Guardian needs some looking at

(noonenew) #1

I’m quite happy with Guardian now but I feel like she could be so much better. more fun to play as, more fun to have on your team and less annoying to fight. I feel her sky shield to be fine for the most part. I’d like to see Guardian’s bionic pulse looked at. I think that Guardian should have 3 charges of bionic pulse. They all revive players as if the bionic pulse was fully charged. Just tap as if you where healing for 50 health and bam they are revived with 100 hp. I’d also like to see players be highlighted blue when they will be revived by the bionic pulse (there is some issues with corners and redeye’s smoke still. Each charge of bionic pulse should have a 8 to 10 second cooldown. I’d like to see part of the cooldown be refunded to the person who had their ability destroyed. I think that the ability should be put on half cooldown if destroyed by the sky shield. One final thing I’d like to say would be that her sky shield should deploy a bit faster. this should help Guardian react to arty strikes and javelin rockets a little bit easier.

Just as a quick 2 questions from my own lack if knowledge.
Does extender increase the bubble size of the bionic pulse? (if it doesn’t pls fix that sd)
Does extender increase the range of the bionic pulse? (I don’t think it does and it doesn’t seem to be it’s intended use but would be a cool thing to know)

(Jigstraw) #2

I am vehemently against your proposed changes to the bionic pulse. As is, guardian is quite overpowered if played correctly. She already has a 65HP tapres if you use a loadout with get up. Additionally, she doesn’t suffer the same “ranged revive” penalty Sparks has.

If you don’t know, when sparks revives a teammate, there’s a brief but important period between firing the revive gun and the teammate being revived. Guardian’s bionic pulse suffers no such penalty and can get teammates back up and on their feet so quickly, there’s often zero chance of finishing the downed teammate off without using a high damage per shot weapon, like a sniper rifle or shotgun.

I could be wrong, but I’m fairly sure that this is due to the fact that leg/body/head hitbox multipliers still factor into damage equations on downed enemies, which is incredibly stupid, as there’s no way to control the orientation a downed enemy ends up in, and you’re often left shooting their legs for 75% of your weapon’s damage because there’s simply no other exposed area to aim at.

Oh, and Guardian also has the absolute strongest combination of movement speed, max health, hitbox size, and weapons in the game.

She moves faster than other mercs with the same HP total, her hitbox is smaller than other mercs with the same HP total, and she has stronger primary weapons than other mercs with the same HP total.

By stronger weapons, I mean assault rifles, as compared to the submachine guns other 110hp mercs use, allowing her to do more damage at range compared to other 110hp mercs.

(HELGA_bunga) #3

all medics have it

(HELGA_bunga) #4

btw phoenix can instant pop 60 hp back on top of his 100 hp and you consider guardian the no heal medic op cause of her hitboxe and speed ?

(noonenew) #5

yeah, guardian has never been through a period of being overpowered. ever. she has always been annoying to fire supports and assaults but never op. I like to think of her less as a medic and more of an anti fire support + assault (when you ignore Kira and rhino) that can revive. I think you’re looking at her in the wrong light to be honest. you’re meant to use her as some would sawbonez (those dang cr42 first gen mains (dw I have nothing against you but you’re worse than lvl 3 auras when it comes to healing anyone but yourself)) as a kill based merc that can heal. You should use the sky shield to support your bunker and then use your gun to kill and then revive once the area is clear. She is clearly designed as a counter explosive merc (heck you’d have to be dumb to miss that). Her revive is based around healing people that she might not have been able to save from say a javelin rocket. However, with the reduced instant gib, Guardian can give that same feel that mercy used to give if you ever played ow. she should make that Javelin run for the hills and give her team a second chance in the team fight. However, none of these thing can actually be done in game. she is THE most situational merc in this game. the blue highlight and the reduced deploy time are quality of life changes and won’t do much except make her less of a chore to play. Guardian’s revive should be the strongest revive in the game. The change I listed makes her feel less useless when you waste a full charge only for a Fragger to get a quad kill nade the second your sky shield goes down. The multiple charges allow her to use her revive and fully charge it on one person without fear of this situation. Overall, I’m making the revive on a longer cooldown and some may see it as a nerf and others a buff. but at the end of the day they are all quality of life changes. It’s actually really hard to make a merc or weapon too good or too bad via quality of life changes.

