Re: Why do people hate blaster mains in hero modes?

@TRlALON There isn’t actually a parry mechanic in BF 2 ... there is a counter strike but you can’t actually parry an opponent in BF 2.

I agree the combat in BF 2 is way smoother than FO. Truthfully if the Devs hadn’t fouled up the existing mechanics the way they did with TROS update we’d be far better. The game was in a better state before that update. 

Cal in FO just feels heavy and lunky in his overall movements and in combat that comes off feeling clumsy not smooth. I didn’t even bother trying to parry and I made out better. 

The update to FO was SUCH a let down. They added a “New +” game mode and a combat mode. ... now ... as an OG gamer I know what legacy “+” game modes are and this ISN’T it. In a “New Game +” the ONLY items you keep are ... appearance items!!! That’s right! After all that they Devs really thought there was replay value in starting over with nothing but some clothes! Yes, because a poncho creates a whole new gameplay experience?!? ... No, a proper New Game + sees your character starting new with EVERYTHING they collected from the previous play through! That’s the replay value! Experiencing the game with those abilities and unlocks from the go. ...

now I know some may be thinking .. “well that makes the game too easy” ... ok ... and? If someone thinks it’s too easy just don’t + game. 

as for the combat mode, again, they fall short. In this mode you can create custom battle scenarios against any opponent in a number of geographic environments. On the surface this sounds like a great idea ... and it would be ... if you weren’t limited to using ONLY the abilities you’ve unlocked in the gameplay up to that point. .... well that’s shenanigans; I can customize everything else about the battle scenario but I can’t customize my abilities? So this means that a fully kitted up Cal isn’t available for custom scenarios until near the end of the story by which point the battle scenario is nearly moot because you’ve fought them all anyway. 

... and on the subject of FO who’s idea was it for the collectible gems? I really hope the Devs read these threads because this is really for them .... news flash; NOBODY wants to back track for 10 minutes on Zeffo for a single silly bauble! Backtracking is a perfectly valid aspect to game design ... when done correctly. In the Metroid series, for example, you would backtrack through areas of the map multiple times but there was a gameplay advancing objective each time; not a trinket. ... Even worse if you are going to use back tracking make sure you open up shortcuts to bi-directional travel. FO has shortcuts that are one way only; meaning that if you do want to return to an area you’ll have to go the long way ... yeah, no thanks.

I’ve been gaming for 30 years, I’ve seen it all; literally. Ive offered to consult with EA on this franchise for free to help them get it right in terms of game logic. For the love of all things human I hope they learn for the next title. 

@AnakinVader34It would be a start if heroes actually had block animations upon blocking a lightsaber strike.

The defender's lightsaber being static all the time doesn't help to create a better choreography.

Overall I think the choreographies are fine, given that they were intended to simply highlight different styles of the characters.

The only one who hurts my eyes in HvH is Grievous, because even when not looking closely it just looks like he's about to passionately slay pillars or clone troopers who can't defend themselves from lightsaber strikes anyways. Means he doesn't need to circumvent any lightsaber block or back up for counterattacks. Looks great and brutal in Supremacy/GA, but really off in HvH.

Then again, the heroes were never made and balanced solely around HvH.

Let's not get started about how Grievous holds both lightsabers at head height to block but the only zone where he's never able to block blaster shots is... his head. #justbattlefrontthings

How far off-topic are we again? lol

@AnakinVader34They once had an event for that and it wasn't great for blasters. I just think that this isn't really balanced, especially after the Leia buff.

Pro stacks who use LS blasters just dominate everything really hard while it's not possible to do it the same way on DS. They rather stick to Vader, Palpatine and either Grievous, Kylo or maybe one or two actual blaster users then.

For me it's easier to deal with DS blasters because they have more situational restrictions you can counter while as the LS ones you can basically just run & gun at all ranges.

@TRlALON The Devs never actually fixed Chewie they just shifted his OP imbalance. 

Chewie still does high damage with his shots which are unblockable regardless of whether they’re charged up or not. His stun and slam are also unblockable (partly due to detection), and he can take a high amount of damage. 

Chewies imbalance is just as it was they just shifted it from being fully bowcaster oriented to being spread among all his attributes. 

given his tank like ability to take damage, his crowd control, and his unblockable shots his base damage output should have been reduced to make him balanced but it wasn’t. 

and all of that isn’t even counting the fact that Chewie benefits from the same hit immunity duration during dodge that most blaster users do which is broken across the class itself. It used to be that a blaster user could dodge a hit or dodge out of an abilities AOE but now if a blaster user is inside of an ability AOE but within the dodge animation the ability registers no affect. Given how quickly dodge abilities recharge that aspect is overly broken. 

