Merc Report - Summer's Changing Field Conditions

[Humam2104]

As for @Sarcy : you could totally play any given role as a medic... while being faster and more resilient than most perks. He's the real jack-of-all-trades, not the Survivalist. I'm also always in favor of buffing the weaker elements rather than nerfing the good ones. But when you can almost single-handedly overcome everything the game throws at you, a nerf is in order.

I'm gonna have to agree with you on this one, Medics and zerks should be really nerfed. I hate playing as each because of how easy the game is. the last time I played as a zerk I didn't use the syringe until wave 5/7 (in coop). It's a totally different game playing as these two. Once these two get nerfed the balance between perks becomes better. Teamwork comes in play, and maybe some weak perks get a little buff here and there.

 

[Kauzmiq]

Nerfs to zerk and medic made sense to me. pretty much my 2 most favorite perks to play cause its somewhat easier to survive for me. But going forward would love to see perk skills that provides buffs to allies and/or debuffs to enemies. Thank you KF2 team!

 

[OnionBubs]

Good to see the Zerk/Medic changes...sort of. Though I'd much prefer to just have the Hemoclobber's self-heal disabled. That'd go a long way towards balancing things because it's a dumb weapon.

The Hemogoblin has also been adjusted with slightly increased stats for damage, healing, ammo pool and a slightly reduced reload speed. This should help make the weapon standout more from the current medic choices and help it find its own place in the possible Medic loadouts.

I love how this weapon keeps getting changed because it's completely ancillary and just doesn't fit with the game.

Offensive debuffing just isn't really something that matters in this game because you only really need it for FPs and maybe the two bosses that are actually vulnerable to it (because KFP doesn't care and Matriarch and Abomination are covered in armor, which means you can't debuff them until they're already halfway dead anyway).

But leaving that aside, the Hemogoblin's problem is always that you had to rage FPs and Scrakes before the debuff would even trigger because it hits too hard combined with the DoT...which makes trying to debuff them pointless because congrats, you raged a Scrake/FP.

So of course, rather than increase the debuff proc and values, they increased the damage on it. Why? Why? It doesn't help the gun at all!

 

[MasterRoshi]

I think the changes made to the berserker are excessive.
I think it would be better to keep the medic changes, make the berserker weaker changes gentler and strengthen the other lesser used perks.
I'm using a translation, sorry if it doesn't make sense.

 

[CitronVert]

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.

 

[Tammo]

I'm gonna have to agree with you on this one, Medics and zerks should be really nerfed. I hate playing as each because of how easy the game is. the last time I played as a zerk I didn't use the syringe until wave 5/7 (in coop). It's a totally different game playing as these two. Once these two get nerfed the balance between perks becomes better. Teamwork comes in play, and maybe some weak perks get a little buff here and there.

What difficulty did you play? Did you have a medic? Also, syringe in coop should never be used on self anyway ...

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

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.

So, what you are suggesting, in order to address the excessive zerk/medic survivability, which you admit exists, let's just make the game harder for any "last man standing" perk, thus, still retaining the zerk/medic advantage in these scenarios. Bravo! Are you zerk main, or something?

TWI, which doesn't happen often, is about to do the right thing (hopefully, as we haven't seen the numbers yet). Don't make them stray away from their stated intention here.

 

[CitronVert]

So, what you are suggesting, in order to address the excessive zerk/medic survivability, which you admit exists, let's just make the game harder for any "last man standing" perk, thus, still retaining the zerk/medic advantage in these scenarios. Bravo! Are you zerk main, or something?

TWI, which doesn't happen often, is about to do the right thing (hopefully, as we haven't seen the numbers yet). Don't make them stray away from their stated intention here.

This is a very confusing reply. I think you haven't read my post correctly.

+30% zed speed and FP attacks becoming un-blockable does not seem like a change that would let zerk/medic to solo waves anymore. And if it's still not enough, I said that it's the idea that matters anyway... not the exact numbers.

