Thoughts on Fragger

(Guilte) #1

Currently Fragger will win just about every one on one against another mercenary because of the damage output of his gun, as well as his higher HP.

The primary difference between the Fragger class and the other classes is his ability to throw grenades, which should be the primary focus of the class. Removing the ability to cook grenades is not the right route to take. I think that in order to balance the Fragger class, a couple of things need to be done.

  1. Reduce the damage on the Fragger’s default gun. This is one of the main reasons why he wins most one on ones. He already has the most HP out of all the current mercenaries, he doesn’t need higher damage too.
  2. Remove the ability to cancel cooking a grenade by switching weapons.
  3. Higher cool down on grenades. This will make smart players save their grenades for groups of players just off respawn, rather than winning a one on one.
  4. Reduce the grenade count to 1 grenade, further promoting saving your grenade for a time when it has a bigger outcome on the match.

I also want to touch on another thing: Bigger maps (example: Dome) will make Fragger less effective. Obviously, there are certain points where Fragger is definitely helpful, but slow movement speed and far lines of sight make Fragger and his grenades less effective.

These are just my opinions. Respond with what you think.

(Furiosus) #2

[quote=“worthyCube;3675”]1. Reduce the damage on the Fragger’s default gun. This is one of the main reasons why he wins most one on ones. He already has the most HP out of all the current mercenaries, he doesn’t need higher damage too.
2. Remove the ability to cancel cooking a grenade by switching weapons.[/quote]

These two are the key points for me. Number 2 is the most important.

If the 5v5 tournament had gone on, we’d see that fraggers nades would win the majority of matches. Fragger isn’t even used as a tank in 5v5 - he simply waits for medics to bait in the other team and then to pop out with a perfectly cooked nade.

Why even bother shooting enemies when you have two grenades that can wipe out teams?

But the real source of this problem is that medics have forced teams to ball up so they can get their instant resses.

Here’s my last game, just so no one can say “Fraggers aren’t op!”:

Game balance is fucked right now. Explosives are the counter to ressing, ressing is OP too - neither being so powerful are conducive to a skill based FPS.

(Milky Mac) #3

[quote=“Furiosus;15204”][quote=“worthyCube;3675”]1. Reduce the damage on the Fragger’s default gun. This is one of the main reasons why he wins most one on ones. He already has the most HP out of all the current mercenaries, he doesn’t need higher damage too.
2. Remove the ability to cancel cooking a grenade by switching weapons.[/quote]

These two are the key points for me. Number 2 is the most important.

If the 5v5 tournament had gone on, we’d see that fraggers nades would win the majority of matches. Fragger isn’t even used as a tank in 5v5 - he simply waits for medics to bait in the other team and then to pop out with a perfectly cooked nade.

Why even bother shooting enemies when you have two grenades that can wipe out teams?

But the real source of this problem is that medics have forced teams to ball up so they can get their instant resses.

Here’s my last game, just so no one can say “Fraggers aren’t op!”:

Game balance is fucked right now. Explosives are the counter to ressing, ressing is OP too - neither being so powerful are conducive to a skill based FPS.[/quote]

They seem op because all the other mercs that counter them are not in the game right now which is why i’ve been asking them to release all mercs at once. Tweaking one at a time wont be accruate. This is because depending on what mercs are in the game others will be stronger or weaker.

Currently though I have no issue killing fraggers since I snipe and 1 HS = Insta gib.

(strawberryJacket) #4

[quote=“Milky Mac;15214”]

They seem op because all the other mercs that counter them are not in the game right now which is why i’ve been asking them to release all mercs at once. Tweaking one at a time wont be accruate. This is because depending on what mercs are in the game others will be stronger or weaker.

Currently though I have no issue killing fraggers since I snipe and 1 HS = Insta gib.[/quote]

Which merc do you even consider to be a counter to fragger ? The only 2 i can think of that can somehow deal with fragger would probably be rhino and nader but i wouldnt even call them counters (especially that fragger have long range weapons when both of them have short range).

When you play a sniper its obviously less of a problem when you sits in another part of the map and not being annoyed by grenades and his insane duelist potential.

