=ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (Full Version)

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Therril Oreb -> =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/16/2014 16:28:30)

With so much interest in developing and discussing balance in ED, it has become apparent that we need to organise! So, in order to make things easier on everyone, from developers to players, we are going to organise some specific threads that will hopefully make discussing this simpler and more effective.


Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread

This is where you can discuss everything balance related to the Tactical Mercenary class.
Got a skill that doesn't fit? Perhaps a combo that proves to be too strong and abusable. Discuss it here with everyone!

A few guidelines before we start:
  • All AE Forum rules are still in effect.
  • No comparisons between other classes. You can use certain facts to build your case on, but please do not turn this into a 'TcM vs X' thread.
  • Everyone's opinions are just that. Opinions. If you don't agree, that's fine. But, there is no need for rule breaking behaviour.
  • If you see a rule-breaking post, please refer to The Trinity: 1.) Report it 2.) Ignore it 3.) Move on. We would rather you have fun with the discussion and let the Forum Staff worry about rules broken.
  • Constructive Criticism is meant to improve something, not rant, whine and complain to be heard. If you are going to criticise, do so with the intent to give help, not tear down.

    Happy Discussing!





  • Noobatron x3000 -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/16/2014 17:35:50)

    This class is hard because honestly I think it needs an entire new skill tree the only thing it has going for it now is poison , and even that you heal its gone. The only tlm's you see now are strength poison and there a species on the verge of extinction.




    Xendran -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/16/2014 17:49:40)

    I think the two most important immediate changes to the Tactical Mercenary are related to its energy skills.

    Atom Smasher should be changed to work with all weapons and be modified like so:
    Atom Splitter
    Strikes an enemy, burning their energy as a percentage of the damage done;
    If blocked, triple the energy damage blocked is returned to you as rage.
    
    Weapon: All
    
    Cost: 60 +10 per level
        Level 1:  50% Conversion 
        Level 2:  54% Conversion 
        Level 3:  58% Conversion 
        Level 4:  62% Conversion 
        Level 5:  65% Conversion 
        Level 6:  68% Conversion 
        Level 7:  71% Conversion 
        Level 8:  74% Conversion 
        Level 9:  77% Conversion 
        Level 10: 80% Conversion




    Battery Backup is not a particularly interesting skill, and was an easy way to say "how do we give these classes easy energy access" when replacing reorute. I believe something similar to this would benefit the tactical mercenary class quite a bit:





    Energy Diversion
    
    Coats your equipment in energy-leeching plasma, absorbing a percentage of all damage dealt as energy;
    A percentage of energy spent is leeched back out of the air, reducing the cost of skills.
    
    Duration: 5 Turns
    
    Cost: 1 Turn
        Level 1:  9%  Conversion | 3.0%  Reduced Cost
        Level 2:  11% Conversion | 4.5%  Reduced Cost
        Level 3:  13% Conversion | 6.0%  Reduced Cost
        Level 4:  15% Conversion | 7.5%  Reduced Cost
        Level 5:  17% Conversion | 9.0%  Reduced Cost
        Level 6:  19% Conversion | 10.5% Reduced Cost
        Level 7:  21% Conversion | 12.0% Reduced Cost
        Level 8:  23% Conversion | 13.5% Reduced Cost
        Level 9:  25% Conversion | 15.0% Reduced Cost
        Level 10: 27% Conversion | 16.5% Reduced Cost
    
    




    You can find my full class revamps Here.




    kosmo -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/17/2014 4:08:46)

    i belive this class needs less of what it looks like.

    i would decrese frenzy s cooldown from 3 to 2.




    edwardvulture -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/24/2014 13:31:30)

    TLM was designed with 2 passives in mind, that's why they have really bad offensive skills. absolutely no synergy. Stun grenade was put in just to nerf the class. field commander is just a crappy version of blood commander, atom smash is just a crappy bersion of static smash. Notice how they do not have offensive skills that rely on the same stat except strength, that makes them unable to make stat spam builds other than strength




    Emperor_Blitz -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/25/2014 2:07:01)

    frenzy is a good skill maybe lower the cooldown to 2?




    kosmo -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/25/2014 4:07:42)

    emperor blitz@

    very good point, i belive that frenzy if looped can be compared to the other hp regains (mob, bc ...).

    the only problem is tht tlm is able to use maximum 2-3 frezy in a game, while the other classes can easely loop blood commander, mob and heal, making them way more effective.




    veneeria -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/25/2014 16:59:40)

    Actuality, ever since I've changed to the tactical mercenaries, i'd say they are the least unbalanced of them all. [&:]

    Like Xedran pointed out, the only "problems" might actuality be the energy regeneration abilities.

