Mercenary Tweaking/Balancing Station

[omegaskorpion]

http://i.imgur.com/bIWMCrx.png

This topic is about how to change/balance/tweak mercs from their current state.
There can be many reasons why mercs need tweaking, their abilities, weapons, health and speed.
And while some mercs are already good, their abilities sertainly need tweaking.

So without further reading here are my ideas how to Tweak mercs.

All Air Support Abilities
For long time the air abilitites have suffered from one thing: GLASS
Artilery, Airstike and Orbital laser suffer from cealing glass, ceiling glass will stop desighnator markers from acticating the ability and the glass will absorb atleast one airstike missile.
This is huge problem in maps like underground (while in middle part of the map), terminal (at the fuel containers) and bridge (place where the ev has to be repaired for the first time).
Now while the glass can be shot with normal weapons, it will still create fustration when trying to destoy some glass during fire fight.
Easiest fix would be to make the glass not to stop abilities and markers. And make them not absorb any damage from abilitites but to make them break from touch but still letting ability happen.

All Throwable Abilities
One of the biggest issue with Throwable is that they tend to hit the team mates, usualy killing the thrower.
No this could be fixed by making the throwable while hitting team mates, not to deal damage to the user.
Other idea to fix this would allow throwables to pass through the teammates.

All Deplayable Abilities
Deploayable abilities seem to have strange hitboxes, they sometimes take no damage from sniper rifles or melee attacks. Some times even pistols and other weapons tend to do no damage to these abilities.
To fix this, the weapons and deployables hitbox should be fixed.

Arty
Artilery
Artilery suffers from desighnator, its sometimes hard to mark the right target with the desighnator.
Now this could be fixed by: pressing the ability button will bring out the desighnator but it wont start the desighnation until player presses the MB1.
After first Artilery is launched the nex will be lauched after player does second press on MB1.

Indoors
Arty suffers from indoors, while other mercs like Kira, who can still run fast indoors, stoker that can throw molotovs outside and inside and Skyhammer that can make use of his beacon as a grenade make arty only fire support that cant realy do much indoors.
Now giving arty a indoors ability would change this, here are few ideas:

Desighnator Blind: player can blind players temporary by aiming players head with the desghnator, this will leave a burn mark for few seconds making enemy player unable to see much in from the screen.

Inbuild Nade Launcher: Arty has inbuild grenade launcher in the desighnator, he is able to shoot small grenades that explode on contact and deal 65 damage, they have 15s recharge time (2 can be used, they use charges from Artilery stike and can be only used indoors).

Phantom
Reflective Armor
Currently this ability is okeyish, works for closing in but fails in stealth for the most part. (unless you are not moving)
Few changes would make this good ability again.

Cloack lasts 15 seconds while moving and 25 seconds while stationary and the crounch walking in in the middle.
Cloack still can only absorb 80 damage.
Cloack takes 15 seconds to fully recharge.
Cloack can be toggled on/off without needing to fully recharge.
Crounch walking is almost invisible, stationary is fully invisible and while moving its slightly visible and while sprinting its just as visible as it is now.

Loadout Cards
All the extra cloack time augments are moved away from the katana loadouts to put them in the knife loadouts.
This balances the cloacking and good melee weapon by little bit.

Sparks
Revive Gun
Revive gun serves as a primary for Sparks and this can be seen as a good and bad thing. The bad thing is that while ADS with this ability its has a freaking annoying reflex sight making it hard to look trought. Also the Gun absorbs too much energy while its charged. Now here are my changes for this.

While revive gun is fully charged, it will take little to no energy to keep the charge going. However the ammouth needed for charge is slightly increased.
While ADS the reflex sight will take more room in the screen and increase the zoom, sights markers are smaller so player can see better.

Small Health Packs
Not the most used ability to heal team mates now is it.
Here are few changes how it could be more usefull:
Increasing healing to 40 (from 35) and direct hit heals 50 (from 45).
Or the recharge speed which rate the health packs regen could be increased to 7s (from 10s)

Redeye (and Vassili)
While he does not realy need any tweaking (outside the bugs) hes arsenal does need them.
the PDP is not realy working with him since he caries pistols with him and since the PDP sucks in hip fire, so its not solid choise for any redeye.
Now this could be fixed with:

Giving the PDP same hip acuracy as the Grandeur SR has. This way it serves as sidegrade to Grandeur.
Making PDP scope markers less space taking, more similar to MOA scope.
Giving redeye a secondary smg to carrie with PDP loadouts (unlikely)

IR Goggles
While its usefull ability, it suffers from one thing, i cant see enemy deplyables, which is heart breaking while you ask your self why enemy wont die from 4 heashots with your m14 during hes in smoking bath? well its that freaking healing station that you could not see with your IR goggles.

