@JCrocodile

Fernando is only as good as whatever force backs him up in a push whereas dwarf is ideal at setting up cover over a wider area.

Dwarf holds fortress.
Fern is point man / guardian.

Fern is better suited to multi foe close quarters combat (CQC), with the primary fire foe piercing ability to damage multiple targets at once as well as stack punish and bruise foes with fireball.

If the player is good at going toe to toe with many foes and able to mitigate damage to thyself and allies with wisdom, Fernando can work in most games when that pinch of direct firepower and sustained pressure are needed. Fern has solid personal endurance with his mobility and shield synergy as the ult is handy at eating abilities that are designed to end you.

The players use of controllable shield to prevent damage is key to understanding what one can achieve with a shield. Compared to bariks shield which is better for team firepower and duelling foes. Ferns shield is "in your face, preventing you from shooting" and works when rushing a foe as a team.

Best Fernando will use a shield in a firefight as an asset to waste a foes time and position, not just personal or ally defence.
Just because you are not attacking does not mean you cannot hinder the offensive ability of the enemy.

That all said...
I am not exactly thrilled with Fernando's performance, and I am not saying he is the strongest, but for firepower, protection and mobility, Fern and Barik hold the line well enough.

However my gripes with Fern are small, mainly due to the damage/healing indifference of other champions in contrast to his low dps.
I would like to see his fireball apply a store weapon item effects as he has pretty poor utility damage vs barriers, deployables and such, what is the point of a low damage ranged attack if the second it lands its mitigated by enough life rip...

My other issue is that I am not truly satisfied by his recovery design requiring a support to stay fed when his ambient recovery could be better...

@Dusklicious

Well imo zhin is a lesser frontline, duelist assassin hybrid.
He is a strong barrier bybass potential and a near perfect escape tools at the ready for mitigation of damage and enemy focus
You missed the days that he was a perfect bodyshield.

He is honestly the right mix of fern/grohk.

I find his dps sloppy, I would like to charge but not hold strong attacks while having better primary light attack dps.

But I do agree his ult talent is... bleh... something that I hate about flank design so far.
Some ults are "fuck you I win" from respawn when they ought to be tactical stagger or persistance moves with a trade off imo.

I would prefer less potential wombo combo team damage by banishing yourself and potential target foe to the shadow realm for the active duration.

Safe isolation of target and self, making target foe unable to be healed, instead of an uber damage value.

After all, Zhin is not the kind of character that would let his kill be interrupted until he is done right...

It would be possible to boost life rip fot ult, but etherial vampires scare Dimitri...
Maybe team mark (Hunters mark) a target after ult to refirm team participation as well..

I'd see his ult take advantage of etherial and mobility kit aspects in an interesting manner rather then body drop cannon.

The ult talent should not have such high raw potential damage, instead foucs on the potential window gained after ult does not connect with target.
Brief damage amp after missing ult, greater ult charge return.

But i digress, I am not a real fan of flanks until they gain utility foes in ways other then damage and self sustain. However zhin works due to etherial has its own level of oppression and safety in a team fight.

I wish to create a Timeless Thread devoted to the dump of idea discussion and critique of map design as it scarcely gets discussion here.
Feel free to share current issues, what you'd like to see/alter in future design.
Below is a few of my ides for some perspective

Mobility Map Assets

More maps could use clever use of elevators, conveyor belts, doors, and assets that move or provide visual information of use when any champ (invisible or not) attempts to use.

Mechanisms that create interesting short pathways that weave throughout a map are key for big brain environmental outplay, team positioning and create other assets on the map worth fight for control over other then choke points and so on.

Portals and non moving map assets provide advantage to invisible champs as its hard to tell if they have been used recently and that leads characters to be hard to balance on certain maps, thus I would argue that their use be restricted.

Personally I think the game should only use portals and gravity pillars for multi spawn room access, or progression across half the map if the cart has reached a checkpoint.

