Charge Bounceback Hurts Onos
Meredith
Join Date: 2018-10-26 Member: 244350Members
Join Date: 2018-10-26 Member: 244350Members
Much appreciation to Steelcap for his work implementing Onos charge in update 316. It is fun to push marines. However, my experience with Onos before and after this change is contrasted starkly and the fun quickly turns into 62 res worth of pain. If I could respectfully offer some input on charge bounceback?
Problem:
Onos charge bounceback is in no way beneficial to Onos gameplay.
Why #1:
Marines take little damage from charge and greatly benefit from being pushed out of gore range.
Why #2:
Onos have to chase down marine targets that were bounced away, reorient aim, and push deeper into marines to gore them. The consequent extra time for marines to do damage without taking significant damage and prolonged, deeper Onos exposure(exposure results in being swarmed by more) produces a web of collective detriments to Onos.
Why #3:
Furthermore, Onos now have to moderate their engagement speed to prevent targets from bouncing away, making them slower, cumbersome, and finicky.
How to fix:
Remove Onos charge bounceback.
Conclusion:
Remove Onos charge bounceback. Onos survivability, damage, and playability is hamstrung because of it.
Problem:
Onos charge bounceback is in no way beneficial to Onos gameplay.
Why #1:
Marines take little damage from charge and greatly benefit from being pushed out of gore range.
Why #2:
Onos have to chase down marine targets that were bounced away, reorient aim, and push deeper into marines to gore them. The consequent extra time for marines to do damage without taking significant damage and prolonged, deeper Onos exposure(exposure results in being swarmed by more) produces a web of collective detriments to Onos.
Why #3:
Furthermore, Onos now have to moderate their engagement speed to prevent targets from bouncing away, making them slower, cumbersome, and finicky.
How to fix:
Remove Onos charge bounceback.
Conclusion:
Remove Onos charge bounceback. Onos survivability, damage, and playability is hamstrung because of it.
Comments
The real benefit comes when you try to bail out from a room full of marines... you just push past them.
You shouldn't be charging into combat, or if you do, you should be stopping before you get to your target, otherwise you are draining your energy... charge has and always was primarily an escape mechanism. Previous, before the pushback, a single marine could block the onos' charge to prevent escape... now? several marines will just be shoved aside as the onos pushes past.
Onos has been drastically improved by the implementation of the charge push back imo.
there's that idea out the window.
That's rationally what people have in mind when they know they can use a charge ability! Don't charge to attack but charge to escape...
I agree with both posters that it's a great escape mechanism, but I disagree that using charge to primarily escape is good utilization of faster movement speed.
It's more energy efficient now, so should this not make charging more important when engaging? In my experience and from any onos I've witnessed, disengagement from combat is nearly always because of being massively focused and immediate depletion of health, not because of low energy.
I am failing to see that moving into engagements more slowly is advantageous, that pushing targets out of attack range is of much benefit overall, or that it's all worthwhile to push people when the rare, suicidal scenario of directly charging into a grouping of marines for escape happens.
Now imagine you're on the marine side with a JP and a big fat cow basically appears out of nowhere (hyperbole!), knocks you out of the air, kills you with 3 gore hits, then manages to escape through a squad of marines because of knockback.
Carefully choosing when and how to engage as an onos is part of the skillset (as with any other lifeform), you don't need a quasi-stomp ability while charging....
Exactly. You're not constrained by energy (usually) when you escape with charge, nor are you constrained by blocking marines.
If you are aware and realize you're gonna be overwhelmed, you can EASILY escape the situation by knocking the marines aside, and that is the situation what this tool was designed to solve... (afaik)
Sounds like a solid fix to me.
-Upside: Current onos charge knockback range has general defensive utility in that the knockback is sufficient to clear a path for the onos to escape.
-Upside: Current onos charge knockback range has very situational offensive utility when used to push marines into low-manueverability areas (e.g. into a corner or up against a wall).
-Downside: Current onos charge knockback imposes slight offensive risk when used to directly confront marines in open areas due to knockback sending marines out of melee range.
Downside Mitigation:
-Begin tapering onos speed down to normal speed when the player lets go of the charge key (rather than just going from fullspeed charge to normal runspeed in what feels like a single instant).
-Suggested speed tapering window: anywhere from .75 seconds to 1 second.
Result:
-Holding charge down would increase your speed and more or less lock you into your trajectory, the way it does now.
-After letting go of the charge key, you will no longer knock marines back.
-The key difference is that you'd enjoy the speed boost for longer after letting go.
-Additionally: after letting go you'd have full control again, even while the speed is still tapering down.
-This will allow the onos to stop charging earlier (avoiding unwanted knockbacks) while receiving a useful residual speed benefit. Closing the melee gap should be trivial in this case, and the onos should feel more maneuverable overall (e.g. this will also make charge feel better as the onos is rounding corners).
When you're trying to win a fight with vampirism and you accidentally knock back a marine you miss both the sustain and they keep their damage dealing potential because that marine is now alive and still damaging you.
Want to knock the marine back? Don't stop charging before you run into them.
Want to ensure that you don't knock the marine back? Let go of charge earlier and make use of the more gradual deceleration period to close the gap without any fuss.
Done.
The famed "bowling pin" scenario remains a catch-22, because exiting a blocked area to that extent is usually a retreat into enough firepower to kill an onos.
pros:
move past marines if a certain charge speed is attained
cons:
always increases engagement time vs. target
forces onos to push further to kill a target, constantly leapfrogging down halls to attack
hilarious tier cons:
always gives target distance from onos
always gives target more time to shoot the onos
interesting notes:
onos movement is still prevented by marines if there's no or limited forward momentum while charging
how to fix:
a zero distance displacement with no minimum speed requirement, or a total removal of the ability
Have you ever considered rethinking the way you engage?
You can shove marines into worse positions, trap them in corners, push them into lava/poison/death pits, you can separate a marine from his group to focus and then leave...
Also, You can, y'know... STOP charging before you hit the marine...
Charging was and is still for the most part, intended as a way to escape bad situations, not run face first into them.
How to fix:
Stop trying to play the way you used to play nearly a year ago, roll with the changes, adapt... the game is literally called "Natural Selection" and you're demonstrating time and time again that you would have died off instead of evolving.
Onos should play a tank/disruptor role rather than being an unbeatable killing machine.
(Fun fact: Onos with Celerity can run through marines at >7.5 speed, without using Charge. Try it!)