How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

[Newbluud]

Prefacing this by saying that I'm not actually a fan of the nerf hammer approach to game balance. I'd be much more interested in seeing a change to other ships, weapons, tools or mechanics in order to open more creative ways to counter, instead of a straight statistical downgrade to the titular ship.

That being said, such a downgrade wouldn't necessarily be unwelcome given how absolutely, painfully, tear-jerkingly bored I am of losing against and easily winning with the Mobula, especially the infamous Hades-double-art Mobula that I affectionately refer to as "cancermob" as opposed to metamob. I think, at this stage, we are all aware that the OP-ness (hue) of the Mob is really limited to that single build, which dominates competitive and mid-level lobbies alike. Other builds are powerful but simply not as well-rounded. With a low skill floor once the pilot and crew have the very basics of game knowledge down and some rather cheesy benefits making it formidable against the best pilots, the Mobula is just too great a dominating force at present, as the pyra has been in the past.

I guess one notable thing about the proposed nerf that will soon be patched into the game is how it will hamper the Mobula's ability to easily transition between long/mid range weaponry to short-range weaponry once an enemy finally gets around that wall of hades/art fire. I like that at least, but the price is too high. It basically cuts down the build possibilities, filtering all possible interesting combinations down to the boring, monotonous, overused tripe that has made me stop watching competitive almost entirely - unless I am told prior to a match that there are less than two Mobulas.

So, ramble aside, post some ideas just for the sake of conversation. Of the numerous people I have spoken to about the Mobula, no two people have suggested the same changes.

[Red-Xiii]

Ive thought about this alot.  I love the mobula.  I like how open and big it is.  And how it must be compartmentalized to crew.  That said, the worsed nerf I would give it is turning speed reduction, lower its up and down buoyancy, something on the movement side of things.  To change gun arcs to me defeats the benefit of the mobula at all.  Heck even add another ramp or something to it so the engies take longer getting to the hull and balloon. 

[Newbluud]

Ive thought about this alot.  I love the mobula.  I like how open and big it is.  And how it must be compartmentalized to crew.  That said, the worsed nerf I would give it is turning speed reduction, lower its up and down buoyancy, something on the movement side of things.  To change gun arcs to me defeats the benefit of the mobula at all.  Heck even add another ramp or something to it so the engies take longer getting to the hull and balloon.

I wish were not so cynical and could love the mob like you do. I don't even find metamob fun to fly anymore, in any capacity. In the majority of situations, unless I'm up against a better pilot in the same ship, I'm pretty much signing myself up for the same match over and over again. Stay high, rain hell, slowly grind them out as they steadily lose the ability to maintain repairs against three weapons, all while they are completely incapable of turning the favour of the engagement because they are engine and weapon locked by arts. It's not fun for my enemy and it's not fun for me. As for my crew? Well, that's for them to decide. Seen as I crew more often than I pilot, I can say that I find any position aside from gunner on said ship boring, because it's just so samey. Hades is only fun because I am learning how to get to a respectable level on it for competitive use, so I still find landing lots of shots satisfying. However, I'm sure that charm will die once I get to that level.

Defeating the benefit of the Mob might not be such a terrible thing. The benefit of controlling distance and being powerful both short and long range is a little ridiculous in my book. Pressuring engineers off of guns is the most effective way to deal with them, but can only be accomplished through enough shots before the inevitable sniping of all your components.

I always thought the verticals were a bit bloody stupid. In a realism sense, moving at the speed it does would probably shift it out from the crew's feet and have them hurtle down towards it and break their legs once the movement is over. In a game sense, also a bit stupid. It gives the mobula yet another easy way to avoid what would be certain death to any other ship and open up a committed brawler to an ally or regain advantage.

[DrTentacles]

The verticals are stupid, coupled with how the balloon works. People say the pyra nerf helped the mob turn into a cancer ship, and forget the fact that carronade and flamer were nerfed in the same patch cycle.

Artimii also need a look at. They're incredibly easy to disable with, and function well at any range. I'd like their hull damage to be taken down.

[BlackenedPies]

The simplest nerf is hull. The mobula is resistant to disable due to its spread out components, and resistant to kill due to its underside balloon and high maneuverability. Some shots inevitably hit balloon and when armor goes down the mob can use its maneuverability to dodge. At range the hull engi can often stick on the upper gun while the armor takes damage because they can continue to shoot and when armor breaks the pilot will dodge. The simplest nerf is reducing the hull health of mob to around 550 like current pyra. Pyra is all hull and can't dodge while the mobula has an underbelly shield and can dodge. 700 hull is too much for the current mob

[Daft Loon]

- Drop the vertical acceleration from 7.5 to 5 (where squid is next best at 4)
- Drop its balloon health from 1200 to 1000
- Add an arming time to the artemis but give it slightly faster turning, probably 150m arming range, in line with the hades and light flak
- Restore the light carronade as a close range disabling alternative, as far as I know the only problem with it was the (horrible) carronade + flamer pyra which died with the flamer and pyra nerfs
- Add +x% arming time to burst rounds which will suit the upcoming H.flak changes and maybe even prompt other ammo choices on artemis in some situations

[DJ Logicalia]

I felt like those gravity changes should have hurt the mob a lot, but I guess those are gone now...

[Newbluud]

I felt like those gravity changes should have hurt the mob a lot, but I guess those are gone now...

They also hurt everything else substantially more. If I was informed correctly, relative to other ships, this was a buff to mob's vulnerability to blending as it fell slower than ships like the galleon and spire, although faster than it does currently. In a sense, whilst this was huge buff to blenders, it indirectly made the mob outshine its peers on yet another level.

