Current Hot Topic OPs - from my perspective

[SlateMaze]

Warning: incoming wall of text on the mechanics broken down. tl;dr; d*ck's air shotgun, tiac's q.

Now I know everyone has their own list of complaints. And I've also seen every character called OP for one reason or another. Most people just don't know how to deal with it.

I also understand that a large portion of what is going on is that new tactics are being found, and people are quick to label it OP before learning how to deal with it. Advanced tactics take a little more skill in learning how to counter, that's the point right?

But I feel there are a few areas that deserve the next bit of attention (this list is not comprehensive, just the most glaring).

D*ck's jump right click (the shotgun spam you all know). This character has a kit that is designed very well in the essence that he runs the gambit for working in all sorts of situations.

For a small synopsis, consider the following before we get to the air shotgun mechanic:

he has a fast melee swing so this can win most the melee trades to start combos,
he has huge mobility which is faster than most due to jetpacks and the nature of his hits (most don't prevent him moving by a great deal),
his wards serve a multitude of functions (vision .. meh, are terrain solid for enemies, but not for allies, provide an aoe armor regen, and are spammable),
his q is very strong in general due to armor depletion,
and so on.

All of this puts together a great character, one which I have no qualms about.. except maybe the wards, they could probably be looked at (mostly the combination of impassable terrain via walking and the spamming nature of it)

But then you add in the air shotgun.
Its quick to fire, quick to reload, quick everything. This move can be spammed, needlessly, and easily.
Its damage is massive. If you get caught with this point blank (read melee range), you're gonna hurt.
Its range is huge, and provides decent chip damage at range due to the tight spread of the pellets.
It can be aimed! A huge boost in potential from this point alone, compared to say Irenny's jump right click.
And finally, it provides a backwards movement upon firing. This hurts.

When you couple it and stick it on a player who knows half of what they are doing, you have a return that far exceeds the effort of most other mechanics in the game.

On the really good ones, I've seen them constantly firing air shotguns in rotation of running in a way such that their movement speed is hardly impaired if at all. (run, jump 180 turn fire black, 180 turn in landing and continue running while reloading, repeat). Note, this means that you either take the hit and stop moving. Or you block and stop moving. You cannot catch up, and will quickly ruin your stamina bar trying to. Of course you can always get lucky if you can predict the movement just right.

I don't need to go into the details of personal experiences, because I'm sure everyone has their own, but this mechanic needs to be toned down a little bit. The care needs to be taken to not overnerf it to uselessness of course, but I'm tired of steam being won by the team who has the better d*ck.

Some ideas (mixed of some floating around with my own opinions):
Tone down the max damage of a full spread connecting.
Lessen the horizontal movement on firing (doesn't provide so much backpedal mechanic)
In tandem, increase the vertical movement (makes him take longer to land). This could be dangerous.. but it gives melee's a chance to catch up, and it lessens the spam.
And worst come to worst, stick an angle penalty on it. Make it fire at some thing like -30 degrees. Not as severe as Irenny's as she gets higher in the air, but enough so that it can't be used in every situation.

With that out of the way, a rising issue seems to be coming from Tiac. His timing inbetween swings is pretty fantastic. Its just barely quick enough to impede most counter actions in the timing of inbetween combos for most characters. But that's not the real issue. It's his RP usage.

In steam again, I've seen tiacs gold out without me hitting them, golding as soon as it ends, and then immediately walking into the next match with a gold at the beginning of the round after using the f-interrupt once or twice. Note: he didn't grab the rp power ups either. Its ridiculous, and for such a strong armor, its too powerful.

Sure you can wait it out, attempting to run the entire time, which is its only counter really as he is fast enough to reach you should you try to launch any ranged attacks, but counter play for the near constant uptime of this move is difficult to be accepting of.

The only measurement to slowing this process is to not hit him while in q, so you don't build his rp gauge... but that usually isn't enough. It doesn't help that he has a pretty strong infinite loop (stronger than valle's in timing, and damage, especially with gold armor).

Ok. Wall of text done, those are my top two OP'd mechanics.

[Cerberus]

I'd have to agree with both of these points. D!ck's jump shotty's speed is simply far over-the-top in how much mobility it gives him. His JR gives him nearly the same move-speed as a normal melee character, and even if by some obscure chance you do get close to him, he just flies around away from you for a few seconds, and repeat. There's really no counter to this besides either picking an Elrath/Renoah to focus on him all game, or hope that the D!ck's bad.

And the Tiac thing I have mixed feelings about. It's ridiculously strong for group fights considering how much crazy damage he pumps out, but for say, a 1v1, his Super Armor is fairly lackluster, as you can just gaurd untill it's duration is up, and he can't really do much.

[SlateMaze]

Yeah, Tiac is something I am having trouble playing against. In a 1v1, I don't have qualms with it, as you said, kite it.

But using it in a setting where it isn't 1v1, then it seems the uptime he can keep with it lasts too long. I'm not for nerfing the stats it gives while it is up. I am for nerfing just how many times he can cast it in rapid succession.

Like I said, in my example I had a tiac, gold out on me while I kited it, where he instantly casted it again upon ending. He then manages to kill me with it. So they won the round and they get a small boost for RP. Without even picking up the RP boost, he was able to come in to the first fight with an F-interrupt, and a Q again, sustaining only the first couple hits that caused him to F.

I might be genuinely skewed in perspective in small lapses of time, but on the whole, I was playing steam a bunch yesterday and on average tiac was able to gold at least once every fight.

I really think setting a damage limit like Valle's Q would do the trick. (it would last longer because some damage gets through), but since the duration lasts so long he is able to hit freely without flinching and take massive damage - though mitigated, which all builds rp up.

If you were to shorten the duration of the Q via some means, his enhanced rp buildup should be lessened.

[SlateMaze]

The part being a constant upkeep of gold armor whenever it is pertinent to have it. I think that ruins the character on the opposite side of the pendulum, and hence my direction of attention in that it needs work.

There are a bunch of solutions that can work for this without hurting the character. Again, I proposed that the duration of time that he is able to have it on compared to when it isn't should be a wider ratio (obviously super armor being the lesser number). Nothing else about it needs to be tweaked.

And I personally feel like if you look at just the ratio of uptime in combat only scenarios, the perception is staggering. Invoking something similar to Valle, a long timer can be used with the ability to end prematurely due to damage absorbed throughout the experience.

You still get an optimal solution of gold tiac with longevity provided you are doing things right. And besides, he can still block while in gold form. Valle cannot.

[HeaT]

The level of kiting that can be performed by a D!ck spamming shotties is too good. My crew and I consider him the best in the game because he has so many options in a fight. The man is easy mode, period.

Tiac has been nerfed 3 times already. I will take damage absorbed to shorten the actual ultimate itself but other than that, I say leave him alone.

[DYSEQTA]

Codebrush should be able to do a database query or something to see the percentage of high rank players that use Tiac and D1ck. The results from that should speak for themselves.

Tiac is an issue because 1 skill is perhaps a tad easy to activate. I agree that the RP requirement has to be raised. It is way too much power for 2 bars. That and Tiac has plenty of other tools at his disposal to get his job done effectively.

D1ck is just broken. I just finished a Netherdale with a red rank D1ck that did nothing the whole match but Jump Shotty and spam wards all around the capture points. It should also be noted that that same D1ck got MVP in the match with 0 contributes... When valid technique with a character can be reduced to a single attack it needs to be fixed. This happened with Elrath, for the better, and now it needs to happen with D1ck.

The real problem with the Jump Shotty attack is that it is airbourne. There are precious few effective anti air attacks in this game and D1ck can effectively spend his entire gaming life in the air. Couple that with the fact that the attack in question has reasonable spread on it and can be endlessly spammed and you have an issue especially when there is any kind of server lag going on.

I don't mind getting smashed by Tiacs as they genreally use everything they have against me (and against me, Elika, its tough surviving a gold Tiac attack and nigh impossible if there is another opponent in the frey, and so it should be) but D1ck is just pathetic.

[Hans]

I was in the same match with said D!ck and it was ridiculous. On top of just shotty spamming the whole fight he was just stacking his pylons to increase the passive buff. Wish I had thought to take a screen shot, but we all know what I'm talking about.

And garbage like this needs to be fixed. Picture speaks for itself.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=142452948

EDIT: The other issue with D!ck is that his reload time is instant as well as his shotgun blast has no travel time after being fired, it's pretty much instant.

Renoah on the other hand when firing her pistols has to lead her shots otherwise she'll miss from travel time where as D!ck doesn't have to.

All I'm saying is it's a bit ridiculous that in a ranged fight D!ck has the advantage over a character who can do only that.

[DYSEQTA]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Biguanide:

Does it hurt that much to avoid him while he's glowing. He wastes 2 RP that way.
If you use it in a crowd, and successfully attack enemies, naturally you should have enough RP to use it again. He's an offensive tank.
This reminds me of when someone complained about F.Rennies Ressurection skill.