Objects that help players traverse the map must also give other players a visual cue to help determine pathfinding as character abilities and mobility used tandem with active map objects can provide a number of character imbalance.

Other Map Assets

I would like to see the return of checkpoints gameplay mechanics for the cart, each checkpoint working to unlock map functionality by dropping base defences, opening gates or drawbridges to gain major route access, limiting the access to the base until after a certain distance into the payload push.

Aside from cart related assets.
Passive area off effect bufcontrol zones...
Regen crystal zone that provides weak healing (80 Hp/sec) to all within range...

Control nodes that activate defences once a team wins control and defends the zone around it.
Base Defences that deal ambient damage to foes who fight within a controlled zone, can be destroyed, resets after death cooldown.
I would like to see a paladins gamemode that has no cart, yet requires point cap for environment advantage over map assets and terrain, its just map asset control/defence in a compact environment rather then rng king of hill or onslaught

I will probably edit this further and share more ideas later, but I am open for discussion on map assets, issues and design. Keen to hear thoughts about maps area that could some enhancement.

Personally I would have a few elevators on old maps like timber mill.

If I was to redesign skye, or a poisoner character in general.
I would go along the lines of multiple stacks of sustain damage.

Both sustain damage debuff types, (poison and burn) should undergo ramping stack/tier mechanics to streamline and overhaul sustain damage.

Certain weapons and abilities should apply a certain threshold of sustain debuff damage with limitations around their various application methods.

Regarding skye's abilities.
Considering I personally see skye as a damage, pretending to be a flank with bad design choices vs poor match ups.
Tbh its her primary attack type and the range its given.
Primary attack could be altered to provide something more...
A simple spray and pray design just does not cut it.

Poison bolts timid as a passive sustain drain to have as a secondary attack, but kind of unfair free damage when used to compensate for max HP to be continuously chipped by..
Personally I'm just not a fan of the feel of it...
I'd rather toggle in between firing poison bolts and primary attack.
Slower fire rate on bolts than primary, less damage, longer window, wider spread, more targets hit, hits apply a poison stack for a small time.

Smoke bomb should just be Choke bomb...
Applies poison for several seconds, combines with poison bolts poison stacks.

Ult's gets burst damage reduction but applies a lingering poison stack to all foes hit.

Combine all this together and skye should be able to be pulling off area debilitate sustain damage by landing all three area poison attacks.

As a side note, more maps could use elevators, doors, and assets that move or provide information when any champ (invisible or not) attempts to use.

Portals and non moving map assets provide advantage to invisible champs as its hard to tell if they have been used recently and that leads characters to be hard to balance on certain maps.

Personally I think the game should only use portals for multi spawn room access, or progression across half the map if the cart has reached a checkpoint.

Shhhhh, let plebs argue about precious 3rd person. Let them wait for games like ratchet and clank and kingdom hearts to have a pro scene... and a solid multiplayer design.
Seriously, 3rd person gamers fragging a game designed for Fps... how entitled... and how many games have you made?

Just stop adding to the discussion if there is nothing worthwhile to say..
Its just the same a old tantrum, and its pathetic at this point, you can add layers of reasoning, but it won't work vs a triggered karen will it?
That is what this thread is now, what a wild read.

Fps gameplay did not evolve much by looking at the character you play... both formats are amost the exact same with their own jank benefits, Fps internal body camera slims the profile of the character and makes them feel like less of a truck to play, allowing a player to make more agile reactions and turns without the camera clipping on the environment. But 3rd person cannot be done without being an awareness crutch by design, no person has out of body sense as an ability, and third person provides this to every player in an unrealistic and unbalenced way when it comes to obtaining battle info, if you complain about emotes, hey its made to attract casual gamers, real people have no need for emotes, and should not even be in ranked due to tilt... geez a good fern has gotta love his laugh emote, free taunt, free tilt, works vs idiots.

