Shotgun- and Sniperchanges some thoughts

[Da_Mummy]

Everybody had been waiting for the shotguns to be changed and we all were happy when the devs announced that they want them to be more aim-rewarding.
Now that the update has dropped it has been a little depressing to me. Not because of the changes to the shotguns, they were actually kinda cool, but because of the changes to other weapons and mercs that came with that.
So I sat down with some friends (min. Level 20) and we all agreed that they effectively killed mercs like Arty, Kira and with an overkill Redeye. Their whole primary set got slaughtered and they got nothing to compensate. Fragger got his Pinaple nerfed and the changes to Thunder aren’t even worth mentioning. The only merc that benefited was Guardian, which none of us really liked but that’s just opinion.
As for weapons: the Dreiss is poor, the Stark and BR mediocre and the Grandeur only a Meme on crutches now (seriouslyyou can shoot at a rhinos feet and the next shot is above his head and the damage can’t even onehit the light mercs anymore which is dumb)
The Revolver-changes were good and fine so please just leave them like that, they should stay more than just style points.

In Conclusion: We all appreciate the concern about balance from you guys, but please don’t be confused by some level 3 that wants something to be nerfed just because he got dominated by a decent redeye with the Grandeur. Sometimes the answer “git good” is actually an option

[frostyvampire]

Redeye is still OP though. I’m still waiting for a nerf on him where you can see his eye glowing red through smokes. And the PDP got buffed again while bolt actions nerfed…

[ThunderZsolt]

I played with the Stark and Dreiss a lot since the update (well, not just since the update, those 2 are my most used guns). They got definately harder to use, but I wouldn’t say slaughtered.

The dreiss was way too good, I could double headshot enemies across the map while firing from the hip. It didn’t have any significant recoil or spread, and you could just spam shots close to max fire rate and still have more than 40% accuracy (as I did).

Now it rewards taking your time to aim at mid-range, while still spam-able in CQC - I’d say it is balanced.

Burst rifles on the other hand are in a strange spot now. According to the devs, the idea behind nerfing them was prevent players landing full headshot-bursts dealing 100+ damage almost instantly.
Funny thing is, I can still do that in close range, but because of the bigger recoil, I’d prefer full auto weapons at mid-range now. This means that the nerf didn’t solve the problem, but made the gun worse where it should be the best.

I’m still experimenting, will post again on this topic later.

[CombatMist]

Dont forget others with 2-3 messed up primaries now.

Rhino: All primaries, less crit to zero crit on mini gun and med station (pretty much all aspects of play)
Fragger:1 primary and 2 nerfs to nades, and weaker med station making tanking harder
Fletcher: All primaries
Proxy: 2/3 primaries
Aura: 2/3 primaries and med station
Javelin: 2/3 primaries
Redeye: 2/3 primaries
Aimee: 1-2 primaries but buffed snitch
Vassili: 1-2 primaries
Arty: all primaries
Kira: all primaries
Thunder: 1 primary and weaker med station making tanking harder

Thats 12 mercs highly impacted by this patch! Thats crippling to about 1/2 of those who this messes up all their weapons and strategies.

[GatoCommodore]

@CombatMist said:
Dont forget others with 2-3 messed up primaries now.

Rhino: All primaries, less crit to zero crit on mini gun and med station (pretty much all aspects of play)
Fragger:1 primary and 2 nerfs to nades, and weaker med station making tanking harder
Fletcher: All primaries
Proxy: 2/3 primaries
Aura: 2/3 primaries and med station
Javelin: 2/3 primaries
Redeye: 2/3 primaries
Aimee: 1-2 primaries but buffed snitch
Vassili: 1-2 primaries
Arty: all primaries
Kira: all primaries
Thunder: 1 primary and weaker med station making tanking harder

Thats 12 mercs highly impacted by this patch! Thats crippling to about 1/2 of those who this messes up all their weapons and strategies.

BR-16 is still good tho, its only stark that went poo-poo

[Da_Mummy]

@frostyvampire said:
Redeye is still OP though. I’m still waiting for a nerf on him where you can see his eye glowing red through smokes. And the PDP got buffed again while bolt actions nerfed…

But now they even reduced the XP gained for even doing his job so it’s even less apealing for a redeye to be an actual “Recon”
Also why do people think that just because you can’t see an enemy means he can’t be hit. He always got punished by fullauto Assaults and it’s not like the smoke gives any damage reduction. And sure I also feel sorry for the Felix Users that are kinda tied to an Ammostation nowadays.

