Idea Health + Steak (A general proposition on instant kills)

This would actually be a really hard nerf on archer and assassin. The primary ability of these classes are to kill, not bring the enemy down to half a heart and let them escape. If you want to remove the instant kill (which I wouldn't recommend), you need to buff it some other way. Similar to how pyro had its insta kill removed and replaced with the frenzy ability. You must give archer or assassin an equally powerful buff to the nerf or else it will become another necro.

 

If a noob critically injures their target but doesnt kill them, there would be absolutely no satisfaction in that. (unless we add a very well done damage assist system, which would display such a shot like its a kill, but even then nothings better than a full elimination)
It's perfect for a competitive scene, relying more on skilled players and teamwork, but that's not what CTF has completely ever been and will be - noobs run minecraft unfortunately and most likely forever will.

Instakills however are easy and fun.

That's why I strongly believe to keep them but to just either nerf other aspects of the class or make the instakill harder/longer to do.


(now that I'm looking back on it, I think old pyro, maybe minus it's spammable F&S, was actually a great balance reference -granted all the other classes were more buffed than today and could more easily counter pyro- just like how heavy has also been)

 

except for the people getting instant killed

kinda like how engineer is fun for one dude and unbelievably annoying for everyone else.

with a bleed. Still has not been tested (to the best of my knowledge)

without a bleed then ya, eliminating instakills and replacing them with true damage on archer is like, the dumbest idea ever

So devastating it is a lot worse than the current ability

Neat idea but doesn't really work in the current frame of assassin. You need to factor in armor and the damage reduction that comes with it. Like, the way you have it set up, it would be impossible for assassin to kill any decent heavy. This is due to both 1) fact that heavy has best damage reduction in the game, 2) best damage reduction combined w/1 steak or medic heal means assassin would need a bunch of hits to kill - while heavy can 2/3 shot assassin (depending on health, whether or not heavy crits), and 3) assassin vulnerability, which you haven't (i have seen nothing to the contrary in this post) removed. this allows assassin to be 1 shot for a short period rather than 2-3 shot later.

also, landing quick hits is already essential on assassin. yes, the class is dumb as hell but it does take some skill to really do some good sh*t with it (i.e. recovering off of @CTFIsBoring)

What

mage and chemist can still use their respective healing pots. Those heal for a lot more than steak (especially w/Mage) so this isn't really a counter if they have those pots or they aren't on cooldown (mage)

i mean yeah... but Mage can just use lightning/ice spell if it needs another second or two for the heal. Then it can kill assassin ez pz

depends. ninja is already hard counter to assassin. w/this rework it's an even harder counter. ninja could go invis and 1-3 shot the assassin. any skilled ninja can do that, even at 1/2 heart hp (and especially when assassin can't do dmg for ~1 second)

Chemist has potions of instant healing lol

agreed on medic. it would be a good counter vs. this assassin

i really hope that wasn't from me xd

not a good idea. why would you punish archers for landing shots?

???

??????

I like the idea of a bleed but i can almost guarantee you that a 1 heart bleed over 10 seconds is not going to land any kills. even necro zombies do more damage than that

only scenrio where it would is if archer 1) lands consecutive shots, 2) medics do not exist, 3) enemies do not heal/steak, and 4) trees/anything taller than 5 blocks do not exist (open maps, this could work. however, if you have cover archer is screwed)

look i'm all for dumping instant kills and replacing them with mechanics that aren't stupid, but what you're suggesting are not those mechanics. the assassin rework (that's more or less what it is) is a hard nerf which makes it impossible for assassin to take out anyone with cc, high armor, passive regen, health potions, or intelligence while fixing none of the underlying issues with the class. those issues being? extremely lopsided gameplay. either assassin is incredibly good or incredibly terrible. There is no in between because ur only purpose is to be a roving instant kill. the other big problem is that success w/assassin is highly ping based, which should not be the case with any class. Also assassin is ninja for lazy people but that's a personal shtick that goes with my feeling that assassin should've been removed like, 4 years ago.

as for the archer rework, it's just bad. i don't say that to be rude, but i legit don't understand why you're punishing archers for being good. How is that fun? Oh ya, you headshot someone (didn't get the kill cause true damage xd lul) and then you lose steaks for it. now you're more vulnerable to ninjas, heavies, mages, other archers etc. I agree that archer should be squishy but it shouldn't become squishier for doing what it is literally supposed to do (i.e. consistently tilting large numbers of people at long range)

How is that fun?

i mean, if we're not making things that are fun for ppl to play, what are we doing here?

