One of my favorite Mercs, and my main at the moment. This is a thread in which we all talk about him, and how we play him along with tips and tricks.
I personally love his grenades, and the solid animation of his fingers ticking the time for you. Fragger can clear rooms whenever the player learns how to use these two grenades (timespan wise) at their advantage.
So feel free and discuss the nade-wielding mercenary, Fragger.
Personally, I feel like the K-121 nerf was undeserved
If anything, cooking nades should have been removed, and in exchange been replaced with either a wider aoe, or more damage in general.
I feel like Nader should be for direct hits, Fragger for spreading that damage out over a room.
[quote=“Watsyurdeal;23668”]Personally, I feel like the K-121 nerf was undeserved
If anything, cooking nades should have been removed, and in exchange been replaced with either a wider aoe, or more damage in general.
I feel like Nader should be for direct hits, Fragger for spreading that damage out over a room.[/quote]
Totally agree with this. Fragger has direct hits for nades right now, when they should be more spread with cooking nades removed. I feel the nades would be useful then rather than running into a tight room or sneaking up on an enemy, holding a grenade, and throwing it last second and getting a triple kill.
Nader on the other hand, I have no experience with and I hope to use her in a later rotation. Looks like a fun character to play due to the fact that I love playing Demoman and Scout in TF2, and she looks like a mixture of the two. And another plus is that she’s German, and who doesn’t love playing as Germans in shooter games.
Fragger with K-121 still dominates competitive games, so the nerf was absolutely justified.
I would say that he’s by far the easiest and most straightforward merc to play. Just aim the gun at people and kill everything in sight. If that fails, throw a grenade. 
My hope is that Nader will become a serious alternative to him, because she’s a lot more fun to play IMO.
[quote=“Brandon;23672”]
Nader on the other hand, I have no experience with and I hope to use her in a later rotation. Looks like a fun character to play due to the fact that I love playing Demoman and Scout in TF2, and she looks like a mixture of the two. And another plus is that she’s German, and who doesn’t love playing as Germans in shooter games.[/quote]
Pretty much, the problem is her ability lacks good damage, you’ll kill Proxy in one hit. But not a Sniper or Sawbonez D:
[quote=“Watsyurdeal;23794”][quote=“Brandon;23672”]
Nader on the other hand, I have no experience with and I hope to use her in a later rotation. Looks like a fun character to play due to the fact that I love playing Demoman and Scout in TF2, and she looks like a mixture of the two. And another plus is that she’s German, and who doesn’t love playing as Germans in shooter games.[/quote]
Pretty much, the problem is her ability lacks good damage, you’ll kill Proxy in one hit. But not a Sniper or Sawbonez D:[/quote]
the problem is, her ability should not OHK every Merc. Imagine a Nader who clears a group of 4 enemies with just her Nadelauncher… ^^
[quote=“irishroy;23800”]
the problem is, her ability should not OHK every Merc. Imagine a Nader who clears a group of 4 enemies with just her Nadelauncher… ^^[/quote]
Vasilli and lower at the very least are not every Merc, those are light weights, and considering it takes more effort than most weapons since it’s a projectile and not hitscan…it seems fair
Fragger was seriously overpowered a month ago. He’s much more handleable since the grenade speed nerf and the K-121 nerfs. I feel like he’s much more balanced right now, but I am still not sure if he still need some tweaks. He’s now available in free rotation, so I hope we’ll be definitely fixed about his state.
Took him for a test ride and oh boy.
Haven’t played him since the last time he was free and he feels so slow (the next slowest I play is bushwacker) throws my whole evasion patterns off. Also somehow the aim feels wrong right now.
Not that I find the weapon too inaccurate or something just that I land an aweful lot of bodyshots where I’d expect headies. Anyways what I’m trying to say is some props to does who can handle the guy not as easy as it seems form the other side of that big fat gun 
.
Only thing his nade is imo (still) a bit OP. And I would like to throw my solution for that into the ring of ideas.
Reduce the fuse time… Please don’t pick up the pitchforks and torches yet hear me out on this one.
Right now there is absolut no reason to throw a nade unprimed (unless you are a noob who doesn’t know better yet). The fuse time is so long an unprimed nade is easy to dodge, infact a Rhino helping his grandma can do it.
If the fusetime was shorter (say 10-20%) there would be a chance that you still damage people that reacted a little too slow. No instagib just maybe 10% of their HP.
Now lets look at the other problem the long fuse time creates. It makes priming dead simple.
The Stages of priming are : Same as unprimed…explodes right in the face of the enemy…explodes in your hand.
