Debuff TF2 sniper
Anyone else feel that the crouched sniper is OP?
p.s. the demoman is extremely underrated
Demoman, snipper, spy, rocket guy, heavy... all these guys are great damage producers. Thats 10 guys, plus 2 respawns, 4 of which do 300 damamge (6 if you respawn 2 of them), plus 6 of them do AOE....sigh.
Yes, the snipper needs to do less damage so that you can't 1-shot jarate something, absolutely! I really do hope it gets less attack so that it can't just 1-shot kill anyting on the board it wants... its very rediculous right now and it makes it very hard to deploy and advance on your side of the board if you have an entire row where you are not allowed to exist less you get your head taken off...
I'd be happy if they just denerfed me!
As far the Crouching Sniper, Hidden Demoman, i think if they just tweaked the other weak teams accordingly, then TF-too-much can stay the same but at least be approachable, albeit a bit obliquely.
TF2 is certainly OP. A lot of the TF2 units are insane board shapers... Spy, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy...
I agree that Sniper is the one that should be nerfed. I think the main reason is that the 2 snipers can own 2/5ths of the board while staying totally unreachable at the back. That is just over the top unfair in the face of TF2's other challenges. It's the no-skill-needed aspect as well. It takes some skill to keep Spy, Pyro, Demoman, or Heavy alive and use them well. Not Sniper, just set it down in the back square and fire away.
Actually better than reducing damage is reducing range, to 6, for example. Then the player has to at least use some brains in deciding whether to place him forward somewhat in harms way, to reach the back, or ..
I dont feel they are OP and the Sniper is not OP too.
the biggest problem from all TF2 units I have is the spy, specially with the shaolin, I often sacrify a monk to take them out.
The sniper is just perfect how he is. Like most tactics in the game, each team has a way to effectively defend against a sniper such that sniping becomes a net AP loss instead of a net AP gain. In fact, if you learn to manage and avoid snipers, they can quickly change from an asset to a liability for TF2 on certain maps as they tend to block entry points and clog basecamps.
Council has unarmed Knights or Knights with shields where you can usually absorb 2 crouched sniper shots (on 2 separate rounds) per 1 heal usually without risking a stomp. Further, council's rez abilities make knock-outs manageable too.
DE has monks that can be used as tanks, or also their mobility allows them to easily disrupt snipers (or medic buffed snipers) with strategic AOE punching and soulblasts. Healing mobility also allows DE to be less clustered and can change rows better and can manage with less heroes on the field at once
For Tribe, spiked shields on orcs works wonders. Unarmed orcs work well enough in most cases also.
For Dwarves, beyond the obvious AOE disruption possibilities (strategic grenades), bubbles work wonders to mitigate sniper effectiveness, or Paladin tanks.
Shaolin, as expected, probably has the most trouble, but a shielded monk is a pretty tough meat wall to crack
For TF2 vs TF2, spies and counter-snipers both work wonders.
I agree with Gribbs. TF may need some tweaking (and some have talked about demoman's AOE as being an area to look at), but I don't think the sniper is the one that needs tweaking. There are ways to deal with him - avoid, AOE, etc. It's coming up with tactics to deal with the different threats.
Of the 5 established teams, the "worst" DE & Council, win 44 and 45% of their League games. So the 5 established teams are pretty well balanced. I do back the Trip-devised tweak scheme, which will ever so slightly nerf TF2 and Dwarves, which includes a modest sniper nerf, but if they want to test balance changes team by team, I'd rather they focus on updating Shaolin and try and get them into the fold of reasonable choices.
Of the 5 established teams, the "worst" DE & Council, win 44 and 45% of their League games. So the 5 established teams are pretty well balanced. I do back the Trip-devised tweak scheme, which will ever so slightly nerf TF2 and Dwarves, which includes a modest sniper nerf, but if they want to test balance changes team by team, I'd rather they focus on updating Shaolin and try and get them into the fold of reasonable choices.
