Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: ZnC on November 01, 2015, 09:31:09 pm
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Ever since the nerf of the Pyramidion (kill meta), competitive games have been revolving around the Mobula (control meta) and its counter, the Squid (and its counter, the Hwachafish) for a while.
It's never gonna happen, but here's my wishful idea of what a meta-changing balance patch would be like.
Mobula
-Armor: 600 > 450
-Acceleration: 4.25 > 3.0 m/s2
*Significantly reduced survivability and mobility. This puts the Mobula in a more defensive role, instead of allowing it to be aggressive or defensive whenever it wants.
The Mobula and Spire is similar in that they have a lot of forward firepower. This change defines the ships; Spire as the forward-moving glass cannon, and the Mobula as an evasive, fire support ship - making altitude maneuvers and wearing down the enemy as they approach.
Squid
-Hull: 950 > 800
*Reduced margin of error with 800 hull; with the speed buffs and pilot stamina, 950 gives a bit too much headroom.
Pyramidion
-Acceleration: 2.25 > 2.75 m/s2
*Returns the Pyramidion to its aggressive role while still having a lower headroom of 550 hull.
Galleon
-Max Speed: 30.02 > 28 m/s
*Slightly reduced mobility. The Galleon is very powerful with the best survivability in the game and a huge amount of firepower; only thing even scarier than that is a fast Galleon.
Hwacha
-Jitter: 4 > 6 degrees
-Yaw: 30 > 20
-Pitch: 20 > 15
*Reduced arcs so gunner stamina actually compensates for it; returned jitter to pre-buff value for lesser effective range.
Heavy Carronade
-Jitter: 6 > 4
-Pitch arcs: -30 to 15 (from -20 to 10)
-Reload time: 7.5 > 5.5
-Range: 400m > 350m
*Revert to pre-nerf values; reduced range to make initiating and balloon lock more challenging, also slightly easier to escape from.
Of course these are my opinions only, and being in the forums for a while, I realized opinions vary (A LOT). Just wanted to express my ideas somewhere.
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For reading interest, here's also my own reference for what ships were designed to do - the whole train of thought inspired by my discussion with MightyKeb.
Goldfish - 'First in, last out'
Firepower: 2
Mobility: 3
Survivability: 2
Pyramidion - 'Vanguard'
Firepower: 2
Mobility: 2
Survivability: 3
Squid - 'Evasive Maneuvers'
Firepower: 1
Mobility: 4
Survivability: 2
Galleon - 'Tank'
Firepower: 3 (taking into consideration the difficulty of getting weapons in arc)
Mobility: 1
Survivability: 4
Junker - 'Versatile Brawler'
Firepower: 4
Mobility: 1
Survivability: 3
Spire - 'Glass Cannon'
Firepower: 4
Mobility: 2
Survivability: 1
Mobula - 'Forward Fire Support'
Firepower: 4
Mobility: 1
Survivability: 2
Ratings from 1 to 4.
Firepower: Amount of forward facing weapons, overlapping weapon arcs, turn speed and turn acceleration.
Mobility: Top speed and acceleration.
Survivability: Armor, hull, ship profiles, and evasive ability (i.e. acceleration and vertical acceleration).
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In my opinion mobula is not op as people make it out to be, it's like the former pre nerf pyramidion wasn't op if you knew how to deal with it. The only problem is novices who are still learning the game don't know how to deal with stuff - which frankly is good, because you want some sort of learning curve.
The change to mobula that you are suggesting, as someone that spent about 2000 matches main engineering on a mobula, I can tell you it's extremely drastic and quite game breaking. The gun used by the hull engineer is pretty far away from the hull. With the current HP of the armor there are times where I react accordingly but the armor still dies too fast or is just on the verge of dying. Nerfing it so much would mean you not only crippled the mobula's survivability, you practically broke it entirely.
As to the galleon change you are proposing I can agree with the fact that it needs a change, but not a nerf, in my opinion it needs a buff. I like the way it handles, it handles the way you'd expect a 320 tons piece of steel to fly. It's very clumsy and takes a while to get going, but it has a sleek design that makes it pretty aerodynamic so it makes sense to have it have high top speed. I rather think that the buff should come from a higher hull stat. Because I think that it doesn't make any sense that a ship classified and meant to be the tankiest in the game, would die for less than one clip of mortar once the armor is down.
