category Let's Discuss Game Balance

[Philosopher 24]

@DSSJKJK As a smoky player that would basically double my problems. I now struggle locking hovercrafts, making it much more difficult to hit tracked as well is probably a move in the wrong direction. 

Maybe reducing the overall speed of hovercrafts. What's absolutely breaking them is trickster, so up to medium hovercrafts they could be balanced around trickster enchancement - with an increase in speed to the lowest upgrades, so low rank players don't suffer too much. 

[Philosopher 24]

@2shots2kills Thank you for the insight, as I don't play hovercrafts myself!

[The_Voltage 178]

freezing arguments be like: 

[cool12345 123]

I love those "Flying Cheat Machines"!  

[Philosopher 24]

@The_Voltage Freezing argument: Getting touched by freezes locks you in place while your supplies run out, making your best tactical option self destructing
Counter argument according to this^ guy: 

[ViIe 4]

So... when is turbo twins going to get nerfed in some way? As much as I too occasionally like to use it, it's too op. Even with 50% prot it is insane.

[cybernite 93]

Well if you see a shock freeze try hard to avoid it and put on cold imunnity if you have it. I find it weird to use since

it uses energy fast and doesn't do as much damage as regular freeze. In this game you have think about defence and offence;

not just whine about it. You also have to have fast equipment garage skills to weaken the enemy strong players. Also to change

turrets to where not many ememy have protection for. 

A fast small hull shockfree freeze with defender drone with protection against your turret will allow it to move in close range

for the kill. You have to cripple it before it gets near you and move away and fire at it till it dies.

I hope that helps. 

[AcnoIogia 46]

Please buff Tesla! Every other turret is better than Tesla.

Let me explain:

Firebird can kill medium hulls in 1.5-2 seconds

Freeze can kill medium hulls in 2-2.5 seconds

Isida can kill medium hulls in 2.58 seconds

Tesla can kill a medium hull in 3.75 seconds

These stats are valid when we talk about the basic damage, no augment and no critical hit or anything involved.

The other turrets are just better than Tesla because they are ranged turrets and can kill Tesla from a longer range.

Firebird has burning

Freeze has freezing which is one of the strongest status effects, not even mentioning you give freezing with every single hit with freeze!

Isida can heal allies

Tesla has what? a ball that travels slower than any other projectile in the game? or you can equip electroturret and the mall might or might not hit the enemy because it is the buggiest augment of all time! Once it hits and once it just passes through enemies!!! I would do 1.6k damage and now i do 0 because the ball is bugged sometimes hits sometimes not!

 

So.. I ask for a buff. not major buff but enough to be playable!

Chain Lightning damage 630 -> 680 (that would be enough to kill medium hulls with 1 less hit if i use booster drone)

Critical damage: 710 -> 900 (most people use status effect augment and won't notice the buff, but it is needed!)

 

Electroturret augment: -50% Ball reload (just because the ball might hit or might not )

Bonus: Let's start adding augments to Tesla... there are sooooooo many ideas, longer range, faster ball reload, more damage, less damage, more frequent critical hit with less damage or less frequent with more damage, faster chain slower chain with more or less damage... and my favorite: healing tesla..  please consider making tesla great again! now we live in Fire-Freeze-Isida-Twins-Striker-Vulcan meta!

[Maf 32,300]

I don't know how strong Tesla is right now or whether it needs a buff, but I do know that your logic is flawed, since turret balance is not just about TTK.

Tesla doesn't just have a ball that travels slower than any hull. It has a mechanic that allows it to substantially increase its range, to hit targets at any angle, to shoot around corners and walls, and to potentially have infinite range by chain-linking with other Teslas' lightning balls. It also doesn't have an energy tank and can shoot indefnitely, while the other melee turrets need to pause and recharge. On paper it looks quite balanced.

[NBIHFADH 34]

It can easily hit enemies at high and low places. In some special terrains, it has an absolute advantage and does not need to be strengthened.

[Hypersomnia 1,695]

last time i checked tesla is as good as it can get. especially augments. they make it broken and in a need for a NERF

[TheCongoSpider 8,942]

On 9/3/2024 at 4:56 PM, AcnoIogia said:

Firebird can kill medium hulls in 1.5-2 seconds

Freeze can kill medium hulls in 2-2.5 seconds

Isida can kill medium hulls in 2.58 seconds

Tesla can kill a medium hull in 3.75 seconds

 

Tesla has what?

