Sniper SmokeScreen, Enforcer Turtling, and more!

It's a nice suggestion, but I honestly couldn't settle for anything less than replacing Snipe with a skill that's going to improve his survivability.

Honestly seems to be a trait all characters have. I'd rather put this up as an all-around suggestion: Prioritizing rope-grabs over attacks so that the game doesn't make you pass over them when you need 'em.

Besides, the LAST thing Huntress needs is an umpteenth advantage over everybody else.

 

Regarding sniper, i liked the way he plays, so i kept playing him, now i usually get to level 4, where i usually get overwhelmed if i dont bring enough drones.
Jar of ants problem is not much of a problem for sniper, or at least its as bad as for most other classes, except maybe engineer, who can use missiles.

Suggestions to move Steady Aim and get rid of current one while removing cooldown seems like a logical change. Charging by itself acts like a cooldown of sorts, along with reloading.
If there's a need to make sniper easier, allow reloading while running would be a good move.
Maybe add a buff ability called something like stimulate neurones, activating which would slow down time by, lets say, 10% (sniper perceives the world as if its slowed due to faster working nervous system) and would give a chance to dodge incoming attacks. This would allow sniper to either escape or charge up a bit easier.

After playing this game for a while i'm more worried about overall difficulty balance of game. No matter what class i play run either ends at level 4 or i get enough of drones. And after 60 minutes i wonder if i should bother attacking at all, since most of damage is done by drones, and monsters have so much hp that no matter who you are your damage is negligible (well, maybe acrid does a bit better). Feels like monster hp increases faster than character damage. And playing drone stations is getting boring.

 

Hello. Thought I would try to drop in a suggestion on the Sniper. I haven't played him a "ton" so to speak, but I've played enough to sort of get the feel for what he's supposed to do. I mean, we are sort of told what he's supposed to do. He's supposed to kill bosses. Point of matter he should really be able to take out any large or tougher enemy with ease. So I put a little thought into it, and I think his problem, along with your Jar thing, is that there is no reward for high level of play, because the way his kit is it doesn't seem viable for even someone with high skill to make it very far. Oddly enough, I think while some might see him as too specialized, I think he might actually not be specialized enough.

So now I'm going to make a few odd ball suggestions. Now, his strength should lie in his ability to take out high level enemies. His weakness is general crowd control. These two things should remain. First proposed idea is based a little on one from the original post, but tweaked. The enemy his Spotter target's should always take full damage. So, to explain, let's say you are targeting something behind a sizable line of enemies. While the bullet may reduce in damage as it goes, as long as it hit's the Scanned enemy it will do FULL, reduced damage. But, I can here you saying, won't that make killing bosses/Elites too easy? Yeah, that's the point. THAT'S HIS JOB.

As an alternate to that, if he has an enemy Spotted, whenever he sets up to snipe he will always face that target, but also will HIT that target first, and then all enemies behind him. I'm not personally a big fan of this idea, but it is one I had so I put it out there.

Next suggest has to do with his Primary Attack. It basically is just a worse version of Snipe. Now, this might be too good, but perhaps make it so that Snipe, not Steady Aim, pieces enemies if you hit a perfect reload. This skill could still just do reduced damage as normal, and wouldn't be able to charge like Steady Aim. This would give him some power over crowds of enemies as well as reward a player for successful reloads.

I suppose I should make a suggestion for his roll as well. A military man huh? How about reduce the cooldown every time he's hit. Or hell, make it so you can roll back while using STEADY AIM to help build it up a bit more.

 

It does raise some interesting questions on how forced reconstruction could be designed. As it stands now, it is a situational tool combo'd into and out of only when circumstances permit it, and its low cooldown compensates for it. I refrain from using it midfight a lot of times unless my enemies are stunned by rage RNG.

Perhaps what could be done is for hammer's cooldown to be doubled, in exchange for a 1.5 second stun. If you wanted you could even take the RNG stun off of his rage and maybe replace it with a static damage increase. It would make the character feel a little more consistent and distinguish the roles of his different abilities a little better.

 

List edited. Enforcer can now crawl! I'm pretty happy with that. Now...

I have to stop you right there because if you really think every other character has the same amount of trouble with a Jar of Ants, it seems to me you don't understand them very well.

Every other character. EVERY SINGLE ONE has the capability to fight effectively in a Jar of Ants. It is still a painful situation but they all have skills that allow them to at least try and potentially succeed.

