FEL-IX' damage and why it made sense.

(Reddeadcap) #1

At one point in time, the FEL-IX did exactly 80 damage which was 160 if said shot was to a player’s head.

this enough to kill anyone weaker than a Rhino and a prove of skill from the Vasilli player for timing the shot just right, especially due to the FEL-IX’ low rate of fire.

Even Thunder, the second tankiest merc would die, due to having exactly 160 health.

A while back it was decreased down to 79, while many might bring up that making it do 4 more damage, instead of 5 compared to the MoA doesn’t mean much, considering that the MoA has generally better stats such as ammo capacity, reload speed and rate of fire, it does mean a lot.

This change was done before the inclusion of the mercs seen in Merc Role-Calls; So everyone had access to Skyhammer, Proxy, Vasilli, Arty and Aura, around this time Aura was the go to character as her healing stations were much too effective; instantly activating when dropped, healing at a faster rate, higher health, etc.

Aura was the one and only character used at the time and figures, she has exactly 80 health which is enough to down her via a bodyshot, the same goes for Sparks in this case but sparks can even counter snipe Vasilli and anyone if sneaking up on him.

I ask, should the damage be changed back to 80 on the FEL-IX and maybe give it the instant kill/decapitation on headshot for it to be seen as the “All or nothing” type of weapon especially since there have been so many changes to Aura and more mercs available, many that can counter both Vasilli and Aura in the right situations even if it would mean its ammo would be brought back down to 5?

The biggest reasons people say that the FEL-IX is a sidegrade to the MoA has been due to loadouts themselves that might have a couple of nice augments, but not because of the weapon itself.

(watsyurdeal) #2

Well if it does 80 damage it will be the perfect counter for Sparks, so I say yes.

As for maybe going higher, idk

Personally I feel like the Fe Lix should be a slower firing, slower reloading, lower capcity, but HARDEST hittng weapon in the game. An AMR essentially, or our AWP.

The question is how high should the damage be? And would the downsides be enough to offset it?

And also…I am likely in the minority but I feel like Aura could use a hp buff to 90, I feel like she’s meant to be close range, unlike Sparks, and that extra health would be nice.

(Reddeadcap) #3

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;110521”]Well if it does 80 damage it will be the perfect counter for Sparks, so I say yes.

As for maybe going higher, idk

Personally I feel like the Fe Lix should be a slower firing, slower reloading, lower capcity, but HARDEST hittng weapon in the game. An AMR essentially, or our AWP.

The question is how high should the damage be? And would the downsides be enough to offset it?

And also…I am likely in the minority but I feel like Aura could use a hp buff to 90, I feel like she’s meant to be close range, unlike Sparks, and that extra health would be nice.[/quote]
Somewhere between 85-90 seams right for Aura.

As for the FEL-IX stats, it has all that going for it basically, it was given 2 more shots than the MoA to compensate the 80 damage nerf to 79, along with the whole no headshot meaning an instant kill without revival.

(Dog) #4

Give it 1 bullet in the chamber and give it a 2.5-3 second reload time, along with maybe 10 shots. Damage set to 80, with gib on hs < 100 hp. You now have a gun purely intended for peeking and taking out a crucial target, but gated by a terrible fire rate and a high window for error in close to mid range. You miss, and they’ll know you have to use your secondary for the next ~3 seconds.

(Reddeadcap) #5

Wouldn’t make much sense as it is a magazine fed rifle, what if an extremely powerful sniper rifle were to be the special ability of another recon, like Rhino’s minigun, Nader’s grenade launcher, etc.

(avidCow) #6

Yes, I think they should try giving it 80dmg.

(Amerika) #7

You don’t fix a gun by making it OP to two mercs in the game. It was changed to 79 damage because you could easily 1 hit Aura and right before the change Sparks was about to be released with 80hp.

Make the FEL IX different but don’t make it crazy against a couple of mercs. I want it to slow it’s RoF, lower magazine count to 2-3 and maybe lower reload speed but make it hit for 79 to the body still but keep the gib headshots. It would make it powerful but not make it crazy like the moa was. So you get the Moa for fast shooting and the FEL IX as the heavy hitter. Maybe slightly change it’s headshot damage so it can also killed Thunder in one shot (160hp).

I’d much rather see it be differentiated in that way as opposed to making it super powerful against aura and sparks.

(Reddeadcap) #8

[quote=“Amerika;110570”]You don’t fix a gun by making it OP to two mercs in the game. It was changed to 79 damage because you could easily 1 hit Aura and right before the change Sparks was about to be released with 80hp.

