Beam/Bolt balance

Imho I believe that if people want the team artifacts to be used more often, someone should increase the xp we am's get in return. You can max weapons which takes 150 adrenaline only to get 10 or 15 xp. A low level am really wants xp, so he would use rod or triple but not bolt because at his level it would deplete way to fast. He would not be using precious adren on maxing things when he can kill and get more xp that way... As a higher level adrenaline player I still see it the same way i could get 10 times more xp killing than maxing a weapon for someone else which only gives 15 or so.

Artifacts and weapons are not sufficient in getting a high score but it involves some skill as well. When you get to a level 150 and up like my adren these artifacts become useless because for example I have zapped countless monsters that just drain my adrenaline and they just dont die while i only get 10 maybe 20 xp back in return, but only when your the last person alive which seems to happen really often.

Also not to be bragging or stuck up

, but i have out passed the highest score on every class except for my weapon master which i will explain later.

For my medic as Road posted earlier, yes they can dominate but need some skill, with the brutes sure they are AI dumb bots, but they do help with their rockets in both xp and points. My medic high score is 3615.
And for the engineers they get their sentinel which is only 1 AI bot but much smarter. My engineer only got this through teamwork with over 5 engineers linking me 3729.
But my weapon master's is 3569 with mystic in the 3900 only because every engineer in the game was linking him in the turret and the map only consisted of him and the engineers.

But the weapon masters get all these neat weapons like the avril and mine layer, if you nerf a adrenaline player of his main offensive artifacts he is practically a dead man walking or in other words its like stripping a weapon master of his weapons and vamp.
How would the adrenaline survive or better yet how will he level, by getting 15 xp from maxing a weapon??? I can picture a desperate low adren player going around maxing everyones weapons

... just like medics go around healing everyone. But then again in order to max they would need more adrenaline, so they would need to kill but how? Maybe a shield gun in the first few waves but how about wave 6 and 10 and up?
Even high level adren players would fall fairly easier than any other class making them the weakest. So if nerfing the class is disabling it why not just get rid of it, or not mess with it at all.

Another example would be: we adrenaline players don't have regen (for the exemption of "TheElectrician", he bought it before the adrens couldn't buy it anymore or before restrictions). If we don't have regen every shot towards us counts, so we have to kill the monsters before they kill us. In order to do this we need adrenaline, but adrenaline raw would barely weaken them, we need something to boost our attack (more like defend ourselves because if we don't kill first we die) like DD or Triple, also weapons in order for the leech to work. In a few maps we are limited on the type of weapons that are available so we (like megawoot) have to improvise, either kill or risk getting killed, which for many of us is not an option, if we have the choice to decide.

I do agree I have overused it but now I only try to use it in times of emergency. I used to get aggressive with points either when there are only bots, when theres 3 or 4 people on or when its a full server.
But Adrenaline players also help in the survival of all the classes because without killing the monsters we could all die on wave 6 in space maps. I am now only killing when we get over run or flooded with monsters or when I am alone with bots and a few people.

And yes i have noticed in deathmatch people switching to adren players just to kill high level players like fodder for xp because of his high 562 level. But just as they switch from their previous classes to their adrenaline players, I also switch to my Medic, I have noticed that a medic can take out a adren player of course in the level 100 to 200 range only because of retaliation. Just as junkies are powerful in invasion, Medics are also powerful in deathmatch. I have found out a technique to getting rid of low blood thirsty adren players by summoning a titan with health bonus maxed and with level 5 or up retal. Since bolt searches for the one with the most health it will automatically aim for the titan and not me, so while the junkie gets his adren depleted by trying to kill the titan, and not to forget full advanced damage reduction, i get rid of the junkie. Just a techinique I happened to pick up... p.s. countershove would help a lot.

So as a conclusion, I believe they are a little unbalanced. I am still testing the effectiveness of engineers & weapon masters in both deathmatch and invasion. Because if medics dominate in deathmatch, and junkies in invasion, where do engineers and weapon masters dominate??

Sorry if i wrote a lot had a lot to say...

Elite wrote:

Because if medics dominate in deathmatch, and junkies in invasion, where do engineers and weapon masters dominate??

We don't.......................

speaking of junkies and support abilities... here's an idea. I know a medic can fix his trans by making it his medic weapon. it doesn't remove the original medic weapon but it fixes the trans. how about a 10 adren junkie artifact for fixing trans's?

