Fragger desperately needs a nerf

(fubar) #41

I don’t know why people think a 2nd fragger is an absolute must. For the majority of times our “2nd Fragger” is a situational pick. Constantly switches from Vassili/Skyhammer/Nader/Sawbonez/Arty whatever the situation requires. There’s places a 2nd Fragger can be more suited for, but on the majority of the maps you’ll get punished for running a 2nd fragger rather than something else. It’s easy to predict and dodge nades, most “fraggers” in this game are a complete joke that heavily rely on their permanent medic support as well. So easy to deal with. I genuinely don’t see what all the fuss is about. :frowning:

(INF3RN0) #42

What is your team and are you actually winning against good teams? I haven’t seen a fully equalized team in terms of every member being equally skilled, however the ones that seem to be winning most of the time run double fragger. I only get to play against teams in a mix, but whenever I run into one that has two high skilled fraggers (not over reliant on meds), I consider double fragger a necessary counter (unless you have a god sniper). Otherwise you’d really need superior teamwork and execution, but the only reliable way to tame a fragger is with your own. I can agree that many fraggers are extremely reliant on their medic, but I play almost exclusively solo due to poor comms in mixes and still find it to be the most impacting merc. The only time I don’t find the double fragger necessary is on EV objs.

(fubar) #43

sick6. so far we’ve beaten every single one of those “top” or “high skilled” teams they like to refer to themselves as. ie v586, zups waters and his gang, hubris, Pp, evaczone, .ini (mattja, titan and co.), wings, bitches5, etc.

(Glottis-3D) #44

this is what i think is one of many DB problems.
i remember building a team back in 2008 times of the ETQW. and it was like WHo can play what part (Rocket launcher/Medic/Sniper/Engie/Vehicle/Firesupport) and team started to play with available range of tactics.

In Dirtybomb if you do not have a good fragger you are screwed.
while in ETQW lots of classes could do different things in different ways.
You could take out cyclop/titan with Shielded-Hog, with disable nade, with Rocket launchers, With Plazma canon etc.

(titan) #45

Sick6 is incredibly good but it’s easy to not see fragger as an issue when you outskill every other team. Hard to get impactful grenades against you guys when we’re never really in a position to spawn camp you and you have strong map presence, crossfires etc due to higher individual skill. You say you swap out fragger for another pick but if you played a team that was pushing you against the wall (is there even a team that goes even vs you?) you know you’d fall back to a 2nd fragger.

(titan) #46

look how op!

(INF3RN0) #47

Ah I don’t remember seeing you on sick6 when I last played them subbing for v586 a few weeks ago. At that time they were forced into switching to 3 fraggers against me and art. I do think that sick had the best teamwork and decision making I’ve seen thus far and I assumed it would only be a matter of time before they adjusted to the DB gun play. Unfortunately I think that too many of the teams in the game atm have either weaker/inconsistent fraggers or overly supportive medics and will suffer against a team like sick6. If fragger doesn’t undergo any serious changes or a single merc rule isn’t imposed by OBT though, I can guarantee double fragger will be the winning meta.

(fubar) #48

I’d be “newb”. I don’t remember playing against you, might have been someone else instead of me. :stuck_out_tongue:
Either way our “main” lineup only really started playing again as of few days ago, seeing how twidi (twidaj) was busy preparing for the ET lan. The majority of times we always used a sub or the other.
We still toy around with things frequently, testing a strat here or there that’ll make us drop a stage immediately if things go south, but… on the chance that we actually do try: I haven’t really seen anyone giving us much of a challenge yet. Out of the games and teams we’ve played, I think zups, waters and co are by far the most… “creative” and “unpredictable” players when it comes to attacking. They do odd things, that shouldn’t work - ever, but for some reason we can’t really seem to adapt to it for the first few minutes of a game. Even though it’s the same thing over and over and over again. :frowning:

(Zenity) #49

So bottom line: If you are a weak team and you don’t think Fragger is OP, then it is because you are too weak. If you are a strong team and you don’t think Fragger is OP, then it is because you are too strong.

A bit exaggerated, but if we go down this line of reasoning then it’s going to be an endless circlejerk. If sick6 does well without a double Fragger setup right now, then that’s the best information we have. If another team or themselves eventually prove that double (or even triple) Fragger is superior, then we can run with that.

I really hope that the “Dirty Cup” happens this weekend, and that it will be played without restrictions so we can learn something from it.

One thing that strikes me about Fragger though, and correct me if you think I’m wrong, but it seems to me that he would still be viable if you would either remove his grenades or his combat prowess (and replace it with that of say, Skyhammer). To me he seems like a double whammy of OP, and while it may be ok to have one “ultimate slayer” class like that, I do wonder how other assaults will be balanced with that. Nader at least feels pretty wimpy compared to him.

(titan) #50

loool I see where ur coming from but I suppose what I mean is in balanced matches the double fragger setup seems essential or at the very least very very strong and all it’s doing is stifling creativity in team comps when every time your in a hard game you feel like you need that 2nd fragger. In upcoming cups my prediction is that in tight / important matches like finals, semis etc teams aint gonna be running skyhammer, nader arty etc… theyre gonna be running 2 fraggers and 2 medics.
Time will tell anyway but I’m sort of jumping off the fragger op train anyway I think the recent nerfs were enough to take away his god-tier status and now hes just ‘very strong’

(INF3RN0) #51

Fragger is the sore thumb of assault mercs. All other assaults have felt much more balanced in the greater scheme of the game- though Rhino pushes the limits of nullifying skill input to performance output, but is at least more counter-able.