Burst damage, the ability to artificially increase its range and angle of attack, and most important of all for endgame - practical status augments. 

 

Let's take a trip back to July 2021, when Tesla was in early access and about to be released in August. Back when Firebird was worse than it is now. When Isida was practically the same as now in terms of offense. Freeze would have had more damage over time than now because of a 7% crit chance back then. 

Now Tesla, Tesla had 980 damage per hit, with 0.9 seconds between hits. An almost as spammable as now ball lightning with 1,960 damage. 980, which is very close to that magic number 1,000. Slap on Adrenaline, get hit with anything to go down to 90% HP and now you're able to one-shot unprotected light hulls the moment they appear. And it seems you forgot that aspect of Tesla.

Tesla does not deal its damage across the span of a second like the other melee turrets. It deals its damage INSTANTLY. Where a Firebird at the time would start off with 175 or a Freeze would start off with 225, Tesla immediately starts off with 980, bumped up to 1,000 very easily with Adrenaline. Do against an unprotected light hull with Adrenaline, a Tesla would immediately end the engagement while the other melees needed at least an entire second. Against a heavy hull, that meant killing it in just 0.9 seconds while the others needed more than 2 seconds of their limited ammo. And this immediate value happens every time an engagement starts and whenever your aim is knocked off. When your aim gets knocked off, you restart that whole process and Tesla once again starts off with huge damage whereas the other melees need an entire second. As an example, you're fighting a Railgun as a Tesla and a Freeze. 0.5 seconds into your attack, they hit you at the edge of your hull and spin you around. You turn back as fast as you can and start shooting them again. In this scenario, when they turn back to start shooting again, the Tesla is already on 1,960 damsge while the Freeze is on around 900. 

 

That ball lightning did double the damage of a chain lightning. So with Adrenaline, you could just instantly kill an unprotected heavy hull if it happened to get hit by it. Or a light hull with maxed Boosted Armour. And you were able to spam that almost as frequently as you can now. Utilising that burst damage in an engagement? Tesla, like Scorpion, does not have a delay between its firing modes. Meaning it can freely alternate between them. So in 0.9 seconds you could do chain lightning + ball + chain lightning on the enemy. With Adrenaline, in those 0.9 seconds you did 8,000 total damage. That heavy hull with Boosted Armour is heading straight towards you? No problem, just casually do 8,000 damage in the span of 0.9 seconds to instantly melt him. You could set up floating minefields that would kill anything unprotected if it touched it. You could even do a beyond the grave final attack where you launch your ball lightning a fraction of a second before you died and it would deal a lot of damage to them and could even secure a kill-trade. Electroturret played into the burst damage, AP and EMP Tesla at the time played into that burst damage heavily. The entire turret was simply designed around burst damage in a 1 v 1. Multiply this by the number of Tesla's either on the field or just on your team and it creates havoc. Players already know how powerful a den of Tesla's firing together are, imagine that before any of the nerfs. 

 

And that leads us to the first nerfs. Damage went straight from 980 to 810 and 1,960 to 1,620. Still retained its ability to kill medium hulls quickly but light hulls and heavy hulls can survive an extra second or two, which I've mentioned before is still faster than the other melees given the way Tesla deals its damage. Some months later, would you look at that, the ball lightning went from x2 chain lightning damage to x1. For some weird reason huh? Must be all that burst damage it could do. 

 

Tesla remains like this for a while until later in 2022 where its status augments obtained status on critical hits and had a paramater reshuffling. Lower damage with higher firing rate and an emphasis on the critical damage being the shots-to-kill decreaser. This led to status augments being even more potent for status applications and TTK reductions. 

In 2023 it received another reshuffling. It received a shots-to-kill increase with the critical damage against light and heavy hulls but the ball lightning did more damage and became more spammable. This here is where it started leaning too heavily into the status effect augments. The non-status augments lost that crucial STK reduction. 