Easy fix would be allowing IR goggles see enemy deployables.

If you have ideas or suggestions how to balance arty please leave a comment.

My other suggestions:
Weapon Balance And New Weapons
12 New Mercs With Consept Art
4 New Maps And Game Mode
Loadout Rewamp

[Edzer]

What I’d like to see changed about Arty is:

• Ability breaks glass.
• Ability targetting is instant, having to stand too long in the open now.

This is honestly the only thing I’d like to see changed. Maybe some buffs to the Stark but his Dreiss and the BR-16 are fine. Also don’t feel like he needs a better secondairy. This is because Arty is meant to be played at mid-longrange and should never be in close range.

Also can’t really compare Vassili’s sniper rifle to the weapons Arty has access to.

[omegaskorpion]

[quote=“EdSir;58271”]What I’d like to see changed about Arty is:

• Ability breaks glass.
• Ability targetting is instant, having to stand too long in the open now.

This is honestly the only thing I’d like to see changed. Maybe some buffs to the Stark but his Dreiss and the BR-16 are fine. Also don’t feel like he needs a better secondairy. This is because Arty is meant to be played at mid-longrange and should never be in close range.

Also can’t really compare Vassili’s sniper rifle to the weapons Arty has access to. [/quote]

The Dreiss AR is good but Stark and BR-16 arent as fine in my oppinion, maing gripe is the similarity and poor ammo economy which could be easily changed.

Secondary “Could” give arty much needed ability to be bit more useful in closed spaces and indoors but well…

I cant realy compare Vasilis arsenal to Artys arsenal, but he is in the Sniper Buddle with Kira and Vasili so now he is sniper (sort of, more like desihgned marksmen or combat sniper)
(then again, i would more likely want to use the Dreissar than DMD with Vasili)

[Gi.Am]

While breaking the glass would be nice simply from a immersion standpoint (tho maybe the glass, blocks the wavelength of the laser designator who knows) it isn’t really needed, you can shoot the glass with every gun to break it.

Damage is fine on his ability, over time it is on par with Skyhammer and Kira.
Making the ability point and click is bad, tho. For two reasons 1. it robs the enemy of the chance to prevent the Artystrike, 2. you quite often need to correct the initial targeting, because it was off or someone jumped into the LOS. At most it would need to be a activate on release. And point one would need to be compensated by making the strike easier to avoid.

Weapons I disagree 100% he excels at long to midrange, but his primary weapons give him enough survival tools for closecombat. The frontloaded damage on the burst rifles is high enough to instantly end encounters with 90HP mercs and a second one will take medium sized mercs out (and that is a bodyshot btw.). Yes he is not the best in closerange but for a fish out of water situation it is more than good enough.
No need to strengthen him with a MP.

The change to Stark AR is strange aswell. Not only would the damage increase push it past the PDP but the slower ROF (slower than the PDP) would also push it even more into a longrange role. Most baffeling that 6 damage increase would effectively change nothing. the only Merc that would be affected would be Vassili making it possible to theoreticaly kill him with one shot. But we are looking at a longrange sniper duel a situation where not all 3 bullets of a burst might hit. And the enemy has all the advantages anyways.

BR considering that most prefer the BR over the starks I would argue that a buff to that weapon isn’t really needed.

[omegaskorpion]

[quote=“Gi.Am;58343”]While breaking the glass would be nice simply from a immersion standpoint (tho maybe the glass, blocks the wavelength of the laser designator who knows) it isn’t really needed, you can shoot the glass with every gun to break it.

Damage is fine on his ability, over time it is on par with Skyhammer and Kira.
Making the ability point and click is bad, tho. For two reasons 1. it robs the enemy of the chance to prevent the Artystrike, 2. you quite often need to correct the initial targeting, because it was off or someone jumped into the LOS. At most it would need to be a activate on release. And point one would need to be compensated by making the strike easier to avoid.

