Partially Revert Bugbite Nerfs

[GreenBoi]

So, not too long ago- there was this PR that made it so Vaurca Warriors would now need a strangling grab to bite, and also increased the cooldown from 5 seconds to 7 seconds. When I first saw it, I disliked it because I thought it'd be an overnerf/make the bite useless. I was re-assured and believed the change wouldn't be that drastic, but after a few months of observing and personal experience, I've come to the conclusion that the PR did cripple Warriors too much. Specifically on the part of a person's reason to be threatened by a Za in the first place.

 

If a person was dumb enough to go hand-to-claw against one of these bugs, and actually intend on doing lethal damage- they'd most likely get extreme physical trauma from these bites and learn the hard way to know their match-ups. The reason for this in the past was because you could bugbite with just a bluegrab and that'd be it, you could also combo this into a headbutt if you were looking to seriously mess with the person.

 

Now, it's literally better just to claw at an opponent than to ever use your bugbite. By the time you reach the strangling/neckgrab that lets you do the 25 damage bite, you could've easily have done that damage by simplying clawing. I know this sounds like powergame talk, but this is really just about efficiency and necessity. You have no need to ever use the bite, not even as an execute because of how long it takes to get to it. There's also the fact that you can do a headbutt for 20 damage on bluegrab too (You take 8 damage yourself, but that's 40-16), which is just better.

 

With this in perspective, I think it makes sense why it'd feel like the bite is just crippled beyond usage now. A Za has nothing naturally threatening with their arsenal right now, their very own bite needs them to neckgrab someone- at a point where you could already and would be better off just neckslicing them as an execute. Them being strong in melee is not that bad considering the fact that the most they add to it is their bite, and other species can still headbutt or have their own tricks. Humans...are humans. Tajara can kite, for the most part. Unathi, have the strongest headbutt and can teleport away for a split-second (and so can Skrell). It's not that hard to escape bluegrabs, or run away/kite before they can grab you. Anyone with proper armor won't be as hurt by it since it's just brute, and if the concern is that unarmored people can easily die to it- isn't that the point? It's lethal if you're an idiot or have no armor, as a shotgun slug would be, as a laser rifle would be.

[Carver]

A throatslit needs a killgrab, a bugbite needs a killgrab. Seems fine to me, especially as the claws are already quite potent.

Oh yes I also nearly forgot - force gloves exist and they make blue moves rather trivially easy.

Edited June 6, 2020 by Carver

[GreenBoi]

3 hours ago, Carver said:

A throatslit needs a killgrab, a bugbite needs a killgrab. Seems fine to me, especially as the claws are already quite potent.

Oh yes I also nearly forgot - force gloves exist and they make blue moves rather trivially easy.

Throatslits easily causes suffocation and can rapidly kill someone from the low BO. Bugbite only does a flat 25 and causes bleeding, but you can do that 25 and bleeding far faster with normal claws, before you get to the killgrab.

 

Force gloves should be taken out of the equation for the most part since they don't come up, and this is assuming people are unarmored and w/o real weapons.

[Peppermint]

Warrior bugs in general are silly weak. Like. They're meant to be scary, huge, fuck-off strong, ya know, warriors, but in reality they're really pretty weak.

 

I'm not sure what kind of buffs they should receive, but def some form would be nice. 

[DeadLantern]

I support this change. I honestly would rather have the bite be too strong rather than too weak, because Vaurcae already have a ton of bad qualities in a combat sense.

[Carver]

1 hour ago, Lemei said:

Warrior bugs in general are silly weak. Like. They're meant to be scary, huge, fuck-off strong, ya know, warriors, but in reality they're really pretty weak.

 

I'm not sure what kind of buffs they should receive, but def some form would be nice. 

I'd rather see them made tankier than a return to easy bite. Never made a whole lot of sense to me that they're actually rather frail.

[Zundy]

Yeah I'd rather they had a better toughness then a higher damage output.

[GreenBoi]

2 hours ago, Carver said:

I'd rather see them made tankier than a return to easy bite. Never made a whole lot of sense to me that they're actually rather frail.

That's because every vaurca species mechanically, except Warforms, are frail. They will never be tanky unless they had some way of clotting and not having to constantly worry and care about something literally no other species cares about. If you get downed or stunned at all, you have to pray your enemy doesn't remove your breath mask so when you get up, it isn't a downwards-spiral of a fight as you suffocate and start blacking out while trying to run or fight.

[Zundy]

To my mind, warrior forms have been bred with combat in mind thus surely should have mechanical failsafes for blood leaking and what not. For another thread another time I guess.

[Roostercat]

I support this. The bite was meant to be something the warriors could use to show prowess in hand to hand, which they excelled in on Sedantis to the point where most wars were all mandibles and claws. The nerf both made the bite effectively useless but also took away any semblance of threat the warrior could bring to the table as now you can just wail on them without any threat of them grabbing you and dealing damage. By the time someone gets to the killgrab the opponent either doesn't know the resist button exists or are already so fucked the bite is just for style points.

