Adjustments to General Gameplay

For the past couple months we have been gathering up ideas and thoughts on how to alter some values to reduce critical breakpoints in the gameplay experience while still staying true to MB2's signature feel. Before even trying them out, we would like to see some discussion on the potential implications and if there are some controversial changes in the mix. None of these changes are final and surely not all of them will ever see the light of day, but many of these ideas attempt to address issues that particularly new players might feel are frustrating.

Note that these changes do not focus on Saber vs Saber mechanics as that is explored elsewhere in Tempest's tweak threads.

General mechanics

• Getup from knockdown activates 0.5-1 second sooner for single life classes
  
• Getup animation from knockdowns changed to a sped up Soldier getup animation while on the ground (mid-air getup is still current coinflip)
• Can't hack objectives while on fire
• All single life classes can sideroll upon knockdown except SBD
  
• Sonic detonator stuns count as assists
• Incendiary Grenade flames stop dealing TK points after being lit for 5 seconds
  
• Assist TKs can be punished
• A primed grenade will tick passively to alert for corner camps

These changes would be focused towards reducing frustration, fixing oversights and small changes to make the game look a bit better. The most significant of these are the changes to how knockdowns look and feel.

Currently the knockdown is a very powerful mechanic that creates tension during a fight and allows for powerful crowd control abilities to be potent. It is one of the big things that sets MB2 apart from everything else. However it can prove very frustrating and can feel unavoidable for the less experienced players. By slightly reducing the time it takes for the getup and giving additional control over your destiny, we hope to alleviate general frustration while slightly reducing the game-ending impact of a knockdown.

All primed grenades will tick similar to Concussion Grenades to allow players to detect corner ambushes more reliably. This will also help players read the battlefield better as they can now determine if a grenade has been primed or not without having to hear the priming beeps.

The Force:

• Pull vulnerability frames changed to match Push
• Push costs changed from 2-2-8 to 2-4-8. Single target knockdown added for Push 2.
  
• Lightning only stuns for the frames that it hits
• FP drains are no longer capped when not blocking

These changes to the way the Force works are slight tweaks to reduce frustrating behaviour in Pull and Lightning. There was a big cool factor in hitting snipes on Jedi/Sith who were playing carelessly, so we would like to bring that back.

Push 3 is generally perceived to be very powerful and easy to use considering its utility. We are thinking of an indirect nerf by making it cost 2 points more to access. Boosting Push 2 would encourage players to save points for other abilities as long as they are comfortable with aiming at their intended targets. People who can do single-target pushing reliably will be able to do so with less points. However, if someone wants to be a crowd control powerhouse, that is still possible, just with an added cost.

Lightsaber

• Passive deflects should never fly behind the deflecter
• Increase Flinch range to match Close IDR for better consistency
• Staff/Duals cost to 0
• Staff/Duals defense arc to match regular stances

These behavioural changes explain themselves for most part. Staff and Duals are made more accessible, but they lose their defensive bonus. Flinch becomes more reliable and both players can expect a specific result when getting shot.

Frag Grenade

• Secondary throw FP drain removed

Knockdown is already punishing enough. It also feels inconsistent as it is the only explosive that does this.

Clone Rifle

• Reduce velocity of both blobs by 15%

The Clone Rifle's blob blasts have become very fast over the course of the years almost sneakily. This has removed a certain feeling of pride and accomplishment from landing air blobs on mandalorians. This also reduces the game ending power the Blob currently holds over Jedi/Sith.

Concussion Grenade

• Direct hits explode on impact dealing extra damage (10-20 HP)

Bring back some of the old Primary Grenade feel to the Soldier class while giving the Double Conc Build a bit more oomph.

Projectile Rifle

• Remove firing delay while scoping
• Introduce focus mechanic: Stand still for 1.5s to fire a 100% accurate shot. Visually decrease crosshair size in the same fashion as EE3 until accuracy achieved
• Adjust ammo available per level 8-12-18

Give the Projectile Rifle back its possibility of quickscoping, but create a requirement of having a setup for making clear shots. Ammo amounts available are also tweaked to make sniping a more conscious decision as it cannot be done wastefully.

