Shyerow
New member
I've been thinking this for a while and just thought I should put it out there for people to discuss.
I often hear both sides of the spectrum of Gun vs Spirit and which is stronger, either from coaching or watching streams. I believe that having every character be able to build spirit or weaping is a cool concept, and hope that the game achieves this goal, but in my opinion, this makes things extremely difficult to balance in the aspect of how much build diversity there will be.
this is the common thought around spirit vs gun:
"Spirit is often much stronger in the early to mid game, whereas gun is much stronger later into the game."
Spirit:
A suggestion I was going to make is that I think there should be a global change to base hero ability damage.
sure this doesnt seem like it would change a lot, but I think it does. A large amount of complaints about spirit is that they are strong early. (I think this ok and how it should be) However, spirit characters having the ability to just oneshot people the moment they get their 4.8k spirit spike is quite unhealthy. This leads to many characters in the game to be extremely broken like (As of this patch) Mina, Vyper, Vindicta who arent entirely meta, just strong burst characters that have the ability to oneshot people very early on (and still are usefull/strong damage carries later into the game).
Gun:
Gun is in a weird spot right now. I am a firm beliver that m1s should be quite weak early and become behemoths in the late game, however an issue is that many of the popular m1s in the game right now have a great lane. (warden, viscous, vyper, mina, etc.) Sure this might be due to other innate issues within those characters, but there isnt really a standard progression for m1s. The other issue is that bullet resilience is in a weird spot. No one is really buying the item due to metal skin being a thing. With how much shred is flying around the item loses a lot of its value. (Armor Piercing Rounds is another awkward item) A hard balancing topic is that gun characters who scale into the late game dont value the 1600 items other than like fleetfoot or swift striker, and having a gun that does a lot of damage in the early game to midgame is a problem (mainly warden and viscous right now)
A solution might be to have more abilities in the game scale with weapon damage to help players gain a sense of direction on how to build the character they are playing. (this however does change the fact that "every character can build either spirit or gun")
Carries:
Many m1s are also building their spirit investment first, which is reducing the value of many of the 1600 weapon items (such as Long range, opening rounds, slowing bullets, splitshot, and the melee item Melee charge) We as players are also almost always forced to buy spirit resilience at somepoint every game in order to be able to do anything at all, where there are many cases where bullet resilience is never purchased (I rarely see the item purchased, and if I do see it I am often questioning that player's thought process)
Many characters who have been identified as main carries (wraith, infernus, mirage, haze, seven, etc.) not many relate well to the really weak early and really strong late mindset that carries (I believe) should have. Seven right now is in the best state of this mindset, but still gets outscaled by other carries like wraith. Wraith has a decent lane due to the spirit spike that many people build towards. Characters like mirage have quite a strong lane, but his farming speed is quite bad, and relies heavily on his mark for damage. The issue with this is that many of the main m1 carries (besides haze, but shes being mostly played as pick) heavily rely on spirit items in order for them to deal damage. In the current game state there are not any strong m1 characters that are building gun items to increase their strength in the midgame.
Frontline:
In the current state, frontline do way too much damage (might be due to the spirit and weapon investment stats) but every frontline character (besides Mo & Krill) currently have an issue in which they are able to 100-0 carries at nearly every point in the game. many of the characters also have some sort of innate damage amp in their kit. Shiv with damage amp on rage mechanics, abrams with gaining gun damage after pinning a target, billy gaining weapon damage for landing his 2 and gaining bullet amp on blasted enemies, victor increasing the damage characters take (on t3 3). this is allowing tanks to be able to essentially be a carry while being so tanky that they are unkillable unless they have 2+ characters shooting at them and even have a high chance of killing many people before dying. (kinda looking at shiv ult) with lower base damage stats, some of the characters' amp wouldnt do as much for them unless they decide to invest more in damage items. (Makes tanks have to actually think about buying damage items over tank items) That being said, tanks having the ability to be a threat is good because otherwise there would be no reason to look at them.
Spirit Nukers:
Many of these characters are in a decent spot due to the fact that everyone is building spirit resilience and the issues I have were mainly listed in the spirit category. but making it so characters have to actually invest more into spirit rather than just the investment to do damage might help with the issue of nearly everyone going for the spirit spike first.
This is by no means a complaint about the game, I quite enjoy the state that the game is currently in, and reporting what I have heard from others and think might be as a solution to it. There will always be two sides of a coin and it will be hard to please everyone, so I wish the devs good luck with the process.
