Merc Report - Summer's Changing Field Conditions

[CitronVert]

Yeah, and how exactly making the zeds faster and deadlier makes it especially harder for zerk/medic? It makes it harder for every perk, no? So, as a solution to the problem of overpowered zerk and medic perks, you suggest just to make it harder for the "last man standing" to clutch, no?

For the sake of shortness - my goal is not to list the precise changes needed and their exact effects since this is still a general topic, I simply wanted to detail the kiting problem and give ideas here & there to solve it.

Maybe this specific change will end up making things harder for everyone, but the goal is not to make solo'ing impossible, it is to prevent cases where the "last man standing" situation starts becoming excessively long, addressing 2 problems at once:

1) zerk/medic being able to kite HoE forever.
2) lost wave being delayed excessively by one single player after the rest of the team is dead.

You're playing CD so maybe things are different there. But in the average HoE server it often happens that one guy takes 15 min to do a wave and everyone has left by the time he has finished.

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

1) zerk/medic being able to kite HoE forever.
2) lost wave being delayed excessively by one single player after the rest of the team is dead.

That is all true, but:

1) The main reason people leave is because it takes a lot of time for BOTH medic and zerk and their duo to kill things. Both these perks are low DPS and especially struggle with a train of 6p HP scrakes that tend to remain alive until the end slowly walking at the end of the kite train; people just don't want to wait for 20-30 mins and have better things to do. If the last man standing is a GS -- things go MUCH faster in both directions, as GS has much higher chance to die and thus cut the time to wait for the L and it deals with the rest of the wave much faster, again, cutting time to wait for the W. Therefore, it makes sense to nerf the zerk and the medic as last men standing, not other perks, therefore, making it harder for last men standing will make it even harder for other perks to clutch, which is very hard to pull off on HoE already for any perk which isn't zerk or medic.

2) We don't want to make the "last man standing" scenario nearly impossible to pull off, it's already very hard on HoE for non zerk/medic perks as it requires almost flawless play. E.g. the increased zed speed (specifically, scrakes and fleshpounds) 30% you proposed above will make it impossible to pull off for any other non zerk/medic perk. As of now, outside of zerk/medic, on HoE, the only perk that can make it playing flawlessly with >1 raging FP present on the map is a very skilled GS with hundreds of hours of in-game HoE experience, everything else is dead in the water, and even GS with a very high chance ends up dead anyway. Keep in mind that during the last man standing scenario, the syringe remains an MP one and heals only 20HP as well as all the zeds have increased MP damage (e.g. FPs 44 HP => 68 HP for the hardest attack, gorefasts 11 HP per swing => 17 HP per swing and so on) and initially he has to deal with up to 32 maxmonsters zeds present on the map at first before the things get calmed down by the Game Conductor. I think that the last man standing is hard enough and doesn't need any improvements. It's just overperforming from the survivability standpoint perks need to be nerfed. I would go as far as removing all speed bonuses from medic, all speed bonuses from zerk and half speed bonuses from GS.

PS in CD games the last man standing scenario pretty much doesn't exist unless it was closer to the end of the wave already and the amount of zeds remaining is approaching zero.

 

[OnionBubs]

That is the standard design principle, however in this case it was determined they were too far out of line and bringing everything else up would break the balance even more, not correct things.

That's reassuring to hear. You'd have to invent a whole new flavor of CD to counteract buffing everyone else to match Zerk and Medic.

Lol by the time all these changes are implemented it'll be pointless running Berserker. Make the 'weaker' perks more viable not the 'OP' ones naff.

Berserker's going to be fine. It may not be as forgiving of sloppy play as it currently is with the combination of its kit + the Hemoclobber, but it will still be widely used. The perk is so popular that there's no way it would be nerfed into oblivion.

When re-balancing hemoclobber please keep in mind it is used as self-heal weapon for many other classes (GS, demo, sharp) which do not need a survivability nerf. For example, if you were to remove self-heal that would make medic almost mandatory (and it is already a serious downside not to have one).

Ideally the nerf should only affect zerk. The weapon is not broken on other classes. Or at least introduce another way for regular classes to self-heal.