    And... Talking about your ideas, i particularly like the idea of each of them being "brand and unique skills". Huge thumbs up specially for Atom Splitter, although about battery backup, i don't really agree much with the replacement.

    It isn't particularly an bad fit and kind of goes well with the whole tactical feeling of the TMs. You sacrifice an turn in which could be used for either offensive or defensive purposes. It is an.. conscious trade off, where you could be stolen of that energy right after you had used battery backup.

    It is.. an 4 turns cooldown after all too.


    Other than our energy leeching ability, everything is right where it is supposed to be.




    Emperor_Blitz -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/27/2014 11:40:54)

    Just like Xendran said a move that tact mercs can regain energy with, they have battery backup but that is countered way to easily static, emp, static smash, and the other one.
    Tlm are the worst class in game atm so I definitely think they need a buff.




    edwardvulture -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/27/2014 13:45:46)

    If we split the skill tree they could get reroute back as well as mineral armor and keep battery back up. The key to balance is giving every class a niche, for the longest time TLM's niche was tank heal looper, there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to do that again.




    aymanrocks -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/27/2014 16:17:36)

    @mercenary ayman ED. Tactical Mercenary skill tree must be changed! It used to be the most OP class... But you EpicDuel staff keep on nerfing tactical mercenary. Like right now you made atom smasher take less energy and you increased the cool down for battery backup. I also think evolved classes should be Overpowered. It makes sense that an Evolved class is overpowered. Right now starting classes are more op than evolved classes. I hope you guys take this in consideration. Thank you.




    Ranloth -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (3/27/2014 16:28:11)

    quote:

    I also think evolved classes should be Overpowered. It makes sense that an Evolved class is overpowered.

    Please look up the definition of "balance", really.

    Also, Devs have said evolved classes are NOT meant to be stronger than the starter classes. This assumes perfect balance - so imbalance such as "flavour of the month" builds are NOT considered in this statement, because we've had TLMs being top-tier in early Delta and now to bottom-tier in Omega.




    razorvenom -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (4/12/2014 20:26:35)

    A lot of other posts had very good suggestions for tlm, but let me just voice my opinion

    Offensive skill: Poisen, sugical, frenzy, artillery strike, double swing, stun grenade

    Poisen- good skill, does damage but not to OP because you can heal to counter it

    Surgical- it is the "special" skill for this class so obviously it does good damage. However, waiting 3 turns to use it doesn't really make it a good option to do quick energy damage, In addition its easy to counter energy- wise

    Frenzy- Good with a str build, and its very good with rage. I, however, do not agree with the earlier comments of making this skill 2 turn cooldown. I can imagen other people complaining about how OP this skill with 2 turn cooldown, then if it gets nerfed, tlm is done for.

    Double swing- In general, this skill is very unbalanced in terms of damage and energy conversion. It costs way too much energy for the amount of damage it does, I mean if you compare it to something like berzerker. I understand it has a 1 turn cooldown, but that still leaves you at a disadvantage in terms of energy.

    Stun grenade- To be honest, the most useless skill tlm has. It doesn't cost a lot of energy, but the amount of damage it does is just disgraceful. Even if you do want to do a lot of damage with it, you would need to have it on max and have a dex build. Even this scenario is difficult to imagine because no tlm would waste 10 stat points on stun grenade. Plus with a dex build, stun grenade would be the only offensive skill dealing good damage, in which case this build is very unlikely to get wins.

    Energy wise:

    Battery backup: Nothing to complain here, it does exactly what it says.

    Atom smasher: Under powered in many ways. First, it can be blocked, so there is never a guarantee of decreasing the opponents energy. Second, this skill only lowers your opponents energy, and in that case also lowers your own. Some people may argue that tlm have battery backup to make up for that. However, in a realistic battle scenario, tlm are always at a disadvantage. Imagen this:

    You have 100 energy. Your opponent (bh) has 0 energy. You use battery backup, now have 450 energy. The bh uses static grenade (lvl 10 45 support) takes away 310 energy, you now have 140 energy. Now you use atom smash (lvl 1-9) and decrease the bh's energy to 0. You wasted 2 turns playing with energy, while the bh wasted 1 turn and after you atom, its his turn which gives him an advantage. Its true that the bounty has 0 energy now, but so do you. Basically, if a tlm uses battery back up, it is with the goal of gaining energy, however in a realistic battle, that is practically impossible.

