Feedback analysis to the devs regarding Vantage

Introduction

With the new situation regarding the apex player base and the greater focus on receiving feedback I thought I’d share my analysis about last season’s legend, Vantage, which was a legend I was greatly looking forward to but sadly got ruined by poor balance and implementation, even though her entire kit has a beautiful philosophy and theme behind it that I'd love to see realised in an effective and engaging way.

Summary

Vantage’s passive:

Passive 3x zoom optic (spotters lens) should be default sniper iron sights (simply apply a 3x zoom on iron sights and enable the spotters lens overlay).

Vantage should gain +20% damage amplification when zoomed in for 5 seconds with snipers, damage bonus is removed/reset when zooming out.

Vantage’s tactical:

Increase the range to 55.

Disable launching towards the bird for 5 seconds after deploying the bird or moving the bird.

Increase the cooldown to 30 seconds.

Vantage’s ultimate

Increase damage amplification on market targets to 25%.

Set ultimate base damage to a fixed value of 75 (no more double damage on market targets).

Detailed analysis of Vantage’s kit

Vantage’s passive:

A really cool scout ability that is extremely thematic, sadly it doesn't really provide anything effectively useful, scouting team shields or player numbers isn’t exactly useful information as pushing a weak team is still very dangerous. The only case that it is very thematic and cool is when you have two teams fighting it out and you try to snipe the stronger team to make an easier third party. But then again, why aren’t you just running in to perform a real third-party?

How to fix? Make vantage’s passive add something unique to snipers, yes, the bullet drop indicator is nice, but I never felt like it was useful, perhaps because I’m too experienced with snipers but players can still easily evade sniper by tucking behind cover or just running and jumping around. Instead, I think it should adopt a part of ramparts aspects, which is the damage amplification. Say: “When scoped-in with a sniper for 5 seconds, gain +20% damage for snipers until you scope-out”. This would reward hard-scoping and give vantage a universal edge with snipers. In addition, I think the spotters lens optic in should override the iron sights on snipers, effectively making it so that vantage gets a 3x scope when picking up a sniper, as nothing is more infuriating then playing a sniper legend but not finding a sniper scope.

Vantage’s tactical:

Vantage’s tactical has a really cool philosophy, at least as I understand it, I think it works as follows:

You place the bird somewhere, take sniper shots, when you need a new angle on the enemy, you can use the tactical to boost to the pre-placed bird.

Sadly, the bug where you can hold Q while the bird is in your backpack turns this ability into a pocket jetpack boost, where all you need to do is look at a direction and hold Q resulting in an instant bird deployment into boost with 1 button hold while the bird is still moving. This makes the ability feel very dull and boring as it effectively becomes a dumbed down easy pathfinder grapple, being very simple, easy to use and uninteresting.

How to fix? Increase the range on the ability to 55 units (matching the maximum range of the bird), thereby making the distance launched able to actually get a new angle on enemies. And to compensate for this buff, fix the instant launch bug by making the launch towards the bird only able 5 seconds after deploying or moving the bird (about the time it takes for the bird to reach maximum distance of 55 units) this way vantage is forced to pre-place the bird and it becomes a significantly more interesting high-skill requirement ability. 55 units is a vast distance, so nerfing the cooldown on this ability to 30 seconds or something is totally fine. I love difficult to use, high potential power level abilities.

Vantage’s sniper:

Vantage’s sniper is extremely weak, even for snipers, the primary reason is its poor reliability to deal damage and its poor damage output. Resulting in me often times saying to myself “why did I waste my window of opportunity using this ultimate, when I could have done a lot more using any other gun” in addition to that it also drops off hard late game by being unable to efficiently deal enough damage to down purple armours (200 hp). I’d prefer if the sniper did a consistent fixed damage output instead of doubling on successive shots on a marked target. Therefore, I’ve done some maths to figure out a nice value:

Damage is fixed at 75, damage amplification on the target is increased to +25%, this results in the sniper dealing 75 > 94 damage (169 total).

However, when combined with her passive, that applies a +20% bonus sniper damage when scoped in for 5 seconds, it results in 90 > 113 damage (203 total).

This means players using the ultimate will be able to 2 shot purple armours if they hard-scope for 5 seconds, clearly showing the laser to the enemy team, signifying her presence and allowing them time to respond.

To add further skill to this aspect, scouting someone’s armour will give Vantage a heads up whether she needs to scope for 5 seconds in order to 2 shot someone. For example, if she detects a blue armour target, she can begin shooting right away as she doesn’t need the spotters lens damage amplification, while if she were to scout a purple armour, she needs to take her time to charge that 5 second zoom in order to two shot the purple armour. Effectively adding more depth, preparation, and precision to the legend, possibly resulting in a legend most true to a sniper theme, where you have to adjust for wind, distance movement etc. but in this case adjust for scouted armour values.

Trivia

I will say though, I’m a super big fan of the laser, nothing is more exhilarating than seeing an enemy vantage’s laser scout across your cover or direction in order to get a shot on you. Beautifully mimicking a sort or sneak or run from cover to cover game. Bravo devs, fantastic work!

For some backstory on me, I’m a guy who LOVES crunching the numbers, analyse strategies, theorise and explore new tactics. I’ve got a few years of experience in modding and I understand how crucial balancing is to a game, making something too weak might completely ruin something beautiful. I built a few mods for strategy games on steam, with the highest number of users currently at 9164 (a complete fundamental rework and expansion to a certain faction that had a great design philosophy, but horrible implementation).

I love what the devs have done with apex legends, and I can’t wait to see what they come with next, but launching a season without a balance patch made me feel empty, I play apex to try new strategies, but if the meta is unchanged and certain legends or weapons remain weak or unfun to play, there’s little to draw me back in.

But I have absolute faith that the apex devs can make fantastic stuff, they built apex legends after all, and since launch, massive, wonderful balance changes have come through and the meta is far better and more even than it was back then. Keep up the great work, you guys are awesome!