Dev's team opinion on Hero balance?

[S1ck]

I am just here to ask what the Dev team thinks about hero in its current state. Is it balanced, not balanced, are you planning on tweaking it in future builds? I have my own opinion but I am just curious where the dev team currently is on the situation.

 

[Gumba]

Like, I know this sounds retarded when you can pick a character like porkins as a hero so the class is already has it absurdities

 

[Damn Polak]

i always wondered: does porkins use standard hitbox, or are his sides vulnerable?

 

[LoU]

I started to playing as jedi (coz it's so damn easy now), clone, wook and i find it pretty fun to play. I'm bored with playing as Hero/sold/et.

 

[Gumba]

Porkins has the same hitbox as any other character but you can see him earlier which make him harder to play. Porkins is only for pros

 

[BigBossBigTeef]

Those man handles are deceptive though.

 

[Supa]

Playing hero without a projectile rifle and still being relevant is hard. The class should be an agile, front line sort of class, and projectile rifle should be allocated elsewhere. That unfortunately complicates the connection between bounty hunter's in the movies and the class in the game - unlike heroes, bounty hunters did use a projectile rifle in the movies.

 

[Gumba]

Agile frontline? With the new dodge and 60 armor max hero is as tanky as ceramic vase.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

That unfortunately complicates the connection between bounty hunter's in the movies and the class in the game - unlike heroes, bounty hunters did use a projectile rifle in the movies.

Yeah, I think projectile rifle should be removed from heroes. We don't have anywhere it would go though, since the classes it was meant to go to never got finished.

P3 is great, I think it is in the spot it needs to be. It has really high ammo drain so you've gotta be good with your shots otherwise you will run out of ammo quickly and you cannot supress at all. I feel like the FP drain on it is all out of whack though.

Dash is pretty wonky.

 

[Preston]

Trying to snipe anyone who's not a newbie at this game is mostly a waste of time; as a gunner just take cover to avoid sniper shots, you can also outplay the sniper by baiting sniper shots with little risk depending on what kind of cover is available to you. The only times sniping is effective is when dealing with newbies who don't see you in time to dodge, or when there is a high population such that you can't focus on the snipers enough (or when used with good teamwork vs worse teamwork to get sniping openings). If you get sniped in a 1v1, that just means you're bad compared to the sniper. And most of the time if you get sniped even though you were aware of the sniper, it just means the sniper was faster than you could react (= better than you) and he deserved the kill.

Sith vs dash 1v1: buy pull 3 and bait the dash to pull while it's going on, free kill, OR jump + lightning lvl1 prevents dash and free kill aswell. If the hero doesn't take the bait then you'll inevitably be able to get very close to him, in which case use saber-out melee or swingblock (if you get shot while swingblock while the hero dashes, you can pull immediately after your swing is interrupted).

Gunner vs dash: aim. Dash allows the hero to dance around you, punishing you if you can't react and aim, but if you can it's of little help to the hero apart from long/middle range when dashing in and out of cover.

L2play issues.

Alright I wanted to say Iagree with about everything you said except the part about sniping people who arnt noobs is a waste of time. Cause its definetly not at all, if you're a decent aniper you can kill anyone, whether or not they see you. Its not that hard. And its especially easy for me atleast to snipe in main as a hero because of pop sniping.

 

[Vitéz]

I think removing Projectile Rifle [PR] is totally a bad idea. The current Hero class has both "hero" and "mercenary" characters. Merceneries dont dodging and dashing... they have the skills and the weapons to do their job. The heroes dont sniping, they get (or steal) the weapons and they have the luck to win. That luck was the old Dodge. The old Dodge without PR (Hero) and Reinforcements (ET) wasnt OP. The problem was that both PR and reinf was/is a default ability for their classes. If there'd be a "lock-out" (like the M5 attachments have) on PR and old Dodge, these abilities couldnt be used together, so it wouldnt be OP, yet the class could represent both heroes and merceneries. IMO this could be the only solution for the PR problem, because the mod doesnt have enough characters to seperate this class (and their abilities) to 2; and PR couldnt be simply replaced with another weapon, so the class'd be boring. Dash should be also on this lockout, and a "new" weapon, the Heavy Imperial Repeater from the base game should be added, what also should be on this lockout, so it'd be (Dodge and Dash) OR (Repeater and PR); aka Hero OR Mercenary choice. Heal should be replaced with Bacta packs, because the current healing is just unfair (on 62HP, lvl2 heals more than lvl3, what is nonsense). I think this could be a fair change for the class, and you shouldnt nerf it to the ground by removing one of the 2 weapons of this class (I count Pistol and Blaster to 1, because they're never used together). I'm not a dev, however this is my opinion about this class.

Anyway, back to the Dash problem, you should add the same CD to Dash what Dexterity has. Dexterity has like ~3,5s CD on rolling, while Dash has dunno... ~1,5s? It'd be fair for everyone. With the same logic, this CD should be applied to all Force powers, preventing "popular" situations like Push spam. I think it'd be fair for everyone, because a misused Push, Pull or even Dash would have much more impact. Now its like "I missed? Doesnt matter, I still have FP/Stamina for 3 more Push/Dash".

