Thoughts on the Explosives Change

([WAR]Larknok1) #1

In case you didn’t know, the max damage explosion radius for several explosives – Fragger’s Frag, Nader’s Martyrdom and Proxy’s mines – were cut in half in this last patch, bringing them down to 32 cm from 64 cm. In order to “balance” this nerf, the max damage was increased to 180 (instead of 150.)

On paper it’s hard to judge these numbers, but in practice – it’s a massive nerf to Fragger, and it makes Proxy’s Mines and Nader’s Martyrdom even more useless than they were before. So I’ll focus on Fragger here.

64 cm is about 2 feet. Which meant that in the past, if you planted a frag inbetween a party of three enemy mercs all distancing themselves 2 feet from the center (as long as you’re not targetting Rhino) – kabloosh – triple kill. Now, it’s a lot harder. And even if you succeed – you won’t instagib anyone unless your enemies have less than or equal to 80 hp.

This is all speculative of course. Let’s get into the numbers:

Your max kill-radius with Explodydendron on used to be 70.4 cm. Now it’s 35.2 cm. That’s 1 dimensional radius. Let’s put that into 3-d explosive volume terms – because that’s what counts for getting Frag kills: It used to hit ~1.46 m^3 with death. Now it hits ~0.183 m^3 with death.

That’s ONE EIGHTH the volume. This means that not only does this patch require you to be up to 8 times as accurate with Fragger, it also means that the statistical probability of landing a multi-kill frag is way, way lower (a lot less than one eighth.)

I’m not sure what SD intended with this rebalance, but it’s a huge nerf to Fragger. The 1 grenade change wasn’t. It changed how Fragger works. This is a HUGE nerf.

(CCP115) #2

But that’s assuming you want the gib.

All it does is encourage smarter grenades. I will say, before explosives weren’t very skilled. “I think there’s an enemy in that room throws grenade sweet a kill”

I will say that it may hurt him when it comes to competitive, but overall I think this is an alright change.

However, I think proxy mines should still be able to give. They’re bad enough as is.

(triteCherry) #3

I feel that since the nerf to explosives, medics are even more annoying.

(sentimentalDime) #4

I feel the instagib removal from explosives wasn’t needed at all, but, the salty players need to blame something. With this i think they completely destroyed Fragger, yeah sure his min. damage radius was increased, but still, the range the grenades used to have was what gave them that last oomph they needed.

([WAR]Larknok1) #5

To enumarate all the nerfs to Fragger:

  • Frags won’t insta-gib anymore on average targets.
  • Effective Volume is 1/8 of what it used to be. (you can’t hit multiple targets)
  • Effective Radius is 1/2 of what it used to be. (it’s at least twice as hard to hit a single target)
([WAR]Larknok1) #6

Using a private lobby with 3 Rhinos shoulder to shoulder from the EV, I dropped frags in front of the center Rhino a given distance away. The distance was estimated using the “z” key and looking away from the EV to give a distance measurement. All distances had 3 meters subtracted away, because that’s the recording given by standing right next to the EV.

I made measurements on all 3 Rhinos a corrected distance of 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 5.4 meters away from the targets. All non half-integer distances were interpolated using the trigonometry of two adjacent circular targets (approximating Rhino) of radius 0.8 meters.

http://imgur.com/a/JgdTA

In order to fully grasp how significant this result is, I would have to compare it to Fragger pre-patch, or post-patch Fletcher stickies.

Red line is a linearish relation up to ~1 meter away from targets that models the plateau max damage of Fragger’s frags.

Green circle is a seeming discontinuity between the Red line and the Blue curve. This is probably because two equations model Fragger’s damage.

Blue curve is a third order polynomial that best fits the damage curve at distances >1 meter from the Frag detonation. It seems to start around 155 and drop off steadily.

([WAR]Larknok1) #7

boomped

(MrFrozone) #8

Did people actually think that Fragger was balanced before this patch? Let’s review: 2nd most health of any merc, access to 3 decent assault rifles including the M4 (arguably the best gun), decent speed, laughably easy to use grenade which insta-gibs most mercs. What that amounts to is an incredibly powerful merc with a very low skill requirement. But wait, you say he has to cook his grenade. Did I mention the large health pool and ease of use?

This nerf really doesn’t change Fragger as much as you think. He is still very powerful it’s just that his ability has been nerfed from ‘kill everyone in a room every 17 seconds’ to ‘kill 1 or 2 people in a room and massively damage the rest every 17 seconds’. This patch just levels out Fragger’s skill curve a little where before very little skill was needed to get huge rewards, the skill level was slightly increased while the reward was slightly decreased.

(watsyurdeal) #9

While I agree he wasn’t nerfed that much, I don’t think he was unbalanced either.

Someone being good with Fragger just means the merc does it’s job, it’s like saying Sawbonez is op because he heals too good…it’s what he does.