851 réponses à ce sujet

[Drakham]

I feel, like the vanguards and all other classes were designed for bronze and the developper did not think ahead about their usefullness on higher difficulty levels (as the difficulty just means higher live and damage and more mobs).

So if these parameters change, but yours do not, the abilities among all classes lose effect in different amounts.

The vanguard for example works with all of them fine with bronze and pretty much on silver.
For gold, you usually have to change your play tactics.
Like with almost every class, but as you have to go into melee by definition (BC) you are in a situation, most other classes can and try to avoid (e.g. shockwave through a wall).



The Design flaw could be changed in two different ways in my opinion.
They have to give you the option to increase the damage OR the defense significantly.

Damage could be depending on class if you get options to increase weapon damage and/or more damage to your powers, but you cant get the maximum in protection.

Protection you can get a mix of damage reduction and amount of shields you have.


The exact combination could be depending on the races and they probably want to favor races coming out latest or the once being more rare to get to be stronger.

The reason why the KV works probably best is simply the fact, that he is less weak with little lag peaks and he can take some damage. Which you always need when you go toe to toe.

I doubt BW will change something significantly in the class design so this wont change, but higher shields and a DR for all vanguards could work to make them work better on higher difficulties.

Most likely, they would not do so much damage like other classes and they are not good at debuffing, like an engineer for example, but they could keep the enemy busy and draw fire onto themselves.

For damage dealing and debuffing there are other classes by design.
There could still be differences in how tough they are depending on the race and if the race gets a nice extra ability, like for examle asari bubble so you can charge into it.

But i doubt they will change such big design parts and only tweak a little on the damage and life and numbers of the enemies as seen so far.
All in all, everything they changed, were only minor changes on some numbers.
Not a fundamental change, like changing abilities or such.

Depending the different difficulty levels...
As the difficulty level is regulated, by how hard it is to kill the enemy and how fast he can kill you and not factors like totally new or unpredictable behavior or "smarter" enemies like in a chess programm, the usefulness of abilities, designed for bronze or maybe silver, will lessen depending on its working mechanism on higher difficulties in different speed.
So some abilities lose its flavor/usefulness faster than others.

Playing a vanguard shows this.
But the same goes to a different degree to all classes.

sidenote: smarter enemies would mean for example different group tactics or synergy effects between the abilities of the enemies.
As most of them dont have much when it comes to biotic theres not much combination ebtween them except that sneakier classes like hunter or phantom like to tag along with others (like how hunter licke to accompany some pyros so the players go for the pyros and hopefully notice the hunters too late).

Modifié par Drakham, 05 août 2012 - 01:19 .

[Quething]

Drakham wrote...

Most likely they would not do so much damage like other classes and they are not good at debuffing like an engineer for example but they could keep the enemy busy and draw fire onto themselves.

For a class to contribute meaningfully as a "tank" requires tanking to be a meaningful role in the metagame. In ME3, it is not. Enemies die too quickly (even on Platinum) to benefit from long-term distraction, and the difference in the enemy damage/player mitigation ratio between the most fragile class and the most sturdy class is too infintesimal a fraction of the total enemy damage/player health ratio. The game is simply not set up to support the tank/dps dichotomy.

I mean, it's true that a well-played vanguard, novaguard in particular, can lead a group of mobs on a merry chase around the wrong side of the map relatively safely compared to several other classes, easily holding aggro without killing any of them, in order to facilitate an upload objective or keep pressure away from the landing zone during extraction. That this is a niche role only applicable about 9% of the time, totally unecessary with a good team and just as easily and safely performed by an engineer or soldier, however, makes it not only true, but totally irrelevant.

As decent at hit-and-run aggro as they are, non-kroguard vanguards cannot survive prolonged engagements with enemies they actually intend to kill, and even if, as you propose, they could, that alone wouldn't give them the ability to meaningfully contribute to the team. Simply staying alive benefits no one. Any vanguard who's been last man standing trying to kill a Gold banshee can attest to that. Even the so-called support classes engineer and sentinel will end the round faster. Given barrier regen and the inability to boost damage by charging, with the wrong gun and no disruptor ammo for tech bursts, a vanguard may not even be able to end the round at all.