Westar M5

• Increase sniper ammo cost so that the clip can fit 1 less sniper shot
• Decrease sniper shot base damage by 3

The M5 is largely where it needs to be, but being able to fire so many shots in succession reduces the feeling of every shot counting. In similar fashion the base damage would be decreased just slightly to emphasize the importance of landing two consecutive shots for the kill.

Bowcaster

• Implement a curved damage increase for the charged shot like with the Disruptor
• Include a sound effect for charging the shot
• Fully charged shots are always accurate

The rapid fire/charged shot swap has made the gun feel more like its own thing. It no longer feels like an overpowered E11, even if only at Level 2. The charged shot is given more emphasis while also slightly reducing its initial damage output, while keeping the maximum charge damage the same. Currently the damage adds up too fast resulting in high damage with very little charging required. These changes just nudge us more towards making the gun feel as punchy as it felt like in Episode 7.

EE3

• Sniper shot damage decreased from 100 to 90

The sniper shot damage is reduced slightly to emphasize shots that land on the chest and head.

Disruptor

• Primary shots pass through targets
• Increase reload time by 20%

The non-scoped mode gets a fun feature that should make it an interesting option in a tight hallway. The Disruptor reloads very fast and this leaves very small timing windows for enemies to relocate and suppress. Increasing reload time should make sniping a more responsible decision.

Melee

• Legsweep no longer knocks down if the target is crouching

This behaviour inconsistent and the legsweep has a very large hitbox, so knocking down players with it is not exactly as thrilling and skillful as it should be. Now players have some counterplay against it.

Poison Dart

• Reduce duration by 33%

Poison can feel like a very frustrating ability when stacked as it forces a player out of the fight. It also grants the Bountyhunter a long timing window for pressure or even securing the kill. This change should increase significance of landing consecutive darts and gives the Bountyhunter less time to capitalize.

That was a lot more than I expected. Please take your time to read and think about these changes. As said above, none of them are set in stone and are more-so starting points rather than final values.

We would love to hear your thoughts. What sounds good? What sounds bad? Why? I am fond of all of these changes and truly believe they make the game more nuanced without feeling too heavy-handed. I am sure we'll disagree on some of the more drastic points, but I would love to see you also highlight which of the changes make the game better even if you feel strongly against some other features.

 

[Vitéz]

Interessting ideas. These parts are I either have concerns about, or I dont agree with.

Spoiler

Knockdowns:
First of all: what do we call a single live class? Clonetrooper without Reinforcements is a single live class? Secondly: there are 3 real single-life classes which cant roll (so get up earlier) already (minus Droideka): Wookiee, SBD and Mandalorian... which classes either have knockdown immunity in certain conditions or can fly away long before any knockdown could happen... why do these classes get this buff? Its totally their fault if they get knocked down, so just why? Dont make the punishment for their own failure smaller by this change. This change is an "I dont care about it" change for the other single life classes, since they alredy can roll, which is just as fast as this will be.
Anyway, the roll for Wookiee and Mandalorian classes idea... it look totally odd when a bulky ARC Trooper does that, now you give this for a dude with a Jetpack on its back, and for a walking carpet... these two classes arent *that* mobile to pull this stunt. IMO it'd look ridiculous, and they still can easily prevent being knocked down, as I said before.

The Force:
The lvl2 knockdown for Push is an interessting buff for the good Jedi/Sith players. The average players always cry about how powerful the Jedi class is... now a good player can get the ability to knock down a single gunner for 6 points cheaper. I dont think much will change ingame, because the average players cant even use Pull (which is kind of the same as a single target Push), but I think the less experienced gunner players will complain about this change... a lot. I'm not against the change tho.
Btw, I'd do some changes with Pull too: the Pull lvl2 should simply do a knockdown, and lvl3 sould take away the weapon (so it'd be similiar to Push, the lvl3 abilities would have the "bonuses" like range and weapon pull)... and I'd even lower the cost of Push/Pull lvl3, and make lvl2 more expensive... like 2-8-4. It'd be a more effective change for Pull if the gunner classes wouldnt get a free Pistol tho... losing a weapon would be a real loss.

