Reviving, finishing and Sparks

(traq) #1

Now that Sparks is released we have more reason to suggest changing the way downed players are finished or revived.

The problem is any time you take someone down, if the other team has a Sparks, it seems like you have to finish them immediately no matter where she is. If you’re not finishing them, their whole team is going to start rising like zombies and instead of their team getting wiped it’s yours, because of one player you couldn’t see and couldn’t necessarily throw grenades at in time even if you had known where she was. It’s not like Vassili where to be a threat he has to have line of sight to you, she just has to have line of sight to a different player some distance in front of you.

With the other medics you can be aware of where they are and just ignore downed enemies if you can prevent them from getting revived, but Sparks being able to revive from the other side of the map from some initially unknown position from cover means you can’t make those kinds of decisions, you often have to waste time in the middle of a firefight finishing everyone instead of properly defending yourself from the people who are still shooting at you.

First of all finishing really should be easier. It shouldn’t take multiple shotgun blasts at point blank range or a full magazine of your secondary weapon to finish someone. Then of course there are the universal issues of reviving being so fast and not having any kind of cooldown and giving them invulnerability, and maybe something can be changed about some of those issues.

Sparks is still very new and not many people have her but I think this is going to become more of a problem as time goes on. It creates headaches because even when you know where she is, and you know who she’s going to revive, and you’re finishing them off with headshots, you can’t do it in time because downed bodies seem to have more HP than they did when they were up and healthy.

I’m not saying she shouldn’t have that ability and make you question if someone can get up just because a Sawbonez isn’t right on them, I’m just saying it can be frustrating given the other elements. You can do all the right things in the right way and still lose because it takes so long to finish downed enemies, especially with the weird fall animations where they randomly rotate on the ground and you can’t necessarily get a headshot from your vantage point like you thought.

You can always say she’s easy to kill, but that doesn’t change the fact that it makes for a frustrating experience at times in a way I don’t think is good for the game with the way it’s balanced right now.

(incredibleHoneydew) #2

Agree upon the finishing and reviving part and don’t forget the immunity revived players get. So revives should have cooldown, no immunity, and half health when downed (compared to now).
If that get fixed, Sparks all of a sudden gets less overpowered, and medics in general. Though they will still be a force to be reconned with IMO.

(Disquieted1) #3

From my experience (which is little considering how I don’t have Sparks)…
In my opinion Sparks’ revives should kick in after a certain period. Possibly 1 or 2 seconds. It would let her keep the ranged revive while forcing both parties to be quick about finishing or reviving. Finish before revive, or revive before finish. Currently, only the second option is available.

(Advanced) #4

[quote=“Disquieted1;32127”]From my experience (which is little considering how I don’t have Sparks)…
In my opinion Sparks’ revives should kick in after a certain period. Possibly 1 or 2 seconds. It would let her keep the ranged revive while forcing both parties to be quick about finishing or reviving. Finish before revive, or revive before finish. Currently, only the second option is available.[/quote]

That would make her useless in any 5v5 team vs team scenarios. It might work in pubs, but you never balance a game around pub play.

(insaneCylinder) #5

It’s absolutely awful, every time there is a sparks and you kill someone, even if you start shooting their corpse INSTANTLY she still has time to revive them. This is something that Sawbonez or Aura can not do to even nearly the same extent.

You HS a rhino with your SMG, you immediately start “double tapping” him but sparks revives him (making him invincible whilst getting up) before you can finish him off and then you run out of ammo in your mag, boom you are dead.

(Advanced) #6

[quote=“insaneCylinder;32183”]It’s absolutely awful, every time there is a sparks and you kill someone, even if you start shooting their corpse INSTANTLY she still has time to revive them. This is something that Sawbonez or Aura can not do to even nearly the same extent.

You HS a rhino with your SMG, you immediately start “double tapping” him but sparks revives him (making him invincible whilst getting up) before you can finish him off and then you run out of ammo in your mag, boom you are dead. [/quote]

This was an issue before sparks (If there is a sawbonez/aura close you are never gibing them in time with anything but a knife.)

Sparks just makes this issue more relevant and in your face. They needed to make gibbing easier for months now.

