A novel suggestion: Medic Crossbow nerf

[Pan-Kaike]

Hey there,

Avid battle medic player in SH 1 (Mainly because so few folks want to play the class - unless suddenly a wild Cave Johnson appears. Then Pyros, Medics and Demos aplenty.) that has a rather strange request.

Damage nerf.

Currently at max trajectory it does 563 (I get this more often than one'd think) and the 20 point nerf honestly doesn't feel strong enough. (It used to be 583 until a couple of months ago. Multiple testing etc etc). I just don't think a medic should be able to outsnipe/outdamage a SNIPER.

I'm almost certain you did this to try to encourage folks to play medic more - it sorta worked. I see three medics at a time on a full server instead of 1-2. lol

Honestly max should be 450-475 range. Capped at 500 at least so machina snipers do 25 damage more per charged shot.

(I would also like to take this time to openly bitch/whine/complain about the crossbow reload speed nerf. I would happily sacrifice 100+ damage a shot to get my speed back. I'm aware this was on valve's side and not the server's, but I'm sure there's some way to tweak that nonsense.)

Thanks for even looking at this/possibly considering/telling me to sod off because I'm a noob/whatever.
~Kai

[BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBoBo]

medic is not even that op besides be fucking annoying but no i like the damage boost u play on ff2 yet everyone i know when senor alux gets on they go medic its a blood bath most people level their strange cross bow on here cause of how much damage it does

[dr. prof. wonder waffle]

i dont belive it needs a nerf most people find the crossbow hard to use since its a 1 shot and all so i guess when you hit 500+ dmg its a compensation to the other dmg you havent done if you arent that good with the crossbow i dont know but i dont belive it needs a nerf c:

[VoiDeD]

I don't recall doing any specific changes to crossbow bolts recently, so any changes in damage may also be Valve's work.

However, I'd say the high damage compensates for the travel time on the projectile, similar to the huntsman having a very fast charge up time to it's maximum damage. The key being that it's all moot point if you miss.

If you're good at the class, I see no reason to punish players playing it. And as you said, it would incentivize players to play medic more (and to hopefully heal inbetween their attempts to attack) than if it would have been nerfed.

(I would also like to take this time to openly bitch/whine/complain about the crossbow reload speed nerf. I would happily sacrifice 100+ damage a shot to get my speed back. I'm aware this was on valve's side and not the server's, but I'm sure there's some way to tweak that nonsense.)

I'm still waiting on Valve to push out the next update that will fix some attributes on items (I'm looking at you, baby face blaster) not working correctly. I'll start looking at what items need to be reverted after that.

[BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBoBo]

voidy have u ever think about banning baby face until the patch fixes it or something like that,also can we do something with the buff banner to do full crits instead and battalions have less fall damage or restitance to push force on where

[Lunacy]

You know why I love these servers?
They have all this shit that the other servers don't.
Go on any other hale server, basically crossbow cannot crit above 200, no bushwacka jumps, no pyro airblast jumps, no spy watch buff, usually no tauntcrits... etc.
Just as well, here a medic's crossbow hit grants 20% uber, whereas every other server it grants only 10% (while having no damage bonus).
Medics are not overpowered nor underpowered as they are now.

[BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBoBo]

i was in vsponyville hale gets random crits all the time and one hale name lyra same thing as ghost buster spencer with people saying oh lyra is the same as cbs i said fuck no she is not first cbs doesnt get a cross bow that will crit after a kill for 5 seconds. also the medics in there are so underpowered and shit they made u get highlighted when last alive they made scouts not double jump if last alive removed mantreads greater jumps removed amps for no reason made the kgb heavies so op that it does like 95 damage on hit when playing as hale attacking them and they made engies with jags have no primary and southern users have only 100 metal on them with 25 metal gain every 5 second

[VoiDeD]

Figured I'd bump this thread to get some more discussion going about the crossbow (and other medic weapons) in VSH.