DICE just kept piling on the attributes for blaster users when people would complain about one thing or another but when they did these things they never took a step back and looked at the big picture. If you add something to a character in order to maintain balance yon often either need to remove OR adjust something else to compensate but they didn’t do that. 

Chewie is a prime example, just because he doesn’t 3 shot Vader doesn’t mean he’s balanced. At his current damage output Chewie will drop a base Vader in 4.5 shots, now that’s assuming none of those register as head shots. From a distance and with his bow caster at 5 bolts it’s very easy to get one of those bolts to register as a head shot and if so you’re at 3.5 shots to kill. Throw in the shock stun and the overly large AOE of charge slam it means that Vader can still easily be melted by combing all of Chewies attributes. Because Chewie has so many attributes that cannot be countered he remains imbalanced. 

@VetteC5RXLet's say Chewie is like Dooku... only somewhat useful in HvH but utter crap in greater modes because completely relying on your opponents being bad.

Needing to wait everytime until the bowcaster overcharge ability refreshes to make Chewie become dangerous is neither fun nor does it make him a good hero.

If I want to use a LS hero where I need to wait until that one ability refreshes everytime, I might as well just take Anakin who in turn can OHK several soldiers with the right star card at once, while Chewie's slow (default) af bowcaster doesn't get anything done in one hit.

@AnakinVader34 Thats not really much of a solution at this point because most Chewie players wait until an opponent has closed in closer to throw stun at which point you don’t get a long enough Telegraph to jump it.

as for charge, well; those are all possible only if Chewie takes a long run at charge slam. Again, most Chewie players use this ability in close proximity which makes all of the counters you’ve suggested useless. 

The things you’ve mentioned only work against an inexperienced or improperly played Chewie.

A critical part of game testing is making sure you evaluate the game as its best played or intended to be played. I can’t begin to tell you how poor quality game design must be whereby your in-game balance is dependent upon inexperienced or improper players. 

If you use chewies stun or slam in close proximity to an opponent they’re screwed. Charge slam especially because players lean on the poor hit detection by using a dodge ability to roll behind their opponent and then immediately charge slam on the opposite direction, triggering it alongside their opponent. Often this sees the opponent unable to block in time but even if they do the slam next to the opponent gets recognized as a hit on the opponent and damages / knocks them back giving Chewie the ability to land more shots. 

This is where the imbalance really rears its head because saber users must get in close proximity to strike Chewie and the current game attributes essentially penalize you for this. 

Also remember; like I said before. Because Chewie is a blaster user he can simply just dodge and avoid any of the abilities you mentioned to counter his attacks. Not only can he do all of the above that I mentioned he can just dodge and be immune to the abilities. 

@VetteC5RXThe things he mentioned actually work pretty well even against seasoned players because they expect everyone to just keep attack spamming after using freeze/pull etc. against Chewie. I often do just one or maybe two attacks afterwards and then jump off so the nade stun doesn't affect me much anymore or the ground slam, if it hits me, pushes me so far off that Chewie won't have an easy time landing all shots on me anymore.

The most dangerous Chewie players are those who constantly tail their teammates. Same for Han and Iden players, the most sweaty pros will never let you have a 1 vs 1 and earn half of their price by just using their teammates as meatshields. The thing is just, that the Chewies just seem to be more in need of such substitutes than the Solos.

@TRlALON  @AnakinVader34  Chewie is strong in 1v1 or in group settings like HvV .. he’s not as good in many large gameplay settings like CS ... UNLESS .. you’re on certain maps or you’re playing with a legit, known, squad of players that will cover you while you deal out damage. 

This is one of the drawbacks to the games logic and why the logic is so poor. Nothing about BF 2 is fluid gameplay balance it’s haphazard and clumsy.

you can have a character that’s vastly overpowered in one game mode but craps out in another game mode but that’s because of how vastly each game mode is structured to work against one another. 

There’s no consistency to this game or the characters in it. When I game test for BF 2 I test each character in the same environment and then I rotate the environments. In testing I definitely find saber users to be better use in games like GA & CS because more of them have high mobility. Blaster users will always suffer from the high number of enforcers and full 360 enemy spawn in these modes. The Devs tried to offset these poor game mode elements by adjusting the characters attributes not realizing they were breaking the game more. 

