The november rebalance. what do you think?

[Dimension]

Its been quite a while since the rebalancer hit, and I'm pretty sure everyone got a good feel for the changes these days.

So what do you guys think of the changes?

couple of points by yours truly:

the gameplay didn't change all that much, which surprised me. Especially the grenade reduction made me think that it might upset the balance of the classes towards devs, because ime grenades are a bit of an equalizer.

I like the fact that people have to be careful what to use their grenades on, and I'm now actually trying to gauge or to get info on whether or not someone has used their grenade yet. in some instances I count grenades and players in order to determine if they still have one.

scavenging for grenade drops is also more present now than it used to be. I also like this.

I also see combat stims slightly more often. Still not convinced they're balanced in effect, but thats for another topic.


as for the plasma cannon. there was a brief lull where nobody played them for a few days, but they're back, and I don't notice them being any less effective at all. the ammunition rebalancer is largely nullified by the abundance of munition drops. the additional cooldown makes plasma devs slightly less aggressive, but not more vulnerable in my experience. PC still seems somewhat OP to me.


Larraman's seems better, and I occasionally use it, but its not omgwtfpwn.


generally, I approve the fact that they didn't go overboard with the tweaking. There's still work, but I prefer them approaching the goal in small steps, rather than swinging wildly first one way, then the other.

[Carach]

PC is indeed still an uberdouche to deal with :P

[Mirage Knight]

PC still seems somewhat OP to me.

Seconded. There's less charged shot spam but the shots themselves still obliterate groups, which I feel still makes the PC overpowered. When going for wider AoE, there ought to be trade off with regard to damage.

[Civik]

The problem with the plasma cannon is that it's an artillery piece with no drawback.

Perhaps changing it so that you can't turn off FF with the PC so that someone will actually take care in using it? But then you have no way to boot bad players...

Maybe keep the massive splash but have only those within a 2 meter radius take the full brunt of the damage with a sharper drop-off the further out it gets. Have a secondary drop-off for armor so that it strips armor in a wider sphere instead of killing outright.

Mainly I find balance hard to guage because most of the time I deal with dying well outside the range of anything that should have hit me. I can be 20 meters away in the air on my machine and host registers that the thunderhammer on the ground hit me. So I really don't have a keen sense of how the balance is affected, I still die because I can't react in time to what's going on the host end.

[Mirage Knight]

Maybe keep the massive splash but have only those within a 2 meter radius take the full brunt of the damage with a sharper drop-off the further out it gets. Have a secondary drop-off for armor so that it strips armor in a wider sphere instead of killing outright.

This could definitely work. At the very least it's worth looking into.

[Gorb]

I find it ludicrously easy to dodge the charged shot in most situations (barring when you run straight into a Dev holding a charged shot, but then he usually kills himself as well) - the main problem for me with the Plasma Cannon is the effectiveness of the regular shots with the Improved Coolant (spelling?) perk.

That said, other perked weapons are just as horrendously effective (Bolter, Stalker Bolter, Stormbolter, Meltagun), so there really is little room for complaint, in my opinion.

Since the changes to the ammunition store, Grenades and how the PC operates (cooldown increase), I have no issues with either grenades or Plasma Cannons. This is of course exclusively my own opinion.

[konfeta]

The problem with the plasma cannon is that it's an artillery piece with no drawback.

You are largely helpless against snipers and assault are guaranteed to engage you in melee even if you see them coming. That's a pretty big drawback.

The grenade changes are most definitely the best part. The game just feels so much cleaner this way.

[Kalimac]

All changes were for the better. The grenade spam is no longer as batshit insane as it used to be, mostly noticeable on the center points of the maps that have them. The use of plasma cannon also went down heavily, although it still is just as deadly as before.

[Arbit]

Grenade changes are definitely a positive.

It's pretty incredible how big the splash damage on PC overcharge is. You can see it coming, roll away, avoid the majority of the blast... and still lose 3/4 of your total health + armor. Still, I don't really feel that PCs are abusive but maybe I just haven't run into the "right" players.

[Danustar]

The nade reduction is soo good!
Also the Final Vengeance nerf. Bless.

Haven't really noticed much else. Is there a log somewhere of what was done?

[Kalimac]

An amendment to my previous post: I don't really get the Final Vengeance nerf. It's always been somewhat of a stupid perk, but nowadays it's also totally useless. I haven't seen a single player die from it since the nerf, and it's not like it was that hard to avoid before. The only situations I found myself dying to it (before the patch) was either when I dived towards an enemy assault who had the perk equipped and then got killed before I landed, which made me die in turn as I hit the ground, or when I got stunned by one or several grenades and got stuck on a final vengeance jump-pack. With the extended time until explosion it's ridiculously easy to avoid it, making the perk a total waste. I still see some players using it though, for some reason.

[uncle_anaesthesia]

Kal i got a few with final vengeance earlier
But it tends to be the devs who are slow to come out of stance, i used to get sick of killing an assault when im meltad up, rolling away and in my eyes up n running to be caught by FV, so the nerf is for me the best improvement.
the nades being nerfed also is better the gameplay isnt so much a nade spam anymore.
the splash damage from the PC was never meant to be a one shot killer but ive been well out the way and still been killed, this may be a lag issue im not sure. but i can die while the shot is still incoming

[Dimension]

PC is far from helpless to snipers. you can hide, charge and shoot your ball of doom halfway across the map onto the lasdev, who, if scoped, might not see it coming soon enough.

and regular shots work quite well vs stalkers, because you do so much damage with them. I'm not saying PC is OP vs stalkers in particular, because yes, often the stalker wins, but the stalker most certainly does not counter the PC like the lasdev, ASM or the occasional ninja HB dev can. and at medium to close ranged, the stalker is pretty much fucked.

I will also say, that CTF with the old grenade count would've been a bloody nightmare.

Final vengeance is not useless, and it never really will be. you cannot expect to always get kills from it, but it works very well to deny a certain area and limit the mobility of enemy players. this makes them a lot more vulnerable to grenades and stationary firepower.

I wouldn't use it, because my playstyle is catered to better by other perks, but now that FV is not as much of a guaranteed kill, I feel that this aspect makes it worthwhile, and I won't ridicule anyone at this point for using it, the way I might have before.

[Kalimac]

I don't really see how you can use the final vengeance to any tactical advantage at all, as you cannot choose when to trigger it. Sure, you deny the area for some seconds after death, but on most places this doesn't have any advantage as you can just circle around it instead.

[Danustar]

Look, it's a noob perk - and that's ok.
If you're expecting do lots of dying you're gonna get lots of mileage out of it.

"Oh hello mr halo dev .."
frag -> ground pound -> chainsword triple -> final vengeance ><

[Jaimas]

True Grit and Serrated Blade both need improvement. Jesus.

[Codex]

I'd say that your normal shots are your counter to snipers. It forces them to keep their head down with suppression fire which allows you to reposition. If the stalker has a positional advantage then you can't wait for a charged shot and hope to catch him sleeping (unless he's a noob). You need to get closer where your shots will be far more effective than his.