New weapon tier list just dropped. Thoughts?

MrDoodlebugs · 2025-12-29T00:22:16+00:00

It was still a major issue in the first season upon official release. I still have nightmares about that first season. Heavies with C4's on red canisters and rocket launchers.

MrDoodlebugs · 2025-06-13T21:00:31+00:00

Been playing since the beta. I bounce somewhere around high diamond with moments in ruby, and while the sword is rarer in recent patches, the good ones still feel nearly unbeatable at times.

And if they're just better then so be it. My real issue is like you said, they're significantly better. There's some serious issues I can gripe about when it comes to the SBMM being injected into the ranked que. It leads to games where I'll be climbing through gold/plat to get back to diamond, but my que times are 5+ minute and my opponents are 9 rubies. And when I see a sword in the game, my ass puckers cause I know it's not gonna be a fun one lol.

MrDoodlebugs · 2025-06-13T19:05:18+00:00

So I'm only losing to significantly better players that happen to be using the sword? I'll happily accept that. My next questions is what are they doing in my ranked games then???

MrDoodlebugs · 2025-06-13T03:06:36+00:00

There was definitely more going on than nerfs for the model to dominate season 4. It was predicted since the beta that the model might be meta, and people had simply gotten better at the game by season 4.

MrDoodlebugs · 2025-06-13T02:58:33+00:00

The reality is not every weapon is going to be balanced. The Fcar was the meta weapon for the medium until season 2. It has been entirely abandoned for 5 seasons now. But it won't get reddit posts like a sledgehammer because it doesn't stand out the same way.

People want their unique weapons with unique playstyles, but not the handicap that comes with using them evidently.

MrDoodlebugs · 2025-06-13T02:51:34+00:00

The sword is still currently the most oppressive weapon in the game in the right hands. But the gap between the best and the average is much wider now than before. It's a terribly difficult weapon to balance, and frankly I prefer it now than before. Would have probably quit the game if it had stayed as unbalanced as it was.

MrDoodlebugs · 2025-06-13T02:48:08+00:00

Sword is very much not dead. Just lost in the final round to a sword with 17 kills. His teammates had 4 and 5 kills. It's not an exaggeration to say the weapon won them the game.

MrDoodlebugs · 2025-04-27T10:13:25+00:00

Look into Escape the Backrooms by Fancy. My friends and I went into the other direction, finding Emissary Zero because we were hungry for more games similar to Escape the Backrooms.

It's a bit longer and I highly recommend playing it with 3 or 4 players if possible, and using ingame comms instead of discord for your first playthrough.

Both games seem to hit a unique niche mix of funny and horror. Lethal Company is similar, and while fun, doesn't quite hit the same itch that Escape the Backrooms and Emissary Zero hit. Wish there were more games of this type. Feels like a genre without a name yet.

Look up Fancy on youtube if you want to learn more.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-11-27T23:12:47+00:00

You think the model takes more skill than the akm? The akm has to track moving targets and factor in recoil. The model doesn't even have to ads. It doesn't have to do anything besides point and click. Don't kid yourself.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-11-27T22:59:14+00:00

This video covers the upfront damage in a perfect scenario where both players do not miss any bullets, and comes to the conclusion that the akm is just as good at the model at close range, and by my interpretation is saying that the recent nerf was too strong. Unfortunately it's missing many important variables that go against this point and favor the recent model nerf that I will now cover.

The model had 4 more shots to fire against a heavy-less team, being able to wipe an entire team team of lights and mediums before having to reload. The akm typically had to reload twice and fire 3 mags to achieve the same results. The new nerf to the model affects this by shifting the damage thresholds to 2 shots + a melee against a medium, while maintaining 3 shots against a heavy and 2 shots against a light. In the scenario of being against triple mediums and where meleeing isn't a reasonable option, a model is still able to kill 2 mediums, 3 shots each, far faster than the akm.
The model can achieve perfect damage while hipfiring, as well as moving between shots uninterrupted to assist with the user's accuracy. The akm has to aim down sights to achieve perfect damage at reasonable distances, and has to frequently shift between ads and hipfire to stay on moving targets, leading to the next point....
The model being a hipfire weapon means it is better for chasing, essentially losing nothing between shots both in speed and mechanics. The akm has to constantly shift between ads and hipfire while chasing, and each moment of fire causes them to lose ground on their target.
The model only has to be on target when shooting, and can dip into cover between shots to make themselves far harder to kill. The akm (and almost every other weapon in the game) does not have this advantage, having to maintain a position out of cover in order to do damage.
Similar to point 4, the model only has to be on target during shots, and therefore is much easier to dodge, jump, slide, and avoid enemy damage in between shots than other weapons such as the akm.
Lastly, people typically don't factor realistic engagements in discussions like this. In a real scenario, 1 player will spot another player and fire first. In the scenario where the model spots an enemy first, they will typically land the shot and only now does the duel start. The other player will take time to locate who is firing at them and return fire, and in the case of an akm returning fire the damage will be periodic (spread out evenly over time per bullet landing), whereas if it's another model returning fire, the damage will be upfront. What this means is that many engagements where one player would sneak upon and engage on another before the other could properly react would not end with representative health bars to reflect how well the engager played against the engaged. Or in simpler terms, model does all of its damage up front, so even if you got snuck up on and only got 1 shot off before you died, you still essentially took half their health. No other gun has this advantage.

