Gunner Nerfs

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chrisb
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Gunner Nerfs

Post by chrisb »

So I've been thinking about the changes, both current and upcoming to Gunners. Those being the 5 ammo nerf to Hail and Demo. In my current campaign I tried changing Demo to 5 ammo to see what it is like. I have to say that both of these nerfs, especially combined feel like they are going way to far.

TLDR; Yes 2-3 ammo is to little, but 5 Ammo is too harsh for these abilities. It really makes gunners feel like a tortoise in the early game when movement is fairly important. I think 4/4 ammo for Hail/Demo is a reasonable cost. Making them 5 each simply causes the gunner to be constantly reloading. Personally I'll be making this 4/4 in my campaigns, and it's what I'm using now even though demo hasn't been nerfed yet. I've found it to be a good balance.

Hail of Bullets is an early game perk. Not just because it's early in the perk tree, but because it falls off due to multiple factors. More HP/Armor on enemies, bigger pods, more aim with each rank and higher priority perks that do far more damage than Hail. By the time M3s start rolling out, this perk is almost never used as there's almost some other action you want your gunner to be taking. Even if you find a situation to use it, it is likely that the situation wasn't some dire circumstance, like killing the last alien on the map that is already badly wounded.

Given that this perk has most of it's value in the early game, the nerf greatly affects the usability of the perk for a couple of reasons. You typically don't have a surplus of mags right away, certainly not advanced/elite mags and most/all of your missions require constant movement. Both of these points get mediated with time, but with that time also sees the falloff of the value of the perk. By midgame your getting into more untimed missions where movement isn't as necessary and getting better mags. But by then you have better things to be doing.

The biggest problem I have with the nerf is how it affects the gunner's ability to keep moving forward while still being able to effective. For the most part, with the current nerf, the ability almost always requires a reload before using it, and always requires a reload after using it. This basically makes this perk require 2 turns to use effectively and often limits movement to 0 for those 2 turns. That's a really big deal in practice when the rest of the squad is often able to perform their actions while moving forward and your under the gun of a turn timer. I've had many times where my gunner is so far behind that he spends his 3rd turn doing nothing but dashing just to catch up while the rest of the team is engaging a second pod. Often this creates a situation where 3 turns pass and my gunner has only done 1 thing.

I think if the ammo consumption of the ability were 3 this would be much less of an issue but would still make it costly. Even 4 ammo seems excessive. It really is not that powerful, especially on higher difficulty where it often requires some setup from other classes to get their HP into hail range. I have tried playing with it at 3 and I honestly think that is a good balance for it. Your still burning up ammo quick, but not completely punished for using it.

I also feel that Hail was never an auto-pick perk. The other options are quite strong at different stages of the game. I highlighted this in another post. The basic idea for me is that Hail is good early, Lockdown is good mid and Shredder is good late. This seems balanced to me and punishing Hail this way seems ridiculous.

One last point I'll make on this being 5 ammo is how useless it is in the AWC. I got this on a grenadier once, was completely useless as I didn't have a spare Adv Mag since my gunners were using them all just to use their own hail! Making this 3 would allow other units that pick it up to use it more easily if they roll it in the AWC.

Demo I feel is also in the same boat but not to the same extreme. It is still very useful in the mid game but also has some falloff. This is mostly due to the availability of many more powerful cover destruction options and the reduced need of destroying cover with better perks on other classes. Making it cost 5 ammo is too much. Having Sat Fire cost 5 makes sense. It's a mid-late game perk where ammo mags and reloaders are more common to have. I think Demo at 3 also makes sense, but even 4 is fine. Typically you at least have a mag by the time your picking demo so it's not so bad to use it and still have 2 shots left. At least you can move/supress and not be forced to reload all the time.

Even with Demo at 5 ammo, it is still going to be an autopick at least until the late game. For most it's going to be an auto-pick. Flush is just not in a good place, and IC requires some understanding and tactical knowledge to use it effectively. I understand why it is an autopick for most, it's easy to use and synergizes well with most of your squadmates. Hell you could make Demo cost 7 ammo it would still be an autopick for most, the alternatives are just not that attractive.
Last edited by chrisb on Sat Apr 01, 2017 3:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
fowlJ
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by fowlJ »

Hail of Bullets cost 3 ammo before it was nerfed, not 2, just so you know.

