Acorn and Imp - Balance Discussion

I generally believe that Acorn and Imp are far too small both physically and visibly. It’s hard to see them, they are hard to hit, and by god are they a pain in numbers. Z-Mech is not powerful enough to balance with Imp. I’d like to spark a discussion about these characters with this post.

Nightcap is small, but she isn’t TOO small, and she is wide and has plenty visual tell on every attack to back it up. Parkour is busted, but that’s another story. Acorn has a generally high jump and a dash, which makes bunnyhopping an easy to abuse tactic. Imp has a double jump like Nightcap, but it hovers (even more so with Booster Booster) and makes it confusing when trying to shoot his small body while he hovers through the air. 

I know it’s not an easy task to increase the size of a character model along with all of their customizations so I am not asking for that, but I feel that increasing their hitbox size even more might be necessary. It’s painful attempting to vanquish them point blank with characters like Corn and Sunflower, let alone from a distance. Also make Hardened only give 25 health for the love of all that is holy. Don’t make their hitboxes disjointed and bloated, but make them reasonably sized so that they aren’t an absolute pain to go up against without splash damage or ability spam.

On the other side of the spectrum, Z-Mech needs a real buff. The antithesis to the Imp and the reason why he has the Mech is a huge boost in power for a short period of time. Right now, there is absolutely no incentive to use the mech other than suicidal tactics, such as Explosive Escape and letting yourself get destroyed while in Missile Madness. Give it armor, increase Robo Laser’s damage output, fix the hitreg on Bionic Bash, and reduce the MASSIVE hitbox of Explosive Escape. 

Oak is fine, but I’d really like if they buffed him so that he could truly be the counterpart to Space Station, such as giving an actual incentive to play the Acorn Passenger with a possible rework and buffing Roll for Damage. Space Station also needs a cooldown and startup time.

What is everyone else’s thoughts about these characters? Would a slight hitbox increase be reasonable? It would help if damage dropoff was added in general, so that these small characters aren’t able to snipe and be impossible to hit from a distance.