Here's my current opinion about it: I'd say the crossbow is currently OP. Maybe not by much, but enough so that most medics don't tend to use the syringe guns anymore. So here's some changes I've made today:

• Crossbows now have a damage bonus of 225%, this is down from 250%. The exact implications of how much this percentage actually changes the damage is hard to gauge with the crit bonus that the crossbow receives already. I didn't want to completely nerf it, so I only decreased the bonus by 25%.
• Syringe guns now build 10% uber on hit, this is up from 5%. Hopefully this may entice some medic players to try it out and see if the new uber building makes it worth using. If not, we can likely increase it more.

Another thing we can play with regarding the syringe guns is increasing weapon switch speed (like the degreaser), to perhaps make it easier to deploy your uber in those close range battles with Hale.

There's also likely some discussion to be had regarding the uber build on the crossbow. Currently it's at 20% on hit, and isn't something that I was confident changing without some input from players. Is it too high? Too low? Just right?

[Punishment_Fatal]

There's also likely some discussion to be had regarding the uber build on the crossbow. Currently it's at 20% on hit, and isn't something that I was confident changing without some input from players. Is it too high? Too low? Just right?

I don't know if this server had it before, but I remember an old FF2 server I used to play on had the Crossbow at a ~150% damage bonus (can't really remember), but each arrow only charged 10%. I presume it was meant for the Medics that wanted to long range snipe. Then again, this was a year and a half ago before the Crossbow was nerfed.

[lonestar13m]

Honestly, 20% gain per hit is a good amount, medics can mainly get their ubercharge from healing people with the increased rate of charge. Plus the crossbow's high damage out is already massive, giving it any more percent per hit would be nuts.


Also, You should totally give syringe guns mini-crits, or something that'll allow the medic to actually damage hale. Maybe even give it the slowing effect like the pomson and natasha, that way medics can build uber reliably and make an escape, rather than a cliche faster weapon speed (poor pyros ;~; ).

[Turkle]

something that'll allow the medic to actually damage hale

Medic really should be a class to just heal and uber people. Right now it's practically better than soldier or demo at dps because of its high damage per hit, decent attack speed, movement speed, and uber.

Only real way I can imagine to fix this would be to make the medic's primary do next to no damage and build uber, but people would hate that. Before the crossbow became popular medic was just dedicated to trying to uber people so that you could get damage and saving people about to die. With the crossbow you get both high damage, uber, and medics not really helping others, which is awful.

tl:dr soldier and demo shouldn't be worse than medic at doing damage

[lonestar13m]

Medic really should be a class to just heal and uber people. Right now it's practically better than soldier or demo at dps because of its high damage per hit, decent attack speed, movement speed, and uber.

The part you quoted was mainly directed to giving the syringe gun a bit of a damage boost of a nice side effect against hale. Even if medics have a good DPS, they have very limited mobility, unlike the soldier and demoman who can use their primaries to jump away. Also, crossbows aren't completely reliable when it comes to hitting hale or keeping him away like explosive weapons could.

[Lunacy]

Syringe guns now build 10% uber on hit, this is up from 5%. Hopefully this may entice some medic players to try it out and see if the new uber building makes it worth using. If not, we can likely increase it more.

Medics can instantly get uber if they get 6 little hits off which can take less than a second if the boss isn't dodging syringes.  I've run out of uber then had it back to full in under a second.  I've been able to 1v1 some bosses for quite awhile when they don't avoid the syringes, getting up to 2-3K damage off of syringes alone.
Also I've been running into a few bugs where I would have more than 100 uber before I used ubercharge and had less than 40% after an uber.

[VoiDeD]

Having played with it, I think it's in a good spot. It makes you have to get up close to Hale in order to reliably get syringe hits, and makes it a viable alternative to the crossbow.

[Pan-Kaike]

and medics not really helping others, which is awful.

You've not been watching the medic chains of death then. Regulars that know to overheal a partner and allows them to fire to get their uber up is common. I've seen it take down 15k off of a hale easily.
I'm still seeing a max of 563 damage, so not sure where the 25% damage loss went. I'll try not sniping from across a map and see if it changes.

Not too keen on the extra uber percentage, but I'll play with it a bit more. I think it could stand to be lowered.

EDIT: I've noticed the max range shot is 506 now. FINALLY less than a sniper max hit. Thank you!