Modifié par Quething, 05 août 2012 - 01:56 .

[Drakham]

Quething wrote...

Drakham wrote...

Most likely they would not do so much damage like other classes and they are not good at debuffing like an engineer for example but they could keep the enemy busy and draw fire onto themselves.

For a class to contribute meaningfully as a "tank" requires tanking to be a meaningful role in the metagame. In ME3, it is not. Enemies die too quickly (even on Platinum) to benefit from long-term distraction, and the difference in the enemy damage/player mitigation ratio between the most fragile class and the most sturdy class is too infintesimal a fraction of the total enemy damage/player health ratio. The game is simply not set up to support the damage/dps dichotomy.

I mean, it's true that a well-played vanguard, novaguard in particular, can lead a group of mobs on a merry chase around the wrong side of the map relatively safely compared to several other classes, easily holding aggro without killing any of them, in order to facilitate an upload objective or keep pressure away from the landing zone during extraction. That this is a niche role only applicable about 9% of the time, totally unecessary with a good team and just as easily and safely performed by an engineer or soldier, however, makes it not only true, but totally irrelevant.

As decent at hit-and-run aggro as they are, non-kroguard vanguards cannot survive prolonged engagements with enemies they actually intend to kill, and even if, as you propose, they could, that alone wouldn't give them the ability to meaningfully contribute to the team. Simply staying alive benefits no one. Any vanguard who's been last man standing trying to kill a Gold banshee can attest to that. Even the so-called support classes engineer and sentinel will end the round faster. Given barrier regen and the inability to boost damage by charging, with the wrong gun and no disruptor ammo for tech bursts, a vanguard may not even be able to end the round at all.

I agree with you mostly...
But doesnt the same go for every class which has to depend on their weapons to do the damage?
I mean the vanguard is not different to a soldier there, only that the soldier probably can make any weapon shine whereas the vanguard has to rely almost completely on the power of the weapon itself (plus some damage bonus).
The "tanking" was meant more like drawing fire onto yourself so your teammates can fire at the boss without fear to take damage themselves.

Of course you can kite a boss with every class. I was not talking trinity here. But i think it could help on higher difficulties if you could use a class for tanking and others could neglect some of their shields for even more damage.

But all this is probably meaningless to discuss anyway as i doubt BW will change something significantly.

And isnt the Kroguard the better canvuard on higher difficulties mainly because his survivability is is so high? 
The human vanguard (Novaguard) is doing basicly the same, just that he depends on his invulnerability during the nova/BC instead of high shields and damage mitigation + BC of the Kroguard.

Despite all that as i said i think i mostly agree with you except a little bit on the being uselessnes part of survivability.

Modifié par Drakham, 05 août 2012 - 01:29 .

[Achire]

I was playing with Destruco-Bot's Justicar on Platinum today, and the bubble DR does make it easier to tank (in addition to staggers from BE). Buffing the 4s 50% damage reduction of Charge a little bit does seem reasonable. Just need to be careful that stacking different DR effects doesn't result in too much hardiness.

[Boopitty]

Not to mention nearly every objective is not Vanguard-friendly. Except maybe the devices one; charge does give you good mobility for that one. Uploads are obviously bad as a stationary vanguard is a dead vanguard, the deliveries/escort are also bad for similar reasons. And since all elimination targets on higher difficulties are bosses, vanguards will have difficulty there as well.

[Elotana]

I'm fine with hack/escort objectives not necessarily being vanguard friendly because I'm comfortable with the role of distracting the spawns

[Pedro Costa]

Achire wrote...

I was playing with Destruco-Bot's Justicar on Platinum today, and the bubble DR does make it easier to tank (in addition to staggers from BE). Buffing the 4s 50% damage reduction of Charge a little bit does seem reasonable. Just need to be careful that stacking different DR effects doesn't result in too much hardiness.

