CTF Summer Testing

Bruh chemist will be so weak if you remove resistance. Archers can 2 shot u and ninjas can 2 hit u. @915

 

Archer has a weird debuff on chem. Ninjas will still die fairly quickly if you can kb them as chem is strong if you can make space constantly (dmg pot+ hp pot in same spot tp kb ninjas and then crit/kill the ninjas). I think it will put chem in the spot it needs to be.

 

Which is why I said it's a tricky situation since assassins die so much.. so it might be better to make it so only medics can restore it

Because again, you're less likely to run into a medic than to die. With this, it means you won't regain assassinate from death which eliminates the whole "reward from dying" thing.

 

SInce this is an update with a lot of changes to how mechanics works when the player dies/respawns, I think it'd be a good idea for scout's death tag to be removed once the scout dies. It's considerably unfair when a scout can just yolo into a crowd, death tag someone, die, and be extremely useful. Maybe to balance this out give scout more survivability? Like maybe some more armor or an extra steak would suffice.

 

This straight up isn't true. Full diamond armor reduces damage by 80%. Full iron reduces by 60%. Full iron with prot V has an EPF of 20 and therefore reduces the damage that gets through the 60% reduction by a further 80% for an overall 92% reduction.

Chemist right now has 10 armor points for a 40% reduction, and resistance 1 gives a further 20% reduction for a total 52% reduction. Giving it two protection 1s instead of resistance gives it an 8% reduction for a total 44.8% reduction. Giving it a chain helmet instead of either resistance or prot gives it 11 armor points for a whopping 44% reduction.

 

Isnt 40+20 60?

 

Enchantment resistance is only applied after armor resistance

 

Finally we’re doing something about a ninja with buffs being able to 1 shot a death tagged elf

 

Personally not enjoying this chem tweak. With crits, one second you have five hearts and the next you're dead without any time to react and heal. Even if players can react fast enough, they're taking so much damage that they'll find themselves dry of healing potions quite often, and with this debuff, regen won't aid much in the middle of a fight since you're losing excessive amounts of health. Also, the potion delay that many players get due to higher ping doesn't give it any justice. It's way squishier than it needs to be imo. thoughts?

 

I agree, it has never been easy killing off a chemist main until now. We cant change a whole class just because there are a few players that are really good at it. Hate to say it but i prefer the old chemist

 

With scout yet to be tested, I'm personally a fan of the testing that's going to be taking place, but I'd also like to add some changes that I personally feel would be nice to include.


1) Decrease the death tag effect duration from 15 seconds to 10.

Lowering the duration is probably the better option than making it completely go away as soon as the scout dies. Scout is still a very squishy class and it won't live for long. Plus scout would become useless during stalemates if they're trying to choose the option to death tag the carrier. The carrier would have the effect for such a small amount of time before the scout dies from all the support, not giving the recovery team a chance to take advantage of that death tag. Lowering the duration by 5 seconds is honestly the better choice.

2) Change the death tag ability to work like assassin's redstone.

What I mean by this is make the tag right clickable, then it'll disappear from your inventory, switching your current slot to your sword slot, and then the next hit you get with your sword will give the player the death tag. I like this idea because a lot of the time your death tag just doesn't want to work on the player and you're spending those failed attempts trying to give it to them when you can be dealing damage instead. And during those failed attempts, the enemy is obviously hurting you, so by the time you actually give them the tag, you'll be all out of steak and almost dead. Also with the first interaction against a player as scout and you're trying to give them the death tag, I do not think it's fair since your first hit towards the player is with the tag which does no damage while the enemy's first hit is with it's sword. With this change, you both trade first shots evenly. (Note that using the death tag, the first hit will just apply the tag to the player while dealing a normal scout's sword damage. Every hit after that, they'll have the multiplier applied onto them.)

 

Thanks for the video evidence. I can see this being really frustrating for chemists.
However.. you should also take in account that you were buffed in all three scenarios which kinda "justifies" the outcome of these fights? Idk.


I'm gonna change the topic with this a little, but I've never been a fan of having Chemist's strength buff in the game.
It makes it so hard to balance out basic damage and armor values because some classes get a disgusting dps with it.
And in combination with scouts death tag it gets even more out of control.

Chemist itself having strength isn't an issue imo, but on classes like Heavy, Soldier or Ninja it's kinda ridiculous. I've been told that one of the main reasons Pyro got an iron chest plate was because buffed Ninjas 2 shotting it. Well now it's basically a requirement for Ninja to have strength to be a threat in that scenario, which is kind of a weird spot to be in too.
Sometimes you just auto loose fights because 20 seconds ago your enemy respawned right next to a chemist throwing potions on the ground and you did not, lol.


Probably unpopular and disliked opinion but chemist should have a perma strength buff (or a stronger sword) and:
1) no strength potion at all
OR
2) a potion giving strength for like 3 - 5 seconds for a coordinated quick push with your teammates. The potion would be an infinite resource with a cooldown.

And from this point it could be a lot easier to balance out damage and armor values for CTF's entire roster.