I don't have much of an opinion right at the moment on this topic, but that was just something that stuck out to me.
chrisb
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by chrisb »

Oh, for some reason I was thinking it was 2. Well, at 3 I don't really see what the problem was, but even 4 wouldn't be as much AP spent on reloading vs 5.
darkerevent
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by darkerevent »

I have always gotten the impression that Demolition was only so popular in the first place because Grenadiers are unreasonably bad at destroying cover (requiring a LCPL + MSGT perk combo before they can do it reliably, thus necessitating that other characters pick up the slack through whatever available means) and because Flush is mathematically terrible (unreliable for its intended purpose while simultaneously having a negative action economy). Due to this understanding, I very much feel that nerfing Demo's ammo cost is a case of treating a symptom rather than the cause.

I agree that gunners are too strong, but to my mind the culprit lies more in the following:

1) They get the incredibly strong perk "Area Suppression" for free at Squaddie, and
2) they are the only permitted wielders of the best move-and-shoot medium-range gun in the game.

I think the gunner's design space and balance would be quite a lot more interesting if Area Suppression required a perk investment and competed against two other build-defining perks, rather than being handed out for free. As long as all gunners get to do AoE crowd control with no perk investment, I doubt that it will be possible to give their level-up perks both the right internal balance and the right balance relative to other classes with similar functionalities. Put simply, anyone else in the game who wants to do consistent area control has to spec for it, and anyone else in the game who wants to do consistently good targeted damage has to spec for it as well. The gunner gets to do both while specing entirely into damaging and utility cooldowns and wielding a Cannon, which does bad things to the balance when you put it all together.

To help address #2 above, I also think that Technicals should be allowed to wield Cannons (but without giving them additional shooty perk options beyond what they already have). However, that's a topic for another discussion.
chrisb
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by chrisb »

I agree with changing Area Suppression from being baseline. I actually think it would balance Gunner a lot. It's very common that I have 2-4 gunners on every combat squad. Having such a mix of damage, utility and control all in one class is too good to pass up. My barracks by mid-game is at least 25% gunners. I train gunners like some people train Shinobis :lol:

I would swap Flush for Area Suppression. While it's certainly useful at all times, it really becomes most valuable going into mid-game. Putting it at SGT would be a good fit. Having it compete with Demolition would really balance demolition more than nerfing the ammo would, though I would still agree Demolition should probably be at least 3 ammo, putting it inline with the activation cost of Area Suppression and Iron Curtain. SGT then basically becomes the 3 ammo perk rank.

This might also see Flush get some use. I really don't see Flush being competitive with anything else a Gunner has unless it is changed pretty drastically. Even if it was brought back to the LW1 version I don't think I'd ever pick it over something else. But if I happen to have it for free, I'd probably use it now and then.

The one thing that comes to mind that might also have to change with this, is what to do with Danger Zone. Maybe it turns Supression into a min Area Supression? Or perhaps it has a completely different effect on regular Suppresion? It would seem odd to have a perk that is completely useless without having picked another perk, and would likely lead to people picking it without knowing you need Area Supression to make use of it.

I think I'm going to do this in my next campaign. Going to try out 3/3 Hail/Demo ammo and swapping Flush for Area Suppression.
LordYanaek
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by LordYanaek »

I personally think it makes sense to have the gunner (using the heaviest weapon available to XCom) act as an immobile heavy weapon platform, or at least some of their builds. This nerf as i said in another topic isn't really a nerf to demolition itself but in combination with the HoB nerf, it's a nerf to the globally overpowered Cooldown Gunner. It's a nerf that doesn't affect their power but rather their ability to deliver this power while staying mobile.
You can still go for a shooty build that will act like a high damage Ranger (but without the Ranger's ability to crit or easily finish wounded targets) or a supression/overwatch build if you really want to take a Gunner on timed missions but the Cooldown Gunner, much like the Nest Sniper is not (in 1.3) well suited to those missions. At least this should give some room to Rangers and other Gunner builds to shine. I don't think it's a bad thing to have different builds specialized for different missions, quite the contrary it was one of the best things in LW1 and hopefully it will be in LW2.
chrisb
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by chrisb »

LordYanaek wrote:I personally think it makes sense to have the gunner (using the heaviest weapon available to XCom) act as an immobile heavy weapon platform, or at least some of their builds. This nerf as i said in another topic isn't really a nerf to demolition itself but in combination with the HoB nerf, it's a nerf to the globally overpowered Cooldown Gunner. It's a nerf that doesn't affect their power but rather their ability to deliver this power while staying mobile.
But it doesn't really do that at all. By the time you have the powerful CD perks, your not using Hail and Demo as much, and you have bigger mags by then so the 5 ammo cost doesn't matter. The time when your using Hail and Demo the most is when you have no better options and you dont have the big mags yet. Basically march and april. It just doesn't make sense for such an early game perk to grind the class to a halt. I get that CD gunner isn't meant to be a highly mobile thing, but does it really need to be turned into a Turret?

