[quote=“bgyoshi;c-228041”]Note to players about private tournament play:
Meta determines merc bans more than power
Thunder isn’t banned from being OP because both teams can “OP” each other with Thunder. Thunder is banned because both teams would always have a Thunder and all game play meta would revolve around Thunder, making a stale meta.
OP = Imbalanced. It’s impossible to be imbalanced when both teams have an equal chance to use it. Thunder would only be OP in ranked if a team could ban the other team from using a merc. They can’t, so it’s not.
Everyone’s complaint about Thunder is with the function of his ability. Nobody has a real solution for it, they just want it to go away. Just ban Thunder from Ranked, he’s unplayably bad without conc. No sense in nerfing the grenade further because there’s no ‘balance’ point for it. The function is to blind players so they can’t see and immobilize them so you can shoot them. If they’re not blind, they will just shoot back and kill you. If they’re not immobilized, they’ll just run away.
@K1X455 Seriously, stop trying. They really just don’t get how Thunder works.[/quote]
@K1X455
While I agree its not as broken as some make it out to be the concept of an ability taking away your sight in a shooter is always going to be an extremely powerful tool, and also will elicit reactions from players who die under its effects. The mechanic in itself is much akin to what some refer to in other games as “cheap difficulty” in the sense that it can essentially cause situations where all control of the outcome is suddenly taken away from the player. In a game that is intended as a skill-based shooter mechanics of that kind will obviously cause some disonance and anger amongst any playerbase, as it essentially removes your input as a factor in the given fight. You can get lucky and kill them shooting blind, sure, but that is a sheer dumb-luck scenario that would only work against bad players.
@bgyoshi
You say that it isn’t overpowered, and I’m willing to agree that its not as powerful as some claim, but can you truly say that its function isn’t too strong for the length of its cooldown and duration in what is marketed as a “Fast-paced Shooter”? While granted the blind itself can’t be balanced in a way that would satisfy everyone, and not nerf him to the ground, the concussion grenade is still on too short a cooldown for an ability of its type. Besides, even if you turn away at just the right time and avoid the blind, only going at 1% normal movement speed for up to six(6) seconds is incredibly powerful. No other merc has an ability with that strong of a debilitating effect to a statistic in the game as to date in terms of raw numbers. This is worsened further by having what amounts to a 17sec cd for an effect that can easily be abused in the comp circuit to get constant team wipes.
In the 5v5 comp formats a team pushing out of spawn can be essentially trapped there by a well coordinated Thunder + Fragger combo putting them on respawn beyond the length of the Frag Grenade and Concussion’s cooldown times. You can claim its not overpowered and I can concede that, in concept, the ability in a vacuum isn’t. However the Concussion Grenade having such a short cooldown is what ultimately pushes it over the edge and makes the ability imbalanced. You are correct that nerfing the grenade itself wouldn’t solve anything without making him useless and I don’t disagree. The cooldown time is, ultimately, the imbalancing factor in this equation and it’s an issue that needs to be addressed.
