I dont understand how, a grenade that slows people, has the same cooldown as a grenade that instakills an area…
The whole point of the concussion compared to the frag, was that it was more consistant, compared to the frag grenade, but with a weaker effect…
18seconds seems appropriate for it
People complained Thunder was OP so they nerfed him to a point where his only advantages over Fragger is his health and Timik.
I wish people would see, they would be instantly dead (maybe even gibbed), if a frag grenade was used. It actually requires even more work to take someone out with a concussion grenade, and therefore should be more consistant.
You’re missing an extremely important factor here: Thunder’s concussion grenade has a much shorter fuse time compared to Fragger’s grenade, thus it’s applicable as a panic utility which is why he was, and still is, an obnoxious merc to play against. Taking out an essentially sitting duck really does not require much effort.
Then increase the fuse, or make it cook like fraggers nade
Boom 11 year olds wont rage when killed by skill
I think fragger should have less cooldown actually. If he misses, he’s fucked, if thunder misses, well, he didn’t do it right.
Shooting a heavily slowed target that can’t jump and possibly even see
MEINSIDES.TIFF
Abilities don’t all need to be equal. You can balance a merc based on more than just their primary ability, and in the case of Thunder, he has significantly more HP and access better weapons, which make up for the conc grenade lagging behind the frag grenade.
Same reason guardian can’t heal or hunter can barely spot, they don’t really need to since the rest of their abilities are so good.
The ability to cook doesn’t really help it. I wouldn’t mind a slight fuse time increase, but it’s really easy to hide behind a corner and just pop out with a cooked grenade, which is arguably even more annoying to a new player than getting slowed by a panic conc grenade.
Adding the ability to cook grenades would basically just mean you won’t even have time to look away from a skilled thunder’s grenade, which is a lot worse than it is now.
Takes more skill to shoot slow targets who are likely still able to aim at you VS popping out from behind a corner with a cooked grenade to surprise your enemies lol
The problem with Thunder is that normally by the time Thunder reaches his blinded enemies, the effects of the conc nade are over.
you should consider trying to use it as a defensive/escape ability instead of an offensive ability. with 160hp and good weapons, thunder shouldn’t NEED the concussion to come out on top in most 1v1 fights. But if someone starts chasing you as you’re retreating, you can drop a conq and keep running to safety
If you have to play like that, pretty sure he shouldnt be in the assault category then
Yes, which is why concussion grenade just slows people, not instantly gibbing them. Thats the whole point
But a weak ability needs a short cooldown (18 isnt even bad for him) always. Fragger has more health than javelin, and his ability is weaker than her rocket. Do you see his grenade getting a 35 second cooldown?
No? Exactly…
The only reason people complain about Thunder is mostly a game mode problem and not a Thunder problem. In pubs where you have 7 people on your team and everyone can afford to spread way out, we get the usual experience for Thunder; a crappy ability that might get you a kill at most if someone isn’t paying attention, but can otherwise be ignored (I haven’t tried avoiding a conc nade in…uh…almost 2 years now I guess). But in 5v5, where it’s dangerous to spread out and teams are usually packed together in a ball, you suddenly blind and freeze an entire team, with your teammates rushing in right after to pick up the kills for you. And that’s just too good.
Fragger on the other hand is a different problem. Giving him more nades (which is effectively what happens when you lower the cooldown) just makes him infinitely more powerful. Grenades are already a guaranteed 1 or 2 or 3 kills (I honestly forget the last time I threw a Fragger nade and didn’t get a kill) and he’s the most pocketed class meaning always at full health. Even in 7v7 he would be too dominant, and the problem would just be worse in 5v5; ranked play would just shift back to what it used to be: Who has the better Fragger?
I dunno why you’re so fixated on these two classes. Fragger is perfect as is, Thunder has a terrible conc nade in pubs and conc nades in general are too good for 5v5.
The real answer is buff Thunder nades and make everything 6v6. It’s the perfect middle of giving you enough players to spread out and not get wrecked by a Thunder, but few enough that spreading out too much is dangerous.
