Brawler & Sniper - Purpose?

[Shrugging Khan]

I recently finished my first playthrough (Tuck/Normal/Ironman), and since I've learned to enjoy the game as I got used to its quirks, I immediately started another round. But whereas I used the recommended setup consisting of Assault/Siege/Ninja/Science before, I now traded the Assault and Siege for a Brawler and a Sniper. I regretted my decision within minutes - they seemed wholly worse than my previous picks.

So I restarted the game as Genji, thinking that perhaps the epic Brawler and Sniper would bring a change. But nope, just more disappointment.

The Brawler's weapons can not outdo those of the Assault or Ninja, while it lacks any of their stat boosts. The Sniper has no ability that would allow it to exceed the Siege Exo. And even their epic weapons do nothing to change the situation - the Shadow torpedo handily outclasses the Railgun, the Plasma Rifle is available to the Assault and topped by the Siege's Plasma Cannon, and anything can take the place of the Gamma Ray weapon with enough range upgrades. The Epic Brawler similarly fails to impress with its Kinetic Burster (Ninja has it, and better stats) or Volatizer (Assault has it, and better stats).

Now, I've only logged some 15 hours with the game so far, and Arcen tend to put quite an amount of thought into their designs. I thusly assume to have misunderstood or overlooked something here. Then again, Arcen also often take a Trial and Error approach to balance, so maybe the Brawler and Sniper have simply tried and erred.

Or maybe they're supposed to be less powerful; a challenge, so to speak.

Well, if anyone could clear this up, I'd appreciate it.

[Billick]

Sniper has the longest sight range.  I believe that the gamma ray has the longest range and single target damage of any of the starter weapons.  The brawler has the advantage of doing good damage while being able to hit around corners.  The assault and ninja don't do as much damage the brawler.  The siege is great, but has the drawback of having limited ammo on all of its good weapons.

[sradas]

Purpose of them? To be freaking awesome, thats their purpose.

Sniper:
  1. Gamma Ray does not only great damage, but every other shot is a free action so really that 5k gamma ray is a 10k gamma ray. Not only that, you can split the damage between two targets.  Has WAY more ammo than a rocket launcher
  2. Rail Gun does wtf damage, all that needs to be said there.  How much fun is one-shotting dragon bots or claw bots?  Lots.
  3. Plasma Cannon is pretty much god mode.  You can stack +blast radius on it safely thanks to the increased sight range so you dont worry about blowing yourself up.
  4. How can the ninja even compete?  Once his stealth is gone, he's gone.  Beyond Machine Gun the range of its weapons suck.

Brawler:
  1. Shoot through walls with its dissolver.  Shoot all the things before they can even see you.  Also, shoot around corners.  Outside LOS.  Just shoot all the things ever, stack a bit of range and radius and its great.
  2. One of its weapons is the same as Ninjas epics so you cant complain there.
  3. One of its weapon is the same as  the Assaults epic so you cant complain there either.


Best team I have found so far is: Assault, Ninja, Sniper, Siege.  Who needs science?
Assault: Use computer slots for + shields.
Sniper: Use computer slots for Hacking (Pretty easy to get 100+ hacking on a Sniper).  No point in Virus since you gotta get close.  No point in Turrets since he has plenty of ammo.
Ninja: Use computer slots for Virus (Pretty easy to get 500+ virus on a ninja)  No point in Hacking or Turrets since you need that valuable stealth to get close and Virus all the things.
Siege: Use computer slots for Turrets.  Turrets work well since he has relatively low ammo stores, Turrets are a great backup and its easy to get them OP.  Works great in lions dens.  Pump his Sensor range to about 40-50 (easy), surround himself with turrets, start shooting Missiles and Plasma and Torpedos at everything.  If anything manages to slip past the death fields and get within 12-15 tiles your turrets mop em up.

[keith.lamothe]

I think the usefulness of the Brawler & Sniper have been covered here.  The only thing I'd add is that swapping out the Siege for... well, anything else... isn't going to make that something else compare very well.  It's not so much that the Siege is OP, or that you'll have any less chance of winning the game with the alternate choice, it's just that gigantic explosions are too cool to be compared to

Siege: don't leave home without it.

[Shrugging Khan]

I think I'll just roll out an all-Siege party next. Can't go wrong with that, methinks - Siege Tank, Siege Cannoneer, Siege Trapper and Siege Hacker will be delighted to steamroll the bots.

[FrostyThePyro]

The dissolver  on the brawler is arguably one of the best weapons in the game, it does more base damage than any non-epic weapon in the game, and has an exceptional ammo count to boot, as a matter of fact of all the guns in the game it has the highest base damage*base ammo value.  It can be easily shot around corners, its just a realy good gun. 

Kenitic burst is also a pretty good gun.

Shotgun is solid, though not exceptional

Volitizer and pistol are pretty bad though, especialy the pistol.



Edit: actually I misremembered, it is the rocket launcher that has most base damage of any pre-epic weapon, though its ammo count is far less than the dissolver

[PokerChen]

With ammo/blast radius upgrades, however, one can runs out of enemies before running out of rocket launcher ammo.   damage*base ammo is an incomplete measure - if you're averaging 3~5 bots per rocket and 1~2 bots per dissolver, it evens out very nicely. In addition, the X-shaped template is far more difficult to work with around corridors than the other shapes, and useless for 1-width corridors.

[Shrugging Khan]

Towards the end of my last playthrough, I've been soloing levels with the Epic Siege Exo. In larger levels with the bots spread over larger areas, I still managed to lure most of them into groups dense enough for a few plasma shots to kill the vast majority of them, so that I could mop up the rest with rockets and torpedoes. Any opposition remaining after that was easy prey even to my hacking-focussed Science Exo.

