Eox's Fletcher feedback.

[Szakalot]

because it would make fletcher really boring?

[Dieu-Sama]

[quote=“JJMAJR;c-216299”]I remember that the Scottish Resistance in TF2 had a longer arming time in exchange for more traps being available and more control over those traps.

It was essentially the least spammy Demoman weapon in the game because of that.

So why not take that formula and put it on Fletcher? He already has the more numerous trap advantage over the other engineers.[/quote]

In fact, the demo from TF2 had have the same problem : it’s a class with a supposedly defense weapon . . . which is used as the most OP assault weapon of the game since 2007.

When Valve tried to balance this in 2014, the competitive community cried and the balance was canceled less than 2 weeks after his introduction

edit : fact checking => The balance was canceled less than 5 days after his introduction :)²

[bgyoshi]

[quote=“Szakalot;c-216278”]meh,

‘insanely fast’ really?

Throwing two stickies ‘in rapid succession’ is not at all fast, unless you only detonate after the 2nd sticky, which is obviously not viable unless your first sticky got stuck on the enemy.

So basically, you throw sticky-detonate; throw sticky-detonate.

This is very slow.

Oh and its 20 seconds for two-sticky throws at the propposed cooldown nerf.

If Fletcher saves stickies for fights thats a fletcher that doesn’t use them for crowd control, to prevent peaking, to harass, etc. etc. etc.

As a die-hard fletcher I can tell you that sticky use is easily 50% suppression/spam and 50% direct combat. Longer cooldown will make Fletchers sacrifice one or the other. Hence - reduced spam.

You should have seen fletcher back when he had 4 sticky bombs, all dealing 100damage stuck or not, now THAT was spam[/quote]

I remember perfectly when Fletch was released.

You are quite good at math, let’s do this again:
3 stickies @ 10s per cool down = 30s to gain all three
-2 stickies thrown = 1 sticky remaining + 20s cool down
-10s = +1 sticky
1 sticky remaining + 1 sticky off cool down after 10s = 2 stickies
Result: 2 stickies ready to throw after 10s of cooldown

Oh look, another firefight

2 thrown - 2 held = 0 stickies + remainder seconds for third sticky on cooldown (under 10s by now)

• 1 sticky off cool down + 10s for second sticky = 10s to 2 held stickies

That means that in any given 13-17 seconds of time, a fletcher will have at least 2 stickies ready to toss, unless they throw all of them at once.

Considering that throw -> detonate -> throw -> detonate kills at about the same rate as an assault rifle getting 50% headshots, I wouldn’t really call that ‘slow’ in any sense of the word.

I always notice Fletchers using stickies for crowd control are the easiest to kill and almost never score well on a team, and the Fletchers that use stickies in every firefight are pretty much unkillable. In my own experience with Fletcher, you basically cannot lose a 1v1 at medium range unless the other person is just sick with aim and scores more than half of their shots as headshots, or you’re already on low HP. The fact that Fletcher can down any class with 1 inaccurate sticky and 1 accurate shotty shot is absolutely obscene, but what’s worse is how you can MISS the shotty shot and just toss a second sticky for the kill. You really can just double sticky and kill everything except a Rhino. As long as you jump off walls and run around, the likelihood of dying is extremely low.

Maybe it’s breaching Fletcher’s ‘high skill ceiling’ or whatever people talk about, but when -I- of all people can consistently top frag over 4:1 k/d every single game with relatively inaccurate throws, the class itself has a problem.

[quote=“Dieu-Sama;c-216323”]When Valve tried to balance this in 2014, the competitive community cried and the balance was canceled less than 2 weeks after his introduction [/quote]

And history shall continue to repeat itself. Every time the community brings up fixing Fletcher, people that main Fletcher continue to suggest fixes that make no effective change on the class.

The problem isn’t JUST the number of stickies on the map at any given time, it’s the fact that stickies are TOO versatile and TOO powerful in their current configuration. They are on a class intended to be able to both TRAP defense and PUSH offense. But instead, stickies are most commonly used to ASSAULT. It’s the job of ASSAULT classes to clear out groups of enemies hiding behind walls, split the enemy up, and push them back. It’s the job of ENGINEERS to lay traps to cover areas the team is away from, to follow BEHIND assault to arm/disarm, and at times to utilize their speed to flank the enemy.

