Backdooring really needs to be addressed

[lmoore0621 (F5 BlackBearD)]

This strategy is in every moba… deal with it.

[asiahmillertime (MLGx420YoloSwag)]

Is it really?! I’ve been under the impression that it wasn’t; or let me be more specific, it’s not as easy as it is in BB because the sentry will actually target you in other Mobas no matter where you are damaging it from. Please educate me if I’m incorrect, bc I’ve never played any MOBAs.

[Battleborn]

Of course they should have to go back to stop somebody. Part of the game is defending your sentry. That’s how objective based games work. You can’t just charge ahead with your whole team. That’s all Incursion would be without the ability to attack from the other side.

[Radical]

This topic has been addressed so many times now.

In my mind it boils down to the game unarguably needs a better notification system for the top bar and maybe minimap too. Also, one of the best suggestions I’ve seen is to add a shield bar as well to the HUD.

Also, backdooring is just a weak strategy. "Hey, my team is getting beat into dust. Let me just walk over here and take down the main objective without even taking any damage."
Neat. How about, I dunno… maybe just pushing the enemies back and taking down the sentry normally? No? Oh okay. I didn’t think so.

[Battleborn]

No, because again, that turns the gameplay into just fighting 5 on 5 in the single lane without any option to try anything else. You have to attack AND defend. That’s how objectives typically work.

[Khas]

It’s only weak, because it means your team was so focused on doing offense, that they got tunnel-vision about the REST of the game, and got gut-punched with no DEFENSE.

If someone was shooting from a position that couldn’t be shot at, or doing damage that couldn’t be stopped, THEN it’d be weak. But I don’t know a single game, where maneuvering around an opponent’s defenses, is considered weak. Usually, it’s the IDEAL strategy. What you’re advocating, screams of a desire to bring more CoD like elements into the game. “They shouldn’t be able to win by NOT fighting us on OUR terms!! Make them stand where we can shoot them, and then we’ll see who the better team is.”

To expand upon the point some: in addition to backdooring, I just backstrike. When we hit a push, I don’t try and push with the rest of the team. I try and get to those turrets and the healstation. If I take out two guns and a healstation, any hope for a rebuff of the push, is cut in half. But, why am I able to do that? Because the opposing team is so focused on TWO gaps, and seeing their OWN health tick down, that they don’t think about the health of the site AROUND them. If it isn’t happening to their health bars, it isn’t happening at all…well, that’s why your sentry just got blown up. Because it was eliminating minions one at a time, while my team was pounding on it without fear of slowing missiles and machine gun turrets, and you guys popping up to your healstation to get back into the fight faster.

[JavaJunkie37]

If someone was shooting from a position that couldn’t be shot at, or doing damage that couldn’t be stopped, THEN it’d be weak

I think this thread has addressed that a couple of times actually. OM is the main offender in this regard. Peek out, drop a nade and airstrike, leave before even the sentry has time to kill you or hell move to target you. Even if the team goes to check, his skills are nearly instant cast and once they are on the ground even killing the OM doesn’t help.

I find backdooring fine, it is another lane with its own risks and rewards. An OM biting a few points off my sentry if my team doesn’t constantly stop what they are doing to keep him on constant respawn, that is ‘weak’.

[Battleborn]

People aren’t asking for a fix for OM’s high-damage skills though. They’re saying that all player damage to the sentry needs to be decreased, and that they shouldn’t have to have any awareness of where he his relative to their sentry. I’m not opposed to toning down specific characters who do a disproportionate amount of damage to a sentry, but for some reason people seem to think that the only way to play should be to butt heads in the middle, some going so far as to say that players shouldn’t be able to damage the sentry’s shields AT ALL.

[JavaJunkie37]

Yeah, I just chose to ignore those bits, just because a map with only one lane is…meh. I honestly don’t know how I would go about fixing the OM issue though, seems making his ult weaker would just be an Ambra type nerf.

[Battleborn]

Just make the Sentry only take less damage from his ult and grenade. I’m pretty sure they can do it. It’s the only instance where it might need to deal less damage, so that seems like a simple enough solution.