 

Yes I agree that archer and assassin need a rework but I'm not so sure about a system where you have to wait for a teammate to clean up. For archer, even if you land the second shot as archer, you can't kill them because it just keeps them at half a heart, which is slightly ridicoulous. If you had a flag carrier across the map with only 2 hearts and you pull off the most MLG shot, it wouldn't even kill them, not even if you made it twice. A nerf like this would see a significant reduction in people playing archer (like necro). Even if this archer could deal 13.5 - 17.5 hearts of damage, it's less than an instant kill. While archer in the hands of an experienced player could be a nightmare for new players, noob archers struggle even now with the IK to get a kill. Same for assassin, where you could be so close to killing a soldier and it wallclimbs a away. This nerf would result in less noob archers and assassins (and probably some of the expereinced players too). A change like this calls for at least an ability like pyro's frenzy.

 

ya i'm dumb. misread the part about Archer steak (this is what happens when you reply to idea threads at 2 am). thanks for clarifying @Sir_Inge

with that in mind, it's not such a bad rework. I don't know how effective it would be at getting Archer kills, though. Would need testing

anything that can't guarentee an Archer kill like, at least half the time, from 30-40 block range is going to wreck the class. Not your fault, Archer is hard to rework without instakills since its ability to get kills is almost entirely dependent on instakills from a looong range (where getting second hits is more difficult than for other classes).

i thought the goal was removing instant kills?

true damage sword is interesting but, imo, assassin needs a complete rework

That's a lot of 'what ifs'. What about the knockback Chemist gets from its damage potions? Or the slow from poison?

Mage can just lightning under them and (probably) knock away the assassin. Also freeze spell - although it's harder to land

Ninja can egg + strafe hit.

I agree. Mechanics shouldn't be so lopsided that it's really fun for one person and highly unpleasant for everyone else.

 

@Armiral_Mugman @BrawlIsMyCity

I feel like we should cater to noobs with some classes. Yes instakills are annoying as heck but for example with archer if you give them slightly worse armor so they're easier to target by a skilled ninja or mage or even an elf then that can balance it out. (The noobs can have fun until skilled players use teamwork to shut them down easily.)
(When skilled players play instakill classes, ofc they're more potent but still can be nearly as easy to kill or distract by other skilled players - for matches we have the leisure to restrict them so the game isn't centered any more around killing/distracting them)

And I do believe instakills attract noobs - even if they get instakilled themselves. Because the mechanic is so easy, if they do get KO'd like that they would read chat and see that it was an archer's shot or assassin and with the right in-game helpful tips they would try to play that class (which you can see lots of new players actually tend to play archer). But with the reworked pyro, they could get lit up and frenzied by a good skilled pvper; however, when they try to KO others they have massive trouble doing so (dying in a few sec more often than not).

Yesterday some guy who joined back for the first time in years mentioned how he loved pyro and now it's trash (sure trash to players who don't have the high skill level to play it - thus a turn off for new or returning players who want easy fast fun - again, we're still providing other classes for example ninja and chemist and even elf for players who can use their high skill cap/learning curve classes and teamwork to easily counter the instakill classes when they choose to, so it can be a win for everyone)

 

you can't have a balanced game with instakills. ya you can kill an archer more easily from melee if you nerf armor or remove the punch. That doesn't make archer's long ranged instakill any more fair though

fun classes & gameplay attract "noobs". if gameplay with an instakill class happens to be fun and gets someone to stick around for another half hour on ctf 2 then god bless. That doesn't mean that instakills attract new players

that's assuming 1) all new players suck and 2) new pyro is incredibly difficult to use

neither of those things are true

So? that's one dude. I haven't seen any mass exodus of players since new pyro.

the main complaint about new pyro was double click frenzy. This surfaced less than an hour after the rework was released. It has since been changed to single click. Not nearly as many complaints now

as further proof that instakill classes are not essential to a good time let alone to drawing in new players: old necro. back in the day it had a fire, sharpness IV (something like that) sword, 1 minute poison II potions, and three zombies. It was extremely fun to play because you could do so much damage with it - no instakill required.