Sniper fails at this because his gameplay is built around shooting enemies from a distance. People don't seem to understand this. Instead, they focus on his ability to deal high single-target damage (in a game where crowd control becomes more and more favored as time goes on, making this a DISADVANTAGE, by the way). But the true core of his gameplay is distance combat. It's the whole point behind his MILITARY TRAINING skill. You run from a group of targets, turn around, use MILITARY TRAINING for ADDED distance, and then charge up STEADY AIM to deal some high damage to the group. Rinse and repeat.

Sniper HAS to play like this. In a Jar of Ants, there is no distance for Sniper to make. And let me make this clear: HE IS THE ONLY CLASS THAT REQUIRES THAT DISTANCE TO WORK EFFECTIVELY (yes, "requires". I use that word because it is true).

If your response to this is to "bring more drones" or "have a specific item", you don't understand the problem. I'm making these suggestions so that the Sniper has a backup plan IN CASE he CAN'T get those items. Every character should have a skill setup that allows them to at least attempt to tackle every situation. Sniper is the only character who doesn't.

 

Agreed.

Lets take a simple example. Say you have 10 or so mobs all clustered together on one of the many small platforms that exist on certain parts of the maps and these are the only mobs left alive after the teleporter timer has ended (and therefore you must kill them). There is no platform on either side for you to safely snipe from, and it is too high off the ground for you to do jump shots.

Lets look at some of the options available to all the classes, shall we? I even color coded them based off difficulty (Cyan is really easy, Green isn't that hard, Yellow means it can be dangerous, and Red means your run is over).

Commando: Kite the giant pack from side-to-side of the small platform using FMJ, you will most likely take a good bit of damage as you might not have your evasion skill up in time for every dodge, but it is still quite manageable.
Enforcer: You can kite with your stun grenade + shotgun knockback and use your shield, should be a pretty easy time.
Bandit: Your grenade, while not as good as FMJ at dealing with packs, is still quite effective you will probably take out most of the mobs with your basic attack though, as it is pretty damn good.
Huntress: Shoot backwards.
HAN- Your punch and your hammer do really good AoE damage, and you can use your little drone buddies to heal up if you take too much damage from the concentrated fire.
Engineer: Turrets, mines, homing rockets that clip through terrain. You have options and do not need to put yourself at risk in any way.
Sniper: Lure the mobs to one side of the small platform, then quickly flip towards the other one and start charging your steady aim, try to release before taking fatal damage to kill one (maybe two) enemies. Wait for regen and then rinse and repeat another 9 or so times. Don't mind the fact that you just lost about 5-10 minutes with absolutely no gain, meanwhile skirting on the edge of death the whole time because of the fact that the enemies are murdering you during the charge time.
Miner: Everything this guy does is AoE and is good at avoiding attacks. No special strategies needed here as long as you have a basic idea of how to not get hit using your skills (not hard seeing as two of them make you invincible, and the last one lauches you into the air).
Acrid: Quite possibly the easiest class to deal with this kind of situation, just spread your slime over the small area and fire your epidemic into the fray, now you can stand off to the side and watch all the enemies die with no further input from you.
Mercenary: Your whirling blades and your dash slash skill (forget what its called) are fantastic for this type of situation, just don't bother using your 4th skill unless you have the ancient scepter as without it, it is pretty bad at mobbing.

The Commando, Bandit and Huntress also benefit quite a lot from range like the sniper, however they do not rely on it (and the huntress can shoot backwards, so its even less important for her).

 

The only thing I would change about this is mentioning that yellow is "slightly difficult", and throw a few more shades and colors between it and red to really emphasize how ridiculous that gap is.

 

Regardless of if I agree on whether or not sniper needs a change, I'll suggest another alternate idea and make a comment. You've made a point about sniper needing distance and I think distance helps, but more importantly I think that playstyle is so unique to him that I want it preserved. This is why I am so vehemently opposed to the smokescreen idea (and a lot of the other stuff in this thread), because it utterly breaks sniper and changes him into another class. I like his playstyle as it is and I believe that he is winnable enough that a complete restructuring would do more harm than good.

That being said I am not completely opposed to all changes. When I play sniper one of my favorite items is the photon jetpack, especially on sniper since it gives me a major advantage and lets me play more effectively in tight spaces. If you've used it a lot, you'll probably see what I mean. Because of that I think an alternate change would be giving sniper a weak photon jetpack-like effect that would increase on level up. If you make it so it hits full jetpack at level 15 or 20 then by level 9 or 10 when the difficutly ramps up to crazy (I can make it this far with no items pretty consistently) then you have the ability to fight in much more confined spaces.

