Balance Changelog & Discussion

[VoiDeD]

Previously, we've held the belief that the nature of ZF's perks are inherently difficult to balance, as some players will always believe that a given perk is either over powered or under powered, and thus the perks have been (mostly) static for many months. It's becoming increasingly clear, however, that some perks are fundamentally flawed (wise, friend, etc) and need tweaks.

Thus, this thread will be used as the official ZF perk balance changelog and discussion.

[VoiDeD]

Changes in 4.2.2.6 (May 8, 2015):

Toxic

• Increased passive damage from 3/sec to 3.25/sec.
• Increased passive radius from 400 units to 600 units.

Wise

• Decreased attack stat gain from assists from 2% to 1%.
• Decreased attack stat gain from kills from 3.3% to 3%.
• Defense stat gain reworked from previous 2.6% gain on melee hit:
• Stat gain when meleed by Heavies is now 3%.
• Stat gain when meleed by Spies is now 2%.
• Stat gain when meleed by Scouts is now 1%.

Rage

• The required health percentage for activation has been lowered to 60%, from 80%.

Supplier

• Reworked from 2 resupply boxes with 4 charges, to 3 resupply boxes with 3 charges.

Stir-Crazy

• Innate defense penalty decreased from -10 to -6.

Horrifying

• Maximum limit of target attack penalty increased from -30 to -40.
• Maximum limit of target defense penalty increased from -15 to -25.

Vindictive

• Attack stat gain maximum limit increased from 60 to 75.
• Defense stat gain maximum limit increased from 30 to 40.

Ninja

• Increased innate defense penalty from -20 to -30.

Trapper

• Decreased cooldown between placing mines from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Increased mine damage from 50 to 80.
• Increased maximum number of active mines to 4, from 3.

Vampiric

• Decreased innate health regen from 10/sec to 8/sec.
• Decreased damage leech from 50% to 40%.

Friend

• Reduced attack/regen bonus when nearby friend from 66% to 45%.

[LilithReiNightShade]

Suggestions:

Buff Holy to make it more useful than diswarding Toxics.

Buff Carpenter to have more walls than 3, and make it so the homewrecker and maul destroy them faster, they're made for buildings normally, so why not carpenter walls?

Buff Stir-Crazy more, -6 defense is still pretty crap considering, i'd suggest adding speed to it to get the buffs of attack faster and actually run from the zombies.

Nerf The Sandman, either impose a limit on them, or increase the recharge time of the balls to avoid stun abuse.

Nerf combust's range but add damage to it to compensate, it gets REALLY annoying when the insane range of combustible explosions kills a low health medic nearby, because some idiot shot one.

Buff Magnetic to deal more damage to engineers, they're the only reason the perk exists anyway, or at least have a buff that stays on while disabling sentries.

Weapon Suggestions:

Re-Add The Half-Zatouchi and just have it restore 50HP on Kill and enable crits on it, but reduce their crit damage by 50%

Re-Add The Tide Turner and change the charge gained back to 25% on kill while charging.

Re-Add The B.A.S.E Jumper and have someone take more damage while its deployed.

*More Suggestions to come*

[sandy]

yay toxic might actually do something now

[LilithReiNightShade]

More Suggestions:

Buff Scorching with more speed and longer afterburn, but disable spawn protection for it. Also allow the sun on a stick to do exactly 33 damage with it instead of 11.

Combustible (Following my previous post) Disable spawn protection along with other changes mentioned.

Buff Holy with an extended range of healing, an attack penalty of 10% and a defense boost for all those being healed for 15%, does not stack with other holy users.
 
Buff Resourceful by changing the health regen to instant healing instead. (Health would be restored by 30, instead of regened by 50)

Buff Tantrum with all stats increase, but decrease defense along with the speed while the penalty occurs, all crits remains the same.

Carpenter (Following last post) Increase health of walls as well.

Nerf Hunter's spawn attack bonus to 40%, but do not have it go down until the timer would normally end for the bonus to be active, then have it go straight to 0% as normal.

Thieving: Fix the instant steals on the cow mangler and pomson, make it at least three hits to steal.

Class Suggestion:

Unnerf the Pyro's speed back to its normal levels, Powerjack not increasing it remains the same. Otherwise pyro remains mostly useless on ZF.

Weapon Suggestions:

Have the Razorback block up to three backstabs instead of one to make it more useful.

Increase the Widowmaker's metal usage to 40 per shot.

Decrease the Boston Basher and Three Rune Blade's Damage slightly, but increase bleed time to compensate.

Increase the bleed damage and length of bleeding of the Wrap Assassin's Ornaments

Increase the time of the Fan of War's Mark for Death

Increase the healing power of the Dalokoh's Bar and make its 50 hp increase an actual increase, instead of having it drain back down to the 300 base hp.

[sandy]

kinda disagree with basher, but i think the festive flamethrower and festive frontier justice might be a bit broken they get stolen instantly with full ammo or it the donators killstreak perk bugging them for me

[LilithReiNightShade]

Additional Suggestions:

Have Charge 'N' Targe gain bleed damage resistance.

Magnetic Suggestion: Add ability to disable sticky bombs in a small radius. (Radius would be just outside the explosion radius of a stickybomb) ((Would not apply to mid-air stickies, only placed ones.)

