I know, stupid question, but Ima ask anyways.
So I recently played a game with an idiot who won’t be named, who claimed Bushwhacker doesn’t get alot of points (facepalm) and that nobody who is good plays Fletcher. Now this guy, like I said, is an idiot so I can’t really be too concerned with his thoughts (he was a level 6, what did he know?), but it did get me thinking: Is Fletcher the New Noob Merc?
Fletcher takes a good amount of skill and patience learn, but people die to him so much they think “Well surely there’s no way that this black guy is actually a good merc, and he’s clearly just super easy to learn.” He’s like Vassili in that way. People will pick him thinking that they’re gonna be quickscoping and getting killstreaks, and then they realize that this is totally different. I have a feeling people just can’t grasp that this game isn’t gonna hold your hand, so when they realize other people are actually good at this game, they think that this is just stupid and want to find a merc they can kill people with so they can feel better. And when they realize “Hey Fletcher kills people alot” they pick him up and realize “Wow this guy is really difficult to learn. Just means he’s a bad merc, and there is no way I’m actually bad.” (Not saying everyone who doesn’t play Fletcher or has troubles learning him is bad).
I dunno, this weird rambling of mine just seems to be may way of sounding like an idiot and being proud that I had the brainpower to put it in to words. I’m a simple man! I enjoy sticking people with sticky bombs and eating food. Guess I just don’t have thick skin for dumb people who have different opinions of mine (again, not saying people with different opinions of mine are dumb, just saying people who are dumb that have different opinions from me get under my skin when they think their idiot logic is superior to my slightly less idiotic logic).
Anyways, feel free to comment on how dumb I am!
Is Fletcher the New Noob Merc?
He’s too spammy for an Engineer
That’s really all I want to say, I don’t want to trigger some people here.
People just get salty whenever they die to Fletcher cause they can’t counter.
Fletcher isn’t usually picked up by new players. They see how they can’t play him and then drop him cause they think he is too hard.
Lol, I’m a level 23, and I main Fletcher. I am generally top on my team, but only get a 1.5 k/d ratio because I’m playing the objective. I find that fletcher is the most fun merc for me because I’m a big fan of explody things and there is skill in sticking people and timing with sticky bomb traps.
EDIT: re-read your post and totally agree with this:
Most of the Fletcher’s in game go for kills only. It’s rare to see one facing the ev repairing. Though not gonna lie he gets annoying since I play squishy mercs
Fletcher got extremely boring for me seeing how easy it is to top score with him.
The fact that phoenix, vassili, aura, proxy, and any merc that has 100hp Fletcher doesn’t give a shit about is the reason, took me a week to learn how to land stickies constantly.
What annoys me about Fletcher is the fact I can lower him to 10HP and then he gets a sticky on me hides behind a stupid corner and detonates it and here I am at low HP so he just jumps back in while I am trying to run and kills me with the stupid Empire or shotgun.
Fletcher got extremely boring for me seeing how easy it is to top score with him.
I topscore with almost every merc, but not Fletcher. I found him really difficult to play. Sometimes I get a quick ace, but then for the next 2 minutes, I get 1 kill or none. Not only stickies are hard, I also don’t feel good with shotgun. Anyway - yesterday I decided to learn how to play him, so it’s funny to see this thread now 
It’s because most of the community just have no idea about who Fletcher is. If you don’t know who you are fighting against, you can’t expect to put up a decent strategy against him. Also, in pubs (at least with low level players), encounters are mostly short ranged. Too bad, because this is exactly where Fletcher is at his best. Add to this the good amount of players who are just dumbly rushing forward, and you have just all the required element for a decent Fletcher to stomp a server.
As I said on Reddit :
Shotgun Fletcher’s strongest and most obvious weakness is mid-long range. Blishlok Fletchers decrease their short range effectiveness for more mid range effectiveness, but are much weaker against flanking.
The classic strategy is just to not dumbly rush him. Never follow Fletcher and stay at a safe distance. It’s also wiser to engage him in a clear area where he won’t be able to use walls that much. If you stay far enough, you’ll plainly be able to dodge stickies. If you play a fast shotgun merc, avoid direct combat : you’ll just get blown up. You can however try to flank him, but don’t be obvious. It’s wiser to flank a Fletcher who does not have a shotgun.
Fletchers usually play a lot around corners where long ranged weapons are not the best choice. Using explosives able to bounce on walls will force him to go away. As his explosives can’t bounce : he’ll unlikely reach you.
Remember : you are NEVER forced to fight someone. It can be wiser to not go in that corner where Fletcher is and go through that street that no one checks.