And here we are in 2024, where after a while of no changes, Tesla received a firing rate reduction and Electroturret  got its much needed buff. It can be implied that Tesla was overperforming somewhere and they concluded nerfing the firing rate was the best course of action. And if that is true, it is most certainly because of the status augments. If anything needs a nerf on Tesla, it is he status augments. You have little to no reason to use the non-status augments (except Electroturret now).

 

This gives you context to why Tesla is the way it is now but to say that Tesla has nothing compared to the other melees is factually incorrect. It can extend its range and can also reduce its own TTK. The lower damage per shot makes it less obvious now but it is still there. 

 

Now the question is...

On 9/3/2024 at 4:56 PM, AcnoIogia said:

Chain Lightning damage 630 -> 680 (that would be enough to kill medium hulls with 1 less hit if i use booster drone)

Critical damage: 710 -> 900 (most people use status effect augment and won't notice the buff, but it is needed!)

You want this. But are you ready to fight against it yourself? Keep in mind this isn't nerfing status augments. This is making individual Teslas stronger. Meaning Tesla dens in general will be stronger. 

 

On 9/3/2024 at 4:56 PM, AcnoIogia said:

Electroturret augment: -50% Ball reload (just because the ball might hit or might not )

Huge firing rate increases like these always end badly. The ball lightning reload speed is fast enough. 

[FLIPSTIKS 136]

So what do we conclude from all this banter about Tesla!

We conclude that augments are the cause of most of the problems in the game, along with the trash cans.

What we all should be asking is why all these OP problems arise. The answer to that is very easy to conclude and has two words-devs, Greed.

This conclusion is based on 100% fact.

Get rid of all augments and trash cans. The first will stop the copy & pasting of turrets with each other and make them all unique again. The second is just a no brainer. 

This game will always shift It's mechanics to whatever "THEY" want it to be, they care little for balance and even less on what players think.

To summarise. 

OP crap constantly changing the mechanics of the game=GREED, simple as that, to say otherwise is just delusional. 

[Hypersomnia 1,695]

On 9/5/2024 at 11:12 AM, FLIPSTIKS said:

Get rid of all augments and trash cans. The first will stop the copy & pasting of turrets with each other and make them all unique again. The second is just a no brainer. 

game shuts down in 5 seconds after that. woohoo.

remove flying monkey? sure.

remove augments and tank game dead.

thats how they milk money to sustain. games are the Ticks and and money is Blood. They're sucking your money to survive. not just tank game its every game like it or not.

but they can do skins for money!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA big belly laugh! im going to show this to my best friend Maf! (hi Maf i know u reading this) it takes them 651861 years to make a single skin while from how theyre talking about their mysterious art department its half of russia at this point. so what theyre going to hire the second half of russia? NO CUZ MONEY ISSUES!

and then they can only milk skins once a year so they only get paid once a year basically uh oh tank game dead. 

then do paints! even bigger belly laugh.

without turning this game upside down inside out and all in between its impossible for them to get away from augments at this point. 

not even mentioning the legal side of doing such insane thing and i'd like to get a refund that is more than hazel saying "hehehe so if you played with this for X min you get 3 epic keys!! haha bye!". The compensation would have to be MASSIVE for each augment and this would break the economy of the game in half forever

[Sharva 89]

Sure, Tesla might be destroying tanks slower in comparison with Firebird, Freeze and Isida, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's more underwhelming than all those close-range turrets. As you said, Firebird has burning effect, Freeze has freezing effect and Isida has healing ability. But with all due respect, I don't think describing Tesla's ability like "A ball that travels slowler than any other projectile in the game" is right. It is this slow travel speed of the lightning ball of Tesla that makes its chain lightning incredibly effective, when it is done correctly. This chain lightning makes Tesla unique in its own way. You can even destroy tanks under a bridge, by standing over the bridge, which you can't do with other close-range turrets.

And speaking of buffs, yes, I do agree with you. Tesla, or in fact, every close-range turret in the game needs a significant buff considering the current meta and matchmaking maps of Tanki Online because till the time we get close enough to our enemies to be able to shoot and destroy them, we get shot by countless players ourselves and eventually, our tank gets destroyed... It's not because the close-range turrets in the game are underwhelming, it's mainly because all the maps of matchmaking battles are either long-range or medium range maps (long-range in most of the cases), which are not at all suitable for close-range turrets. So it's not particularly necessary for close-range turrets to get buffed. They would be playable even with their current stats if the devs add short-range and close-range maps like Hill, to the matchmaking in Tanki Online, which I'm eagerly waiting for. Even decreasing the number of maximum players possible to fit in one battle (especially in medium-range maps like Sandbox) would play a major role in the close-range turrets being effective.