    The bottom line of my point is that tlm needs a good skill for quick offensive energy/ phiscal damage (take out stun grenade and artillery strike and replace them with a skill that does phiscal and energy damage improving with tech and dex) and an energy stealing skill ( replace atom smash with a stealing skil)




    zion -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (4/13/2014 11:01:13)

    Right now the strongest 1v1 build in the game is for a TLM to have very high health and str and max poison + strike, strike, strike etc. (If you have nerfing bot and Celtic Cleaver even better). Since the poison now does unmissable str damage, it just does tons of damage too quickly for a defensive build to cope.




    razorvenom -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (4/13/2014 15:35:13)

    Right now the strongest build 1v1 is blood mage str build, high hp, strenght, blood mark, intimidate ( to lower opponents str which lowers damage done to you), bludgeon, and yes, wepons like celtic cleaver and bots obivously help. TLM poisen can easily be healed so i dont see the problem there.




    Stonehawk -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (5/4/2014 21:14:18)

    quote:

    Double swing- In general, this skill is very unbalanced in terms of damage and energy conversion. It costs way too much energy for the amount of damage it does, I mean if you compare it to something like berzerker. I understand it has a 1 turn cooldown, but that still leaves you at a disadvantage in terms of energy.


    A change in this skill is needed! I think it should have nearly same cost as bludgeon. Since it's already weaker, it shouldn't cost 50 more energy, if we compare. I know it's cooldown is only 1 but: who would use a maxed double swing 2 times in a row, for example? It would cost all the energy.

    quote:

    (take out stun grenade and artillery strike and replace them with a skill that does phiscal and energy damage improving with tech and dex)


    I think artillery strike is a mark of the mercenaries' class. Even though it's nearly impossible to be as useful as mage's multi, because it does lower damage and, since you need to LOWER DEFENSES to have higher support (and support is not so good nowadays, I think it was pointed in another topic), no one would make it too high, so it'll never do as much damage.

    But now talking about stun grenade and atom smasher:
    I don't think Atom Smasher should be changed to work with all weapons. If that was the only change, who would use a club if all skills were possible to use with any weapon?

    Instead, I think it would be good to change both stun grenade for the maul (which is blockable and only usable by a club) and the atom smasher can be replaced by EMP (not a possible waste of turn while trying to take energy.)

    This change would encourage people to use a club, because if it stays as it is, I think no one would use a skill to SPEND energy TRYING to take energy.





    The berserker killer -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (5/4/2014 22:26:25)

    Tactical Merc used to put up a fight when the cooldown for Poison. Not everyone was tlm because it was still a Tactical class to use but it was still fun because of the 1 turn cooldown

    I think the 1 turn cooldown should return. It wasn't OP for some reason because tlm was kind of perfectly balance




    rayniedays56 -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (5/5/2014 9:17:21)

    ^
    The one turn cooldown was taken out to compensate for venom strike, which didn't have that 1 turn. Also, what use would a 1 turn cooldown give you now? If you poison someone, and they heal, you still have to wait to either a: gain more EP to use the poison, or B: wait until you can use it again.

    No, this classes imbalance is proportional to it's lack of a debuff, in my opinion. All other classes have a debuff. To me, to help out TLM a little bit, they should have smokescreen back in place of field commander. The only reason it was taken out before was because they had technician and reroute, which, ultimately, added into a near unstoppable build of high strength, high smoke, medium tech, and hybrid armor.


    ****OFF TOPIC****
    Did anyone else find it funny when the 3 evolved classes were released, they ALL had technician? xD




    Mother1 -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (5/5/2014 11:52:13)

    @ Rayniedays56

    even when technician was removed Tactical mercenary still had smoke. They removed smoke because the class had Energy gain, armor and a debuff. so they had to choose between reroute at the time or smoke and they choose smoke since strength Tactical merc was too strong. Doing so again would bring that back even without the passive energy gain since battery backup is stronger than reroute.




    Tal Shiar ED -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (6/1/2014 12:00:40)

    I think they should bring smokescreen back since now there are no more passives




    King Bling -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (6/1/2014 14:21:35)

    i think the high support requirement on frenzy should be reduced or removed since a high str build can total not use it while a focus build having 450 damage cannot gain much health from evn max frenzy. dont you guys agree on this?