[frostyvampire]

@Da_Mummy said:

@frostyvampire said:
Redeye is still OP though. I’m still waiting for a nerf on him where you can see his eye glowing red through smokes. And the PDP got buffed again while bolt actions nerfed…

But now they even reduced the XP gained for even doing his job so it’s even less apealing for a redeye to be an actual “Recon”
Also why do people think that just because you can’t see an enemy means he can’t be hit. He always got punished by fullauto Assaults and it’s not like the smoke gives any damage reduction. And sure I also feel sorry for the Felix Users that are kinda tied to an Ammostation nowadays.

Xp doesn’t matter. If I told you they added a character with a machinegun that does 100 damage per bullet and has 150hp, but only gets 1xp per kill, does that make him not overpowered?

It doesn’t matter if you can’t hit him or not, the smoke is huge and the enemy team can’t see you while you can see them clearly. If you get killed as Redeye through your smoke often then something is wrong with you.

Every time I play Redeye, I end up dominating not because I’m good, but because I play an overpowered character and it gets boring.
Every time I play against Redeye, I’m forced to go Arty and focus on extinguishing his smokes because else he will dominate our team.

Redeye is overpowered, just because you stand still inside your own smoke and miss a lot so the enemies can shoot you easier doesn’t mean he is balanced. If you throw a smoke 20 meters ahead of you and hide behind some random corner where only your head is visible, you won’t die

[ThunderZsolt]

@Da_Mummy Redeye still gets 100XP for “spotted assist”, so he gets 120XP instead of 160XP - remember, only for looking at enemies. Unless it is Rhino/Thunder/Fragger, he gets as much XP as the player killed them.

You can stand in the smoke, can stand behind it, can throw it on enemies, or just throw it out as a distraction. Smoke doesn’t prevent you from using actual cover, good luck guessing where is Redeye’s head. I don’t think that he is really overpowered, but if you get killed in the smoke, it is your fault.

[Da_Mummy]

@frostyvampire said:

@Da_Mummy said:

@frostyvampire said:
Redeye is still OP though. I’m still waiting for a nerf on him where you can see his eye glowing red through smokes. And the PDP got buffed again while bolt actions nerfed…

But now they even reduced the XP gained for even doing his job so it’s even less apealing for a redeye to be an actual “Recon”
Also why do people think that just because you can’t see an enemy means he can’t be hit. He always got punished by fullauto Assaults and it’s not like the smoke gives any damage reduction. And sure I also feel sorry for the Felix Users that are kinda tied to an Ammostation nowadays.

Xp doesn’t matter. If I told you they added a character with a machinegun that does 100 damage per bullet and has 150hp, but only gets 1xp per kill, does that make him not overpowered?

It doesn’t matter if you can’t hit him or not, the smoke is huge and the enemy team can’t see you while you can see them clearly. If you get killed as Redeye through your smoke often then something is wrong with you.

Every time I play Redeye, I end up dominating not because I’m good, but because I play an overpowered character and it gets boring.
Every time I play against Redeye, I’m forced to go Arty and focus on extinguishing his smokes because else he will dominate our team.

Redeye is overpowered, just because you stand still inside your own smoke and miss a lot so the enemies can shoot you easier doesn’t mean he is balanced. If you throw a smoke 20 meters ahead of you and hide behind some random corner where only your head is visible, you won’t die

Alright
Backpaddeling a bit
What I ment to say is that the changes to his weapons weren’t that great to me. If wanted to start a discussion on OP Mercs everybody has their opinion and everybody keeps crying about phantom, proxy and thunder, if you can aim and use your abilities every Merc can be strong, but using an allround weaponnerf as a counter to a strong pair of abilities doesn’t seem like a good idea.
And to close the Redeye debate I know he is ridiculously strong if you know smokeplacement and how to aim, but he is definitely not broken or OP.

[Da_Mummy]

@CombatMist
I don’t think that the characters with shotguns got their strategys crippled by that. As long as it was more than “run in and shoot somewhere” before that

[Guziol]

The only change that i don’t agree with is grandeur. It’s even worse now and it was already bad. I had good performance with post nerf dreiss and stark. Br was also allright but felt a bit weird with it’s burst delay. Shotguns feels great.

[frostyvampire]

@Da_Mummy said:

@frostyvampire said:

@Da_Mummy said:

@frostyvampire said:
Redeye is still OP though. I’m still waiting for a nerf on him where you can see his eye glowing red through smokes. And the PDP got buffed again while bolt actions nerfed…

But now they even reduced the XP gained for even doing his job so it’s even less apealing for a redeye to be an actual “Recon”
Also why do people think that just because you can’t see an enemy means he can’t be hit. He always got punished by fullauto Assaults and it’s not like the smoke gives any damage reduction. And sure I also feel sorry for the Felix Users that are kinda tied to an Ammostation nowadays.

Xp doesn’t matter. If I told you they added a character with a machinegun that does 100 damage per bullet and has 150hp, but only gets 1xp per kill, does that make him not overpowered?