Edited September 5, 2024 by Sharva

[Isshiki 24]

Some overdrives are overwhelmingly strong and others are just not it! I will only mention the ones that I think needs changes.

Attention!: These ideas doesn't mean all of them should be implemented on the overdrive, but one or the other... or yes! maybe all.

Let's start with the support overdrives:

Paladin: It needs buff! Freeze & Burning immunity is a must! Could give a special ability when more allies in your range of overdrive effect radius you can heal more. Maybe another one when using the overdrive heals the user to full health immediately.

You could still counter it with Wasp, Crusader, Ares, Wiking or even Mammoth overdrive, you can survive with Titan, Hopper & Hunter doing 2000 damage is pretty effective as well, after you only need a little damage to finish them off.

Dictator: Rework is needed! I think It should be half support and half offensive overdrive, and here is how: Enemies should receive 10s burning & 3s stun instead of the freezing effect. The supercharge effect should be removed but add a 100% damage increase to the user (allies don't benefit from this). The support part of the overdrive is unchanged except the supercharge.

Second idea: +100% armor boost +100% damage boost but supercharge effect is removed, you instantly heal yourself to maximum HP (allies don't benefit from this) Everything else is unchanged.

The overdrive itself loads very slow, and it deserves better effects. You could still counter this overdrive with basically any other overdrive as of killing the dictator or surviving with other support overdrives.

Titan: Buff or Rework is needed! The 90% protection should be changed to 60-70% but the dome needs to be bigger, as of now it is 20m, should be 30m at least! Enemies under the dome could receieve EMP or Jamming effect.

 

Offensive overdrives:

Wasp: Minor buff is needed!  Remove the jamming, make the stun 1 sec, emp 3-4 sec.

The 0.4s stun and 1s emp is barely doing anything. If enemy only damaged 1000, they get 1s emp which means 400 damage from burning, and they can heal themselves after. but with more duration of emp the burning could be more useful.

Mammoth: Minor buff is needed! Blaster augment immunity!

[ZHU-HE 0]

have you ever played hammer?do you know how poor it is ?thunder`s dps is nearly more than hammer,and it is more easy to control. A difficult-controling gun should be powerful! And striker is too powerful,look at the number of protection against striker!

[AcnoIogia 46]

I think hammer is fine, if you take that It deals 760 damage and the shot reload is 0,8 seconds. You can deal 2280 damage in 2,4 seconds. (If all your pellets hit and no critical damage/protection/extra armors involved) After that, ofc there is that "hard" waiting time 2,5 second clip reload. But even the 5 shot augment makes it very good, cause you can shoot 5 times without the need to reload the clip which after the reload becomes 3 seconds, only 0,5s more... or you can do Adaptive Reload, if you kill instant reload... and to be honest Hammer has many many augments that you can use and have a different playing style. (don't even mention Assault Magazine)

Let's compare the basics of your Hammer, with my favorite turret Tesla:

Tesla - Hammer

630 Damage 760

710 Critical Damage 1160

0,75 Reload (sec) 0,8

(doesn't have) Minimum damage range (m) 60

20 Maximum damage range (m) 40

I only did the basics, now of course Tesla has a lightning ball which deals 1160 damage but the reload of it is 6 seconds, and as I said Hammer does have a 2,5 second clip reload, but if you compare, you see hammer has a better stat in everything except reload, and even that tesla only wins by 0,05seconds... Mind you! Tesla is a melee range turret and supposed to have superior damage and reload over short-medium-long range turrets! But oh well, it isn't! So actually Tesla should be the one getting a buff!

If you compare Tesla to other melee range turrets, Freeze and Fire has a 1200 damage/sec Isida has 1160 damage/sec, If I do the math Tesla is doing 840 damage/sec!!!