 

[MaceMadunusus]

I think removing Projectile Rifle [PR] is totally a bad idea. The current Hero class has both "hero" and "mercenary" characters. Merceneries dont dodging and dashing... they have the skills and the weapons to do their job.

Okay, but the class they were intended to go to was titled just that. Mercenary. Which is why I said we didn't have a class that fits it because the one it was going to doesn't exist.

 

[KaiErieh]

Dash (magic 'I-teleport' button) is stupid visually and makes no sense at all... but for gameplay it's quite good. I'd imagine 'dash' as an ability of jedi/sith as seen in TFU or other SW games but for a soldier, like Han or Porkins it's bullshit. This is where gameplay priorities take over visuals and I'm ok with that.

What I am not ok with is the invulnerability to anything while dashing. Like ok you almost teleport, it makes no sense blah blah but hey you can't even be shot? Dash has it's huge advantage in combat with Sith but when someone is shooting at a dashing hero, it should deal fkin damage. Bring reduction but total invulnerability? Pls.

Some people want to take Proj rifle away from heroes? Now? After all these years? When the game is almost dead anyway? pfft. So bounty hunters get Ruptor and Proj and Rebs get what?... M5 Sniper with ARCs? LoL.

P3 should not be touched in any aspect. It is well balanced, I think I can just second Mace here. Power/ammo clip. Nuff said.

So only thing that comes to a mind that could make Hero feel OP is dodge. Dodge is another bullshit feature that should be removed completely but we all somehow learned to live with dodge and throughout it's been nerfed pretty hard and as much as I hate dodge, I'd say it's now more ok than ever. (it's not ok at all, it's a bullshit and unfair feature but from gameplay perspective over the years...) Imagine RC3 dodge back alongside current dash lel.

Heal? it costs quite lotta points to be really effective for gameplay - I say it's fine.

What I believe is the only 'Hero-like' feature that actually makes sense is Quick throw ability and ironically, that's underplayed as hell..

 

[Supa]

If dash were to stay in the game, I would rather it not be a blink, and have an actual animation that you could shoot during the animation, and increase the length of the dash to compensate. This whole nonsense of it not having a cooldown, and negligible resource costs, needs to be fixed though, in my opinion at least.

Like everything in the game, dash should be situational, but at the moment you can use it whenever the hell you want, however many the hell times you want, and it'll be just as effective as when you used it before.

 

[LanceOfLonginus]

Proj is the problem, been that way since before it was buffed. [Who said: yes, let us buff the weapon that can instantly 1 shot anything]

IMO: Keep proj's HS damage, drastically lower anything less than a headshot on damage for proj, but maintain it's knockback for giggle's sake.

 

[BigBossBigTeef]

Okay, but the class they were intended to go to was titled just that. Mercenary. Which is why I said we didn't have a class that fits it because the one it was going to doesn't exist.

Question, do you guys have the tools and man power to make that class or did it get scrapped because of internal decisions, like was this supposed to be in the heros place?
Because I think it would be great to have another common pool class like the soldier and ET/CMDR.

I think it would be easy to balance if you make the class a weapon specialist. Have it just the one class that doesn't have special abilities or anything just an armory of weapons to pick from. This would also be easy to make code wise; you don't need to make some kind of gimmick or put a shitload of time animating stuff. Although I don't really know what its like to code for this game, I only fiddled with source, and source is special kind of hell for people who use it as a engine.

What I have in my minds eye that their build screen would only feature weapons to that specific team. So you don't see a merc on the rebel team running around with empire weapons. However I cant think of any models you would put on that class. I would just remove the option of having the projectile rifle from the sith team build screen for the merc, so the bounty hunter remains the class sniper for sith.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

I think Azu was the one who was working on those classes a couple of years ago. Never implemented in open and instead left the toys like conc nades, flame nades, sonics, etc. to ets and such.

To that person thinking ppl are advocating for rifle removal: No one is saying to remove sniper rifle from rebs or the game. Tweak it, make a new class or best option, build specific. You can do what you lot did with arc grenade/sniper. Choose one or the other, you can't have both. You could play around with that idea.

Buy sniper riple, lose your ability to dash/have nades/e-11, whatever works.

As for dash - animations should be quick ground rolls Or Frontflips, backflips and cartwheels!
Instead of having it as what it is now, teleport/phase type, I'd remove the blaster immunity completely and the first tier would be just the quick movement roll and the second tier would be the ability to shoot while doing it.

And ey, how come we never gave the item "sentry gun turret" to a class in open? Never had an issue with it balance wise in any fa I've ver played tbh.

 

[Gumba]

Proj is the problem, been that way since before it was buffed. [Who said: yes, let us buff the weapon that can instantly 1 shot anything]

IMO: Keep proj's HS damage, drastically lower anything less than a headshot on damage for proj, but maintain it's knockback for giggle's sake.

Proj is the weapon with the most drawback in the game. You move very slow while scoping and it reloads for 4(!) seconds. Thats like getting hit by a sonic nade every time you reload. If you have problems with a hero in cover sniping you. Just listen when he reloads and rush him.