Lightsaber:
No offense, but get rid of this flinch nonsense already. It rewards those gunners who do their only job: hit the targets. Its like the Jedi vs Gunner fight starts only when the Jedi is in melee range. And its a BS. Perks were much better than this (without the damage reduction for all styles). The perk system had 2 critical error in my opinion: they didnt give any negative attribute for the Jedi, only positive ones; and a single player could pick 3 different perks and rotate them ingame, which should have been kept on 1. I suggest to remove flinch and the generic damage reduction for Jedi, and restore the perk system even as buyable passive skills, so the player could pick 1 (or none) single buff (with a debuff) and thats it. Not to mention that why cant players (even gunners) get flinched when they get shot from farther? It doesnt hurt that much, or what? The whole idea is stupid (no offense for those who had this wounderful idea).
If these buyable passive skills would be bound by certain styles, than the useless styles in Open mode (like Staff and Dual, which are tweaked in this suggested idea) would be useable again, like they were for a short time in the history of this mod. And before you start that "other styles are just as useful in Open mode"... they are not. Its not Duel mode, you dont necessarily have to kill the enemy Jedi/Sith to win. But it is a problem, that most styles are useless against Gunners (so against the other 6 classes / team).

Clone Rifle:
I'm not sure its necessary to reduce the velocity of the ion blobs. They dont look so fast than the classic blobs.

Concussion Grenade
Its an obvious nope. A Soldier with one single live will be able to kill a Jedi with 2 succesfully thrown grenade? Yay? Even if it wont be able to do that, it'll still make a lot of damage; or it'll force the Jedi to use Push which will open the Jedi's defences for the enemy gunners to finish the job. And this is only for 1 life of the Soldier from the 3.
If you'd finally merge the 3 basic gunner classes in a team (Soldier-ET-Hero/BH) into one single Trooper class (which would be a much better buff for the gunners than any Jedi nerf will ever be, because the Trooper would have the same unpredictable ability-set than the Jedi/Sith classes have now), and these concussion grenades would be usable on a single live class, then it'd be great. But to give this to a class with reinforcement? Nope.

Projectile Rifle:
Just add a shotgun-like weapon to Open mode already. Yes, you added quick-scope back, with a little nerf (which is none, because accuracy is not as important in short/melee range), but you also nerfed the classic usage of the Projedtile Rifle: to use it as a sniper weapon. You'll have to wait to make an accurate shot, just like you have to wait to use Disruptor by charging it, but Disruptor is a hit-scan weapon, and the shot goes through enemies... while Proj. Rifle doesent do any of these.
To be honest I love the general idea of a focus-period, because it'd be much more authentic, but since you're not interessted to give this focus-period for the other scoped weapons (including the non-sniper weapons, like the Bowcaster or the A280 as well), its an obvious nope.

Westar M5:
Why dont you make the size of a single clip smaller? I mean you already nerf the weapon by reducing the damage of the sniper shots, do you have to nerf the ammo cost as well? Especially if the official statement is that "the M5 is largely where it needs to be", which should mean that the class is fine, only small tweaks are required... not nerfs.

Anyway, good to see that the development of the mod didnt reduced for the development of the saber system, and even the community was asked about the suggested changes.

 

[AODVIX]

I would only disagree with the lightning nerf. Rest I could try it out.

 

[eezstreet]

my balance opinions lol r shit but here goes:

- Getup times being altered for single life classes, is good. Buffs Bounty Hunter in a good way since iirc that's the only non-SBD class that has a horrible getup time.
- Lightning stun should not be changed like that, it will completely ruin the point of it. I think what would be more acceptable is if the stunned player is able to outrun the sith while they are doing lightning, instead of being caught in a web of death.
- Blob change is good, fine, alright
- M5 is fine. Don't change it. Not many people go M5 sniper anyway, even in DOTF from my experience. The grenade launcher is just much more useful.
- I don't think staff/duals should go to 0. Just cost less.
- Wook changes: Wook needs a nerf in some way, it's just ungodly strong. Maybe decrease their speed a bit with Melee 3 or increase the cost of Melee 3. But their charged bowcaster was basically useless before, so this at least gives them options. Melee 3 is still way stronger even with these changes. It's not enough to justify getting Bowcaster 3 over Melee 3.
- EE3 changes: I'm not sure that kinda change really makes a difference, breakpoint-wise. What does 10 less damage do, fundamentally speaking?
- Projectile Rifle: Scoped sniper shots should not be random. Period. I have hated the Projectile Rifle ever since some horrible accuracy changes were made that made it not fire perfectly straight anymore. Projectile rifle should just shoot in a straight line, or subject to ballistics like Achilles suggested. Instead, make the scope sway and use a real breath mechanic.
- Disruptor changes: Penetration doesn't seem useful. Maybe make the primary fire on par damage-wise with blasters and also have penetration and you've got a recipe for a hallway clearer. Also, typo here? If you want a fast-reloading hallway clearing weapon, why increase the reloading time? Surely you meant decrease it? (I think you confused reload time with reload speed?)
- Legsweep change: Why? Again gotta say Achilles is right here, the whole point of legsweep is to knock down crouched targets. Now there's just no point. Crouch n win.
- Poison dart changes: I think it's good, considering that BH has other changes which make them stronger.