But every perk already has a self-heal: it's the medical syringe that all classes get (and is ridiculously good on Medic). There shouldn't be a glut of ways for perks to self-heal because that's the Medic's role in the class-based system. The Medic is there to heal the team's mistakes in return for not having great killing potential--that's balance.

However, including a self-heal weapon on perks that are already incredibly durable compared to others just made them even harder to kill. That's why the Hemoclobber should be the first thing to go in the dumpster, with the remainder of the balance discussions to follow.

<snip>

Those who block FPs with a knife, in most cases, decrease their suvivability and waste valuable time.

Correct. There's a couple of edge cases, like Commandos with Tenacious being able to withstand the 2-attack death threshold to get healed in the meantime, but most of the time it's not worth doing.

That is all true, but:
<snip>

Good points.

@CitronVert: what o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu is stating above is that the way to deal with the LMS/round-taking-forever issue is to clamp down directly on Berserker and Medic's pure tankiness/survivability rather than make the game harder for everyone else as well.

Which I concur with. Other perks don't have kits that lend themselves to "never dying" quite like those two do. Survivalist has some of it, but that's Survivalist for ya.

I still remember when they tried fixing the Last Man Standing issue with the "Last 5 Zeds are permaraged" patch so many years ago. Not fun.

 

[Spoke]

I played almost every class in HoE and very happy to see medic/zerk finally nerfed, these 2 classes often make HoE feel like a joke. That said, I don't think we can make them balanced with just number changes, and in order to avoid making them less fun for the average playerbase, I would suggest a different approach.

I will speak only for HoE, the mode where most of us "tryhards" play. Imo these are the main balance problems.

1. Zerk/Medic are too forgiving, and picking any other class feels like shooting yourself in the foot in terms of risk/reward. Too many things feel arbitrarily punitive for other classes and often result in unfair death (eg. taking 50 dmg from a random husk shot, getting 1-shot by a scrake/FP combo).
2. Kiting/Exploiting spawn mechanics makes solo'ing too easy for zerk/medic when the team is dead, often resulting in the "one medic solo's a full wave while all the team is dead" situation.

Imo 1) can be addressed with number changes, but 2) cannot, and as long as both are not addressed, zerk/medic will unquestionably be the top classes.

The main issue with medic/zerk is how independent they are from the rest of the team, and how reliably you can solo a wave with them by just knowing how the numbers work. The thing is, due to the combination of speed, resistance and self healing, the zeds can simply not damage you fast enough to kill you if you keep running around forever. Tweaking resistance by 5%, 10%, 20%, won't matter, as long as zerk/medic can still solo a map by running around, these 2 classes will always be the better ones, because they don't rely on teammates to win, while every other class does.

Imo KF2 is not a 100% cooperative game, and should never be, but if you join a 6p multiplayer server, then you should have to adapt to your team a bit, and there should not be a strategy that you can apply regardless of what your teammates do (picking zerk and kiting). So what I would like to see happen, is an increase in zeds aggressivity once most of the team is dead, to make sure that medic/zerk are heavily punished for not keeping the team alive; and that the wave won't look like 15 minutes of one guy running around forever for spectators.

Example, once half the team is dead:

• Every zed gets +10% movement speed every 2 minutes, stacks up to +30%.
• FPs deal +20% additional damage after each successful attack, stacks without cap, no longer blockable after 2 attacks (to prevent from parrying the same FP repeatedly and using its charge to kill other zeds).
• to partially compensate for this, ammo boxes spawn much more frequently (makes for more dynamic gameplay on non-zerk classes)

I think it should be made so that solo'ing a 6p wave is still theoretically possible, and a very good player can still carry bad teammates, but much less reliably.

There is currently such mechanic during the boss wave, where if most of the team is dead, the boss gets +10% speed per 2 minutes, stacks up to +30%. Why not bring something similar to regular waves as well? As it stands, the wave becomes easier when your teammates die (due to the reduced HP), so considering it is possible to solo it without much effort, a good zerk is encouraged to let everyone die.

These suggestions will just make the problem worse. Berserkers can tank these hits, it would just take even longer since he would back off, heal, take a hit while dealing some damage and repeat.

 

[CitronVert]

But every perk already has a self-heal: it's the medical syringe that all classes get (and is ridiculously good on Medic). There shouldn't be a glut of ways for perks to self-heal because that's the Medic's role in the class-based system. The Medic is there to heal the team's mistakes in return for not having great killing potential--that's balance.