To be honest I'm not sure if sniper needs to be able to fight super effectively in tight spaces (I think the smokescreen would make it too easy and if you give it a long cooldown then the game just ends up being a waiting fest until it goes off cd) and I think a well balanced jetpack effect would keep him in the action but would still make it difficult to do perfectly. The main reason I don't want it to be easy is since I don't think all the characters have to be at the same difficulty and I know there are players who don't seem to struggle to get wins with sniper, so he's certainly a powerful enough class that he can consistently hold his own with most item kits even now.

 

I don't play sniper much, but from what I've seen your weak jetpack suggestion would only really be beneficial in the 'platform' type Jar of Ants; in a true, pit jar of ants I can't see it being too helpful, beyond giving him a whole second to charge steady aim and then HOPEFULLY be able to jet out before taking a ton of damage. Seems to me like, while it might help, and will certainly preserve the vastly different playstyle the sniper has, it wouldn't help the poor guy enough.
And regarding your other points about liking, or at least not caring, about character tiers being a serious thing: I just can't agree with you. I don't think the Devs EVER intended for certain classes to be considered all-around better (or close enough that the other class shouldn't be played for more than the challenge or the sake of variety), and would prefer all classes had the same difficulty with the game in general. Certainly, the differences between classes would make certain situations harder or easier, but none should require luck or exploitation of the spawn code to avoid situations that would otherwise be dangerous, but doable rather than utterly and finally fatal.
Perhaps I am being too dramatic about this class's weakness and shortcoming, and perhaps I am simply not skilled enough to deal with it, but I personally think the sniper needs tweaking.

 

To be completely honest, the Sniper is currently a watered-down wannabe version of the Commando. Here's why.

Let's face it, SNIPE would be useless if not for how pitiful the Sniper's kiting ability is. Even with consecutive perfect reloads, it hardly outdamages the Commando's primary, (It might not, actually. Wow.) and damage is wasted whereas the Commando's two bullets can bring more total damage if the first enemy dies to bullet #1. With slower DPS and the reload gimmick, it just kind-of sucks.

The Sniper's signature single-target attack, STEADY AIM, doesn't even do it's job with bosses unless you have some way of getting onto a platform above the crowd that doesn't have any mobs on it. If you can't find a suitable place to shoot perfectly clearly from, your damage and cooldown is either inferior to the Commando's, or you're dead. The absolute inability to deal with crowds in tight spaces compared to any other class is crippling. Now, I realize that this class isn't supposed to be good at crowds, but come on. One damage to all enemies with a six-second-or-less windup and 4 second cooldown? Really? That's still a worse cooldown than the Commando.

MILITARY TRAINING is a backwards TACTICAL DIVE with longer cooldown. Enough said.

Ahh, SPOTTER: SCAN. The only major difference between the Commando and Sniper, and it might actually be the Sniper's ball court here. If it works right, and if you can get a 100% unobstructed shot at the boss and IF you can survive long enough to fully charge your shot, you might hit decent damage mid-game. The guaranteed critical hits are also beneficial in multiplayer, allowing a team to pick up for their Sniper if he can't fire a good shot. This undeniably gives him at least one edge over the Commando when it comes to dealing damage to enemies, and maybe some decent health cuts if the boss is in front of the crowd.

All in all, as someone who loves the Sniper's playstyle, it's just not viable when you're playing solo. Not being able to reliably deal damage on-the-go or to crowds kills the Sniper's chances of winning even before the game starts. If a more reliable form of AoE damage (or even the ability to use AoE passives worth a damn!) or a faster/safer STEADY AIM was brought to this class, it'd easily shine as a viable and valuable character both solo and in a team.

 

Agreed actually, edited the post a little bit. But since there is no class that can fit in the chasm of awful that separates sniper from the rest of the classes in those kinds of situations, I just edited the color descriptions to clarify.

 

This is where you aren't using it quite right. I'd use the flight to safely charge up the attack, then use the flip to get out. You'll note that this means you are charging it right in a pit of enemies, but if you use the flight correctly and time it well, you can get enemies to attack while you're in the air then land, shoot and backflip out. It's really hard to demonstrate since photon jetpack is so rare, but I think giving it natively to sniper, maybe with a bit of a normal jump boost too would preserve what I love about his playstyle and perhaps build upon the parts of it that I like the most.

In addition the jetpack would also differentiate him from commando (if you think he's the same) and would make it easier to hit enemies targeted by the spotter (making it target tall enemies might even be useful here, but that's a bit of a big jump).

 

I still feel like that's setting the skill threshold a bit high, at least compared to the other characters who I could pick up after general practice with commando and a few runs of them. Perhaps that's the playstyle difference you're referring to?