If you put this much time and effort into making your own 3rd person games, programming over the sholder aiming is almost always offset when it is based off of a primary FPS, unless your aim is right behind the player character so their body is blocking your sight, or you redesign the bullet travel path, your shots will drift off on an angle and not follow the crossair past a certain range.

Meaning you are supporting a format of aiming that is intentionally inaccurate at range. So it is only suited to limited champs...

Furthermore, my trials with the dozen 3rd person paladins games was jank collisions in terrain, brakes on ability use, brakes on respawn, brakes when cc, character animation braking to T posses when certain abilities clash, this was playing the champions that worked with 3rd person. I started fragging 3rd person when ferns camera broke on shield and ult causing me to ditch a game, if that happens to more then 50 players a day and decides the game outcome for 500 players. That is bad for stability. How can a serious gamer support that when it ends their game prematurely or ruins the gameplay.

Now, I have not seen a T pose for a long time, the skeletons and animations tend to be more stable now then when 3rd person was out. Still not perfect, ragdolls do ragdoll things and sometime players die still standing until respawn and so on, but to agure that 3rd person should return without having a grasp of some the issues it created is rich.

Understand what Dev will need to do a better take on implementing 3rd person to each chatacter and map to work with abilities and camera bugs. Then they will still need to iron out the coding, fix irregularities in maps and camera collision issues they do not account for. Adding this to each character would require a few patches worth of code overhaul that will not be absorbed by the compeditive players, nor does dev have the power to do this to every character quickly. They could put their time to better use.While it can be implemented, the instability it may provide would not be desired in the games current state and may need a few patches in PTR.

I don't really need to say anything more. I just want games to evolve properly and not waste time catering to fads, casual gamers who do not understand programming, or pandering to dynamics to inflate playerbase numbers when the game should attract a skilled audience instead based on gameplay.

We should not be wasting our time with this.
There is skull crushing to be done.

His weakness atm is due lack of escape speed, being easy to follow. His former +movespeed after slither card was key to a good snake toss playstyle in order to juke around terrain and maintain distance. Removal of the speed just made snake slow when pressured by flanks, and less likely to play aggro.

I have heard that he may receive base ability buff to curse foes at range with ranged heal, but I am unsure as to what would be fair value for free damage. Personally, having the ability to consistantly deal sustain damage while in lockout states would just suit the playstyle, as well as much additional strength with reveal damage and terrain juke potential vs chasing opponents. Although mend could have some work with card mechanics.

I enjoy how flexible damba's abilities are designed to be both supportive and hositle at the same time, yet mend is the only exception without the curse, it is a hand holding heal ability alone, no other alternate use, paladins support design should not restrict player with such abilities imo, shame every support character after followed its design.

Personally, I feel heal abilities need to stay at consistant values no matter the talent of choice. The only thing modified is healing coverage / enemy hinderance mechanic.
Having talents to provide an additional charge to each heal/suppression dynamic sounds better talent design then the current imo.

I think, snipe heal/poison 2 charge, 2 heal/poison molotovs, would be ample talents if their CD rotation was balenced accordingly.
Although his hostile sustain damage ought to be kept to utility damage values alone.

Other then just ramping the damage of snake toss, I would argue that giving mal a sustain damage on mend should be all battle info, extra damage and dps bonus you need.

Furthermore I would rather see mal improve his survivability or ambush potential via some form of weak regeneration heal and a 2s invisibility after slither, with slither going invisible towards the end duration, with an added feature, does not uncloak until the end of the snake toss, or any attack or ability.

Invis after slither into snake toss sounds better to me then just snake toss bonus damage alone, a wise player can play a whole heck of a lot safer when pressured and attracting focus, shedding visibility before any stun or fear expires and repeat the process from safety.

But hey all that thrown together on one champ would be considered broken, battle info around terrain, invis and cc... yeah bogus ayy... but that is what I would consider a complete character for a shooter.