Still doesn't solve the phantom problem =P

[EatonTJ]

An idea to throw out there for the novaguard... what about having rank 6 biotic charge evolution be either:
1. 100% shield (the one everyone gets now)
or
2. prime target for 2 seconds (or whatever short time to allow an instant nova detonation, but nothing else).

It would certainly be a high reward for charging and nova-ing, but you'd give up full shields whenever charging from health. Although for better players, having any shields is pretty much the same as having full shields.

Just a thought, but it seems that Novaguards not being able to prime for biotic explosions is what limits their damage on higher levels.

[disappearingone11]

I really like most of the DR discussions and suggestions in this thread, and if Bioware were to implement any meaningful change to vanguards (I'm hoping though not holding my breath), I think that this would be the best way to do it. The alternative would be to significantly boost health/shields to most vanguards, which would be simple enough to do, but would imo likely lead to other balancing issues. For instance I would never advocate that a human, Asari, or Drell have Krogan-esque durability because that would just be silly, even if it worked from a purely gameplay perspective.

As far as tanking is concerned I generally agree with the people saying that there really is no such role in this game, or that tanking is at best situational. The whole idea of holding aggro against trash mobs is a relatively minor task for a tank compared to absorbing boss damage, and tanking bosses is neither viable nor really even necessary. Moreover, what significance there is to grabbing aggro on trash is pretty much limited to silver and early gold waves: bronze is little more than practice mode and can be played however you see fit, while later gold/platinum is full of heavies.

The root of the problem is that the class is simply poorly designed, both conceptually and practically. Conceptually, its especially bad because this soldier/adept hybrid class is (with the lone exception of the Krogan) skewed way to the adept side, which is a fundamental issue. The average vanguard shouldn't be quite as tough as a soldier, but to make almost all of them as weak as adepts is just wrong; the Drell and Phoenix vanguards are identical to their adept counterparts with the exception of BC, the Asari is only slightly more soldier-like due to lift grenades, and though the Slayer is a unique human character like all N7's, he has the same durability as the Fury. And from a practical standpoint vanguards are flawed because their powers (especially the signature biotic charge) are only situationally useful, rarely complement each other well, and scale horribly with difficulty levels. Strong melee potential is also wasted because of poor survivability. So while there are ways of using all of these characters effectively (less so at higher difficulties, but still), their effectiveness comes primarily from not playing like vanguards: you either play as a gimped adept due to fewer useful biotic powers and the ability to create strong detonations, or you play as a very weak soldier. BC is relegated to a defensive/survival move, and is generally unhelpful to the rest of the group. I really don't understand why vanguards were made this way--my best guess is that it was to ensure that they weren't OP--but it's a major design flaw that, unfortunately, will probably never be fixed.

Modifié par disappearingone11, 06 août 2012 - 12:22 .

[Quething]

Boopitty wrote...

Not to mention nearly every objective is not Vanguard-friendly. Except maybe the devices one; charge does give you good mobility for that one. Uploads are obviously bad as a stationary vanguard is a dead vanguard, the deliveries/escort are also bad for similar reasons. And since all elimination targets on higher difficulties are bosses, vanguards will have difficulty there as well.

Oh man, don't get me started on my deep, abiding fury that Charge forces you to drop the pizza in a delivery round. They finally implement an objective that's actually conceptually all about mobility, the one thing we're actually great at, one objective that could finally make us worth our weight in gold once every thirty rounds, at least, and then made us totally impotent useless at it by locking out our main skill while carrying.

That upper-tier novaguards can nova-cancel with melee for better survivability while carrying is small, and I'm pretty sure unintended, consolation.

Modifié par Quething, 06 août 2012 - 10:43 .

[Pedro Costa]

EatonTJ wrote...

An idea to throw out there for the novaguard... what about having rank 6 biotic charge evolution be either:
1. 100% shield (the one everyone gets now)
or
2. prime target for 2 seconds (or whatever short time to allow an instant nova detonation, but nothing else).

It would certainly be a high reward for charging and nova-ing, but you'd give up full shields whenever charging from health. Although for better players, having any shields is pretty much the same as having full shields.

Just a thought, but it seems that Novaguards not being able to prime for biotic explosions is what limits their damage on higher levels.