 

Admittedly the jetpack is an OKAY idea. It keeps the Sniper RELATIVELY safe while he charges a shot, but then he lands and is bait for any monsters that happen to be there, and if he's in a huge crowd, one split-second is all it takes to go from max health to 25%. SmokeScreen would protect the Sniper much more effectively.

Also, your assertion that SmokeScreen would ruin his playstyle is completely unfounded and not very well thought out.

If SmokeScreen had a reasonably long cooldown, that would effectively eliminate the idea of simply waiting for it to cooldown before you attack. Waiting for SmokeScreens should only be done in a Jar of Ants, where it's required (yes, required). Otherwise, you should actually be a good sniper and rely more on your Roll-and-Aim strategy.

So that said, Jetpack is okay, but I'm not convinced that I'd prefer it even just a little bit over SmokeScreen.

Yeah, jeez. Who uses SNIPE? I only use it if I fail a perfect reload and want a retry. *SNIPE* DO OVER.

 

So what your saying is that the Sniper would no longer play like a sniper, but like a jetpack assault trooper hybrid thingy?

Uh...

I mean the idea is not bad, but can we at least keep it thematic? I really don't think having bouncy snipers bouncing around all the time because it gets them extra time charging their shots is the right solution to this. It would most definitely not preserve the sniper's gameplay, that is for sure.

 

Also, I would mention that a lot of these classes, such as the Bandit, Commando, and Han-D are very good at keeping entire mobs at bay because they have a lot of good stun/knockback attacks. Commando can spam FMJ and the... barrage attack thingy... FMJ stuns everyone, and the barrage attack does some excellent knockback, meaning that he gets in quite a few hits before the monsters approach him, even on a small ledge, then he rolls to the other side to repeat. I'd probably move his difficulty level up to green.

Bandit can sorta do the same with SmokeScreen, his normal attack, and the dynamite.

Han-D is the KING of knockbacks. Hell, his entire playstyle is centered around playing paddleball with your enemies. I don't think anyone handles a Jar of Ants as well as Han-D does. He can pretty much facetank the damn thing and not even worry about dodging. Just punch, punch, punch, score a kill, get a drone, use drone, heal, rinse and repeat, never die.

 

Am I reading this wrong?
His basic attack is what ALLOWS him to have a great kiting ability along with a decent damage output.
His AOE skills need a minimum damage % though, rather than reducing to 1's after piercing like 5 enemies.

 

I had some difficulty considering those three to be fair. However I decided on Yellow for the bandit/commando because they carry pretty significant risk of taking a decent amount of damage depending on enemy types and exact platform size and so-on. Especially bandit, if it weren't for the incredible potency of his basic attacks I would have had to make another color tier between yellow and red just for him. Since his invisibility skill has far too long of a cooldown to be practical at taking them out in anywhere near a decent time if you rely on it, and his grenade is significantly worse then FMJ.

As for HAN-D, on early mobs he probably has the easiest time of them all, but certain elite mobs (goddamn missiles) and certain mob types (bison being one of the worst offenders) can do absolutely enormous amounts of damage to HAN-D since be has a huge delay attached to his attacks. Throwing his healing drones into the mix I averaged out my totally-not-biased-in-any-way (I hope) arbitrary color coding ranking for him to be green.

 

His basic also has one of the slowest firing rates in the game. Although if you have the ability to kite an enemy (aka there's enough open ground), you're doing yourself an incredible dis-service by not simply resorting to the handy roll-and-aim tactic (turn quickly, military trainnig + steady aim).

To say the Sniper has terrible kiting ability is kind of a lie, to be fair, because his entire gameplay revolves around kiting enemies (which is why he suffers so hard in a Jar of Ants).

But to say that his basic attack lends to this is laughable, because it's easily the worst basic attack of any character ever.

 

Try doing a jump combo using any other gun wielding character's basic attack.
No matter how well you time it, it's impossible because their basic attacks fire for low damage at a fast rate. (Enforcer excluded, because you wouldn't be jumping while in protect and serve mode)
The sniper can maximize damage even while jumping due to his slow re-fire rate.

Similarly to the sniper, the basic attack of the mercenary is also widely disputed.
Again, you have to see how it works with jumping. Being able to consistently use aerial attacks is a HUGE advantage in the game.

He doesn't suffer hard in "Jar of Ants" situations because of his kiting ability, he suffers because he has no multi-target attacks which hit consistently, he has to pick off one enemy at a time. His kiting ability is what allows him to actually have a chance to survive situations like that.