Balance problem - metamidion

[OnlyMan.]

Hey guys. So just popped into Guns after taking a 3 month break, due to frustration over the seemingly lack of balance in the game. I came back. Same problems, different day. The problems all revolve around the metamidion. It is honestly a blight on what could be a perfect game. A ship, with unmatched killing power, who can maneuver amazingly, and has a pretty decent hull health. It is sad, when I am see players with twice the skill of others, lose to choosing the wrong ship. How can this be fixed? Nerf the hell out of the maneuverability. The pyramidion should be like a bullet. When its on target, it is absolutely deadly, but when juked, does not have the ability to phoenix claw right to where it needed to be. I understand that the ship should be noobie friendly, but that doesn't mean allow new players to compensate for lack of skill. As someone who cared enough about the game to start and assist with getting this game into MLG as well as participate in its competitive scene, it is extremely frusturating to have to deal with a ship that is over powered and takes considerably less skill to be good at compared to every other ship. Sure, at the top level of play, the metamidion loses SOME of its power, but in random ladder, it is a game breaker. I'm not trying to be a pest, I'm only sharing why a player who regarded this game so highly, had to stop playing out of sheer frustration over one ship. Thanks for your time

[Caprontos]

I don't know..I see Metamidion dieing to all sorta of builds.. in random match maker games.. but yeah it is a very straight forward option.

That said, the devs have said the next ship balance thing will be.. Spire + squid buff.. of some kind.. and a pyra nerf.. of some kind.. They didn't say what they were.

So it may be less effective after that.

[OnlyMan.]

However in terms of skill needed, and this is coming form someone started in the competitive scene as a meta only pilot,  is so much less than what I needed for any other ship.

[Kamoba]

Metamidions are easy to crew and pilot if you have a crew who will not run around like headless chickens... add an AI engineer or a gungineer who insists on two people being downstairs the metamidion looses all of its potency..

That said as a metamidion pilot, it has a lot of weaknesses, just because other pilots do not exploit those weaknesses often enough does not make the ship itself over-powered...

Would be interesting to see how the hand of balance intends to balance it out a bit more, but once that happens, you'll never see the pyra in the hands of PUGs (pick up groups) again, which would be a shame...

[Replaceable]

All you have to do is get out of arcs, plus the pyra is pretty weak, less acceleration, rotation speed, vertical acceleration/top speed than other ships. And plus it lacks disable, so take a carronade and/or an Artemis, get rid of the guns and it can't win.

Fly a catfish. (Hwatcha goldfish.)
Take meta junker (hades/art/art, gat/ mortar, carronade/banshee, gattling/banshee)
Fly a mobula and dodge them. Then use their poor turning speed and your pretty good acceleration to get away from them.
Overpower them with the firing power of a galleon.
Knock them off arcs with mines.
Take a carrot pyramidion (carronade, Artemis.)
Flamer carro pyramidion.
Out range them.

Hell, even fly out of arcs with a squid and keep in their blind spot.
Try a dual gat, heavy flak spire, with a mine, that's harder to pull off but since a pyramidion is almost all hull, they can die to this pretty good.

It's not over powered, it has its place, and it has its counters. Plus I'm seeing less Metamidions these days if I'm honest...

I will admit though the skill floor to use one is pretty low, but still it can be beaten regardless of this.

It's important to note that gat mortar wrecks pyramidions because of all the hull they have to hit, fly at your own risk.

Speaking of which, you can block shots with every ships balloon except a pyra.

Bit of a mess of a reply but hey.

[OnlyMan.]

"Metamidions are easy to crew and pilot if you have a crew who will not run around like headless chickens... add an AI engineer or a gungineer who insists on two people being downstairs the metamidion looses all of its potency."

That is all ships.

"That said as a metamidion pilot, it has a lot of weaknesses, just because other pilots do not exploit those weaknesses often enough does not make the ship itself over-powered..."

I have spent more time piloting a metamidion more than any other ship, as that was my main ship in competition for a long time (until Tropo thought I was not stupid enough top screw up) Does it have weaknesses? Of course, but in terms of weakness compared to strengths, the meta is very imbalanced.

"Would be interesting to see how the hand of balance intends to balance it out a bit more, but once that happens, you'll never see the pyra in the hands of PUGs (pick up groups) again, which would be a shame..."

No, we should start seeing more spires, junkers, mobula etc. I'm not saying that the metamidion is perfect. I am saying the skill needed to do well with one..is really not that high.

[Replaceable]

Edit: Balloon block in everything except a pyramidion, and a galleon.

[OnlyMan.]

All you have to do is get out of arcs, plus the pyra is pretty weak, less acceleration, rotation speed, vertical acceleration/top speed than other ships. And plus it lacks disable, so take a carronade and/or an Artemis, get rid of the guns and it can't win.

Fly a catfish. (Hwatcha goldfish.)
Take meta junker (hades/art/art, gat/ mortar, carronade/banshee, gattling/banshee)
Fly a mobula and dodge them. Then use their poor turning speed and your pretty good acceleration to get away from them.
Overpower them with the firing power of a galleon.
Knock them off arcs with mines.
Take a carrot pyramidion (carronade, Artemis.)
Flamer carro pyramidion.
Out range them.