Weapons I disagree 100% he excels at long to midrange, but his primary weapons give him enough survival tools for closecombat. The frontloaded damage on the burst rifles is high enough to instantly end encounters with 90HP mercs and a second one will take medium sized mercs out (and that is a bodyshot btw.). Yes he is not the best in closerange but for a fish out of water situation it is more than good enough.
No need to strengthen him with a MP.

The change to Stark AR is strange aswell. Not only would the damage increase push it past the PDP but the slower ROF (slower than the PDP) would also push it even more into a longrange role. Most baffeling that 6 damage increase would effectively change nothing. the only Merc that would be affected would be Vassili making it possible to theoreticaly kill him with one shot. But we are looking at a longrange sniper duel a situation where not all 3 bullets of a burst might hit. And the enemy has all the advantages anyways.

BR considering that most prefer the BR over the starks I would argue that a buff to that weapon isn’t really needed.[/quote]

OK

The glass change needs to happen, it already bullshit that the ability will be blocked by it but also in map like terminal, not only the glass will block the artilery but also the sealing beams will block it, even skyhammer has to throw one beacon just to clean out those support beams before he can actualy use the ability for killing. Also aiming at the glass in the sealing can be lethal if you are in firefight and usualy after this fire figth, you dont need to shoot the glass because you have to move to the next area… (underground).

The ability damage is not ok, the enemy has to be in the middle of the artilery or he wont die and since the aoe is small it wont hit targets as easily and it has huge damage spread out.
In comparison the skyhammers airstike will deal huge ammount of damage even without a direct hit and kira can just follow players with her laser.
Stoker in other hand is for blocking areas and works in every kind of map (indoors and outdoors)

The burst rifle has good damage yes, able to deal 45 damage per burst and 90 damage to head per burst, but if you dont hit and you miss, you have to wait a moment before you can shoot again making you vunerable for a slight moment.
And while its accurate weapon the burst weapons are bad at following movement. Dreisser AR is good because it is semi auto, you know when you can hit again since you dont have moments between shots.
However Arty is bad when it comes to the indoors, no ability, no speed, no close range weaponry, which is why he needs some back up.

Take in considoration that the BR-16 and Stark AR fire rate is 220. And time to kill is 165, more than any other rifle or smg.
However this time to kill comes with only 9 and 8 times burst. Burst is good method in range but in close range it gets harder to keep on enemy and missing good bursts is bad thing.
180 (which can be changed if its too low) Rof is not that bad when you take consideration that the damage that you will deal is better and yes, it will make it more like sniper but what the heck is a point of rifle with a scope if the rifle is not good at range, currently both burst rifles are medium range guns with ok long range and bad close range abilities.
(also the arty and kira are listed in sniper buddle, this does not realy mean anything but atleast one rifle out of 3 could and should be better in range than others.
(also 2 damage change affects a lot. 3 bursts are enough to kill everything up to fragger and 2 headshot burst are able to take out rhino and of cource one burst headshot kill to to vasily is also good)

Reason why Everybody prefer BR-16 over Stark AR is simple, other is a ok gun and other is a nerfed version of said gun. (50 extra range and sh#t scope and slower reload time arent going to help with that)
And most of the people still prefer the M4 over the BR-16 because consistant headshots.
Im not saying BR-16 is bad, but its ammo economy sertainly is bad (9 shots… 9 shots x 3)

[Gi.Am]

hm
Glass ceilings
You do know that they fixed the roof in terminal with the Phantom release patch almost a month ago, right? you don’t need to waste any abilities to break the glass, simply shooting it with a secondary is enough. And you can see/shoot the whole trainstation roof from the defenders spawn, likewise you can shoot the whole station ceiling from outside the station, well before you usually have to fight.
Similar the glass on underground, aside the fact that the transition is often quick enough that you don’t need AOE for that part anyways. The area is a circle and you can shoot the ceiling of the whole area from the level above that segment (coming down the first escalator from the first objective) again secondary does the job.

Artystrike damage vs. Skyhammer damage.

Artystrike comes in the form of 3 bombs in short succession falling randomly into the targeting area each bomb deals 100 damage and has a radius of 240 units (same as a fragger grenade).
Skyhammer Airstrike drops 7 bombs in a straight line each bomb deals 120 damage and has a radius of 150 units.