Then they went and turned up the diarrhea dial even more by adding in garbo maps like Fellucia, MC85 star cruiser, FO Destroyer, & the low res Scariff (Crait is good though). 

Rather than fixing the source of the issues with the game the Dev’s tried tweaking the characters instead; to try and make them fit better into the broken game. This is why people hate on blaster mains; because it didn’t take long for people to discover and exploit their OP traits and abuse them. 

@TRlALON  Freeze / Pull is very easy for Chewie to avoid because the cast times for both abilities are some of the longest in the game and so the Telegraph is mad long. If Kylo jumps while approaching any good Chewie knows what they’re going to do and will Doge to immune their ability, charge slam to knock them back and then pop shots at them as they’re in the knockdown animation. 

the same goes If Chewie gets pulled. Blaster users can still fire during a pull or knock down animation and since a character like Chewie can deal so much damage you can get your opponent low while being knocked down or pulled. As for Freeze, again, you’re released after the first strike so an immediate charge slam gives you the upper hand once Kylo strikes you or tries to Frenzy. 

As an experienced player I have an idea of what a good player will do with each character and it’s very easy to counter with one of Chiewiee attributes whether I dodge or shoot or slam or stun; depending on the situation one of those is going to give me the upper hand. 

more often experienced players will team on Chewie; doing at least 2 v 1 at which point Chewie is cooked (as characters would be). But as is often the case in BF 2 even experienced players aren’t in a supporting squad regardless of what game mode you’re in. 

@VetteC5RXYeah freeze and pull are massively telegraphed.
Blasters can fire while being pulled? Weird and OP imo

@AnakinVader34 

Yeah blaster users are able to maintain fire while being pushed or knocked down. It’s been a long standing issue with blaster users that really reduces the effectiveness of abilities because blasters can keep landing shots when they’ve been disrupted. 

as for nerds; no. There had been an adjustment to block and dodge abilities some time ago which ended up being reversed when another game tester on this forum did a lot of work and brought the issues to light.

the current dodge issues with blaster users was altered in TROS update. Part of the overall buff given to most blasters saw a change in how their dodge works. Now rather than being evasive blaster dodge abilities are immunity based. For the duration of the dodge ability strikes and abilities are not recognized. This is definitely OP; especially when you realize that the actual dodge ability mechanic timing doesn’t align with the characters animation. This means that “proper” ability timing on blaster users is VERY haphazard at best.

charcaters like Luke who have instant cast abilities don’t see this as effective but other characters who have longer ability cast times see the game timing amount to nonsense at this point; especially when you factor in the bad input stacking. 

blaster user damage output is enough that this dodge mechanic is overpowered because it enables blaster users to ignore strikes for at least two dodges plus sees the dodge recharge rate very low so baster users can dodge a lot and often. Finn & Phasma do NOT benefit from this mechanic. Whether that was by design or mistake I don’t know. 

so to recap; blasters can do high damage from a distance without consequence, if an opponent closes distance the blaster user can then rely on a combination of crowd control and dodge to manipulate their opponent and still deal high damage. That’s not balance. Some attributes need to be adjusted to balance them out. 

@VetteC5RXThat only works perfectly if that player does exactly what Chewie or any other blaster user predict.

Like I mentioned before, most blaster pros are used to have targets that can be easily anticipated and outplayed.

It's like they don't even consider it to be possible that someone strikes only once and backs off, uses a Kylo jump without doing anything or waits with abilities until someone has rolled etc.

So there's that, blaster pros who're used to play against spamming opponents get predictable in some way themselves at some point because they expect to score an easy combo.

That Chewie has a charge slam left is the reason why I use only one or two attacks to trigger him using it, because it appears like I'm spamming.

Same when using choke etc. I briefly back off after one hit because everyone responds either with slam or grenade.

Many blaster users already get really confused when someone just holds block to deflect shots back at them.

Especially the Leia players who assume that everyone just tries spamming lightsaber attacks so they'd win by spraying back.

At that point it's just a weird cat and mouse game with all those panic-rolls.

@TRlALON  That’s still haphazard because regardless of how the saber users plays to engage a Chewie the Chewie player can easily modify their play style to take advantage of the situation.

if you strike me once I can simply just shoot you and you can’t deflect my bolts or I can toss my stun grenade behind you and you can’t block the stun, if you jump I can then charge slam and give you damage + a knock back. 

again, only a Chewie player that isn’t experienced is going to get bested by some of those tactics. An experienced Chewie vs an experienced saber user will see Chewie at an advantage that the saber user has to try and offset. That’s not balance or good gameplay. 