stuff which doesn't get addressed but should:
- SBD is boring and only has one gun. People say SBD is OP and I think they're wrong. They're actually fairly weak in a straight-up fight, especially against melee wooks, clones, and even soldiers if the SBD is not built the right way. I think the people that say SBD is OP only play noob glowstick mode and get wrecked by cortosis, because that's pretty much the only thing they're super amazing at. Which to be fair, like 80% of the players haven't figured out that there's another class besides Jedi or Sith (?) because it's all that I ever see. Give SBD another role that they can tech into. Playing around what you think your opponents are going to use is really boring.
- Melee wook is stupidly strong, even with charge changes there's no reason to pick Bowcaster 3 over Melee 3. Health 3 is just mandatory either way.
- Heroes have a bit of an identity crisis. There's nothing really standout about them, aside from Dodge, which has been nerfed to the ground over and over. Heal is too weak. Their pistol skills are less interesting than Mandalorian or ARC (and they have the acrobatic skills of neither). Their midrange and long range are not as diverse as Bounty Hunters. They get grenades but who cares, so do Soldiers and Elite Troopers. And hey, Bounty Hunters have them beat again here too, because Bounty Hunters get a more interesting and useful tool here as well.
- Dual pistols are still garbage, can't aim accurately enough to do charged shots, and ARC bounce shots always kill your teammates.
- Mind Trick is worthless and expensive. Mind Trick requires that someone be visible to you, which in most cases means that you're either getting the jump on them anyway, or they've already spotted you, in which case they already know what you're up to.

 

[Gargos]

@Nex youre making it sound like using lightning 1 succesfully is the greatest achievement a sith can do. It hardly takes any skill to just jump and lightning and then land before the gunner can do anything. The sith has the advantage in most cases easily. Are you sure youre not the one trying to keep the game this way so it would benefit YOUR gameplay greatly instead of you needing to adapt?

And calling grip useless? Still one of my favorite force powers (well it is true that right now grip 1 and grip 2 are hardly worth a dime but grip 3 is still my love child). If I can manage to jump around in melee mode to be able to execute grip on even some good players (youn cannot use grip 3 unless you have 65 fp or more and with lightning 50 or more) then it takes no effort whatsoever to jump in with a saber and use lightning. Sure there are counters such as wookiee str3 and clone stamina 2 but lightnin is a fairly used tactic are you supposed to always play these classes for counter and nothing else?

Edit

Proj: I think I understood it wrong, so waiting 1,5 seconds it becomes accurate while moving too then? I think I like that idea

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

@Nex youre making it sound like using lightning 1 succesfully is the greatest achievement a sith can do. It hardly takes any skill to just jump and lightning and then land before the gunner can do anything. The sith has the advantage in most cases easily. Are you sure youre not the one trying to keep the game this way so it would benefit YOUR gameplay greatly instead of you needing to adapt?

And calling grip useless? Still one of my favorite force powers (well it is true that right now grip 1 and grip 2 are hardly worth a dime but grip 3 is still my love child). If I can manage to jump around in melee mode to be able to execute grip on even some good players (youn cannot use grip 3 unless you have 65 fp or more and with lightning 50 or more) then it takes no effort whatsoever to jump in with a saber and use lightning. Sure there are counters such as wookiee str3 and clone stamina 2 but lightnin is a fairly used tactic are you supposed to always play these classes for counter and nothing else?

