Commando Archive
Thread: Correspondent Update for June of 2005
"Commandos got lots of utility capability not only in the functionality of their heavy weapons but in their grenades which forced us to re-evaluate the overall balance of Commando as compared to the other professions.
All that said we are looking at the usefulness of the various heavy weapons and adjusting as needed. A major factor impacting the effectiveness or your weapons is the fact that all elemental damage is broken in the game right now. Getting the elemental damage fixed and added back into your weapons will be a significant boost to their effectiveness."
Hence, that is our role now...utility and delivering damage via various modes. Now, we all agree here that this is not currently working up to snuff, but at the same time we also have a clear focus on what needs to be done. We need our weapons -and- grenades, useful and accessible to Master Commandos. We also need the current AoE bug fixed. Elemental damage hopefully will help us once that's fixed, and elevate us above the "balanced AoE profession", that is if our AoE is fixed to 100%. This is currently what Im pushing for.
I would also like to thank Ackehace very much for his proposal on giving a type of commando mod that makes heavy weapons and grenades of all levels useful as utilities for a commando to do his job. Aside from the current detrimental intended effects, and broken elements of those utilities...I want to put together an indepth proposal for Ackehace's ideas and expand upon them with (more) discussion, possibly, within the community. This may be better suited as we know what the devs are now looking for. Specials, innate offensive abilities, offense stances, etc may be great ideas (which they are) and certainly can have a place within our profession, but given the "utilities" (not 100% working granted) we recieve, having a system more along the way of giving all our weapons a useful purpose for a high level commando may be the best way to go, as it gives a mastered commando full use of his dev-given utilities.
Regardless, Ill still be looking for ideas and further discussion on all possible solutions and still will (as I have been) presenting them to the developers on the correspondent forums.
Onto other news:
Aside from our first response in quite a while, and the upcoming elemental fix (I hear this publish, cross your fingers that AoE's gonna get fixed too! Perhaps the two are tied together?), I will still be drafting up the rest of the Commando Guide 3.0. The reason why it has yet to be released is theres still quite a bit left to be desired in our profession, and Im giving the Developers as much time possible to get fixes in and to allow the CU dust to settle even more. Things may and will change, grenades should hopefully get improved, AoE will get fixed, etc etc. Since this has yet to happen, and since the Developers have also asked the profession correspondents to write up new or revised profession guides, its now or never as it may be a while till we finally see a fully functional profession. But who knows? If at any time the guide gets outdated because radical changes have taken place (which im hoping for with grenades, and maybe some of our weapons/abilities)...Ill update accordingly.
I wanted to give you all a small update on whats been happening the past few days and whats going to happen this summer. We're one of the best communities out there, and I have the confidence in all of you....we'll see those fixes and more improvements to the game. We've always stuck together, and this will be no different. Commando forever!
See you all in the trenches!
tacwraith wrote:
I've said it before and i'll say it again. BAD idea to increase our nonconsumable weapon damage. Real, REAL bad idea. 5 rating in damage that other proffessions or commando itself can boost even higher by using high damage multiplier attacks from other proffessions will only guarantee a major nerf in the near future. This should be even more obvious now more than ever that commando has zero special attacks. We got nerfed to uselessness before because of our high damage via dots+wounds. Now you push for commando to again have massive damage dealing capability without taking into consideration the damage modifiers of other proffessions.
Short memories and naive hopes is what y'all have. *sigh*.
Return our consumable weapons, certed at master box and make those be the 5 rating in damage. Non-equipable means they cannot be used with other proffession's specials. Problem solved.
Tac, again...thats incorrect in regard to Ackehace's idea. Its not increasing the power levels of our weapons, but increasing the number of our CL 50-54 equilvent weapons. Big BIG difference. Mods that would bump up a CL 14 LP would have no effect whatsoever on a CL 50 or 54 master weapon. In effect, our LP's, HPBC's, HAR's, RL's, ASL's, and all our grenades would be equilvent to our mastery weapons and afford us the opportunity to use their states effectively.
Carbineers can still KD and hit for more damage than our RL, BHs can still blind and hit for more damage than us right now, all we're talking about is bringing our weapons that can innately do that up to that level. Rather than 1-2 grenades and 1-2 mastery weapons, we'd suddenly have all our weapons and all our grenades useful. An ASL that can blind and do relative damage as a PFT, a RL that won't be useless because its so dang hard to craft and only a CL 22, etc etc. Its bring those weapons up in line with our top tier weaponry, all it is. If it was unbalancing, that would mean our current master weapons would be unbalanced likewise, which they are not. Rather than a PFT and a near-clone that does the same thing, we'll have several weapons that have similar damages but different abilities on them (like the HAR with no AoE, and a blind...the ASL with an AoE and a blind...grenades, etc).