Have the Flying Guillotine/Cleaver recharge in 10 seconds instead of 6 to prevent intense spam.

Decrease Black Box Ammo to 10 instead of 20, alternatively, have the black box cost hp to fire a rocket to prevent abuse.

Increase Detonator Explosion Jump Height to make it more useful.

Increase Bleed Time on the Tribalman's Shiv to increase its ability to be useful, and while bleeding, zombies have 20% reduced speed.

Athletic Suggestion: Lower uber gained per hit to 10% instead of the normal 25%, all other perks with ubersaw are fine, this is to prevent chain medic uber abuse. ((Addendum: While the ubersaw is out, disable the ability to be healed in general, to prevent the use of ubers to build more chains))

Hitman's Heatmaker: Upon fully charged headshot it's an explosive headshot which inflicts 50 damage to every zombie nearby with 3 secs of 5 damage bleed, charge is 20% slower than normal, focus effect remains normal. (None of the explosive effects while the focus is on) ((The Explosive Headshot is constant in its damage, damage buffs and debuffs along with defense do not affect it))

Pyro Class Suggestions:

Change the Flamethrower Ammo Limit to 150 instead of 125

Backburner: 50% stronger airblast due to the ammo consumption

Sharpened Volcano Fragment: Stock Damage, Lights Zombies On Fire, 7 seconds of bleed damage, penalty is 30% slower swing speed.

Third Degree: 20% faster healing while deployed, -20% damage, 100% crit on recently healed zombies. (Sandvich use, or health pack, not the automatic regen)

*This should be the last list*

[VoiDeD]

Slight addendum to the 4.2.2.6 changelog that wasn't previously mentioned:

The passive damage of toxic zombies should no longer increase the defense stat of players using wise.
Melee attacks of toxic zombies shouldn't increase the defense stat of players using wise.

Edit: I think I need more coffee.

[LilithReiNightShade]

Shikiru Emberflame: Here's the biggest things i've heard.

Nerf the sandman in someway, limit the number available, lower max health while equipped, make the recharge longer, just do SOMETHING.

Unnerf the Pyro's speed, so its back to normal, it really makes pyro useless to have it at current speed.

Balance Juggernaut with more attack and defense and some knockback, but make speed -100 instead of -50.

Fix the warrior's spirit overall speed debuff, its unneccessary and just makes it worthless, the lowered attack speed and health were fine without that.

and unban all the weapons, namely the zatouchi, tide turner, and base jumper, and add debuffs to them to make them balanced. Like the Zatouchi only restoring 50 HP on kill instead of full health.

Copy pasted here to outline the biggest changes people want to the server. Voidy, if you would please.

[sandy]

the sandmans ball regen is already pretty slow the only problem is alot of people use the sandman if you wanna balance it just make it so the ball cant be picked back up once it is used and they have to wait for the cooldown to end

[VoiDeD]

Apologies for the delay in getting this update out. I wanted to get it released last Sunday night, but a tornado rolled through and a power surge killed my development machine's power supply so I had to get a new one.

Changes in 4.2.2.8 (August 5, 2015):

(4.2.2.7 technically came out May 8th, but didn't get a changelog)

Carpenter

• Can now build 5 barricades, up from 3.
• The health of each barricade has been reduced to 275, down from 350. (1375 effective hp with 5 barricades, vs 1050 with 3).
• Homewrecker and Maul now do 200% damage to barricades.

Stir-Crazy

• Defense penalty has been decreased from -6 to -4.

Magnetic

• Now deals 25% additional damage to engineers.

Scorching

• Increased speed bonus from 50 to 60.
• Reduced the number of seconds of spawn protection from 5 to 3, on maps with spawn protection.

Combustible

• Reduced the number of seconds of spawn protection from 5 to 3, on maps with spawn protection.

Athletic

• Medics now only gain 10% uber when using ubersaws, down from 25%.

Weapon Changes

• The B.A.S.E. Jumper is now allowed, but players take an additional 50% damage while parachuting.
• Fixed the Festive Frontier Justice and Festive Flamethrower being stolen instantly.
• Warrior's Spirit movement speed nerf has been removed.
• Flying Guillotine damage reduction decreased to 40%, down from 50%.
• Flying Guillotine now reloads 25% slower.
• Sandman balls can no longer be picked up by zombie scouts.
• The Tide Turner is no longer banned, but the on-kill charge meter refill has been reduced to 25%, from the normal 75%.
• Decreased the max primary ammo on the blackbox to 10.

Class Changes

• Pyro's movement speed nerf has been removed, now moves at normal speed.
• Pyro's max primary ammo has been increased to 150, from 125.

[Lunacy]

Is it impossible to change the half-zatoichi to something like 25 health on kill with some random penalty rather than the full heal since the previous banned items are now reworked and unbanned

[VoiDeD]

Changes in 4.2.2.9 (Jan 9, 2016):

(This changelog also includes some changes that were previously released but weren't in any changelog)

Selfless

• Fixed selfless zombies being able to explode on other friendly zombies.

Thieving

• Fixed shortstop ammo being incorrect when stolen.

Misc Changes

• Fixed dispensers not being disabled when built.
• Disabled the ability for the eureka effect to teleport back to base.

Weapon Changes

• The Phlog now no longer gives Pyros uber when taunting.