There is plenty reason to pick him
There is still plenty reason to pick him
And those reasons are?
Control, late game unstoppable tank, disruption, chomp damage, and sustain
Chomp damage is only interesting against characters like Montana, with much HP IMO.
Chomp resets fast, is stong but it can be hard to hit. And sometimes itās just ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā when it misses. Chomp should be a tad easier to hit, because you have to be extremely close and it also sometimes decides to target the enemy you did NOT want to target.
Late game unstoppable tank, disruption and sustain? Boldur wins.
I donāt think Kelvin really has a lot of control though. (Or is a late game unstoppable tank, btw.)
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I always felt he was, plus boldur is more like a distraction he wantsaid you to shoot him but if you donāt, well you see hime just waiting forever for someone to shoot his shield for health being useless and his sustain and disruption falls offor, kelvin while I agree it needs some kind of rework (seriously have you read the lore on ice wall, it makes it sound awesome) I still like it and think it should be kept
Oh and I never had a problem with chomp, plus I feel kelvin is a bane of tanks
Boldur more like a distraction? IMO, more like an unkillable assasin who isnāt very sneaky. ;p
I love ice wall,I just think it is RIDICULOUS that is has a 1 second delay. And like, when I try to place Mikoās shroom, it will very nicely show me the exact place Iām going to place it and that place is on the same spot I target. This ice wall tho, the game shows me that itās going to be ridiculously far away, while I point at the freaking ground in front of me sometimes. Then I use it, and itās somewhere else. WUT?
I guess I just suck at placing that wall.
And I did have a problem with Chomp earlier, when the thing right in front of me was Caldarius, I used chomp, and it didnāt hit him. Idk what happened.
Edit: Okay, I may be overreacting at some points. But sometimes Kelvin can be less responsive than Mikoās freaking healing beam and that just frustrates me.
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[quote=ādeemsss123, post:25, topic:1543810, full:trueā]Late game unstoppable tank
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Whether or not Kelvin becomes an āunstoppable tankā depends heavily on two factors: how often he is being allowed to Chomp (Iāve had allies in game that seem to be so obsessed with getting kills that theyāll attack anything I start getting low, even right as Iām winding up Chimo, so that they can get the kill) and how long the match lasts. If either of those factors is denied to Kelvin, heās a complete and total pansy. If both of those are provided to him in spades, heās absolutely amazing because he is the only Battleborn that is actually capable of getting stronger while at max level.
The problem now is that, with Sublimate being nerfed to heavily, Kelvinās early game, when heās incredibly weak, has suffered to such an extent that heās often incapable of actually getting to a useful level of endgame performance (hell, in my experience, most PvP matches donāt even last long enough to get to level 10, much less stay there for an extended period).
Kelvin is the kind of character that changes functions dramatically between his early and late game: his early game basically has him act as a controller (since his damage is mediocre and heās not durable enough to be a tank yet) while his late game has him act as a straight up tank. Boldur and Montana are basically tanks from the start and simply become better tanks at their end game.
I agree that kelvin is unresponsive, another factor is that kelvin really needs teammates that understand him to make it through early game
Iāve been level 10 in Meltdown once, and had a shitload of HP and 40 health regen. I did feel like an unstoppable tank that gameā¦ But still, Kelvin seems to be lacking things that the other tanks do have. Monty is just extremely good at so many things, and Boldur is exremely good at tanking, getting HP back, he can deal a lot of damage and be faster than Kelvin in sublimate. Seriously, thowing away your axe when you need to run is actually better than Kelvins sublimate for getting awayā¦
I feel with a good team I easily get through early game, with a non teamworking team it is a pain though, I feel kelvin is the most durable tank late game of you have been doing good
EDIT: plus he is a tank killer
[quote=ācadecampbell, post:32, topic:1543810, full:trueā]I feel kelvin is the most durable tank late game of you have been doing good
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I would probably say heās tied with Boldur unless youāve been getting Chomp hp pretty much on CD. Boldur with his shield (especially if you take the self healing or unbreakable shield helix) is an absolute beast.
The issue is that Kelvinās early game and the rest of his kit is really bad compared to what Boldur provides (and makes it so that Montana, while a worse tank at the endgame, tends to be better at everything else). Kelvinās early game is so bad that he requires almost constant supervision and support to become a functional tank like Montana or Boldur, who can become functional/effective/powerful without all of that.