Yes I know you should not only see the "Time To Kill"... but if you check, Freeze and Firebird apply a status effect with every hit (freezing removes damage boost and making the tank extremely slow, burning does damage overtime so it deals more than 1200dmg/sec), Isida can heal allies and receive scores for it besides having a good TTK, while Tesla has a Ball which he can connect to and raise his range by +5m.. Hurray! (unless you shoot more lightning balls which takes time, and usually you get killed before you could have 2 or 3 lightning balls, and no one is near them so you couldn't kill anyone) The augments for Tesla is also horrible since there are only status effect ones + Pulsar + Electroturret... That's it!

[Muscularity 160]

I disagree because the augment ''heavy slugger'' is busted, very high critical chance and it hits pretty hard, still can two shot a medium tank without double armor, fast fire rate and fast reload time

[TheCongoSpider 8,942]

On 9/28/2024 at 1:51 AM, ZHU-HE said:

A difficult-controling gun should be powerful! And striker is too powerful,look at the number of protection against striker!

By your logic, Striker and its augments should remain just the way they are.

Edited September 30, 2024 by TheCongoSpider

[DOW 22]

So I am an experienced player (legend 12) who tried out a lot of augments for a lot of turrets on test server, and felt like Smoky the OG turret of the game has been sidelined and nerfed by the admins, It requires a very strongly experienced smoky player with the best augment to defeat a new player using say Firebird with compact fuel tanks augments and don’t even get me started on the extremely unbalanced Striker augments, Its almost like the eldest turret has been orphaned by the devs for their new children, now of-course I understand that devs want players to use new turrets so they maintain this imbalance on the side of new turrets, but smoky players have largely died out, its rarer to find a smoky player then to find a 10k GS player, its time to have some mercy on smoky.

update: so this issue actually got curated by devs, which is pretty cool, we (and tanki) are so back. 

Edited October 11, 2024 by DOW

[Maf 32,300]

Eh, from my (very limited) experience with Smoky, its only problem is that the projectile radius is too small, so you often end up missing moving targets even if you aim well, simply because the target gets out of the way. No such issues with Thunder/Scorpion/Gauss etc.

[Wry 93]

As an experienced smoky player I think smoky is balanced and the effectiveness of it fully depends on the player's skill and playstyle which is fair. So if you missed a shot with smoky rather than saying its the turret's problem you could say that the turret has no auto-aim like thunder and railgun and require unique projectile mechanism that require certain angles to hit the target. For example, if you are moving fast and trying to shoot a non-moving tank your shot will go up and it wont hit the target even though you were aiming at it. So the trick here is to slightly brake before shooting so the pattern while you are moving (pressing W) is like this: S shoot S shoot S shoot, therefore you are controlling where the projectile will go and I'm talking about normal hulls ofc. Its not about smoky being weak its about other turrets/augments being OP. Personally I don't want the devs to buff smoky, I feel it will lose its identity, since smoky is known as a weak turret to use, I find it fun dominating battles by using it, because it is more challenging to win using smoky against the variety of OP turrets/augments.

Edited October 2, 2024 by Wry

[NikmanGT 4,362]

On 10/2/2024 at 11:59 AM, Wry said:

 

Oh I've seen you a lot of times in MM with smoky and wasp and I feel your gameplay is unique that I respect your point of view. 
The brutal thing is the game has shifted from skills to the parameters of the augment since a long time. Sure, skill will certainly gain you advantage in crucial times, but you can't tryhard or play aggressive all the time and you need some solid defense on your side to hold the enemies.

Smoky doesn't seem to have much OP augments except Smoky pulsar which people can just shoot and play, rest status effect augments can be countered or can be easily fought with the current metas. 

[Wry 93]

On 10/2/2024 at 10:12 AM, NikmanGT said:

 

 

Agreed, in the end even if there is no mistake by me I will miss regardless because striker tandem augment's impact force will make me miss shots and that is totally fair since that is how a competitive online game with many unique combos should be, there is no perfect combo each and every combo must have some flaws in some areas and situations. players are mistaken for thinking these disadvantages should be removed by buffing turrets or making OP augments that remove these disadvantages.

For me I see augments as a way to add different mechanisms and playstyle to a turret despite how effective they are and that is the case for smoky's augments. Maybe a healing smoky augment could be an interesting idea.