It's about time we remove Sparks' Med Packs

(Apofenas) #21

Sparks is overnerfed hardly. But still a broken merc. From all her nerfs i only disagree with REVIVR damage falloff, because it removed her only primary weapon. This is what i never understood. In my opinion if you can actually outsnipe Vassili or Red eye who have far better weapons and abilities for sniper role, than you deserve these kills. But Sparks self heal and ability to revive team mates with same shots she uses to kill enemies is what i consider broken at her.

I dislike her survivability. Mainly concept of her medpacks. They lose hardly as self heal compare to Phoenix’ pulse, but with her small hitbox and speed they boost her survivability to absolute bs. But at the same time they are useless even with potent pack augement and direct hit when you need to heal Fragger, Thunder, Rhino or some “tryhard” cursed team mates. I’m sure most of Sparks players wouldn’t give any med pack to low lvl Skybro. It promotes selfish play and teamkill-to-revive, which is most broken part of her.

I’d better remove her medpacks and give REVIVR 2 firing modes: combat and support.

In combat mode make REVIVR do 66% damage at close range, but 100% at long range;
In support mode make REVIVR revive and heal team mates with distance penalty ofc. So Sparks has to choose between killing better or supporting better.

Basicly heal should work next way: on full charge 20 hp insta heal, then about 20 health with fast regen and than slow it to standard regeneration by 50 HP healed. Charge percent affect those 50 HP, so spamming shots at team mates would give minimal effect. Also regen can be interrupted by enemy fire.

This concept could fix a lot of her broken sides.

(Sefuh_FR) #22

It’s surprising the number of discussions about Sparks being broken whereas Sparks is not so much played and is maybe the less played medic …

Not a bad idea , with a small cooldown of 2sec for switching fire mode.
But i think no ability to heal herself is too much crippling for Sparks.

(CCP115) #23

Just make them heal slowly on herself, like Sawbonez Speed. Now she can’t run and pop pills while wall jumping like a maniac.

(Tanker_Ray) #24

I would say quite a good idea as I’ve seen good Sparks running away with insta heals + Potent Pack she got with 383 which is 36 HP instant heal. Where she doesn’t use it to heal but healing her self up.

But removing the whole thing…hmm…

her med packs actually have very long cool down, compared to Sawbonez’s med pack. Well those two are same 10 sec but the usage frequency is very different.

All medics deserve a self recovering skill which leads to my survive = my team’s reviver or healer survives.

Since she got enough nerf about stop being sniper like before, I disagree a bit.

(Apofenas) #25

Sparks med packs are already shit enough even as self heal. Phoenix already got better insta-heal from rushed pulse, but also heal team mates near him and repeat in ~7 sec. For time Sparks will drop 2 med packs for herself to restore 60 hp, Phoenix will charge pulse and heal himself to full hp and 100 hp to team mates nearby. Phoenix will need about 15 sec to restore pulse, Sparks - 20 sec for 2 med packs.

If she gets self heal penalty of any kind, than they will become useless, because self-heal is pretty much only thing they are used for. Even if in return she could insta-heal team mates to 50 hp with direct hit, it wouldn’t still be any close to what other medics can do.

I also doubt it would fix any of current problems. Sparks will get ANOTHER nerf, but will not stop using med packs for self-heal and will still team kill to revive. That’s simply more efficient.

(ClemClem7) #26

Sparks is extremely weak, has little firepower and bad heal ability.
She’s the least played medic because after all the nerfs, she is definitely too hard to play with. If you think all sparks are OP, it’s not true. The only players who play sparks are those who main her, because they’re the only ones who can play well with her. If a 80Hp merc can self heal under your fire, maybe just accept that he overplayed you. But it’s not so hard to kill a sparks because if she’s shooting you, she doesn’t self heal, and if she self heal, she doesn’t shoot at you so:
Weak fighter (with secondary weapon) or defenseless victim. Not so hard to deal with her.
She need rebalance, yeah, but not to nerf her. They need to buff some characteristics, and nerf others to fit to a more useful medic gameplay.

(solace_) #27

I had suggested at some point giving sparks perhaps a) the heavy pistols and b) special editions of the machine pistols. the special editions would be buffs to the machine pistols or even attachments that other mercs would not get on their MPs. Perhaps an increase to damage or rate of fire, or even a sight like the blishlok or extended mags.

I don’t know, I just think it would probably be safer than making radical changes to the revivr or medpacks.