And relative to other perks a gunner gets, like Cyclic Fire and Saturation Fire, these perks are nowhere close to as powerful. I could maybe see these abilities costing 4 ammo, but 5 really cripples them this early in the game.

As for the suppresion gunner, these really don't get built until your closer to mid-game. They really don't have a lot of value in March/April since the pods are typically not big enough to matter that much. It's not that it's useless it just isn't normally the option you want since it only burns more turns. I normally start building Suppression gunners starting around May so I have them ready into June/July where they really start to matter.

Any other type of build is really marginal and is going to be highly outperformed by other classes. Graze/Shredder gunners are good past August, but by that time you can usually snag a SSGT from the market or a mission and get that. Your not going to start building a Shredder gunner in March.

And this is why I at least will be reverting them. At least to 4/4, but more likely I'll go 3/4. Hail is just not powerful to warrant having the same ammo cost and a longer CD than Cyclic Fire... that's absurd. I really have no idea why they think it needed a nerf, it was never that powerful to begin with, and this just makes the class very awkward for the first 2-3 months.

If you want to make CD gunners less powerful. Take away Area Suppression. There's no reason at all that should be a Squaddie perk. It's close to one of the most powerful perks in the whole game. I'd say it even competes with many MSGT perks. It also makes regular Suppression an almost never used ability. The only time I have seen anyone use Suppression is when there aren't 2 targets to tag with Area, or they have only 2 ammo left. Even when you only have 3 ammo, Area is still a better choice because it's the debuff that matters not the shots. This way if your speccing an suppression gunner, your going to take Area Supression instead of Demo. And even if your speccing a CD gunner, you may still want to pick Area as it's a very good perk. At least demo would have some reasonable competition. Flush... :lol:
aedn
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by aedn »

Gunners right now get to much. they have to much damage, to much aim, to many borderline OP perks, and they scale to well throughout the game. Personally, i think gunners need a significant aim reduction on leveling, say +12 to +15 rather then +20, with a boost to HP possibly.

Beyond that, i feel that the MMO/cooldown gunner builds should play more like a LMG gunner from LW1, so i like the idea of limiting mobility when using specific skills like hail of bullets, saturation fire, and cyclic fire is ideal to me. This gives you significantly different playstyles if you choose the cooldown playstyle, vs a overwatch playstyle, or a more mobile rapid fire play style which no one bothers to use at all.

Removing area suppression has little to no impact on cooldown gunners, because the build is largely centered around using abilities to do damage. You basically toggle chain shot, HOB, Demolition, Cyclic Fire, and saturation fire as needed depending on the situation. There is little value in removing area suppression from that group of perks, because most people rarely use suppression once they get the bulk of activated skills. its actually more of a nerf to non cooldown gunners imo, because you force people to take AS as a perk pick, while cooldown gunners can largely ignore it.

Demolition is a good to great perk due to the lack of reliable cover destruction by any other class, and the fact that the other perks at this level are both below average. IC can be useful, but it largely depends on rolling a quality tier 1 AWC perk to make it worthwhile. Flush is currently complete trash on any class you take it, even as an AWC perk its pointless. I do agree that 5 ammo per use, is pointless as its already been done with HoB and the only impact was to classes that rolled it as an AWC perk, while gunner had zero impact at all. Either change the cooldown, or make it cost 2 actions to use is a better solution imo. personally, i feel demo should have never been placed on the gunner tree to begin wth, it should be on the grenadier tree and technical tree.
chrisb
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by chrisb »

Gunners already have bad aim. Most of their abilities have aim penalties on them already. Rapid Fire and Cyclic Fire have -15 aim on them. Shooting with a gunner at most targets is lucky to get 60% to hit most of the time and that's at MSGT. Of all the classes that shoot, they consistently have the lowest aim, I think their aim is fine where it is.

The problem with comparing this to LW1 is that you could choose that on a per mission basis. You can't do that here. There is no SAW vs LMG that you can swap out from one mission to the next. LW1 didn't have perks that locked a class into being a stationary turret. You could take the SAW on one mission, and take the LMG on a different mission. The same gunner got to be useful on both. Also this is not LW1. LW1 had very few missions with timers. Bomb and Terror was it and those weren't common. LW2 is full of these, 80% of the missions require high movement, and it's near 100% in the early game.

As for Rapid Fire, that's a GSGT perk, your not seeing that until well into mid-game. By that time the game is almost over. And saying nobody bothers with it is kind of absurd since I've seen it used rather alot and I'll pick it on my own guys plenty of time. But this is not an early game perk, it's a late game perk.