So no, the intent is not to make it harder for non-zerk classes. The intent is to make it hard for every class especially harder for zerk/medic, as well as speed-up the game for spectators when half the team is dead.

As for the "zerk main" part. Literally half of my post is explaining that TWI did a good nerf + further nerf suggestions. So again, please re-read it. (And btw no I'm not a zerk main, and I consider it one of the least fun class. I played 100+ hours on GS,medic,zerk,demo and sharp each).

 

[Humam2104]

What difficulty did you play? Did you have a medic? Also, syringe in coop should never be used on self anyway ...

Why should there be a medic in the team? Why should the medic outrun the whole team running around the map and self-heal until they can defeat anything.. hordes, bosses, large zeds. Literally.

 

[Tammo]

Why should there be a medic in the team? Why should the medic outrun the whole team running around the map and self-heal until they can defeat anything.. hordes, bosses, large zeds. Literally.

In the context of your post, i was obviously asking if you were healed by someone else. And to reiterate aswell, outside of solo play syringe should not really be used on self anyway. And you haven't said which difficulty, so i'm gonna assume you weren't playing Hell on Earth, which means your complaint about it being to easy is meaningless.

 

[Tammo]

This is a very confusing reply. I think you haven't read my post correctly.

+30% zed speed and FP attacks becoming un-blockable does not seem like a change that would let zerk/medic to solo waves anymore. And if it's still not enough, I said that it's the idea that matters anyway... not the exact numbers.

So no, the intent is not to make it harder for non-zerk classes. The intent is to make it hard for every class especially harder for zerk/medic, as well as speed-up the game for spectators when half the team is dead.

As for the "zerk main" part. Literally half of my post is explaining that TWI did a good nerf + further nerf suggestions. So again, please re-read it. (And btw no I'm not a zerk main, and I consider it one of the least fun class. I played 100+ hours on GS,medic,zerk,demo and sharp each).

Almost any perk should block Fleshpounds with knife to de-rage, sometimes even the same one multiple times.

 

[Yoshiro]

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

 

[Sarcy]

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.

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

 

[Yoshiro]

Make the 'weaker' perks more viable not the 'OP' ones naff.

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.

 

[CitronVert]

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

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.

 

[flashn00b]

TBH, i feel like the Berserker is actually underpowered with the way his progression is built. Sure, he is quite the powerhouse when you hit level 25, though getting there actually kinda sucks due to his only passive being Perk Weapon Damage. I still think that his skill set should be re-organized to incorporate stronger passives, with the end goal being to have very few changes for those already at Level 25.

 

[Sarcy]

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.

Then perhaps such seismic shifts should be saved for KF3 wherein a new balance can be set.

 

[CitronVert]

Then perhaps such seismic shifts should be saved for KF3 wherein a new balance can be set.

No, because Zerk is slowly ruining KF2 HoE and has already single-handedly ruined VS Survival balance.

I would be the first one to protest if zerk gets too heavily nerfed. But as it stands now, this class is so absurdly strong that I don't think we're anywhere close to this situation. (eg. look at this to know what's possible - for a good zerk, HoE is mostly a speedrun).

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

Almost any perk should block Fleshpounds with knife to de-rage, sometimes even the same one multiple times.

It shouldn't.

Blocking FPs mitigates pathetic 20% of the incoming damage, making it not worth it to spend time pulling out a knife, blocking and then switching back to the weapon to shoot the FP. E.g. the hardest 68 HP multiplayer HoE FP attack is mitigated to 55 HP, which, outside of marginal scenarios, doesn't make much difference and is not worth time lost not shooting.

Just watch some higher level CD videos and count how often, say, sharpshooters do pull out the knife to block its raging attacks. It'c close to zero.

But if TWI, say, made the knife blocking to mitigate, say, 50% of the incoming damage, this could have led to reassessing its role and it could become worthwhile to block FPs.

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

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

The intent is to make it hard for every class especially harder for zerk/medic

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?