(Press E) #6

Rant ahead from someone passionate about medic mains, the main points are:

  • Remove the cooldown on the bionic pulse, it’s counterintuitive
  • Return her base HP to 30 on revive
  • Reduce her bionic pulse charge time to fit with her charge time audio queue
  • Give her Spark’s revivr overheat mechanic on her revivr if she uses it too much or holds the charge too long
  • Reduce deploy time on the drone by at least half
  • Give the drone increased resistance to explosions
  • Revert the drone’s HP back to what it was
  • Potentially shrink the drone’s AoE slightly
  • Give most of her loadouts the “tough” augment

Reasoning behind these ideas:
I’ve been a medic main since I joined DB, and believe me, a lot of guardian’s issues stem from having a cooldown on her bionic pulse.
Multiple revives are a cool gimmick, but because of how merc HPs vary, you’re far more likely to have teammates die in quick succession rather than at the same time. Because of that, having a cooldown means you can either use it on the first teammate who drops and potentially lose the second, or wait until both drop and potentially lose the first. And that’s if they’re even in a close enough range, which they usually aren’t. The marginal usefulness of having the bionic pulse does not make it worth a cooldown. And at its current 2 seconds or whatever, what’s even the point?
If it absolutely needs some sort of spam restriction, give it something similar to spark’s overheat.
Her bionic pulse also seems to take longer to charge than it should, and it’s audio queue actually suggests it’s finished charging even though it’s only around 90%, which I don’t get

Also worth noting that giving 60 HP on a ranged revive at base is stupid. You should be encouraging players to watch their teammates health, so they can pick them up with a full charge the moment they go down. Encouraging players to instead tap revive with the bonus HP and cooldown only lowers the potential skill ceiling on her.

As for her drone, it’s a great addition to the game to counter the meta of projectile spam mercs, but the latest rework for it is crap in every way. Reducing the amount of time it stays up, sure, but only if it deploys in under half the current time. As it is it’s impossible to counter a lot of projectile mercs, notably the ones who most need countering like Stoker, simply because it takes too long to deploy. Hell, it’s even very difficult to stop an arty blast if you spot the laser thing.
Giving it tanky HP is also pretty bad, it just makes shooting it unfun and tedious, similarly to the turret. You should be rewarding players with clever drone placement, not just guardians who throw their drone in the middle of the open. The one thing I will say though, it should have higher explosive resistance. Having a nader throw a grenade at it and one-shot it before it can deploy is terrible.

I’d also like to see guardian have access to several cards with the 'tough" perk in the future. As a medic you have to stay alive if you want to help your team, but if you want to play assault you’ll need a reliable way to heal. Since guardian can’t, doing any assault role is very risky, as it could leave your team without someone to revive them.

She’s by no means a bad merc, but she feels like she wasn’t playtested by any actual medic mains for sure.

EDIT: Also might be interesting to give her some sort of small “preventative XP”, like when her shield is up near an enemy projectile merc who’s ability is ready to use, or over the EV or whatever. As it is she only gets rewarded for blowing up a projectile, but not from preventing one from being thrown in the first place

(Terminal_6) #7

They could also just replace the Hoigat with literally anything else and make her about 10x more appealing

(Press E) #8

They just need to buff it a bit. It’s basically the M9, which is still a pretty good weapon, only faster and with more ammo. I haven’t actually used it much myself, but from when I did it just felt a bit… idk, I guess shaky is the best word for it? Spamming it just doesn’t feel as good as spamming something like the M9.

Tbh I might like to see them make the hoigat full auto or something. Or hell, maybe burst fire even if they gave it a faster firerate. At least it would be different then.

(Jigstraw) #9

you’re wrong, not all medics have the same delay sparks has. Her revive rifle was deemed unfair a long time ago and they added a longer delay before her targets actually get up as a countermeasure to give players a fair chance at finishing their enemies off before they get revived, the same should be done to the bionic pulse for the same reasoning