Fletcher is, right now, an ASSAULT class with ENGINEER objective speed. If all you do is slow down sticky bomb recharge by 2s, that doesn’t change. We have to change how stickies function to remove the ASSAULT part of Fletcher.

[Szakalot]

i suppose fletcher is ez-mode against weak players. Not trying to indicate that thats only what you’re up against, but I’ve never found even the best fletchers to be that insanely hard to take down, compared to when they play fragger or any burst rifle merc.

Its relatively easy to push a fletcher who wants to play with stickies and, catching them with their pants down, its basically game over.

I can definitely agree that fletcher is a strong pubstar merc, but against players with good medics? its very hard to do any real damage.

Throwing stickies is very slow, its only when people allow Fletcher to juke them around corners that they get screwed. Catch fletcher in the open and he is hopeless.

[bgyoshi]

[quote=“Szakalot;c-216359”]I can definitely agree that fletcher is a strong pubstar merc, but against players with good medics? its very hard to do any real damage.

Throwing stickies is very slow, its only when people allow Fletcher to juke them around corners that they get screwed. Catch fletcher in the open and he is hopeless.[/quote]

Again, we’re suggesting changes to make him more balanced for MOST matches, not top level comp play. In all honesty, I don’t know why more games in ESL or trying to be ESL don’t have a separate pub and comp balance, and allow custom servers to choose comp or pub balance rules.

Throwing stickies might feel slow, but it’s really quite fast. You can throw and detonate two stickies before a Fragger can toss and explode one grenade, or before a Proxy can drop and arm one mine… and you can toss two stickies and detonate one faster than a Bushwhacker’s turret goes up and active. It just feels slow in the heat of a firefight because you need everything instantly.

And in all honesty, I almost always run from Fletchers in the open and chase Fletchers around corners. When they’re running around corners, it’s easy to flank them or pin them down and avoid stickies because there’s an obstacle in the way. In the open, it’s impossible. You basically have to aim perfectly or die, since you can’t escape the stickies. At least, you can’t escape stickies thrown by someone that isn’t terrible at Fletcher. And in my own experience, Fletcher duels best in wide open spaces and performs best while attacking corners, not retreating around them.

[bgyoshi]

And for the record, @N8o has a nice video about how fair and balanced Fletcher’s stickies are.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=V2RxzPzkYiM

[JJMAJR]

because it would make fletcher really boring?

I have one question for you and one question only.
How is Fletcher not boring already?

[quote=“Dieu-Sama;c-216323”][quote=“JJMAJR;c-216299”]I remember that the Scottish Resistance in TF2 had a longer arming time in exchange for more traps being available and more control over those traps.

It was essentially the least spammy Demoman weapon in the game because of that.

So why not take that formula and put it on Fletcher? He already has the more numerous trap advantage over the other engineers.[/quote]

In fact, the demo from TF2 had have has the same problem : it’s a class with a supposedly defense weapon . . . which is used as the most OP assault weapon of the game since 2007.

When Valve tried to balance this in 2014, the competitive community cried and the balance was canceled less than 2 weeks after his introduction

edit : fact checking => The balance was canceled less than 5 days after his introduction ²[/quote]

Well looking back at my balance ideas I said (not directly) that direct hits should deal immediate damage in some form even with the prohibitive arming time attached.

On top of that, Fletcher has a passive already that was important enough for people to run at least one merc that has the same passive as him. Demoman’s grenade launcher isn’t an upgrade over Soldier’s rocket launcher, so that and having less health means he needs something stronger than the shotgun to use.

Of course, Fletcher needs his ability to pull weight in combat, but it shouldn’t be so much that he’s the best option for an offensive engineer. It should be easier for players to deal with an offensive Fletcher than a defensive one.

Fletcher has two problems without those sticky bombs. Firstly he doesn’t have a way to defend the objective properly like other characters could. Secondly he doesn’t have a way to engage at range.

I given a general idea for a Fletcher rework, where he could use his projectiles to damage enemies via direct hits, but those things can’t deal damage until they’re fully armed, and don’t blow up when destroyed manually.

With @Eox giving feedback I think it would be better to have Fletcher’s crossbow deal 92 damage on a body shot, and have only a 1.25x multiplier on a headshot. This is considering how easy it is to dodge Fletcher’s sticky bombs as they are right now.