@Lukash369
THAT SAID.
CROSS PLATFORM IS RENDERED USLESS WHEN CONTROLLER INDIFFERANCES ARISE

Please try and inform the devs that work on better quality keyboard and mouse ports to console would be appreciated.

Because if each player, no matter the console, had Keyboard set ups and the UI options were identical cross platform, this would not be such an issue.

Consoles now are fully capable of having PC controllers. An in game mechanic identifying and isolating your use of control platform for the game, throwing you in the arena with other players using the same control platform.

I am kind of tired of console games asking you to use their shite controller, it should be time that any game on console should be playable with Keyboard and Mouse.

It makes no sense for some shooters and crpgs to devolve controler set ups. The ideal custom setups with both mouse and gamepad analog stick for 360 degree movement angle range, on PC it sends the UI into a total shambles as it tries to switch between game pad and mouse keys.

Question is, casual to combat random, or ranked for serious level gameplay.
Both is fair, but how its implemented is key.
Because both can annoy people.

Getting a call for surrender mid overtime to me is like....
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU WEAKLING, CAN'T YOU SEE TIS IS THE TIME FOR FACE MELTING, DON'T WASTE MY FOCUS WITH YOUR LACK OF SPINE."
You get the deal..

For siege at least.
A window at the start of each round after the first would be an alright optional choice.
Therefore a round must be played in order for a surrender to be optional, even then it must be done in the starting phase of a round in order to be called.

In future ranked gamemodes in general, a team should have multiple round style design with windows in order the players to have moments of clarity for tactical discussion and clear opportunities for item purchase, while games are proven over a few trials of the same combat rather then one continuous shitstorm.

I find the game design behind base defence to be questionable still.
Certain maps aside, I find that you are not given much of an advantaged window right outside your door.
The benefits of spawn do not really cater to the bottleneck the spawn often provides.
If you have a window to push to the enemy spawn door, with enough fire power you have opportunity to stagger out a game from the start of match, trapping foes in spawn, collecting key characters until the game progression requires the point to be activated and cart pushed.
When a team has the advantage and takes all the time in the world to push the cart, you do not want to linger around on those games.
Spending time waiting for your comrades to back you up as you fight a 2v1 outside your door... or watching them flee around the foes while you stay limited to an area is lack of teamplay costing you map progression...

What I am getting at here is that certain bases could use some close quarters denial features to hinder players who backfoot a team so, all progress is hindered for the rest of the round due to the narrow design of some spawn door locations that fit in one field of view unless one can pass a shooting gallery to collect skulls and stagger the enemy. These defences could be deactivated once the point is captured, or the playload reaches potential checkpoints.
The idea being, a better foothold around spawn without hindering the payload push.
If players had base environment zoning, it would provide hindrance to characters who can simply sit outside spawn and attempt to hardcc you or displace you.
If a team is harder to push into spawn, does not feel so alone when on the backfoot of the round, their desire to surrender should only be reserved for the truly crushing an impossible defeats.

Here's some thoughts.

All a wise player needs to consider is average dps provided by hit consistency of +1200k dps hitscan champs compared to 850 blasters.

Depending on the refire rate, prefire time, projectile size and splash damage... you get an attack dps that is ineffective past a certain range at certain angles.
Whereas Hitscan and characters with an insane range potential are effective at any range and will always provide hitscan trait effects such as dismount and instant application of damage.

An 850 explosive is not as potent per shot then the +1.2K shred, nor will it deal damage to multiple targets on average per shot to compensate for its lack of dps...

That said some characters have massive area damage ults that also act as potential area instant kills, that could be toned back to apply some damage over time pressure, lock up / down / exile+damage over duration type pressure mechanics.

Somewhere a discussion colab discussion on considering how far you can set hitscan damage or large area damage from singular source alone.

• Personally I like the concept of projectiles without splash getting more damage the greater the distance travelled, but ideal min max damage capping would be needed.

• Bullet Hitscan having greater damage falloff over range.

