Idea Minecraft but Chemist is Tweaked

Just nerf ninja, it's a problem to more than just Chemist on offence. Chemist was a hard class to play before Resistance and I think it should stay that way currently.
It doesn't make a big difference killing the Ninja at all because when they respawn they can go harass someone else or harass you again. You also don't have the option of not killing the Ninja, because you'll die.
Same goes for Elf or Medic, they deal so much to you in one lifetime even if they don't kill you, and they're back instantly.

In my opinion Ninja's mobility should be nerfed, and if not, then maybe the amount of damage it deals.

 

I agree with Ivan. For me, the mobility of Ninja is actually the problematic here. However, if the problem is not only with ninja, then I would be more interested by giving a better armor to Chemist. I just don't think doing that only because of ninja would be a good idea. That would for sure help the chemist to fight a ninja, but it will also help the chemist to fight any other class. With the health pool chemist currently has, I don't think giving it a better armor is the good fix for the original problem between Chemist / Ninja.

About the suggestion of Yami, I would say that CIC is working to not implement class exceptions like that. We want the game to be as much intuitive as it could be. In my opinion, the buff that had archer against chemist was not a good fix, so I don't think giving that to a chemist against a ninja would be good to implement.

I'm not against the idea that chemist could get a buff again, but I also think that chemist is still a viable class.

 

The problem isn't just Ninja or Chemist being too weak. It's the fact that it can give Strength I to others. If you remove that aspect of the game, you'll be able to tweak many more classes not just ninja alone. To add onto that, offending will be easier to do when you know people aren't dealing more damage than the sword/tool that they have. AND no more unfair match ups if you don't have strength vs someone that does.

The only problem I see with this is how it'll affect stalemates. You need buffs to recover if archer/scout aren't viable to use. And that's another issue to add with stalemates. The main classes that kill the flag carrier are archers and scouts. Every now and then pure damage happens to be the best thing to do BUT you need buffs. Two solutions that I have are the following...

1) reset flags and respawn players back into spawn after 5-8 minutes of both flags being gone from their flagpoles. Add a mini countdown of 5 seconds to prepare players to leave spawn (player's can not leave spawn until after the 5 seconds)

2) (not really a in depth solution but) add more viable abilities to other classes that are also dangerous on recov so archer and scout aren't just the only two go-to classes to use.

Either way, solution 2 has to change as well. Two classes shouldn't be the only options to use for stalemates, unless stalemates are non-existent. Personally, I believe stalemates should exist though, just not long lasting ones.

(kinda sidetracked from the main topic at the end but it still ties up to it)

 

Agree with Ivan, Chemist would be balanced if not for ninja. Either a enderpearl cooldown or damage reduction would help.

 

I'm in full support of removing strength because yes it allows for further balancing of defensive classes.

However,

I think the problem that we are trying to address here is that nobody plays Chemist any more because it drops too quickly (especially to ninjas).

Here is a wall of text about my thoughts on current chemist gameplay.

Spoiler: My thoughts on post-nerf chemist gameplay

Have this in a spoiler because it's less important and some of it is probably 2am waffle

Chemist is in a bit of a strange place right now. I use it as an aggressive support and pressure sponge; dealing with enemy ninjas is very easy as chemist when they're trying to kill someone else, and damage pots are the go to method of smacking ninjas in 1v1s, just like before.

Personally, I don't get very frustrated when I am killed in a few hits by a bulk player, as chemist has the mobility/kit to avoid bulks to a reasonable extent so it's something I could have avoided. I think that the counter to chemist should be bulk, so that's fine.

It is now a lot more challenging to kill ninjas with chemist than with Res 1, which is good and I like the challenge associated with that; during the resistance era, you could deal with a ninja without ever bothering to heal yourself, and chuck a regen pot afterwards. This made Chemist stupidly tanky. Now it's different, and it's more of a gamble as to whether you throw a heal pot or not. I often get caught out by a second ninja appearing straight after I finish fighting a first ninja, as I was paying attention to killing the first ninja before and perhaps didn't see their pearl, etc.