Respectfully disagree. Making certain classes depend on medic is the exact opposite of balance, you enforce a class to be even more mandatory than it is. Be it just for the speed+resistance team buffs, Medic is already the most impactful perk anyway, even if the whole team was playing with hemoclobber, you'd still want one.

If I want to try demo with hemo, because I don't want to trust the medic, then leave me be. I'm not coming to your server saying that medic is busted and a cheese even though honestly I believe it carries more bad teams than hemoclobber.

Never in the history of this game has medic been mandatory to win HoE, and I would like it to stay that way. As it stands, hemo is unfortunately one of the only ways to play certain classes without medic, so if it has to be nerfed due to zerk, I'd like to see compensatory changes for other classes that can use this weapon.

@CitronVert: what o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu is stating above is that the way to deal with the LMS/round-taking-forever issue is to clamp down directly on Berserker and Medic's pure tankiness/survivability rather than make the game harder for everyone else as well.

Which I concur with. Other perks don't have kits that lend themselves to "never dying" quite like those two do. Survivalist has some of it, but that's Survivalist for ya.

I still remember when they tried fixing the Last Man Standing issue with the "Last 5 Zeds are permaraged" patch so many years ago. Not fun.

There are good and bad ways to address this, I think we can agree.

 

[Sarcy]

Food for thought, Berserkers - for the most part - have to get up close and personal to deal damage so they need to be reasonably tanky otherwise they become useless. Just look at Boom waves, if you're a Berserker when they activate you're either having to hit-and-run or steer well clear until it passes.

Now the Medic, the unnecessarily tanky Medic, this ones a no-brainer - dump the extra armour etc and make keeping them alive the make-or-break scenario it should be in higher difficulties.
Certainly doesn't help they got so many toys to play with, anyone care to explain that away in terms of 'balance'?
Imo Medics should be fragile, almost helpless, individuals that can only really handle low-tier threats and heal/help teammates handle the rest. At no point should a Medic be able to basically outlast the opposition - I for one would love to see the end of 501 yawnfests.

As for speeding up enemies, no just no, the game is already teetering thanks to movement differences - amping up hostiles would just exacerbate things.

In short, leave Berserker as is, nerf Medics and for goodness sake don't turn the Zeds into The Flash.

 

[Agent Pickles]

Like I've said before, nothing about nerfing actually improves synergy, but it does come at the expense of the player who enjoys playing solo. I hate seeing simple nerfs and would prefer to see alterations.

Change "Skirmisher" to "Sprint and Recover".

I used to run. At the end of every race, many participants would bend over while catching their breath. Sooooo.... Everything the same about Skirmisher but if the Zerk wants the +2HP recovery, they have to be crouched. The zerk gets the recovery OR the sprint, but not both at any one time.

And since I could only sprint for so long in real life, limit the endurance of the zerk (and all sprinting in KF3). Yes they sprint fast, but not forever, and they need a moment of holding still to recharge their sprint.

And/or change "Skirmisher" to "Morale Boosted".

The Zerk only gets the full power of the speed bonuses if all teammates are alive. If there are 4 players and one goes down, the Zerk's bonuses goes down by 25%. Likewise, the Zerk only gets HP bonuses of +1HP/sec for every teammate they are near. Or maybe they just metabolize healing elixer better, and get a 2% bonus to healing for every living teammate.

And/or change "Vampire" to "Ankle Biter"... again, zerk must be crouched to recover HP, and maybe add a minor damage bonus to attacking legs.

Vampire lore rarely mentions drive-by tactics, so maybe it only works when the zerk is standing still. Or...

Since Vampires typically make a big dramatic production out of playing with their food, a more apt way to earn +4HP is if the zerk hacks up a corpse, rather than landing the killing blow, forcing them to stop and choose between attacking for damage or attacking for food. Because GPU limitations exist, corpses would be in less supply than zeds, making Vampire boosts less common, but still a rather common boon.

Side note: I miss the days when you could disseminate the boss's corpse after it is killed. Bring that back. My therapist agrees.

