I keep reading posts that go along the lines of needing to "compromise" with the nerfers.
This isn't a democracy. The nerfers won't hold the game hostage until their demands are met. Tactical cloak, and infiltrators in general, are working pretty much as intended. Their whole game revolves around stacking damage boosts into the stratosphere to deal critical damage to high-priority targets.
As far as I can tell, the only time Bioware really "nerfs" guns or powers is when said guns/powers allow the players to render enemies helpless on Gold.
The major examples that come to mind are:
1. Falcon: this gun was designed to be a powerful grenade launcher, not a universal stun-locking device. Yeah it was a ton of fun, but it was seriously broken. Now, it is quite usable when not firing blanks, and can even be used for much more reasonable group stun-locking with the hunter mode ROF increase, or the turian soldier's marksman ROF increase.
Or, you know, you could use the striker, which was designed as a rapid-fire grenade launcher.
2. Sabotage - Hacking: This power allowed the Quarian Infiltrator to rend Geth hilariously helpless on Gold. Again, sad to see it go, but it had to happen. Having said that, I feel like this nerf went just a bit too far. It takes too long for enemies to start attacking a hacked enemy. By the time they do, the hack is either about to wear off, or your team will have already killed everyone in the group, including your target.
It would be nice to have some of Sabotage's versatility back without making it a Geth game-breaker. I don't want the power to be able to single-handedly be able to decimate the Geth (well, okay, I actually do, but in the same way that I want a gun that shoots thresher maws and biotic gods). I just would like to be able to use the power as a brief distraction, a way to cover my escape, just to occupy the rest of the group of enemies for a couple of seconds.
Still, it has its uses vs. synthetics, which brings me to...
3) Sabotage (again!): Backfire: So this one took a while to catch onto because A) enemies killed just by backfire damage don't give points (bug, I presume), and
the wording of how sabotage's backfire works is misleading as all get-out. It talks about overheating an enemy's weapon, but it has absolutely nothing to do with that: it is simply a delayed direct damage and stun skill vs. organics.
The broken part came when some clever players discovered that by quickly stacking sabotage, they could immediately trigger previously cast sabotages while stacking the "vulnerability" evolution's 100% increase to tech powers - powers like *
sabotage*, allowing a couple of Quarian infiltrators with the correct build decimate reapers - yes, even
Brutes and
Banshees - in
seconds,
without firing a shot. (Oh, and btw: Sabotage has a small area of effect against organics
).
You can still do this, but they scaled back the tech vulnerability stacking, so you can't just frolic around casting sabotage, giddily laughing while reapers drop dead all around you on Gold.
The rest of the "nerfs" have been pretty tame tweaks to bring gun damage, ammo, and/or weight into line with its rank and intended utility.
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So why do I bring this up? To illustrate a point: Bioware's balancing goals are not to make the infiltrator less competitive against your class(es) of choice. Their goal is to make the enemies competitive so as not to reduce their game to a simple exploitable gimmick. Having said that, there are limits to what they can do just by tweaking player and enemy parameters, so don't expect A.I. overhalls or map redesigns to eliminate FBWGG any time soon.
Also, don't expect them to radically change how tactical cloak works. It's part of the design of the game, and seeing as how much trouble it has apparently been for them to fix seemingly simple glitches, it probably isn't nearly as easy as some here seem to think.
The only thing that they could do is change the parameters like recharge time and damage bonus, but I don't see them doing that either. Why? Because the margin for error is so small. Infiltrators by and large revolve around tac cloak the same way vanguards revolve around charge. It is the center of their game, and key to surviving and contributing to the team (all novelty builds aside).
Even a seemingly innocuous thing like nerfing the damage boost from tac cloak gimps the infiltrator. It centers entirely around quick bursts of damage on key enemies. To do so, they need to jack their damage up as high as it will go before firing their shot/burst. Watering that down, even by a few measly percentage points, risks hobbling the class in its entirety.
And for what? You want more points? You're playing the wrong game (or with the wrong people). You want stronger guns? The presence of the infiltrator has not prevented Bioware from introducing new strong guns and buffing the ones we already have (remember, the nerfs have been few and far between).
*sigh*
tl;dr The infiltrators seem to be doing exactly what they were designed to do. (P.S. I feel like this could be remedied by a minor overhaul of the scoring system, adding more points to assists, as well as more medals for cooperative actions, like doing a ton of assist damage with certain weapons, or killing enemies attempting to flank your teammates, and so on. There is a natural competitive instinct in human nature, so while the points really don't matter, they can be used to sort of subliminally shape the attitudes of the player base to the desired effect).
I so wanted taht gun to make a mark at last
Retour en haut
:wizard:
