Non Extreme sugestion on Vauban's Kit

[Fil089]

It's been a time now since the community has been looking for ideas to improve the game and various specific aspects of it. Since I joined the game I have been looking at those ideas but most of them end up changing way to much of an specific feature to work. Some need it, others not so much. It's been the case for Vauban. At least for me.

Vauban was name after a military engineer, so I see him as more of a tactician frame than a purely trapper. His abilities should revolve more around area denial / crowd control than damage. I have some sugestions but they mainly focus on changing Tesla and Minelayer, but I agree that Bastille and Vortex are redundant.

I will try to put my ideas on this post so you guys may help refine it but first, let's adress the main problem(s) with Vauban so we can decide what measures to takwe in order to fix him.

-= Vauban's Problems =-

1- Tesla and Minelayer are too weak

The first thing most people complain about Vauban is that only his 3º and 4º abilities are worth using. While I agree that both Bastille and Vortex are good abilities for Vauban, I tend to think that they are interchangeable. But that's not the problem here.

Rather, is that Tesla and Minelayer are too weak to have what I think it is their intended use: Choke Point Crowd Control.

Teslas can't hold a choke point unless players spam many of them for it, which is why I think they are left aside. Low discharge rate coupled with low damage makes it so Tesla becomes an energy intensive ability that doesn't make the resulting choke point worth the amount of energy spent to deny it.

The same can be said to Minelayer, but multiplyed by four!

Bounce is mostly used to troll other players, or at least I haven't seen it used to the squad benefit. Trip Laser seems like a good ability, but the CC it provides is really inneficient due to it's size and method of CC. Shred and Concuss are fine as the are, but the same energy problem of Tesla also affects this ability.

2- Vauban's role in a squad

Since Vauban was constructed with the "Trapper" arquetype in mind (Wiki Trivia) his role should be, as I mentioned on the beggining of this post, of a tactician. But his abilities don't help him so much on that. His new Passive helps with the mindset, but we discussed why his more accessible abilities are at best underwhelming, and at worst detrimental.

Bastille nullifies enemy aggro since enemies inside it cannot attack, but this ability still allows enemies to attack from the outside and it has a cap on how many enemies it can hold still, not to mention it has an augment specific to keep enemies outside once it has reached it's limit.

Vortex pulls enemies towards it's center and deals a good amount of damage to them, not to mention it also neutralize aggro during the process like Bastille, and it also leave enemies open to melee finishers! See why I said Bastille and Vortex are redundant? Basically Vortex is a better version of Bastille with less range and good damage and utility!

-= Problem's Conclusion =-

So... After analising what Vauban has to use I came to a, frankly, shocking conclusion: Vauban is a one trick pony! He can only stop enemies from attacking by either suspending them with Bastille or clumping them with Vortex. And since Tesla and Minelayer are energy and CC inneficient he really don't have anything else to do!

-= Change Suggestions =-

1- Tesla

The problem with Tesla is that it needs to be spammed in order to be effective. Same goes for Minelayer, but I have a different solution to it. Tesla needs to be both a good CC tool AND a Damage tool at the same time! But what if... We make that a two step process?

Since Tesla currently have to be balanced with the ability to have many in the field at once this means that whoever decides to mod Vauban for it will go for Energy Efficiency first and whatever they decide to be more important to use after. But that can chance if we decide to balance Tesla so it can only have one "mine" at a time!

To achieve this, here are the proposed changes to this ability:

- Tesla will throw a single mine with it's current Strengh, Range and Nº of Charges intact, but it's discharge rate will be increased and it will try to avoid discharging the same enemy in sucession;

- A charge will force a proc of Eletricity one the affected enemy with a % chance to propagate it's proc to adjacent enemies based on Power Strengh;

- This "mine" will have a charge mechanic that increases the amount of charges it can hold;

- On deployment, A Tesla will have a set time duration or it will lose charges at a certain rate until it dies;

- On reactivating this ability while there is still a Tesla on the field, the current Tesla will detonate dealing the amount of damage equivalent to the amount of charges it still had left and forcing an Eletricity proc on all the affected enemies.

This aims to make this ability a viable Choke Point Blocker and provides an extra in the form of a manual detonation damage dealer, making this ability viable for both crowd control and damage. But this creates a problem for the Frame: It severely limits the amount of choke points he can actually control. Unless his other abilities make up for it...

2- Minelayer

Minelayer depends on spam, but we already dicussed why that's a problem, besides Bounce been immediatelly useless, so the major change in Minelayer will be only one: It will become a portable minefield deployer!

Yes, Minelayer will become Minefield! On using the ability Vauban will throw a single grenade that will lay down a small minefield where it lands with the specific trap been selectable on holding the button.

Trip Laser will lay a net of lasers on the place. Both Shred and Concuss will have many mines layed down, but the effects of the traps will not stack on top of each other, only extend their duration. Shred in specific will only knock enemies down, not blow them away.

I admit I don't know what to do with Bounce so I leave this spot here for anyone who wants to throw any ideas here.

The main idea of this change is to clump the traps together in such a way so there is no necessity to spam the same type of them in one place, opening the creativity to combine diferent types of traps together to maximize Vauban's utility and realize his tactician / choke point denial potential.

-= In Conclusion =-

Vauban is a frame with a conflicted design because he is often described as a "Trapper" but people don't know why or how to use his tools. The aim of this sugestion post is to give this frame a more methodical approach to some of his abilities by limiting some aspects of ones and expanding / adding others.

I hope this post sparks a stream of ideas that can help improve this frame, and I thank you for reading this post. 🙂