Thank you for all the great replies.
Kelvin’s right click is an aoe attack around him which he can simply hold down. Galilea can also clear waves with some effectiveness, and benedict can assist. Whoever is out there in the lane mashing minions up would get supported by the Miko/Ambra, and backed up by the benedict/marquis. Especially since galilea+kelvin means that if anyone came to contest them, they’d get combo stunned and deaded.
That said I do have to admit I am purely thinking about the one meltdown map from the beta, as the incursion map was poorly designed and I played it much less. And I do acknowledge there will be many other maps which may very well support different strategies, or encourage different team comps. Overall I’d like to see maps where snipers can’t take out buildings way in the back for free, lowering the need for them.
But the amount of vision, coverage, and mobility this team has, mixed with the stuns, means that if anyone steps slightly out of place, or even attempts to move forward, their death is for the most part ensured. With enough communication I still believe this team has the capability of shutting absolutely everything down.
I never used the slug helix outside of pve, I used the increased spread and pellet count for more damage, as I fairly consistantly landed hooks into headshots with ghalt. That said, I’ve only seen numbers like those on a headshot, but maybe that’s simply because I never used slugs.
In your team Marquis is lacking the easy backup from benedict, which means gally or even kelvin could run up to him and take him out without too much trouble. ISIC would get plinked down by marquis constantly, being a big easy target. And if you had a ghalt instead of a marquis, which is a pretty good pickup, it would mostly be a matter of team keeping eyes on the ghalt so he can’t disrupt the support, the sniper, or snag benedict out of the air. With him being killed as soon as he shows his face, your damage output goes way down, and you simply can’t win fights anymore.
Yeah, it’s all on paper, and it’s still focusing on the meltdown map, but uh…eh. Maybe what needs to happen is if we do get a competitive scene, it might should be limited to one map? Something more carefully balanced and easily tweaked as it needs? That might be a good solution, and it could be something that could be done just somewhere along down the line. That is, if one of the maps we didn’t get to play isn’t already really well done.
I did admit, when someone brought that up before, that it is more about player skill than character strength. But as I also said, the person who holds the sharper sword has the advantage by nature. It’s why we even have discussions about balance, because we want the game to purely come down to me/my team, vs you/your team. How well you can play, how solid is your strategy, how quick and clean is your decision making. And when we have a team who is, potentially, better than all other team compositions, the game stagnates, and it becomes just that team playing against just that team, unless someone really wants to try to break the mold at the risk of losing.
Counters already exist, and I’ve given quite a few examples. And as I said I don’t think bans are the answer, but I don’t know. With such a small roster it doesn’t seem fair to ban characters. And with such a small roster, the large sweeping counters seem unfair as well. That’s part of my point.
Excuse me for being dense though, but I’m not sure what you mean by miko being the only native choice for a class. If you mean he’s the only healer, that is incorrect. If you mean he’s the only beam healer, that’s incorrect. Ambra can do it, it just takes a few levels for her to play like she’s the medic from TF2 as well. Characters are extremely unique in this game though, and that’s one of the things I really like about it.
I’m not sure how an el dragon killed you, unless he was level 10 and got the ability to throw fireballs. Most melees have a ranged attack on a cooldown though, so it makes sense that a rath finished you off… however the idea is that they shouldn’t be doing a lot of damage to you. They might get to scratch you, but as benedict you pretty much have control of whether or not a melee is allowed to hit you.
You certain? I swear I could never hurt a kelvin while it was in sublimate. Huh.
I’d really really like if this were truely the case. Helix choices don’t seem to do quite enough to break out of a lot of these counters though. Yeah you can focus damage on miko, but sometimes you should still be healing, and you still have an ult that, until level 10, only heals. You can perhaps back up and purely post-fight heal, away from galilea turning your healing off, but then you’re losing a lot of effectiveness.
This game is a massive balancing act of so many different things. With characters, their levels, helix choices, loot choices… I could perhaps say that the answer might be to give even more helix choices to characters so they have more potent options, but that would make balancing it all even more nightmarish than it already is. Adaptation is great, balancing that adaptation is the worst thing imaginable.
Well, in a plain of equal skill, the person with the advantage should naturally always win. Countering is an advantage. I’m not saying it’s unbeatable (as your dota suggestion is absolutely rough, I have experienced both ends of that encounter… though the most memorable was building 4 battlefuries, a daedelus, and a mask of madness as sven, walking into a lane, and killing a brood I didn’t know was there because I tapped a creep.) but it…gives an advantage. Especially as a team who is communicating and attempting to work as one well oiled machine, having the right people in the right places means you can effectively use those advantages to your…advantage.
