Reduce frag grenade point cost for solds

[Dra-Gon]

Proposing to reduce frag grenade point cost for soldiers from 20 pts to 15 pts.
Currently, secondary fire for frag grenade is a weaker version of concussion grenades - damage is lower, does not knock down flying targets, area of effect seems shorter as well (would need devs confirmation on this).
From soldier's PoV, if I want to use the grenade as defense against enemies (i.e. knockdown and kill), a better idea is to just take the cheaper and stronger concussion grenade. If I want to use it for large but avoidable explosion, I take the frag nade and use it for primary fire only.

Currently, concussion grenades cost 14 pts. For frag grenades, the "ability to choose" a primary fire or secondary fire is why it should cost that 1 extra point - after all, grenades are a one-time use weapon, so as stated above, for 15pts you can either use it as a weaker version of conc nade or large but avoidable explosion.

Bringing the point cost down to 15 points would bring it on par with commanders/elite troopers. For the extra 5 points a sold could gain either an extra close combat training or shield/ammo or an additional conc nade (but they would also have to sacrifice some shield/ammo or e11 lvl 3 to have enough points - so doing this would make them a glass cannon or a unit with low firepower).

 

[Threepwood]

Frag nades are made to explode and do huge damage in the right circumstances, hence they should cost more because of the bigger damage potential. Making frag nades cost the same as concs makes primary nade spamming a concern when you have multiple solds + commanders in a team, making the game considerably cheesier (which was the reason secondary nade was nerfed I imagine). Your argument for the difference cost of only 1 point while having a choice of either primary or secondary for frags makes little sense if frag nades are in that sense more useful - you can do huge damage as an explosion OR still be able to knock valuable targets down. I think the point difference is justified as it is right now.

 

[cannonfodder]

by making it more expensive by 1 point, instead of seeing solds run 2 concs, you'd be seeing solds run 1 conc and 1 frag + their normal guns and stuff. Also frag nades have more mixup potential now than they ever have before, say your fighting a support sith with a frag nade, he has to decide if your going to throw it at him like a conc nade where he has to wait and time a near perfect push at closer ranges, OR he can bumrush you, but in either situation, you can just throw the nade early and direct hit him for 36 instant damage and knock him over right in front of you. Another example is if you and your team is needing to push past a choke point that an enemy sith is sitting at pushing nades. If you throw an early primed sec nade, the sith has no way of knowing if that's a sec nade or a primary nade, so he has to push it either way, letting your team throw their other stronger nades in during the push cooldown period, and if that nade you threw earlier was a secondary nade, you don't have to worry about it killing half your team instantly from being pushed back. And lastly this is just a general advantage of sec nades behaving like concs, now you can bounce them around corners where you used to have to actively walk around the corner to throw the sec nade.

At the end of the day, the soldier decision is grabbing the frag nade that's more expensive, but offers many more options to the soldier, or grab the cheaper conc nade for more damage + more AOE but only fills 1 role. And its 3 frags for a soldier vs 6 concs for a soldier (with respawns)

 

[Fang]

i just wish i wasnt made of paper somedays

 

[lynt]

i just wish i wasnt made of paper somedays

And didn't move like a snail

 

[Dra-Gon]

Sorry for the late reply. Didn't have much time to reply sooner.

Frag nades are made to explode and do huge damage in the right circumstances, hence they should cost more because of the bigger damage potential.

The point cost would be the same as it is for commander/ET - 15pts. I would completely agree with your argument if the point cost was 20 pts globally for all classes, but right now you are basically arguing that a point cost of 15pts for a slow soldier is a huge buff, but a 15pts point cost for commander/ET is fine and balanced. Let's also not forget that commanders/ETs can have 2 frags per live, so up to 4 frags per round - and people still don't abuse it en masse.

Making frag nades cost the same as concs makes primary nade spamming a concern when you have multiple solds + commanders in a team, making the game considerably cheesier (which was the reason secondary nade was nerfed I imagine).