Removing Area Supression from Squaddie has a huge impact. One of my strats that I used to faceroll supply raids was to take 3 Gunners. And I'm talking April 1st not August so they're not really 'CD' gunners. I'd pull 2 pods of 8, lay down 2 Area + 2 Flash and use the other 7 people to shoot. What was left just hunkered or fired 1% shots. They won't run because they only do that to get a better shot, which they can't. I used this over and over on many missions. Pull big to get lots of Aggression / Bring'Em On buffs, Area to control, then as the pod got whittled down, finish things off with CDs and the full squad.

Taking Area away makes it so CD gunners have no mass control option. There's 2 things that matter the most in this game, kills and control. If you can't kill it, control it. And Gunners are the only class that can do both for turns on end. Grenadiers can only do this for a handful of turns, nobody else is capable of it at all.

The 5 ammo change has no impact to mid to late game gunners because of mags and autoloaders. It has a massive impact on early game gunners. That's the whole point I'm trying to get across. My problem isn't with July+, its March/April. I've been playing with the demo nerf alongside the HoB nerf. It's retarded and I think it's a bad way to 'nerf'. If the abilities are too OP, then fix the abilities. Using CD and ammo as a nerf is either ineffective or crippling, depending on the campaign date.

You don't balance a class by crippling it, you balance it by adjusting the abilities themselves. It's fine to use ammo cost as an adjustment, but ramping it to the max in the early game is just bad balancing.
darkerevent
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by darkerevent »

chrisb wrote:But it doesn't really do that at all. By the time you have the powerful CD perks, your not using Hail and Demo as much, and you have bigger mags by then so the 5 ammo cost doesn't matter. The time when your using Hail and Demo the most is when you have no better options and you dont have the big mags yet. Basically march and april. It just doesn't make sense for such an early game perk to grind the class to a halt. I get that CD gunner isn't meant to be a highly mobile thing, but does it really need to be turned into a Turret?
Agreed. I will reiterate that nerfing ammo costs on the cooldowns is only going to hurt early game gunners, who are (1) expected to go on more on-the-run GOps missions than they'll be expected to go on later and (2) are still reliant on loot RNG to get autoloaders and expanded magazines to support their play style.

Gunners existing in summer onward will hardly even feel it, which means these nerfs aren't going to do anything to reconcile the larger problem of gunners being outright better overall than equivalently built rangers in most situations in the mid and lategame. The lategame gunner's mobility will hardly even feel these nerfs, both because reloading is trivialized later and because the abilities in question are seldom used in clutch situations beyond the first few months of the game.

If there is a committed desire from the developers to make the gunner feel immobile in a similar fashion to the ranger, I think that the biggest healthy step that could be taken in that direction would be to implement a LW1 style of LMG weapon as an alternative to the current cannons (slightly bigger damage, bigger magazine, cannot be fired after moving, grants squadsight and can be fired up to 5 tiles beyond visual range) and then work on balancing the class around the notion of it having decisions to make about its weapon loadout for each mission. As it stands, cannons are mostly just better rifles, for practical intents and purposes.
chrisb wrote:Removing Area Supression has a huge impact. One of my strats that I used to faceroll supply raids was to take 3 CD Gunners. And I'm talking April 1st not August. I'd pull 2 pods of 8, lay down 2 Area + 2 Flash and use the other 7 people to shoot. What was left just hunkered or fired 1% shots. They won't run because they only do that to get a better shot, which they can't. I used this over and over on many missions. Pull big to get lots of Aggression / Bring'Em On buffs, Area to control, then as the pod got whittled down, finish things off with CDs and the full squad.
Agreed, the ability to use three or four CD gunners in one squad and use one or two Saturation Fires and Cyclic Fires per turn while the others suppress the enemies into submission is absurdly strong during the midgame, being outshone only by massed Shredstorm Cannon cheese (which is even more toxic to the game balance and needs to be nerfed hard).

Multi-gunner is how my low-percentage supply raids will be done in the midgame in 1.3 if nothing else is changed besides reducing the number of characters who can go on the mission to 8 (down from 10). Gotta do more with less, and the gunner definitely provides that.

--

Also, if Area Suppression were to be changed to require a perk investment, I would suggest removing DZ entirely and replacing it with a general-purpose "your shots do more" perk, and just make the baseline AoE of DZ a little bit larger if it actually needs to be that big to do its job. (I don't currently think that it needs to be that big, but that's a question for balancing.) Someone else might be able to come up with a better idea than that though.
KevlinTallfellow
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by KevlinTallfellow »

In regards to their role as a heavy weapons unit, Gunners *should* have low or no mobility while performing their function, much like Sharpshooters. You can move, or you can shoot, but you can't do both without special training and/or equipment. Gunners really *shouldn't* be such powerful assets on timed missions that require constant movement; the ammo changes address that very well, and in a logical manner.

