Turtle's Shield

[Jigstraw]

I feel like one-way shields that fully block damage for one team while still allowing the other team to shoot through it are rather overpowered. This may be changing with the upcoming release of Hunter and his deployable-disabling crossbow bolt ability, but just for a moment, let’s pretend that that’s not happening.

I can’t be the only person that thinks turtle’s shield could do with a slight rework. A good sniper is a nightmare to play against, and a good sniper behind a turtle shield is practically untouchable, because you have to expose yourself to them to do anything about the turtle shield, and there’s almost guaranteed to be no way of flanking it or otherwise catching it off guard, because vassili’s heartbeat sensor has a longer duration than cooldown, so it’s got 100% uptime and can spot you coming.

I think turtle would be a lot less frustrating to play against if the shield only fully blocked explosive abilities, and had a completely different interaction with bullets. What if the turtle shield, instead of completely stopping bullets, lowered their velocity by absorbing some of the kinetic energy from the bullets as they pass through the shield, resulting in those bullets doing reduced damage against the target on the other side of the shield. For the sake of argument, let’s say the shield cuts their damage in half, but takes the half of the damage removed to its own HP pool. This way, people behind turtle shields wouldn’t be completely untouchable, and would also no longer be immune to aimpunch. If this change were implemented, you’d at least have a chance at throwing a sniper’s aim off by shooting at them. This change would also prevent the absolute cheese that is putting a mine in the final objective carriages on terminal, and then placing an outward-facing turtle shield inside the carriage to prevent the mine from being destroyed from a safe distance. Another instance of the shield’s current function creating absolute cheese is when turtles strafe back and forth across their shield in close quarters combat, making it nearly impossible to damage them with gunfire.

The ability would still be quite useful for the team using it, because cutting your enemy’s damage in half is still very powerful, especially when you have a health station set up alongside the shield. Or a bushwhacker turret. The only thing I’d buff about the shield if this change were implemented, is making players completely destroy the energy shield, opposed to destroying the metal shield generator bit at the bottom that has less health, since completely destroying the shield would no longer be necessary to get at the people behind it. Stacking multiple turtle shields might be problematic if not coded correctly though. Hopefully the turtle-stacking scenario would be affected by the law of diminishing returns; One shield cuts damage by 1/2, the second shield cuts damage by an additional 1/4, the third shield cuts damage by an additional 1/8, etc., if shield stacking is allowed to have any effect at all.

[Gire]

tldr
i have never been in situations myself that Turtle seemed OP, more like he should get buffed

[Splicerrr]

The shield can be easily destroyed with multiple players shooting at it or with explosives. Never try to take out turtles shield by yourself when there are multiple enemies behind it and try to find a way around it. Also heres a tip: The shield generator itself (the bottom part of it) has less health than the actual shield when deployed. Although you can only shoot at it from behind the shield because it is protected from the front. Try to use explosives to take out the enemies behind the shield by throwing them over the shield. If there is only one enemy behind the shield just long jump past it and kill him.

The shield is definitely not op and turtle is actually an underrated engineer from what I see. Its pretty useless if the enemy team has an air support or javelin, since it will easily take them out. Like @Gire said, the shield should have a bit more health.

[Drac0rion]

The shield actually is OP if you consider DB to be a skill based shooter. I’m not saying it’s crazy OP, but it’s still slightly overtuned for DB.

It’s the only ability in the entire game that requires a counterpick. If Turtle does manage to fully deploy his shield, you’re not going to solo push through it with just your guns.

The current shield has what, 500hp? Considering average merc hp to be 120, the shield has a value of over 4 mercs and the shield doesn’t even take any critical damage from the front. And that’s still without the augment.

From the latest patch notes:

Turtle’s Shield Generator can play a pivotal role in defending an Objective or covering his allies. However, it can prove a little too effective at times in choke-points, with very little the enemy team can do to break past the barrier. A lower base unit health encourages Turtle to position his shield carefully, and the bullet multiplier increase will make taking out the shield with regular gun-fire a little easier.

Even SD is slowly realizing that the shield is overtuned.

The shield doesn’t need much adjustment, but Turtle would be more balanced overall if SD would shift the shield purpose more from defense to offense. In other words reduce the hp pool, but also reduce the cooldown. Then Turtle wouldn’t be able to set up as strong bunkers for camping on defense, but he could push up and be much more useful on offense.

[henki000]

Yes, turtle can be handy. But not OP in my opinion.

I suggest that instead of nerfing shield’s health, let’s double it health and cooldown time. It will make counters more effective and use of shield more tactical. You need to be close to recovering shield back before it gets destroyed. But it should be still weak against airstrikes. Also cut Turtles health 5-15hp, but make own hitbox to bionic arm that is 75% more durable.

[GatoCommodore]

@henki000 said:
Yes, turtle can be handy. But not OP in my opinion.