Well, lightning 1 doesn't continue a stun after the lightning ends, so the gunner can just shoot you before your swing connects if they have any sort of reaction time. Lightning 2 is only useful against Soldiers and ETs, every other class can avoid any swing you perform via running and jumping. Lightning 3 is pretty useful, but only if you get the jump on them.

Grip is actually almost useless. Any smart gunner will just shoot you 3-4 times and drop you below grip threshold. The only thing I use grip for, is to grab level 1 grip, and use it on semi-smart players so that they see the grip icon and panic run, then I pull them.

 

[Gargos]

Grip is actually almost useless. Any smart gunner will just shoot you 3-4 times and drop you below grip threshold. The only thing I use grip for, is to grab level 1 grip, and use it on semi-smart players so that they see the grip icon and panic run, then I pull them.

Funny, I am using def 1 build with grip 3 push 3 pull 3 and I find it super useful, I do not go under the fp limit even with that. Guess I only meet noobs then

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

Funny, I am using def 1 build with grip 3 push 3 pull 3 and I find it super useful, I do not go under the fp limit even with that. Guess I only meet noobs then

Maybe you do. Because I only really find grip useful in a 1v1 situation, and a good gunner can pretty easily stop that from working.

I find speed 3 so much more useful lately than anything else.

 

[Gargos]

I find speed 3 so much more useful lately than anything else.

you could also just get speed 1 for 2 points and get something else with the rest of the points since the opening cost for speed is 25 fp with every level. The short bursts are what count.

 

[Nex]

@Nex youre making it sound like using lightning 1 succesfully is the greatest achievement a sith can do. It hardly takes any skill to just jump and lightning and then land before the gunner can do anything. The sith has the advantage in most cases easily. Are you sure youre not the one trying to keep the game this way so it would benefit YOUR gameplay greatly instead of you needing to adapt?

And calling grip useless? Still one of my favorite force powers (well it is true that right now grip 1 and grip 2 are hardly worth a dime but grip 3 is still my love child). If I can manage to jump around in melee mode to be able to execute grip on even some good players (youn cannot use grip 3 unless you have 65 fp or more and with lightning 50 or more) then it takes no effort whatsoever to jump in with a saber and use lightning. Sure there are counters such as wookiee str3 and clone stamina 2 but lightnin is a fairly used tactic are you supposed to always play these classes for counter and nothing else?

Edit

Proj: I think I understood it wrong, so waiting 1,5 seconds it becomes accurate while moving too then? I think I like that idea

I see your point, however even now lightning lvl 1 is hardly reliable as you have no control over it (although works well against newbs). You just aim and press a key so it auto fires for a brief moment unlike it is with lvl 2 where you can fire it till you run out of fp and deal far greater damage. Removing short stun time window right after lightning ends destroys the purpose of it. You will be able to fire lightning, deal some damage and that's it. After lightning stops, gunner will recover instantly. You gain nothing out of it but just lose fp and become more vulnerable. That's why it makes no sense.
Just look what they did with grip 1 and 2. Today you either go for grip lvl 3 or no at all. Grip on lower levels worked just like lightning lvl 1/2 does now. Except it additionaly could be used on Jedi once they got force focused. They removed that stun window and grip instantly became useless. It's gonna be the same with lightning.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

A lot of good discussion going on. Remember that these are tentative thoughts we have and once this thread has run its course, I'll go through it and gather up your feedback and see what sticks and what doesn't. We can have more of these threads. That's kind of what I want to start doing. See how Blizzard has handled Starcraft 2's balance development together with the community for the past year. Introduce the change ideas early on to the players and iterate on them based on discussion.

Judging by the positive reactions so far from shortening the getup recovery timer, that ought to be an okay addition that is at least worth trying in practice. It should not be drastic, but enough to make a small difference. What I'd love to see here is a change along the lines of a player barely surviving that 5th shot that was going to kill them normally. That lucky long range Push/Pull that managed to knock you down, the Jedi is no longer able to run up to you without significant risk. The goal is to not nerf something into the swamp.

The projectile rifle idea seems somewhat controversial and it's probably best to go back to the drawing board with that one. It's a difficult weapon to balance right.