Would you rather have a tank that can become a beast on his own or a tank that can become slightly more beastly if heās given constant support at the beginning, is basically incapable of doing anything useful at the beginning, and is only going to start potentially outperforming the other tanks when the match has lasted 25 minutes?
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Iāve always manage to help get kills early game, plus I donāt feel as useless as boldor early game
Do feel like the abilities themselves are bad or just need something, like how ice wall is clunky
I always thought boldor was way to fast for his size, I hate he gets free overshield, seriously he should have to hit someone for that
Yes in PVP he is underpowered and therefore not used very often. This happens to characters when they get nerfed too far.
GBX removed the one thing that made people want to play him. So now they donāt.
They should have tried to find balance. Such as reducing his stun time but increasing some other capability.
However, they were responding to complaints from the PVP community that Kelvinās stun is too powerful (for PVP). They did not think about the unintended consequences of the nerf.
I have noticed from talking to PVP players that the diversity in PVP is falling off. Players stick to a few of the characters as they perform better in PVP. GBX should look into this.
You will see very few kelvins until this is fixed.
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This. There just is no reason to pick Kelvin over other tanks and thatās the problem.
(Except for incursion, bcuz matches there quite often take 30 minutes.)
Thatās a bit reductionist and assumes a lot of stuff about his initial level of performance. Itās also not as simple as that because if youāre really trying to balance characters, youāre not balancing them against their current level of performance; youāre balancing them against an ideal range of performance that all characters fall within.
By definition, they couldnāt have thought about the unintended consequences (because they werenāt intended). This doesnāt mean that they didnāt expect to see some results that they werenāt expecting or that they werenāt, on some level, expecting to see these current results.
One of the strategies for balancing games in a living and evolving environment is initially overnerfing something and, after a short period of time (2-3 weeks) bringing it up to the intended ābalancedā level to make sure that the meta-game is encouraged to look elsewhere (which allows the devs to see what else might be imbalanced, because players are way more likely to find broken things in the game because there are a lot more players and they arenāt privy to the initial thought process and intent).
If you see an option get nerfed āinto the groundā, itās entirely possible that it was nerfed that theyāve got a plan to bring it back up in a bit.
[quote]Players stick to a few of the characters as they perform better in PVP. GBX should look into this.
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This is pretty much standard in every single multi-character game because balance is hard, and the metagame is constantly evolving. Pretty much anywhere you look, youāll see a small number of effective strategies used in competitions (play/defenses/strategies in sports, MtG decks, MOBA team compositions, etc.) with a small number of wildcard occurrences from people looking to use the stagnancy of an established metagame against itself (e.g. if you plan on people playing perfectly, if you play imperfectly, you can actually gain an advantage and defeat the perfect player because the perfect player canāt adapt to dealing with imperfect play; this is the major difference between a chess master and a grandmaster).
The goal in any living game with character selection is for all characters to be equally desirable; more realistically, itās making them all similarly desirable; even more realistically, itās making as many characters as possible to be similarly desirable without any truly massive outliers existing in either direction.
Really? In my (admittedly limited) PvP experience, most matches tend to finish in 15-20 minutes. There might be 1 character whoās level 10, but most people are going to be 7-8 unless youāre in a exceptionally well matched game.
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One of the strategies for balancing games in a living and evolving environment is initially overnerfing something and, after a short period of time (2-3 weeks) bringing it up to the intended ābalancedā level to make sure that the meta-game is encouraged to look elsewhere (which allows the devs to see what else might be imbalanced, because players are way more likely to find broken things in the game because there are a lot more players and they arenāt privy to the initial thought process and intent).
If you see an option get nerfed āinto the groundā, itās entirely possible that it was nerfed that theyāve got a plan to bring it back up in a bit.
This has been gearboxās stated strategy, and it ultimately may work. But they have larger issues right now in that this process is taking a long time and theyāre bleeding players by the week (if PC numbers are to be believed and consoles are similar).
Additionally youāve seen minimal tweaks to characters that were nerfed too hard, and more targeted nerfing across the board. It seems more of a strategy of spaghetti at a wall, and/or nerfing things into the mud.
Despite popular belief most players that Iāve come across have little desire to play ALL the characters. When the handful that you like arenāt doing well and are continually pushed into the ground you can get even the most diehard players away.
You made a great post, and I hope Gearbox considers this not just for Kevin, but for ALL the classes as they seek balance (whatever that construct truly means).
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