Trooper you might of wanted to keep that secret to yourself they might nerf that too

Trooper wrote:

speaking of junkies and support abilities... here's an idea. I know a medic can fix his trans by making it his medic weapon. it doesn't remove the original medic weapon but it fixes the trans. how about a 10 adren junkie artifact for fixing trans's?

oo ooo hey thats cool now i have to try that I think once upon a time I magiced my trans to a piercing

I don't agree that medics dominate at DM for the most part the most useful skill heal blast doesn't work , I have an easy time killing low lvl players (and I should) but highter (100+) are near impossible. wasn't aware your using the suprise here is a titan technique in DM love springing that on unsuspecting players

WM are the best rounded class overall and can adapt to any situation but a crappy weapon set is still a crappy weapon set and can hold back a WM for waves, were an AM always has there most powerful weapon bolt/beam at their disposal and with the mere 10 adren needed to use it and adren drip (even lvl 2) they are a force to be reckoned with

so how about some suggestions everyone (keep em constructive of course)

With my medic level 196 i was able to take on 2 weapon master and kill them both (fodder and another high level forgot if it was thth or desert wrath), but my medic killed them and still had around 300 health. Didn't use titan just used my trusty infinite medic rocket launcher, so if i could take them out, with a titan i can also take out a junkie, just try it whenever you see a junkie...

I promise you wont be disappointed unless they have retal too

Elite wrote:

As a higher level adrenaline player I still see it the same way i could get 10 times more xp killing than maxing a weapon for someone else which only gives 15 or so.

Point taken, but there are other artifacts that can give you a decent return on xp that aren't the beam or bolt. Rod, triple, double magic? In my experiment to play using mainly the bolt and beam, I'm leveling up MUCH faster than I would if I didn't use these artifacts, which I feel is a sure sign that something is wrong here.

Elite wrote:

Also not to be bragging or stuck up , but i have out passed the highest score on every class except for my weapon master which i will explain later.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the thread.

Elite wrote:

But the weapon masters get all these neat weapons like the avril and mine layer, if you nerf a adrenaline player of his main offensive artifacts he is practically a dead man walking or in other words its like stripping a weapon master of his weapons and vamp.

I doubt anyone here is willing to strip the LA class of all offensive artifacts. The bolt and beam are not the only offenses... at one time the class did not have either of these artifacts and could still command respectable scores.

Elite wrote:

Even high level adren players would fall fairly easier than any other class making them the weakest. So if nerfing the class is disabling it why not just get rid of it, or not mess with it at all.

It's not always about an individual class, but how they mesh with the others. The original abilities were split up into classes so players could support each other (and also so that they wouldn't be overpowered). Medics can heal, weapon masters can pass out weapons and protect, and engineers can add shields and provide shelter for adrenaline masters. Again, there was a time when the class didn't have these artifacts.

Bottom line: the LA class has a broad range of abilities, and I doubt that removing the bolt and beam is going to break the class. I haven't used those artifacts as my main attacks in a long time and I still find the class fun to play. However, it's significantly less fun to play when a monster disappears as quickly as it can appear on the map by someone else using these artifacts. It's overkill.

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

TEAM artifacts!! when was the last time you've seen them used ?
the only time I see them used is by low level AMs why ?

As for the team artifacts, I'll admit I haven't used them in a while. I tried them out when they were first added to the class, but my adren cap was far from maxed, so I couldn't keep a sphere up for long. Eventually I forgot about them. Thanks for reminding me.

At my current level I have considerably more adren capturing abilities, so I can do it now. If you ever see a good spot for me to put up a sphere, or you need a weapon modified, just let me know. And if I don't get to it in a reasonable amount of time, just keep bugging me. Sometimes I get distracted and forget.

My suggestions would be

Beam. Probably the best of the Beam/Bolt/Rod triplet as it has to be aimed. Stop adrenal surge working with Beam kills, so not so useful to the AM. Remove from non-invasion games.

Bolt. Possibly remove. Alternatively stop adrenal surge working with it. Also put a one second delay from when you press the key to when it fires. This will stop people rapid firing the bolt and taking out a room full of monsters. Again, remove from non-invasion games

Rod. Needs to be reduced - possibly just reduce the range by a bit, so it doesn't hit quite so many monsters at once

I think that should sort out the main complaints of the thread.

Other issues:

Spheres. I would have prefered to make these cheaper to run. At the moment, 250 adrenaline will run one for 12 seconds. Which is not long. However, a high level AM will get that back in around 100 seconds. Which means that 9 high level AMs could keep an invulnerability sphere running between them for the whole of the last 3 waves. So, I cant really make it any cheaper, or it may actually happen. But note that for each person in the sphere, the AM gets one xp per second. So, if you have 5 people in your sphere, you will get 60 xp - which is comparable with the 63 xp you would get from killing the 9 skaarj with the bolt I mentioned earlier in the thread.

Triple I have frequently said that the triple is too overpowered, and is the main cause behind most of the imbalance in the game. Eg you can't take a metal titan out with the bolt with 250 adrenaline, but a triple on a flak means you take it out in 4 seconds for 40 xp - and of course you will get 36 back for killing the titan plus 4 from drip. However, people do not want the triple nerfed, so no change

Blasts I would have liked to have reduced the cost of some of the AM blasts, but I think that will just cause calls for them to be nerfed.

honestly, I don't want a nerfing, or for that matter it to be removed. I say, make the team concept the cheapest and easiest, then it will actually not make sense to play the non team work angle. as for reducing the rod, they have this fly around the map with the trans thing going to increase the effective range now so....