Now the maximum damage an airstrike does is 840+75 = 915 (75 for the airstrikemarker).
One Arty artillery deals 300 damage. However Arty gets two strikes to start with, upping his damage to 600 (I’ll leave the targeting / call in times out they should be roughly equate to the same overhead time). Arty has a cooldown of 20 sec. while Skyhammer has 70 sec. means that Arty will have fired 3 aditional strikes before Skyhammer can call in his next.

Arty can deal 1500 damage before Skyhammers next strike comes in. Giving him a damage advantage. Granted when the second airstrike comes in skyhammers damage jumps to 1830 taking over again.
10 sec. later Arty is at 1800.

On a side note not really related to Arty, we know that 1 airstrike, or 3 Artystrikes 100% downs an EV that means EVs (and generators) should have somewhere between 600-900 HP (I would guess around 800) would put a Kira beam at around 400 Damage overall (unless there is a special damage reduction/multiplier that affects objective damage).

Since the AOE abilities deal overal roughly similar damage. And Arty has the distinguished advantage of being more spamable i.e. less missed opportunities, I think it is fine.

As for weapons I see and understand your point and disagree. All his primaries function good enough as a closerange backup, for a merc that is not supposed to fight those fights in the first place (his job in those situations is to hide behind Fraggers back and keep his K121 going).
Aiming well with the burstrifle in closecombat while hard, will kill people in 1-2-3 bursts. Likewise the Dreiss has the potential to kill everybody in 4 shots (which are accurate even on hipfire). Yes it can be hard to pull off and you will more likely loose a closerange encounter against mercs better suited for that distance. But that happens when you don’t use a merc in a range he is good at (no one is asking for a Timik/Stark on Rhino for example to compete with Arty on long range).

[Edzer]

[quote=“omegaskorpion;58279”][quote=“EdSir;58271”]What I’d like to see changed about Arty is:

• Ability breaks glass.
• Ability targetting is instant, having to stand too long in the open now.

This is honestly the only thing I’d like to see changed. Maybe some buffs to the Stark but his Dreiss and the BR-16 are fine. Also don’t feel like he needs a better secondairy. This is because Arty is meant to be played at mid-longrange and should never be in close range.

Also can’t really compare Vassili’s sniper rifle to the weapons Arty has access to. [/quote]

The Dreiss AR is good but Stark and BR-16 arent as fine in my oppinion, maing gripe is the similarity and poor ammo economy which could be easily changed.

Secondary “Could” give arty much needed ability to be bit more useful in closed spaces and indoors but well…

I cant realy compare Vasilis arsenal to Artys arsenal, but he is in the Sniper Buddle with Kira and Vasili so now he is sniper (sort of, more like desihgned marksmen or combat sniper)
(then again, i would more likely want to use the Dreissar than DMD with Vasili) [/quote]

I disagree about the BR-16 not being fine, it’s the weapon I like most on Arty. Prefer the dreiss on Kira. I really think the BR-16 is in a good spot atm, if you aim well with it you are really rewarded.

[Cappe]

Making the ability point and click is bad, tho. For two reasons 1. it robs the enemy of the chance to prevent the Artystrike, 2. you quite often need to correct the initial targeting, because it was off or someone jumped into the LOS. At most it would need to be a activate on release. And point one would need to be compensated by making the strike easier to avoid.

Why should the enemy be able to prevent Arty casting arty? It’s already easy enough to avoid the arty, the moment you see the mark on the ground you still have plenty of time to get away from it.

[omegaskorpion]

[quote=“Gi.Am;58409”]hm
Glass ceilings
You do know that they fixed the roof in terminal with the Phantom release patch almost a month ago, right? you don’t need to waste any abilities to break the glass, simply shooting it with a secondary is enough. And you can see/shoot the whole trainstation roof from the defenders spawn, likewise you can shoot the whole station ceiling from outside the station, well before you usually have to fight.
Similar the glass on underground, aside the fact that the transition is often quick enough that you don’t need AOE for that part anyways. The area is a circle and you can shoot the ceiling of the whole area from the level above that segment (coming down the first escalator from the first objective) again secondary does the job.

Artystrike damage vs. Skyhammer damage.

Artystrike comes in the form of 3 bombs in short succession falling randomly into the targeting area each bomb deals 100 damage and has a radius of 240 units (same as a fragger grenade).
Skyhammer Airstrike drops 7 bombs in a straight line each bomb deals 120 damage and has a radius of 150 units.