If you want a heavy offensive rifleman, get a Ranger and give them a heavy rifle. If you want somebody who has good mobility and suppression ability, build an appropriate Ranger or Technician, or even a Specialist. You can even give them SMGs with extended mags to improve their mobility and still allow for the debuff from suppression, even though they will likely not have the ammo to take any reaction fire, and if they do it will have a substantial weapon-based range penalty as well as having a negligible effect on target unless they have status ammo.

We're lucky that the cannons are man-portable at all, and don't require a team to use. Forcing Gunners to combine a reload with many of their most powerful abilities is the fundamental equivalent to forcing a Sharpshooter to not move in order to use a heavy sniper rifle to one-shot an enemy in cover from across the map.

If you're throwing so many bullets at a guy in heavy cover, that you simply cannot miss, then yes, it should take a LOT of ammo to do that, if not ALL the ammo. If you're throwing so many bullets at a guy in heavy cover, that the heavy cover is completely destroyed and utterly removed from existence, then yes, it should take a LOT of ammo to do that, if not ALL the ammo. If you're throwing so many bullets at a group of guys standing near each other, that you hit most or all of them in your field of fire, then yes, it should take a LOT of ammo to do that, if not ALL the ammo.

As they were previously, and somewhat currently, Gunners really are too powerful, in that they have too much power *and* mobility simultaneously.

As far as balance goes, I think people should be asking themselves some questions. Would you prefer that the cooldown abilities of Gunners require most or all of your ammo to use them each time? Would you prefer that the cooldown abilities of Gunners have lower ammo costs but require two action points to perform them, such that they cannot be used after moving without burning a charge of Command? Should Gunners have inherent class penalties similar in effect to Snap Shot if they move and attack on the same turn (i.e., reduced aim, or possibly increased ammo usage)?

It seems to me that Gunners are intended to be high-drag and low-speed in exchange for their offensive power and utility, and the changes so far are putting them closer to where they need to be to accomplish that.

Then, of course, there's what everyone always says: If there's something you don't like, just change it. You can mod almost everything yourself, and pretty easily if you know where to look.
chrisb
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by chrisb »

KevlinTallfellow wrote: It seems to me that Gunners are intended to be high-drag and low-speed in exchange for their offensive power and utility, and the changes so far are putting them closer to where they need to be to accomplish that.
If that is the design goal of Gunners then that is almost completely antithetical to how the missions are being designed. Especially in the first 3 months which typically makes up around 25-30% of a campaign. The first mission you can even afford this kind of slowness is likely to be a troop column. So either your left taking a low rank gunner, who isn't going to have the perks in the first place, or you have to carry dead weight with you, or you have to send them as a tagalong on stealth missions and just send them directly to evac out. None of this really seems like good design.

The problem with using ammo as means of balance is that it does not accomplish the goal of balancing the class. It is still just as powerful as it always was. You could change it so that every ability used all their ammo, regardless of clip size, and it would still be just as powerful. All you really accomplish is applying a higher skill cap on the class. Players inexperienced at the tactical layer will have a hard time making the class work, while skilled players will see little to no impact at all because they understand the game well enough to make it work.

I believe this is largely why you hear people complain that Sharpshooter is somehow bad. I take them on timed missions all the time, you just have to know how to use them. But players without 100s if not 1000s of hours of experience don't have that kind of knowledge yet, so they tend to simply not use them, in which case they don't learn how to either.

Now I'm not suggesting that all classes should be easy for someone to play on their first campaign. But if the goal is to balance the class, adding a skill cap doesn't accomplish that goal. I'm not making all these arguments for myself. They really don't affect me at all. I think if balance is to be achieved then there needs to be a better way, and I know I'm not the only one who thinks this. Problem is those people are also quite skilled and mostly aren't concerned because it doesn't affect the game for them. I would love to see Gunner be more balanced, this is just not accomplishing it.
Last edited by chrisb on Sun Apr 02, 2017 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
LordYanaek
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by LordYanaek »

darkerevent wrote:
chrisb wrote:But it doesn't really do that at all. By the time you have the powerful CD perks, your not using Hail and Demo as much, and you have bigger mags by then so the 5 ammo cost doesn't matter. The time when your using Hail and Demo the most is when you have no better options and you dont have the big mags yet. Basically march and april. It just doesn't make sense for such an early game perk to grind the class to a halt. I get that CD gunner isn't meant to be a highly mobile thing, but does it really need to be turned into a Turret?
Agreed. I will reiterate that nerfing ammo costs on the cooldowns is only going to hurt early game gunners, who are (1) expected to go on more on-the-run GOps missions than they'll be expected to go on later and (2) are still reliant on loot RNG to get autoloaders and expanded magazines to support their play style.
Expanded mags are the reason why it makes sense to have a 5 ammo cost. With 4 ammo, if you have an elite mag you can use two abilities without reloading and if the cost is only 3 you can use both in a row as soon as you have a basic mag. With a cost of 5 you still have to reload each turn if you want to cycle the CD abilities. Autoloaders are the only real issue but at they allow at most 3 move-reload-shoot turns.

