I have thought about this for awhile, sitting back watching update after update try to ascertain and obtain some form of balance for all characters; one of those being the Rose whom went from being particularly powerful to slightly shackled back to a condescending normalcy. What do you think of the character as it was then up till now?
I feel iffy about the actual role of the rose in relation to how the engineer works. When the beta revealed her, I thought that she was an okay role-reversal to the more defensive nature of engineer; she needs to stay at medium range, particles can be quickly shot out, but they are not overtly punishing. In terms of abilities, the engineer has movement(knockback/ability disruption), 1 stun, and a gatling for protective purposes whereas the rose has 2 stuns (both are complete ability and ads shot removals) and an invincibility (now also heal) option. However, the start of GW2 up to graveyard, it was really bad, albeit not fun to even be on the same team because a rose was guaranteed to be on the leaderboard besides the usual healers. With the nerf, there was this weird period between Graveyard and Trouble P1 patches where her damage felt just right and she had to position herself closer to her targets in order to get maximum potential, which I enjoyed as it added a distinct challenge. However, even with the fixes that they did, I agree her hitbox is still rather small in comparison to the imps even when they are jumping about; I love to play as brainz, but become quickly frustrated when dealing with a rose who begins to shoot me from across the map or worse above especially on maps like time park. I like the concept of having attracting shots, but the problem which was added after Trouble in Zombopolis P1 patch was her tracking particles became angled to help home on targets as well as increasing the distance that the particles could home in on with a pretty good fire rate and ammo to spare (a maxed rank toxic can take out a dummy shield in 5-7 seconds). Though I am glad to say that she is much better to play with than before, both with and against, but still needs room for improvement.
(Hey, quit picking on Rose!)
Truth be told, I've found roses to be quite annoying in Turf Takeover for one of three reasons:
a) They stay at a certain distance and punish you and your partners
b) If they're getting close to getting vanquished, they use their free "Get Out of Jail" card and go invincible
c) Most maps have an open field so there's hardly any cover to get away to while they can happily jump and float in simple dodging
I've always thought as Rose as a support class, but like a few sunflowers, some players want the action to revolve around them.
I think it'd be great if Ice Rose and Fire Rose didn't have any tracking whatsoever.
It'd also be neat if instead of pure invincibility for arcane enigma/arcane lotus, received damage is reduced to one-fourth. No zombie class has invincibility, just many different forms of damage-reduction... that are still rendered useless with Goatify. I don't think there's any counter to Goatify besides an All-Star's shield and that usually needs super reflexes.
I enjoy playing as Rose, but fighting against players who are dedicated to using her can be so... difficult...
A good Rose player can be a nightmare at long range with the homing shots for sure. She was, as previously stated, a nightmare to deal with at launch (I never played beta), and was toned down due to that. I don't mind playing Rose and most people playing them in MP matches don't seem to understand how powerful she can be at mid to long range and get in the scrum where she's actually not that great. Play to your class's advantages and disadvantages always but with Rose it's particularly crucial.