It doesn’t matter if you can’t hit him or not, the smoke is huge and the enemy team can’t see you while you can see them clearly. If you get killed as Redeye through your smoke often then something is wrong with you.

Every time I play Redeye, I end up dominating not because I’m good, but because I play an overpowered character and it gets boring.
Every time I play against Redeye, I’m forced to go Arty and focus on extinguishing his smokes because else he will dominate our team.

Redeye is overpowered, just because you stand still inside your own smoke and miss a lot so the enemies can shoot you easier doesn’t mean he is balanced. If you throw a smoke 20 meters ahead of you and hide behind some random corner where only your head is visible, you won’t die

Alright
Backpaddeling a bit
What I ment to say is that the changes to his weapons weren’t that great to me. If wanted to start a discussion on OP Mercs everybody has their opinion and everybody keeps crying about phantom, proxy and thunder, if you can aim and use your abilities every Merc can be strong, but using an allround weaponnerf as a counter to a strong pair of abilities doesn’t seem like a good idea.
And to close the Redeye debate I know he is ridiculously strong if you know smokeplacement and how to aim, but he is definitely not broken or OP.

He is OP though. Thunder was OP before the nerf. Nobody ever said that Proxy is OP, she is just annoying. And who has ever complained about Phantom?

Every merc can be strong if you know how to play them, but some mercs are just OP.
It doesn’t matter if you have good aim or average aim, there is no counter to Redeye. The only counter to him is to hide until the smoke expires or use another Redeye (or waste abilities to extinguish his smoke but it doesn’t kill him).

Yes, I disagree that nerfing the weapons he can use is not the right way to deal with him, it’s not the right way to deal with any merc since every merc has 3 different weapons and multiple mercs can use at least 2 of them.

Redeye needs a nerf not because he can be strong if you are good, he needs a nerf because he has no counters and there is no way to deal with him and he doesn’t require that much skill tbh. Fragger grenades can be easily avoided and he is vulnerable while cooking them. Thunder grenades can also be avoided and you can still shoot him. Vassili and Aimee get punished for missing and you can still kill them. Redeye on the other hand is invisible, you can use explosives to extinguish his smoke but it doesn’t even kill him and his cooldown is not that long for it to be as effective. If Redeye was forced to be inside his smoke then he would be balanced, but the way he is now, you have to be dumb to stand inside of it if you are not planting/defusing/repairing.

[Da_Mummy]

@frostyvampire
I said closed. This is all opinion if you think redeye is OP cool but don’t be salty just because I think he isn’t.
Again he is good but not invincible like you are trying to tell me.
And also “who has ever complained about Phantom” ? Seriously? How about half the playerbase

[frostyvampire]

@Da_Mummy said:
@frostyvampire
I said closed. This is all opinion if you think redeye is OP cool but don’t be salty just because I think he isn’t.
Again he is good but not invincible like you are trying to tell me.
And also “who has ever complained about Phantom” ? Seriously? How about half the playerbase

I’m not salty because you disagree with me. I’m salty because every time I see a Redeye, unless he is a noob under level 10 he will dominate my entire team. Doesn’t matter if he is a level 200 sweaty Redeye main or a level 30 average Redeye with average aim.

He is not invincible, but he is invisible. You can’t see him, he can see you.
The nerf he needs is not worse guns, the nerf he needs is his eye to glow red while using the IR goggles. So the right way to play him will be to spot everyone and then turn off the IR vision and shoot the red mark things.

I never saw anyone complaining about Phantom being OP. He is just a dumb merc that needs a rework

[Da_Mummy]

@frostyvampire said:

@Da_Mummy said:
@frostyvampire
I said closed. This is all opinion if you think redeye is OP cool but don’t be salty just because I think he isn’t.
Again he is good but not invincible like you are trying to tell me.
And also “who has ever complained about Phantom” ? Seriously? How about half the playerbase

I’m not salty because you disagree with me. I’m salty because every time I see a Redeye, unless he is a noob under level 10 he will dominate my entire team. Doesn’t matter if he is a level 200 sweaty Redeye main or a level 30 average Redeye with average aim.

He is not invincible, but he is invisible. You can’t see him, he can see you.
The nerf he needs is not worse guns, the nerf he needs is his eye to glow red while using the IR goggles. So the right way to play him will be to spot everyone and then turn off the IR vision and shoot the red mark things.

I never saw anyone complaining about Phantom being OP. He is just a dumb merc that needs a rework

Final agreement as long as this comes with rebalanced weapons I am fine with it
No but as for phantom. I always saw people either demanding a rework, a nerf or buff and for me personally he is just a mishmash of annoying but not threatning for engineers and a weak one man pick class nowadays.