Here is a list of classes you can 1 shot as a hero with a hit in the chest:
-Soldier
-ET(without dodge)
-Sith(this one is weird because i have seen sith with red surviving a shotgun shot to the chest)

Now keep in mind that you hit the chest around 50% of the time because random arm hitboxes come in your way because how characters shoot in this game.

 

[Vitéz]

The quoted part is the intro for my idea to solve this "problem" @MaceMadunusus, nothing more. Anyway, you cant simply remove PR from Hero, because Hero would be a boring and a useless class after this. Playing as Soldier or ET has more benefits than playing Hero without PR. This is why I came up with this idea to use a "lock-out" on 2-2 "hero" and "merc" abilities. It'd ensure that unfair and/or OP builds cannot be used (like old dodge with PR or repeater), and the class could be played both as "hero" and "merc" too. The Hero class itself was always stupid with its hybrid abilities... tbh I'm surprised that there are devs who thinks the same. I'm still saying that my idea could be a great solution, because it'd be possible to play as movie-like heroes, and the "merc" build would be closer to BH, what is also great (in sniper vs sniper battle, dodge is just unfair). The layout of the class would be this:

Spoiler

- Pistol (0-4-15) (19)
- Blaster (6-7-8) (21)
- Frag Grenade (10-10-10)
+ RC3Dodge (15+10+5) (30) //yeah, I reversed the old 5+10+15
+ Dash (25) //changed into a 1 level ability, this is the current lvl2 (edited)
* Proj. Rifle (20)
* Imperial Repeater (?-?-?)
- QT (5-5) (10)
- Bacta (10-10)
- Armour (0-4-6) (10)
- Ammo (0-4-6) (10)
Abilities marked with + cannot be purchased if abilities marked with * are purchased.

@Kasabian, the RC3 Dodge alongside a Dash what has the same cooldown as Dexterity has wouldnt be OP. Old Dodge lvl3 was like 30 points I think, Dash is 15 now, Pistol3 is 19... its 64 points... just make sure to edit these points so the player wouldnt be able to buy a Frag Grenade for this build (so convert Dash into a 1 lvl ability, and make it available for 25 points), and it'd be fine. As far as I remember, Hero with the old Dodge was never too hard to kill, the ET with the Dodge2 was the real problem, because ET has reinf... ensuring that a "hero" (with dodge and dash) cant buy "mercenary" weapons (like proj. rifle), and ET cant buy Dodge could keep things balanced. Seeing things ingame, a Hero with Pistol3/Blaster3, RC3Dodge3 and Dash (+lvl2 ammo or armor) wouldnt be OP... we killed ETs with better build for years (lol, do you remember the a280-1, dodge-2, grenade build?). Check the spoiler part to see what my idea is.

Btw I'm curious, the devs thought that Hero underperforms against Sith... you never thought about making QT a free ability, instead of giving (Force) Dash to the class? Seriously, all class has its counter ability against Jedi/Sith, Hero has the QT for years... nobody used it, because the players thought they can fight well without it... most of them couldnt, and start to blame the game first. It was a pure L2P issue. And yes, balance > logic, but there'd be other solutions for this "problem".

Anyway, if you dont want to change stuffs like this, just please add ~3,5s cooldown to Dash and to the Force powers... spamming is annoying and unfair.

 

[Gumba]

QT is useless. If you buy nades you can knock them down and switch to e11 without much downtime anyway. You cant QT and shoot with the proj because there is a huge fire delay. You are basically wasting the points.

And dash 2 is very useful because of the invulnerability to blaster fire and the cost reduction so you can dash 4 times in a row instead of 3 times.

 

[Vitéz]

@Gumba, The logic behind QT is good, but I cant argue about what you said: 10 points for it is a waste. This is why I asked why didnt it become a free ability instead of adding Dash. As you said, its possible to do the effect of QT manualy by switching weapons fast, so QT'd have been changed, because adding Dash didnt make QT usable. Dont misunderstand me, the "replacement" skill, the Dash is balanced (except the spamming part) and fun, but its not a Hero ability... its a Jedi/Sith ability, used by Starkiller in TFU, and its like giving Force Grip to everyone... yes, everyone could use their fists to choke the target, but obviously it'd be ridiculous to give Grip to everyone. Dash is the very same. I think it would be better to simply improve QT, like giving extra Force drain for Blaster and Pistol for the next few seconds after using QT.

IMO Dash 2 is waste of points as well. Yes, you can dodge shots while using it, but Dash can be used to move into cover quickly... the wall blocks the shots so you dont need the dodge... and if you're using it to move backward or forward, you'll dodge that 1 or 2 shots what could hit you, but you also will be shot with the 3rd, the 4th, etc. shots, because you're in the same direction toward the enemy gunner. TBH I never used 4 Dash in a row, and I never saw anyone to do it... 2 dashing is usually enough, there's a 3rd just in case... the 4th is good, but unnecessary. Its like buying Tracker Dart lvl2 in 3 v 3... yes, 6 Dart is obviously better than 3, but is unnecessary.