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I would have to agree with you. Just as you have extensive knowledge of engineering a mobula, I have been piloting galleons and junkers most of my three years with GOIO. I pride myself on running a tanky galleon, but it is something you have to work really hard at. I think it needs more HP to compete with the way all ships have evolved and the general direction of HP additions Muse has been going. If component breaking didn't go to the hull it would be a different story, but the ship is a big target with a lot of vulnerable parts.
But I also think spires need a lot of armour to be able to live up to its turret design. Its low armour completely contradicts its style, which works very well with mobile ships like the squid and goldfish.
Will we ever see these ideas supported by Muse though? Dream on.
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A reasonable buff to the galleon and a start to balancing the spire might be to reduce the heavy gun rebuild a little. It would be effectively a buff to the ships durability too with the amount of damage heavy guns absorb when not broken.
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Even if mobula is OP, which personally I kinda think it is, it will never see a nerf because the game is balanced around pubs and casual play, not competitive. The abysmal pick rate and the high skill cap will keep the mobula unpopular in pub games, and thus really hinder any possibility of changes from muse, unfortunately
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Junker - 'Versatile Brawler'
Firepower: 4
Mobility: 1
Survivability: 3
Junkers have better mobility than Spires and Mobulas. In my eyes they live in the same space as the Pyramidion with one difference. The Pyramidion is an aggressive brawler, and the Junker is reactive brawler.
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I think mobula is just too fast. It has the armor of pyra but is slower at repairing. Reducing acceleration would make it less fun to fly. I say reduce top speed to 26 or less. It has a wide profile and presumably a lot of drag so it would make sense for it to be as slow if not slower than junker.
But yeah the game isn't balanced around competitive.
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I have always thought the Spire should be the vertical Galleon. Tough as hell armor and hull wise, armed to the teeth, good turning ability, good vertical, but miserably slow. Typical city defense platform, NOT a glass cannon.
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That's probably the way it has to go. The spire is probably the least balanced ship in the game at the moment, if it faces one of its many counters its the weakest ship, if it doesn't its probably the strongest.
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I'd be OK with some more spire buffs. It's my favorite ship, but I can't bring it in competitive because it's too easy to shut down. Can't bring it long range because hades/art just eviscerates it, and your positioning needs to be perfect to have it as a viable brawl ship in this kill heavy meta
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The spire is second only to squid in terms of acceleration and turning, and third in terms of vertical (close to squid). It has good top speed with easy repairs and heavy firepower. It is not unbalanced, it's easily countered. The excellent maneuverability makes it fun to fly and helps make up for its weaknesses. Buffing its armor would make it overpowered and warrant other changes to make it less fun. I'm not convinced buffing armor would make it better because it's so vulnerable to certain weapons, and it already has 950 hull.
Spire isn't used in competitive because it's easily countered. Flash a spire and they bring anti spire. Spire would often be a great choice if there wasn't the risk.
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While I read all the posts I wanted to say exactly what blackedpies here said, the spire is as strong a ship as any. If you would remind yourself of the buff patch for the spire a few months ago, people said it was op and everyone took it. According to muse they even said it had one of the higher, if not the highest win rate of all ships and were considering it they might have buffed it too much - nothing had changed since that time.
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I didn't say it wasn't strong as it is, just that I envisioned it playing the role it was designed for.
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I didn't say it wasn't strong as it is, just that I envisioned it playing the role it was designed for.
I think part of the issue is that the Mobula, Galleon, and Spire are all "weapon platforms," which means one will always be stuck oddly between the other two.
They are uniquely designed ships, but I think their roles step on each others toes a bit too much. Maybe the Spire needs more guns situated around it so it has more angles covered and more firepower than the Mobula, but needs to rotate back and forth to bring that power to bear - two heavy guns on 45-60 degree angles from each other, for example.
It's one of the reasons I wish we had ship-specific perks, actually. A world where the Spire deals extra damage when below a certain speed (or after X time with engines idle) would make the ship a premier park-and-destroy ship, while the Mobula has some other ability that helps define the two forward-facing weapons platforms a bit more.
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Siege mode!
(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/starcraft/images/b/b7/SiegeTank_SC2_GameAnim2.gif)
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Siege mode!