    Edit:

    Ok this is one other issue on a tactical merc which i would like to point out! The skill named frenzy is quite unbalanced and pretty useless. I will explain it properly.
    First of all if someone has a strength build then he can use maximum 2 frenzy since its support requirement is too high like 42 probably. which is pretty useless to the strength builds, and guy gain max 80 health back, now if someone is a 5 focus build, which means 450 weapon damage (not considering the high ranks like 20+) which again means even max frenzy gives them like 100 health back at a cost of 180 mana from which someone can heal 400 health back.
    Now I would like to suggest some ways to make it better and be used as a nice skill, either make the support requirements lower by 5 points or totally remove that stat, OTHERWISE if you would have notices that cyber hunters have the skill named static charge which gives them mana at no cost of mana plus hitting with weapons dmg, same like that the frenzy should be made 0 energy cost and no support requirement as well to balance it with other skills too.
    Thanks for reading it and you may discuss further and raise the point if you think that it lacks those points!!!

    Posts merge. Please don't double post. ~Mecha




    Rui. -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (6/2/2014 8:26:27)

    I would gladly trade static for frenzy..

    As a cyber I static and get 130 energy back and all the next moment I get assimilated ... Frenzy can be used on rage and gives back over 250 health...

    This skill has just received a buff and is way to useful at lvl 1 and 2 ... compared to a lvl 10 static.





    King Bling -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (6/2/2014 12:32:06)

    Rui. you surely are out of your mind, the reason is you can never get 250 health with even max frenzy and rage, if so please post a picture of getting equal or more than 250 health from frenzy,and I am telling this because if you see properly a strength build could have that 250 health at rage build i suppose strength build does not have 45 support for max frenzy and if a 5 focus build uses max frenzy at rage then due to his/her damage being low its again obvious he will heal max 150 health.


    And you do you even know that static does not have any support requirement on it and even a strength build can use it while in the case of frenzy only a focus build can use max frenzy and a strength build can use at max 2 frenzy.....




    GearzHeadz -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (6/2/2014 14:08:07)

    Well to get 250 health back from a max frenzy it takes 438 damage. With the 10% armor ignore plus the 30% armor ignore from rage, it wouldn't be that hard. I've seen it before myself as well.

    And if you would want frenzy to be changed to be more like static charge but with for health then it would lose the 10% armor ignore, become unblockable, become unrageable, uncrittable, and its cool down would be moved from 3 turns to 4, and maybe be moved to zero energy cost since it has all of those effects with it, and maybe even gain its club requirement back. Does that sound worth it?

    As for the support requirement, currently it goes 19+2 per level, maxing out at a 37 support requirement. This was put in to keep str TLMs from becoming too prominent I guess, and as a balance from them using frenzy to deal immense damage and gain immense health back. I too feel that they may of went a little high with the support requirement as to make it so the skill is hardly used. I'd say lower the support requirement to 16+2 per level, maxing the support requirement at 34 support. This would still keep crazy str builds in line while making the skill more accessible to more builds.




    suboto -> RE: =ED= Official Tactical Mercenary Balance Discussion Thread (6/2/2014 17:32:22)

    Ideas for improveing tatical merc:
    Skill field commander changed to:
    a skill that does a random debuff based off top 3 stats on opponent similar to omega sword but a more weaker verison
    Example of skill tree:
    lvl1 5% 30energy
    lvl2 7% 40energy
    lvl3 9% 50energy
    lvl4 11% 60energy
    lvl5 13% 70energy
    lvl6 15% 80energy
    lvl7 16% 90energy
    lvl8 18% 100 energy
    lvl9 19% 110energy
    lvl10 20% 120energy
    the skill would improve with none and cool down would be 3turns and last for 3turns. can be restored with assualt bot by 65% of the amount.
    the skill double strike: current energy cost 150 to 330
    new set up
    lvl1:120energy
    lvl2:135energy
    lvl3:150energy
    lvl4:165energy
    lvl5:180energy
    lvl6:195energy
    lvl7:210energy
    lvl8:225energy
    lvl9:240energy
    lvl10:255energy
    Atomic smash current 47% to 77%
    reworked:
    50% to 80 or 84% slight increase
    Stun grenade:
    current system:
    lvl5= +10dmg
    lvl9= +10dmg
    lvl13= +10dmg
    lvl17= +10dmg
    lvl25= +10dmg
    lvl29= +10dmg
    lvl34= +10dmg
    Adding +10 at level 40 is 1 slight buff
    current system +10dmg every 4dex you put in
    change to +10dmg every 3.5 or 3.75 dex you put in slight buff
    This would bring more use to this skill
    Mineral armor possiblely a change
    of a slight buff but keeping 100% at max
    current system 30% to 100%
    new scale:
    lvl1 35%
    lvl2 42%
    lvl3 51%
    lvl4 58%
    lvl5 66%
    lvl6 74%
    lvl7 80%
    lvl8 87%
    lvl9 93%
    lvl10 100%
    either this rescale or energy every level increased reduced from +20 to +15






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