Mzo's Thoughts: Y3S2.2 Mid-Season Changes, Dev AMA

A portion of this article was intially seen on BreachingSiege.

In light of the upcoming operator changes in the mid-season patch, as well as the developers follow-up AMA, Mzo -- Pro League caster, SiegeGG Podcast host, and creator of BreachingSiege -- sat down to informally share a few of his thoughts about them.

The following has been written by Mzo.

Operator Changes

Finka

• Reducing the ability duration is fine, as it does mean timing is more important without increasing frequency of use.

• Not really the right operator to give frag grenades to. Let's look at the other operators who have frag grenades:
  • Buck, Sledge - Soft breachers who can entry frag.
  • IQ - Support Entry fragger who can use frags to help clear detected gadgets.
  • Doesn't make sense design-wise to give Finka grenades just to make it a more played operator.

• Reduced gas damage modifier is good, as that made Finka basically a non-starter in any high level match where Smoke is played.

• ADS boost reduction is good as this was way too powerful when combined with other effects, especially with shields, SMGs and 3 speed attackers.

• Unfortunately they didn't make or acknowledge the #1 change requested change by PL players, remove the recoil modifier! SMGs get quite a boost in Ranked with this.
  • I would like to see that buff removed as well as the Echo counter. Finka's abilities make the most sense for site pushes, so having all 3 site denial operators be able to counter Finka (Smoke, Echo, Lesion) is a bit overkill and you can't know if someone is boosted to potentially waste a Yokai blast on.

IQ

• Replacing frags with a claymore will very likely reduce IQ's pick rate in PL a fair amount. Attack operators with frags like Buck and Sledge make for a good second or support entry combination with gun based entry fraggers like Ash and Twitch, helping them to clear out roamers or gadgets. Finka will not be a good candidate for either of these roles, making the swap pretty odd.

• IQ had the benefit of being able to identify gadget positions to grenade them out, but will now have to rely on pings and comms to ask other operators to do so. Overall this might not be a hugely negative change, but it is a bit baffling of a justification compared to when they took away Thermite's (which is where IQ got them).

• For anyone that doubts this will cause a huge decrease in pick rate, I'd point you to Capitao's pick rate plummeting when his frags were removed.

• I find it strange they focused on IQ as a counter pick to Valkyrie and Echo without acknowledging Pulse, Vigil, Mute and Bandit, which IQ has demonstrated a significant counter to in PL.

• Reducing electronics detection range is probably a reasonable change, but how much that effects usage will be pretty map dependent as the detector is most often used when outside buildings, so the range at which gadgets will be from outside is pretty variable.

Blackbeard

• It seems odd that they would state they don't want to "make him stronger" and then buff the damage output of the MK17. While the SR-25 has become the standard choice for PL players, the MK17 was already strong as is, and the nerf to the SR-25 damage alone would have been fine. The bigger issue with the MK17 is the recoil, not the damage.

• Reducing shield HP is a good change, but only dropping it 10 HP without addressing the real problem of the temporary invincibility shield breaking animation is just kicking the can down the road at this point. It's possible that the invincibility issue is relatively fixed, but discussions with pros and my own observations lead me to believe it isn't 100%.

• Moving faster while the rifle-shield is attached is a good comfort change, and a nice offset to the shield HP reduction. It's definitely not comfortable to have to switch to the Deagle so frequently.

Glaz

• Unfortunately the decision to keep the fire rate buff while just reducing damage is not going to have the effect of making him more situational, as it doesn't really address the actual problems with Glaz -- seeing through smoke, yellow highlights, and high fire rate. Expect him to continue being banned just as heavily in PL.

Twitch

• It's possible that the damage reduction to the Famas will have a positive effect in Ranked, but is not likely to do the same for PL. High fire rate weapons with predictable recoil are extremely powerful in PL as they increase the chances for head shots which are unrelated to bullet damage. Modifications to recoil or fire rate would have made more sense.

Jackal

• Increasing the safety of scanning footprints will likely improve Jackal for maps where he is able to get scans from outside or in safer spots, and itself is a positive change.

• Unfortunately they aren't really addressing other issues related to his ability, so I don't expect this to effect PL level play.

Frost

• It's good that they acknowledge that further work needs to be done, but buffing an already good SMG isn't going to really make any significant difference. If they wanted to increase usage they need to increase the effectiveness/stealth of traps or give Frost an extra trap.

Dokkaebi

• While the change is phrased in such a way that it makes it sound like they are nerfing Dokkaebi's gadget choices, they are unfortunately just increasing the desire to use Dokkaebi as more of an entry fragging role.
• The SMG12 is already fairly effective, combined with the ability to hunt roamers with phone calls and (now) stun them, you are getting a very powerful combination with other entry or support entry roles. Expect to see Dokkaebi's ban rate increase over the PL season against teams that also want to run Lion.