People's main argument for not having flinch be a reliable feature seems to be that it harms the feasibility of the slower stances? What if Red/Purple are flinch free? Essentially berserker styles designed to take the hit.

Some abilities and elements were not addressed in this thread, but do understand that we are keeping an eye on them as well. For example Dodge might be too strong now, but we'd rather let the meta settle a bit more to see where to go next.

 

[Lastt]

It's actually incredibly hard to backwack someone unless they are turned really far away from you. I've demonstrated this to a number of people who claim that it's super easy to get backwacked and it changes their opinion pretty quickly. I'd be happy to show you as well. The reason why people hunt for BWs now is because it takes 10 years to chew through someone's BP -> might as well just BW them, especially if they're outnumbered.


This would only affect higher damage weapons (it's not increasing the FP drains, just not capping them).

I personally don't think it's balanced and don't know why it got so over-tuned.

Sounds good, next time I see you ill ask you to show me. But thats besides the point, I have a feeling your still thinking of this in a 1v1 sense, like a duel. Im sure it is very hard to go for a BW in a duel, against an opponent who only has to focus on you. But what im trying to say is MB2 needs to be balanced around both duels and Open (fighting multiple opponents). You yourself told me that defense arcs were lowered in 1.4, and that nerf is keenly felt when fighting gangs of sith whose sole purpose is to get behind you. Especially when your doing things like jumping around, running on walls etc, the change compared to 1.3 is very noticeable.... 1.4 made fighting groups of enemies much harder, the changes to parry, lower damage, even swings while running got nerfed, on top of the nerfed defensive arcs. All these changes have made gangbangs more frustrating then they were before. Fighting multiple opponents is a valuable skill practiced by warriors for as long as there have been warriors... MB2 has neglected this skill, as now numbers and stats tend to determine who wins 1vX situations.

And on the lightning nerf, please dont do this. Lightning again is one of the few tools available to sith to get the hordes of heros, clones and soldiers to back up off him, if only for a couple seconds. Shortening that time will have a much bigger impact then you expect....

If you guys are looking for suggestions to offset the nerfs to push, pull and lightning, why dont you buff the part of jedi that takes the most skill? Things that have to do with sabering, like the defensive arc, capped or reduced BP drains while blocking, maybe even a buff to deflect. Or you could actually make some useful saber perks vs gunners, give the styles some more flavor. Personally, if done right I think that would be the most fun and interesting....

And of course theres always saber throw....

 

[Lervish]

At this point I'd like to remind everyone of one of the first sentences of this topic:
"None of these changes are final and surely not all of them will ever see the light of day"

It's a feedback round and your concerns will be taken into account before making any changes. Personally I'm not a fan of just nerfing features directly, instead I'd look at what can be done to buff others to counter them. Ideally everything would feel juicy and powerful when used in the right situation.

EDIT: Ben basically said this a minute before me apparently.

 

[DeLFoZ]

I will give my opinion in the points I consider will make a huge change in the current game. For the rest I dont rlly care as I think wont have much of an impact.

• Getup from knockdown activates 0.5-1 second sooner for single life classes

I dont rlly know how long each class takes to get up but even 0.5 secs seems too much 0.2-0.3 secs should be enough

• Getup animation from knockdowns changed to a sped up Soldier getup animation while on the ground (mid-air getup is still current coinflip)

I dont understand what you mean by coinflip get up but this change sounds good.

• All single life classes can sideroll upon knockdown except SBD

No. I want different classes to be different. You suggest to decrease the get up time and add roll for all classes on top of that?

• Push costs changed from 2-2-8 to 2-4-8. Single target knockdown added for Push 2.

No. Why this sudden obsession with nerfing all knockdowns?

• Lightning only stuns for the frames that it hits

Yes. Lightning should be more of a team support mechanic. This would make lightning users to hold it for a few seconds rather than tapping.

• FP drains are no longer capped when not blocking

Im not quite sure if this would be too big of a nerf but I like the idea to punish careless rushing.

• Secondary throw FP drain removed

I dont feel secondary throw is op. Personally I would leave it with the 20 force drain.