Apart from completely rewriting the Gunners trees to put cooldown perks in competition with each other, and as a result completely remove the CD gunner build, i think the most sensible way to balance them is by making them low mobility and thus bad on some missions while keeping them very strong when the mission allows them. Reducing mobility can be done either by forcing reload or making those perks require both actions (like Cyclic Fire). Forcing reloads is actually the least punishing option as you can still move to a better position on the first round of engagement and you won't totally loose a turn when you eventually have to reload. The only issue is that it makes those perks quite bad to gt through the AWC (for Hail of Bullets) as you need a Magazine mod to use them in the first place.
chrisb wrote: The problem with using ammo as means of balance is that it does not accomplish the goal of balancing the class. It is still just as powerful as it always was. You could change it so that every ability used all their ammo, regardless of clip size, and it would still be just as powerful. All you really accomplish is applying a higher skill cap on the class. Players inexperienced at the tactical layer will have a hard time making the class work, while skilled players will see little to no impact at all because they understand the game well enough to make it work.
That's a good point but having a specialized strong build (i don't like talking about class as CG Gunner ≠ Gunner) can give more room to other builds/classes while at the same time keeping them very strong when you need them. This can create some sort of asymmetrical balance between different classes/builds where every one is better than others in the right situation without any being always better. Asymmetrical balance, while much harder to achieve is also much more interesting in games (it's the reason the first Starcraft game was such a success being the first strategy game to feature totally different camps with entirely unique units and almost 0 overlap in functions or tactics).
If CD Gunners can be balanced around weaknesses to compensate for their strength they can stay as strong as they are now without being globally overpowered.
darkerevent
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by darkerevent »

LordYanaek wrote:
That's a good point but having a specialized strong build (i don't like talking about class as CG Gunner ≠ Gunner) can give more room to other builds/classes while at the same time keeping them very strong when you need them.
I sincerely don't think this can happen for Gunners as long as Area Suppression is baseline. It's too much power baked into existing as the class and ensures that a CD gunner always has a less-aggressive, control-oriented option available for moments when their useful "spells" are on cooldown. Because of that, there also isn't enough design space available to make the perks on the suppression side of the tree "strong enough" to be worth dedicated investment.

This demonstrates itself well in how things currently are in-game: even without taking any suppression-enhancing perks, Area Suppression is still the strongest infinitely reusable ability for controlling clumped-up enemies, and it will still have a good chance of dealing severe damage to them (a normal hit from the strongest medium range gun in the game) if they happen to move.

As a point of comparison, consider a non-overwatch ranger's overwatch capabilities, versus those of an MSGT overwatch ranger with CUP, RR, EV, and so on. They're starkly different both in terms of number of reaction shots that can be taken and the average expected potency of those shots, and the overwatch ranger's EV perk even allows their overwatch to be run-and-gunned into with no cooldown. The functionality difference is huge -- as it should be when you're talking about a build difference that involves six or seven differing perk choices from one another.

Now consider a suppression-built gunner, versus a CD gunner who just happens to have chosen to area suppress on that turn because there was no better option. While it's technically true that the suppression-built gunner has a higher damage potential on that turn, the difference in practical functionality between the two is minimal. For instance, the suppression gunner's suppression doesn't debuff the enemies' aim by a larger amount or anything like that; it's just more likely to kill rather than maim IF the enemies happen to decide to run it, and it may have a one-tile larger radius if DZ was chosen. That's basically it.

The gunner has no actual "master of suppression" perk options like "You can take damage one time while suppressing without having your suppression broken" or "your suppressed targets suffer a further -20 reduction to aim" or "targets who remain in your suppression have an additional chance to have their cover destroyed before the start of the next player turn, with environmental damage scaling based on weapon tech."

Stuff like that would be build-defining, but it doesn't exist and can't exist because it would make min-maxing a hybrid gunner too easy -- again, as long as Area Sup is still baseline.

The closest things to such are Lockdown, Mayhem, and CUP -- all three of which are mainly focused on dealing damage, which a CD gunner generally does better than a suppression gunner anyway without needing to muck around with making the enemies run the suppression. If you're looking to control via red fog and death, a CD gunner is a much better fit.