(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/starcraft/images/b/b7/SiegeTank_SC2_GameAnim2.gif)
Basically, yes! Probably with something like a 2 second window of leeway: just enough that you could pivot the ship slightly to adjust targets while retaining the benefit, but not enough to, say, track a Squid at mid-to-close range while still retaining the bonus.
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Siege mode!
(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/starcraft/images/b/b7/SiegeTank_SC2_GameAnim2.gif)
Basically, yes! Probably with something like a 2 second window of leeway: just enough that you could pivot the ship slightly to adjust targets while retaining the benefit, but not enough to, say, track a Squid at mid-to-close range while still retaining the bonus.
I think maybe have it like thus;
2 second window of throttle on loses all bonus
2 second window of turning drops to half bonus
Also where is that .gif from?
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Starcraft tank \o/
There's a hero in Heroes of the Storm who just is one of those. She's a lot of fun
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The fun strategic choices in the game are made from ships, weapons and classes that have well defined roles. The Mobula overshadows the Spire (and everything else really) when it comes to long range, open terrain sniping. That's almost all the maps - Dunes, Sepulcher, Water Hazard, Firnfeld, Fjords, and Blackcliff. Because the option to firefight against the hard-to-hit Mobula is only Lumberjack Hades (which will get taken out by Mercury or Artemi); the only real counter becomes the Squid, which aims to get near and out-maneuver.
Other design issues I feel are the current strength of disabling ships, overlap of Hwacha and Minotaur ranges, and how weak the Blenderfish is (Blendersquid has much more firepower and mobility). When clashes in roles happen, the stronger one will simply be used a lot more often (e.g. Hwacha > Minotaur). Here's more of my attempts at defining general roles:
Control
Ships: Goldfish, Squid, Mobula
Strength: Disables, control of engagements.
Weakness: Mediocre killing power and durability.
Kill
Ships: Pyramidion, Spire
Strength: Killing power for fast take-downs.
Weakness: Mediocre speed and durability.
Tank
Ships: Galleon, Junker
Strength: Durability and raw firepower.
Weakness: Slow.
It does seem like the control meta has been strong competitively since the (NERF PYRA) patch. Would be nice to see things along the lines of Kill > Control > Tank > Kill. However, the opposite is true - Pyra and Spire often gets smashed by control ships.
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Brawl junker can be very effective against mobula as long as there aren't carronades. Minotaur is now much longer range than hwatcha.
I strongly disagree that blenderfish is weak. It was ridiculous before and now it's balanced. The only nerfs that weren't necessary were the jitter increase and up arc decrease. The ability to shoot down at a falling ship with a quick reload was broken. I used to prefer hwatcha fish but now I much prefer blender. With two side flares and no gunner. Spanner mallet buff stamina OP. Flares are OP flames (80-50 deg vs 60-35).
The problem is that people play it wrong. Before you could sit and pop them until they die. I'm disappointed at almost all blenders in competitive for this reason. Burn your engines the whole match whenever you're moving. Never be afraid to hydro. Control and only do full rams if there's a goal. Sitting and misplaced rams just don't work anymore.
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Chute vent is better than hydrogen, in my experience. The reduced armor damage on the carronade makes controlling your opponents, and rams against the ground necessary. You pop, toggle vent to ensure the correct downward momentum, then pulse moonshine when you impact, and "ride" them down, using the front of your ship as a lever. Don't wait, or hesitate. You cannot lock a good captain down indefinitely, and you can't rely on out DPSing with weapons alone. Your goal is to keep constant pressure via pops, and rams until you secure a kill. Once you're in an engagement, there is generally no escape. Do not commit unless you have a good approach, and can follow through.
You are a disable ship in the sense that often, the "correct" choice is to pop one target, leave them dead in the water for your ally, then focus/charge down the other. You are not, however, a hwatchafish or a galleon, gradually grinding down your opponent. You do not want to be in a prolonged fight. Once you pop the first balloon, the kill should come within 10-15 seconds at most.
Side guns are Flare+Flamer, or Flare+Carronade. Side weapons are only useful for pressuring enemies. The terrain and your ship is your weapon.
Open with Lochangar+Stamina to aim quickly, then switch to charged. Stay loch if they have heavy disable. Or take buff engi, and alternate between loch, and normal. If they take your front gun (aka vs Hwatchafish) it doesn't matter. Your hull health and armor is a resource. Ram their balloon.
