This new patch is what happens when devs listen to the people who whine the loudest on the forums. The complaint that these skills were so OP were often made by players whose soldiers had 24+ willpower then complained that they could spam abilities too much.
The easier solution would have been to limit the willpower cap so you can’t spam them. My units have 12-14 WP so these OP skills were NEVER a problem. I never could mindcrush 4 times in a row, nor could I run clear across the map by spamming dash.
But to appease these people many of these skills are near useless. Dash for example, the main point for me was to dash in and get 2 shots with a shotgun, or dash away after taking those shots. Now that is impossible, making Dash nearly useless.
Quick Aim I often used to pull of a precision shot that NEEDED to land.
Rage Burst problem was that it was too OP on sniper rifles now has a huge aim penalty making it useless on the very weapons it was MEANT to be used on, now it seems even MORE likely to be use ONLY with sniper rifles since they are the ONLY weapons accurate enough to use with a 50% penalty.
And who was complaining about Master Marksman? That needed a change?
Then they nerf assault rifles, the near worst weapon in the game? Was there anyone saying their assault rifles were TOO GOOD, lol?
While half the forum complained about OP skills the other half said the game felt too hard, even impossible to them. Those people are now royally fucked. I’ll stick to the unpatched version, thanks. I didn’t even like the changes to return fire as it felt better in the release version, the more they fix things the worst they seem. Listening to small % of players that live on the forum is not always a good idea.
The problem is they didn’t even listen to this small %. I assume you would throw me into the whiny “skill OP plz nerf” bunch since I did complained on many combos being way to powerful. Even though many threads started by many “game too easy” players started actually very constructive discussions with many suggestions, arguments and counter arguments on how these exploits could be balanced. What we got in newest patch seem like Devs only skimmed through them or focused more on other sources of info (I don’t know what is being posted on Reddit or discussed on Discord).
For instance old Dash was opening potential to spam 2xKill->Dash->2xKill->Dash rince and repeat with Rapid Clearance (I cleared entire first chamber of enemies, except 1 Scylla, in final battle with just one Assault/Infiltrator in one turn, he had 12 WP just like your soldiers). So it’s nerf, as much as I appreciate it, had to come with other balance changes that would compliment it.
Rage Burst is still very powerful with sniper rifles (-20% acc is a joke for SR) and it became almost useless with other weapons. There were tons of suggestions that made more sense like for instance just disable RB for sniper rifles. I just don’t understand thought process that lead to some of those changes.
I agree on RB now needing some love for Heavy burst weapons only. The issue is RB on a Sniper rifle from across the map seems just silly but no need to make Heavy weapons have less acc or use for RB in my mind offhand. Gotta test it out though.
Also why up the cost of Mutogs really? I mean who’s exploiting Mutog’s or is it just to bring them inline with non living vehicles?
Well, the complaints on the forum were mostly on balance:
make life easier for rookies
nerf things that are clearly OP
So they did part of the second and perhaps a bit of the first one.
You not taking advantage of it doesn’t make it a wonderful design choice. Someone challenged me to find what was the maximum distance a soldier could travel in one turn (which was a fun exercise): 301 tiles (Too much speed makes defense difficult - #12 by pantolomin). Of course nobody does that, but don’t tell me it’s fair. With the nerf it will go down to 201 or something like that which is still very honorable (Armadillo moves 28 tiles for comparison).
Haven’t seen anybody, but I can understand why it is nerfed. 50% was huge.
Yes, this one was a shocker. Didn’t see it coming.
Well is sound like the problem was with Rapid Clearance, so why nerf Dash instead?
And I agree that spam can be a problem, so fix the source of the spam, the overly high Will point cap. I used these skill as powerful, but limited abilities, often used in a pinch. Saving them for the right moment for maximum effect, Not spamming them endlessly like some other do.
Adjusting the cost/limiting the cap would solve the problem with out making them useless. Hell you can just remove the skill from the game and say ‘we fixed the dash spam’, but that is hardly the best way to do it.
I would love to know that as well. Mutogs are good mainly for sweeping up worms. And that’s it. Everything else is dome better by soldiers or other vehicles.
Well in truth the didn’t fix that since they still allow you to move the same distance by increasing the movement to 75% up from 50%, so your problem with dash is still there. So there is still Too much speed, just less shooting.
And as I said lowering the WP cap would solve the mind crush spamming, as well as most other spamming without destroying the usefulness of the skill itself.
From my point of view (that can be read in the thread linked) they didn’t. The travel distance can still be huge, the “nerf” makes you lose only 4AP distance on the 301 tiles (=> 252 tiles still), but doable with 16 WP instead of 24 WP.
Dash is just so unnatural. You have an annoying triton with shotgun on the side, dash twice to go close, shoot twice, dash somewhere safe if needed. That’s 2.5 turns worth of AP with 12 WP.
Would you as a player like to see an opponent use this against you ? Let’s imagine a multiplayer mode one day, who knows ?
Dual class to a sniper and you still have 3 shots with quick aim and 9WP.
Dual class to infiltrator and you deal twice the damage, so no need for 2 shots.
Dual class to heavy and rage burst the guy for 5WP.
Not really. With lower WP limit soldiers would be more prone to mind control. Better way would be to limit how WP is replenished. But also nerf to too powerful skills is a good way of balancing.
As @pantolomin said it wasn’t your problem, but it was design problem. Because you don’t overuse exploits it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
Interesting conclusion.
So maybe use only 1 shot? That can help you with your escape from enemy. Nevertheless you still can go there, shoot and go back! What is useless here?
Use synedrion sniper rifle if you really want so much precision.
Interesting, But I think that those other weapons still can hit Chiron or Scylla.
I’m not sure if someone was complaining but I would. 50% is huge bonus. This is too much for many weapons.
That is little bit strange, but well I would balance all weapons differently, so I’m not here to judge.
Not really as enemy strength (their number) should be toned down when starting new campaign. btw one thing doesn’t exclude the other. Skills were OP and difficulty could be too high.
The priest head with frenzy adds 5WP (not documented but it does) + 2 perks add 2 WP if your priest happens to be lucky (which happened to one of mine) => 29WP achievable
Yes, I could use mind-crush 5 times before kills needed to continue. Let’s say that everyone is dead in a 10 tile radius by the time.
Skill like perception that add say +2 to willpower let you go above the cap I believe.
True, but fixing your problem shouldn’t create one for me. Stop the expoit without ruining the skill for other that were’t trying to abuse expoits.
By mid to late game shotguns can not one shot kill, so dash up into danger, not getting the kill and dashing back is not usefull and still uses lots of willpower for little in return.
A Hell canon has terrible aim to begin with, add -50% on to that and then limit it to 5 shots and you have a real wate of time unless you are point blank.
In truth it is still kinda there. A sniper rifle with the weak spot ability with 5 shots will likely do about 500-600 damage, then add 50% from marked for death and you still an near 900 damage. Which is still fairly OP, so RB with a sniper is still an issue (though far less then before), but for heavy weapons, the thing it was designed for, it will suck badly.
Hell, you could have fixed the problem by not giving sniper rifles 15 round magazines.
I don’t know, their accuracy is so low that it isn’t that great. Laser rifles that hit the target more reliably is better if you combine it with weak spot or other armor striping, or if you can hit an Arthons arm. They often have 70 hit points, if you can hit that you can disable it, but the piercing assault isn’t accurate enough for that.
I guess it depends on whether or not you favor close combat encounters or not. But if you favor up close and personal why not use a shotgun?
A laser does 30x6=180 damage if no armor is left, the other 30x5=150 so in that case the laser is still better especially if there is a greater likelihood of those bullets landing.
