Here is how you fix Arty.

(MoFragn) #1

Take away his crappy artillery strike and give him a spawn beacon. Simple as that. He becomes a must have merc over night.

(D.C.V.) #2

Spawn beacon?!? I don’t know how exactly you imagine that, but it sounds OP.

They should just buff his artillery skill, like maybe increase the AoE, remove that small “lock on” timer which requires him to stand still to call the airstrike, decrease the time it takes for the shells to hit, you know, stuff like that(not all of them at the same time obviously).

(GoobyOfPls) #3

This isn’t Battlefield, the maps aren’t large enough for spawn beacons.

If the maps were larger, though, this would be a great idea.

(GregHouseMD) #4

Decreasing the time it takes for his shells to land would make it just about an instant kill for anything in the area. As with all the artillery skills, you have to consider that it’s not only useful for killing people directly, but also flushing them out of cover.

Increasing the duration has been discussed around here. I think the general consensus was that was a bad idea. I don’t have a strong opinion, personally.

I think the main thing that really could use some work is the targeting. As someone else pointed out, the laser painter is a bit of a diva; it works when it wants to, not when you need it to. Improving that, making it easier to target the area you want, would go a long way. It’s no good having it turn red on the EV when you want to target the EV, you know? Or turn red because there’s a shard of glass blocking it. I think that’d fix a lot of the related issues quite nicely.

(Eox) #5

Arty’s atrillery strike is actually the most flexible ability among every “airstrike” type abilities. You can throw one every ten seconds. I am pretty sure a good player can exploit that very well.

Knowing this, I’d hardly call him “underpowered”.

(B_Montiel) #6

The thing is, his field of usefulness narrowed horribly with kira’s release. Her laser is pretty much more practical than his artillery strikes, it does more damage to players and still have good damage against EV if it’s not moving. Arty had already difficulties to compete with skyhammer but it feels further poor now with two mercs filling an exact same role.