Hypothetical Sparks Nerf.

(GottaBeGreg) #1

I am creating this poll in the hope that one day soon the community will stop denying the obvious and realize that Sparks is broken OP at the moment, and they will then look for solutions as to how to fix her.
IF YOU DO NOT BELIEVE SPARKS IS OP AT THE MOMENT THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU.
I have come up with multiple possible ways in which I believe she could be balanced and I want to hear which is more preferable. Again, if you do not believe she shouldn’t be nerfed this isn’t the place for you, so don’t flood the rest of the discussion with she isn’t OP related complaints and waste my time.

(GottaBeGreg) #2

Please note that ticking option four is discussion enough for me, and after doing so you can fell free to head off somewhere else.

(Thai-San) #3

Even thou I picked this one I do not fully agree with it. I just though it’s the best idea of those you gave us. While I totally agree with you that her fighting abilities are way to strong since the player base learned how to use her revive gun as one of the best sniper rifles in the game, her medic abilities shouldn’t be altered in any way since you already have enough time to counter her revive attempt since the revive nerf/change.
To lower her fighting value I’d just say lower the base damage of her revive gun so she can deal 80-90 dmg max with a fully charged head shot. This allowes her to instakill other Sparks’, Auras (and Proxys?) if she manages to fully charge her rifle and land a headshot on those small, fast moving targets which requires skill and should still be rewarded. But headshoting other mercs should not resolve in a kill if they’re at full health.

(GottaBeGreg) #4

Yeh that does sound fair, but her current revive ability is also absolutely insane. That being said if her combat effectiveness was lowered far enough she could retain this ability so it depends upon which way you want to push her. Into a reviving focused long range merc or a revive capable sniper. So yeh, you’re looking at two ends of the spectrum and fair enough.

(Eox) #5

Poll feels biaised. I don’t want to vote that last option, it feels like insulting you. :confused:

(GottaBeGreg) #6

The poll is biased, it involves a hypothetical nerf. If you don’t think there needs to be a nerf then feel free to ignore the poll, I take no offence.

(MvMArcher) #7

And what if I do feel that she needs a small nerf, but I’m unhappy with your suggestions?

(GottaBeGreg) #8

Then feel free to post that in the discussion. I am merely saying that this merc is way broken and I believe these are the only steps that I can see working to balance her. Feel free to enlighten me.

(MvMArcher) #9

My suggestion:

Lower full charge damage to 55 (from 65).
This way she would still function as a sniper, but it’ll save 5 mercs from being a one shot kill.
Since it’ll “only” do 110 damage on a headshot instead of the current 130.

Make quick charge drain the charge, with the same percentage that it increases the charge rate.

And overall make the REVIVR overheat a bit faster.
Just so you can’t hold a charge for too long.

(Telzen) #10

How about just remove the headshot multiplier altoghter while leaving the rest alone.

(watsyurdeal) #11

I don’t see any issues with the first one, seems pretty reasonable. Well, at least the first part, the second half seems unnecessary.

(retief) #12

All of those nerfs are terrible. If you really want to nerf her damage, knock her headshot multiplier down to +50%. Boom, no more 1 shot headshots for most mercs. She would probably need compensation buffs at that point, though. Remember, her revivr is her primary weapon – her “primary” is a secondary on everyone else. Cripple it and she loses most of her offensive power.

(GottaBeGreg) #13

@Retief You’re glossing over the problem which goes that she is capable of consistently landing shots while strafing and that she has pinpoint accuracy whilst doing so. She is capable of doing massive damage without headshots and anyone with a little bit of aim can consistently land headshots while doing said strafing, because her hipfire accuracy is literally the best in the game. Not to mention that her charge is so short and her battery life so large that she can easily spam the weapon to great effect, meaning all it takes is a little strafing and she becomes a hard to hit sniper with self healing and team mate reviving at all ranges. Taking away some of her headshot damage is merely changing her from having a MoA and all of these things to having a Pdp and all of these things.

(GottaBeGreg) #14

@MvMArcher I can agree with these changes but the charge needs to start draining fast straight away if this was to be the case, because her rapid fire aspect is still incredibly potent, with a just over half charge still able to one shot small mercs. This would mean that you couldn’t just willy nilly charge up little shots and release before the charge gets full and starts draining fast.