If Charge only replenishes 50% shields, Nova'ing after a charge will usually do far less than 100% damage since Nova depends entirely on barrier percentage, and even at full damage and a full-nova spec, your damage output is ridiculously low for higher difficulties.

Still far, FAR more appealing than a freaking 25% chance of not triggering a cooldown, tho.

[EatonTJ]

DarkLord_PT wrote...

EatonTJ wrote...

An idea to throw out there for the novaguard... what about having rank 6 biotic charge evolution be either:
1. 100% shield (the one everyone gets now)
or
2. prime target for 2 seconds (or whatever short time to allow an instant nova detonation, but nothing else).

It would certainly be a high reward for charging and nova-ing, but you'd give up full shields whenever charging from health. Although for better players, having any shields is pretty much the same as having full shields.

Just a thought, but it seems that Novaguards not being able to prime for biotic explosions is what limits their damage on higher levels.

If Charge only replenishes 50% shields, Nova'ing after a charge will usually do far less than 100% damage since Nova depends entirely on barrier percentage, and even at full damage and a full-nova spec, your damage output is ridiculously low for higher difficulties.

Still far, FAR more appealing than a freaking 25% chance of not triggering a cooldown, tho.

True, although there would assumedly be plenty of occasions where you could charge with already full shields and do a full Nova Blast. 

[Bleachrude]

Heh....Drell vanguard solo platinum is up on youtube

[Pedro Costa]

EatonTJ wrote...
True, although there would assumedly be plenty of occasions where you could charge with already full shields and do a full Nova Blast.  

On Gold? Sometimes, but it is pretty situational, well, even more so than a "safe" Biotic Charge
Still, like I said, much better than the 25% no cooldown chance. 

Bleachrude wrote...

Heh....Drell vanguard solo platinum is up on youtube

Saw it. Not much Biotic Charging around and the OP did say it was one of the most excrutiating things he did.

Modifié par DarkLord_PT, 06 août 2012 - 02:43 .

[Elotana]

Bleachrude wrote...

Heh....Drell vanguard solo platinum is up on youtube

It's a funny stunt, but watching the video he's just camping the Giant LZ with a Scorpion/Reegar and occasionally running away or charging for barriers. He might as well be playing any class. I could probably survive if I put some heavy guns on the Drellguard and did a FBW Platinum run from behind cover, but that doesn't really solve any of the problems discussed here.

Modifié par Elotana, 06 août 2012 - 02:55 .

[Elder_Jefferson]

Yeah, as above poster said, once you hit Gold the charge is more of an escape mechanism rather than it's initial intent - which is to put a whole lot of bad in your opponents' faces.

If they were to increase the strength of shields after a charge, put some stuns in place for non-barriered enemies, and throw in a temporary weapon bonus after charging - then I might actually be tempted to use the bum in gold matches. To help compensate for these increases, they could reduce his health and/or weight bearing capacity

[Elder_Jefferson]

Just unIocked the slayer, and he's pretty much the antithesis of a vanguard. I only charge lonely enemies or enemies located outside of my immediate sphere of trouble.

Modifié par Elder_Jefferson, 06 août 2012 - 03:10 .

[Pedro Costa]

Elder_Jefferson wrote...
[...]they could reduce his health and/or weight bearing capacity

This... is an absolute "no". Vanguards are soldier/adept hybrids, as it is right now and excluding the Krogan, all vanguards are more or less adepts with Biotic Charge, tipping the scales even more is detrimental to the class.
Not to mention, most decent weapons(not even good ones, decent ones) are reasonably heavy to begin with.

[Elder_Jefferson]

DarkLord_PT wrote...

Elder_Jefferson wrote...
[...]they could reduce his health and/or weight bearing capacity

This... is an absolute "no". Vanguards are soldier/adept hybrids, as it is right now and excluding the Krogan, all vanguards are more or less adepts with Biotic Charge, tipping the scales even more is detrimental to the class.
Not to mention, most decent weapons(not even good ones, decent ones) are reasonably heavy to begin with.

