hmm interesting read, alot of points. way too much to comment on everything but I will pick a few things.
Phantom,
his cloak/shield already emit a high pitched humming sound if you are near by granted it gets easily drowned out when combat noises are around and suffers from the same bug as the airstrikes but its there.
Aura healingstation,
the current setup time is there to prevent quick selfhealing and placing it in combat situations it gives you a short window to kill Aura before she becomes quite a bit stronger. Wouldn’t want to see that window shortend.
Likewise the exploding idea while it sounds intriguing. I don’t think taking 50% of Auras health by destroying a non moving target is that great especially if we factor in destroying healingstations with explosives 40 damage on top of grenade splash is pretty punishing basically what I’m trieing to say is the healingstation is an ability they should help your team not become a point of damage.
Aura/Sparks,
Speed reduction obviously I can see the reason for that, but their speed is their main survivability tool nerfing that, without increasing their survivability in another way seems unfair, especially considering that they are regarded as too weak anyways.
Arty,
ok let me preface that I’m a fairly regular Arty player and I must say those changes are flat out bad in two directions.
- a 2 second delay before the first shell hits makes it extremly easy to avoid. So you will get even less kills than before.
like wise a 2 second delay between each shots would mean that its easy to traverse through that area (wait for the shell and then move) you would get at best the damage of one shell into someone (which is not enough to kill). More problematic with those delays it becomes impossible for Arty to do his main job destroing the EV. A moving EV would get hit once and after that it is out of range.
Which brings me to the 2. problem that artillery would be only good for one thing static objective defense and that in a very bad way.
4 shells with 2 second delays inbetween would mean 8 second shutdown of an objective area. Considering that Arty has 2 strikes would allow a flat 16 second shutdown. Considering 20 second cooldowns you could look at a very very small window when you can plant/defuse/repair. And while I normaly hate to bring Merc stacking into balancing discussions 2 Artys or more would be gamebreaking bad.
On a similar note Skyhammer spread increase could mean that he can’t destroy EVs in one go anymore.
Weapons,
SMGs: Hochfir the low recoil is the main sellingpoint of that gun. Its not exactly regarded as OP so why is it only getting a nerf without some buffs?
SMG-9 as someone who likes that gun I don’t understand your changes the gun allready has the second lowest spread of all smgs. More important the main difference compared to the crotzni is the lower ROF so pressing the SMG-9 even more into a closerange role makes no sense since it will lose those battles based on the ROF disadvantage alone. Also is there a reason why the only SMG that is perceived as OP is not getting an overhaul?
Felix: thats a pretty large round of nerfs for just 1 more damage (I do understand the significance of that 1 damage but still).
M4: Higher ROF and more accuracy on a weapon that has the highest accuracy already in that weapon class and is overall considered to be the best gun in game. Sorry to say but nerfing the damage by 1 doesn’t cut it to balance that out.
Longjump punishment ok you gotta explain that a bit more. Does it mean I keep more of my momentum when I land my longjump at the same hight, higher (against a wall, on top of a box) or lower (jumping out of a window) ? eitherway whats the idea behind that change.
MG nests replaced by gatling guns, tell me more.
Hacking objectives. If this is what I think it is. i.e. I hack 10% and die and the enemy team can’t take the 10% away (basically repair progress for the EV). I say fuck yes that would allow a snigle sneaky person to break through spawncamping and forcing new forwarded spawns. Would also punish defender teams for overextending too much.
Bugfixes, well can’t argue with that bugfixes are always good.
However considering that the latest patch introduced guardian XP for blocking incoming damage against other teammembers. I would say that AOE damage blocking is not a bug, but a feature.