(Naonna) #28

Keep in mind that the devs have stated they are NOT changing existing loadout cards. Sparks is under the curve compared to aura and sawbonez. She can’t snipe now. (She can poke, but if 3 bullets hit her, she dies.)

The point of her is that she’s supposed to be supportive via sniping and healing. Since sniping isn’t an option outside SMG range, revives are all she has left. She can revive teammates, but it makes no sense that in order for her to be viable against skilled opponents, she has to murder her own teammates and revive them (for heals.) - You can remove the self-heal of her own health packs, but make them more efficient (at least a bit) for teammate healing, and she’d be ‘fine’ … not good, just fine.

(solace_) #29

[quote=“Naonna;168550”]Keep in mind that the devs have stated they are NOT changing existing loadout cards. Sparks is under the curve compared to aura and sawbonez. She can’t snipe now. (She can poke, but if 3 bullets hit her, she dies.)

The point of her is that she’s supposed to be supportive via sniping and healing. Since sniping isn’t an option outside SMG range, revives are all she has left. She can revive teammates, but it makes no sense that in order for her to be viable against skilled opponents, she has to murder her own teammates and revive them (for heals.) - You can remove the self-heal of her own health packs, but make them more efficient (at least a bit) for teammate healing, and she’d be ‘fine’ … not good, just fine.[/quote]

I just thought it would be sort of low-key ok, cause they aren’t really changing anything but I see what you mean.

Really, I was trying to increase her general viability, not make her into some kind of killing machine. Which I agree, would be unnecessary and most likely over-powered. I felt with her recent nerfs, she has been substantially worsened as a whole, both as a medic and a fighter.

(Sinee) #30

I feel like this would eliminate an aggressive play style for her. Maybe that is the way it should be, however, not many people are going to purchase Sparks if the only thing you can ever do with her is sit at the back of a map and revive.

People play an FPS to kill things, and people want to kill with Sparks just like with every other merc.

Maybe she should be made purely defensive, and it be made nearly impossible to play her aggressively. But the reality is that no one would ever choose to play her over other medics if that’s the case. It would reduce her gameplay to being the most boring, lonely gameplay in the entirety of DB.

I main Phoenix, used to main Sparks a long time ago, and I couldn’t imagine playing medic-only. It’s just boring. Plus, it reduces Sparks to just competing with other medics on her own team for revives, seeing as that’d be the only way she can get XP.

(Amerika) #31

I would prefer to give Sparks real primaries and have her REVIVR require you to skillfully heal people. Think of it like a healing sniper gun. Requires extremely good accuracy and/or coordination with your teammates to get a heal (they might want to sit) but puts a super high healing skill cap on her. It also removes one of the things a lot of people dislike about her. And she wouldn’t be either the TF2 healer or Mercy from OW where you don’t really even aim.

People who play snipers would still want to play her and if done right she could be pretty good. I don’t know what to do about healing herself though.

(UndeddJester) #32

I have to admit, while I’m kind of against the idea as it just seems silly to fire little lightning bolts at people to heal them, I’m having a hard time coming up with an argument against this point from a gameplay point of view. When I see a solid Sparks in close quarters 1 of 2 things happens…

  1. She hits me hard with her Reviver and starts spraying/running rings around me to finish me off easily.
  2. I hit her hard and she starts hopping away like crazy, running over her own health packs back to her own lines.

As pretty much any merc, actually catching a good Sparks is very hard when she is hopping away. Unlike Aura where if she winds up hip deep in the smelly stuff, she more often than not takes a dirt nap, Sparks is just very hard to put down. Most of the time if you do put her down, actually finishing her is also a job it itself.

The main problem I see is you suddenly no longer have just long range rezzing, you also have long range healing as well, which means Sparks basically never fights anyone other than snipers… maybe thats a good thing, but I kind of like that she has to put herself in danger to actually heal allies (in public games at least).

(LifeupOmega) #33

[quote=“Amerika;170617”]I would prefer to give Sparks real primaries and have her REVIVR require you to skillfully heal people. Think of it like a healing sniper gun. Requires extremely good accuracy and/or coordination with your teammates to get a heal (they might want to sit) but puts a super high healing skill cap on her. It also removes one of the things a lot of people dislike about her. And she wouldn’t be either the TF2 healer or Mercy from OW where you don’t really even aim.

People who play snipers would still want to play her and if done right she could be pretty good. I don’t know what to do about healing herself though.[/quote]

I’d take anything over ranged revives and corner peaking feat. infinite life.