• Reduce velocity of both blobs by 15%

I would nerf ION blobs. I would make it so than ION stuns Deka and SBD with the same area of effect but It will only stuns other classes if its a direct hit.
This way ION is specialized to take down certain classes. Lets be honest, Its so annoying that clone lands the ION 2 meter away for you, yet your stunned for such a long time...

• Remove firing delay while scoping
  [*]Introduce focus mechanic: Stand still for 1.5s to fire a 100% accurate shot. Visually decrease crosshair size in the same fashion as EE3 until accuracy achieved

No please. To me projectile is the offensive sniper while disruptor is more of a defensive one. I personally play BH with both rifles always and several players asked me why. Well because each of them is better for a certain situation...they are different.
If you make this change both rifles would be pretty similar with the disruptor being a stronger version.
Please consider my opinion as a main sniper player Ive been for years.

• Reduce duration by 33%

Im ok with nerfing the duration. Maybe reduce it by 25% instead of 33%.

 

[DaloLorn]

Red/Purple being immune to flinching would certainly be an interesting concept... Risky, but interesting nonetheless.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

Personally I'm not a fan of just nerfing features directly, instead I'd look at what can be done to buff others to counter them. Ideally everything would feel juicy and powerful when used in the right situation.

Perhaps Lightning could be looked at in another way? Check everything that Lightning prevents a player from doing and see if there are some abilities that should be possible to do while they are not currently.

Can Hero dash while stunned? Can an ARC dexroll while stunned? These are probably the classes that need counter-measures the most. Multilifers to me are cannon fodder and deserve to die as much as possible. That's what they're designed to do.

Could Lightning simply be given a higher startup FP cost to make it slightly more risky when it does not succeed?

The damage output of Lightning 1 and 2 could also be looked at. If it does not match Lightning 3, maybe it should?

 

[Nex]

Perhaps Lightning could be looked at in another way? Check everything that Lightning prevents a player from doing and see if there are some abilities that should be possible to do while they are not currently.

Can Hero dash while stunned? Can an ARC dexroll while stunned? These are probably the classes that need counter-measures the most. Multilifers to me are cannon fodder and deserve to die as much as possible. That's what they're designed to do.

Could Lightning simply be given a higher startup FP cost to make it slightly more risky when it does not succeed?

The damage output of Lightning 1 and 2 could also be looked at. If it does not match Lightning 3, maybe it should?

Leave all force powers alone.

 

[Gargos]

Red flinch free sounds fine but as an active purple user I have doubts it being flinch free would be a good idea. Maybe it could have a buff so the flinch can only be activated later during the swing? (Sounds like a tough nut to code tho).

 

[Vitéz]

I was thinking about the Ion blob, and I've got an idea. Make the distance of the shot constant (the max. distance we can get with max. charge now). However add a weapon overheat effect when using the ion blob. The more we charge the weapon (to make the area of the ion splash larger), the longer this overheat would be.
With this, if the user choose to bomb the enemy team to stun multiple enemies, the user wont be able to shoot those enemies because the weapon will be overheated. Still, the teammates can shoot the enemies, so it'd encourage more team play. If the user doesnt charge the weapon, the ion splash will be small, so it'd be able to stun only a single enemy if its a direct hit, but the user's weapon overheat would be so quick (or none), that the blob user could continue to shoot the target without any restriction. The general weapon overheat duration should be lowered with Clone Rifle lvl3, which'd be another reason to pick lvl3 over reinforcements (and it'd be a little nerf for the reinf clone, which is OP for years).
The velocity of the ion blob would not be changed in this idea.

 

[Preston]

"Projectile Rifle

• Remove firing delay while scoping
• Introduce focus mechanic: Stand still for 1.5s to fire a 100% accurate shot. Visually decrease crosshair size in the same fashion as EE3 until accuracy achieved
• Adjust ammo available per level 8-12-18"

Might as well remove proj while you're at it. These changes makes it useless. And please stop nerfing jedi and sith every build, might as well remove them too if they are becoming useless. Pull and push has been nerfed hard enough already, and now with the knockdown changes, it makes pull and push a waste of points.

 

[Chocorope]

It's not making Proj.Rifle useless... Its just making it less of an full Assault Tool, while making it more of Support Tool like it should be.