Oscar Mike has zero CC aside from his level 10 mutation, which means giving up orbital strike. All he has is area denial and a pea shooter.
He does not need a nerf.
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That’s a bit of a straw-man. People don’t want everything to be buffed, that’s ridiculous and the viewpoint of an ignoramus. No, we want an easily understood baseline. And then we want the weaker characters to be buffed according to that baseline so that they can be viable.
I understand that nerfs need to happen, but understnad that since the launch of Battleborn, there has not been even one single buff. Before the launch of Battleborn, the only buff was Ghalt, which was hilariously ill-advised.
They’re not showing us that they know how to balance. So how are we supposed to have confidence in that?
Nerfing every single character down to the baseline of the weakest characters doesn’t do anything because there will always be ‘weakest characters.’ That’s why you need a general baseline with varying quantities based upon what the character is supposed to do best (healing, CC, DPS, tanking, et cetera).
As I said, the way it’s going we’re going to end up with everyone just doing 1 damage and 1 healing, because that’s the inevitable outcome of this style of balanicng. It’s self-destructive.
Let’s wait and see what the 24/26 characters being changed brings.
6 chars getting a wound sounds like a buff-fest is coming (and Miko might finally get her comeuppance).
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No need to get personal, rude person. You have said the same thing as me - I was just putting a light-hearted spin on it. Keep your hat on - it’s just a game.
Now now. We’re all frands. Group hug.
So your saying if he had cc effects he needs nerf? Wrong.
Disclaimer: this is not an argument about having more nerfs.
Buffs are always going to be trickier than nerfs.
We will always see fewer of them than we see nerfs, at least when it comes to smaller updates.
This is for two reasons:
- Avoiding power creep.
- The explosive complexity involved in balancing buffs.
Power Creep. Buffs tend to reduce the amount of time it takes a character to kill something, make it easier for a character to kill something, or make it harder for a character to die.
Buffing, therefore, will always tend to either reduce the difficulty of the game (PVE) or alter time-to-kill (PVP).
In the former case, whether you like the change or not, depends on whether you play PVE for the challenge, or to indulge in some good old fashioned blowing-stuff-up.
In the latter case, you usually want to avoid having your TTK float too far from its initial point, as that can really change the complexion of the game.
The more you buff, the stronger this effect. So designers are always cautious when they buff.
Explosive Complexity When you nerf down to a baseline, the number of changes you make are relatively small.
When you try to buff characters up to a baseline, the number of changes you need to make can be massive.
Since this a multiplayer game, each and every one of these changes can react and interact in unpredictable ways.
Since it’s a 3D FPS with tons of customization options (Helix / gear), the number and kinds of these interactions is breathtaking.
I can’t even imagine how you would build test cases to properly vett all the different ways your newly buffed characters would interact across the maps/modes.
There is no amount of play testing in the world that is going to allow you to model all of these interactions to any degree of accuracy.
As a result, what ends up happening, is that you are going to create a situation where a round of buffs is followed by a round of nerfs, as you work to correct the mistakes you were unable to pick up in testing.
Since all changes are met with a certain percentage of people being unhappy, having your character buffed and then subsequently nerfed, is going to lead to a ton of unhappiness.
This is why designers tend to nerf downward, rather than buff upwards. It’s honestly easier, and tends to engender less anger in the mid-term.
As a thought experiment,
Lets say we made the following changes:
- Raised Ambra’s beam damage by 10%
- Added a hard CC somewhere earlier in Attikus’ kit so he has better lethality early game.
- Raised Deande’s sprint speed by 15% and movement speed by 10%.
What effects would these changes have in Meltdown? Incursion?
Would these changes cause more players to pick these characters, thus increasing overall play experience with them, thus increasing quality of play beyond what the buff provides?
Do these changes infringe upon other characters roles in negative ways?
Personally, I have no idea, but there is one of these that I have an inkling absolutely would.
2 Likes
They are stuck in an inbetween range. Her cc is not as extensive as you think she can only slow, pull, knockup and stun and two of those are helix only, the stun removes the pull, the ult only really can hurt players at level 10. Her damage helix choices are also very limited so the damage front is limited
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In my limited play time in regular PUG queues I have to agree with the OP on almost all of his points. Any team that has Oscar Mike, Miko/Alani, and Thorn is going to beat the other team (and rather easily if the other team doesn’t have any of those 3). Gali and Boldur I don’t see too often in PUGs but I can see the points the OP makes.
Also, I think the reason most people can’t see the true power of Boldur is because in most PUGs there is hardly any communication or teamwork. I think its kinda hard for a someone to play him, or any tank for that matter, if their teammates aren’t talking to him letting him know if he’s overextending, or if they are retreating while he’s still going strong. There have been more than a few times I’ve been on a team that has gotten 2-3 enemies killed and instead of following through to take the sentry down, they have retreated or something.
If someone like me has noticed that OM, Miko, Alani, and Thorn are impacting solo queue PUGs they way they are only playing 2-3 matches a day, there is definitely something to the OPs suggestion that these characters need to be looked at.
3 Likes
well if his napalm was a slow, then yes, they have to drop the damage or lose the slow.
However, if child grenades was given a slow/wound it might be useful.
Wrong. Calderius got a buff to his TMP damage because it was too low. I do agree with you that we need a baseline and characters should be brought up to it instead of brought down unless it’s really necessary.
Didn’t Caldarius get buffed between the open beta ending and the actual launch on the 3rd?
I believe his TMP got a damage buff
He did in the Day One patch.
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I keep seeing people reference these seemingly big changes coming to most of the cast of the game along with some kind of anti heal mechanics or some such. Where is everyone seeing this info? I’m most curious.
They had a stream a few days ago where they mentioned a lot of changes to characters. Originally it was mentioned by the devs in the “Play With The Devs” event that 24/26 characters are getting changes. Look up the stream history on GBX twitch channel and they go through all the new maps, which are being released this Thursday, and mention a lot, not all, of the upcoming character changes.
awesome, thanks! I watched the stream after the event, but had the volume muted so I didnt hear anything, f*ck me right? lol.
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Lol, they just talked about wound, Ambra and Attikus basically. And that Rath is their strongest killer and that’s perfectly fine (he’s the baseline now).
Orendi, WF, Kleese, Miko, OM, ISIC, Quick Melee, Kelvin, Reyna, Alani, Ghalt, etc were also mentioned. It’s very informative but in no way the full picture I think.
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Not now at least. lol
instead they buffed his child grenade helix. 