Right now. You have plenty of time to move in and out of cover, allign the nade , get to the point where it will explode perfectly (and you don’t have to time it yourself aswell, love the animation tho don’t change it) and let it go. Worse even if you overextend the priming it takes a fairly long time till it kills you.
If the fusetime would be shortened, those windows would shrink and the chance of blowing yourself up while priming would increase. making it overall harder to prime especially under stress (firefight) making a unprimed nade the save alternative.
Or in short: Reducing the fusetime would allow for strong instagib nades, while increasing the skillcap for primed nades and still providing a viable alternative for newer players and panic situations.
[quote=“Watsyurdeal;23806”][quote=“irishroy;23800”]
the problem is, her ability should not OHK every Merc. Imagine a Nader who clears a group of 4 enemies with just her Nadelauncher… ^^[/quote]
Vasilli and lower at the very least are not every Merc, those are light weights, and considering it takes more effort than most weapons since it’s a projectile and not hitscan…it seems fair[/quote]
It’s not either or though, you can use the GL to shoot behind walls, spam areas, weaken opponents, and finish opponents hiding at range. All of this makes her extremely versatile and my absolute fav to play on publics at the moment.
The only question is, does she pack enough punch to be played competitively. That still remains to be seen.
[quote=“Gi.Am;23915”]
Or in short: Reducing the fusetime would allow for strong instagib nades, while increasing the skillcap for primed nades and still providing a viable alternative for newer players and panic situations. [/quote]
sorry, no.
Shorter fuse time - higher DPS.
shorter fuse time - less exposure when cooking nades
If grenades had a 1sec fuse time, they’d be so ridiculously OP, it’d be like fletcher sticky bomb at 150 damage
[quote=“Szakalot;23938”][quote=“Gi.Am;23915”]
Or in short: Reducing the fusetime would allow for strong instagib nades, while increasing the skillcap for primed nades and still providing a viable alternative for newer players and panic situations. [/quote]
sorry, no.
Shorter fuse time - higher DPS.
shorter fuse time - less exposure when cooking nades
If grenades had a 1sec fuse time, they’d be so ridiculously OP, it’d be like fletcher sticky bomb at 150 damage
[/quote]
Now THAT is OP. 
Ok I don’t see how a shorter fuse time (say 10-20%) would increase the DPS that much since the amount over time he can throws is bound by cooldown. All it would give him in this regards are splitseconds more time to shoot. But anyways it did got me thinking and do some madeup number crunching.
And I was indeed wrong.
Shortening the fusetime on its own is not the way to achieve what I had intended (making priming more tricky/risky and promoting unprimed throwing as a safer alternative).
possible ways for that would be either
all not ideal solutions however I stand by my view:
priming = higher skillcap and riskier but better damage / unprimed = safer less but reliable damage
Would be a good and fair balancing endgoal.
[quote=“Gi.Am;23986”]Ok I don’t see how a shorter fuse time (say 10-20%) would increase the DPS that much since the amount over time he can throws is bound by cooldown. All it would give him in this regards are splitseconds more time to shoot. But anyways it did got me thinking and do some madeup number crunching.
And I was indeed wrong.
Shortening the fusetime on its own is not the way to achieve what I had intended (making priming more tricky/risky and promoting unprimed throwing as a safer alternative).
possible ways for that would be either
all not ideal solutions however I stand by my view:
priming = higher skillcap and riskier but better damage / unprimed = safer less but reliable damage
Would be a good and fair balancing endgoal.[/quote]
you seem to think that the only consideration for fragger is whether he will manage to throw the grenade, rather than blow himself up.
I dont think nades should work like that. Its pretty easy NOT to blow yourself up, lol.
shorter flight time is a reverse on a recent nerf. it finally put fragger in a good spot, pls dont make him more OP.
increasing AOE but decreasing damage? thats one take on nades, wouldnt mind it personally.
I’m not for increasing the flight time. That statement was simply pointing out that the nerf that makes nades a little bit easier to avoid also unavoidable makes priming safer for fragger players.
Let me illustrate:
Say you want to hit a specific target area.
The flight time to that area is 1 sek. Unprimed the nade lingers for 1.5 sek before it explodes. So you prime the nade for 1.5 sek and it will instantly explode in the target area. If for whatever reason you hold unto your nade, you get the flight time as buffer i.e. you can hold the nade past the perfect priming time for 1 sek before it will explode in your hand.
If the flight time increases to lets say 2 sek. that will be your new buffer and you can hold unto a nade for 2 sek after perfect priming time, before it will harm you.