The fact that any blaster user can do panic rolls is garbage in & of itself. Blaster users can do the panic roll back & forth, all the while ignoring saber strikes and in the time it takes the saber user to turn their character around the blaster user has recharged a dodge roll and will just go back and forth while their abilities recharge and then melt the saber user if they’re still in proximity. 

this is total nonsense because saber users must be in proximity to do damage and only three characters in the game have an ability whereby they can close distance to do damage: Kylo, Annakin, & Grevious. ... in all 3 instances the saber user can be shot and in the case of Kylo his ability AOE’s are so trash they’re laughable; especially when compared to Grevious or Annakin’s 

@VetteC5RXI think we're speaking from very different experiences here. That's fine, I just have yet to meet a Chewie who can really escape my clutch unless he's that guy who never misses any shot no matter what or hides behind his teammates all the time. Though he might  just play as Solo because the main gun does the better pew pew pew for him.

Just from what I usually experience, Chewies won't be able shoot a lot at me while I'm jumping because they either spam rolls or are stuck in the middle of the slam run animation because they think that I'll just spam abilities and lightsaber attacks myself, hence why it works so well even against great players.

I meant to say is that I jump away or pretending that I want to get close and it's not exclusive to Kylo. Works for Vader and Maul too.

When they slam hit me mid-air, I'll be thrown so far away (thanks to really great hitbox design) that it's hardly an advantage for them anymore and using the stun grenade is just risky if not outright wasted then.

Rolls? They're cancer lol.

@TRlALONYeah, everyone has different experiences tbh.
@VetteC5RXYeah roll can be OP lool

But, my friends, the question is: How exactly DO we re-work the roll so it isn't broken?

@TRlALON  Yeah I would say the players you experience with Chewie play him poorly and don’t take advantage of his attributes as they are now.

if you’re a Vader and you’re jumping to approach me the first thing to do is time your shots so they hit you as you reach the ground and before you take your next jump. As Chewie I don’t need to kill you as you approach, hitting you once or twice is enough to do around 450 points of damage which is half your health right there. Then all I need to do is once you do get close use dodge to position myself to toss stun that you can’t block and hit you with a couple more shots. At this point you’re either dead or very near dead; I can then combo roll and slam to bypass your block and either kill you or give me enough time to take the last shot I need to guarantee you die. Keep in mind that a tip with Chewie is to land shots at a distance .. why? Because with Furious Caster active a headshot registers 353 damage per cluster hit! That’s massive damage and at range the hit box detection is so haphazard that it’s VERY easy for your cluster shots to register as a head and melt huge damage before your opponent closes in. At that point their health has taken such a hit that you can legit just stand there and shoot them even if they’re striking you and Chewies DPS will kill them before they kill you. 

there’s very little Vader can do if played this way because his saber throw doesn’t do heavy damage, focused rage doesn’t do the damage reduction it proclaims, and choke I can avoid by being close to you. In doing so the choke AOE is much narrower and easily rolled out of. A properly played Chewie has an advantage over any saber user it’s just a matter of leaning on his broken stats the right way. I find that most players lean on Hann, Leia, Bosk, & Iden anymore for this more so than Chewie.

@AnakinVader34 Thats easy. You fix roll by removing the immunity it has, making it like it used to be. Blaster uses can roll, they can even roll often; I’m good with that. But make it so that roll is used to actually dodge a strike or ability, don’t make it where roll provides full immunity regardless of where the character is. That makes it broken and toxic and why people lean on it so much. Yeah the dodge recharge is fast but you don’t have to proper time it, you can just spam it and let the immunity do the rest. Take that away and it makes a huge difference the way the mechanics re-balance. 

@VetteC5RXMan I get that Chewie is a tough hero but that doesn't mean that he's invincible just because someone might know what he's doing.

Also I don't play this game since only yesterday so implying that the only reason why I managed to kill Chewies is that they were all a bunch of idiots is just false. Where have all the "good" players you have in mind been hiding then all those years? Is it because they all switched to Han about whom they feel like he can do the same as Chewie but better?

@AnakinVader34What do you mean with easier to aim?

The aim pros hit the target anyways, so no wonder that they stick to Han's faster pew pew pew pistol. I can imagine that this ridiculously strong detonite charge + shoulder charge as well as the 3 rolls starcard matters too.