My suggested fixes for Arty.

(ron1n) #1

These changes may have very well been already suggested but I couldn’t find them so figured I’d give it a crack.

1. Change Health to 110 and sprint to 420. Makes no sense giving him the same stats as Skyhammer. He should be in between both Kira (Light) and Skyhammer (heavy) to give him some point of difference. As it is now, he’s a second tier Skyhammer.

2. Ability change.

So as it works currently, You have to aim it (clunky, takes time) hold it (more time) and hope that during all this:

a) you aren’t just shot while standing there staring at them.

b) they see you calling it in and move

c) it takes too long and they sprint past long before the arty strike actually hits.

d) you realise you could have just shot them and achieved the same result.

Solution:

The weaknesses stem from maintaining line of sight and how slow it is to call in. To fix this, I suggest letting Arty use his current lock on mechanic to PRE-SIGHT where he wants his artillery to go. Once the position is locked in using the current method, he can then call it in instantly whenever and from wherever he wants (obviously pending a cool down). Could then repeat aiming it if he wants to reset the location (hold it to re-aim, click it to fire on the move)

So in essence it would function a bit like fletcher’s sticky bombs, but obviously with different cd/restrictions. It would also keep the current red dot warning on the ground and time from firing it to it actually landing.

I feel like this would actually make the ability useful without needing to change its damage values or aoe radius. And it would solve all the issues that come from requiring line of sight as you can pre-set it in safety and then quickly set it off in the middle of a fire fight. Plus it kind of makes more sense as artillery is often pre-sighted and the coordinates are just given a designation and called in repeatedly.

Thoughts?

(Natemajor) #2

I honestly think that Arty is fine; his speed and health are great because he can withstand the same fire that a skyhammer can and saying he’s “second tier” is wrong because in my opinion Arty’s weapons make him better. His weapons are more long range oriented and can be devastating in the right person’s hands. I do agree with you on that the artillery ability is clunky and that probably should be improved somehow… Maybe not resetting when he gets shot or something idk how to fix that. However I do believe with enough practice you can use the ability to its full effectiveness. It’s almost like an accurate skyhammer nade. Emphassis on almost :stuck_out_tongue: . Any how I do see alot of these change arty things whereas I think he’s fine :slight_smile: just my opinion however.

(Gi.Am) #3
  1. Disagree - besides Stoker (unreleased fieldops) is also 120 - 400 So all Fieldops are the same except Kira who is the odd one of the pack.

a. never target when people look at you.
b. people that don’t see you (a.) don’t move.
c. target known camping spots or lead the target (don’t aim where they are, aim where they will be)
d. An Arty artillery strike will kill everyone in the blastradius instantly (including Rhino) if people are bunched up you can kill 2-3 Mercs, proxy mines / turrets / Stickies, healingstation and maybe even damage the EV in one go. I have yet to do the same feat with a Dreiss.

  1. Upon first reading I liked the idea. decoupling targeting and damaging from each other indeed sounds nice and usefull. However after thinking it through a bit. I have to say no it would make Arty way too OP.
    compared to Fletchers Stickies there are two main differences.

  2. Fletcher has to get close to the target to mine it, Arty can target across the map.

  3. Fletchers Mines can be removed by the enemy, Artys artillery can not.

So in your suggestion a defending Arty could mark the C4 site or a chokepoint once, in the beginning and deny that area forever sitting in the Spawn.

That said I like the decoupling, hmm what could balance it out would be this. You target a Area like normal, you can fire 1 artillery at will in the next 10 seconds (exact number tweakable) after that the marker goes away. If you fire the marker goes away. Strike cooldown would start when you lay down a marker that way if you don’t fire in the 10 sec you waste a strike.

Since you have two charges you could be having 2 Markers up at the same time. hiting fire would strike the first marker only and you have to hit again to get the second one out.

This way Arty can’t simply shut down an Area forever. And has to show himself after every Strike giving the enemy a oppurtunity to take him down.

(ron1n) #4

[quote=“Gi.Am;34905”]1. Disagree - besides Stoker (unreleased fieldops) is also 120 - 400 So all Fieldops are the same except Kira who is the odd one of the pack.
2.
a. never target when people look at you.
b. people that don’t see you (a.) don’t move.
c. target known camping spots or lead the target (don’t aim where they are, aim where they will be)
d. An Arty artillery strike will kill everyone in the blastradius instantly (including Rhino) if people are bunched up you can kill 2-3 Mercs, proxy mines / turrets / Stickies, healingstation and maybe even damage the EV in one go. I have yet to do the same feat with a Dreiss.[/quote]

For stoker it makes sense to have the standard 120/400 because he’s more of a close combat merc. Feels and plays a bit like fragger. Besides, just because they both have the standard 120/400 isn’t really a reason not to give arty a point of difference.

As for using his ability, you’re referring to playing against random pub scrubs in a big full server. In that situation, yeah sure, you will get some kills, people will sometimes bunch up and you might be able to prefire it. Against competent players who are comming you, especially in smaller server sizes, you will find his ability lacking.

So while his ability CAN be ok as it is, you kind of need the stars aligning and to take risks while the other field ops don’t really suffer such a handicap.

  1. Upon first reading I liked the idea. decoupling targeting and damaging from each other indeed sounds nice and usefull. However after thinking it through a bit. I have to say no it would make Arty way too OP.
    compared to Fletchers Stickies there are two main differences.