Elite: as one of the better players I have ever had the pleasure to play with and chagrin to play v.s. you results are not typical!

I do not believe its about who can take who, or what class can do what, unless it is at the detriment of the others.

And last, Elite, you say that you have to kill to survive? Well not that long ago, you were playing with 5 medic and a engineer on a map. just you and us. you dominated killing everything, with 5 medics and an engineer you could have walked away from the keyboard and would have still survived every wave. With as many medics as are commonly on, most of which are more than willing to forgo killing monsters for more exp. will drop everything so to speak to race across the map to heal another player, its hard to argue that the only way to survive is to kill. I commonly help very low level players survive all 16 waves.

I've said it before, I don't think there will ever will be a utopia in balance between classes. Everyone has their own opinion. My only complaint is the the beam snipers. That's not the weapon's ability, more like the person behind the weapon.

I never had to fix my trans with the medic weapon maker but I know people who have. I'm just suggesting the idea of having something act like the remote max except it will only work on a trans and removes it and gives a new one. kind of like how when you magic a gun it takes it away and give you a brand new one... with starting ammo and such. my idea

The bolt and beam by themselves are not the problem.

THE PROBLEM IS BEING ABLE TO USE THE TRIPLE WITH THESE ARTIFACTS.

If you are running a triple and then using your rod warlords and queens die with very little adrenaline usage. Titans fall like skarj when you use a trip with the beam.

When I was not aware of this combo I could still outscore on a map significantly but not to the extent that I see now.

I have seen certain players put up 3000+ scores joining halfway though a small map using this combo.

Nerfing the adrenaline surge is the worst possible solution to the problem.

Szlat wrote:

So, if you have 5 people in your sphere, you will get 60 xp - which is comparable with the 63 xp you would get from killing the 9 skaarj with the bolt I mentioned earlier in the thread.

The only waves you would ever use the invul. sphere on would have much more XP out there walking around than 9 skaarj, why waste all your adren to get 60 XP when you could be out gaining 500+ XP on a titan wave??

Up until about 6 months ago the LA class was all but extinct until a few of us wanted to see what the class was truly capable of, there were very few high level LA characters still playing and getting a weapon maxed was a luxury. Now it seems there are always a few LA players on and most are emulating what they have learned by watching others. So unfortunately instead of these characters all being played to individual taste they are all playing the same way......this is very frustrating for all other players.

Simply stop the abililty to use the triple with rod/bolt/beam and this will fix the problem.

like using the same coding that keeps triple from being used with piercing. implement the same code into the bolt and beam that it cannot be used with triple

Micron(Micron) wrote:

The bolt and beam by themselves are not the problem.

Some people think the beam and bolt are a problem, even without involving the triple. e.g. in deathmatch where the bolt unaimed will instagib a high level opponent.

Micron(Micron) wrote:

THE PROBLEM IS BEING ABLE TO USE THE TRIPLE WITH THESE ARTIFACTS.....Simply stop the abililty to use the triple with rod/bolt/beam and this will fix the problem.

The list will grow and grow.
First loads of weapons got their damage reduced because they were too powerful with the triple. Then the flak+5 was nerfed to +4. Then you could no longer run the double magic modifier with the triple. Then no rage weapons or vorpal weapons. Then no piercing weapons. Now no rod, beam or bolt. So many hacks in the code just to try and get round the fact the triple itself is the problem. Get rid of the triple, then you can balance every thing else a lot better. But no, everyone secretly likes being overpowered.

Micron(Micron) wrote:

Nerfing the adrenaline surge is the worst possible solution to the problem.

For clarification, I was only talking about adrenaline surge not working with the beam and bolt - otherwise surge would be unchanged. Getting rid of surge essentially makes the beam and bolt more expensive in adrenaline, therefore the AM can use it less.

I think theres another option here which most people arnt considering for artifact balance: engineer-like cooldown timers.
give bolt an 5-8 second cooldown and it suddenly becomes usefull, but not spammable. no more people transing around the map spamming bolt unless they just wana cruise around wasting most of thier time.
if you add timers, theres no need to remove a somewhat important (but not vital if you ask me) artifact, and it doesnt destroy its usefulness, just its abusefulness. If it cant be spammed, I dont think theres much of a problem with its power either. It just turns the bolt into a self defense/offence supplement utility instead of a room clearing h4x.

I'm also in favor of:
1:removing the ablity of triples stacking with artifacts.
2: more XP for weapon maxing and perhaps other team artifacts.
3: maybe toning down the triple to a double. Still powerful(its a DD on command, comon...), but its a 33% decrease in damage, which is rather significant. *MAYBE*. I'd like to see other adjustments first.
4: modifying blasts to either be A: cheaper but yeild weaker results or B: cheaper with decent cooldowns.

**disclaimer - I play a WM and engi; I dont have a junkie**