Rage burst for sniper / heavy still OP

[walan]

Before I start to complain, I would first like to thank the developers for this great game. The game is a rough diamond and with a lot of polishing it has the chance to be better than FiraXcom Wotc!

One of the unique game mechanics are the boss fights, which I was really looking forward to.
The problem is that if there is a sniper / heavy with a rage burst in the team, all other tactics to kill Scylla are superfluous / obsolete. I just have to wait until the scylla shows up, then the magazine (5 shots) is unloaded twice from a safe distance and that’s it. The other team members don’t need to do anything once. And the tactic ALWAYS works! This will ruin the tactical part.
In my opinion, this skill needs to be revised again. The changes from the patch alone are still unsatisfactory.
Take a seat, the opponent has these options …
The 50% decrease in accuracy and the reduction to 5 shots (patch) has meant that this skill now has almost no combination of classes with any major OP. Alone because of the -50% accuracy. Especially the pure inmobile heavy will never hit the opponent.
However, the sniper / heavy has hardly any problems with this and can therefore continue to “cheat”.

You could change the “rage burst” skill differently. Here are a few possible variations:

1. Usable only with automatic weapons. However, the reduction in accuracy (-50%) is at least weakened. This would also suit the heavy, as there is an affinity for the machine gun.
2. Increase the WP costs to 10 so that it cannot be repeated again and again.
3. Hard cap for effective range for example 15.
4. Do you have any other ideas?

What do you think?

[MichaelIgnotus]

Couldn’t agree more. I have long argued that this should be limited to machine-guns only. I personally limit myself to this in my campaign, and it works well.

Though TBH, snipers can still take out a Scylla in a Citadel in 2 or 3 turns without ever being threatened by it, even without RB. If you want to fix that, it’s much more fundamental than the RB problem.

[MadSkunky]

@walan

What do you think?

Fair thaughts, but if you only nerf one of the OP combos you only make this one unatractive and the players go to other OP combos.

Only one example:

• Infiltrator/Berserker with Sniperist perk, double stealth bonus and adrenalin rush. This combo deals even more damage per turn as Sniper/Heavy with rageburst (x2 stealth x4 AR = x8 damage compared to x5 damage from RB) and can shred almost any armor with the first shot by using berserkers armorbrake.
  You can even top this if you have the trooper perk by using assaultrifles and here explicitly the daimos because of its high accuracy, higher base damage per burst than sniper rifles and then 6 times armorbreak for the first shot. Make the math and your RB combo is simply weak compared to that.
  And there are some other combos that can do also a big amount of damage per turn.

Short:
Closing only one hole doesn’t help much but yes, maybe we should at least start with the obvious ones.

[Yokes]

@walan

1. Usable only with automatic weapons. However, the reduction in accuracy (-50%) is at least weakened. This would also suit the heavy, as there is an affinity for the machine gun.
2. Increase the WP costs to 10 so that it cannot be repeated again and again.
3. Hard cap for effective range for example 15.
4. Do you have any other ideas?

What do you think?

1st option for me. Whoops, stopped editing before posting. Of course there should be -30% penalty to accuracy. I’m still thinking about limiting number of bullets per such burst, if it is right or wrong.

[VOLAND]

Couldn’t agree more with everything that’s being said on this thread.

@MichaelIgnotus

Though TBH, snipers can still take out a Scylla in a Citadel in 2 or 3 turns without ever being threatened by it, even without RB. If you want to fix that, it’s much more fundamental than the RB problem.

Yes, absolutely. IMO, Scyllas need a total rethought. For starters, it shouldn’t be possible to kill a Scylla by shooting repeatedly at that one leg. Not sure about the rest of the Pandas, but taking down a Scylla should require destroying a vital, well protected organ (maybe some organ that only gets revealed after the Scylla suffers sufficient damage?)

Ah, yes, please, for the love of Chtulu, don’t just slap more HPs and armor on her to take care of the problem.

@MadSkunky

Fair thaughts, but if you only nerf one of the OP combos you only make this one unatractive and the players go to other OP combos.

Good point. However, rather than thinking about specific OP combos I suggest taking a more holistic approach - look at all the effects that can be achieved with the different buffs.

How much damage per bullet can be increased in PP? The sneak x2, blood lust, reckless, weapon profiency, mark for death… Am I missing any? That can be 100+50+30+25+50… 255%? So, if I’m not mistaken, each projectile can do up to 355% damage with the right buffs. This is absurd, it doesn’t make any sense on any level. I’m not even talking reality checks here, just basic game mechanics.

But it gets worse when you consider the accuracy buffs. You can get up to +55% to accuracy just from armor/mutations. Then you have the cautious perk for another +20%, and the marksman perk for another +30% (total +105%). Yay, why use SR when you can use the Hell cannon instead?

But wait, it get even worse, because then you have the insane mobility (see this thread here About reducing mobility), that allows you to run up next to an enemy on the other side of the map, shotgun them in the mug, and run back, all in the same first turn.

