On the state of Fixer (high end)

Since I'm not allowed to comment on balance changes in the first balance update post in months, I'll try making a post here. Then we'll see if its censored out here aswell.
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The problem:
Fixer is the worst boat at endgame, the devs knows and they think its fine because "its good at lower levels".

If you dont trust me when I claim that Fixer is the worst endgame boat then go look at the top 50.
- Best placed speeder (1st), defender (2nd), enforcer (5th), shooter (8th) and Fixer (45th).
- Of the 50 best captains in the Bay, 2 play Fixer. Thats 4%!
- Its not limited to the top 50. In the Nightmare summary I did a month ago Fixers had the lowest average infamy of all boats and the lowest peak position, while having the same low usage as defender and enforcer.

And some historical info: Fixers werent dominating the leaderboards before the nerfpatch that cut selfhealing in half. At best you'd find 5fixers in the top 50, thats half of what an even distribution would be.
So why was it so important to nerf an already below average boat?

My guess it that it happened for two reasons;
1. People in multiplayer games moan and complain more about healers than anyone else (go look at these forums if you doubt this). Fixers are a minority so hitting them with the nerf bat was a popular solution.
2. Fixers were (are) alot better at being useful when matched up (playing with higher mk/infamy boats). Its alot easier to be useful as a mk5 fixer in a Nightmare game, than for classes that have to go into the line of fire. This led to low level Fixers having inflated stats. The solution? A nerf that hit high end much harder than anything else.

Balance at low levels hardly matter in this game. You get to x infamy and get stuck at 50% winrate regardless, whether you are blocked at 2000 or 2500 as a mk4 (just an example) does not make a large difference. At endgame is where balance matters, there is a reason why long standing mmo games primarily focus on balancing at max level and accepts some degree of imbalance below.

Tldr. Nerfing an already mediocre Fixerclass to fix low level balance was a terrible design choice. It was shit then, its shit now, and it will remain shit cause the devs dont give a shit about endgame balance (or are to stubborn to admit wrongful past choices).

 

Agreed. Fixers are great up to mk5 but then at mk6/7 they really lose their touch, they are too easy to take out with their low hp and half self heal. If rovio could find a way to buff mk6/7 fixer without changing mk5 at all that would be nice

 

All boats have 8 slots. They would have to take away a slot. If they did take away the 2nd red slot I would find an extra green slot appropriate, but I doubt they would take it away

 

That could just be sample bias. The top 50 are all pretty big spenders. Rich people like sports cars and flashy speedboats... who knew?

Just because you don't see anyone pulling up to red-carpet events in an ambulance, doesn't mean driving an ambulance makes you poorer.

 

Where are these complainers? I don't spend a lot of time on the forums admittedly but I've only seen the opposite...

 

Trust me.
Most of it is about stars, but plenty of fixers come running to forums to complain about lack of appreciation
Heres a few big ones on stars...
https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/you-know-its-cool-i-only-kept-the-team-alive.9565/#post-31012
https://forum.battlebay.net/threads...ould-help-us-understand-this.9631/#post-32010
https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/fixer-stars.9525/#post-30755

https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/undervalued-and-unloved-healers.12575/#post-50248

have fun!!

 

If you spend 30000$ at a mobilegame you have an ego that needs to be fed with wins, if playing Fixer was the easiest way to a top rank the whales (and other highly competitive players) would play it.
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@Battle Bay Scrub Half the matchmaking complain threads are about how Fixers in the unfriendly team is unfair, despite data showing that it doesnt affect winrate

 

Hard to judge for me as mk5 but I don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be. There were higher ranked fixers before but they switched to another boat to get even higher. Does it mean fixer is less good at the top? Yes. But it also means that 45th spot is not an accurate representation of how far fixer can get. If for example Elitist were still fixing there would still be a top 10 fixer.

Also the balance at the very top doesn't really matter anyway, since none of us will reach the very top (unless you have 25k dollars that you're just dying to get rid of)

I like the idea of shifting points though. I never really understood why a fixer needs 2 weapon slots with 3 red points. If even 1 point was shifted to blue, that would indeed make a difference already because of big shield.

Edit: shifting a red point to yellow would also be an idea... tesla shield fixers!

 

That is also a possibility.

Yet another possibility is that there is point of diminishing returns with fixers. A team with 1 fixer can be quite strong, while a team with 3 fixers is going to suffer from a lack of firepower.

Fixers are quite dependant on their teammates to deal damage, so damage dealers will naturally rise to the top, while fixers will suffer when teamed with each other (Miika did say that statistically 0 fixers beats 2 fixers).

So if all the top players switched to fixer, fixers would be too numerous to form hard hitting teams. Again, teams with damage dealers would win, and eventually damage dealers would be pushed to the top.

 

Mk6 fixer should get another blue slot and space.

 

Perhaps, I strongly doubt it though. I dont think its a coincidence that:
-Elitist moved to defender and now holds higher rank.
-Leonut used to hit top10, now he is #47 (granted legendaries has destroyed skill VS gear balance though)
-Ramshak swaps from Fixer to Enforcer and suddenly he is able to reach the top 10 (was rarely in the top 50 as fixer)
-Brizo used to be a top50 (sometimes top 10), after the nerf he isnt anymore.
-So many of the best Fixers have dissapeared (either quit or swapped boat to something else).
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Its not an issue thats limited to the top 50, although its much worse there. The top is the data that is easily accesible which is why it gets referenced (probably too often, granted). But the trend covers Nightmare in general (which is where the mk6 players you want to measure yourself against are).