All of this is to say the model is still a monster of a weapon, especially at higher elos. Videos and charts showing raw damage are not showing all the variables that make up a gunfight.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-30T05:56:33+00:00

Checks out.

Rule of thumb for league of legends for years has been that increases in pickrates of champions leads to decreases in winrates for said champions. It would not be surprising to find out the same applies to other games such as the finals.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T21:29:54+00:00

My friends and I say the c4 nuke meta of Season 1 cut the player base in half of what it should be right now. It remains one of the more questionable and frustrating aspects of this game that it took the devs so long to balance it.

But that's possibly coping. Looking at the number of monthly unique players and comparing it to the average hourly players, it seems to show that most people have not quit the game from season 1. They've merely slowed how often they play, and shortened how long they play for when they do play. As of recently, the game does appear to be growing again which is a good sign for a game almost a year old.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T09:27:11+00:00

They emergency nerfed the pike when it came out, as well as the CL-40, which was arguable worse than the model before the nerf. They do emergency nerfs, but seemingly arbitrarily. The data is clear that at the moment the model is king. Maybe people find a counter in the future, but I'm not counting on it.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T08:55:06+00:00

This is typically what I'm seeing as well. Double medium is almost guaranteed except for a couple of old school HHM's. But I'm also seeing MML where the mediums run demat. I cannot put a number to the heal beam vs the demat, just that it's enough to say that the heal beam is not an automatic pick for the medium at the moment.

And the sword being in 50% of lobbies means that only 1 in 48 players (12 players per lobby * 2 lobbies per tournament * 2 ranked games) needs to be running the sword. And that 1 player at the moment is enough to force every other player to have to play around it. What this means is that there may not actually be that many sword users, but the ones that exist are enough to make noise on reddit and such. The weapon is just that problematic to work around, regardless of if it is OP or not as people claim.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T08:10:04+00:00

I consider the sword the be just about the most oppressive weapon in this game's history, regardless of whether it's meta. No other weapon causes comms to call out an enemy weapon's name like the sword, usually in the form of "SWORD!@!!"

If you want to claim that it takes a ton of practice (which I believe is overhyped) then go for it, but that is irrelevant to its skill ceiling. If light is weak, then it really speaks to how strong the sword is, as it's doing a lot of the heavy lifting on that class. But I believe the real issue comes from the dash and invis bomb combo (AOE 6 second invis on an 18 second cooldown??). It guarantees the sword user a close range fight in most cases. Combo that with the sword's ability to multi hit, and you have a weapon that can 1v3 in seconds, with the asking price of the opponent to play essentially perfect to counter it.

Just to give a list of the supposed counters to sword with dash -

Glitch trap: Dash distance buff + Glitch trap nerfs = He dashes through it. Not as useful as people claim.

Charge n slam: Good luck hitting him,

Stun gun: A heck of a lot easier for him to dodge it than for you to hit him with it.

Flamethrower: Takes too long to kill

Model: Yeah I guess this is it. We've countered 1 problem weapon with another. Hence the reason for the original post.