Now the maximum damage an airstrike does is 840+75 = 915 (75 for the airstrikemarker).
One Arty artillery deals 300 damage. However Arty gets two strikes to start with, upping his damage to 600 (I’ll leave the targeting / call in times out they should be roughly equate to the same overhead time). Arty has a cooldown of 20 sec. while Skyhammer has 70 sec. means that Arty will have fired 3 aditional strikes before Skyhammer can call in his next.

Arty can deal 1500 damage before Skyhammers next strike comes in. Giving him a damage advantage. Granted when the second airstrike comes in skyhammers damage jumps to 1830 taking over again.
10 sec. later Arty is at 1800.

On a side note not really related to Arty, we know that 1 airstrike, or 3 Artystrikes 100% downs an EV that means EVs (and generators) should have somewhere between 600-900 HP (I would guess around 800) would put a Kira beam at around 400 Damage overall (unless there is a special damage reduction/multiplier that affects objective damage).

Since the AOE abilities deal overal roughly similar damage. And Arty has the distinguished advantage of being more spamable i.e. less missed opportunities, I think it is fine.

As for weapons I see and understand your point and disagree. All his primaries function good enough as a closerange backup, for a merc that is not supposed to fight those fights in the first place (his job in those situations is to hide behind Fraggers back and keep his K121 going).
Aiming well with the burstrifle in closecombat while hard, will kill people in 1-2-3 bursts. Likewise the Dreiss has the potential to kill everybody in 4 shots (which are accurate even on hipfire). Yes it can be hard to pull off and you will more likely loose a closerange encounter against mercs better suited for that distance. But that happens when you don’t use a merc in a range he is good at (no one is asking for a Timik/Stark on Rhino for example to compete with Arty on long range).
[/quote]

You havent played much terminal? with arty or skyhammer OR KIRA
While the glass can be destroyed with guns, the steel beams dont give a damn about bullets, only about explosives, and if you manage to destroy ever glass windomw in the cealing you still have to take in consideration that you airsrike will still hit the steel beams and they will block artilery from happening and kiras laser also if not destoyed.
Not only it increases fustration while in fight to destroy the glass and the steel beams but also that you 1.30s waited ability will go to waist if you dint destoy the glass or steel beams.

During the battle, the artilery damage is not consistant, since the desighnator has hard time locking in on anything, the EV is good example of this, you have hard time marking the EV since the desighnator does not understand the curves, and locking the EV is real hard during battle, easier way is to mark the areas where EV is going, since marking a Stationary EV is like rocket sience sometimes.
Yes it can destroy the EV in 3 Artilery stikes making arty the best EV destroeyer but that is the only thing its good at. Marking enemy, then waiting to the artilery to be lauched and then to wait it to land takes a long time, and during that time enemy has already moved on.
Also sometimes even the direct hits have not dealed enough damage to kill Rhino or anybody els, this might be a bug because the artilery seems to react to enviroment and curves realy hard.
Now while the direct hit usualy (should) is able to kill enemies, the blast radius is not able to do this most of the time.
(also yes, the objectives have differend damage reduction numbers per ability, kiras laser can most of the time kill merc with one hit but it only deals 2/5 damage to full health EV, Also before the fine tuning, Sparks was able to destroy objectives with her revive gun, but now it deals reduced damage to them)

The ability as it is now is not fine, because the desghnator is bugged, it takes too long and has slight change to kill enemies.
Making the desighnator mark the area by one click would make it more useful and would remove that curve thing. But it would still take time before the artilery is landing to its target.
Also the damage needs to be more consistant, if it realy deals 300 damage then it blody hell should deal that 300 damage.

The thing with the burst rifles is not only their close quaters abilities, but its also their ammo economy which they are realy bad, 1 missed burst is already 3 shots missed.
Giving 1 more burst to BR-16 would make it slightly more better, but no god or bad weapon.
It would only improve its ammo economy by a little bit.

Only reason why i want arty to have better secondary is because he has already the worst indoors cababilities of any fire support.
Kira can run faster, making her good in outdoors and indoors, skyhammer has weapons that can defend him in all ranges and he has ability to use indoors, stoker is similar to skyhammer but has ability that is best indoors, but is also still usefull in outdoors.
Now what does arty have in indoors? NOTHING, absolutely nothing. Medium to long range weapons with still good hip acuracy to use in close quaters but that does not realy help when other mercs still have better changes of survival and usability indoors.
Now yes, the machine pistol does not contribute as a ability, so if devs could create arty a indoors ability that would work too.