For the sake of discussions of mobility versus immobility, I should also mention here that if one builds a character as a suppression gunner, that character is currently on average just as ammo starved and immobile as a cooldown gunner is, because Area Suppression is equally ammo intensive for both of them. Again, there is no perk for suppression builds that does something relevant to that issue, such as something that would have an effect like "Your first two reaction shots during Area Suppression don't cost any ammo."

So, in closing:

It sounds like, in 1.3, every build of gunner is going to be (mostly) move-and-shoot capable if has exmags and autoloader charges, but (largely) move-and-shoot incapable if they do not. The exception will be the yellow actions (Cyclic Fire and Killzone), which are just immobile regardless. I don't think those ammo cost increases are a good design choice because their main net impact is to introduce more loot RNG dependence into the early game, (which the early game, imo, already doesn't need more of) on a class and meta-favored build that has far more that's wrong with it than ammo costs.

If that's going to be how it is, then I'd at least like to see some kind of mobility-oriented options in the middle of the tree (possibly giving some love to the oft-ignored Combat Knife in the process -- Fleche in the tree, and a third-tier combat knife existing, anyone?) as well as the option for gunners to equip SMGs if they so choose (so that I can carry them through early GOps without their big hunka-chunka cannon being a detection liability before I'm good and ready to be seen).
chrisb
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by chrisb »

I think items like Elite Mags should really not factor into balance all that much. For the most part they are quite rare. If your not mass farming supply raids, which snowballs into high rank soldiers that can then plow through GOPs quite easily, your not getting large amounts of loot. Also Elite stuff is rather rare until you hit the late game. At that point balance really isn't as important as the aliens start getting rather obscene and a little extra kick doesn't hurt. It's mostly the early and mid game where balance matters since it can either snowball or tank your campaign depending on which way the wind blows. I'm not saying they shouldn't be considered at all, but saying that something has to be some way because in some rare case you might have a little bit of imbalance is overtuning imo.

I agree with the Suppression build being not nearly as economical of a perk choice. I have been playing around with using Suppression builds in combination with Assault/Technical heavy squads. I've only done a couple of troop columns with them so far, and it's early so I don't have a lot of the good perks yet. It does work well and allows you a lot more leeway to pulling fog of war. Combos nice with a rocket to use Area Supression as a psuedo Kill Zone. But overall it feels like I'm simply leaving more on the field to shoot at me, even if they are lower % shots and they are no more mobile. And when there's nothing to supress, your not able to do anything else really well. Your sort of a 1 trick pony, a trick that every gunner gets anyway. So I'm not sure I'll stick with it for very long though I'll at least keep it up for this campaign to see how it plays out.
chrisb
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by chrisb »

I just remembered something from LW1 that I think was sort of an artifact/bug of the game engine. Sometimes when you supressed you actually did destroy cover. It was rare and wasn't something you could really hope for. I think it's sort of like how when you take a shot off a roof top you can wind up destroying your own cover if your shooting at a hard down angle, especially with a shotgun. I learned the hard way not to overwatch with shotguns from rooftops, bad times.

I think it would be interesting if one of the perks gave you something like a 5 or 10% chance to destroy cover on targets you Area Supress. It should be doable since the mechanics are sort of a hybrid of Sat Fire and Demolition. Not sure PI would go for it though :lol:
LordYanaek
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by LordYanaek »

darkerevent wrote: If that's going to be how it is, then I'd at least like to see some kind of mobility-oriented options in the middle of the tree (possibly giving some love to the oft-ignored Combat Knife in the process -- Fleche in the tree, and a third-tier combat knife existing, anyone?) as well as the option for gunners to equip SMGs if they so choose (so that I can carry them through early GOps without their big hunka-chunka cannon being a detection liability before I'm good and ready to be seen).
Interestingly, i have a gunner who rolled Fleche as AWC and i also know (i play with AWC perks revealed) that she has Blademaster and Bladestorm at T2. I took Combative for the first time and will see how a knife heavy gunner plays :D

If Area suppression is such an issue in your games (in my games CD gunners rarely if ever suppressed anything, if they had nothing better to do, they would try to kill something with a direct shot), another option that wouldn't require redoing the entire tree would be to reduce the efficiency of Area Suppression as you can't be as good at suppressing a large area as you would be against a single target - like -15 aim penalty rather than -30 and half damage if you hit - and add bonuses to the suppression perks so that you can eventually get Area Suppression to be as effective as it is now only if you invest into several perks. If you just move it into the tree (say to Cpl) it will be a one time choice between HoB and Area Suppression and won't really require you to focus on suppression built like the Overwatch Rangers of your example.
chrisb
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by chrisb »

That's a good compromise. Nerfing default AS and allowing it to be made better through perks.