Done yet? Nop. How about casting electric reinforcement a couple times each turn, then recouping the WP cost on the same turn by using “recover”?

If there is one overriding problem in PPs balancing it’s effects stacking. And then trying to solve it with slapping more armor and HPs on the enemies, or with stuff like the new acid (devs, what were you thinking? How was this tested?)

Sorry for going off topic!

[MadSkunky]

@VOLAND

then recouping the WP cost on the same turn by using “recover”?

Speaking of recouping WP, did you know that you can use zerkers AR to “recover” for 1 AP?
So you can ‘spell’ armorbreak and adrenalinrush for 9 WP, shot 3 times and with the 4th AP you can recover and get back almost all of the used WP in this one turn (full recouping needs at least 17 willpower). Next turn repeat, no end in sight. For me, this alone also feels somehow unbalanced and that without any stacking or OP skillcombos.

[VOLAND]

Yes, I forgot that one. Though TBH I try not to use meta-berserkers.

[walan]

@MadSkunky

@walan

What do you think?

Fair thaughts, but if you only nerf one of the OP combos you only make this one unatractive and the players go to other OP combos.

Only one example:

• Infiltrator/Berserker with Sniperist perk, double stealth bonus and adrenalin rush. This combo deals even more damage per turn as Sniper/Heavy with rageburst (x2 stealth x4 AR = x8 damage compared to x5 damage from RB) and can shred almost any armor with the first shot by using berserkers armorbrake.
  You can even top this if you have the trooper perk by using assaultrifles and here explicitly the daimos because of its high accuracy, higher base damage per burst than sniper rifles and then 6 times armorbreak for the first shot. Make the math and your RB combo is simply weak compared to that.
  And there are some other combos that can do also a big amount of damage per turn.

Short:
Closing only one hole doesn’t help much but yes, maybe we should at least start with the obvious ones.

.
It seems that many “OP” holes results from random skills such as “sniperist”.

How about if a soldier only gets the random skills that have no further weapon affinities? For example, for an infiltrator, the random abilities “sniperist”, “assault training” and others that give a weapon affinity would be deactivated. A sniper, on the other hand, would be able to get “sniperist”. This would still allow the infiltrator to use a sniper rifle if sniper was chosen as the second class. However, you cannot then use the skills of the berserk.

[MadSkunky]

@walan

It seems that many “OP” holes results from random skills such as “sniperist”.

Some of them for shure but not that many.

Sniper/berserker is also very strong and compared to sniper/heavy with rageburst very flexible, you don’t need one big target with high hp and can split your 4 snipershots to different targets. No need for a random perk here.
Assault/berserker with iconoclast is also a stupidly OP mixed class even without any random perk, also maybe a bit weaker but in the same direction assault/sniper. Thx to rapidclearance you can gain additionally AP by killing enemies with 1 AP.
The same combination but with daimos is not that strong as Inf/Zerker with trooper (the AR skill) with daimos but a bit to strong in my opinion.
Assault/heavy with rageburst Iconoclast? Very heavy damage and if you take the AP in account then even more than a deceptor rageburst (5 x 10 x 40 = 2000 damage for 2 AP!). And a ragebursted daimos is also very strong. As i wrote above basically stronger than a sniperrageburst if you can get rid of the armor before you shot (5 x 6 x 30 = 900 for 2 AP with an OKish accuracy on distance!). There are plenty of possibilities to erase the armor, for instance with a seperate sniper or berseker.

Beside that, your idea of not allowing the random perks that don’t match the base class would take a lot of diversity out of the game and possibly make some classes, like infiltrators in particular, more unpopular than others (I only guess they’re not that popular anyway because of their weak mainweapon … but idk? … I like them a lot … hrhrhrhr ).

Edit:
I forgot all Infiltrator combos, almost any of them are pretty strong even without random skills. One i really like to use is inf/heavy with rocket and grenadelauncher, very effective against all enemies that are somewhat clustered. And a Thor rocket with double damage can oneshot a Chiron or Siren, for shure not savely and very random but it happens to me pretty often.

[LouisdeFuines]

I very much like Rage Burst like it is. Please keep it the current way.

[trihero1]

Infiltrator appears nerfed to me; even with a 100% stealth thief perk infiltrator the enemy reveals me when I’m smthing like 5 or 6 tiles away from them. You used to be able to walk up right next to them, no?

[MadSkunky]

Nope, not closer than 5 tiles even when vanished, this was one part of the last patch and in my opinion a good one. I personally found the old way, were you can step direct close to an enemy and shot without getting revealed, somewhat stupid and for shure too OP (but I have to admit it was also always very funny).

Now i use the ones that rely on closer combat from a bit more distance (not under 5 tiles) and this way it is more difficult then before but also more challenging and I like this playstyle a lot. My preferred mainweapon for Inf/Assault changes from Iconoclast to Gorgoneye, so i have to look for the right random perk (selfdefense?). But the old shotgunstyle is still going well, you don’t have the kill guarantee anymore but the damage output is still enormous.