With a medium ranged weapon dealing 115 headshot damage the arming time for the explosives could be 2 seconds. You think that’s slow and you want 0.8 seconds? Look at TF2’s rocket launcher. The fire delay on that thing is 0.8 seconds. You barely have any time to pull out another one when you could detonate the sticky bomb. I tried 1.2-1.5 seconds on a metronome and I’m still not satisfied.

You can literally look up the word “metronome” online to test fire delays up to 1.5 seconds. Imagine the first tick is throwing the bomb, and the second is the bomb detonating. 0.8 seconds (75 BPM) is barely enough time for an arming time to be justified in the first place.

That’s a 2 second fire delay. You can still lay traps using that, snipe enemies, and do all sorts of stuff while Lock-On wouldn’t turn the explosives into an offensive tool. You still have insane burst damage on a direct hit, even without a headshot. There’s still a viable way for Fletcher to kill things at medium-long range. But it would make Fletcher not as viable as Nader in regards to pushing objectives.

But what could I do? It’s not like people want to lose a cructh.

On a side note, I understand Fletcher currently has an activation time (the delay after pressing [E]) attached to his sticky bombs. I think that it should be removed if the arming time was 1.4-2 seconds long.

[Dawnlazy]

[quote=“Szakalot;c-216359”]i suppose fletcher is ez-mode against weak players. Not trying to indicate that thats only what you’re up against, but I’ve never found even the best fletchers to be that insanely hard to take down, compared to when they play fragger or any burst rifle merc.

Its relatively easy to push a fletcher who wants to play with stickies and, catching them with their pants down, its basically game over.

I can definitely agree that fletcher is a strong pubstar merc, but against players with good medics? its very hard to do any real damage.

Throwing stickies is very slow, its only when people allow Fletcher to juke them around corners that they get screwed. Catch fletcher in the open and he is hopeless.[/quote]

Played Fletcher competitively at DBN for quite a while and I disagree entirely, Fletcher is not slow by any stretch of imagination. He’s really really good in 1v1s since a quickly detonated sticky will not only give you a good HP headstart but will also throw off your opponent a lot due to the explosion screenshake and pushback. Plus a huge portion of the game is played around corners anyway, maps like Bridge or Terminal are 90% fighting around corners.

With all that being said, maybe I’ve been spoiled by playing Fletcher, but the other engies can be quite frustrating to play competitively. Maybe they should be brought up to the same level of firepower as Fletcher, or at least slightly toned up while Fletcher gets slightly nerfed so that engies don’t suck too much at combat. But then there’s the whole issue of design I’ve mentioned before, Fletcher just makes the other 2 engies irrelevant since he has throwable explosives whilst the other 2 have abilities that are best used defensively, and you don’t want to play engie on defense when you can be an assault, fire support or recon anyway.

[Szakalot]

Fletcher shines compared to the other engineers, but he has nowhere near the power of Fragger etc. which is what people here are suggesting.

He also has some very strong chokes, but pushing on a map like chapel ev?

He is still quite spammy though for his engy class, so increasing cooldown is an obvious nerf that will cut fletcher power in all scenarios

[Eox]

[quote=“Dawnrazor;c-216388”][quote=“Szakalot;c-216359”]i suppose fletcher is ez-mode against weak players. Not trying to indicate that thats only what you’re up against, but I’ve never found even the best fletchers to be that insanely hard to take down, compared to when they play fragger or any burst rifle merc.

Its relatively easy to push a fletcher who wants to play with stickies and, catching them with their pants down, its basically game over.

I can definitely agree that fletcher is a strong pubstar merc, but against players with good medics? its very hard to do any real damage.

Throwing stickies is very slow, its only when people allow Fletcher to juke them around corners that they get screwed. Catch fletcher in the open and he is hopeless.[/quote]

Played Fletcher competitively at DBN for quite a while and I disagree entirely, Fletcher is not slow by any stretch of imagination. He’s really really good in 1v1s since a quickly detonated sticky will not only give you a good HP headstart but will also throw off your opponent a lot due to the explosion screenshake and pushback. Plus a huge portion of the game is played around corners anyway, maps like Bridge or Terminal are 90% fighting around corners.