Methinks that if I had used two Siege Exos, I would've quit the playthrough early out of boredom.

However, another thing I discovered to be slightly very very very powerful was a Ninja Exo with massive stacks of Trap Skill upgrades. Slinging 50 sentries with 3k damage and 30 range? All it took to empty a level was switching to an Exo with a longer sensor range and whistling cheerfully.

And stacking shield upgrades on the Assault and just bungling through the levels without a care in the world? Probably more testament to my somewhat sloppy play style, but it still seems to be that the Assault beats the Brawler both in utility value and in raw numerical combat prowess.

[keith.lamothe]

FYI, 1.001 fixes the sentry cheese you referred to.  It's actually much worse in 1.0 than that if you stack, say, 300 trap skill that way.

[licker]

Balance and polish is nice, but some exos should still be better than others.  Of course, some of it will still depend on play style and luck with getting the right loot to maximize the right area.

I maintain we don't need to fret over some kind of perfect balance.  If you find it too easy with Sieges, stop playing with Sieges and see how you can compensate using some other tactic.

This game is supposed to be a rougelike afterall, though it's still far too forgiving for me to really consider it that way.  Rougelikes are supposed to occasionally be simply unwinnable due to the vagaries of chance.  I've yet to have that happen in BD, though I gladly admit I'm not playing the highest difficulties.  Still, 'normal' difficulty in most roguelikes still results in more failures than successes, and once you learn the mechanics of this game I have a hard time seeing anyone losing on Normal or Hard without seriously restricting their choices or other self imposed restrictions.

And don't take that as a knock on the game, not everything has to be anything, but sometimes somethings should be otherthings 

[keith.lamothe]

Balance and polish is nice, but some exos should still be better than others.

It doesn't need to be razor-balanced, yea.  This isn't a competitive rts or moba or whatever (not that they necessarily achieve razor balance, but it's kind of the implicit goal there).

That said, if we give you a choice between six things, then for each of those things:
a) It needs to not be so weak you'd obviously just choose something else.  Otherwise, why include it at all?
b) It needs to not be so strong you'd obviously just choose it and never choose the others.  Otherwise, why include the others at all?

Basically, it's not so much a question of balancing the choices, it's not including unnecessary choices.  In the explicit-choice situations; obviously you can choose to just bumrush the enemy every time (and generally die horribly) but it's not like that's a behavior you're picking from a list, etc.

In this case I think all 6 exos are well within the range between a) and b)   There are some things that could use some work like the Volatizer's usefulness and that kind of thing, but the exos themselves seem to be doing well.

[nas1m]

Balance and polish is nice, but some exos should still be better than others.

It doesn't need to be razor-balanced, yea.  This isn't a competitive rts or moba or whatever (not that they necessarily achieve razor balance, but it's kind of the implicit goal there).

That said, if we give you a choice between six things, then for each of those things:
a) It needs to not be so weak you'd obviously just choose something else.  Otherwise, why include it at all?
b) It needs to not be so strong you'd obviously just choose it and never choose the others.  Otherwise, why include the others at all?

Basically, it's not so much a question of balancing the choices, it's not including unnecessary choices.  In the explicit-choice situations; obviously you can choose to just bumrush the enemy every time (and generally die horribly) but it's not like that's a behavior you're picking from a list, etc.

In this case I think all 6 exos are well within the range between a) and b)   There are some things that could use some work like the Volatizer's usefulness and that kind of thing, but the exos themselves seem to be doing well.

I think you are right here.
BTW: Any news on whether/when further refinements will come for the new Customization/Inventory?

[keith.lamothe]

BTW: Any news on whether/when further refinements will come for the new Customization/Inventory?

I generally avoid giving ETAs or responding to requests for them, when I don't know the answer   I'd hoped to have the next batch ready for Monday, but the weekened was totally crazy and I've been booked solid on other stuff yesterday and thus far today.  Anyway, yes, I am trying to get more of it done, and fwiw I've got it no longer doing the drag-n-drop thing and instead "click source, click destination" (and the opposite).

[nas1m]

Anyway, yes, I am trying to get more of it done...

That's all i hoped to hear. Glad (at least a little) more is coming! I must say i quite fell for this game . And no worries - the last thing i wanted was an eta .

[licker]

Balance and polish is nice, but some exos should still be better than others.

It doesn't need to be razor-balanced, yea.  This isn't a competitive rts or moba or whatever (not that they necessarily achieve razor balance, but it's kind of the implicit goal there).

That said, if we give you a choice between six things, then for each of those things:
a) It needs to not be so weak you'd obviously just choose something else.  Otherwise, why include it at all?
b) It needs to not be so strong you'd obviously just choose it and never choose the others.  Otherwise, why include the others at all?

That's one way to look at it.    I'm partial to various roguelikes where there are 100s of combination choices, and some of them are clearly inferior to others, yet they offer a different challenge and or play style.  That's not to say that BD *has* to do things this way.  Achieving 'balance' is a worthy enough goal on it's own, but I'm not super worried about it.  Some maps should be punishing if you chose to go siege and some should be punishing if you choose to go assault.

It's already that way to a degree, though I simply am unconcerned about charges that one exo is OP compared to another.  Use it or don't use it, the choice is still on the player.  The plasma cannon hitting through walls is ridiculous to me, but all that means is I stopped using the siege because the mechanics involved with it don't appeal to me.