On the topic of tankiness, ideas of reducing the pain they take from stuns to half has been thrown around (because of the carapace) which could be another solution. Overall I definitely support reverting the nerf. The tankiness part should probably be another thread for another time.

[MattAtlas]

I would like to remind everyone that the reason bugbite was nerfed was a specific combo of headbutt + bugbite dealing like 50 damage insantly being abused. Consistently.

The nerf should stay.

Edited June 6, 2020 by MattAtlas

[Skull132]

5 hours ago, Lemei said:

Warrior bugs in general are silly weak. Like. They're meant to be scary, huge, fuck-off strong, ya know, warriors, but in reality they're really pretty weak.

A 25 damage insta-attack is not the way to go about buffing them. At all.

High damage attacks should require some form of commit and come with a way to dodge or other penalties. Bugbite was removed due to it missing all of these characteristics and just being a really strong special attack with no downsides. Free real-estate, as it were. Other attacks being more convenient in fast moving environments is not necessarily a bad thing: as noted in the PR, the change made the bugbite into a finisher or into a very specific kill-move. So other attacks being more usable makes sense and is intended.

[Roostercat]

16 minutes ago, Skull132 said:

A 25 damage insta-attack is not the way to go about buffing them. At all.

High damage attacks should require some form of commit and come with a way to dodge or other penalties. Bugbite was removed due to it missing all of these characteristics and just being a really strong special attack with no downsides. Free real-estate, as it were. Other attacks being more convenient in fast moving environments is not necessarily a bad thing: as noted in the PR, the change made the bugbite into a finisher or into a very specific kill-move. So other attacks being more usable makes sense and is intended.

Due to other finishers or just the classic unga me beat skull in being faster and more efficient, literally nobody ever uses the bugbite. Ever. I have yet to see anybody ever use it since the nerf, and it may as well not exist at that point.

 

19 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

I would like to remind everyone that the reason bugbite was nerfed was a specific combo of headbutt + bugbite dealing like 50 damage insantly being abused. Consistently.

The nerf should stay.

is there not a way to make that combo impossible? Such as making a headbutt fail right after a bite or vice versa? Because I can concede that is a pretty BS combo.

[Skull132]

47 minutes ago, Roostercat said:

Due to other finishers or just the classic unga me beat skull in being faster and more efficient, literally nobody ever uses the bugbite. Ever. I have yet to see anybody ever use it since the nerf, and it may as well not exist at that point.

The only other mechanic cited here that does similar damage is headbutting. Minus very large weapons I guess, like fire axes, that can deal a maximum of 25 brute per attack. But those are slooow, and take up your other hand.

See the problem is that this is power creep. "Look we have a 20 damage attack so we might as well get the 25 one!" No, we might as well not. If head butting becomes an issue, then we'll nerf that as well. But it has yet to be proven as such.

If you say that bug bite is useless as it stands then maybe simply accept that the idea behind such an attack isn't what you want it to be (widely useful), and come up with another idea on how to make combat as a bug interesting. Again: a 25 damage no-penalties fast-attack is not it.

47 minutes ago, Roostercat said:

is there not a way to make that combo impossible? Such as making a headbutt fail right after a bite or vice versa? Because I can concede that is a pretty BS combo.

There's technically a way but the mandibles are still too stronk according to other factors.

ADDENDUM: Alb pointed out that we could make the mandibling drop the grab, to make it impossible to chain head buts and mandibles. Though this still leaves us in a situation where mandibling is a straight upgrade from 20 damage and 10 self-inflicted damage to 25 damage and 0 self-inflicted damage.

[Cnaym]

2 hours ago, Skull132 said:

Alb pointed out that we could make the mandibling drop the grab, to make it impossible to chain head buts and mandibles. Though this still leaves us in a situation where mandibling is a straight upgrade from 20 damage and 10 self-inflicted damage to 25 damage and 0 self-inflicted damage.

It's almost like having giant mandibles on your exoskeleton head would do that.

Another thread about balancing things that needed no balance ^_^

We could just delete the bite and increase brute armor. Would require even less skill, but combat would be easier for new players I guess.

Overall against anything that would change clotting. Vaurca are not designed for extensive and armed combat, they are throwaway brick walls.

Dropping the grab after a bite would fix the stunlock abuse while leaving the often called weakest race at least a little bit of offence.

[GreenBoi]

Though personally I'd be fine with being able to combo a bite into a headbutt- I know why it's an issue, especially since you literally can do 50 damage in like 1 second if you have a bite macro.

 

However, if biting just drops the grab- I think that would be fine since the person would probably know to now run to not get bit again and keep distance. The bites have a 7-second cooldown right now, so you can only do the 25 once and then have to rely on your claws to do another 25 (which technically isn't really hard, nor is getting 25 damage WITHOUT the bite which a lot of people forget about)

[Boggle08]

Honestly, if you wanted to buff out the bite, keep the aggressive grab, and just make it act identical to a G2 crush. Crushing is functionally identical, yet it does enough damage to rip dinged up heads and limbs off. Mandible bite's just a fireaxe swing, on account of it being 25 brute.

Alternatively, you could just ditch the bite in favor of staying power, like what several others in this thread are suggesting.