(Eox) #5

I’d more directly attack the cooking mechanic. One unavoidable nade of doom with a 45 seconds CD is still an unavoidable nade of doom : you won’t be able to avoid it up to middle range, which is basically why that ability is considered as blatantly overpowered and brings so much rage. I also don’t really want to hinder Fragger’s flexibility (two nades are much more flexible than one).

If someone played Halo, remember the frag grenade in that game. Not cookable, a bit hard to use and bouncy, but rewarding enough and not totally unavoidable. It allows some nice tricks and are far from being totally unavoidable. Making it work a bit like this one would be nice : make it detonate after two seconds or something, and remove cooking. You can also tweak it based on surface contact, if the nade touches something solid, it will explode after 1.5 seconds.

Another user also suggested to not remove cooking, but instead giving to nades a minimum timer. It could also be a good idea.

(Pogo) #6

Only one nade with a larger cooldown seems like a pretty radical change. Raising the cook-time until a frag detonates would be a decent way to prevent grenades from being spammed.

I could be wrong, but it feels like health regen has changed a lot since Closed Beta from a year ago. If it takes longer to regen health, players are going to play more defensively and use cover more often. Which is kind of what is so useful about frag grenades since you can just pop one out if you can predict it well enough.

(Amerika) #7

I still find it hilarious that if you see a Fragger that is shooting, then suddenly he’s not shooting anymore, and people don’t move from where they are and eat the nade he was cooking. Then get upset about it. It’s so easy to avoid and bait nades.

I’m fine with Fragger being nerfed a bit as I think you shouldn’t be able to switch weapons after cooking (this is where 50% or more of my nade kills comes from on Fragger) and maybe increase the respawn time while reducing aoe damage slightly or have it drop off quite a bit.

But yeah…some of you really need to notice these things as it will make the game quite a bit less riling.

(TemplarMedic) #8

What if Fragger had a longer weapon swap and grenade swap time? I’d still say remove the swapping to weapon while cooking but aside from that…make it so that it takes more than .5 seconds to go from cooking a nade to his weapon or from his weapon to his nade.

Sure he could still sit behind cover, but it would discourage him from nading people out in the open or while already under fire.

(einstyle) #9

if the opponent fragger starts nading midfight, you shouldn’t have a problem killing him anyways (if he decides to cook the nade it gives you a fair amount of time to headshot him, and if he lets go of the nade immediately, you can just walk away while shooting him as he has wasted his time taking out the nades and switching back to his main weapon)
so I think the problem isn’t Fraggers fragging out in the open so much as Fraggers sitting behind corners and chucking out those perfectly timed nades from safety

(bumbertyr) #10

Fragger nades?

(smartIsland) #11

At this point I honestly have no problem with anything except the K121

(son!) #12

my problem with fragger is that people will try and straight up fight fragger as any merc. When I play fragger, RARELY do I see non-fraggers back off from a fight. Proxies, vassilis (using their secondary smg), auras, what have you will commit fully to the 1v1 with a fragger. They have no concept of waiting for others to help and no concept of poke damage–it’s all 100% +w commitment. If you are also rolling a fragger you have a coin-flip chance in taking the fight. if you’re not playing a fragger your odds are by default going to be quite a bit worse.
fragger outfragging everyone? class is working as designed…
now is fragger gibbing full team pushes too often with his nades? yes. but you fix that by making it more difficult to have a nade primed and ready for a team push. force fraggers to play smart and conserve their nades by removing re-priming. similarly players can play smart and think about baiting fragger nades before committing to a push. re-balancing the game to try and fix stupid play does not make sense.

(Szakalot) #13

All those people who don’t see how the nades are OP, I don’t know what to say; I guess you haven’t played against good fraggers. The annoyance comes from a lack of counter. Nade is the best ability in the game, I’d take it over defibs, ammo,heartbeat sensor, or OBJ PDA.

Sure, noob fragger’s won’t cook the nades making you think you can ‘dodge’. Proper fragger will throw it in your face in 0.2 second with no dodge possibility, I’d often try to long-jump as soon as I see a fragger priming a nade and it would still get me.

TL;DR: fragger’s nades have no counter and scale even worse with player skill.