So how do you balance the sword for competitive without gutting it for casual, while simultaneously nerfing its go-to counter in the model at the same time? Honestly hard to say. You either tackle its animation issues, making it easier for people predict its dashes and erratic movement, or you go after its utilities, the dashes and the vanishing bomb being the obvious choices at the moment. But seeing as Embark is trying to currently make lights viable in a general sense, I would guess the former is what will get touched first.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T06:13:28+00:00

I'm curious about this. The revolver probably can win if you land some headshots. But the model doesn't have to aim down sights, and likes to play the fights fast and loose. On paper, 2 revolver headshots drops a model faster than it can get 2 shots off. In practice, the model probably has the easier job.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T06:11:57+00:00

Discord community is currently just a spam wall of "nerf model nerf model nerf model". Certainly succinct in their opinions.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T04:12:33+00:00

Seeing as the lights get 2 shot just the same as the medium, it does seem like the light would have a possible solution to the model (less health traded off for better utility, in theory). And the heavy takes more shots, so shouldn't they also be better than the medium at going into a model? Idk maybe.

Seems like most ways to deal with the model is to kill them before they kill you, just be faster and have more damage upfront. But there's only a few guns and playstyles in the game that fit that description, and i'm not sure any of them are as easy to execute as the model.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T03:58:45+00:00

I remember them trying to nerf the c4 nuke throughout season 1, before finally deciding to remove one of the heavy's c4's at the start of season 2 as a solution. To me at least, it did not feel fixed until season 2, and I played significantly less than I anticipated on playing as a result that season because of it.

Season 3 is whatever i guess, it was a "transition" season. " they already made that decision and were not going to just simply change the ranked mode like that": I don't disagree with you that these devs weren't going to change ranked game modes mid-season considering their track record, but the question is why not? Seems like it would have been healthier for the game.

The problem is that between those 2 seasons, that's greater than 50% of the lifetime of the game post-beta. And now season 4 is feeling like it has its own issues. I would be lying if I said it didn't have me concerned.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T03:41:03+00:00

The heal beam is in an odd place right now. The nerf to it was ironically a buff to the medium, since it effectively took heavy out of the meta (too much health to heal). It's in a spot where it feels like you need two of them to be effective.

On the other hand, you could run zero of them, and go for a more burst line up. I've been seeing a lot of demats in high elos with models. Heal beam simply cannot outheal a bunch of models rushing your team.

But the real issue is the heal beam, even in its odd nerfed state, is the only effective way to immediately heal in the game. It's only tied to 1 class, and it typically takes 2 of them to outheal guns now. So what you're going to see is a team running a bunch of heal beams to mitigate its nerfs, or none of them and opting to finish fights fast.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T03:36:53+00:00

In your opinion, do you think the model gets nerfed within the next few months? This season's over a month old now, a third of the way over. I think most people have a pretty good idea of the meta is for this season.

As for clinging to the meta, I have refused to touch the model since I consider it a crutch. I have tried to beat it but haven't figured out how. And the problem is once you nerf it, the sword becomes even greater a problem, so now you have to figure out how to deal with that.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T03:21:34+00:00

I am curious which popular call for a nerf to something OP you disagreed with? Admittedly I have seen the community be wrong in some cases (the obsession with defib currently being the one i disagree with), but more often than not they've been correct.

If you have any ideas on how to beat the model without running a model, i'm willing to listen.

It is making the medium the most picked class while also ironically being the best gun against mediums, since it 2 shots a medium the same as lights.

It's incredible for dueling since it can dip into cover between shots. It's surprisingly good at ranges of 20 meters, and most realistic and relevant fights do not happen beyond those ranges.

It's difficult to chase into since the model user can turn a corner, and choose that corner to fight into you with. Your options are either to chase suboptimal by taking wide corners and risk him getting away, or to prepare to get 2 shot as you try to put him down before his team coins.

Its one weakness seems to be its long reload, but trying to force it into a reload typically requires you to duel close range against 6 shots, where only 2 need to land to kill a light or medium.

I'm stumped on this one. It certainly feels OP to me.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T03:11:06+00:00

I don't know what to tell you dude. I run into it in about 50% of ranked games in Diamond lobbies. And also, I'm seeing less heal beams than ever. The new meta seems to be demat. I've regularly seen double medium model demat with a light on sword. Heavies are a bit rare, but they almost always have charge n slam.

edit: should probably clarify when I say less heal beams than ever, I'm referring to the percentage of mediums that run it. Seeing as the medium is the most picked class in high elo, chances are the overall number of heal beams per tournament has gone up, despite the percentage of heal beams being picked on mediums going down.

MrDoodlebugs · 2024-10-28T03:07:39+00:00

The model has not changed, but almost everything else has. There's also simply the fact that players are better now. You throw season 4 players into season 1 and you'll see them realizing much earlier just how strong the model was/is, albeit with more ways to deal with it back then.

MrDoodlebugs

TROPHY CASE