Playing with as Sable Santana is very frustrating now.

[Leidran]

I guess it’s necessary to state before all else that I heavily focus on 1vs1 matches, rather than 2vs2, mostly due the queue times being much less lengthier, although to be honest the 2vs2 matches I’ve had as Sable didn’t change my experience with him either way.

Before the patch Sable certainly was particularly annoying to fight against because his block was incredibly strong and reliable, specially against single-shot weapons like the sniper, revolver and pistols.
But now a lot more issues are present balance wise, many of them being from before the patch itself:
- Cards increasing your speed and/or allow you to tank damage almost guarantee a win as long as the opponent doesn’t have cards to escape, and even then you can damage them very quickly before they have a chance to do so.
- If the enemy has Speed Down and you have zero way to counter it or get a ranged weapon, you pretty much got no chance of catching them up.
- Most strategies that are not predictable usually include using other weapon cards and/or not using the Katana to begin with.
- Any sort of automatic firing, explosive or buck-shot capable weapons decimates the katana user without a sweat.
- If the enemy has a mine and you don’t have any weapons or damage negation cards on your hand, they can stand near it while they pepper you at a distance, and if you approach too much they can just walk back and trigger the explosion. A similar thing can happen if the enemy uses a turret, although the strategy is a bit different of course.
- It decimates beginners for some reason, and when they have it on their hands they tend to not figure out it can block bullets. This might be due player incompetence but I feel it has to do with the weapon not being particularly intuitive to use.

I believe that the reason why some players said that the nerf heavily hindered Sable was because the unique mechanics of it make it ridiculously hard to not change it in a way that’s too strong or too weak, since the block is the only thing going for it. Not to say melee weapons in a game with lots of guns is not exactly something that will work in general, not even Team Fortress 2 can manage to make a melee only class without it having some sort of weakness so big it invalidates all his tools. I don’t think modifying the Katana itself is the right thing at the moment though, I feel the one that desperately needs something is Sable himself: maybe he could start with a Katana card instead of the weapon itself or maybe the Katana could have some weak long-range capabilities somehow (like reflecting bullets while still taking damage, being capable of throwing the blade towards his opponent or throw shurikens/kunais). I know the main idea of his design is him just being “the melee guy”, but so far that really doesn’t work at all without him being heavily unbalanced.

I hope Brainwash Gang can do something about this because so far I just have been feeling incredibly frustrated playing as my favourite character (to the point where I just quit some games out of annoyance, which is of course not excusable on my end of course, I should learn to deal with these emotions, but it’s not easy due Sable’s state), and its really making me want to not touch him again despite of how much I love swords and messing with people using swap weapons.

[sab]

i have better idea to fix santana - delete character from the game

[Leidran]

Originally posted by sab:

i have better idea to fix santana - delete character from the game

Fair enough, time to dive into the forever box.

[sab]

Originally posted by Microwave:

Originally posted by sab:

i have better idea to fix santana - delete character from the game

Fair enough, time to dive to the forever box.

sad but true. developers not understand simple thing. range > melee. if you need balance - take katana leap

[ManiacOverlord.ttv]

I don't really see any way to balance Sable with the game as it is. Not without changing their katana into a different buff entirely.

Sable either decimates or gets decimated depending on the skill of the players involved. Some cards work to make Sable absolutely broken, while some break katana-tiger in the opposite direction and basically make it impossible to win with him.

Sable IS a fun character, there's that. But at best, the only way I can see them maybe being even marginally more balanced if you were made able to throw the sword at the cost of immediately having to "Reload" after throwing it. It's impractical enough to not be worth doing consistently, but solves the issue of being completely helpless in the face of mine/turret cheese and also prevents speed up/down from being the decider of matches.

[Leidran]

Originally posted by ManiacOverlord:

I don't really see any way to balance Sable with the game as it is. Not without changing their katana into a different buff entirely.

Sable either decimates or gets decimated depending on the skill of the players involved. Some cards work to make Sable absolutely broken, while some break katana-tiger in the opposite direction and basically make it impossible to win with him.

Sable IS a fun character, there's that. But at best, the only way I can see them maybe being even marginally more balanced if you were made able to throw the sword at the cost of immediately having to "Reload" after throwing it. It's impractical enough to not be worth doing consistently, but solves the issue of being completely helpless in the face of mine/turret cheese and also prevents speed up/down from being the decider of matches.

Yeah these are pretty much all my complaints summarized. It's really annoying because before the Katana was nerfed Sable still had these kind of problems (as in, he had a lot of moments where opponent skills and cards decided rather you winning or not), so it really feels they tried to balance the Katana itself without thinking how it would affect Sable.

[furrytouhou]

sable w