I always try to take really safe, flat routes to the flag in order to avoid getting hit over an edge; this is the most effective way to kill a chemist as a ninja (from my perspective), comboing them over a small ledge which means they can't easily heal and then take some fall damage.

Let's imagine pagodas 3 is being played. Ninjas constantly respawn and pearl in the direction of the offense, which is the most predictable thing ever. Chemist is only strong at killing defensive ninjas because their timing is usually predictable, which means you can ensure you've got regen, and you can throw potions exactly where the ninjas pearl or you can tell are walking, meaning that you can kill them in one hit. It's also a bit of a ninja magnet, so if you can deal with the ninjas, or at least survive a couple of waves of them, the rest of your offense makes it to the flag for free.

Once at the flag it's somewhat throwing to steal the flag as chemist when you've got an elf or soldier in position - so my usual role is to give regen to any of my teammates I might come across and be the first to enter the flag, chuck pots at the pyro a bit and wait for my teammates to have a go at stealing, then hit the pyro away and give it some poison to enjoy while I leave the flag with my teammate and deal with any returning ninjas for them (as mentioned before this is the easiest thing when they aren't trying to focus you, but not exclusive to chemist either).

After that the best you can do for the team is to spam heal pots onto the carrier to get an instant restore, and then either spawncamp the archer or kill ninjas on recovery depending on the amount of other support it has.

On the rare occasion that you decide it's best to steal the flag as chemist it can get really depressing. Chemist has the health pool to make it out of the flag, but you have to be lucky that you don't get dropped. Due to the nature of capping, you might have to take a route that you otherwise wouldn't in order to avoid recov, and this puts you in a bad place to deal with ninjas as they can easily exploit the terrain and the element of surprise to 3 shot you. It's a lot harder to deal with ninjas when you're carrying the flag, because there's 4 or 5 other people chasing you and therefore you can't afford to slow down. Running and jumping with the flag when a ninja has arrived is actual suicide, as they can 3/4 shot you before you've had time to hit the ground (sometimes depends on the map).

I have enough clips to make a montage of getting out of the flag against many defenders and making it across the map only to get quickdropped by a ninja, the same one that I killed a couple of times on the way to the flag. It's really really frustrating and makes you feel like you let the team down, when in reality it's just chemist being weak.

The problem that chemist had before was that anyone could play it and easily walk out of a flagroom while clicking heal pots every few seconds. I like the extra challenge of new chemist, where you have to kill ninjas instantly in order to stand any chance against them. But it feels unfair when the ninja kills you in just 3 hits.

Right now a ninja can kill a chemist in 3 hits if just one of the hits is critical. What often happens is that they get 2 normal hits and the third is a crit due to them falling after you hit them once. Another method is that the ninja can jump just before appearing behind and starting a combo, which means again it's just 3 hits. Also you get stupid double hits that happen sometimes. 4 standard hits is enough to kill a chemist. This amount of hits would maybe be fine if chemist had steak, but potions are not instant (steak doesn't work either haha) and for that reason you end up needing to use them after 2 hits or you're dead. This isn't really possible when carrying the flag, as you have to do this to fight off multiple defenders.

Changing chemists armour just enough so that it can take 4-5 ninja hits rather than 3-4 hits gives the chemist player a tiny extra bit of time to deal with the ninja, whilst still not tanking nearly as much damage as res 1. It still leaves it vulnerable to bulk, since we're working on the idea of giving the chemist 1 hit of extra time to kill the ninja, which would not make a difference to bulk

It would be great to be able to test this out in a couple of PPMs, and I'm sure that many players would be happy to see a chemist which is balanced as a support as well as a situational ground capper, rather than just an overall tank like it was before.

 

...nor are they completely reliable! Pots are even further worse off than steak because pots have mana. A lot of times I'm right clicking the pots praying for the mana to return.

