Time To Buff Defender... or nerf Shooters and Enforcers. Fixes suggested.

Hello Battle Bay community and developers,

As per discussions on meta from last nitemare league I have compiled a list of fixes to help parity on the bay and to Ballance defender compared to other boats on the bay. These fixes dont all come from me. I have suggestions from porthos, sylas, weeze, ysl...etc. great players who play different boats.

1) fix defender attributes.
Can do thru buffing turret, radius, speed, etc. My simplest suggestion here is 10 percent turret buff, 10 percent radius buff, and .2 speed buff. Thanks YSL and myself for this buff idea. (Edit) add 10 to 20 more defense pts to every defender boat. And more hp. For every boat to keep up with stronger weapons.
2) fix defenders shot box size or reduce defender boat size by 10 percent.
Everyone knows defender is the easiest boat to hit on the bay. Torps love it. This is like shooting fish in a barrell. A size reduction would make it more fair. Seriously. Why does this boat need side fins and need to be so tall? Also. The hit box for defender is currently larger then the dimension of the boat. We get hit by items all the time that never touched us. This idea was from Weeze.

2b) new idea from Eye of Doom in another thread.... Add a blue slot to all defenders. Would allow defenders now to go dbl big shield. Or finally add lube or rudder. Thanks Eye of doom for this idea.

2c)editted. This idea came from this forum. A player mentioned lowering the global cooldown for Defender on all weapons equipped. Right now global cool down is 2 seconds every boat. Either get rid completely global cool down for defender. Or reduce it by 1 sec. This would in affect give defender a buff.
3) Give defender an immunity to all fire and frost. This idea comes from Porthos and Sylas. 25 to 50 percent reduction for all fire and frost effects due to higher defense points. The more defense perks added the higher the immunity. We all know defense points and defense perks are unused. This would give a reason to use them. And ballances out the new meta of using flare on everything. Now flare makes bandage not work almost half a match. Immunity for defender makes good sense.

Now to more controversial suggestions.
4) give defender a 4th weapons slot. That can only be a single red weapon. If none of the above happen. Its time to add a weapon.

Now for real ballancing controversy ..
5) nerf enforcers and nerf shooters.
Nerf enforcer speed and shooter speed down .2. And reduce defense pts by 5 for enforcer. And reduction of 15 defense pts for shooter.

A developer recently told me. Enforcer is now the most Op boat in the game. Think about it. It got buffed to now being the Op boat.
The enforcer buffs went too far. Especially now with all the weapons and tesla nerfs that crushed Speeders.
Enforcers rule the bay.
As for shooters. Not a single nerf to any weapon has affected them. They can fire thru any weapon non stop and never worry about cool down. So with that said now. Why do shooters need such high defense points? Or to have that level of speed?
This reduction to both these 2 boats should be highly considered.

Recently in other forums I posted about losing a full health 1vs 1 against a shooter. He had 10k health. I had 18k. He won. We both only missed 1 shot. My ships attributes and cooldown issues killed me. This is the new normal. Its imballanced.

Same with when i go against an enforcer 1vs1. Enforcer has 6k health. And can kill my 18k health defender in a straight fire fight? Happens. All the time. Imballanced.


I wrap this up with the same Challenge I have issued all nitemare players. Play defender for 2 weeks and win nitemare league. None believe it can happen. I spoke to Benjen. Renamed Noat. Currently number 10 nitemare. He has Legendary T5 grenade, Legendary T4 ex cannon. And Epic T5 ex cannon. He said he cant win nitemare league.
So if our very best defender doesnt have a chance with Legendary T5 wrapons? What chance does the rest of us defenders have?
I say it tongue in cheek but to point out fact meta.
All other boats on the Bay have won Nitemare league in last 3 months. Speeder, enforcer, fixer, shooter. With Epic Maxed weapons.
So Defenders with maxed Legendaries arent winning it. Think about the imballance.

I write this thread for community discussion. We all see an imballance. Only currently 3 players top 200 from defender only. Same as the last 3 months.

Something needs to be done. Whether doing all of the above suggestions or just some of them.
Special thanks to Porthos, Ysl, Weeze and Sylas for helping come up with positive suggestions to fix defender.

And a real request for all Developers to play Defender for the next 4 weeks. And really start to understand the boats limitations. And imballance issues. Let us see u on the bay Dmg Don, Miika and Grim Repair playing defenders.
Once u feel our pain. Maybe these suggestions will make sense.

All other players. Take my challenge.
Pull out your Defender boats. Dont let it die. To have a diverse bay. We must have ballance.
We arent there. But we can Fix this together.
Save the Defender boat.
@The Grim Repair @Miika @Dmg don

 

First, great post.
Second, defenders are the toughest boat to play and to get items for. A mk6-7 defender requires 5 blue items (turbo, big shield, 3x std shield or bandage/rudder/lube). That is really hard to get, especially you don’t see that many blue pieces. All other boats require only 3 special slots (exept shooter 5 weps but everyone builds them anyway). I would like to play defender, but i can’t simply because i only have big shield, turbo and bandage. This is the reason I chose enfo as my second boat.
Defenders are really challenging to play.
Fixers
- Heal them when they are hurt
Shooters
- Spam damage
Enforcers
- Dance, do dmg, distract, protect
Speeders
- More challenging, but still, distract, assasinate, disappear
Defenders
They have to lead the charge. Pick the right moment, right place, right time and right first target, since they are first one going down.
And we can add the facts like it’s really clumsy, which drives new players to other boats since they are just playing for fun at first. When they play more seriously, it takes months to build another boat, and defender is the hardest one to build.

