Wookiee Fury is unfair in mixed-skill servers.

[Lessen]

A Wookiee can fill most of its Fury bar by killing the world's most inexperienced soldier via ambush.

The same Wookiee can then use that Fury bar to unavoidably massacre several honestly good players, if they aren't playing Mando or Sith and can't get away.

The optimal counterplay then becomes: take turns TKing your newbie ally before the Wookiee can get him.

That's bad.

It's an exaggerated example, but my main point is just that Fury punishes you disproportionately for your teammate's mistakes. Certainly, MB2 is a team game where bad coordination is punished. But if your teammates aren't coordinating well with you, you still have a chance to defend yourself. And if your newbie teammate chucks a grenade at a force user, they'll probably get caught in the blast too and realize what they did wrong.

But Fury punishes you because a random, distant teammate got killed somewhere far away from you, and it punishes you brutally, a long time after the fact. It's gross. Rather than being obligated to just try to coordinate well, you become obligated to actively protect your worst players from ambushes.

That being said, Fury seems basically valid in a competitive context where everybody on both teams is skillful and coordinated. Maybe it would be better off as an optional server setting? That way, it could be disabled in heavily mixed-skill pubs.

 

[Tempest]

Having server-side toggling of parts of classes is just going to be big headaches, IMO. I had a few brief thoughts about Fury and my initial idea for making it less oppressive was making it start decreasing after a certain point to prevent this exact kind of problem.

 

[Starushka]

I personally don't like current implementation of Rage. Rage shouldn't be a toggleable ability, this is rage afterall.

 

[Lessen]

I personally don't like current implementation of Rage. Rage shouldn't be a toggleable ability, this is rage afterall.

You made me wonder if it's officially "Rage" or "Fury", and the 1.4 patch notes reference both. It looks like Rage is the ability and it uses Fury Points? Also, it took me a while to realize what you meant, but, you don't like that Rage is activated at-will with the push of a button, right? That... suggests interesting alternative ways to approach rage.

I'm wondering if Rage could be rethought or replaced. Wookiees, as a super strong and naturally violent and temperamental species, ought to have a good melee option, and Rage definitely makes sense, it's just hard to balance satisfactorily. And arguably the role it fills at this point (of advancing into territory and fucking shit up) is already filled well enough by Jedi.

@Tempest I think Fury 1 (or whatever it's named in the class config screen) already drains over time, and level 2 removes that? That would prevent Wooks from using one kill for a precision-strike rampage several minutes later, which would prevent a lot of the "abuse," although i still dislike it for letting a Wook turn a kill on a bad player into a chain of free kills on good players.

still thinking about Rage not being activated at-will. what would that imply..... For instance, what if, if a Wookiee took a lot of damage in a short time, it would be forced into Rage mode, meaning it gets stuck in that roar animation and stuck in melee, but gets damage resistance. I'm not sure if this is even remotely a good idea but it's interesting to discuss. A Wook taking a ton of fire would go into Rage mode but probably get too damaged during the roar to do anything, which would make Wooks more reluctant to charge into heavy fire, but the potential of triggering berserk would deter people from focus-firing a Wookiee if they're not sure they can handle the Rage, giving Wook a weird, subtle increase in ability to push into territory (because people won't want to piss it off and will prefer to wear it down slowly while letting it take ground.)

Presumably, given that it has major Pros and Cons, this ability would be intrinsic to all Wooks instead of optional. It would have an interesting effect on Bowcaster Wooks. For instance, if you sniped a Bowcaster wook in the chest from far away, it would go into rage but then probably go hide in cover rather than charge down the hall at you, taking it out of the battle for a little while. It would change wooks relationship to lightsabers, since getting hit by one would probably do enough damage to trigger rage. As it is now, the rage roar would just make the wook completely open to a free saber kill, but stuff could be changed to change that situation.

I guess that idea doesn't entirely avoid the problem of newbies causing Rage in bad contexts, but at least the newbie also necessarily contributed (by damaging the wook) in order to get that result, and it's easier to learn from. It was also just interesting to discuss and maybe someone else will get a better idea out of it.

 

[SomeGuy]

The example you have posted as your reasoning for this is a purely player skill based situation. One person playing to their strengths on purpose. Changing an ability based solely on bad players' decisions is not good. Rage can be an extremely advantageous ability if used correctly, and can conversely do nothing if not. The wookiee can only shut it off after killing someone, use that knowledge. I see where you want to go with this but forcing players to go crazy just from getting hurt is ridiculous, especially given the fact wooks are large and priority targets for enemies. Headshots do insane damage on wookiees plus they have no armor points for mitigation, and if it's a melee only then not much means of ranged attacks. All situational stuff. Change and adapt.