(Disquieted1) #7

[quote=“Advanced;32182”][quote=“Disquieted1;32127”]From my experience (which is little considering how I don’t have Sparks)…
In my opinion Sparks’ revives should kick in after a certain period. Possibly 1 or 2 seconds. It would let her keep the ranged revive while forcing both parties to be quick about finishing or reviving. Finish before revive, or revive before finish. Currently, only the second option is available.[/quote]

That would make her useless in any 5v5 team vs team scenarios. It might work in pubs, but you never balance a game around pub play.[/quote]

Fair enough. I’m all for a smaller time-to-kill and a smaller damage-to-finish.

(insaneCylinder) #8

[quote=“Advanced;32188”][quote=“insaneCylinder;32183”]It’s absolutely awful, every time there is a sparks and you kill someone, even if you start shooting their corpse INSTANTLY she still has time to revive them. This is something that Sawbonez or Aura can not do to even nearly the same extent.

You HS a rhino with your SMG, you immediately start “double tapping” him but sparks revives him (making him invincible whilst getting up) before you can finish him off and then you run out of ammo in your mag, boom you are dead. [/quote]

This was an issue before sparks (If there is a sawbonez/aura close you are never gibing them in time with anything but a knife.)

Sparks just makes this issue more relevant and in your face. They needed to make gibbing easier for months now.[/quote]

Invulnerability wasn’t a thing before sparks patch, when sawbonez or aura revives they need to be there and be exposed to enemy fire, often when sparks revives someone I have JUST KILLED I can not even see her so even if I manage to kill the enemy again it’s pointless because she will keep reviving them.

(Gi.Am) #9

First of you don’t fix a single Merc by nerfing mechanics that affect all medics.*

Second Sparks is fine as is (or rather UP). Yes she is strong in open fields sitting somewhere behind, But guess what she is the worst 1 on 1 closerange merc in the game so far. Sure she does fine on the long stretches in Chapel and Trainyard but I rather have a Sawbonez or an Aura in the close combat mayhem of 75% of all encounters in Dirtybomb not only will they hold their own better in those situations their defibs work better and don’t get blocked by team mates.

Also not only does she need sightline her rezgun has a very visible trail that shows you where she is hiding.

*Making finishing easier is a overall nerf to medics and forces medics to stay even closer to their teammates. Since the only chance they have, if finishing becomes easymode, to a revive is standing directly besides their team mates all the time. Unless you make finishing so easy that it is impossible to revive at all, but then we can remove the whole decap/gibbing/revive mechanics altogether.

(GregHouseMD) #10

Just shoot Sparks twice in the head with literally* any gun, and your problems will go away instantly. Heck, a mean look is generally enough to send Sparks running for the hills.

Yes, you need to gib downed players instantly if there’s a medic around. Yes, there usually is a medic around. And, yes, good players are very much capable of doing that. Sparks does have a minimal charge time on her REVIVR. It’s not much, but between reaction times and that, there’s plenty of time to hit 3 and LMB.

Unless Sparks is already aiming, and in fact reading a charge in anticipation of a teammate going down. Which happens. I do it. In those cases, you might not have the time. Nor should you really expect to. I mean, that’s no different from if there’d been a medic right beside the person. Except if there was a medic right beside them, you’d be dealing with two players directly instead of just one, so it’s still a better situation.

*not literally - sidearms may take three shots

(giftedStatue) #11

I think a little workaround with revives should fix this, but it would have to be done in a way that wouldn’t change reviving in other situations.

My idea for this would be if someone was getting repeatedly revived over and over (say, 5 times within 5 seconds) their revive immunity would stop. Now, don’t freak out on me about this, because in most situations you would never see this change pop up. You would only really see it happen in the specific situation that OP describes, where an enemy is made essentially immortal by just being revived over and over and over the instant he dies by a medic standing behind cover (and with sparks you could do it with a teammate halfway across the map!).

Unfortunately, I do have to admit I’ve abused the aforementioned strategy in pubs before the Sparks update. I’ve stuck behind a corner with a Rhino in the doorway throwing out a few shotgun blasts with his revive immunity, but never actually dying when he goes down because I was repeatedly charging my defib to full and hitting him with it the instant he dropped. He ended up clearing the entire room and cleared my team to plant C4.