Not sure why you are quoting my post on this but I'll answer anyway. The question is not about whether the skill is valid its about how much it costs to use it. Hell Elikas Q cost 3 and she is still vulnerable to a gold Tiac, an Elrath, a Renoah, a D1ck, a Gasper, or an Ice Renny during it's execution. Tiac's armor (lets ignore the damage increase) when gold is so strong he can shrug off a snipe shot to the back like it was a moth bite and also cannot be stunned at all for the duration. So for ten seconds he can rage free from any concern, its a 2 RP 10 second rampage (which in a group can be regularly repeated). Elika gets a 2 second still vulnerable blast for 3 and she's squishy as they come.

[SlateMaze]

Everyone seems to be along the same lines here save the section below. Another thing to consider for ♥♥♥♥ is to not allow him to reload in air after firing the shotgun. I know its near instantaneous, but even going so far as to mimicking renoah's reload feature (can't reload and perform other actions at the same time) would be a help.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Biguanide:

Despite all that you said,
..Have you tried pressing E (guard) with Tiac when Dragons Valor is activated, lol do you play as him.
He does not block, instead he does a Dan Mei aoe shout that doesn't even stun. Instead it takes like 30SP and 2 damage.
rofl do the ppl that complain about chars not bother playing the char to see why players use them the way they do. It gives you alot of useful info when making a post like this yknow, right?
lol if they did change anything about him an attk speed inc. would be nice if they make his buff like Dan Mei and Valles

I'm only speaking for Tiac atm, I know Richards like a top tier char, heck lol I camp wards too.
It works. Is that what you call a Low risk high reward?

It really seems like your thought process for offering up valid rebuttals primarily consists of debasing and insulting the person who you disagree with and just leaving it at that.

What it comes off as is that you love Tiac and don't want him changed, because change is bad. I'm just glad you decided to put a little detail into this so I can talk about it.

First, I don't main him, and I have played him on a number of occasions, though I never tried to block in gold form, as I would have thought it not needed. What I witnessed in steam canal would have been a bug my friend. Seeing a gold Tiac blocking would have been just that. However, it doesn't negate anything about my post.

You switch out blocking with a useless shout. Which I can only see useful in the presence of an extremely low hp person than can dodge sprint hits well. Again this is but an insignificant detail concerning the topic, I just put what I noticed.

So I just went and played him on nagas for a full round for the first time. And mvp'd it with 2 purples in there. Once going, I had gold armor for any 2 out of 3 times I engaged. And that was probably because I bothered golding twice for some engagements that were a little lengthy.

That's the whole point of this post. Not that he is vastly overpowered and needs to have the foundations of his existence looked at, but that the duration for q-armor when fighting is ridiculous.

While his 1v1 mastery can be a bit daunting if the other person knows how to run, he's not without other tools to help him (sprint).

His utility in fights where there are more than two people present it AMAZING when he has q up. And that's FINE, as long as there are reliable times where it is down. Currently, there are none.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Biguanide:

Does it hurt that much to avoid him while he's glowing. He wastes 2 RP that way.
If you use it in a crowd, and successfully attack enemies, naturally you should have enough RP to use it again. He's an offensive tank.
This reminds me of when someone complained about F.Rennies Ressurection skill.

An offensive tank that has constant upkeep of armor that pretty much guarantees him a kill on a squishy if they so much as think to attack him. He can partial combo a full health non-armored squishy like renny, renoah, elrath etc. They die in 2/3 hits to the back. They can't escape that. Period. And he can't be stunned once started.

But again, I point out! This is not about nerfing his amazing skill in any way but duration.

I leave with this. You say he needs an attack speed increase in compensation. I would argue that a silly change. There are a range of attack speeds, he falls lower in some areas, in fact in his left left right right, both rights are blockable provided he doesn't alt-right even if he hits you with his lefts. That's fine, and he isn't the only one (see cezanne for left left left). But he also has one of the strongest, if not THE strongest, infinite still in play right now, all while being one of the easiest to time (this is subjective).

Do you even master your char of preference before attacking other people's lack of play on them?

[Sliferx]

I dont agree with anything here(not exactly :p)? well i wont quote any specific post but ill just post my own opinion.

First of all i dont main tiac, i played him before but i dont really care about tiac, he can get nerfed or buffed, i could care less. Right now i think he's fine though, in 1v1 tiac isnt much of a problem and it depends on who you're playing as and how skilled you and the tiac are but tiac attacks are slow, so you should be able to beat him in 1v1 (with almost every character) and of course if you disagree with that and think you're a good enough tiac you can always add me to prove me wrong.

I think if there is any change it has to be increasing cost just 1 more RP, but thats it. Not that i want that change, i also think about people who use tiac.. i mean slow attacks... can be blocked and countered easily man, that shield is important for them :)

In the end, i dont know if a change is needed, i do think he's fine actually. Cant please everyone i guess, if you want something to nerf maybe nerf dat JLL spam? like the valle one ^_^ even though its not much of a problem for me, but it can be a problem for alot of other people. Thats more worthy of a nerf i guess.

