I want to preface this by admitting my love for this game. I’ve always been a fan of FPSes, I have played countless hours of various class based FPSes, and Mobas are one of my two honest passions when it comes to video games.
This game is fantastic. It has every bit of the charm of borderlands, the FPS side of things is great, it’s more of a true moba even than a game like Heroes of the Storm, and most things feel like they should feel even in this beta.
Most.
I played it as much as I could on the PC version, which was hindered by either fatal erroring every game, or the game just shutting itself down… but I managed to hit rank 47 regardless which I am happy about. I can’t say I am the best at the game, or that I know more about it than even people who have played less than me, but I do have a point of view that comes from experience with this game, and massively extended experience with other mobas and class based shooters.
Let’s start with balance. Balance is fun to talk about, everyone has an opinion about it and it comes from, usually, how often they win or lose against a character, or how often they seem them win or lose. The issue here is battleborn has two huge dynamics that affect how strong a character CAN be. A character like marquis isn’t strong simply because of his skills, but because he has a long accurate hitscan weapon that does plentiful damage, and in the hands of an experienced FPS player he can blow everyone else out of the water. A character like rath, on the flip-side, doesn’t require as much actual skill, and as long as you can land his abilities you’re going to be at least some levels of effective.
It’s hard to say if a character is too strong because if someone’s a good enough aim as Whiskey Foxtrot, a character that most people seem to consider underpowered (And I’m not going to completely disagree), you can get plentiful crits with his battle rifle and do enough damage to make enemies reconsider their life choices.
So I think the safest thing to talk about as far as balance is characters who do too many things too well, and characters who don’t do what they should do well enough.
In my honest opinion, ISIC does way too many things way too well. He is a tank with plentiful health, shield, an actual energy aegis, rotating wards, a stun, and can ult to pour out more consistent damage than any other character (as it feels). I’m not going to suggest changes because I like ISIC, I like everything he does and I feel like if I were to honestly suggest something it would take away something fun from him.
Meanwhile Deande, in my experience, did too little damage for being what seems to have supposed to have been the quintessential assassin character. I don’t think this is because of her damage output, but because of her lack of early CC, or a hard CC option at all. Maybe she’s meant to be more of a harrassing character, and if you were to just look at her skills it would be a fair assumption, but all of her helix choices seem to be around her dealing damage and escaping alive. It’s also completely possible I suck, I didn’t play deande too many times, but this was my experience with her.
I can’t honestly say anything concerning balance on any other character, because I didn’t have enough hard experience with them to make a fully formed opinion, however I do feel like a lot of people’s feel for balance issues comes from the fact that some skills and characters are naturally harder to use, while some are incredibly easy. It doesn’t take much effort to use oscar mike’s instant detonation frags and airstrike fights, but it takes more effort to land sticks as whiskey and peg their head with your (Hopefully more accurate than oscar’s) rifle.
Though if I was going to say one thing, I do dislike how important snipers seem to be to any team comp. Their ability to take out enemy buildings without risk and doing so quickly is a source of irritation for many, and especially on incursion where the first sentry can be plinked from an obnoxiously safe distance at certain angles, namely from the opposing side’s sniper ledge. Though the incursion map is poorly made overall, in my opinion. A mix of silly geometry, easy to defend/hard to attack areas, marquis being able to stand on the stairs to the sniper ledge in just the right spot to see over it without his model peeking over, and the difficulty to mount an offense without plinking it with a long range character, and if you do actually get a good push the sentry seems to fall incredibly rapidly… I’d rather incursion maps had another lane of minions leading to the same sentry, and sentries having more survivability, but it being easier to attack them. But hey, that’s just my longwinded opinion.
A main issue with a lot of characters’ “Balance”, however, is how fast some skills can actually come out. Rath ult starts nearly instantly and doesn’t limit your movement, it feels good to use. However an El Dragon ult, which only lasts for a limit amount of time, has a lengthy startup time which locks you completely in place. It belongs in some places, like a reyna ult, but not so much on others. Other things have an obnoxiously long recovery, like whiskey ult, and kleese ult. Especially the latter, as the recovery isn’t apparent, you’re just not allowed to do anything except move for a while. It makes the game feel sticky at points when you’re trying to do something but the game either stops, or restricts you.
Also skills being interrupted during the startup, before the effect happens, but still putting the skill on cooldown is really frustrating to experience. Especially using skills that this should never happen to, like a galilea shield throw or a reyna overshield.
Team composition is intriguing in battleborn mostly because of the game being blind pick. The game does have solid counters, a character like galilea will stop their miko from pocketing someone. A sniper like thorn or marquis does really well stopping a benedict, while a benedict does really well against most melee characters. However you have to guess what the other team might pick for your pick to be intelligent and meaningful…in concept. In reality from what I can tell there is no reason to not have a galilea on the team, as she is one of the few melees who can ground benedict, she stops miko, easily deals with rath, and provides a sizable advantage to fighting an ambra all while having an extremely solid stun which benefits your team regardless of what the enemy team has. And that is saying nothing about her potential damage output. Snipers, as well, seem like a no-brainer pick as they provide endless utility to the team with their ability to shoot buildings down without risk, they bring masses of damage, and both snipers are very strong characters besides.
I’m not sure where to say the base of the problem here is, if it’s those characters being too strong, or another part of the game needing tweeked, but as far as I could tell there was no reason to not have a galilea and marquis/thorn (or both) on the team, mixed with at least one character who could efficiently wave clear (Which thorn can do herself).
The only suggestion I can possibly give are perhaps make snipers inherantly do less damage to buildings, requiring them to invest more time destroying them… I’m not sure what to do about galilea being such a solid pick.
Though I would like if the game’s character pick phase was something more akin to Dota or League ranked pick, where one team picks a character, then the other team picks, and it goes back and forth. It’s not like it would slow down the pick phase, considering everyone seems to let the 2 minute timer run out anyways. Or, hell, just incorperate that into the ranked mode, since that’s a thing in this game as well.
As it stands Battleborn is still a fantastic game and I will maintain that as long as gearbox plays every card right, this game will blow Overwatch out of the water simply because of the amount of depth and options this game provides over what Blizzard is trying to do, which is simply make a class based shooter with an ult button.
I just hope they stay dedicated to refining this game, and don’t lose heart and start dumbing the game down.
And I hope they give me a real assassin character so I can eviscerate those bastard marquis’ robotic spinal cords.