(retief) #15

A pdp can shoot one hell of a lot faster than full charge revivr shots. A pdp can shoot 3 times a second, and you have to charge a revivr for a second (ish?) to hit full charge. Saying that a +50% headshot revivr is similar to a pdp is an incredible overstatement. The headshot damage is similar, but the fire rate is massively in the pdp’s favor.

Honestly, I agree that sparks has a lot of strengths. She also has major weaknesses. For one thing, she has 80 hp – she still gets instagibbed by frag nades and one headshot burst from most weapons (or one semi auto sniper headshot) will kill her. She also is reliant on pre charging her revivr if she wants to win 1v1s. Sure, if she is sitting at a corner and constantly charging her revivr, she has decent uptime (a simple battery nerf would reduce this uptime). If an enemy rounds the corner right after she cancels her charge, she needs to run away or die. If she is sprinting and runs into an enemy, she needs to run away or die. If she misses that one fully charged shot, she needs to run away or die. If all of those things go right, she damn well ought to pack a decent punch.

I’m not saying that she doesn’t need nerfs. However, if you cripple her revivr, she becomes absolutely useless. Battery nerf? Sure. 50% headshot damage? That will hit her pretty hard, but you could give her something else to balance things out. Cripple her revivr entirely? No one will play her.

(m86edit) #16

i feel like the REVIVR should do less damage, say 50-55, which would allow her to pick off mercs like vas and sawbonez, but prevent her from instantly downing almost everyone ever.

also reduced hipfire accuracy.

(GottaBeGreg) #17

Im not suggesting things that would cripple the Revivr, I am suggesting reworks that allow the Reviver to still function in the fashion that it was set out to be. I am merely giving ways that would restrict the current unbridled power of the revive gun. All of my supplied nerfs would still allow her to be an effective sniper and medic, but that would stop her from being a straight up goddess of life and death, slaying and reviving every merc on the field, no matter the range. Im going to try and get in touch with one of the insane Sparks players in AUS and try and get some footage of how he plays off him, and when if I succeed I will post it here and prove that a lot of her current mechanics are incredibly unbalanced.

(Ritobasu) #18

#1 issue with Sparks right now is her ability to potentially oneshot mercs that aren’t Fragger or Rhino along with nothing to temper her relentless laser spam if she can’t be engaged up close aggressively. So address those

@Retief 's suggestion is the best, along with brief but noticeable recharge delay after shots. Like somewhere between 0.34 to 0.67s? Long enough to prevent rapid fire tapping, but not enough to hamper her reviving abilities or taking carefully aimed and charge shots at a slower pace.

Sparks doesn’t need any buffs after that, she’ll still be capable of being a major pain in the ass

(gg2ez) #19

I only ticked option four because I’m a d*ck. Still love ya, Greg. Option three sounds pretty intuitive, hard to use, but still, intuitive.

(retief) #20

[quote=“Ritobasu;107723”]#1 issue with Sparks right now is her ability to potentially oneshot mercs that aren’t Fragger or Rhino along with nothing to temper her relentless laser spam if she can’t be engaged up close aggressively. So address those

@Retief 's suggestion is the best, along with brief but noticeable recharge delay after shots. Like somewhere between 0.34 to 0.67s? Long enough to prevent rapid fire tapping, but not enough to hamper her reviving abilities or taking carefully aimed and charge shots at a slower pace.

Sparks doesn’t need any buffs after that, she’ll still be capable of being a major pain in the ass[/quote]

It is worth noting that spam revivr shots are TERRIBLE. In theory, a min charge shots deals somewhere around 20-25 damage every .32 seconds (in practice, the delay will be slightly longer because people can’t click immediately). Also, note that those numbers factor in quick charge. That works out to a maximum of 63-78 dps in a game where most primaries deal 120-130 dps. If you are curious, the tolen mp deals 110 dps and it is generally considered to be terrible.

Spam shots do a decent job of finishing someone who was wounded by a charged shot, but they are not effective on their own until other weapons start to hit damage dropoff. The REVIVR really doesn’t need to slow down spam shots even more.