[Battleborn]

Yeah, because those aren’t problems. Being able to damage the sentry too easily is a problem. Being able to get behind it and damage it at all isn’t. Defending the objective is part of the game. If you have a problem with people attacking your sentry from behind then it’s up to you to change your playstyle to stop them, not up to Gearbox to change the game so that they can’t do it.

[jmorales20]

What on Earth are you even talking about? Go play Capture if all you want to do is team kills. Incursion is supposed to be about pushing the minions to take out the objective. Without that there’s no point to it and it should just be Capture. Wow, you basically just make it clear how badly back dooring needs to be addressed. The fact that it means you can totally bypass the whole point of the mode is a major problem.

[jmorales20]

Nerfing his ult would be bad. Just make the Sentry shields tougher against Battleborn attacks. That would fix the entire issue easy-peasy.

[Battleborn]

Believe it or not, you actually don’t get to decide what the game is about. The game is about destroying the sentry. That’s the objective. The minions might be there to take it down more quickly, but that doesn’t mean that it needs to be impervious to damage from players,and that you shouldn’t have to defend against them. Just because people are completing the objective in a way you don’t like doesn’t mean that the game needs to be changed.

[Balrog2039]

Backdooring in my opinion is a good strategy depending on the player’s choice of character. I don’t tend to do it unless my team is getting hammered in the front lines. I have gotten behind defenses and decoyed the enemy team as Orendi and Deande before and allowed the rest of my team to push the lane. Only time I was able to take down a sentry shield as Orendi after I nullified back behind the 1st sentry and destroyed turrets. I then used Orendi’s Ult with her lvl 10 mutation (Pillar Storm I think) when the whole team was near it. All the shadowfire pillars was able to down the shield but I ended up dying from the sentry in the end. OM’s ability to do so is better but still counterable. This however leaves your team open in the front. Its a stratagy I have used and will most likely still use as its a way to change gameplay.

[Khas]

To take some of the anger out of BB’s posting: What he’s saying is correct. The Sentry IS the target of the Incursion game, not the minion wave. Meltdown, is the mode where the minions are the target.

As far as people taking the sentry out in unconventional ways, that’s a staple of every GOOD game. Any game that tactically dies on the vine, does so because there is only one clear, unambiguous way to win every match. And once everyone figures that way out, there’s no strategy left, no thinking required. It all comes down to reflexes and player skill. Look at Team Deathmatch games. If the top 5 players are on one team, even if the rest of that team is garbage, you can get an 80-90% win ratio out of those five players, JUST because it’s not about a TEAM effort, but just the team total kill count.

I mean, let’s be honest, this ISN’T the most underhanded way to win a match. Assisting is. If two teams have undamaged or evenly damaged Sentries, it goes to team score to decide who won, right? Well, if you see that outcome on the horizon, you can start shooting for more assists on kills, than actual kills. Every kill counts for 2 points for the player who got it, and 1 for any assist. if all four players get an assist on a kill, that’s 6 team points PER kill. Even if the enemy kills two of you without assists, you’re gaining more per enemy death, than they are per YOUR team’s death.

Incursion’s end game, has multiple paths to victory, and that forces both teams to stay on their guard. More than one game has been decided because a losing team suckered the winning team into letting DOWN their guard, into GETTING comfortable and thinking the fight is won. And then, they throw a gameshaking reversal LIKE backdooring the sentry down or even just taking out a few points in the last few minutes of the game, and fighting to build up to a stalemate, knowing they’ll win by sentry health. It’s not unfair, it’s not unethical. It’s doing what any good team on the backfoot should do: waiting for the right time to launch their counterstrike, and then hammering it home.

[jmorales20]

I understand what you’re saying but I’ve already said in my opening post and elsewhere that I don’t think backdooring should be removed as a strategy. It’s just that right now it is way too easy for an Oscar Mike to do. It is nearly as bad as the Marquis cheese when he was able to snipe the Sentry and I don’t recall anyone thinking that was a legit strategy that should be allowed to stay in the game. That’s all.

Back dooring should be possible, it should not be so insanely simple.