[omegaskorpion]

[quote=“EdSir;58569”][quote=“omegaskorpion;58279”][quote=“EdSir;58271”]What I’d like to see changed about Arty is:

• Ability breaks glass.
• Ability targetting is instant, having to stand too long in the open now.

This is honestly the only thing I’d like to see changed. Maybe some buffs to the Stark but his Dreiss and the BR-16 are fine. Also don’t feel like he needs a better secondairy. This is because Arty is meant to be played at mid-longrange and should never be in close range.

Also can’t really compare Vassili’s sniper rifle to the weapons Arty has access to. [/quote]

The Dreiss AR is good but Stark and BR-16 arent as fine in my oppinion, maing gripe is the similarity and poor ammo economy which could be easily changed.

Secondary “Could” give arty much needed ability to be bit more useful in closed spaces and indoors but well…

I cant realy compare Vasilis arsenal to Artys arsenal, but he is in the Sniper Buddle with Kira and Vasili so now he is sniper (sort of, more like desihgned marksmen or combat sniper)
(then again, i would more likely want to use the Dreissar than DMD with Vasili) [/quote]

I disagree about the BR-16 not being fine, it’s the weapon I like most on Arty. Prefer the dreiss on Kira. I really think the BR-16 is in a good spot atm, if you aim well with it you are really rewarded. [/quote]

While the BR-16 is rewarding when hitting, so are weapons like M4.
Difference is not that the M4 has better ammo economy, 35 shots, no burst, no wasted ammo if you dont hold your finger on fire button.
BR-16 in other hand will wast that ammo, even with one click, because its burst, so one missed burst is more dangerous for BR-16 user than missing a burst with M4.

Missing is deadly with BR-16 unlike with M4.
Not only missing but the ammo economy is bad, since you have only 9 shots and weapons like M4 have 35 shots.

I know that some people love the BR-16 and dominate with it but its more harder to learn than anything, mostly because of that ammo economy.

One simple buff could make it just a little bit more usable, so players dont need to play reload simulator with BR-16 all the time.

[quote=“Cappe;58631”][quote=“Gi.Am;58343”]
Making the ability point and click is bad, tho. For two reasons 1. it robs the enemy of the chance to prevent the Artystrike, 2. you quite often need to correct the initial targeting, because it was off or someone jumped into the LOS. At most it would need to be a activate on release. And point one would need to be compensated by making the strike easier to avoid.

[/quote]
Why should the enemy be able to prevent Arty casting arty? It’s already easy enough to avoid the arty, the moment you see the mark on the ground you still have plenty of time to get away from it.[/quote]

My point exactly, not only its hard to mark the area, but its also make that artilery count.
even if arty would be able to point and click artilerys the enemy is still able to run away from the marked are, just like when skyhammer throws hes beacons the player has time to react and run and with artilery even more time to react.

[Kaori1]

HERE COMES AWRTEEE!!

I actually prefer the BR over the Kek just because everything I touch with it dies faster than Wildstar.

[omegaskorpion]

[quote=“Kaori1;58854”]HERE COMES AWRTEEE!!

I actually prefer the BR over the Kek just because everything I touch with it dies faster than Wildstar.

[/quote]

ummm?

…what do you mean by this, since arty has no access to KEK anyway?
Just a preferance over weapon that classes that use KEK dont have access to?

And i can still agree that its a good weapon, but its ammo economy is still one of the worst.

[capriRocket]

just give him a friggen rocket launcher, all problems solved. we dont need a merc named javelin do we?

[omegaskorpion]

just give him a friggen rocket launcher, all problems solved. we dont need a merc named javelin do we?

but then he would not be the artilery man now would he ^^

Then again javelin is suppose to be rocket merc with controllable missiles so… two mercs with rockets?

[Kaori1]

[quote=“omegaskorpion;58860”][quote=“Kaori1;58854”]HERE COMES AWRTEEE!!

I actually prefer the BR over the Kek just because everything I touch with it dies faster than Wildstar.

[/quote]

ummm?

…what do you mean by this, since arty has no access to KEK anyway?
Just a preferance over weapon that classes that use KEK dont have access to?