Fully agreed that its not a problem a mk5 where Fixers are one of the top boats. Its a sad price to be top dog at low level, when the tradeoff is being trash at endgame.

 

I think you're trying to hard to find an alternative answer rather than accepting the easy solution; Fixers are underplayed (at high end/Nightmare) because it produces worse results.

4% of top 50 is Fixers (thats pretty average for post nerf). 10% of Nightmare is Fixers, thats 1 Fixer pr game om average. I dont see overpopulation of green boats as an imminent issue

 

MAYBE top player just tired of being a healer, its not easy to take care of 4 other player.

MAYBE

 

Your tape got a boost though!

Congratulations

 

Another step to produce a league of selfish fixer's.

 

You couldn't be more wrong on Elitist and Leonut.
Elitist was fed up of fixing stupid players.
Leonut just came back after a few months break ! Give him time.

And guess what, Leonut took a break because his fixer was nerfed and couldn't do "God Mode" (as he calls it) any longer. 1v5 for him was "piece of cake".
I get it, you want fixer to have better things but it should be both ways.
Your constant whining of speeder taking over the bay, speeder being too OP, blah blah brought us to massive nerf, every update (or at least, it helped).
Now, you want fixer to get a buff too ?
So let's make things clear a little :

Speeder (and enforcer) getting massive nerf : Less speed with OB, less HP, less stun (aka our defense). Pretty sure the next one will be frost for some reason and the one after, that will be the fire combo.
Defender and shooter getting HP buff (the latest update, Tesla bolt is a buff to those ships). Defender having 20K HP is no where UP (under powered) especially since almost all of them are using the fire combo, which deals an INSANE amount of damage. Average dmg : 3000 per hit. That's half our HP in 2 shots (FG + EC). That's almost my frost/big torp combo. Seen Peelah combo ? 3600 dmg. 4800 critical.
Fixer (sort of a buff with duct tape, depending on who's using it). You have a good amount of health, same weapons as speeder, a yellow item AND 3 ways to heal yourself.
And you want another buff?
How is that fair ? Please tell me.

If you want to be like Leonut, I could understand but either buff ALL ships OR we need a proper balancing.
This is NOT a proper way to balance it.

Let's not forget mine with fixer. Spamming a radius of mines all over so speeders can't get close and if they do, it's almost a one shot kill.

I get it, you want more loving for fixer and I want fixers to have that too. But this is not the way to do so.

ps : I'm not ranting on you by any means but please realize every time I come check the forum it's : nerf this, nerf that, nerf the shit out of this !!!! PRONTO ! Nerf, nerf, nerf nerf nerf.
Now, I associate the game, the community (forum) with nerfing and so are plenty of people. It's starting to piss off people, including myself.
If you took this message "personal", I do apologize in advance as it is not my intention.

 

@Bunta I'm not that touchy so no worries

I play speeder and fixer, mostly speeder lately - That boat was dominating the bay and the nerfs hardly surprising (Unless we dont care about endgame balance?).
We can pretend like this is me crying for a buff to my class sure, we could also discuss if its random why 1 boat consistantly fails to get near the top.
I'm never going to buy enough "skill" to get near the top, I'm ok with that. Ill happily admit to not being a good enough player also. Doesnt change my view on the mk6 fixer though (neither from a speeder or fixer pov).
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I can imagine how a played who decided to call himself Elitist would think like that Ill still bet that if Fixer provided a higher return of investment then he would play it more anyhow (if nothing else, then to reach peak infamy).

I dont want to be Leonut, doubt I could abandon all social skills and reach his amount of douche even if I tried (suppose this paragraph ended up being a good attempt though!)

Edit. You are right about the constant nerf/buff/matchmaking whine though. Seems to be the case in all game forums these days This post is particularly whiny because Miika started censoring balance comments out of the balance patch post (citing off topic, which is funny if you look at what is allowed to remain). But I do apologize for contributing to the whine trend rather than attempting to be a better man.

 

Oh good ! I was afraid you might get mad lol

Thing is, I think the pulse should have been at 70/75% instead of 50%. I guess they want players to use duct tape since it has gotten 2 buff since the last 2 updates. Would make sense.

Elitist is a beast of a fixer but a lot of them keep saying "I can't fix stupid".
Example : He was using a mine with his fixer. He was the MVP of a lot of battles.
When your fixer does more damage than the whole team, there is a problem.

That's why he left being a fixer (for now) and I understand those who quit fixer as well.
I have a pretty much good understanding of how difficult it is to play this boat : Have to keep everyone healthy, deal damages when needed, etc... and the rewards aren't usually the best. It's too much work for "nothing".
I think a lot of fixers think that way.

Doesn't matter about your whine or others. I don't hold grudges =)
Maybe we need one GIGANTIC thread instead of 200 saying the same thing lol

 

Every update makes me to play less game. :| . Now I am seeing less fixer in Ace div 1. Every 15 match I am seeing only 1 or 2 fixer(friend n unfriend). Only seeing shooter with t2 leg weapons( most of it).
May they are new to this game. Or just maybe something else.