Make the FEL IX different but don’t make it crazy against a couple of mercs. I want it to slow it’s RoF, lower magazine count to 2-3 and maybe lower reload speed but make it hit for 79 to the body still but keep the gib headshots. It would make it powerful but not make it crazy like the moa was. So you get the Moa for fast shooting and the FEL IX as the heavy hitter. Maybe slightly change it’s headshot damage so it can also killed Thunder in one shot (160hp).

I’d much rather see it be differentiated in that way as opposed to making it super powerful against aura and sparks.[/quote]
How exactly would it be OP if it were only to be really damaging to only two mercs, who aren’t really designed to be in the front line or the open, one of which can at least counter snipe Vasilli?

Hitting them would be thanks to just good reflexes and while Aura and Sparks have 80 health they have the highest speed and smallest frames/hitboxes, if one was to hit these two it’d be their reward and this game does have a huge focus on counter-play with many character classes working better against another.

Giving it 80 damage and 5 shots a mag is pretty simple and straight foward way to change it as it has, compared to the MoA lower stats on everything else.
My only other thought would be to lower the MoA’s damage down to 70, 140 if a headshot, making it kill everyone on a headshot except Fragger, Thunder and Rhino.

(Amerika) #9

[quote=“Redcap;110590”][quote=“Amerika;110570”]You don’t fix a gun by making it OP to two mercs in the game. It was changed to 79 damage because you could easily 1 hit Aura and right before the change Sparks was about to be released with 80hp.

Make the FEL IX different but don’t make it crazy against a couple of mercs. I want it to slow it’s RoF, lower magazine count to 2-3 and maybe lower reload speed but make it hit for 79 to the body still but keep the gib headshots. It would make it powerful but not make it crazy like the moa was. So you get the Moa for fast shooting and the FEL IX as the heavy hitter. Maybe slightly change it’s headshot damage so it can also killed Thunder in one shot (160hp).

I’d much rather see it be differentiated in that way as opposed to making it super powerful against aura and sparks.[/quote]
How exactly would it be OP if it were only to be really damaging to only two mercs, who aren’t really designed to be in the front line or the open, one of which can at least counter snipe Vasilli?

Hitting them would be thanks to just good reflexes and while Aura and Sparks have 80 health they have the highest speed and smallest frames/hitboxes, if one was to hit these two it’d be their reward and this game does have a huge focus on counter-play with many character classes working better against another.

Giving it 80 damage and 5 shots a mag is pretty simple and straight foward way to change it as it has, compared to the MoA lower stats on everything else.
My only other thought would be to lower the MoA’s damage down to 70, 140 if a headshot, making it kill everyone on a headshot except Fragger, Thunder and Rhino.[/quote]

Being able to easily single shot two mercs is just not a fun thing to have happen to you when playing those mercs. Hence the change in the first place that almost everyone universally agreed with. Also, this game doesn’t work with counters in mind as you won’t always have a hard counter available. It doesn’t work like TF2 or Overwatch and balance has to be assuming that there won’t be a perfect counter available at all times to both teams/all players.

The Moa is in a good spot. I’d rather not nerf something that is perfectly fine and a lot of people in the community like and enjoy. That’s just bad for business overall and a good way to piss people off. Just like one shotting Aura’s and Sparks would be. It would be better to adjust the FEL IX to be it’s own unique rifle since far fewer players use it overall due to it simply being a slightly worse version of the Moa right now.

(watsyurdeal) #10

[quote=“Amerika;110844”][quote=“Redcap;110590”][quote=“Amerika;110570”]You don’t fix a gun by making it OP to two mercs in the game. It was changed to 79 damage because you could easily 1 hit Aura and right before the change Sparks was about to be released with 80hp.

Make the FEL IX different but don’t make it crazy against a couple of mercs. I want it to slow it’s RoF, lower magazine count to 2-3 and maybe lower reload speed but make it hit for 79 to the body still but keep the gib headshots. It would make it powerful but not make it crazy like the moa was. So you get the Moa for fast shooting and the FEL IX as the heavy hitter. Maybe slightly change it’s headshot damage so it can also killed Thunder in one shot (160hp).

I’d much rather see it be differentiated in that way as opposed to making it super powerful against aura and sparks.[/quote]
How exactly would it be OP if it were only to be really damaging to only two mercs, who aren’t really designed to be in the front line or the open, one of which can at least counter snipe Vasilli?