• Explosives getting a clear definition of average splash damage size for multi foe blasting reasons.

Personally I believe that more damage abilities should be granted offensive store item capabilities and/or apply debuff traits that have synergy with the primary attack mechanic, instead of the primary attack dps or ability dps being outright too daft.

I feel that average Hitscan Dps should be 1k-1.2kish average values, scaling to 450-850 dps after max falloff ranges, depending on their designated suppressor/sniper class ample range.

The character should be assisted by other kit features that benefit the primary fire dps, allowing them (temporarily boost damage / ability stagger / better frag window) sort of momentary pain mechanics, or options to grant the team temporary Battle Information to outmanoeuvre the enemy.

On that note, a damage class should not operate on firepower alone, instead offer damage utility and alternate pathways of shutting down team dynamic approach with talents that alter a main ability to be somewhat troublesome in a meta game way...

--

On design side note, Certain Damage over time effect designs such as burning / poison could gain a stacking mechanic, allowing it to have greater effect the longer / greater the stack magnitude has been applied. Allowing team synergy to support the continued effects of stacked debuff, thus providing the game more effect damage.

Certain weapons, abilities, classes could be limited to providing one stack, while others try and push it further for a moment as it will take less time to amass 3 stacks of effect damage if 1 is applied by another champion.

Damage types should be given a characteristic, not just blast and direct. Depending on class of ability it could be given less initial damage but be given other game effects and/or work with store item abilities.

• Explosives could provide anti heal+burn duration, possibly reducing the effects of DR of a duration.

• Poison could provide lower levels of anti heal depending on application method, possibly slowing the cooldown time / resource recovery of abilities.

• Abyssal Ult Explosions could exile the enemy upon reaching max stack, with better design it could stagger both healing and Cooldown timers for the duration.

All hidden values of Atk Up, Slow, Regen, Haste, DR Resistance, could be visually indicated and mitigated by a x3 stacking system would give clear indication to the current approximate value of the buff/debuff you are influenced by, akin to how cauterise works with severity levels.

Damn I hate looking at Grover these days.
Seems that everything I liked to play has been reworked to become less aggressive and passive.
Except for Term...
On average, Grover feels like an assist machine with poor hostility potential due to slightly underwhelming damage.

Before his dps nerf he suffered from poor damage vs deployable anything, then they reduced the scaling of the hostility items, so whatever feeble damage you deal, you are not getting much of a hostility upgrade.
Ask yourself, what does grover do vs ying who sits behind near infinite clones..?
What does grover do vs +3k deployable assets?
How is he expected to deal with them?
He can't contribute much firepower quickly, that is still his major issue, made more apparent by the recent balance changes.
Aside from that, now sustain is accessible at all tiers of caut, enemy sustain really digs into your dps if you miss a shot, on top of that, grover's weapon does not really suit cauterise, but it is required to deals with hp sustain that eats into his dps/fire rate.

Unless we talk about how Grover still scales wrecker damage vs personal shields, which is a niche counter pick option that I think can be improved in itself to cater to more common gameplay features.

Grover was a Chad Maeve/Jenos Tank Hybrid in Beta, High mobility, frontline cqc damage, heavy damage corridor suppressor from afar (just needs a fair max damage cap), good potential reset, just had issues with team synergy healing...
Now heal synergy has somewhat improved, his synergy with elim CDR or mechanics to remove a chunk of CD quickly is a tad strong in the free reset department, worthy of a minor nerf.
But since he lacks the ability to make kills or fight alone, it stays strong as allies have to obtain kills and fight cqc battles on his behalf..

Honestly, I feel the mechanics for his healing resets to be not the best quality of life Grover atm. He as become too focused on taking out big chunks of his CD for heal consistency that he ends up being inconsistent in other areas.

I just tire of this design of support.
They used to be good brawlers, now I barely can say support and brawler in the same sentence, unless you state a good support that does not need their hand held.