Of course, the whole ‘getting up’ part of reviving now was obviously put it to prevent doing the above with Sparks, and it’s very effective as it makes it difficult for your zombie of choice to do much damage inbetween revives. However, the problem of keeping him alive indefinitely is still there, and a Sparks positioned in the backline where she has sight of her allies but not her enemies can just sit there spamming her revivr at someone to let them get to cover again scott-free. With Aura or Sawbones you can shoot them as they come over to the body, but Sparks can revive people with absolutely no danger to herself, making her very convenient for abusing chain revives.

So that’s why I think that a change should be made to chain-reviving a single person, but it needs to be done in a way that it will never show up in a game unless you’re blatantly exploiting chain-revive. Chances are if you revive the same guy 5 times in 5 seconds you’re just pocketing him to make him immortal, which isn’t fair to your enemies OR your teammates (come on, share the love).

(Ghosthree3) #12

Earlier I killed the same Aura 4 times in a row landing nothing but headshots as she was revived repeatedly. She was a meter in front of me but I never had time to finish her before the revive came out. I may have been able to had I been on top of her with a knife to finish but that wasn’t an option as I would have died moving out from where I was.

Absolutely retarded. Eventually I just had no ammo left and got killed by her - yes she ended up living.

Another time I killed a Proxy on the top floor near the elevator on the first point of Underground, she died near the rails just a bit out from the elevator doors. I left her to deal with the other opponent and she got revived through the rails from a Sparks on the ground on the other side of the map near where the attackers come out on the right side - defenders perspective.

What the fuck.

What makes it even harder is the fact that in the first fraction of a second after dying the ragdoll is invulnerable, you can hit the head and hear the ‘tink tink’ but no hitmarkers come up and no damage is done. This means you have to wait until they’ve pretty much hit the floor to finish them off, this gives Sparks more than enough time to get the revive.

The only way that seems to work almost 100% of the time is to knife them right as they die as this doesn’t suffer from the ragdoll invulnerability.

She is absolute h3ll to play against in pub play where people are running around everywhere and she can safely stay back and just focus on reviving everybody. Sparks is cancer.

EDIT: h3ll is a swear…lmao

(Shananuga) #13

Well there are several ways to counter reviving sprees actually. Explosives, sniper headshots and what most do not know, If you shoot the head of a downed enemy he dies instantly. A well played medic/rhino lockdown can be annoying but is not absolute. As for sparks, I think once phantom gets out we will see lots of behaviour changes. Sparks is easy to spot and can be zoned out too. I dont really see the problem here.

(avidCow) #14

A lot of this sounds like sour grapes, and I don’t see the problem now tbh since the Sparks patch cut the useful invulnerability in half afaik.

Instead of just complaining about that the time the opposing medic was doing their job and that made me upset, offer a suggestion for SD.

I’ll make a start…

In order to combat ‘revive trains’ I propose that prone health should be reduced to 75% of regular health.

p.s shooting the head is not an instant tap out, it simply does extra damage as usual.

(aneki) #15

There are ways to counter this and it should be encouraged to position yourself properly when killing a tank (fragger, rhino, skyhammer). Instead of shooting the corpse, you can pull out your knife and insta-gib. This is insanely fast if switching to knife and hitting instead of the auto-knife. You can also bodyblock the reviver and get in the way of his revive.

The issue is on public servers, and not existant in competitive as of yet. Please don’t dumb the game down. I’m still waiting for the “impossible to master”-part.

(traq) #16

Those of you who are saying “just kill her” are missing the point. Also for those who say she’s not used in comp - how many tournaments have there been since she was introduced?

Like it or not, this game, like every other FPS ever, if it succeeds, will be mainly played on public servers. If you don’t want to improve the gameplay in public games you should just say so and we can save ourselves the argument.

Either her revive ability is going to exploit already existant problems in this game or it’s not. Time will tell I suppose, but I’d like to know that at least there’s some discussion about this and the devs are aware of the potential issue.

(Ghosthree3) #17

Lol, yeah ok so I should just kill the Rhino in the middle of the street where I can be shot from 4 different angles so I can knife him and prevent the revive. Nice, I’ll do that.