Another side note: TWI wouldn't have to nerf Skirmisher if Dreadnaught were appealing. Consider that direction, such as making Dreadnaught a tastier option by including the ability to knock zeds back if the Zerk parries a zed while sprinting, turning them into a bull rusher who can clear paths for teammates or push QPs off of a cornered teammate.

Third side note: While it does nothing for KF2, I'd still like to see Nemesis Zeds be added to KF3. These are zeds that particular perks would hate to see coming at them. A zed that can disarm up to two weapons from perks and dual wield them against the team would be detrimental to a melee-heavy perk like the Zerk. Make them fast but weak against bullets. The Zerk's weapons can be recovered from the zed's corpse. Lots more balancing options for TWI in the future.

Team synergy that could be added here would be along the lines of giving shooters a recoil improvement bonus every time they shoot over a crouched Zerk. Zerks get HP from crouching and putting themselves in harm's way while the Sharp or GS can get a cleaner head shot on the incoming tall zeds.

I'm happy for my buddy if they're a badass with any perk, and last man standing scenarios would happen less often if each perk were having fun playing their role, so I'm less concerned with whether or not my ideas fix the LMS issue. Because the people I usually play with are friends in real life, I have no problem with cheering them on and coaching them through it.

But I also have no qualms with people leaving the game if it is a LMS scenario and they don't want to wait to see how it'll turn out. If you have better things to do than watch other people play, then... yeah, stop playing. Or play solo.

As for the Medic...

In a combat situation... hell yeah I want my medic to be speedy. If I'm bleeding out then I want the medic before my Jimmy Johns. And hell no I don't want them burdened with needless armor (see also: want them speedy). I'll be the shield and take the damage so they don't have to or I'll be the offensive threat that kills the zed before it gets to the medic.

Drop the medic's armor to 50, max. Keep the speed. Change the passive healing recharge and potency buffs to work most effectively if the Medic is stationary. Their darts still work better than the average perk in all scenarios, but work exceptionally well when holding still. Or make their weapons recharge faster the longer they go without taking a hit. People want healing? Defend the squishy medic.

Certainly doesn't help they got so many toys to play with, anyone care to explain that away in terms of 'balance'?

Because the devs wanted every perk to have a perk weapon that heals others. What I find silly is the fact that so many of the other perks are largely limited to one class of weapon. That's why so many of the new weapon ideas that were proposed were lackluster. Somebody wants Support to have a new weapon so they proposed another, ordinary, every day shotgun that might as well have been a re-skin of a current option. Boo.

I'd like to see TWI shuffle the deck. Drop perks altogether.

 

[NoknokHuzthayr]

Support mercs will also find that their High Capacity Magazines (level 5) have been increased. These should help make those perk choices more viable to those interested in bringing more rounds to the fight.

That is not the reason why this perk skill isn't used. It's because it's useless on weapons like Boomstick, Doomstick and HRG Buckshot. Make this perk skill affect those weapons too (e.g., give them a reload speed bonus instead).

And Berserkers will find the following skills adjusted downward: ...Resistance

Resistance was just buffed in the last update:

Resistance

• Resistance to all damage increased from 20% to 25%.
• Additional resistance to Poison and Sonic damage increased from 20% to 25%.

Why was it buffed in the first place? (Didn't the last update had a long beta period?)

 

[Humam2104]

The community team has raised the chatter about the Hemoclobber with the design team.

So the hemoclobber's self-healing ability will be removed? it's really sad if that's the case. I always use it when I'm playing with a noob medic.

 

[Kazaanh]

Nerfing zerker because synergy between medic and zerker is way too good? He is a melee class, though he requires some strengths, especially enjoyed using hit & run tactics with parry perk ( the one that increases your resistances and dmg after parrying ). Instead of doing that how about you could buff other perks? Demo, support they need lots of love. Doing that 6 years after game release, is kinda well. We will see what the numbers are.

Kinda sucks because zerker playstyle is very fun, and I would say kf2 has one of the best melee combat systems. You can feel the weight of each strike and its very smooth.

I mean, just make it so medic buffs from syringes don't affect zerker and there you go. ( or don't work if you use melee weapons only ranged )

Such a terrible day to end KF2 lifetime, well its already on living support. But I am eager to look for KF3 now, I'm kinda way bored with repetitive content releases. Hope you will nail that experience greatly again for us to enjoy.