Another idea that's been thrown around would be to make 1. health pots use no mana. So giving chemist less damage pots or slightly increase its damage pot mana usage could balance that change, while as suggested 2. increasing protection enchantments by 1 level on chemist armor for the smallest degree of protection increase. This would help chemist with its current low survivability particularly against (an endlessly respawning ) ninja and especially also a defending (buffed?) heavy.

Every class needs its own way to 1-up another! That's natural balance...like imagine if every class was OP in its own way. #MCPVP ...I don't believe in nerfing, nor do I think ninja should be a big problem either. Instead of nerfing, I'd propose to buff class counters. For dealing with ninja's current state in meta, I'd propose to buff necro and/or chemist. Ninja thrives on its high damage mobility...that's its OP niche. No reason to remove it, nor to remove the OP niches of each class. That's what can and should make the game fun and unique.

EDIT:
Another idea for chemist, perhaps instead of or on top of a small protection level buff...
3. Add resistance 1 to the fire pot (lasts 45 seconds). How about that for a game changer?
Idea credit: @915

Another idea, or direction, to take chemist... remove its splashable buffs, @Recovs like your proposal to remove strength, and rely on a
4. new bard class to give these kind of buffs as an area of effect. Having a likely low damage class (and a position on the roster...) required in order to give buffs in a semi-close vicinity, I think is much more fair than chemist buffs atm.

^ 4 ideas to help balance chemist

 

I think that mana should remain a thing because it raises the skill ceiling of chemist a little - when managed well it's not really a problem

A small amount of extra time to kill ninja (by having extra protection) is enough to make chemist viable as it still has its large health pool and would not be able to tank through damage the same as before. It still requires the playstyle of killing ninjas when they arrive, rather than just running away and healing, so I think that's the right place for it to be in.

The way I see it is that chemist was way too powerful before, it got nerfed too harshly and we're now finding the balance between those two points having played with the weaker chemist for a couple of months

I think this is also really important with the league already starting

 

What about adding a mana system for blocking so that flag carriers can’t just sit around blocking for the whole stalemate. Would make assassin more of a threat in stalemates.

I do agree that chemist needs tweaking just so it’s more viable. Hopefully it can be done soon.

People say the problem stems from ninja but when a team has bad ninjas, offense can very easily get into flag and steal. If ninja were to get nerfed overall then offense would be completely buffed which would result in more stalemates. Therefore I think the only reasonable balancing change rn would be to make chemist slightly better vs ninja as Tom/Cardona suggested (through a protection change).

 

I think that'll mess up with soldier's wall climb.
Maybe have assassin get an ability only during stalemate that makes you toggle your assassinate to a different mode that deals 5 hearts of true damage, even if the person is blocking instead of using it's insta kill assassinate mode. If properly timed, it'll help with killing the flag carrier faster.

 

Ah yeah forgot about that, this would be cool though for sure.

 

Res1 chem was especially op because you could literally fall like 30 blocks and not die, so on specific maps you either had to roam up early or utilize mainly soldiers just to get back on the chem. Just increasing prot returns the pvp survivability while removing that annoyance. Imo it's probably safer to just do this instead of doing a class specific debuff bc we all know how well that went with archer & chem.

I don't know if my game is broken or something, but it always puzzles me when people complain about ninja being op because personally I almost never drop in more than 2 hits - I take damage like crazy. I've had unbuffed heavies doing 6 per hit, chems insta killing me at 6 without potting - and yet as buffed bulk I somehow have to hit ninjas 3-4 times etc? It just doesn't add up, so if someone could enlighten me on why this would be happening I'd be glad to hear it. I would comment further on the actual thread if I had a normal perspective but yk

 

I don't feel like this is a ninja damage or mobility problem. I play ninja quite a bit and I cant count how many times a chemist has mid fight damage potted and i'm dead with no chance. Either way, i don't think that ninja should be nerfed, but i'm not against chemist getting a armor buff to give him more time to fight the ninja if hes ambushed.

 

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dam u wrote a lot