I suggest that instead of nerfing shield’s health, let’s double it health and cooldown time. It will make counters more effective and use of shield more tactical. You need to be close to recovering shield back before it gets destroyed. But it should be still weak against airstrikes. Also cut Turtles health 5-15hp, but make own hitbox to bionic arm that is 75% more durable.

yeah nah, i think the shield is not that OP anymore when hunter shows up.

[LifeupOmega]

It’s pretty annoying seeing an entire team huddled behind a shield knowing they can’t be fucked up in certain areas. I still feel it should have been a 50% absorb, effectively reducing headshots to bodyshots which is more than enough of an advantage, while still fully eating explosives.

Turtle is ludicrously powerful, but he does it in such a passive way that people seem to overlook him.

[woodchip]

It is a pretty busted ability. Not very useful all the time but when it is useful it straight up prevents attackers from even taking gunfights, which feels really jarring in Dirtybomb.

One problem I have with the suggestion in the OP though is that it would still synergize pretty brutally with Aura. A shield that reduced bullet damage by 1/2 wouldn’t actually be much of a nerf against the most obnoxious form of Turtle play, which is the 2-3 player teamstack.

I think it should be changed to a radically lower shield HP, maybe like 100-150, and then have the shield generator ‘recharge’ after 5-10 seconds. Then maybe increase the generator HP somewhat. That shield would still make attacking into it an uphill fight, but it wouldn’t be an impossible fight like it is now. This design would also allow the activation time to be tuned down slightly, which would go a long way towards making Turtle more useful on offense.

Turtle is straight up abusive on points where he can protect his shield from airstrikes. And many of these points don’t even have a viable flanking path to get behind the shield. The only thing that keeps it in check on these points is hardcountery mechanics. If your squad isn’t running one of the 3-4 Mercs that can shutdown an indoor Turtle, it’s completely frustrating. Now, because one of those 3-4 Mercs is Fragger that rarely happens, but the point stands.

Over the long term I think Turtle simply has to change. A team camping behind a 500 HP barrier is frustrating and not particularly fun for anyone. It also creates a situation where every map created going forward needs to be carefully vetted for Turtle shield abuse potential.

The pros/cons of redesigning Turtle to me are not particularly close.

[woodchip]

@henki000 said:
Yes, turtle can be handy. But not OP in my opinion.

I suggest that instead of nerfing shield’s health, let’s double it health and cooldown time. It will make counters more effective and use of shield more tactical. You need to be close to recovering shield back before it gets destroyed. But it should be still weak against airstrikes. Also cut Turtles health 5-15hp, but make own hitbox to bionic arm that is 75% more durable.

@GatoCommodore said:

@henki000 said:
Yes, turtle can be handy. But not OP in my opinion.

I suggest that instead of nerfing shield’s health, let’s double it health and cooldown time. It will make counters more effective and use of shield more tactical. You need to be close to recovering shield back before it gets destroyed. But it should be still weak against airstrikes. Also cut Turtles health 5-15hp, but make own hitbox to bionic arm that is 75% more durable.

yeah nah, i think the shield is not that OP anymore when hunter shows up.

I think this approach is dangerous, because it doubles down on the hard countery nature of the Turtle/Turtle counter interaction. Which isn’t fun for anyone. Either Turtle doesn’t face his counters and his team roflstomps behind an impenetrable shield, or he does face his counters and then he gets shut down.

That’s how Overwatch does things and it sucks.

[GatoCommodore]

@woodchip said:

@henki000 said:
Yes, turtle can be handy. But not OP in my opinion.

I suggest that instead of nerfing shield’s health, let’s double it health and cooldown time. It will make counters more effective and use of shield more tactical. You need to be close to recovering shield back before it gets destroyed. But it should be still weak against airstrikes. Also cut Turtles health 5-15hp, but make own hitbox to bionic arm that is 75% more durable.

@GatoCommodore said:

@henki000 said:
Yes, turtle can be handy. But not OP in my opinion.

I suggest that instead of nerfing shield’s health, let’s double it health and cooldown time. It will make counters more effective and use of shield more tactical. You need to be close to recovering shield back before it gets destroyed. But it should be still weak against airstrikes. Also cut Turtles health 5-15hp, but make own hitbox to bionic arm that is 75% more durable.

yeah nah, i think the shield is not that OP anymore when hunter shows up.

I think this approach is dangerous, because it doubles down on the hard countery nature of the Turtle/Turtle counter interaction. Which isn’t fun for anyone. Either Turtle doesn’t face his counters and his team roflstomps behind an impenetrable shield, or he does face his counters and then he gets shut down.

