[Reiki]

Hello everyone, Reiki here

Starting today, I want to run a weekly event that might help with game design on a personal level or not. The challenge is simple. Test a weapon and after sufficient testing, figure out if it needs to be buffed or nerfed. These are competitive standards. This means you have to think in terms of if you would take this weapon, as is, to a tournament to win. You can go a step further and give ideas on how the specific weapon can be buffed or nerfed. If you feel it's neutral, just say so.

I'll be testing out this weapon and I'll leave a few notes I've had about the weapon. Think of it as initial thoughts I've had. Hope to see plenty of people participate! Participants get a special title at the end of the week!



Mindshock Melee attack:
A close range attack similar to the vital shock. Limited uses per life (Subject to change). Freeze enemy in place if in range and does true damage, eats hp = to damage. Does multiple hits and can be sidedashed out of.

[-NoctiS]

I think the weapon has it's place in S4, it's difficult to use and lacks versatility on the more basic maps and especially in td, but it's worth a look at in dm games even though it's still really hard to successfully pick up and be good at.

I don't think the weapon needs a buff or a nerf and adding a melee attack wouldn't work all that well because the weapon has such a huge delay after you finish shooting.

I believe that the only thing that could need adjusting is the cooldown time after you finish shooting, but that doesn't need to be done imho.

[.Trace]

Pros:

• Has Auto-Aim
  
• Only weapon that can restore health to the user
  
• Can hit through walls

Cons:

• Very low damage input
  
• Ineffective in long range
  
• Healing effect is too low
  
• Long delay after shooting

It's low damage output is not useful at all in touchdown (If I remember correctly it takes 13 seconds to kill someone with a Mind Shock only) and the healing effect is not enough to sustain yourself even against a single opponent. Considering how slow you move with a mind shock and the delay you have after shooting, you leave yourself open to all kind of attacks. Even adding this weapon a regular weapon setup is hard. After a few touchdown games of trying to add Mind Shock to my setup, I settled with this setup: Smash Rifle / Counter-Sword / Mind Shock @ Flying. Smash-Rifle as a shooting weapon, Counter-Sword as your melee weapon, which also combined with Flying opens the possibility to wing dash, and mind shock. The reason I picked Flying is not because of the wing dash, but because It's one of the only ways to increase Mind Shock's damage output, by adjusting your height so you get constant criticals. However even with Flying and constant criticals this weapon's damage is too small to compete against a shooting weapon, and it's delay is too big to avoid a melee weapon. Maybe some people will use it as an auxiliary weapon, to pressure their opponents by shooting through walls with it and I do believe that's what Mind Shock's supposed to be, an auxiliary weapon, however it will rarely be used because there are far more useful utility weapons to equip such as an Air Gun or a Sentry Gun.

Considering buffing or nerfing the weapon, you have to be very careful when adjusting a weapon with auto-aim and self-healing abilities. One of my suggestions would be to increase the damage by a few points while decreasing maximum clip. This will result in Mind Shock dealing damage faster, however it'll also result in frequent reloads. Another less effective buff would be to reduce the delays animation abit and tone up the movement speed up a notch, maybe leave it at the same speed as Semi-Rifle.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the self-healing is 3 health for normal hits and 4 health for criticals. If they want to go to another direction with Mind Shock, and keep it as a self-healing vampire-like weapon, buffing up the critical healing effect would also work.

Excuse any grammar/spelling mistakes, English is not my first language

This post has been edited by .Trace: 05 August 2011 - 02:36 PM

[Chauy]

-looks around for Naota-

In my opinion, and Trace has stated this already, it would be hard to buff or nerf something like Mind Shock and because of that, as Noctis said, it is a very situational weapon.
I've played around with MS before and I think it's only good for momentary harassment or last hitting (tehe last hitting).

I don't think it should be buffed as far as damage goes.
Maybe a slight buff to its HP recovery would be good. Actually, giving it 100% life steal might not be a bad idea.
It has low damage so it won't kill people easily, and so you have that trade off of "do I need to kill them fast or can I afford to try and recover HP?"

Providing another versatility function, like a melee as Reiki stated, could also help it to be used more.
Although I was thinking something more in the line of smash rifle pimp slap.