The team that I set up has two characters, benedict and marquis, who can cover most of the map (Talking about meltdown) extremely effectively. While it has 3 characters who are more physically in lane and have many stuns, any contesting them leads to death almost undeniably. It IS about the team, yes, and this team is full of having a distinct advantage over the enemy team, not just a character to character basis.
I agree wholeheartedly that the wound effect should also exist on another character. I suggested whiskey foxtrot as he shoots scraps of rusted metal at people like the ■■■■■■■ he is. But kelvin still counters tanks, and benedict still counters melees. Part of the point I’m trying to make is that there are multiple characters here who can each counter multiple characters individually, while also being strong as a team collectively. I am interested, though, in what another similarly filled lineup would look like (If you have one in mind), and how it would function compared to this one.
Which is good, but there are still counters.
Montana has a messy effective range and as soon as he steps out of position there’s just so many stuns, and kelvin really easily deals with a montana just by himself I feel. Sure he can slow benedict, but as soon as he starts shooting at benedict, kelvin (Or kelvin + anyone else) is going to be over there on the case, and marquis could also help if desired. Once kelvin gets there benedict can return and apply more damage to the situation.
Also I believe marquis will beat a thorn if they attempt to range eachother, and thorn’s weird jumping (even without the moon jump helix) only serves to make her an easier target for marquis. She does bring good lane clear to the team, but I think my team has sufficient lane clear… Though maybe faster lane clear would give more opportunities to put pressure on the actual enemy team?
Tangent
Perhaps part of the issue with how people are playing this game is their timing… Minions spawn on a strict timer (Every minute?), and with minions down you’re free to pressure the enemy team, pushing them away from their minions. Perhaps lane clear is even more important than I thought. Perhaps you could play the game extremely passively, only going when minions spawn, clearing minions as fast as possible, pushing the enemy team back by being coordinated and hyper aggressive, then simply backing off until minions spawn again… It goes to show that we still probably don’t know how to play the game.
That sentiment could easily be taken as “Well then this discussion is pointless”, but this discussion prodded this realization. Plus all discussions are worthwhile, they indicate a lack of understanding on the part of one party or the other, and help bring people to more educated opinions at the least, and a collective agreement and understanding at the best.
End Tangent
Double sniper is probably one of the worst things I’ve had to experience in this game, any time I was against a team with both a marquis and a thorn, and they were any kind of competant, it sucked all fun out of the game. I can’t comment on it’s true effectiveness because I only played the sniper classes a few times, but it was rough.
The idea isn’t entirely that this team crushes every other possible team, though in some regards I do feel that, but in a blind pick scenario this is the safest team to pick. For the sake of avoiding absolutes, we can at least say that barring a few team comps, this one does exceedingly well against most setups.
The loose roles do assist…maybe the issue is they’re not loose enough? Discussing with my friend lead us to the subject that some characters can simply do too many things and there’s no singular way to stop them. Instead of focusing characters, or focusing counters, maybe make all characters more broad? That sort of goes back to adding more helix choices to each character which is still a balancing nightmare, but it could still possibly be a solution?
I feel like the idea of selecting helixes to help with counters would work in some instances, and as I said previously, the answer may be to expand helixes to give more dynamics to a character… The idea of bringing gear to help relieve counters may not be a solid idea. Partially because some of the counters, gear simply doesn’t help with. Obviously if you bring heal gear as miko, and they have a galilea who focuses on stopping your heals, your gear’s effect is also significantly diminished… Is the answer then to just build general things like health, or to build damage on miko incase you get countered? We’re still working with a blind pick situation here, so decisions like that can’t actually be made without simply guessing.
I…don’t disagree with anything here.
This is a big thing that I realized after a while. Most of my concepts are with the one meltdown map we had available in mind. So yes, character effectiveness can vary from map to map… But is that really a good thing? Should my favorite character not be as good as another character simply because we rolled a different map? Even in a competitive sense this means that each map has a list of characters who may as well not be picked, and ones that should definitely be picked. This doesn’t serve to fix an issue of balance, it just makes balance more confusing.
I suggested earlier in this no doubt long ass post (I haven’t been keeping track of how much I’ve been typing) that maybe later on down the road that a map more meticulously designed (If one of the maps already in the game isn’t already good enough) could be the one specifically used for competitive play. That the hyperfocus on balance could be directed for the characters on that one map, a “Final destination” of sorts. That is, of course, if gearbox wishes to cater to the competitive scene.
I’ve said the same thing about benedict, he’s an oddly polarized character that cannot be focused without changing the absolute fundamentals of his skills. I love the character and don’t want him to change at all, but he’s still odd.
Thank you for all the responses guys, I’ve learned a good bit and I value all of your opinions.
I hunger for more responses!