Hell, even fly out of arcs with a squid and keep in their blind spot.
Try a dual gat, heavy flak spire, with a mine, that's harder to pull off but since a pyramidion is almost all hull, they can die to this pretty good.

It's not over powered, it has its place, and it has its counters. Plus I'm seeing less Metamidions these days if I'm honest...

I will admit though the skill floor to use one is pretty low, but still it can be beaten regardless of this.

It's important to note that gat mortar wrecks pyramidions because of all the hull they have to hit, fly at your own risk.

Speaking of which, you can block shots with every ships balloon except a pyra.

Bit of a mess of a reply but hey.

Getting out of arcs should be the right answer...but with phoenix claw and the gat mortar having exceptional arcs in almost all directions, its not that hard for a meta to stay on target. Of course it can be beaten, however, the effort/skill needed to beat one in a mobula, for instance, is much higher than vice versa. Also, blocking shots with a meta is pretty unnecessary most of the time, due to its compact nature.

[Mean Machine]

However in terms of skill needed, and this is coming form someone started in the competitive scene as a meta only pilot,  is so much less than what I needed for any other ship.

So? Same is with guns. It's a lot easier and faster to learn how to fire gatling or flamer than hades or lj and i don't see people complaining gatling is op or unbalanced.
Pretty much every ship in game can wreck metamidions with the right loadout, but yes you will need more time to master those. But hey, more effort - more reward. Fair, don't you think?

[Replaceable]

I'm talking about blocking the shots from a metamidion in a different ship, it can protect you from damage.

[OnlyMan.]

However in terms of skill needed, and this is coming form someone started in the competitive scene as a meta only pilot,  is so much less than what I needed for any other ship.

So? Same is with guns. It's a lot easier and faster to learn how to fire gatling or flamer than hades or lj and i don't see people complaining gatling is op or unbalanced.
Pretty much every ship in game can wreck metamidions with the right loadout, but yes you will need more time to master those. But hey, more effort - more reward. Fair, don't you think?

No, the guns are balanced fairly decently, especially since the flame nerf I saw that went out. The risk/reward factor for a gat is balanced. Sure you have great hull strip, but you have mid range at best and low accuracy. LJ can render a ship nearly useless in less than a clip, but it is very tough to fire. Now, the effort I needed when I first started to play guns nearly a year ago was incredibly minute in comparison to my results. This was especially obvious when I beat pilots who are without a doubt better than me, but I was able to win with little effort needed. Have I sometimes beat player who are better than me with other ship? Sure, but it was with much more effort and the fact that SAC was training their engies bootcamp style.

[RedRoach]

I have never had an issue with metamidions.

Then again, I have never flown AGAINST a metamidion that I remember being a problem. I think there might be a picture or two of me winning with one, but I don't recall getting stomped repeatedly by one.

I like to think that if you pop the balloon of a metamidion, the ship gets too low to try to arc it's guns. And most ships (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think only the galleon is missing this) have a forward facing gun that can be used to pop balloons.

For unexperienced crews trying to use the "low-risk, high-reward" weapon without proper chem spray, there's always the flamer, which disables guns and causes everything to be sent into a beautiful scorching inferno.

[OnlyMan.]

Balloon popping is a effective tool, yes. However, the balloon is right next to where the gat usually is, making it extremely easy to repair then resume fighting. Thats not really the issue in my eyes, though. The fact that you can keep arcs incredibly well, despite the ship being made to work almost as a projectile

[Kamoba]

A metamidion without Phoenix claw is a dead midion... A pilot who does not use his claw is a dead midion... So maybe pilots should nerfed?

[Wundsalz]

First off, I think the game is currently better balanced than it ever has been before. I see quite a large variety of ship builds in the matches I play in public and competitive matches these days. I particularly don't see swarms of metamideons in public nor in competitive matches. So I think you're exaggerating the problem quite a bit, as your observations just don't reflect my personal experiences.
Regarding competitive play I do not consider the Metamideon to be dominant at all. That's really a thing of the past. There are just so many builds which can easily handle metamideons - hwachafishes, Meta-Galleon, Junkers in general and many more. Sure a metamideon is good for a kill if it isn't dealt with swiftly, but the same is true for many other kill-builds.

The metamideon is and always has been a very straight forward and easy to run ship. It takes relatively little effort* to put it in a state where it can get a kill even on very experienced ships. It's a noobfriendly ship and remains useful in the higher tiers. I don't see a problem with that. In fact I like GoIO has got a ship that's easy to pick up and worth to master.

Hell, even fly out of arcs with a squid and keep in their blind spot.

This argument pops up in almost every squid vs Pyra debte, but personally I've never considered the positioning against squids to be problematic for pyras. This explicitly includes well flown and crewed squids.

A metamidion without Phoenix claw is a dead midion... A pilot who does not use his claw is a dead midion... So maybe pilots should nerfed?

Yes, the phoenix claw is wildly regarded as overpowered. The pyramideon is one of the ships which benefits most from it.

*it's easy to get the pyra into a state where it can operate at 80% of its power (which is sufficient to perform decently in most public matches). Squeezing out the last 20% of power the pyra has got to offer takes a lot of skill though.