Now I’ve played toby, and I’ve read what people think of toby, and the current play style for toby is a sniper behind a shield.
I honestly don’t think this was intended, but I’m not sure. The reason why I don’t think hee’s supposed to be a sniper is because every character’s playstyle fits them. Toby doeesn’t seem like a sniper. His character model, his personality, how he is described. He seems like a ranged “brawler” style more so than a sniper. Kind of like montana. I think toby was supposed to be a medium-long range Territory holding character, kind of like galilea only with range and a little more mono-directional.
The reason he’s played as a sniper is because if he tries to hold a territory he gets killed. He has no push value because his shield instantly breaks in a skirmish, so he has to set up from far back. However, he’s too big to snipe well because he loses his sheild, and then he loses his range and then his damagee, and he has to run.
How I think he should be played when he is fixed:
I think toby will be able to use his thrusters to get into battle quickly (and in turn up his damage resistance a little) and set up a shield a little intrusively so that he and his teammates can have an advantage in the fight. Kind of like the ranged version of desecrate. His shield will either let players push harder by moving faster, or hold their position better with a little extra health and attack speed. His arc mine will help condense the battle field (by pulling or slowing) or allow him to sneak a free kill if it stuns a weak/already hurt player. In the end, His ultimate will probably be the ranged equivalent of dreadwind, a sweet damaging ult that does it with DoT (of course enemies can run away from it more easily and it can’t get multiple people at once but it would still be almost if not as strong as dreadwind, as it almost already is) His DPS won’t be overall higher than anyone elses, but his shield allows him to live longer and deal damage faster, meaning he can grab some kills. Imagine a more team player version of benedict, only grounded and without the extra aoes (but the extra defense). This is what I think Gearbox was going for, and one of the reasons they compare toby to benedict in the lore (if you’ve ever seen the lore achievement pictures)
Honestly, one thing that I think would be cool would be a little more anti z axis (anti air, jumping) just to play around with the benedict vs toby, but honestly, I just want toby to be territorial like I think gearbox wanted, instead of a sniper, because it doesn’t fit toby.