Another secondary function could be:
right click = projects a field where mind shock hits all enemies, at the cost of decreased damage, increased energy use, and becoming stationary during use
If enemies stay in the field for 3 seconds then they get interrupted (like a spy dagger light slash)

I think 3 seconds is a really long time, more than enough to get out of the AoE
But it would make MS more useful and maybe even really f****** annoying if their whole team runs it and the fields stack lol
Actually never mind don't make the fields stack

This post has been edited by Chauy: 05 August 2011 - 03:12 PM

[.Trace]

Chauy, on 05 August 2011 - 03:12 PM, said:

-looks around for Naota-

In my opinion, and Trace has stated this already, it would be hard to buff or nerf something like Mind Shock and because of that, as Noctis said, it is a very situational weapon.
I've played around with MS before and I think it's only good for momentary harassment or last hitting (tehe last hitting).

I don't think it should be buffed as far as damage goes.
Maybe a slight buff to its HP recovery would be good. Actually, giving it 100% life steal might not be a bad idea.
It has low damage so it won't kill people easily, and so you have that trade off of "do I need to kill them fast or can I afford to try and recover HP?"

Providing another versatility function, like a melee as Reiki stated, could also help it to be used more.
Although I was thinking something more in the line of smash rifle pimp slap.

Another secondary function could be:
right click = projects a field where mind shock hits all enemies, at the cost of decreased damage, increased energy use, and becoming stationary during use
If enemies stay in the field for 3 seconds then they get interrupted (like a spy dagger light slash)

I think 3 seconds is a really long time, more than enough to get out of the AoE
But it would make MS more useful and maybe even really f****** annoying if their whole team runs it and the fields stack lol
Actually never mind don't make the fields stack

I'll have to disagree with you when it comes to buffing damage or healing. Giving Mind Shock 100% life steal means that you will get 10 hp back every second, more if you crit. That's alot higher than Mind Energy normaly heals. The main problem with Mind Shock is not it's damage either, It's the time required to deal maximum damage. If the weapon had abit more burst damage, but also more cooldown time, it would be way more useful in modes such as Touchdown. But in the end, you can't go too heavy buffing up a weapon that gives you life-steal and doesn't factor aim, just positioning.

[Chauy]

.Trace, on 05 August 2011 - 03:17 PM, said:

I'll have to disagree with you when it comes to buffing damage or healing. Giving Mind Shock 100% life steal means that you will get 10 hp back every second, more if you crit. That's alot higher than Mind Energy normaly heals. The main problem with Mind Shock is not it's damage either, It's the time required to deal maximum damage. If the weapon had abit more burst damage, but also more cooldown time, it would be way more useful in modes such as Touchdown. But in the end, you can't go too heavy buffing up a weapon that gives you life-steal and doesn't factor aim, just positioning.

Mm I agree about the damage buff
But Reiki said the premise is what will make me decide to bring it into a tournament match

I'm not amazing at S4 and I've only been in 2 matches, and one of them was pretty low level, so my opinion maaay not be the best
But I think the question of "do I heal or do I kill quickly?" is an interesting one.
10 HP/second, I don't think that will help you survive if you get shot at or CS jump attacked

The reason I want to buff its life steal and not its damage is the same reason that you don't want to buff its damage
It would be too ridiculous

[V-Breezy]

The only map I could see mindshock being effective on, at least TD wise, would be station 1. I've found that a smg/ms/sentry/detect set works really well on that map. Because you have detect, you can see people behind walls so you know not to run around the corner and get CS'd. It also allows you to see sentries and take them out in case the other team likes to camp with nells.

The purpose of the set is mid control. I usually like to put my sent down near the enemies base so if they try to run out for the ball they get pushed around. The MS combined with detect makes it so you can damage the enemy while they are still in their base, which lets you avoid taking damage while whittling down their health. And if they decide to come out of their base and push towards the ball, the sentry usually either kills them because they are so low on health from the mind shock, or just weaken them enough so you or your teammates can finish them in a few shots.

I don't think the mindshock needs a buff at all, considering it would be really hard to buff a autoaim weapon without completely unbalancing it. Maybe leave the damage how it is but make it so if the enemies are close together, you can shock multiple people at the same time.

[Lag]

Mindshock is a weapon designed to harass the person getting shock from it. The shock can go through walls, has auto aim, and returns HP back to the user. It also makes an annoying "BZZT" noise when hitting the target. The drawbacks is very limited range, low damage output, and low speed while carrying it. This weapon has limited use in TD due to people constantly moving around and going out of range on MS. Only TD maps I would even consider taking MS on would be St-2, St-1, and Temple-M. In DM, though, it has more uses due to people tending to camp. Combined with Detect, MS can check and kill people hiding behind walls and buildings. Even without Detect, it's a useful tool to check who's behind a corner.