And i can still agree that its a good weapon, but its ammo economy is still one of the worst.
[/quote]
I never said he did lol. But people always assume that the kek is the most powerful gun in the game…and I disagree with said people :P.

I roll with bush and arty in my loadout and I REALLY hate using the kek after reking so hard with the BR.

[omegaskorpion]

[quote=“Kaori1;58942”][quote=“omegaskorpion;58860”][quote=“Kaori1;58854”]HERE COMES AWRTEEE!!

I actually prefer the BR over the Kek just because everything I touch with it dies faster than Wildstar.

[/quote]

ummm?

…what do you mean by this, since arty has no access to KEK anyway?
Just a preferance over weapon that classes that use KEK dont have access to?

And i can still agree that its a good weapon, but its ammo economy is still one of the worst.
[/quote]
I never said he did lol. But people always assume that the kek is the most powerful gun in the game…and I disagree with said people :P.

I roll with bush and arty in my loadout and I REALLY hate using the kek after reking so hard with the BR. [/quote]

I have newer found the KEK as godly as people clame it to be, i find the Hockfir better.

I would find the BR better if it had more mag size, currently the thing that keeps me from using it compared to oher weapons is the ammo economy and mag size, it runs out of ammo fast and has to be constantly reloaded.

[omegaskorpion]

I made slight changes to the Weapon balance, i also checked my grammar.

[Gi.Am]

@omegaskorpion indeed I didn’t play much terminal lately, which is a shame. Anyways since I could have been wrong I hoped into terminal and tested it . This is the ammount of ceiling destruction you can do with a pistol, from the defenders spawn (I walked into that position afterwards for better visibilty). Considering that throwing 5 Airstrikes into the station, deliberately aiming for the steelbeams, without any sign of further destruction I think it is save to say this is as good as it gets.

Some further, nitpicking Kira one laser deals 50% to the EV. Sparks revive deals 0 to the EV after the nerf.
The artillery deals consistent damage inside the circle, if you don’t get a kill it means one of three things. 1 you miss aimed. 2 the enemy dodged it (which is fair game, their job is to get a position cleared, when they flee it is doing the intended job). 3 there might be indeed a bug I quite often encounter grenades that seem to get blocked by small ledges could be the same thing.

Next thing will also answer to @Cappe All AOE abilities are ment to be dodgeable they give a clear warning. However Skyhammers airstrike is the most obvious and easiest to dodge. For starters you see a grenade coming in, you get a poff sound, a bit of smoke, a clear line indicating in which direction, you should run. you get plane sounds (with longer duration than Arty) . Another thing that is a disatvantage for skyhammer he has to get into grenade throwing distance i.e. realtively close to the battlefield.
Artys artillery is very lowkey in comparsion, making it more important to being able to prevent it from happening in the first place. But more important is the fact that Arty has no range limit on the ability (same with Kira) allowing them to stay in their prefered range and out of harms way. To compensate they need to expose themself (sometimes) for 0.4 sec and have a chance to get interupted.
For all this I do think it is nice for the enemy to be able to supress Arty and Kira from casting, considering that it encourages them to use flanking position and play smart, using map knowledge and timing to land strikes without having a direct sightline.

But I admit maybe I’m just too used to targeting from save positions, when I target right in front of the enemy I know that it is a last ditch / high risk atempt. I do remember being very frustrated about the whole aimpunch preventing targeting thing in the beginning. So yeah mostly I feel that it can be justified and it is a nice tool to have for the enemy but not something that must be absolutely 100% present.

[SirMurder]

[quote=“omegaskorpion;58950”][quote=“Kaori1;58942”][quote=“omegaskorpion;58860”][quote=“Kaori1;58854”]HERE COMES AWRTEEE!!

I actually prefer the BR over the Kek just because everything I touch with it dies faster than Wildstar.

[/quote]

ummm?

…what do you mean by this, since arty has no access to KEK anyway?
Just a preferance over weapon that classes that use KEK dont have access to?

And i can still agree that its a good weapon, but its ammo economy is still one of the worst.
[/quote]
I never said he did lol. But people always assume that the kek is the most powerful gun in the game…and I disagree with said people :P.

I roll with bush and arty in my loadout and I REALLY hate using the kek after reking so hard with the BR. [/quote]

I have newer found the KEK as godly as people clame it to be, i find the Hockfir better.

