Vauban: Reengineering

[DeltaPangaea]

So I've gotten back into Vauban. And as always, some things just don't feel quite right.

I really like the idea of Shred, especially since they're very long-lasting, you can set up a bonafide minefield. But the thing is they're meant to be armor-shredding landmines, but armor is actually what they're WORST against. Blast damage eats a damage penalty vs Ferrite armor, and then there's the effect of the armor itself reducing the damage further. They don't do enough damage to actually do a lot to things, and are doubly screwed against the entirety of one faction and certain members of the others. And then to cap it off, the activation range for the mines is actually quite small.

I feel like there's a number of ways Shred could be made a bit better.

Firstly, simple change. Make the activation range equal the blast radius minus about a meter or so and put maybe a second delay between trigger and detonation. This would make the mine able to more easily hit a group of dudes, since the first triggers it and then the rest walk into the radius. You could also put in a satisfying beebeep preceding the explosion, which would also help you know that it's one of your mines going off and not some other random explosion. You should probably hear that beep regardless of where you are too.

Secondly, the damage issue. You don't want these to be too powerful if you can just throw them directly at people, so what you do is make them scale up. The longer a mine sits on the ground, the more it primes, and the more damage it'll do once it's triggered. So if it goes off immediately, it'll do say, 200-300. Nothing amazing, and you spent 50 energy doing what Ember could do for 25, but worse. But if the mine sits there and has a chance to charge up for say 10 seconds, then its damage scales up to like 1000. Something tasty like that.

Thirdly, ARMOR. It's an Anti-armor mine that's worst against armor. There's a couple solutions here. First would be to have its damage just ignore armor entirely, but that's a little inelegant. What you could do is have the armor-reduction effect be applied BEFORE the actual damage. You could even have the armor reduction scale with time alongside the damage. On deployment it'd reduce it by maybe 40% like now, but at full charge it'd strip 100%. This would also resolve it being Blast damage and thus innately sucking vs Ferrite armor.

Thus are concluded my thoughts on Shred.

 

And then there's Tesla. Poor, poor Tesla.

Tesla is just not a good ability. The total amount of damage that one puts out is good, but the amount of time it takes to actually deliver that damage is flatly depressing. They aren't going to actually accomplish anything noticeable unless you pile them up into one spot, at which point it's not a 25-power ability, it's a 100+ power ability. Add on to that, they have a saddeningly-low status chance to boot, so they aren't even helpful for crowd control.

So here's my thinking.

Ditch Teslas attacking in pulses. It's not satisfying and drags out the damage delivery across such a MASSIVE timeframe that it's just not relevant. I'm thinking that when active, a Tesla just constantly shocks everything around it, much like how an Arc Trap does. Maybe 100 damage a second? Rather than pulses, a Tesla has Shock Time and Deploy Time. Increasing Duration will thus increase both the time a Tesla sits for, and the total amount of time it can sit around for. Either expiring will destroy it. 5 seconds shock time, 20 seconds deploy time as bases, perhaps.

Secondly, Tesla has a guaranteed electricity status on anyone you hit with the projectile DIRECTLY, and the electrical stun lasts on that person (And only them) until they die or the Tesla expires. They're the sort of thing you throw AT people, not just around the place for trapsetting. He has Shred and Concuss for that now, Tesla can be something else, a batarang crossed with a taser

In this way, Tesla goes from being a terrible area-denial/damage ability that you need to use 4-5 times to be worth anything even on lower-level missions, to a more IMMEDIATE damage ability, and at higher levels where damage abilities fall off, it would still function as single-target CC.

Thus concludes my thoughts on Tesla.

I've got some minor quibbles too, about how Tripwire doesn't seem to do a whole lot of anything for the energy cost it has, but that might just be me, so eh. It'd also be nice if Ability Range increased the speed of Vauban's projectiles, so you could throw them further and more accurately. That's just a 'it'd be nice if' though.

 

Well there we go, another big fat wall of text. Any thoughts? Opinions? Am I just Vaubanning incorrectly? Tell me whatcha think.

[Galuf]

short version: Vauban lost 100% of his appeal version after version.

I'll go further saying that vauban's kit is outdated. It was fine at release but he got denied by upgrades.

1) New parkour S#&$s on his bumper.

2) Powercreep in general S#&$s on every of his damage sources.

3) !MOST IMPORTANT! Nidus pull is plainly better than his ultimate. It can have bigger range, is spammable and most importantly nidus has inate way of dealing with the S#&$ spamming 1.

4) Bastille? Well Gara does WAY better. (basically infinite enemies bastille + infinite snowgloble)

 

You still can camp a tunnel with vauban and a tonkor ala good old days but it feels weaker than before.

Edited November 14, 2017 by Galuf

[TKDancer]

ALSO shred mines ragdolling enemies is a pain

 

i want to reduce their armor, not send them flying

[DeltaPangaea]

Also of note, I feel like Vauban's passive is a bit... misapplied. It doesn't really fit him much at all, especially since his armor is nothing special.

I don't know what you could change it to though. Perhaps something with hacking. But that's a little underwhelming too, so maybe a twoparter.

Some tiles/pins when hacking start aligned, and he has a chance to unlock lockers, like the Master Thief mod.

[Phyrak]

7 hours ago, DeltaPangaea said:

Also of note, I feel like Vauban's passive is a bit... misapplied. It doesn't really fit him much at all, especially since his armor is nothing special.

I don't know what you could change it to though. Perhaps something with hacking. But that's a little underwhelming too, so maybe a twoparter.

Some tiles/pins when hacking start aligned, and he has a chance to unlock lockers, like the Master Thief mod.

Hacking would seem appropriate 

Two parter is the way to go imo

Edited November 15, 2017 by Phyrak
Misread and rewrote reply