With all that being said, maybe I’ve been spoiled by playing Fletcher, but the other engies can be quite frustrating to play competitively. Maybe they should be brought up to the same level of firepower as Fletcher, or at least slightly toned up while Fletcher gets slightly nerfed so that engies don’t suck too much at combat. But then there’s the whole issue of design I’ve mentioned before, Fletcher just makes the other 2 engies irrelevant since he has throwable explosives whilst the other 2 have abilities that are best used defensively, and you don’t want to play engie on defense when you can be an assault, fire support or recon anyway.[/quote]

I totally share your point of view here. Small Fletcher nerf with a buff to other engies if needed is, in my opinion, the best path to follow. The two other engies just lack verastility a bit too much. We need to make them a bit more potent during an offense.

I’m not really happy about buffing Proxy though, since she can be even more frustrating to deal against than Fletcher in pubs (despite being shit in competition). She might need some kind of rework first. But a Bushwhacker buff that enhances his versatility is definitely something I look forward to. The main question remains : how to do it. However, this is off topic. We’re talking about Fletcher here.

[bgyoshi]

I totally share your point of view here. Small Fletcher nerf with a buff to other engies if needed is, in my opinion, the best path to follow. The two other engies just lack verastility a bit too much. We need to make them a bit more potent during an offense.

I disagree with this where it applies to pubs. I think they only feel less versatile because of Fletcher’s disproportionately high versatility by comparison. Bringing Fletcher down to their level with no added buffs to the other two would make him quite balanced and fair in pubs.

To balance for competitive, Fletcher needs to be brought down less than pubs, and the other engis brought up to match. You have to keep Engineers as strictly worse on offense than assaults, otherwise assault classes become sidelined.

Just more arguments for making pubs and ranked have separate balancing.

[Szakalot]

while i agree that pubs and ranked play very differently (mostly cause of server size and friendly fire) separate balancing IS ABSOLUTE DISASTER.

twice the balancing headache, twice the amount of whine (something OP on pubs, UP in comp; like proxy), pushing pubbers even further away from trying out ranked ( where the rules are not only different like friendly fire, but you also have to learn an entire new meta), and for what? so that some pub outcry can handle proxy a bit better?

the main culprit is the server size, and casual MM pushing games into 6v6 should adress that a bit. though friendly fire is obviously making fletcher weaker (proxy even more so, hence she is unviable)

[Szakalot]

snip

[bgyoshi]

[quote=“Szakalot;c-216461”]while i agree that pubs and ranked play very differently (mostly cause of server size and friendly fire) separate balancing IS ABSOLUTE DISASTER.

twice the balancing headache, twice the amount of whine (something OP on pubs, UP in comp; like proxy), pushing pubbers even further away from trying out ranked ( where the rules are not only different like friendly fire, but you also have to learn an entire new meta), and for what? so that some pub outcry can handle proxy a bit better?

the main culprit is the server size, and casual MM pushing games into 6v6 should adress that a bit. though friendly fire is obviously making fletcher weaker (proxy even more so, hence she is unviable)[/quote]

[spoiler]Disaster? Not really. The only reason it isn’t viable is because there’s no custom pub server rules where you can choose comp or pub balance and customize server size. No matter what you choose, you get one of three problems:

1. Pub is horribly imbalanced
2. Comp is horribly imbalanced
3. Both environments are balanced, but there’s extra dev overhead

Pub is currently horribly imbalanced and it always will be. The game is currently balanced around 5v5 comp which is 100% different than 6v6 pub and 200% different than the majority of pub games which are 7v7 or 8v8. Pub will never be balanced.

Balancing pub just shifts the same problem to Comp instead, where everything is super nerfed instead of super powered and the game isn’t fun.

Creating 2 different balance environments makes sense since there’s already 2 different play environments. It’s currently impossible to practice comp rules in Pubs. Pub and Comp meta is already night and day different so the argument that they have to get used to a new meta is invalid, since… they already do.

Yes, server size IS the problem, but SD is never going to put 5v5 in pub servers and they’re never going to bump Comp teams over 5v5. They already created 2 environments, they refuse to merge the two environments, so they SHOULD make 2 different balances.

How this applies to Fletcher is as mentioned. Fletcher is more balanced in the current Comp meta than he is in the Pub meta. The problem is that he is absolutely ruining Pub play and nerfing him to fairness would absolutely nerf him to uselessness in Comp play. It’s a lose lose situation for SOMEONE, and I personally think they should balance for pubs since the vast extreme majority of their income is from pub only players, and make the Comp players lose.