Barb Wire

• The previous nerf to barb wire was a bit heavy and has had a positive effect of increasing the pick rate of other gadgets. It has however made barb wire itself so weak as to be somewhat useless outside of a few spots, leading to even Smoke running impact nades sometimes. "

  Increasing the slowing effect (which is the purpose of the gadget) back up a bit while keeping the ease of clearing it is probably the right call. Hard to say how much of an effect 5% will have however.

Other Discussion Points

Alibi

• I think it's fairly obvious why Alibi is strong in Ranked play but not PL; look at Caveira. it surprises me that it's hard for them to understand the difference in mentality and play style in Ranked vs PL in regards to operators that can throw off or surprise opponents.

Maestro

• I think looking at the times Maestro isn't banned in PL its pretty clear to see that his gun is currently overpowered. His hip fire and recoil need some changes along with removing the extremely unnecessary ACOG on an LMG. It doesn't make sense that you'd put an ACOG on an LMG, give it near perfect hip fire, and then decide it also needs 80 bullets!

Overall there are some positive changes in the patch, but I'm skeptical of many of these having a positive effect on PL as they don't seem to directly address any of the significant issues.

Thoughts on the Developers' AMA answers

Warning, this is a bit long as they said a lot, but much of it is vague or speculative.

• Thatcher changes in the future will be interesting in regards to making his EMP less "binary" as they put it. I'm not sure how they'd handle "temporarily disabling" batteries as that would likely force Bandit to shoot his own battery just to Bandit trick it (since you wouldn't be able to put a fresh battery on a wall that already has one).

• I like the idea that Thatcher will require a bit more timing in regards to usage, but I do fear that he'd likely fall out of favor for situations where its safer to just shoot or grenade gadgets. I do think if they simply made him disable most gadgets then they'd have to consider giving him a 4th EMP.

• Possible buffing of Capitao's firebolts would be interesting, but possibly overpowered as right now they are generally used in 3 ways:
  • Burning someone out of a tiny specific spot (e.g. Oregon -- Kids' Bedroom)
  • Cutting off a rotation (e.g. Border -- Armory Lockers and 'Sandwich')
  • Denying defuser disarming (an older idea, but one Pengu demonstrated just tonight)

• It's good to know they want to keep the number of frag grenade operators contained, but with the amount of play Buck and Sledge see, the best way to contain how overpowered they are right now is to either buff Jager, add another grenade denial op, or reduce the number of throwables (2 stuns instead of 3 would be good).

• The idea of a Castle rework could be great, but it risks the issues MOBAs have with major redesigns making a previously interesting operator suddenly bland or uninteresting, as he's in a great place in Pro League play. I do think it wouldn't be bad to find a way to make him more useful and less annoying outside of PL though.

• Interesting that JB seemed to take the idea of improving Thermite's ADS time to heart as it would be nice to have a better alternative to Hibana, but Hibana is currently TOO good and could possibly use a nerf to the Bearing 9 first (attack SMGs are too good right now in general).

• It's good that they don't want to nerf operators into the "un-fun" range, but this is concerning in light of much of the recent power creep as it means the power "floor" is likely to continue to rise. They may be more likely to buff old operators than nerf newer ones (see the above Finka "nerf").

• With that said, it's good that JB at least mentions they think OP operators are a negative experience. I just hope they can address those kinds of problems faster in the future (see Ela and Lion for VERY clear examples).

• Speaking of which, it's good to know there are some Lion reworks coming. The hope is that they make using his ability involve more risk or tradeoff, but still make it easy enough to use for support players (which was a goal of his design).

• Very curious what they mean by making Frost's traps less binary as there aren't really any obvious ideas for that grey area between impactful and not impactful outside of some visibility buffs.

• It's definitely confusing to read stuff like "but we would avoid taking actions to force some mechanics into Pro League if it's already fine at lower levels of play" in light of what seems like a forced attempt to get Finka played more in PL.

• I hope the Mute buff will mean more versatility for jammer use. The use of jammers on more hatches would definitely be welcome, especially in light of further Thatcher changes.

• It's a bit concerning how many times its stated in the AMA that they have a rework/redesign planned for operator X as they mention a good majority of the operators. Starting to give me 'LoL cold sweats' as the MOBA influence on the design is getting a bit strong already.

• I am glad they plan to address RoF for machine pistols once the new recoil system is in as RoF (and mag size for newer ops) is the biggest reason they are so strong in PL right now.

• "Binary" abilities/gadgets seems to be a very big theme in the AMA it leads me to believe its a term that is being used a LOT around the Ubisoft office at the moment as a focal point going forward for new designs and reworks. Keep it in mind when evaluating the next DLC!

These developer AMAs are fantastic for getting insight into the balancing process far beyond the blog posts. I hope that with the next DLC release we instead get an AMA with the Operator DESIGN team rather than BALANCING team (they made it clear they are seperate!)

All these thoughts are my own and don't necessarily represent all the staff at SiegeGG. If you'd like to discuss any of the points futher please hit me up on Twitter, @mzo!