Well, that shouldn't be a problem for pugs, I imagine. And in open, as sad as it sounds, this would be balanced by spamming anything else. 2 good dekas with power management will trash such attack force and on the other side arcs with dexterity 3 or PLX will also have no problems.
Also, as I wrote in my earlier post, you can have 2 grenades as a sold, but then you can only have either:

• ammo 2, armor 2, e11 lvl 2 - low firepower or low accuracy but higher survivability
• ammo 1, armor 1, e11 lvl 3 - higher firepower, but low survivability

There is no other way to spend the points, unless they also sacrifice ammo or armor to buy close combat skills instead.

by making it more expensive by 1 point, instead of seeing solds run 2 concs, you'd be seeing solds run 1 conc and 1 frag + their normal guns and stuff.

Except they wont get their normal guns and stuff, as I have pointed above. Apart from that, what exactly is so groundbreaking if they have 1 frag 1 conc instead of only being allowed 2 concs? Both examples you provided paint a post-apocalyptic MBII scene if the point cost was reduced, but some important details are omitted.

say your fighting a support sith with a frag nade, he has to decide if your going to throw it at him like a conc nade where he has to wait and time a near perfect push at closer ranges, OR he can bumrush you, but in either situation, you can just throw the nade early and direct hit him for 36 instant damage and knock him over right in front of you.

This is completely ignoring jedi/sith arsenal of abilities. Sith can use lightning, jedi can use mind trick or speed. Not to mention acrobatics like wall running. Also, this exact situation with frag nades used to actually be worse with the old secondary fire - the targeted jedi/sith still had to decide how to handle the grenade - early push, rush, etc. Nothing has changed for jedi/sith except the secondary grenade is weaker now than it used to be.

Another example is if you and your team is needing to push past a choke point that an enemy sith is sitting at pushing nades. If you throw an early primed sec nade, the sith has no way of knowing if that's a sec nade or a primary nade, so he has to push it either way, letting your team throw their other stronger nades in during the push cooldown period, and if that nade you threw earlier was a secondary nade, you don't have to worry about it killing half your team instantly from being pushed back. And lastly this is just a general advantage of sec nades behaving like concs, now you can bounce them around corners where you used to have to actively walk around the corner to throw the sec nade.

How is this any different to pre-1.8.0? If you are sith and they throw conc nade at you, you need to push it or jump away anyway and that gives them an opportunity to throw a primary frag nade. And let's not forget other nades that are utilized more in such situations - sonic nades and fire nades - these limit the other team, allowing the attacking team to use primary frag nade.
Also, why should one sith be able to defend an area against multiple nades from multiple enemies thrown at similar time? He should be cornered by that time and not be able to provide easy support for his team.
Last but not least, your example seems to point at a general problem with spamming nades, but not exactly a reason as to why frag nade should not be chaper for solds.

---
Since we are talking soldiers, can we also consider upping/lowering point cost of e11 level 2? Why I bring it up is not exactly because of balancing reasons, but because of the point selection menu for soliders in general - solds have 80 points to spend on their abilities. All their skills and weapons cost even amount of points, except for e11 lvl 2 and it breaks my heart to see that at least 1 point has no way to be spent any where

 

[Liniyka_xddd]

I'm all for buffing sold in one way or another. It's probably the worst class in the game right now, unless used together with rally commander/ET.

If you wanna know why I think it's the worst class in the game, here:
- lowest effective HP in the game
- lowest combat mobility in the game
- no perks/skills to help with either of the previous problems

What you end up with is a class that can't do anything but stay behind cover and camp the whole game. It dies in 2-3 shots, it's slow as fuck and it's nothing special in terms of firepower. To give it some credit, it is a decent counter to saberists, but there are better classes who are good not only against sabers, but also gunners.

 

[Jay Brando]

anyone against allowing soldiers to have two frag grenades is likely basing their opinion off of the extremely skilled gunner players that are playing and trashing just about everyone with the E-11 and concs.

heroes being allowed multiple nades and quickthrow isn't being looked at as strong at all, while players who want to be bob-billy occasionally suicide-bomb with at least 2 nades, and likely dash, too.

in my opinion it really won't change a lot to let little soldiers have a bit more boom power and variety in their builds.

 

[S o l d i e r]

I've suggested something like this before: Making grenadiers work. Would really like to see grenadiers being viable and useful as a build as they are really fun to play.

Edit: Just realised this post was exactly 4 years ago lol.