(Zenity) #14

Grenades can be “countered” just like snipers can be “countered”, with game awareness. Not always of course (that would make them useless), but the amount of times you die from these depends directly on your movements.

I think Fragger is fine on pubs, but could well do with some tweaks. For better or worse, he’s by far the easiest to get a lot of kills with (and that usually means topping the scoreboard).

For competitive play that’s what the competitive players need to agree on. It seems there is some disagreement there as well, so I really hope we’ll have a tournament soon to get some clear answers.

In any case though, I think it’s a realistic expectation that the next patch will have some tweaks for Fragger, and he’ll most likely still be just as viable. I don’t think he needs to be smashed with the nerfbat just yet, but thankfully that isn’t SD’s style anyway.

(mOist) #15

EDIT: its op.

(Draceus) #16

Most of these points are totally invalid from a competitive view. Sure, fragger is strong but that is his role in this game, to win 1v1 or 1v2 fights is his job. You want to nerf him so hard that his nades are useless and his gun is as well and that he loses a 1v1 vs a sky?
That completely removes the viability of the class.

This is exactly right, people expect to win a 1v1 vs a fragger as a proxy, when they dont they cry about how OP it is.
You can counter the fragger with a skilled sniper for the 1 shot gib or you can use your brain to try and predict where the nades are going to land and not bunch up 5 people together.
The class would also be totally fine in 5v5 competitive mode if there was a 1 fragger rule. Now there is not such a rule and he can be a bit to strong but nerfing him to the ground is not the answer

(Glot) #17

i think most of the suggestions are not about nerfing him to the ground. but nerfing him a little bit, so that instead of being Overpowered, he will be Powered.
Right now he is (his nades are) overpowered.
I thoughtfull nerf to nades, that will keep them As powerfull as they are now, but will demand more skill in timing and more precise map awareness and battlesense - this will be a good step.

so as suggested by many i vote for
-no weaponswitch-cancel (treasure your nades, be carefull with them)
-longer cook (more comparable to TTK on Fragger. if he is exposed and cooking - you can try to take him out)
-slower nade speed (so that ppl can dodge them to some extent)

and mb
-longer cooldown (less spam)

(Amerika) #18

[quote=“son!;15392”]my problem with fragger is that people will try and straight up fight fragger as any merc. When I play fragger, RARELY do I see non-fraggers back off from a fight. Proxies, vassilis (using their secondary smg), auras, what have you will commit fully to the 1v1 with a fragger. They have no concept of waiting for others to help and no concept of poke damage–it’s all 100% +w commitment. If you are also rolling a fragger you have a coin-flip chance in taking the fight. if you’re not playing a fragger your odds are by default going to be quite a bit worse.
fragger outfragging everyone? class is working as designed…
now is fragger gibbing full team pushes too often with his nades? yes. but you fix that by making it more difficult to have a nade primed and ready for a team push. force fraggers to play smart and conserve their nades by removing re-priming. similarly players can play smart and think about baiting fragger nades before committing to a push. re-balancing the game to try and fix stupid play does not make sense.[/quote]

Yup. Pretty much this exactly. If you’ve seen @son! play as a proxy you are seeing a guy doing it right. He never even tries to directly engage a Fragger without the upperhand and instead takes poking shots and used the speed of his class to do the job. Most people don’t play like that outside of the experienced competitors. He doesn’t get hit by a Fragger priming nades because he doesn’t stick around. Others simply sit there and eat them then get upset.

I think nades should still definitely be able to be primed as you need to stop pushes in some cases in competitive but I do believe the ability to prime them then switch weapons should be removed. Making you need to commit to that throw. Then see how the class works and possibly tone down the respawn rate/damage accordingly.

Nerfing the gun, the HP and the nades all at the same time is not the best idea because it will make the class go from being possibly a bit too good (considering his role) to being completely worthless.

(DadoPeja) #19

“I do believe the ability to prime them then switch weapons should be removed.” +1

This should balance it !

(riptide) #20

The only change he needs is cancelling a cooked nade. He should be forced to commit and if he guesses wrong or the team avoids him after a peek. Then the opposing team can push while it’s on cd.

I know some people will say “but his team can tell him in voip where to nade” and all I can say to that is… good because a team working together should be rewarded.