[frostyvampire]

@Da_Mummy said:

@frostyvampire said:

@Da_Mummy said:
@frostyvampire
I said closed. This is all opinion if you think redeye is OP cool but don’t be salty just because I think he isn’t.
Again he is good but not invincible like you are trying to tell me.
And also “who has ever complained about Phantom” ? Seriously? How about half the playerbase

I’m not salty because you disagree with me. I’m salty because every time I see a Redeye, unless he is a noob under level 10 he will dominate my entire team. Doesn’t matter if he is a level 200 sweaty Redeye main or a level 30 average Redeye with average aim.

He is not invincible, but he is invisible. You can’t see him, he can see you.
The nerf he needs is not worse guns, the nerf he needs is his eye to glow red while using the IR goggles. So the right way to play him will be to spot everyone and then turn off the IR vision and shoot the red mark things.

I never saw anyone complaining about Phantom being OP. He is just a dumb merc that needs a rework

Final agreement as long as this comes with rebalanced weapons I am fine with it
No but as for phantom. I always saw people either demanding a rework, a nerf or buff and for me personally he is just a mishmash of annoying but not threatning for engineers and a weak one man pick class nowadays.

Phantom needs a rework. But nobody ever complained about him being OP.
He is fun in pubs against noobs, but his ability is just dumb.

His “invisibility” doesn’t do anything if you are not standing still
The armor is broken with 2-3 shots
His EMP gives away his position
Ever since they gave him the EMP, the cooldown on his armor became too long.
He just needs a massive rework. But he was never OP and if anyone complains about it they must be new to the game or are playing with no headphones and maybe 100p resolution.

I agree that nerfing Dreiss and Grandeur is not a good solution because it harms Aimee (which is already useless after the FEL-IX became trash), Kira and Arty.
Splash Damage should revert this update and rethink everything through. I don’t know how some of these changes even got past testing (if there was any in the first place). Grandeur was balanced after the first nerf to 32 damage on bodyshots, what are they even doing to the PDP, and I won’t even start about the new useless FEL-IX (yes I know, I’m a sniper main so I only mention the snipers).

[LifeupOmega]

@Da_Mummy said:
As for weapons: the Dreiss is poor, the Stark and BR mediocre and the Grandeur only a Meme on crutches now (seriouslyyou can shoot at a rhinos feet and the next shot is above his head and the damage can’t even onehit the light mercs anymore which is dumb)

In Conclusion: We all appreciate the concern about balance from you guys, but please don’t be confused by some level 3 that wants something to be nerfed just because he got dominated by a decent redeye with the Grandeur. Sometimes the answer “git good” is actually an option

One shotting any merc with a hitscan weapon with no cooldown is dumb, Grandeur included. Dreiss is still a top tier AR, the nerf did pretty much nothing to it (You can no longer 3 headshot a Thunder, that’s it) and it still has one of the best TTKs of the AR family.

Grandeur is still fine as is, it was brokenly good before. Maybe the answer is “git good” when using it so you don’t struggle as much

[Sorotia]

@GatoCommodore said:

@CombatMist said:
Dont forget others with 2-3 messed up primaries now.

Rhino: All primaries, less crit to zero crit on mini gun and med station (pretty much all aspects of play)
Fragger:1 primary and 2 nerfs to nades, and weaker med station making tanking harder
Fletcher: All primaries
Proxy: 2/3 primaries
Aura: 2/3 primaries and med station
Javelin: 2/3 primaries
Redeye: 2/3 primaries
Aimee: 1-2 primaries but buffed snitch
Vassili: 1-2 primaries
Arty: all primaries
Kira: all primaries
Thunder: 1 primary and weaker med station making tanking harder

Thats 12 mercs highly impacted by this patch! Thats crippling to about 1/2 of those who this messes up all their weapons and strategies.

BR-16 is still good tho, its only stark that went poo-poo

Joy…there goes my only good ghostclip card…stark sucks so basically my favorite skin which I got one good card of is now useless.

May as well just stick to automatic weapons…I used to play like that and I branched out to BRs and Shotguns a little…never liked the dreiss much and just suck at sniping.

So yeah may as well just play autos…

[Da_Mummy]

@LifeupOmega
Grandeur is still fine as is, it was brokenly good before. Maybe the answer is “git good” when using it so you don’t struggle as much

It isn’t good and I’ve seen enough posts from other people to know that I’m not the only one finding it hard to even consider using it nowadays.
It’s pretty much outclassed by every other Sniperrifle in the game and btw the PDP can still oneshot light mercs and nobody complained about that.

[ThunderZsolt]

@Sorotia said:
So yeah may as well just play autos…

I came up with the same conclusion after more playtesting at the weekend.

I don’t think the burst rifles suck, though. They are OK, and they still hit hard… if they hit. I find the timik-47, shar-c and the M4 more consistent at all ranges.

Looks like my 3 most used weapons will change
from dreiss, stark, BR-16
to dreiss, timik, M4