(titan) #52

Again i see where ur coming from but sick6 could run without a single fragger and still smack teams around, but it doesn’t mean fragger isn’t strong it just means they are a stronger team so don’t need to use the absolute most efficient team comps to win.

(INF3RN0) #53

[QUOTE=fubar;526559]I’d be “newb”. I don’t remember playing against you, might have been someone else instead of me. :stuck_out_tongue:
Either way our “main” lineup only really started playing again as of few days ago, seeing how twidi (twidaj) was busy preparing for the ET lan. The majority of times we always used a sub or the other.
We still toy around with things frequently, testing a strat here or there that’ll make us drop a stage immediately if things go south, but… on the chance that we actually do try: I haven’t really seen anyone giving us much of a challenge yet. Out of the games and teams we’ve played, I think zups, waters and co are by far the most… “creative” and “unpredictable” players when it comes to attacking. They do odd things, that shouldn’t work - ever, but for some reason we can’t really seem to adapt to it for the first few minutes of a game. Even though it’s the same thing over and over and over again. :([/QUOTE]

Ah gotcha. I also played against zups team with in a mix pug and we had some pretty close games, although they were pretty new together. v586 would be a top contender if they weren’t entirely reliant on Art1er outperforming everyone, but I always told him that pure support medics will fall-off against those that can play both roles well like adeto or eissefeldt for example. I think they almost merged with some members of zups team originally, but I feel that art1er and drac will eventually be finding a new lineup if they plan to play seriously. I do think that the game will need to go into OBT before you’ll have anyone worthy to compete against or test things more thoroughly. When people were asking me who I was predicting to win the first cup I really did think it was going to be s6 because they have the most complete and balanced team with the most dedication atm. The old hubris or the EU mix from the previous cup would likely have been very strong since they had what I’d view as the most balanced high skill teams at the time, but it’s the typical loss of interest and cycling of power in betas. I’m hoping the game is in a state that attracts attention of competitive teams by OBT though as I’m pretty eager to see how the strategies evolve as a spectator, which I truly hope to see viable variations in merc comps working in.

(BAMFana) #54

L O B B Y B O Y Z

If we practiced enough and learned how to play (ie. not just fragging), we could be pretty damn good. Unfortunately we all come from a completely different type of game and things like timing pushes to spawn waves, avoiding staggered spawns, naturally setting up crossfire positions etc. are just completely alien to us.

The rolling spawn waves may even make me ragequit the game in the end. It’s just ridiculous to me that there should be no punishment for dying if you time your death correctly, but it’s an impossible point to argue around these parts.

Otherwise echoing what others have said in this thread. Some of the lineups and loadouts you guys play are suboptimal imo, fubar, but you’re so far ahead of everyone else when it comes to playing the game correctly that it doesn’t matter. Things like running m4 fragger with explodydendron wouldn’t work against an equally skilled team.

(Rémy Cabresin) #55

We still play around with that and often our fragger player(s) change their card according to who we play. Some teams play more separate so the MG can outdmg the 1v1/1v2 duels, but some teams tend to play really close together and use group pushes where explodydendron can be devastation. Like most others teams, we are also still playing around with different setups etc. We’ve found a good baseline I guess that works for us but we still change things around(also since we don’t really have a 100% set 5 players we often still change roles).

(fubar) #56

Disagree. Can’t speak for Draceus, haven’t seen him much, but art1er is utterly useless. He’s got a bit of aim but that’s essentially all he got going for himself. Has 0 game awareness, never utilizes his nades and is utterly and completely worthless without syku babysitting him. Want to beat artier? Throw a nade behind him, always guaranteed to get a medic or two. Always. At that point he’ll get full without ever having done anything useful, works 9 out of 10 times. For crying out loud, we played them on trainyard yesterday and set a 5minute time while I had a permanent ping of 700 on attack, effectively turning it into a 4vs5.

There are far, far better players and more skilled teams out there than him.

Yes and no. :stuck_out_tongue: We’re still toying around with setups, loadouts, you name it. Just as everyone else is. But depending on opponent and their type of play, a M4 with Explodydendron can prove a lot more effective.

(syku1) #57

[QUOTE=fubar;526582]Disagree. Can’t speak for Draceus, haven’t seen him much, but art1er is utterly useless. He’s got a bit of aim but that’s essentially all he got going for himself. Has 0 game awareness, never utilizes his nades and is utterly and completely worthless without syku babysitting him. Want to beat artier? Throw a nade behind him, always guaranteed to get a medic or two. Always. At that point he’ll get full without ever having done anything useful, works 9 out of 10 times. For crying out loud, we played them on trainyard yesterday and set a 5minute time while I had a permanent ping of 700 on attack, effectively turning it into a 4vs5.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t disagree that you are better than me, but please dont judge someone based on 1 game
The only game i remember playing against your team was the game on trainyard so i don’t know how you can make any assumption on just 1 game :S

(Glottis-3D) #58

isnt this whole clan-measuring a little bit offtopic?
i know like no other, that measuring e-penises is the most important thing, but still…

(Rémy Cabresin) #59

[QUOTE=syku1;526787]I don’t disagree that you are better than me, but please dont judge someone based on 1 game
The only game i remember playing against your team was the game on trainyard so i don’t know how you can make any assumption on just 1 game :S[/QUOTE]

You guys played the same when potty and envision still played with you. We played you couple of times in earlier beta when we were all still figuring out the game, the way v586 plays the game hasn’t changed since MM went live, neither has it changed with roster changes.

(LiNkzr) #60

Thank you for your input.