(Source: GSR "secret" blenderfish tips. Since it's what I mostly play.)
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Regarding Mortar vs Galleon, it is probably an intentional design for it to take down any exposed hull in one clip. The strength of a Galleon is having a buffed armor of 1040; that itself takes a lot of firepower from the enemy team to take down. It is a challenge to even bring a Mortar up close to a Galleon without getting smashed by its firepower.
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Moonshine-chute vent is the aggressive setup. Both tools are great for control and rams. Moonshine gives you better control in tight quarters where you don't have much room and it reduces the effect of being bumped while ramming. It provides 1/3 more thrust at 300% more damage than kerosene and requires two engis with spanner mallets to repair effectively.
Kerosene gives 3/4 the thrust at 1/4 the damage. Spanner repairs twice as fast as kero damages and it can be used for periods without needing immediate repairs. It allows you to bring a wrench buff engi and buffed engines with kero provide 88% of the thrust of moonshine. I love hydro and it's a powerful defensive tool.
Moonshine-chute is what the blenderfish is best at. Kero-hydro is multipurpose and defensive.
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Posh. Properly used moonshine can easily be repaired with just a spanner (though wrench is better), and still beat kero in short and long runs.
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Moonshine is faster but it's harder to use in combat. Kerosene can be used constantly and repaired with anything.
Moonshine can be repaired with spanner until it has 250 damage and then you mallet. If you repair with just spanner you're losing 28% efficiency because moonshine does double the damage of spanner and 44% more than mallet (67% more than wrench). Wrench isn't enough for the main engine. When your main engine has heavy damage or need to rebuild components then moonshine is not better than kerosene. You end up decelerating with low turning and vulnerable engines. An engine at 50% produces 1/2 thrust and is easy to destroy.
Moonshine is faster but it adds stress and needs attention. With kerosene you have a constant 150% boost at little cost (3/4 moonshine at 1/4 cost). Both have their place and I'm just pointing out why kerosene is the safe choice on goldfish with its spread out repairs.
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Just some thoughts:
Is the Mobula OP or are the guns? Is the Galleon strong, but hard to position or are the guns powerful, but none of them have any arcs? The balance of ships revolves a lot around guns too.
Mobula, people thought, was countered by Carronades, which I found to be silly and countered everything that had a Carronade with either two Carronades or even a Mine Launcher, while instant hydro-ing after my balloon is rebuild. The Explosive guns alone will never hit once the armor is down, because vertical mobility. What's left is the shatter damage guns that have limited arc and limited use and are only means to survive the Mobula's superior everything. But then again, a certain Spire loadout (credit to Princess Tutu) used a Carronade (pre-nerf) and Gat/Mortar and I was officially dead everytime that thing started the engagement.
And that is half the game for everything: Starting the engagement. Mobula's have a hard time starting engaments on not so open areas, yes I am purposfully not using the word "maps", because its reaction time is very low when it comes to turning. It has to predict the enemy's position in order to have a chance or it has to bet on survival through vertical mobility, this is why Squids are strong against it. But then again, this is why the Mobula is so strong too, because it is relatively easy to predict your enemy when you have seen him once or not in that specific location, meaning there are only so many ways for them to attack from.
Another thing making the Mobula strong is its kind of high forward acceleration, giving it some serious survival boost and even a good chance of getting into arcs. But without it, it probably wouldn't win any brawl, ever.
If a nerf for the Mobula is in order, I would actually want to see a specific gun slot removed: The one on top of the hull wing. This will severly cripple many multi-range Mobulas, as it would leave the basic Hades (or Merc) and double Art trifecta with only one close range gun in brawls, which might just be a Light Carronade, always. Carronade, double Artemis is still not weak, but kills much slower than my most trusted double Carronade and Artemis combination.
In short: Removing the Mobula's top hull wing gun slot will make loadouts more specialized as sniping platform loadouts will become more vulnerable to brawl, and brawl loadouts more vulnerable to sniping. Multirange loadouts will be left strong in one or the other category, but never more OP than a Spire or Pyramidion could get, anymore.
Nerfing horizontal acceleration I can see as an option, but the other 2D movement stats would have to be balanced around that.
Also, greatest weakness of the Mobula, I still believe, is its engines. Make them easier to be destroyed and you may win fights a lot easier, depending on what you are doing.
