’re already arming more than twice as fast and more than half as damaging as mines, and you get a third one, and each one cools down more than half as fast, I don’t see how a .2s increase in arm time hurts any defensive use.

The only, and only reason why stickies are good is because they’re detonatable way too fast with no drawback.

(watsyurdeal) #19

I suggested 10 seconds, same as you. Though I worded it “30 seconds for all three, each one individually like Proxy mines” and not “10 seconds each”.
[/quote]

That’s your issue. Poor wording. People understood “30 seconds for each bombs”. :stuck_out_tongue:

Unfortunately there is no real way to punish spam without nerfing his versatility, and as you said before I was mostly playing Fletcher correctly anyhow.

The problem is people want to play Engineers like they’re on par with Recon or Assault, they aren’t, they have only one job, objectives, so their abilities are focused all around that. I still think one sticky that does more damage than 3 that do less is better, cause it encourages accuracy, timing, and careful thought, and the payout is big. Considering Mines can one shot certain mercs I see no reason the stickies should not 1 shot at least 110 hp mercs with a successful stick, 75 damage max with the radius and 25 damage minimum, 35 damage bonus when stuck to an enemy.

That, or 25 damage when stuck to an enemy, and two stickies, two stickies placed together near other means you can set a trap should kill most mercs. But it really just comes down to what realistically speaking you all want, skill or spam, skill means yes, it will be harder to play Fletcher, and if that breaks the class for you you’re probably relying WAY too much on the stickies.

(GatoCommodore) #20

I suggested 10 seconds, same as you. Though I worded it “30 seconds for all three, each one individually like Proxy mines” and not “10 seconds each”.
[/quote]

That’s your issue. Poor wording. People understood “30 seconds for each bombs”. :stuck_out_tongue:

Unfortunately there is no real way to punish spam without nerfing his versatility, and as you said before I was mostly playing Fletcher correctly anyhow.

The problem is people want to play Engineers like they’re on par with Recon or Assault, they aren’t, they have only one job, objectives, so their abilities are focused all around that. I still think one sticky that does more damage than 3 that do less is better, cause it encourages accuracy, timing, and careful thought, and the payout is big. Considering Mines can one shot certain mercs I see no reason the stickies should not 1 shot at least 110 hp mercs with a successful stick, 75 damage max with the radius and 25 damage minimum, 35 damage bonus when stuck to an enemy.

That, or 25 damage when stuck to an enemy, and two stickies, two stickies placed together near other means you can set a trap should kill most mercs. But it really just comes down to what realistically speaking you all want, skill or spam, skill means yes, it will be harder to play Fletcher, and if that breaks the class for you you’re probably relying WAY too much on the stickies.[/quote]

but another problem is fletcher still able to play like assault or even better than before if you decrease the sticky count and increase the damage.
they key in here is cooldown. while you can drop proxy mine, it cant be thrown far enough over a cover. While fletcher can deny cover by throwing over it or airburst at longer range.

i think cooldown nerf slightly higher than proxy (12-11 sec) but still retain the same 3 stickies and less damage on maximum range would reduce constant spam.

im also not sure how to justify fletcher sticky shotgun combo.
proxy is Close range specialist, bush is kind of in the middle, fletcher is weird. He can do in any range as long as the player is good enough. Ive seen fletch players that are able to do stick at very long range against snipers.

lastly, the loadout.
both proxy and fletcher got smg secondary paired with m.pistol.
i think, rather than nerfing the m.pistol SD could have nerfed the cooldown because sparks got hit very hard by the nerf for the machinepistol.