Many people have been arguing with me about this topic, right away I would like to say that I like to play medics, they are my most played classes. When I first started Dirty Bomb, I didn’t care for skyhammer all that much, so, I played Aura. I played her a good deal, but did not particularly enjoy it, I liked the concept, but all I was good for was the occasional revive and a bit of healing; my killing potential was zilch. When Sawbonez came into free rotation a couple of weeks later, I tried him out. He was instantly my favourite merc and i bought him as soon as I could. As a noob who liked to play medics, he allowed me to much more effectively support my team, because he had easier to use weapons, he had more health so I could stay alive easier and much longer, and his ability was much more effective for me to help my team with. Over time, as I became a much better player, I grew to liking aura more because of her speed and versatility for a experienced player. And these days, she is my number one played merc along with my trusty Blishlok or remburgh.
That little story is why I am making this post; because I have experienced the difficulties of trying to play aura when first coming to the game and having a terrible time. Sawbonez made my experience much better as a noob.
The original post:
This is a long one, but please read through and tell me what you think. TL;DR at he end.
I know this might sound strange but it has been suggested before and also it is sort of a fact that sawbonez is the preferred medic. The reason they should do this, and they could even do the same for skyhammer, is that is would be like a DB social experiment to determine who would actually certain mercs if they weren’t free.
Aura is great and she is on my “choosable” merc list (cant remember what it is called) but it can be kinda annoying when there are about 4 aura’s on my team, because she is the one of the two mercs a new player can have, and they have no idea what to do, or, how to help the team. The healing station is really powerful, however, it can only help the team when the aura wielding it knows where to put it and also that it needs to be picked back up when the front line changes.
Sawbonez is a much more self explanatory merc, with two basic abilities which I think would suit the new player base well. If they were to do this with skyhammer, I would probably suggest making fragger the free merc because, again, it comes down to new players not knowing how the game works and how to best support the team. Not to bash new players but newbie skyhammers don’t know/remember/think they have to throw down ammo and also have no idea when to use their airstrike.
It was brought to my attention that fragger is much better if played by a experienced player, I do agree with this, however, it still could be possible to implement fragger as the free merc because he is quite tanky and has some decently easy weapons and abilities to control. (BR16/ Frag). Overall, Im not super sure which to switch for skyhammer, they could just leave it as is. i think sawbonez would be a really good merc to switch for aura though.
TL;DR: Fragger and Sawbonez are much more new-player friendly with higher health and easier more self-explanatory abilities to use. This change would also be implemented to see how many people continue to play aura and skyhammer.
For Splash Damage, this change would not effect your income, I know it is important for a FTP game, because you could make both Aura and Skyhammer 50,000 credit mers and give fragger and sawbonez for free. For those who have already bought both of the newly free mercs, appropriate refunds would be given. So nothing would really be different than before.