I wouldn't have changed the tree all that much really. I would have simply swapped it for Flush. Flush at baseline is usable and not OP. You still get regular suppression.

As for CD gunners not using it much. It really depends on the pods you pull. It's super exploitable for large 20+ alien pulls. With that many ayys they have to bunch up to get cover and are often easily flanked because of it. If you have 3 CD gunners and you pull that, simply have them suppress all the things first turn, kill what you can, double flashbang with RD Grenadier and watch as they get slaughtered by suppression on their turn or just hunker down. Even if they run they are flashbanged, but typically they just hunker. As the numbers diminish you simply use more gunners to kill with. It wasn't hard to get 40+ enemy supply raids where I got shot at less than 10 times pulling 16-24 on the first turn. It sounds like suicide, but really the AI just goes batshit crazy with that much suppression and no cover to run to, especially while flashbanged, and even worse if you play with red fog. So funny watching things shoot for -5% to hit...
dstar3k
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by dstar3k »

chrisb wrote:double flashbang with RD Grenadier
Wait.

WAIT.

Flashbang STACKS?!?!

....Wow have I been passing up opportunities....
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by chrisb »

Not sure if that's sarcasm or not :lol:

In case not, no they don't stack.
darkerevent
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by darkerevent »

LordYanaek wrote: Interestingly, i have a gunner who rolled Fleche as AWC and i also know (i play with AWC perks revealed) that she has Blademaster and Bladestorm at T2. I took Combative for the first time and will see how a knife heavy gunner plays :D

If Area suppression is such an issue in your games (in my games CD gunners rarely if ever suppressed anything, if they had nothing better to do, they would try to kill something with a direct shot), another option that wouldn't require redoing the entire tree would be to reduce the efficiency of Area Suppression as you can't be as good at suppressing a large area as you would be against a single target - like -15 aim penalty rather than -30 and half damage if you hit - and add bonuses to the suppression perks so that you can eventually get Area Suppression to be as effective as it is now only if you invest into several perks. If you just move it into the tree (say to Cpl) it will be a one time choice between HoB and Area Suppression and won't really require you to focus on suppression built like the Overwatch Rangers of your example.
First of all, good luck with the knifeplay-capable gunner. That sounds awesome. xD I really wish there was a third tier knife to use with it.

Area Suppression's power issue is twofold. It locks enemies out of casting most abilities (similar to a flashbang), and it provides the aim debuff.

Most of the time that I use Area Suppression on swarmy combat missions, it's more for the insurance against ability usage, since enemies typically have a low % chance to hit anyway due to smoke and cover. While nerfing the aim debuff would technically help, it still won't keep CD gunners from noping an enemy cluster's grenades, etc., which allows the player to save a flashbang for later.

For context: if there's an essential enemy cluster that I must be certain will not take special actions, I either flashbang them or alpha strike them out of existence, but I will use Area Suppression to keep secondary and less-important clusters locked down so that my flashbangs and explosives can remain usable over more of the mission. That's most of what I use it for, although occasionally I'll use it on a huge pile of enemies after a bad pull, and then also flashbang them.

While I think that reducing the aim penalty on Area Suppression and then giving it back (and more) via a perk is a good idea, I'm not sure it will actually correct the core of the issue I'm currently seeing, which is that stacking several gunners in a squad is just too easy to do, even with all of them having the same (or nearly the same) CD-oriented build, because they can each serve as an endlessly reusable mini-flashbang when needed. (That, and as chrisb noted a while ago, the area suppression also doubles as an AoE attack as long as the enemies can be influenced to run it.)

I should also add that in most cases I don't take low % standard shots on my gunner over suppressing, since the security of the suppression interfering with the enemy getting off a grenade (or other shenanigans) appeals to me more than speculating on an unreliable shot. Of course, that might vary with situation and squad comp, but it's the general principle I follow, and I probably get less wounds from unexpected grenades than I would if I took the shots. The way that the CD gunners can be so frighteningly strong on damage while also giving that security on-demand is the main issue I'm having.

--And to the posts that have been made since I started writing this: flashbangs don't stack, but when there are that many aliens active you usually need to flashbang two locations in a single turn in order to get most/all of them, which is why RD double deploying comes in handy.
dstar3k
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Re: Gunner Nerfs

Post by dstar3k »

chrisb wrote:Not sure if that's sarcasm or not :lol:

In case not, no they don't stack.
Not sarcasm. And I'd been assuming it didn't stack. :)

In my defense, I had to go pick up my wife's ashes this morning. I was very, very drunk (to quote Abe Dumbledore -- bonus points for anyone who recognizes where the quote is from).

No one should have to do that at 44. Damn it.

Shalon Wood
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