Just applying this will give a very hard time to any Fletcher player you’ll encounter.
People think anything in a pub is OP, I got told that Thunder was OP the other day because I went 43:2 as him.
Fletcher excels at pub stomping because people are bad at coordinating, they cluster together, and that allows him to abuse his explosives.
Fletcher is overpowered but not for any one reason.
BlackBombs are annoying but balanced, Anhuld is a great shotgun but balanced, emp 9 is a great gun but balanced, and if objective specialist is op nerf bushwhaker.
Its when you put all of these on one class it becomes an issue.
The emp 9 is just as good as the hochfir at mid-long range, save hipfire bloom and 15 less ammo capacity.
The anhuld is honestly the second best shotgun in my opinion, right behind the hollunds. Faster rechamber time and tighter spread makes it possible to push its effective range to almost 15-18 meters (yes, 15+ meters.) This is because of the way shotguns work in dirty bomb. Each one will always shoot in a perfect star pattern, and bloom out as it travels, with some small amounts of randomness if youre jumping. In most games, the shotguns are 100% RNG, which makes them bad at range because they spread fast and RNG cant be worked around well. However here, when you get used to the pattern and how it will bloom out, shotguns can be very effective at ranges they usually wouldnt be. Of course, you wont out DPS a good aiming player with an automatic weapon, but you can finish him off after blackbombing or soften him up a bit for EMPing.
The emp 9 is just the absolute best secondary in the game. I doubt anyone would contest this. Youre basically carrying around a hochfir SMG in your pocket, which is one of the better SMGs even according to the community. Again, very good in both close and medium range.
BlackBombs are stupidly effective at clearing points and on offence. Not overpowered, just stupidly effective. Ill use terminal as an example. Throw two BlackBombs on the C4 in the shipping containers, and wait for someone to defuse. Those two bombs will kill any merc (except a rhino with tryhard i suppose) from full HP and they are significantly smaller than mines, so most people wont see them, at least as easily as a mine or turret. Or if you dont already have the bombs in there, throw them in. two kills all mercs. They are also the ONLY weapon in the game now where bunny hopping is an unhindered strategy. Jump like, i probably cant say this on the forums with out getting modded a bit. Its not harder to effectively dodge your bombs as youre spamming them and you can effectively dodge while spamming them. Most fletchers rarely even need to use their gun.
Bishlok. Simply best smg in the game in my opinion. If you have good accuracy, its DPS is very similar to most other guns, albeit punishing if you miss. The KeK10 only has 8 more DPS for example
Bishlok DPS: 120
KeK10 DPS:128
36 damage headshots are brutal against every class. Especially low HP classes. 18 damage bodyshots are also brutal. Yes, youre at a disadvanatge in head to head combat or close range, but if you get an ambush or are at longer ranges (as you often are on chapel, dome, trainyard, the new maps, and to an extent underground) you have massive advantage over many automatic wepons if you have good aim.
Engineers are just engineers. Nothing silly op or up about them.
So how does this make fletcher overpowered?
You give him a frag grenade that does 50 less damage (THREE OF THEM) at half the cooldown each, which can clear points as well as a nader, and then give him the best situational primary weapons in the game while giving him an automatic SMG secondary as good as the hochfir at further and closer ranges, while letting him be an engineer. A decent fletcher can blackbomb two people defending a point by cover peeking blackbombs (which, unlike frags or nader bombs, are unavoidable if they stick) and then come in and normal gun a third, then plant twice as fast as most other mercs, and then his team shows up. Or, he clears a c4 of all defusers with two bombs or of a couple defenders and defuses while his team shoots the last few around him.
This is not just theory crafting. The blackbombs are just better as weapons than nader or fragger (find me a single good nader or fragger that nade primaries.) and he is an engineer with the same explosive spam potential as the other explosive classes.
I didnt mention mines as they function a lot differently to other explosives.
Now how would i fix this? i would do one of these options personally.
-up the cooldown of the bombs to 12 seconds each from 8
-remove objective specialist from him and give him ammo or an HP buff to be an assault, replacing him with a new engineer (TURTLE PLS)
-remove the emp 9 from all loadouts, or at least the ones with lockon, replacewith M9 or selbsdat
-lower his HP to 100 up his speed
-add an arming time to stiky bombs but remove detonation delay, say half that of mines.
This is full of misinformation. You’ll never reach Fragger’s efficiency at piercing defenses and nullify pushes with Sticky Bombs for two reasons : reduced radius and way smaller damage burst. You don’t even know the real damage value of a Frag Grenade : 170 since the Dickens update.