 

I would like to see this tested, +1 from me

 

I completely agree, if the strength and speed effects of chemist were just for itself it would be much simpler to balance the game in general and chemist too. At this point buffs are pretty pointless because considering the advantage they give and how easy it is to receive them, pretty much everyone is buffed in competitive, so they are just useless and a huge loss of time for everyone (at the start of the game, when offense respawns, when defense gets buffed, etc.). So then if you take that into account, chemist's effects are often no longer an advantage over others while they should have been. It's one of the reasons why chemist was pretty horrible before the big buff, being completely destroyed by a buffed heavy in an enclosed area, and still easily traded in an open area. I'd argue that if strength and speed become permanent effects for chemist (and if we give it by the same occasion 5 splash buff potions for a short duration as you mentioned) then removal of resistance + protection I on helmet and boots should be enough to make chemist balanced. (If it becomes too strong, you could nerf the sword or remove the strength and buff the sword, or just remove the protection).

If what Billhelm said isn't implemented, I'd say that after having tested the new chemist a bit, I can clearly see it's not as strong, but it's still decent. I would be fine with this change being implemented, although I think protection II on one of the pieces and protection I on the other should be better.

 

I agree with this. Another possible solution could be shortening buff duration for other classes.

 

At that point why not just merge scout and assassin? They're both lightly armored speedy classes that apply a negative effect that causes/can lead to death. It seems like the changes to the cooldowns and medic restore in the testing only bring them closer together, and your changes bring them closer still. Plus it would be a simple way to remove instakill from assassin and solve a lot of the problems with that class such as ping.

 

Okay, so hopefully the right place for this:

As of right now, Archer's base bow damage (assuming fully charged shots) is VERY RNG. Without armor coming into the picture (i.e. against Ninjas), a fully charged bow shot can deal anywhere from 6 to 10 damage (or about 3 to 5 hearts). As best as I can tell, the distribution is probably random / unweighted, although it didn't fully even out after 100 instances of testing (see below):


What you'll notice with that distribution is that it has an impact on whether or not Archer is able to 2-shot ninja with fully charged shots. It's a very low change (2.89%, using the above distribution), as it requires two 10 dmg rolls in a row, but it can happen. While that amount of RNG is a little obnoxious in its own right, it gets worse if you account for the fact that Ninja is rarely on full health. If you subtract 4 damage (the amount of damage you take after pearling once) from ninja's healthpool, Archer has a 34.46% chance to two-shot it - a total that's much closer to a coin flip.

So how does that have anything to do with the Chemist changes? Thanks to the debuff on Chemist armor, it falls back into the range where Archer has a chance to 2-shot it with fully charged arrows. See the damage distribution below:

Based on that distribution, there are a number of scenarios which can lead to Chemist being two-shot by regular Archer shots, but also a number in which it's a guaranteed 3-shot. The probability comes out to a 23.39% chance of a 2-shot; not a coin flip, but still a significant chance that the two-shot will occur. Pretty much everyone I spoke to agrees that having an RNG two-shot chance onto Chemist isn't desirable for Archer, so there are a couple ways to fix that. The first would to be to make Archer's base damage more reliable, but if that's not an option, Archer's specific damage multiplier onto Chemist could be tweaked to either prevent the two-shot from being possible, or guarantee that it will happen (if that's what staff are going for). I know the damage values will be changing slightly (this is all based on Chemist having protection on the helm, not the chestplate), but there will still be a chance for a two-shot under those circumstances, and I think the game would generally be better served with less RNG damage. Sorry if that's a large wall of text for a minor interaction, but just figured I'd give my 2 cents on this one.

also thanks @Ninsanity & some others for help getting this done quickly

 

I was shot for like 45 minutes straight to find these numbers, please fix.

 

For starters, assassin doesn't get redstone back when you die anyway, I'm not sure where this is coming from. That was changed years ago already.

Secondly, back when assassin did get redstone back when they died, it was "misused", especially on maps where the spawn is near enough to the flag room, or the main parts of the map. Regrettably, I think this was a change for the better.

I'd still like to campaign for some of the following changes in a thread I've posted ages ago:
https://www.brawl.com/threads/73194/#post-933102

Although I no longer support all of those additions, most of them still make sense to me.

I think a reduction in time before you get assassinate back is a good compromise for not getting it back when you die, you don't always die straight away anyway, and by the time you get you get back on the map you shouldn't be waiting long to get it back, not at 15 seconds.

As for medics not healing redstone, some of them don't anyway lol. No, seriously, I think this is fine as I am often guilty of "spamming" assassinates in the flag room, however would in fact give more of a consequence when deciding when to hit.

Lastly, relating to the fact others have raised about assassin being too weak. I don't see any issues with assassin getting a strength potion for 10 seconds, for example if you weren't hit in the last 30 seconds, you could throw the pot and still "surprise" someone who wasn't your kill, especially if they are alone. 10 seconds would be the right amount of time to defend yourself, combined with compass ideas I suggested ^