  2. Fletcher has to get close to the target to mine it, Arty can target across the map.

  3. Fletchers Mines can be removed by the enemy, Artys artillery can not.

Yeah but you’re overlooking the benefits of fletchers ability:

  1. His stickies can be used almost constantly, arty’s have a more significant cd.
  2. His stickies can be used anywhere, on every map. Arty needs open sky.

So in your suggestion a defending Arty could mark the C4 site or a chokepoint once, in the beginning and deny that area forever sitting in the Spawn.

That said I like the decoupling, hmm what could balance it out would be this. You target a Area like normal, you can fire 1 artillery at will in the next 10 seconds (exact number tweakable) after that the marker goes away. If you fire the marker goes away. Strike cooldown would start when you lay down a marker that way if you don’t fire in the 10 sec you waste a strike.

Since you have two charges you could be having 2 Markers up at the same time. hiting fire would strike the first marker only and you have to hit again to get the second one out.

This way Arty can’t simply shut down an Area forever. And has to show himself after every Strike giving the enemy a oppurtunity to take him down.

Well there’s multiple easier ways to balance this. First of all would be the question as to whether it persists through death, in which case you could either say no, or yes but set off the cd upon re-spawning so you can’t just die and use it straight away.

The other option would be to only allow 1-2 artillery strikes on the pre-sighted spot before needing to re-aim it. I think this would work much better than a timer.

All of that I’d leave up to the whim of the devs to sort out as it’s easily tweakable. I was more interested in just the actual idea of having the aiming decoupled from the firing which I think is what’s important to making the ability more useful. Would add a certain level of tactical forethought too.

(Jojack) #5

I really don’t mind the suggestion of being able to call in the strike after the marker has been placed. I think that could be fun but would need quite a bit of balance testing to make sure it’s not OP.

I think a simpler fix, and one that my bias roots for (coming from ET), is just making his ability the same as the artillery ability in ET. Skyhammer’s airstrikes are exactly the same except, to my knowledge, you can’t aim the air strike like you could in ET. Basically, in ET, you could throw your canister out their and it would get the orientation based on where you were looking when the audio confirmation came in (perpendicular to where you were facing). It didn’t just come in perpendicular to where you were facing when you threw it.

For artillery, for those that never played ET, it was similar to Arty’s ability now except instead of one artillery shell coming in, it would call in a barrage. The number in the barrage scaled to your level in the map. I think it started with 2 and ended with 5 (about one per second). So basically it would call in multiple blasts in random spots within the initial AoE of the marker. It wouldn’t hit in the same spot every time. The AoE was about three times the size of Arty’s radius now, with each strike being about the same as Arty’s radius now hitting randomly inside the larger AoE.

I think you could give him 3 or 4 strikes in his barrage that all came in succession of calling them down and make his cooldown the same as Skyhammers and you would have a great area denial ability that would serve a great purpose (locking down one exit from spawn, one entrance to objective, covering outdoor c4 plants, keeping engineers off of downed EV’s etc. )

Give it enough fire power to take down a fully repaired EV if all shells in a barrage hit the EV.

(Gi.Am) #6

HP. I was simply stating “makes no sense”
is not true. I disagree that he needs more speed / less HP. Arty’s ability can be used across the map. Weapons are long range. He refills ammunition. Because of all that it’s fine for him to be a little late to the battlefield. More speed would only buff dodging slightly, but on a Merc that has to stand still quite often thats not that useful. Besides he isn’t worse at dodging than Nader and Sawbonez (who are 110). On the other hand 120 HP is kinda a sweatspot number, increasing TTK (slightly) over a 110 Merc for very popular weapons (Timik, M4, Crotzni, SMG 9 and Empire 9).

Ability usage. I was pointing out what an Arty player has to do to be more efficient / avoid the problems you pointed out.
That holds true wether you are on low lvl. pub or against pros. The only difference (aside from getting overall more killed) between them is how many kills you will get, pros will listen to the incoming sounds and dodge or avoid an area. But I’d argue if I play smart and hit a sniper position with artillery, wether the sniper gets killed or jumps away, I reached my goal. Getting the sniper out of position.

It’s the same with all AOE abilities your skill is to get them going in the right spot at the right time, theirs is to avoid it.

Ability change. Fletcher has those advantages to compensate for the lower damage and the fact that his stickies can be destroyed.

There are two types of Area denial abilities in the game. Those that threaten an area indefinitely (Turrets, mines, stickies) and can be destroyed by the enemy. And those that can’t be destroyed only avoided. The ones you can’t destroy will only threaten for a short duration (fieldops abilities).

Your Idea without a timer turns the Artillery into a indefinitely threat that can’t be disabled.

Simple examples:
Arty target the C4 Area. No one can plant without loosing a player. If they try Arty blasts them. Only alternative stay away from the area forever.
Secondaries marker on it, the minute they repair it Its gone again.
Marker behind the EV the second the repairing starts they die, if they see the marker they can’t avoid it anymore (now they would move out and back in).
Marker in the spawn. Arty chills behind his team. As soon as the full whipe happend, wait for the spawntimer and BOOM next spawnwave stopped right there (getting two charges on one marker, the next wave gets hit aswell).