Hitting them would be thanks to just good reflexes and while Aura and Sparks have 80 health they have the highest speed and smallest frames/hitboxes, if one was to hit these two it’d be their reward and this game does have a huge focus on counter-play with many character classes working better against another.

Giving it 80 damage and 5 shots a mag is pretty simple and straight foward way to change it as it has, compared to the MoA lower stats on everything else.
My only other thought would be to lower the MoA’s damage down to 70, 140 if a headshot, making it kill everyone on a headshot except Fragger, Thunder and Rhino.[/quote]

Being able to easily single shot two mercs is just not a fun thing to have happen to you when playing those mercs. Hence the change in the first place that almost everyone universally agreed with. Also, this game doesn’t work with counters in mind as you won’t always have a hard counter available. It doesn’t work like TF2 or Overwatch and balance has to be assuming that there won’t be a perfect counter available at all times to both teams/all players.

The Moa is in a good spot. I’d rather not nerf something that is perfectly fine and a lot of people in the community like and enjoy. That’s just bad for business overall and a good way to piss people off. Just like one shotting Aura’s and Sparks would be. It would be better to adjust the FEL IX to be it’s own unique rifle since far fewer players use it overall due to it simply being a slightly worse version of the Moa right now.[/quote]

No offense @Amerika but that pretty much sums up the brunt of the problems with this game, if there’s no direct counter there’s very little you can do since there’s not much counter play in general.

Players are given a good amount of chance in fire fights but not so much vs abilities.

But that said, I do understand why the Fe Lix could be annoying, but it might as well not exist then cause there’s no other niche for it to fill. Unless they increase headshot damage so it can gib more consistently.

(Amerika) #11

I’m pretty sure I offered up a fairly solid idea on how to differentiate it without, hopefully, making it the new go-to OP rifle for high end play. And I’m sure there are other ideas out there beyond, “be OP against two mercs in the game just to justify the weapons existence”.

I do agree if there was direct counter-play the devs could get a lot more creative with merc abilities. But the game just isn’t designed that way and it sounds like the engine simply won’t support it. Overwatch can load all of it’s characters instantly with no issues. But it was also built from the ground up with that in mind. UE3, if what the devs said is accurate, is a bit more of an issue and would probably require a lot of extensive modification to do that with a mixed bag of results.

So for now DB is not a game that has direct counters nor can it afford to have direct counters simply to make one weapon more unique when it really doesn’t make it unique at all since it fires almost exactly the same currently.

(watsyurdeal) #12

@Amerika

Realistically? No, there isn’t, if the weapon gibs on headshot, then it will be the dominate rifle since even with the downsides people would learn how to use it for that guaranteed gib.

If it doesn’t at least do one shot bodyshots to 80-90 hp mercs then people will use the MoA, because it only has 1 extra shot and a few points more damage, it has nothing else to make people want to use it except for augments. And even those aren’t that good for the cards that have the Fe Lix.

It’s going to need a specific niche that the MoA can not fill, otherwise people won’t use it except for if they simply like how it looks.

(Amerika) #13

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;110869”]@Amerika

Realistically? No, there isn’t, if the weapon gibs on headshot, then it will be the dominate rifle since even with the downsides people would learn how to use it for that guaranteed gib.

If it doesn’t at least do one shot bodyshots to 80-90 hp mercs then people will use the MoA, because it only has 1 extra shot and a few points more damage, it has nothing else to make people want to use it except for augments. And even those aren’t that good for the cards that have the Fe Lix.

It’s going to need a specific niche that the MoA can not fill, otherwise people won’t use it except for if they simply like how it looks.[/quote]

That’s the reason why you nerf it’s RoF, it’s reload, it’s mag size etc. The issue with HS gibs wasn’t HS gibs but the frequency at which you could quickly rattle off a couple of them giving one team a huge advantage. I don’t know if it would work but I know the rate of fire and the amount of shots you could put down range heavily influenced how powerful HS gibs are.

It would give it a niche, make it a huge risk but huge reward weapon and require headhunting without making it OP vs. two mercs in the game for no other reason than to justify the weapons existence.

There are probably better ideas though. I just don’t think 1shotting any merc is a good idea if it’s not a headshot. Especially since you can even more easily gib now.

(Dog) #14

Then give it the same damage as the MOA with bodyshots, but give it a larger headshot modifier so it downs everything except rhino with a hs, and gibs at 100-120 or less, but make it have a smaller mag and a slightly lower rof than it is now.

Alternatively, give it utility by spotting enemies you hit with it for x seconds.