The problem with only buffing Shaolin is that it won't be a correct balance if nothing else is done at the same time to DW and TF2. Part of the problem with Shaolin is that they are very vulnurable to AOE. So if you don't decrease AOE from DW and TF2 and you buff Shaolin only, then Shaolin will need to be made strong enough that it can overcome AOE damage. But that will leave it too strong when DW and TF2 then get AOE removed. Because it is a network of interactions, you need to establish first which things MUST change, and change all of those first, and then tweak the other parts that COULD change afterwards.
So the main decisions to make are related to fundamental game-questions:
Why are Shaolin doing so poorly?
Who do they loose to the most, why?
Why are DW and TF2 winning more than the other teams?
Why are so few people playing Tribe now in the league?
The DE changes are not essential, IMHO. The Tribe issue can be traced back to what many have said about them having weak and unreliable AOE damage, DW and TF2 need to be looked at fundamentally. Should all teams have more AOE to equal them? In which case all other teams get buffed to match them, or should they get less AOE to match other teams a bit more properly? Or should they retain high AOE but get reductions elsewhere to compensate for their high AOE yields ?(to make them as different as possible from other teams). What sort of team do we want to make the Shaolin into from our changes, defensive, offensive, mixed, crystal attacker etc.?
Once the fundamental changes are determined, I think that at a minimum TF2 and DW get 1 nerf, Tribe get at a minimum witch splash increase, DE at a minimum need nothing (because they are frankly very close to perfect, just slightly under par) and Shaolin need, in all honesty, at least 2 buffs, if not 3, to even be remolety comparable. once that is all done, then you can make very small adjustments of one change, to one team, and re-asses. But until you get it somewhat close to what the end goal is, doing very small changes to just one team will get you no where and eventually i'll just give up on the game.
:_)
I am not sure if the sniper needs a nerf, but here is another idea on how it could be done. If crouched the sniper needs a free view to the target, and will not be able to gain his crouching bonus with friendly units blocking the view. It is prolly to complicated to be added, but I expect this would solve the problem with the sniper hiding all the way in the back, behind 4 friendly units.
the idea of slightly nerfing TF2 sniper to only 6 range instead of the full 8 is a great idea!!!
They'd have to re-work the achievement. :(
the idea of slightly nerfing TF2 sniper to only 6 range instead of the full 8 is a great idea!!!
No, it's far too big a nerf. In fact, it eliminates the sniper's USP.
well this would never be implemented, but what if you reduced the range from 8 like people ask, but then open up the area of attack to all directions. 6 up 6 down 6 across 6 back, and the field therein. hehehe.
Makes things more interesting but would force you to park that sniper somewhere closer to the action. Two crouched snipers would be deadly I know - why this would never happen - just thinking out loud.
I'm not sure the sniper needs a nerf really. But if he was to be nerfed I would like to see his crystal damage reduced even further, he can still do too much crystal damage in my opinion. Having it so his crouch bonus had no effect on crystals might work. By far and large I see TF2 players camping in the corners with their snipers and poking holes in your crystals all game.
Yep. Right now, I am playing DE against TF2 on the shooting crystals map. He has a sniper in each back corner, covering both crystal assault squares and firing away at two of my crystals. (I shouldn't complain, I guess. He only has 2.)
If sniper was the only TF2 advantage it would be no big deal, of course, but after spies, pyros, jarate, impossible mobility.... it's too much and sniper requires so much less skill to utilize than the other TF2 advantages. Reducing to range 6 would bring some skill into the situation.
Range 6 would make the sniper almost useless in my opinion. It's too strong a nerf, and it will never happen because of the achievement. If you want to nerf the sniper it should be done in other ways.
Slightly reduced damage on the crouch bonus should be enough, I think. The Sniper is already a fragile, situational and often awkward unit -- forcing him to sit in harm's way just to make a boosted attack the following turn would make him pretty much useless.
I was mistaken by the achievement. But it is still too strong a nerf to reduce range. Trip how much damage do you propose on crouch?
I think 250 (rather than 300) is good.
There's a lengthy explanation of why I think this is enough in this thread, but the quick version is that it stops TF2 from being able to effectively 2-shot vanilla units through combinations of Sniper + Soldier/Pyro, and deals far more reasonable damage against shielded units who have been jaratéd.
How about we debuff you
and buff me
and debuff Trip
HA username: darkozl