[VOLAND]

@walan

It seems that many “OP” holes results from random skills such as “sniperist”.

It’s true that OP holes can result from third row weapon skills, but not necessarily and not all of them.

For example, a sniper/assault with HW skill can be OP, provided he has extreme mobility and/or armor accuracy buffs. With those he can basically single-handedly clear most of the map. Without those buffs though it’s an OK build - basically a dedicated HW shooter, as opposed to a regular Heavy that acts as a tank, basher or artillery.

So what @MadSkunky said basically.

There are many ways to solve the balance issues, the problem is at what cost.

Currently I’m thinking that the best way would be via introducing some intuitive underlying mechanics. For example, make accuracy go down with movement depending on the weight of the weapon, or for SR introduce a pressure mechanic - if there is a visible enemy within x tiles, accuracy goes down.

[walan]

@MichaelIgnotus

Couldn’t agree more. I have long argued that this should be limited to machine-guns only. I personally limit myself to this in my campaign, and it works well.

Though TBH, snipers can still take out a Scylla in a Citadel in 2 or 3 turns without ever being threatened by it, even without RB. If you want to fix that, it’s much more fundamental than the RB problem.

I just found this feedback post:
https://feedback.phoenixpoint.info/feedback/p/make-rage-burst-auto-weapons-only-give-it-back-its-swing
It is not exactly what I would like most, but it is going in the better direction than it is currently.

[walan]

@VOLAND

Done yet? Nop. How about casting electric reinforcement a couple times each turn, then recouping the WP cost on the same turn by using “recover”?

Wow!
Devs this looks BROKEN!

[MichaelIgnotus]

It IS broken - and people like me and Voland keep banging on about it until they start fixing it ever so slooooowly

But unlike others on these forums who just seem to want to bash the game for the sake of it, we do it from a position of love. Based on his posts, I think Voland likes this game even more than I do. We can both see its potential, which is currently buried so far under a pile of meta-wizardry that it sometimes feels like there’s no hope. But we keep chipping away and chipping away, and eventually the devs seem to recognise that enabling a Squad to magically end a mission on the very first turn may not be the most satisfying playing experience in the world.

There is a very good game struggling to get out from under its OP skills and wildly overreacting DDA combo. It’s just not managed it yet.

Doesn’t stop us trying to help it though

[omenomaho]

@MichaelIgnotus

But unlike others on these forums who just seem to want to bash the game for the sake of it

I doubt that anyone that still lurks on these forums is “bashing the game for the sake of bashing”. We obviously love this game. Some (myself included) might get increasingly more grumpy - Snapshot does not exactly make it easy to keep calm though; exactly because those OP combinations are addressed so sloooowly and yet kinda half-arsed.

However, it’s not like nothing is happening. They clearly have no intention of abandoning the project just yet

[djoles77]

@omenomaho

I doubt that anyone that still lurks on these forums is “bashing the game for the sake of bashing”. We obviously love this game. Some (myself included) might get increasingly more grumpy - Snapshot does not exactly make it easy to keep calm though; exactly because those OP combinations are addressed so sloooowly and yet kinda half-arsed.

+1 to that

@omenomaho

However, it’s not like nothing is happening. They clearly have no intention of abandoning the project just yet

That is true, but at this point I am bit suspicious that they are capable to correct issues that this game has. IMO they are concentrating on wrong things. On feedback tool there are many many good suggestions which are just ignored.
Also very slow rate of fixing bugs and reintroducing of old bugs with patches doesn’t smell good. It is usually indication that something is very bad with code.

[icemann]

I think that if you feel that rage burst is too OP then don’t use it. It’s the final skill in the tree. It’s supposed to kick ass. That’s why it’s last.

Not all players want an intense challenge with this game. That’s why we’ve been campaigning for the difficulty to be rebalanced.

If you look back to the January patch, that was completely due to the 1% of hardcore players that wanted the game to be harder, and so nearly everything got nerfed. That was horrible for the other 99%. I don’t want to see anything like that again. No’ones forcing you to use rage burst, so don’t use it then.

Also, to compare to other XCOM-like games, all of them had the final boss being a moderate challenge, but not an intense one. What your proposing is for a more difficult final boss battle. No thank you. This game is already hard enough.

[MichaelIgnotus]

As I have said before and will keep on saying again: everything has to be rebalanced in unison.

There’s no point nerfing OP Skill combos if you don’t make the difficulty spike go away at the same time - because abuse of one is directly related to the severity of the other.

I like a challenge, but if you read my posts you will see that I’ve been one of the loudest voices calling for Easy to be made Easy - and I will keep on doing so because I recognise that there are people out there who do not want to cope with a casualty rate of 1 Squaddie per handful of missions.

That doesn’t alter the fact that RB and many skill combos are completely broken atmo. Anything that allows an exploit which can end the mission on Turn 1 or 2 is broken in my book - and that’s exactly what’s happening with Citadel missions right now.