That’s how Overwatch does things and it sucks.

yeah i do agree turtle shield is pretty powerful in a chokepoint, but then it only takes a fire support merc to shoot the edge of the shield with his unlimited ammo to kill the shield.

focus fire also deplete his shield fast, even better when coupled with Unlimited Ammo.

i had some ideas like a repeated fire multiplies the damage each shot so it would hinders snipers but not mercs with low damage or high rate of fire automatics from killing it.

it does serve as a good explosive spam deterrent

[woodchip]

@GatoCommodore said:

yeah i do agree turtle shield is pretty powerful in a chokepoint, but then it only takes a fire support merc to shoot the edge of the shield with his unlimited ammo to kill the shield.

focus fire also deplete his shield fast, even better when coupled with Unlimited Ammo.

i had some ideas like a repeated fire multiplies the damage each shot so it would hinders snipers but not mercs with low damage or high rate of fire automatics from killing it.

it does serve as a good explosive spam deterrent

Unfortunately I disagree with this. Having a fire support spam 400-500 HP is not an effective response, at least if Turtle’s team has the normal number of fingers. You can’t afford to channel 2 clips into a shield and not get annihilated against competent enemies. It’s like taking a normal gunfight except the enemy team has roughly 2x your effective HP. And even if you could do this without getting rekt, Turtle can just pick up his shield before it dies and put it back a few seconds later. Not to mention if they have a sniper this is a 100% no go tactic.

This actually happens sometimes. Your (admittedly disorganized) team headbutts against the Turtle shield like 3 spawns in a row and then when you finally kill it it’s back up 5 seconds later.

[ThunderZsolt]

@LifeupOmega said:
It’s pretty annoying seeing an entire team huddled behind a shield knowing they can’t be @$!# up in certain areas. I still feel it should have been a 50% absorb, effectively reducing headshots to bodyshots which is more than enough of an advantage, while still fully eating explosives.

This is the idea!

I’d say 60-70% instead of 50% though, but that is just playing with the numbers. Also, this way you could shoot the generator from the front, it would be too easy to kill with only 50% reduction.

[ghostdog021]

Buy hunter and Turtle is useless

[K1X455]

You need more experience to counter Turtle’s shield. It’s so weak, only Steady augment is his saving grace.

[Szakalot]

two people can take a shield out in less than 3 seconds. Shield HP cant be equated to merc HP, cause shields dont dodge. If 3 people hog a shield, use AoE or just walk around. EZ PZ

[Mr.Cuddlesworth]

Sounds like no one hear knows about Javelin/Nader. His shield is fine as is.

[JJMAJR]

@Drac0rion said:
The shield doesn’t need much adjustment, but Turtle would be more balanced overall if SD would shift the shield purpose more from defense to offense. In other words reduce the hp pool, but also reduce the cooldown. Then Turtle wouldn’t be able to set up as strong bunkers for camping on defense, but he could push up and be much more useful on offense.

I disagree with this because Bushwhacker’s turret received a health nerf a long time ago, which made his turret nearly useless at defending objectives or providing support fire.

I think making Turtle’s shield less useful at protecting people isn’t a good idea because we would likely end up with something that is just about as useful as Phantom’s cloak before it had gotten full invisibility.

Nerfing health for abilities tends to go wrong and I don’t really trust SD, or anyone in these forums for that matter, to do something like this without fucking it up.

[OCB-Wildcard]

@JJMAJR said:

@Drac0rion said:
The shield doesn’t need much adjustment, but Turtle would be more balanced overall if SD would shift the shield purpose more from defense to offense. In other words reduce the hp pool, but also reduce the cooldown. Then Turtle wouldn’t be able to set up as strong bunkers for camping on defense, but he could push up and be much more useful on offense.

I disagree with this because Bushwhacker’s turret received a health nerf a long time ago, which made his turret nearly useless at defending objectives or providing support fire.

I think making Turtle’s shield less useful at protecting people isn’t a good idea because we would likely end up with something that is just about as useful as Phantom’s cloak before it had gotten full invisibility.

Nerfing health for abilities tends to go wrong and I don’t really trust SD, or anyone in these forums for that matter, to do something like this without @$!# it up.

Yeah… plus history teaches us that history is, by nature, a repetitious cycle; and Splash Damage has been down that road and botched it royally once already, let’s not repeat the trend. He works fine on offense assuming you handle the shield placement properly; especially on maps where planting C4 is among the Primary Objectives. He’s fine where he is right now, so leave him how he is; there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken, after all.

[Brycko]

Turtle, without his shield, is a fairly weak merc, like Bushwhacker. His shield is a fairly strong and easy to use ability but it can be pretty easily countered. He’s kind of in a limbo of being very underrated/weak (mostly because of his weapon choices) but any buff to his ability makes him too strong.

His ability suffers from low skill; Whilst some of the best mercs have a higher learning curve, his shield is easy to use and, if you know how to counter it, easy to counter. It’s also more of an ‘anchoring’ ability; you can only use it to hunker down somewhere which makes it inflexible in DB’s fast paced, fast-movement gameplay, especially because of it’s slow deploy time.

I want to see some changes to Turtle’s shield to make him high skill that is proportional to his impact, like being able to carry the shield for a very short time (i.e 3 seconds) to make pushes or protect teammates from heavy incoming fire.