[hickwarrior]

What I think about Tiac is that that Q is too ridiculous for the cost it gives you. Valle's no-flinch armor doesn't last long if people beat on it, but it costs 3 RP for it. Compare that to tiac's Q, and his is infinitely better than Valle's. Which only gives Valle's F a use for her RP as far as I am concerned when it comes to her skills.

As for Richard, I don't know. Any Richard will abuse it, which is a given. But I feel like they are quite predictable when doing it. In a 1v1, I can see how it's OP, he can kite all day. But when 2 people focus on him and they're smart about coordinating it, he'll fall easily. That's assuming the other teammates are busy with their own fights, or not paying attention at all. So I'm not sure how well that can play out.

But it is quite irritating to have to chase him down and it does take a bit too much to have to beat Richard, while he doesn't even need to think about it and take the high ground preferably. That shouldn't exist, he needs to think about what he should be doing, rather than not.

[DYSEQTA]

Oprindeligt skrevet af hickwarrior:

As for Richard, I don't know. Any Richard will abuse it, which is a given. But I feel like they are quite predictable when doing it. In a 1v1, I can see how it's OP, he can kite all day.
...
But it is quite irritating to have to chase him down and it does take a bit too much to have to beat Richard, while he doesn't even need to think about it and take the high ground preferably. That shouldn't exist, he needs to think about what he should be doing, rather than not.

Yes this is my point. D1ck isn't difficult to beat it's just painful due to the fact that most characters are limited in what they can do in the air. When I play Renoah on Netherdale I make it my business to shoot down floating D1cks as a matter of priority for no other reason than to give my team a stress break from constantly having to deal with it.

Those that play him that is all I see them doing, jump, shoot, jump, shoot, lay wards in some anoying arrangment when left alone, jump, shoot, jump, shoot. Amongst high ranking players I see every other character being utilised fully; all their attacks being used in battles but not D1cks.That's why I say he is broken and why he is like Elrath pre nerf, no one uses his other abilities because one ability is simply effective and his others simply arent.

You could probably just swap d1cks shotties around and it would be fixed: Double shots on the ground, single shots in the air.

[Sliferx]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Kokoro:

Those that play him that is all I see them doing, jump, shoot, jump, shoot, lay wards in some anoying arrangment when left alone, jump, shoot, jump, shoot. Amongst high ranking players I see every other character being utilised fully; all their attacks being used in battles but not D1cks.That's why I say he is broken and why he is like Elrath pre nerf, no one uses his other abilities because one ability is simply effective and his others simply arent.

You sure about d1ck not being utilized fully? :) yeah maybe most of these 'high ranked' players just spam JR because they just dont know anything else, but not all them them are like that you know. I will explain why ♥♥♥♥♥ are spamming JR now.

It all started with this in CBT2

♥♥♥♥
- R, JR's damage has been increased

When ♥♥♥♥ was very underrated, no one using him because they dont know how. He was totally viable though if you know how to use him, so after that patch people started using d1ck more and spamming that JR all day :)

So how to fix it? bring shotgun damage back to original.. before patch.

[DYSEQTA]

Oprindeligt skrevet af SSSliferx:

You sure about d1ck not being utilized fully? :)
...
So how to fix it? bring shotgun damage back to original.. before patch.

On the servers I frequent which are the Austrlian servers plus a few US servers I go and lag it up in when I can't get into the Australian ones, Yes I'm very sure. I've been meleed like once or twice by a D1ck and that was clearly just out of desperation, and ultimately failed for them.

So why would unpatching something fix the problem. Wouldn't that just reinstate the original problem?

[Alazorant]

You could probably just swap d1cks shotties around and it would be fixed: Double shots on the ground, single shots in the air. [/quote]

T-Up
This should settle the D1ck Down

[Sliferx]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Kokoro:

Oprindeligt skrevet af SSSliferx:

You sure about d1ck not being utilized fully? :)
...
So how to fix it? bring shotgun damage back to original.. before patch.

On the servers I frequent which are the Austrlian servers plus a few US servers I go and lag it up in when I can't get into the Australian ones, Yes I'm very sure. I've been meleed like once or twice by a D1ck and that was clearly just out of desperation, and ultimately failed for them.

So why would unpatching something fix the problem. Wouldn't that just reinstate the original problem?

As i said in my post

"yeah maybe most of these 'high ranked' players just spam JR because they just dont know anything else, but not all them them are like that you know."

Kokoro there isnt an "original" problem, back then in CBT2 people were just noobs, danmei and ♥♥♥♥ were very very underrated even though both of them were beasts.