Let's talk about balancing
Balance in a game with this many characters isn’t particularly easy. When you take into account both personal bias and experiences in game your perception of balance and therefore your ideas for said...
Forum Discussion
Part of the balance issues I see are within the Kits themselves. Certain classes (characters), have an ideal combination of weapons + skills. I am not a fan of Citrons myself, but it would be the apparent the kit is the issue itself. The Citron has respectable durability, health, damage, and mobility all in one kit. On the other hand most characters have to sacrifice one for the other. I could go on why things like the Peashooter and Rose are a nuisance, but I wouldn't cover what anyone else hasn't.
After playing a character like the Tank Commander soldier, it makes me scratch my head a little. This soldier is powerful and effect point blank, and requires aim at a distance due to the games environmental hit detection. Because the round explodes on contact with something, the tip, or just being in the area of something the environment doesn't like wastes an entire round. Then this compounds with something that I lack to understand. You only get one round, and while it reloads fairly quickly, the game punishes you for attempting to hit someone greater than 10 yards away from you. A precise shot at a distance other than close range rewards you with 10-30 damage. That alone astonished me. A precise shot with a hard to land explosive munition does less damage than a sniper round just blindly shot off. To top this off, it just makes every other Soldier far more ideal, and the tank commander left behind. I loved this character in PvZ1, but I understand why no one plays him now. It's high risk for little reward to no reward.
Things like this are compounded but the existence of the Scuba Soldier, that has 2 rounds, and can range 40-50 a round with little damage drop-off.
Tank Commander is his own special kind of fun, and does require that you get up close and personal, and quite possibly sacrifice yourself in the process. He was OP in GW1 and has suffered the fate of redundancy after being nerfed. His reticle/shot mechanics/splash make him forgiving of sloppy play, but once I got better at Scuba I switched over. Really, he's pretty darned good, but Scuba is pretty much a straight upgrade. Tank Commander is more of an in your face "hey, look what I can do!" guy.
I understand he was OP at some point, but you just justified my argument essentially. He is outshined by a brand new variant, and holds no real place in reality. It's also not as forgiving as one would think. Yes, it can do damage but even as close range, the damage fluctuates between 40 and 60. And the splash is only around 10 if you somehow cluster everyone. Then imagine not hittting your target dead on (which does all your damage), such as a Rose or Peashooter, that is practically an instance loss. As the name implies he fires an explosive round, and when you miss one round even point blank you lost a majority of damage potential. His damage isn't even remotely forgiving at range, and should have something over Scuba Soldier which he doesn't. Atleast Scuba gives you a UAV like effect.
I could just point to the existence of Iron Citron, if yet another comparison is needed.
@Punisaur wrote:
I understand he was OP at some point, but you just justified my argument essentially.
I thought I was agreeing with you and expanding a bit on my thoughts about tank commander. 🙂 I still like playing him but usually will choose scuba in order to get better numbers. I've seen some of my high skilled friends vanquish everything in sight with tank commander. The difference in ranged damage you mention is really problematic for tank commander.