The same thing can potentially be achieved if we were given Advanced LPs, Advanced RLs, Advanced HARs, etc etc...same idea, just different way of execution.
Now, adding a commando multiplier to our weapons which equally effects a CL 14 LP as a CL 54 PFT would be bad, as we'd instantly become a FOTM...now Id agree on you concerning that, but the idea of bringing our low level weaponry up to a mastery level is a whole different scenario. But something along those lines of beefing commando damage is NOT what Ive ever been pushing, ive always been pushing for ideas that could work and potentially be balanced (including your re-introduction of consumables).
Message Edited by StarNick on 06-07-2005 10:41 PM
star... whats the difference between you saying that "In effect, our LP's, HPBC's, HAR's, RL's, ASL's, and all our grenades would be equilvent to our mastery weapons and afford us the opportunity to use their states effectively."
and me saying that this would make other proffession specials ovepowering because then they get very high damage plus the state effects all in one?
Equivalent to our mastery weapons in damage i'd read similar dps/damage to our plasma flamer..which does rather good damage imo (thanks to fire dot)
Remember, elemental damage is not in the game yet. I have an heavy lightning that has +200 elemental and its max damage is 800. so all the sudden if im 4000 rifleman/master commando/carbineer 0430 I get myself a freaking 1000 max damage weapon that does 200 extra elemental damage AND put a300 per tick fire dot on target with headshot and legshot and snipershot damage modifiers on top of it. and this is before powerups!
Thats the point im trying to make. All other proffessions have their high damage specials and thats all they do: extra damage.Commando weapons put effects. imagine a rocket launcher with similar damage to plasma flamer being used with snare attack (target gets KD'd AND snared) and 2nd shot being a sniper shot (very high damage) without delay in switching weapons. Or my heavy lightning beam snaring people in front of me with cone and then proceeding to legshot them, putting high damage, dot and snare effect all at once.
If you do not see this as a quick way to a nerf I dont know what is.
tacwraith wrote:
Remember, elemental damage is not in the game yet. I have an heavy lightning that has +200 elemental and its max damage is 800. so all the sudden if im 4000 rifleman/master commando/carbineer 0430 I get myself a freaking 1000 max damage weapon that does 200 extra elemental damage AND put a300 per tick fire dot on target with headshot and legshot and snipershot damage modifiers on top of it. and this is before powerups!
tacwraith wrote:
star... whats the difference between you saying that "In effect, our LP's, HPBC's, HAR's, RL's, ASL's, and all our grenades would be equilvent to our mastery weapons and afford us the opportunity to use their states effectively."
and me saying that this would make other proffession specials ovepowering because then they get very high damage plus the state effects all in one?
Equivalent to our mastery weapons in damage i'd read similar dps/damage to our plasma flamer..which does rather good damage imo (thanks to fire dot)
Remember, elemental damage is not in the game yet. I have an heavy lightning that has +200 elemental and its max damage is 800. so all the sudden if im 4000 rifleman/master commando/carbineer 0430 I get myself a freaking 1000 max damage weapon that does 200 extra elemental damage AND put a300 per tick fire dot on target with headshot and legshot and snipershot damage modifiers on top of it. and this is before powerups!
Thats the point im trying to make. All other proffessions have their high damage specials and thats all they do: extra damage.Commando weapons put effects. imagine a rocket launcher with similar damage to plasma flamer being used with snare attack (target gets KD'd AND snared) and 2nd shot being a sniper shot (very high damage) without delay in switching weapons. Or my heavy lightning beam snaring people in front of me with cone and then proceeding to legshot them, putting high damage, dot and snare effect all at once.
If you do not see this as a quick way to a nerf I dont know what is.
What do you think I was doing with Master Commando/Master Rifleman now? Lay a flame DoT. Switch to a 1057mx Advanced Laser Rifle that is actually faster than my heavy weapons. Nothing different about that and it is in live. Just Stick the DoT and change weapons to do the damage. The only reason I am pissed is that I can't do that kinda damage with heavy weapons. The scary thing is that there are much better rifles than I am using out there. Defense sucks on this template.... you get hit pretty hard, so it kinda compensates.
I think the thing that frustrates many commando's is that we see commando as more a way of thinking than most other proffession. Proffesions that enduered long stages of neglect tend to do that, look at rangers, squad leader ect.
I think fixing elemental, and aoe would go a long way to helping out commando, also make the states stick a lot longer. (at least 10 secs)
I think however, that what I call "attitude specials" would fit commando very well. It goes along the lines of the utility proffession idea. You take an elite proffesion, like rifleman, add some unique weapons, plus the whole "If it first it doesn't die, add more high explosives" metality to it.
my 2 creds anyway.