Sources :
- http://dirtybomb.wikia.com/wiki/Fragger
- http://dirtybomb.nexon.net/news/5534/-what-the-dickens--update
This is more than two times the power of a single non-stuck sticky bomb (80 damage). A single powerful explosion will always does the job better at clearing a path than three smaller ones.
Now about Fletcher reaching Nader’s power : once again this is totally false. Nader’s Grenade Launcher have five shells and those fly faster, go much further and don’t need to be manually detonated. Add to this the fact that Nader’s grenades also have a slightly better radius since that november’s fine tuning update. Also, the GL fires faster than you can throw your stickies.
Source : http://dirtybomb.nexon.net/news/4901/fine-tuning-update-november-2015
This makes the GL much more potent in direct combat. Sure you can’t one shot a 100hp merc with, but that’s just two mercs in the roaster. She’ll get rid of every mercs with 90 hp or less, or between 110 and 180 hp faster than Fletcher do, thanks to the better RPM and instant detonation on direct hit. The only situation where sticky bomb’s TTK is better is against Vassili, Phoenix and Rhino. Also, better radius means better efficiency against crowds.
Shotguns are trash : in a competitive metagame where fights are mid to long ranged you can’t pack something where the DPS (and to an extent TTK) will decrese exponentially over distance. Especially since the most recent changes. A shotgun will never compete against a KEK-10 or a M4A1, or actually any weapon with a better range and good reliability. And Empire-9 is not even close to the power of a real SMG. The only acceptable primary Fletcher has is the Blishlok, and I didn’t heard that it was everyone’s favorite weapon.
Just wanted to mention that I killed Vassilis, Phoenixes, Kiras and Proxies numerous of times with sticky that was on floor and once they were above it, they died… With full hp.
So sticky’s real damage is 100, but that 100 drops pretty quickly to 80 once its little more out of range.
Also I would rather like 3 stickies than 1 frag nade.
Especially when I am fighting against 100 or less hp mercs, as stickies can kill (in less radius, but still can throw more stickies) as much as frag can… Another thing is that fast cooldown.
[quote=“Feley;146289”][quote=“Eox;146286”]
This is more than two times the power of a single non-stuck sticky bomb (80 damage).
[/quote]
Just wanted to mention that I killed Vassilis, Phoenixes, Kiras and Proxies numerous of times with sticky that was on floor and once they were above it, they died… With full hp.
So sticky’s real damage is 100, but that 100 drops pretty quickly to 80 once its little more out of range.
[/quote]
That merc very likely got damaged at the same time where you detonated. I did the test tons of times against different mercs : I just can’t go above 80 unless it’s a direct hit. However self damage goes up to 100.
Even the wiki says it : http://dirtybomb.wikia.com/wiki/Fletcher
[quote=“Eox;146290”][quote=“Feley;146289”][quote=“Eox;146286”]
This is more than two times the power of a single non-stuck sticky bomb (80 damage).
[/quote]
Just wanted to mention that I killed Vassilis, Phoenixes, Kiras and Proxies numerous of times with sticky that was on floor and once they were above it, they died… With full hp.
So sticky’s real damage is 100, but that 100 drops pretty quickly to 80 once its little more out of range.
[/quote]
That merc very likely got damaged at the same time where you detonated. I did the test tons of times against different mercs : I just can’t go above 80 unless it’s a direct hit. However self damage goes up to 100.
Even the wiki says it : http://dirtybomb.wikia.com/wiki/Fletcher[/quote]
I don’t know than 
Sry for wrong information, but I was so sure they all died at 100 damage.
[quote=“Ballto;146273”]This is not just theory crafting. The blackbombs are just better as weapons than nader or fragger (find me a single good nader or fragger that nade primaries.) and he is an engineer with the same explosive spam potential as the other explosive classes.
[/quote]
Yeah this, anyone who thinks that stickies are fine in their current state is completely out of their mind, just look at any good Nader player and see how they have to rely on their SMG for the majority of their kills, where as Fletcher is running around with his stickies in hand 90% of the time and rarely if ever actually duel someone from full HP with their guns. The key thing here is the nearly instant detonation time immediately upon tossing the sticky over, Nader has to either get direct hits or hope her opponents don’t run away before the fuse timer runs out. Why exactly is an engineer allowed to be more of hassle to fight than an assault? Not to mention how he also gets the best secondary in the game AND has a get out of jail for free card as long as he can turn around a corner since it’s suicide to chase him down.
Far too much firepower for a non-assault merc. I say give him throwing inaccuracy when jumping (only fair since now no one else can be accurate while jumping) and make it so that stickies can only start the detonation process once they actually get stuck onto something, they’re called “sticky bombs” not “corner-peeking airbust rockets”.