The Galleon is strong, because heavy guns usually only need one clip, or less, maybe even only one shot, to do what they need to do. The Galleon is weak, because it has a hard time starting engagements and if it succeeds, chances are the enemy can outmanouver the heavy guns's limited arcs and rotation speed and on top of that, is "easily" disabled and killed by Gat/Mortar.
I would want it buffed, but maybe right now it is as good as it can be, with the other ships being so damn quick and vulnerable too.
Ext and I once talked about how a good buff to it would look like and when mentioning the hull value to survive on buffed and I think normal round, Mortar, the Galleon would never die to disable/control guns like the Carronade, without explosive gun assistance. I honestly almost wouldn't mind that, if it wasn't for your average 4 Hwacha Galleon in pub matches.
A good buff, and I am not joking here, would be reverting the Harpoon back to a state where it actually reeled ships in, for that was the only way a Galleon could quickly and effectively react to quick ships that just casually sit in its blind spot. And it worked, every time, unless it was a Gat/Mortar Pyramidion, because Gatling and Mortar kill everything, regardless.
The Spire experiences a similar issue to the Galleon: Guns are very strong, when used for or against the Spire. It may be more manouverable than the Galleon, but a lot of ships are still more manouverable in one way or another, and that is where it starts to get countered. What's more is that it has more issues than the Galleon, when it faces disable guns like a Carronade, which can stay above it forever with even less effort than against a Galleon, and Hwacha, which threatens to eat its hull everytime even when the armor is at 100%.
I would like to still see a great increase in armor, after all its glass cannon-ness doesn't originate from the stats, but from the design of the ship. Reducing maybe vertical and turning acceleration by a little bit would then balance that.
Basically, siege mode.
And Squids probably have so much hull, because touching anything with exposed armor kills them as quickly as one can blink and thus are extremely vulnerable to Carronades, while also being vulnerable against a little bit of engine disable from Hwacha and Artemis. Thing is though, if you are the Squids target, chances are you will never win! Speed wins and guns are too strong, good game.
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And Squids probably have so much hull, because touching anything with exposed armor kills them as quickly as one can blink and thus are extremely vulnerable to Carronades, while also being vulnerable against a little bit of engine disable from Hwacha and Artemis. Thing is though, if you are the Squids target, chances are you will never win! Speed wins and guns are too strong, good game.
You know the game's changed when we're debating whether squid is OP...
I do agree that 950 is a ridicilous amount of hull. I would like to see squid become an actual hard ship to fly again by taking a hull nerf, and if its too much, give it some sort of mobility buff like turning acceleration to reward pilots even more for flying well with it.
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When triple artemis Junkers were popular the Goldfish was considered weak and the community wanted it buffed. Shortly after this it became one of the most used ships in competitive play without any changes from Muse. Be brave and try new things.
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When I was young blenderfish roamed the skies, being overpowered as they were, and hwachafish was (not exactly rare outside competitive) a thing of beauty, that actually takes some skill to fly.
Things have changed.
Now the hwachafish is slightly overpowered and blenderfish is a rare, beautiful thing.
So since fish is trendy these days everyone's bringing hwachafish whenever possible.
Now, I just wrote that blenderfish is rare. Well, that's not exactly true. You see, it's an excellent disable ship, really nicely balanced (unlike the heavy carronade itself, look at obsolete carro spires and that sad necessity on the starboard of the galleon). But few people actually know how to fly an excellent disable ship such as this. I literally mean few in the entire game.
So, we also have an abundance of blenderfish in Paritan and Canyons, because that's where the kill blenderfish pilots shine (keywords: moonshine, chute vent). Which is also the way that ship should be flown there, sadly.
Most of these pilots are unable to fly it effectively in maps, where blenderfish is an actual disable ship. I am disappointed.
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I like to take Blenderfish on Dunes, just because.
Anyways, I agree. People get so used to the 'meta' that they never try the 'weak' builds. Mostly because they don't want to learn how to fly. They just want to drive in a big flying gun and pull the trigger.
That is why I have actually started flying a Pyra after two years of playing. It finally seems like a challenge.
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Most pilots don't want to put there team at a disadvantage because of the ship or build that they brought to the match. I think this is why you see the same ships each week and why we don't see the Spire or Galleon flown that much.
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Hey spud, there are some of us old dogs who fly what they like and make their own meta!