Against other weapons, MS is at a disadvantage to almost all of them due to its low damage and range. Out of all the auto aim weapons, IMO, MS has the lowest DPS out of them unless buffed with AP, and even then, crits are the main source of damage with the weapon. If MS is not critting, it barely does anything. Never go into a straight up gun fight using MS. If the person can aim, MS loses every time. Suggested that if using MS to start a fight, make sure to start it behind walls and land as many crits as possible before the other person gets out of range.

Considering buffs or nerfs for Mindshock, it's hard to try and change around with a weapon the auto aims and heals the user without trying to imbalance it. That being said, I think MS needs a slight buff. Maybe adding a "chain" effect so MS can damage two targets at once. The chain hit with connect with the closest person to the target being shocked. Target of chain must be really close to main target, can't crit, and does maybe like 30% of damage from main hit.

[Shienryu]

This is a great exercise, but I don't have my thoughts on it as I don't bother to play S4 and I never use Mind Shock... But it would be cool to see people use it.

[Reiki]

I think everyone benefits from understanding other options. Plus, the forum is not as much used for strategy as it should so I thought giving people an incentive to do so might be nice. Any data you use, we might try to put on the front page. :-) Shienryu, why not give it a shot? I wouldn't mind getting online for a little bit to try it with some of you guys.

[Lag]

Since no one mentioned it yet and really helps MS in terms of damage, to get crits with it, you must have the cross-heir on the target and be on the same elevation as the target (or close to it).

[volton]

Ok, imma do some matches with ms, and see how it goes ^-^ Brb

[Reiki]

I've done a total of 20 games today. So far, I've found it doesn't help a lot on full hp opponents. If you need to pick off people, homing rifle does about the same thing. I feel the healing is negligible. Why add a feature if it doesn't do a lot. Its switch time, as Noctis mentioned, is really slow and could be useful if that lag time wasn't so long. I still think something to encourage close-quarters combat and deal some extra damage is a good feature that could be added. High-risk and reward for a weapon like this could make it competitive without breaking balance.

[Energy]

Maybe Cancel that lag with an airhug? could someone test that

[.Trace]

Energy, on 05 August 2011 - 09:40 PM, said:

Maybe Cancel that lag with an airhug? could someone test that

You can cancel it with shield, but by taking shield you give up on Flying, so you also give up on 100% critical strikes, making the damage even lower.

[Reiki]

I still feel after so many games that a big problem is the damage. Even if it healed for 50% of the overall damage, the damage is just negligible. It does so little. A hacker type weapon like this is not the same as the Homing Rifle or Spark Rifle because they can hit from halfway across the map! This has a mid to close range as well as no rear invincibility so getting behind a mindshock opponent stops the fight there.

[.Trace]

Reiki, on 05 August 2011 - 11:32 PM, said:

I still feel after so many games that a big problem is the damage. Even if it healed for 50% of the overall damage, the damage is just negligible. It does so little. A hacker type weapon like this is not the same as the Homing Rifle or Spark Rifle because they can hit from halfway across the map! This has a mid to close range as well as no rear invincibility so getting behind a mindshock opponent stops the fight there.

I believe the problem is not the damage, but the amount of time the weapon requires to kill. Thats why I suggested increasing the damage but lowering the ammo count, so the weapon does the same amount of damage in less time, but as a trade-off you'll have to reload even more.

[dropship]

i'm finding my semi/smg/mind shock set extremely useful in ironheart, mostly because of how much cover there is here.

[Hamlet Piglet]

The damage of the mind shock is fine but the weapon itself is abysmal performance wise compared to other weapons in every situation. In my honest opinion using mindshock in 99% of the cases feels like a huge waste of time. I could even say it feels incomplete? I played around with it and only found it useful Battle Royale but even then it's not at all that useful. A big noticeable problem is that it really doesn't help out in team modes at all.

For the Mind Shock:
The DPS/RoF (Rate of Fire) = low, the running speed = low, the range = low and the disruption capabilities = low as well, with the only redeeming factor being easy aim and very small heal.
No I would never use this in a tournament...

Hard to know what to do with Mind Shock, but I can brainstorm some ideas.
----------------
Brainstorm:

Damage With Mind shock = charge up for a right click ability? stun, knockback, or a blast?

Self Heal more on a kill

Slows Down target (slightly but more on crit range)

increasing self heal depending on the combo counter (yeah i forgot that was in the game)...
----------------

Keeping the ablility to fight against it but giving it a more suited utility is what I'm aiming at.