-Shyerow
I often hear both sides of the spectrum of Gun vs Spirit and which is stronger, either from coaching or watching streams. I believe that having every character be able to build spirit or weaping is a cool concept, and hope that the game achieves this goal, but in my opinion, this makes things extremely difficult to balance in the aspect of how much build diversity there will be.
this is the common thought around spirit vs gun:
"Spirit is often much stronger in the early to mid game, whereas gun is much stronger later into the game."
Spirit:
A suggestion I was going to make is that I think there should be a global change to base hero ability damage.
sure this doesnt seem like it would change a lot, but I think it does. A large amount of complaints about spirit is that they are strong early. (I think this ok and how it should be) However, spirit characters having the ability to just oneshot people the moment they get their 4.8k spirit spike is quite unhealthy. This leads to many characters in the game to be extremely broken like (As of this patch) Mina, Vyper, Vindicta who arent entirely meta, just strong burst characters that have the ability to oneshot people very early on (and still are usefull/strong damage carries later into the game).
Gun:
Gun is in a weird spot right now. I am a firm beliver that m1s should be quite weak early and become behemoths in the late game, however an issue is that many of the popular m1s in the game right now have a great lane. (warden, viscous, vyper, mina, etc.) Sure this might be due to other innate issues within those characters, but there isnt really a standard progression for m1s. The other issue is that bullet resilience is in a weird spot. No one is really buying the item due to metal skin being a thing. With how much shred is flying around the item loses a lot of its value. (Armor Piercing Rounds is another awkward item) A hard balancing topic is that gun characters who scale into the late game dont value the 1600 items other than like fleetfoot or swift striker, and having a gun that does a lot of damage in the early game to midgame is a problem (mainly warden and viscous right now)
A solution might be to have more abilities in the game scale with weapon damage to help players gain a sense of direction on how to build the character they are playing. (this however does change the fact that "every character can build either spirit or gun")
Carries:
Many m1s are also building their spirit investment first, which is reducing the value of many of the 1600 weapon items (such as Long range, opening rounds, slowing bullets, splitshot, and the melee item Melee charge) We as players are also almost always forced to buy spirit resilience at somepoint every game in order to be able to do anything at all, where there are many cases where bullet resilience is never purchased (I rarely see the item purchased, and if I do see it I am often questioning that player's thought process)
Many characters who have been identified as main carries (wraith, infernus, mirage, haze, seven, etc.) not many relate well to the really weak early and really strong late mindset that carries (I believe) should have. Seven right now is in the best state of this mindset, but still gets outscaled by other carries like wraith. Wraith has a decent lane due to the spirit spike that many people build towards. Characters like mirage have quite a strong lane, but his farming speed is quite bad, and relies heavily on his mark for damage. The issue with this is that many of the main m1 carries (besides haze, but shes being mostly played as pick) heavily rely on spirit items in order for them to deal damage. In the current game state there are not any strong m1 characters that are building gun items to increase their strength in the midgame.
Frontline:
In the current state, frontline do way too much damage (might be due to the spirit and weapon investment stats) but every frontline character (besides Mo & Krill) currently have an issue in which they are able to 100-0 carries at nearly every point in the game. many of the characters also have some sort of innate damage amp in their kit. Shiv with damage amp on rage mechanics, abrams with gaining gun damage after pinning a target, billy gaining weapon damage for landing his 2 and gaining bullet amp on blasted enemies, victor increasing the damage characters take (on t3 3). this is allowing tanks to be able to essentially be a carry while being so tanky that they are unkillable unless they have 2+ characters shooting at them and even have a high chance of killing many people before dying. (kinda looking at shiv ult) with lower base damage stats, some of the characters' amp wouldnt do as much for them unless they decide to invest more in damage items. (Makes tanks have to actually think about buying damage items over tank items) That being said, tanks having the ability to be a threat is good because otherwise there would be no reason to look at them.
Spirit Nukers:
Many of these characters are in a decent spot due to the fact that everyone is building spirit resilience and the issues I have were mainly listed in the spirit category. but making it so characters have to actually invest more into spirit rather than just the investment to do damage might help with the issue of nearly everyone going for the spirit spike first.
This is by no means a complaint about the game, I quite enjoy the state that the game is currently in, and reporting what I have heard from others and think might be as a solution to it. There will always be two sides of a coin and it will be hard to please everyone, so I wish the devs good luck with the process.
-Shyerow