I would find the BR better if it had more mag size, currently the thing that keeps me from using it compared to oher weapons is the ammo economy and mag size, it runs out of ammo fast and has to be constantly reloaded.[/quote]

Hochfir is 1 less dmg and less spread hochfir is better imo too

[omegaskorpion]

[quote=“Gi.Am;59416”]@omegaskorpion indeed I didn’t play much terminal lately, which is a shame. Anyways since I could have been wrong I hoped into terminal and tested it . This is the ammount of ceiling destruction you can do with a pistol, from the defenders spawn (I walked into that position afterwards for better visibilty). Considering that throwing 5 Airstrikes into the station, deliberately aiming for the steelbeams, without any sign of further destruction I think it is save to say this is as good as it gets.

Some further, nitpicking Kira one laser deals 50% to the EV. Sparks revive deals 0 to the EV after the nerf.
The artillery deals consistent damage inside the circle, if you don’t get a kill it means one of three things. 1 you miss aimed. 2 the enemy dodged it (which is fair game, their job is to get a position cleared, when they flee it is doing the intended job). 3 there might be indeed a bug I quite often encounter grenades that seem to get blocked by small ledges could be the same thing.

Next thing will also answer to @Cappe All AOE abilities are ment to be dodgeable they give a clear warning. However Skyhammers airstrike is the most obvious and easiest to dodge. For starters you see a grenade coming in, you get a poff sound, a bit of smoke, a clear line indicating in which direction, you should run. you get plane sounds (with longer duration than Arty) . Another thing that is a disatvantage for skyhammer he has to get into grenade throwing distance i.e. realtively close to the battlefield.
Artys artillery is very lowkey in comparsion, making it more important to being able to prevent it from happening in the first place. But more important is the fact that Arty has no range limit on the ability (same with Kira) allowing them to stay in their prefered range and out of harms way. To compensate they need to expose themself (sometimes) for 0.4 sec and have a chance to get interupted.
For all this I do think it is nice for the enemy to be able to supress Arty and Kira from casting, considering that it encourages them to use flanking position and play smart, using map knowledge and timing to land strikes without having a direct sightline.

But I admit maybe I’m just too used to targeting from save positions, when I target right in front of the enemy I know that it is a last ditch / high risk atempt. I do remember being very frustrated about the whole aimpunch preventing targeting thing in the beginning. So yeah mostly I feel that it can be justified and it is a nice tool to have for the enemy but not something that must be absolutely 100% present.[/quote]

Fare enough.

Sparks Revive gun does deal damage to EV, i have tested this, but it does very low damage to it now that only 5 full charges gave me 30 objective xp and seemingly only 10-20 damage.
Further on as i have been playing arty a lot laterly (and testing kira in the progres)
While the Artilery should deal that consitant damage it does not always do it, the damage sometimes spreads odly in the landing area which could be a bug but it still affects a lot of the gameplay.
That grenade bug indeed sometimes affects also air type attacks.

Curruntly the only reason why the Artys artilery should be easy to activate is because its not as deadly as others, explosion radius is small, it has long time before it lands on target, the targeted area has enemy colored beam in the area where its going to land (kinda like skyhammers beacon creates enemy teams colored beam, telling where the airstike is coming)

Skyhammer does not need to throw hes ability from close ranges, i have threw the beacon from other side of the map to the other (shapel, the part where EV does the second turn)
And in comparison to arty, skyhammer can throw them behind cover while arty has to wait shit in his pants to activate the ability while everybody is shooting at him, reseting the timer all the time and then the other fustration of that targeting area is not targetable for some odd reason in middle of the street (sometimes, even smallest props, like powerlines, can block the targeting area…)
And When arty finaly gets the ability activated, the enemy will just move 3m and it was wasted.

Artys ability would be easy to move away from, even with point and click targeting, because the artilery still has to land which takes about 1.5s and there is vivible marker where its going to land. Also Everybody can hear the sound of a launched strike.

The sad thing is that every merc needs viable ability to be viable, arty is good against EV but that is how far the usability goes, yes i can personaly still make top of the leader boards in normal games with arty, but just because that i like to use the Dreissar AR.
Now if the ability would atleast be easy to use, it would be enough game changing to make it useful. But then again, there is still thing about how arty performs indoors, because every other fire support already has a way how to deal with it…