Concs in a “fast, skill-based” shooter is retarded. No timing or ability involved, just faceroll to victory. Other player isn’t even allowed to play the game they thought they were going to play when they booted this devless piece of shit up. Thunder is an abortion who is anathema to the very principles core to Dirty Bomb’s gameplay. I don’t understand why this is a difficult concept. Remove the slow and then we’ll talk.
If they start removing mercs to make the game more fast and skill-based you will end up with playing Quake…
He’s talking about removing abilities that are basically the antithesis of what would promote the kind of fast, skill-based game a lot of us want to play. From DB I want fast, frantic gunplay, not to fight turrets, get slowed to a crawl or insta-die from an invisible merc specifically designed to AVOID head on combat.
In fact for me, mines, airstrikes, laser and arty strikes can go too.
There’s no rule that says a weaker ability needs a shorter cooldown. Cooldowns are just another way to balance abilities really, you shouldn’t think of them any differently than other numbers like AoE/damage/duration/etc.
And thinking about them as just another stat, long cooldowns on a bad ability can be justified against things like HP/movement speed/weapons/etc just like everything else.
As thunder is now, his high performance more than makes up for a weaker ability with a longer cooldown. The conc grenade is still by no means a bad ability after all.
I really can’t understand why you hate Thunder so much when Fragger has basically all of the same issues, but worse
Thunder:
Fragger:
So how is Thunder any worse than Fragger? He can’t cook his grenade to instakill people before they have a chance to react, getting damaged from a grenade means you need to heal before you can do anything else, whereas thunder’s wears off in a couple seconds, and you have to rush in to finish off your enemies who, if you didn’t hit them dead on, are still more than capable of doing significant damage to you?
If you honestly think having to cook his grenade is justification for fragger being basically even less skillful in every regard you mentioned, then you’re vastly overstating the amount of skill needed to hold down a button for a second and walk out from behind a corner. It only takes a couple of throws to get used to his arc and travel time, and when I was still getting used to DB, it was by far one of the easiest “skills” to learn.
Ultimately what’s worse, getting slown down for 2 seconds by something that you can avoid relatively easily, or being instantly blown up from behind a corner by something you can’t avoid? Because both take the same amount of skill.
Have you played W:ET or ET:QW? W:ET had panzers, mines, rifle grenades, artillery, air strikes, snipers (OK, arguably better than the one hit one kill snipers in DB), also mortars. Covert Ops had a remote satchel charge. Every class had grenades (which were slightly less powerful as Fragger’s IIRC)! ET:QW had the types of shields Turtle and Guardian have. This stuff is what you would expect to find in an SD game. I guess the concussion grenade is “new”, but I don’t feel it’s either too weak or too powerful.
The major difference between those games and DB is that DB lacks any controls for limiting the amount of spam, e.g. by limiting / banning specific mercs and classes. Making that configurable in community servers would be great…
Apart from the conc grenade, you are addressing the abilities I mentioned in passing, not the ones I primarily indicated as problematic. Conc grenades slowing you down, invisible mercs designed for surprise kills and turrets are NOT conducive to a fast paced shooter, regardless of what any other game does or doesn’t have.
It sounds like your “logic” is to put maximum content out, regardless of how garbage it is or how detrimental to the game, and let the players dig the gems out of the shit? More is definitely not, necessarily, better.
Why balance mercs at all? Just add more! Teleporting/ invincible/ flying mercs sound awesome, just give us the means to exclude them from servers!
DB is DB. Whether or not area denial can be part of whatever genre you want DB to be doesn’t matter, because DB is what it is. Games can be more than one genre, and very few games are perfect epitomes of their genre. More often than not they’re mixtures of different things.
Ultimately it’s not so much a matter of these objects not belonging in DB, it’s a matter of you not liking the type of genre the objects stem from, and wanting DB to change its genre to be more like what you want.
Wanting to remove area denial and whatever else from DB would be like me asking Overwatch or TF2 to add sprinting to their games. Those games already have their own identity, and it’s unrealistic to expect them to change and shun their fans just because the way that they are doesn’t fit with my preferences