 

[Lessen]

The damage-induced Fury was certainly just an idea for the sake of discussion/inspiration.

And, I don't think you really addressed the fact that, in certain contexts, the optimal "adaptation" is to kill your incompetent teammate before they can feed the Wookiee. Most classes are doomed once a Wookiee rages from cover while within, like, 50 feet of them, and there's no adaptation to make at that point to not die. A raged Wook at full health (which is admittedly unlikely) has effectively 1200 health, and its high speed makes it very hard to consistently headshot.

Certainly you could also adapt by all switching to Sith and Mandalorian so you can jump/fly out of the way, and then ambush the wook when it's caught in its post-fury slowdown. Deka can also probably GTFO if it doesn't get caught completely off guard, and isn't in a situation where it has a shot at doing enough damage to actually kill the raged wook.

but still, in a lot of contexts, Fury very heavily punishes a bunch of players because of one player's mistake, and, i maintain that that's toxic.

but yes there's counterplay. I do agree. My dislike actually comes mostly from the fact that, when I play berserker Wook, my main thought is honestly "I hope there's a bad player on their team I can fuck over so I can flank and get a ton of bullshit kills on their good players." That seems like a bad thing.

(in other news, if an incompetent rocket ARC gets pulled, and a Mando gets the rocket launcher, you can fire rockets while jetpacking, which is honestly just hilarious. I'm mentioning it as another example of people getting punished very hard for one awful move by an awful teammate, but I also don't really mind it as much. It's more rare, and rocket ARC is already a tremendous threat to their own team, lol.)

 

[Sonichu]

I don't think balancing an entire class to one very specific (and very infrequent) scenario or the lowest common denominator of skill level is a good idea. Wookiees can fury dominate in some cases, but the same can be said for any class; a TD flying in to a tight group of players in a choke point on a map is a very real scenario, but we don't consider a nerf because someone lucked in to those circumstances.

If Wookiee was very broken right now, we'd certainly see it being spammed far more and it would be gamebreaking on many maps. I feel right now, it is in line with the rest of the class balance.. There is of course room for slight number tweaks, but rethinking the entire ability might be overreaching.

 

[SomeGuy]

but yes there's counterplay. I do agree. My dislike actually comes mostly from the fact that, when I play berserker Wook, my main thought is honestly "I hope there's a bad player on their team I can F**k over so I can flank and get a ton of bullshit kills on their good players." That seems like a bad thing.

The issue I think is your point of view with this here. The problem is not the wookiee class or the player using it, but is in fact the other team for not effectively watching flank areas and letting players wander alone. This is a team play game. Punishing an entire class because of incompetent team play makes no sense. If these were actually 'good players' then they would not get flanked by a raging wook, simple as that. This is purely a player issue and not a mechanics one. Same thing could happen to a mando player that flanks behind a whole team just to rocket the group. Oh no, rocket needs a nerf!

 

[Lessen]

This is a team play game. Punishing an entire class because of incompetent team play makes no sense.

Which is why the title of the thread is "Wookiee Fury is unfair in mixed-skill servers."

Not that I disagree entirely with your point, I just don't think you're fully respecting my own argument :y

 

[StarWarsGeek]

"Wookiee Fury is unfair in mixed-skill servers."

There are probably a ton of features that you could argue are "unfair" in mixed skill servers. I don't think that's a problem really. I think every class has a pretty good way to prevent getting steamrolled by a fury wook:

Soldier/Commander: Multiple lives. As tanky as fury wook is, it's not that hard to take down over the course of 2 or 3 lives with a combination of running and spraying at its face. If the wook gets into spawn and camps with fury for close range respawn kills, that's a major teamplay error by imps.
Sith/Mando: Jump/Jetpack out of reach. Can even save teammates before they get to safety themselves if they crouch so a teammate can jump on top of them to get on a box. Tall boxes are fury wooks' worst enemy. Also sith can just use red, hold crouch, and get a guaranteed kill on the wook at the cost of some HP.
Deka: Roll away.
BH: Snipe the wook before it activates fury. Even during fury, snipes still do a ton of damage and can be followed up with a few shots from your primary weapon.
SBD: Blast armor. Hold crouch and aim for wook's head. For best results buy FP3. YMMV without team support with FP lower than 3.