What isn't fun and what does turn off players are classes like elf and new necro, and the changes made to them. it's way too hard to do particularly well with either class and, as such, they are some of the least played classes in the game.

 

Literally gives Chemist, Mage and Ninja more time to heal themselves and/or use their respective counters to Assassin if they aren't blocking.

 

Idk I still feel like there can be a balance of letting instakills be and letting anybody who wants to attack/target the instakiller first succeed. hey a rhyme lol

 

As an Archer main, I get that people are frustrated with getting headshot. However, Archer has an incredibly crucial place in the CTF meta. Having an Archer not be able to actually kill someone at range (this is what it sounds like when you say drop them to 1/2 a heart, please correct me if I'm wrong here, I feel like you can't be actually suggesting this) is absolutely crazy! Killing people at range is the whole point of Archer! If you want Archer to only deal 9.5 hearts of damage to someone, I'm actually totally cool with that, but if that would kill them then they should die. If they had steak, well, that was a risk they took. If they had steaked earlier they might not be dead now. In pvp you don't get a second chance to steak after getting hit, and hitting someone with an arrow at range shouldn't give second chances either.

In terms of instakills in general, often the only way to break a stalemate is through an instakill. Ordinary damage is often not enough, especially given the various ways of healing a flag carrier (medic, chemist, mage, engi). Removing these instakills would make recovery far harder then it already is. Personally, I like CTF because it's fast-paced. Making it easier to hold stalemates drags the game out and is, at least in my opinion, more boring. I think that instakills are a necessary evil; people kinda hate them, but they are too necessary for the health of the game mode to effectively remove. (Pyro is not an instakills but it accomplishes the same thing; damage that happens faster than someone can reasonably respond)

 

I have a feeling that we are talking past each other here; rereading my post I realize it is far less clear than I first thought, so let me try again.

I am perfectly fine with Archer not having an instakill. 9.5 hearts true, 8 hearts, whatever, as long as it is reasonably crippling (like pyro's frenzy) I don't care. I consider pyro's frenzy to be basically an instakill. 9 times out of 10, it the pyro frenzies, the opponent dies. Both Archer and Assassin would be fine with the same.

What I do care about is that Archer can get kills, and the impression I got from your initial post is that getting hit by an arrow would reduce the player to 1/2 a heart and then bleed that last bit off over time, even if the player is lower than the amount of damage dealt. If an arrow does 8 hearts true, and an Archer hits a player with 5 hearts, that player should just die.

The other issue is breaking stalemates. While assassin cannot effectively break stalemates, Archer most certainly can. Given that Archer needs teamwork anyway to recover, it's not that big of an issue, but if an Archer takes 5-10 seconds from when the arrow hits to when the player dies, that will make recovery that much harder.

To sum up: make Archers arrows scale with range, capped at 9ish hearts true (if you want to remove steak as well, sure), with no bleeds or last second saves, and you have a +1 from me. (I don't care enough about assassin to have an opinion).

I hope this is more clear, if not, please let me know so I can respond with an equally inscrutable post.

 

The archer instant kill is completely unfair, at least assassin has the potential to be effectively countered, archer has zero risk and a very high reward. Fixing the class seems to be something the community can't agree on. This is something that shouldn't be nerfed too hard initially, rather eased into and well play tested. I could get behind your idea if it was eased back for now. As for archer requiring no skill, well, some archers are much better than others, so clearly it does, the amount of skill required is certainly debatable. There's not much skill in sword or ranged pvp to be perfectly honest, we're playing a block game here.

 

I would like to see the main archer players with mods to discuss some ideas, @Proterozoic brought up some very interesting ideas a long time ago but never really got any response on it (apart from community comments / some mods responding to it). Archer needs a rework rn but in my opinion, forgive me I'm not an archer main, in the current meta it should temporally do to just remove the punch I so we can have some extra time to work on a full rework of archer.

 

That sounds really really dumb