However, SD has made it super clear that pubs can burn in a fire and Comp is the only thing they care about, and that pubs will lose. Problem is, SD is losing DB players, and while Fletcher isn’t the sole reason for it, Fletcher is just the prime example of why it is: Pub players don’t matter to SD. Comp is king and Fletcher is a Comp merc. He is by far the most controversial merc in terms of game balance because Comp players like him how he is and pub players see how impossibly overpowered he is.

Applying many of the changes suggested in this thread would be an unprecedented move to balance pubs and simultaneously limit Comp meta.[/spoiler]

tl;dr Pub and Comp are already so different that someone gets screwed by balance changes anyway. I just hate seeing them constantly screwing over pubs and losing players because of it.

[Szakalot]

its funny how you think SD completely abandoned pub play for comp, when most of the comp community think its exactly the other way around.

SD seems to balance around comp most of the time - except a merc like thunder who is banned for months in comp, without SD balancing them in any way

BUT
SD also focuses the majority of if its dev time on pubs, pub events, skins etc. none of which comp cares about.

in the end i think pubs are remarkably well balanced, all mercs can be godly in the right hands, and all mercs are killable no mtter what you play.

i can concede that fletcher has relatively high power for low skill requirement, but imo its
mostly due to spammyness. in a 8v8 pub you can just throw stickies at chokes and some enemy is bound to get killed.

step up the skill levels and fletcher power starts
to drop. good players’ aim will not be hindered by wall spam as much, if you have shotty they will stay away, if you have blish they will push you hard.

the best fletchers can keep up with this power scaling, but at this level a high skilled player will stomp regardless of which merc they use

[bgyoshi]

On the contrary, the comp community complains about ANYTHING that changes a meta game they’ve gotten used to. If anything pisses off a comp player more than a game-breaking class, it’s a changing meta game.

“MAN I USED TO MAIN [insert class here] IT’S THE BEST CLASS EVER AND SD RUINED IT I’M NEVER PLAYING AGAIN”

“Dude all they did was fix a gl–” “NO SHUT UP SD RUINED IT FOREVER”

[Szakalot]

your way off the mark. over the years comp community wanted:

• dedicated servers
• SDK/more maps
• better maps/ more comp oriented maps/ assymmetrical spawns
• several game breaking bugs fixed (most have been fixed)
• some comp rules, maybe even drafting ststem
• performance optimization

very few complaints had ever to do with balance, and those that did where fixed one way or another (vassili instagib, revive trains, nerfing fragger a bit)

there are still some balance complaints: redeye in smoke and thunder; which you almost NEVER hear complaints about on pubs.

the only balance change i can think of that ruffled some weathers was vassili inaccuracy when jumping

[bgyoshi]

To be fair, I didn’t specify that I was talking about comp communities in general and not DB specific, but yes you’re right.

Those are the same things pub players want out of DB too. I remember lots of ruffled feathers about Bushwhacker turret cool down nerfs, fragger getting only 1 nade, and one of the gun rebalances last year. But in general for this game they don’t complain all that much.

But this is entirely off topic. This is a Fletcher thread and I think we’ve exhausted it

[GatoCommodore]

[quote=“MidnightButterSweats;c-216690”]To be fair, I didn’t specify that I was talking about comp communities in general and not DB specific, but yes you’re right.

Those are the same things pub players want out of DB too. I remember lots of ruffled feathers about Bushwhacker turret cool down nerfs, fragger getting only 1 nade, and one of the gun rebalances last year. But in general for this game they don’t complain all that much.

But this is entirely off topic. This is a Fletcher thread and I think we’ve exhausted it[/quote]

fletcher still OP.

[HammerOfDawn21]

[left][left][quote=“MidnightButterSweats;c-216341”]

Fletcher is, right now, an ASSAULT class with ENGINEER objective speed. If all you do is slow down sticky bomb recharge by 2s, that doesn’t change. We have to change how stickies function to remove the ASSAULT part of Fletcher.[/quote]

[/left]

Reducing his speed could also work, bring it down so its at least par with the speed of bushwhacker. You don’t see Bushwhacker jumping around like a maniac.[/left]