So there are some reasons why people don’t choose defender -> why it’s being used less.

 

Ur points 1 and 2 are good and are the much needed and perfect buffs for defender.
Pt 3 and 4 are not good.

 

Lol...Enforcers are Op now???
2 updates before they were most unused ship and now with little hp and 5% speed buff , they are OP.
PLZ send me your defination of OP..

 

Problem is that enfo has become the ship of choice for a lot of whales.
2 top end tesla shields and super hard hitting weapons with the evasion capabilities enfo offers is pretty overpowered.
Those of us with just one rare shield that disintegrates at a sneeze aren't that op yet

 

But isn't any ship in the hands of a whale OP

 

Despite all that Enfo. Is still 3rd used ship in top 50.
By this basis Speeder is OP as highest used ship.
I do agree Defender need buff. But enfo nerf idea is just ridiculous.

 

Definition of OP. A developer telling me they are the best ship in the bay.

 

Again all of this is a Defender buff thread to spur discussion.

Without buffing the Big blue ship.

Nerfs for other ships should happen.

I prefer buffs to nerfs any day.

 

Lol....I also think its the best ship..I use it.Its about preferences.
Being best and op is not same u know.

 

Ask for defender buff all day, I don't care at all.
Just leave us enforcers out of this...
We were weakest ship and finally got some love, Not to be called OP by someone who don't have facts to prove it.

 

Haha we'll see if the enfo devs can overtake the speeder devs this season. My money is on not a chance

 

Lol. Was a speeder player.

But back to it.

No one thinks Defender is ballanced.

It needs a buff.

And I also notice no one is defending shooters.


Look. Lots of changes have happened on the bay. I prefer buffs to fix weaker boats and weaker weapons.

The next meta do for a buff is Defender.
End season stats show it.

 

You dont get a buff for a ship which requires least complexity To play.I m not saying defender users dont have skill,But it req least skill among all boats.According to me enfo and speeder are the hardest...

High Risk-High reward aka speeders

Low Risk-Low reward aka defender

I am more inclined to Balancing shooter MK6 below ie Mk1-Mk5.Thats all.With some shooter fav weapons which are Sniper and missile.Seeing a lot of defenders in bay lately,it is a fairly good boat

I made a thread about defender Buff long ago,Now i m totally against it!

 

It's not uncommon for me to see 6 defenders in a match these days actually.
Usually all against me, with a fixer behind em

It does seem that the big blue is more popular than ever before.

 

No skill?!?

Lol

No skill. All wrong.

Each boat has its skill set. Defender included. Yes it aint quick. But the skill is not dying in the 1st minute.
One day watch one of my penta kill vids and then ask if it was no skill. A defender who does a penta is the Unicorn.

 

I've gotten like 3 or 4 pentas with Defender... maybe you're exaggerating.

Anyways there's so many ways it could be buffed. Nobody mentioned making bandages % of health based for example. Basically I think there was some kind of dumb idea behind Defender in the first place which was, hey this big ship with a bigger hitbox is a moving shield for other people to hide behind or something. But past a certain level there is no way that eating shots can work... weapons get so much stronger than HP.

 

As an enforcer i'm half with you. Enforcers didn't need a speed boost. A good lot of the players needed to switch to speeder (they still do). The speed buff was entirely uncalled for. And I confess, I do miss creeping around at a deathly speed of 0.74 (if i recall correctly). BUT enforcers don't need a defense nerf. IF we could roll back time to the pre-buff days and re-buff the ship. I would have buffed enforcer defense and hp.

Now about those shooters. I'm still only half with you. I absolutely hate this boat by all means nerf it somehow. BUT if you nerf this lovely boat so hard you'll destroy it. In fact I dare say that if you nerf this even just a little bit you'll destroy everything it has going on for itself. You see, it's a strong boat because it's stats don't shine in anyone particular area. In other words it's a crappy boat. But this crappy boat is ready for a little bit of anything. In terms of stats it's the most balanced boat in the game. It's got the hp and defense needed to take it through most situations you would expect to see in battle. It's got enough ship and turret agility to allow to get it's job done efficiently, which is shoot stuff. And it's got just enough speed to allow it to traverse the battlefield. But it's just a boat holding a bunch of guns. No yellow items, no green items, just a lot of red and a few blue items. It's a true beauty, I admitted it. But it sucks at all of that stuff. And those whom have mastered the boat have gained my respect. Because I need yellow items. I don't see how people play without them.

Just imagine enforcers without yellow items. The only thing this boat can really do is aim fast. It's got wicked turret agility. Yeah its got some health and speed, but with out yellow items its weapons are crap. It's defense kinda low too. If you look at speeders its even worse. It's the fastest boat in the game. And the ship agility is insane. But it can only hold 2 weapons. Oh, and base speed is crap. Most the speed came from the yellow items. Without out yellow items both these boats are useless and helpless. They're just sitting ducks.

The shooter on the other hand is literally what it should be. A mobile fortess that needs a nerf and nerfs to destroyed. It's beautiful but... Man......




Just don't touch my enforcer anymore. Leave it be. Seriously. Like super seriously. >:l

 

Yes I agree, but someting has to be done to the enfo double shield. Defender with only three weapons are at a huge disadvantage. You break their shield with your strongest weapon only to have them pop up another before your cd on Ec is up to break it again. You are just a big blue limp noodle. HP increase will not help with this! I prefer better mobility and speed over hp most times but another weapon slot would go a longer way in helping.


Turkett

 

But the speed buff and op double shields have turned enfo players into yellow defenders with and unkillable advantage. They are now very oppressive attack tanks that they were not designed to be.

Turkett