On a side note however I do think his primaries need to be reworked a bit. Blishlock needs a slight RPM buff and shotguns IMO need more range but less damage so they can stop being OP up close without being useless from range. Now Fletcher can be like Bushwhacker and Proxy, having to actually use his guns to kill and using his ability for more situational plays.
[quote=“Dawnrazor;146294”][quote=“Ballto;146273”]This is not just theory crafting. The blackbombs are just better as weapons than nader or fragger (find me a single good nader or fragger that nade primaries.) and he is an engineer with the same explosive spam potential as the other explosive classes.
[/quote]
Yeah this, anyone who thinks that stickies are fine in their current state is completely out of their mind, just look at any good Nader player and see how they have to rely on their SMG for the majority of their kills, where as Fletcher is running around with his stickies in hand 90% of the time and rarely if ever actually duel someone from full HP with their guns. The key thing here is the nearly instant detonation time immediately upon tossing the sticky over, Nader has to either get direct hits or hope her opponents don’t run away before the fuse timer runs out. Why exactly is an engineer allowed to be more of hassle to fight than an assault? Not to mention how he also gets the best secondary in the game AND has a get out of jail for free card as long as he can turn around a corner since it’s suicide to chase him down.
Far too much firepower for a non-assault merc. I say give him throwing inaccuracy when jumping (only fair since now no one else can be accurate while jumping) and make it so that stickies can only start the detonation process once they actually get stuck onto something, they’re called “sticky bombs” not “corner-peeking airbust rockets”.
On a side note however I do think his primaries need to be reworked a bit. Blishlock needs a slight RPM buff and shotguns IMO need more range but less damage so they can stop being OP up close without being useless from range. Now Fletcher can be like Bushwhacker and Proxy, having to actually use his guns to kill and using his ability for more situational plays.[/quote]
Half of the things you say is true…
But you can’t put Bushwacker in same catergory with Proxy…
Proxy is just smaller Fletcher with stronger bombs, longer cooldown, no detonator but instead touch activated… Less HP but more speed… Both have good secondaries (+ Deagle/Simeon), as well as two shotguns and one SMG.
Now I agree on point where Fletcher is given more killing abillity than Nader is, and the abillity to repair/defuse and do objectives faster. But nerfing Fletcher wouldn’t make sense without nerfing his counterpart… Proxy.
Also Fletcher is good counter to a lot of mercs (e.g. Aura + Rhino), and if they nerfed him wrongly, whole balance would fall apart, cause nerfing Fletcher would seriously indirectly buff some other mercs. I see Fletcher as a little bit OP merc that carries a lot of balance on his shoulders.
the number on frags was a typo/mistake, i thought that the frags did 160 after the 10 damage nerf and hit 5 instead of 6.
second, frags are easy enough to dodge in open areas (as are stickies to be fair), and you sacrifice the blast radius for number of them. In places nades would be thrown to stop a push or pierce a defence, it would usually be a chokepoint. Naders blast zone is also significantly smaller than the frags, but her quantity of explosives makes up for that. They also cool down in half the time. Sure, if you throw a frag grenade at one guy, it will always do more damage than a sticky, but if you throw two stickies at a guy, it does as much or more than a frag depending on stuck or not.
Naders grenades are easier to dodge, harder to aim in closer ranges, and cannot be repositioned or go off nearly as quickly (assuming the fletcher has lockon which most fletchers run anyway). Sure, she shits the grenades out much faster, but they will not detonate as quickly. From a distance she will be better, but i would like to point you to this quote
In direct, 1v1 or 1v2 conflict stickies are ALMOST ALWAYS better than a frag nade or nader nade. An exception would be if a fragger was already cooking one and you rounded a corner.
The stickies are a primary weapon. Period.
I would also like to point you to the very first lines of my response.
[quote=“Ballto;146273”]Fletcher is overpowered but not for any one reason.
BlackBombs are annoying but balanced, Anhuld is a great shotgun but balanced, emp 9 is a great gun but balanced, and if objective specialist is op nerf bushwhaker.
[/quote]
I acknowledge that he is not overpowered for any one reason, and that stickies are balanced in their current state. It is the combination of several aspects.
As for my ideas being terrible, unless i am miss reading you,
I emboldened and italicized where you should read. i said ONE. not ALL.
As for shotguns, they are situational weapons, which again i acknowledged and on the emp 9, again i acknowledged it was a slightly gimped hochfir and pointed out the stats that are worse, but i can say from personal experience with the emp-9 and hochfir its not very noticable in most scenarios i have been in