I know it sounds bad at first, but if they incorporate all the other suggestion s I made, he would very playable (and actually fun). You can't have the best of both worlds, so you end up with a "weaker" soldier who can use low-level biotics. It sounds like most people want a krogan who can charge, stasis, and warp/reave - with reaper shields and triple damage bonus...

[Bleachrude]

Elotana wrote...

Bleachrude wrote...

Heh....Drell vanguard solo platinum is up on youtube

It's a funny stunt, but watching the video he's just camping the Giant LZ with a Scorpion/Reegar and occasionally running away or charging for barriers. He might as well be playing any class. I could probably survive if I put some heavy guns on the Drellguard and did a FBW Platinum run from behind cover, but that doesn't really solve any of the problems discussed here.

Really...have you tried soloing platinum with a turian sentinel? It's actually harder IMO since the damn turian doesn't have the mobility of a drell yet the added health/shield on platinum doesn't make one lick of difference...

[Pedactor]

Elder_Jefferson wrote...



I know it sounds bad at first, but if they incorporate all the other suggestion s I made, he would very playable (and actually fun). You can't have the best of both worlds, so you end up with a "weaker" soldier who can use low-level biotics. It sounds like most people want a krogan who can charge, stasis, and warp/reave - with reaper shields and triple damage bonus...

I just want variation.  I don't find Biotic Charge interesting as a Shield Recharge or a small buff.

It's why the Nova Guard remains my favorite since there's actual synergy there outside of Biotic Explosions.

[disappearingone11]

Elder_Jefferson wrote...

I know it sounds bad at first, but if they incorporate all the other suggestion s I made, he would very playable (and actually fun). You can't have the best of both worlds, so you end up with a "weaker" soldier who can use low-level biotics. It sounds like most people want a krogan who can charge, stasis, and warp/reave - with reaper shields and triple damage bonus...

Some people may want that, but that's not at all what most of us are advocating. The problem is that excluding the Krogan, vanguards aren't the soldier/adept hybrids that they're supposed to be, they're just adepts with biotic charge (which actually equates to being adepts with low-level biotics). And the main reason why this doesn't work is that they don't have enough health/shields, not to mention that speccing maximum health/shields as it is comes at the cost of melee power, which should be one of a vanguard's strengths. Therefore, solving the problem can't involve further weakening survivability: whatever biotic charge shield buffs you gave would be negated by decreased health (at least assuming that the former didn't greatly outweigh the latter, and I do mean greatly).

Elder_Jefferson wrote...

Just unIocked the slayer, and he's pretty much the antithesis of a vanguard. I only charge lonely enemies or enemies located outside of my immediate sphere of trouble.

Case in point. Granted, I haven't mastered the Slayer by any means (I've had him for about a week), but it's readily apparent that he's not well equipped to be a vanguard. He can be a makeshift soldier with lightweight weapons and his phase disruptor, and biotic slash is a nice AoE ability that can hit through walls. But how frustrating is it to have great melee abilities combined with the durability of wet tissue paper? And using BC for anything other than defense can be suicidal even on bronze.

[Sereaph502]

Then don't play a slayer like a human vanguard. You don't have the "I'm invincible and kill everything around me!" nova, so don't expect to be play to play the same. The slayer is more of a medium range fighter, with the ability to charge to either get out of danger or reposition.

[thegamefreek78648]

When using the N7 Slayer I use biotic charge followed by a combat roll backwards then the palm blaster and either use biotic charge again, biotic slash or get the hell out of dodge while they are all recovering.

[Achire]

Elotana wrote...

Bleachrude wrote...

Heh....Drell vanguard solo platinum is up on youtube

It's a funny stunt, but watching the video he's just camping the Giant LZ with a Scorpion/Reegar and occasionally running away or charging for barriers. He might as well be playing any class. I could probably survive if I put some heavy guns on the Drellguard and did a FBW Platinum run from behind cover, but that doesn't really solve any of the problems discussed here.

Impressive and all, but did he even use charge in the entire video? Just compare that to sy7ar's Gold solo and it's pretty clear there are some major problems with playing Vanguards on Platinum.