[Helios.]

i always thought the vertical mobility was kinda weird for the mobula (but i think the mobula is weird already for reasons i may or may not get into below) and in terms of game mechanics its absolutely disgustingly strong. if you get through a withering trek through artemis shooting out your guns and the engie camping the hull so the hades doesnt take you out before yo get there. if you get through ALL of that, it can do one MORE thing nobody else can do to escape any other ship.

consider two things about this movement:
1stly, its teh fastest in that direction int eh game wich means unless you have chute vent and hydrogen: its gone

secondly with one exception all the balloon popping weapons are pretty damn intimate, so not only do you have to get in on the mobula under fire but you also have to get just a little bit farther, and the closer you get the more accurate all their shots are getting. meaning yoru carronade/flamer/banshee is destroyed for most of the fight. you almost certainly havnt done enough damage to their balloon to stop them from shooting up like a cork. so if you thought you had them on the ropes, by the time you get back to them, their hades has rained death down on you and probably a gat and a mortar have too, just for fun.
the lumberjack is therefore the only decent weapon for taking the mobula down a peg without running a gauntlet. the mubula will shoot it out in one 10 rocket salvo even if you are on pub matches, its just too damn big, and it takes forever to fix when it gets knocked out, much longer than it takes the artemis to reload... its also one of the trickiest guns to use, and even thogh ive practiced my little heart out, its still hard to line u shots on the mobula because its so flat, and height is the axis that is hardest as everyone who has ever played a spire and wondered why nobody was missing you can attest. nobody is getting it lined up perfectly except its going WIDE...

here's how i would nerf the mobula:
1 make the rise/fall acceleration a lot less. it allows a real opportunity if you can get to them to actually kill them without an unparalleled instant escape trick
2 increase the reload time on the artemis. its always been too good, a good hand with that puppy can disable a ship better than a  hwacha, and its often reloaded in time to get your hits in on the hull too. two (or if you are a real jerk, 3) of the little bastards can strip your armor faster than you can repair it, and drop you without pausing to change guns. its decent explosive damage is also perfectly able and willing to blow you apart. its the workhorse shatter weapon at range just as the gatling is the piercing workhorse: if you want it done right, theres no other weapon to take. if someone wants to take the mobula as it is now and slap a merc up top (or on the sides) as it stands leave the arcs the way they are. let people use them like they have been, the only real overpowered build is concerned with the double disable/hull killer rockets.

what this does:
it releases some of the pressure on the heavy weapon disable/reload issues that are causing the galleon and the spire such grief. most of the time its a hwacha or an artemis disabling your heavy weapon these days. a hwacha is rough, but at least you know a heavy weapon is SUPPOSED to be a brutal hit. a light gun knocking out all four of your guns is just absurd.

id advocate as i did in my other post, which was huge sorry, that these changes be put in one before the other separated by some weeks. give us time to see if one change will give us the balance we want, and maybe the other wont be required (or an overcorrection)

[Helios.]

oh the other thing about the mobula that is weird is that its center of gravity seems like it should be above the balloon, which always makes me think it should flip over...

[Dementio]

If the Mobula loses vertical mobility, I would buff the turning acceleration. Because of those engine positions, that ship should be spinning like a tornado, "360NoScopebula".

The biggest nerfs I can actually thing of is not tampering with the number stuff, but rather the "physical" components and their positions:
Removing one single gun slot. Anyone of them gone is going to do the job better than whatever Muse is trying to do with those gun arcs changes. #SomethingDoesntWorkMobula

Remove both top wing guns and you reduced it to Pyramidion sniping capabilities, or a more risky Junker. Ending up with the reputation of unbeatable brawling instead of master at multiranging like there is no tomorrow. If need be, add a tunnel connecting the hull and balloon hallways, but then numbers must be nerfed too, as that would allow regular buffs on balloon and armor, now that would be OP. #YearOfBrawlMob #NerfGatMortar

Place the engines even further away from the crew. I usually pilot these ships, but when I do actually crew on a Mobula, I just can't find the time to repair the engines, it takes so much time. With even more distance from the guns to the engines, and it is stuck on the horizontal plane. When that Mobula brawls against quicker ships, it will buy the quicker ships some more time, as the Mobula needs to burn engines to keep arcs going, but eventually the crew has to leave said guns to repair engines. #LionGunOP

[Solidusbucket]

What if they just turned all the guns inwards. Wouldnt that make it easier to get out of flank arcs? Would also make it stupid powerfuk at long range but its already that.

[DrTentacles]

I actually had "removing the top two guns" as one of my list of ideas to re-build the meta. (Along with adding another light gun to the Galleon, and fixing the Spire.)

The Mobula's guns slots give it Junker versatility, without the need to turn, and with Squid verticality.

[ZnC]

Being too hard to kill is the most fundamental issue with a ship that is supposed to be an evasive sniper or "paper cannon".

I'm surprized no one has talked about how small the Hull profile of the Mobula is unless you are directly above or beside it. Combined with 600 Armor, it usually takes 2 Gatling clips to strip it. For a ship that is difficult to disable, has good maneuverability and tons of firepower, this is nonsense. Mobula Armor should really be in the 400-500 range.

[GeoRmr]

I wouldn't, I'd just un-nerf all the other ships and revert some of the changes that have lead to the Mobula being so dominant.

Bring back heavy-clip heavy carronade (perhaps with a drastic reduction to shatter damage to prevent the old component sniping fun "problem") fix the pyramidion so the natural gatling carronade hard counter is playable and all will be well.

do it like this:

Roll back the game to February 2015
Add stamina and adjust gun arcs accordingly
Add current minotaur
Reduce shatter damage of the heavy carronade so it's slightly less effective and can't snipe components
Reduce range of the heavy carronade.
Then nerf the pyra again for no reason because it's cool to do that every patch