The thing with fragnades is, the only situation when a long priming time is a disadvantage is if the nade is thrown mid fight. I.e. fragger decides a fight isn’t going to well and he dives into cover, primes the nade and than throws it. In that situation the longer he has to stay in cover and prime his nade the easier it is for the enemy to realize what is going on and GTFO.
I totally get that.
Problem is most fragnades are not thrown midfight but to initialize a fight to kill before the enemy even has seen a fragger before they know a primed frag will come. the priming happend before the engagement (or on the cup lvl. before they even spawned).
Longer flight times helps a bit in this situation.
At this point I don’t have a solution (tho my gut feeling is that if the system would be manipulated in a way that people would throw more unprimed nades and primed be more situtional instead of the defacto standard it would elevade alot of the grief).
I’m just stating how things are working right now.
Personally, if I think of Fragger, I think of the Juggernaut from Tribes Ascend, and the Mortar Shell gun that was great for clearing the flag stand. His grenade should be like that but for plant spots or people around an EV, but as it is it’s just quick kills.
I think removing the cooked nades for nade with a bigger radius and more damage. The goal is to basically force the enemy to stop camping and grouping up together. Will be a great counter for Aura and people who literally just sit and wait on the points, which becoming more common now that the game is in open beta.
[quote=“Gi.Am;24083”]
Say you want to hit a specific target area.
The flight time to that area is 1 sek. Unprimed the nade lingers for 1.5 sek before it explodes. So you prime the nade for 1.5 sek and it will instantly explode in the target area. If for whatever reason you hold unto your nade, you get the flight time as buffer i.e. you can hold the nade past the perfect priming time for 1 sek before it will explode in your hand.[/quote]
??
you don’t throw nades at ‘specific areas’. You throw them at enemies, who move constantly.
Problem is most fragnades are not thrown midfight but to initialize a fight to kill before the enemy even has seen a fragger before they know a primed frag will come.
Nope. Fragnades are used in all kinds of circumstances, as opening nades, or to flush people out of cover, or mid-fight when falling back, etc. etc.
Longer flight times helps a bit in this situation.
Longer flight time is a new nerf you didnt discuss before. You were discussing longer fuse time. I agree that nerfing fly-speed (increasing flight time) nerfs nades.
Shortening fuse time though is A BUFF.
The only desirable prime-time you want, is the one that allows you to throw the nade at its maximum throw distance, and explode on point instantly.
You don’t need ‘buffer time’ when throwing nades. You spot an enemy, you cook a nade, you throw it and get a frag. Any additional waiting time is a nerf to your effective DPS
I guess we are more or less on the same page and are really just talking semantics. But anyways just to clear things up.
In a gaming situation the Specific Area could be enemies, chokepoints or objectives (and no they don’t nessecary move i.e. a enemy sitting on a MG ).
But as far as priming is concerned they can be simplified to two states:
The enemy has just seen Fragger and knows that a primed nade is imminent (midfight, fall back, flushing people out of cover if they saw fragger).
The enemy isn’t aware of a priming Fragger (initiating, spawnnades, flushing people out of cover that haven’t sawn fragger).
In Midfight the longer it takes to prime a nade the easier it is to dodge.
In Initiating the length of the priming process is irrelevant. Flight time and visibility decides wether you can dodge it or not (and expirience ofcourse).
You are right about the Fusetime beeing a Buff, I was wrong about that in the first post and admitted as such in the second.
The desirable priming time not sure why maximum throwingrange plays a role.
Fusetime = flighttime + lingeringtime.
You want to always prime as long as the remaining lingeringtime would be (the nade explodes exactly when it hits the desired point). That’s different depending on how far or near you have to throw.
If my mark is 2 meters away the flight time will be short and the lingeringtime is long (so I have to prime longer).
If my mark is 50 meters away the flight time is long but the lingering time is short (I have to prime less).
Therfore the increase in overall flighttime (a nerf) also allowes you to be more sloppy with your timing when it comes to releasing a primed nade (a little buff).
Having played with him I’m somewhat torn between the BR-16 and his K-121. The nades however, being able to cook them with him counting is really helpful.
The BR-16, though. I’m not sure if I actually do like it, It feels like it drastically alters his playstyle on a negative aspect. I can’t grasp Fragger using it efficiently enough, atleast not when I play with it; then again I do not know if I use it right, seeing as I end up going more mid-to-long range with it.
Would the BR-16 be a viable sidegrade y’reckon, or am I just dumb and shud uninstall better off using the K-121 overall?
Shed some light for me on this matter, that would be most appreciated!
EDIT: I’m also not sure about his run speed. He feels so sluggish to run with. Perhaps giving him a small buff with his speed would do wonders?