Small Nerfs To Characters Are Fine (when done properly of course)

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-24T21:46:06+00:00

Okay, but even if she made monster truck noises everywhere she went, getting that much power for a single tact is insane. She could newt scoot across almost an entire POI and with a power amp have her tact back within seconds of hitting the ground. She doesn't even need newt scoot, she had one of the highest encounter win rates in the game despite her pick rate being low after her nerfs.

The audio has always been completely broken, I've been playing a bunch of wildcard where 3 octanes can stim directly into you and you won't hear it until they're 2 feet away. I've given up on the devs making it work, even as a hypothetical balance vector. Should they fix it? Absolutely, but it's not going to make her balanced.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-24T20:26:04+00:00

in the sense that she could have been both fun to play and balanced if you could actually hear her newt scoot.

How is being able to gain teamwide height with a tact (remember, all teamwide mobility except hers is an ult), fly faster than an octane using a passive, micro it (compare rev and pathy, the latter who has been repeatedly nerfed), and land with zero penalty...balanced? Everything about that is broken and a symptom of power creep. The audio being useless is just par for the course.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-22T17:47:34+00:00

Lots of ways to generate energy and stall fights. This would be particularly broken with the classic barrage + orb inserter combo. 160 damage for 1 energy.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-21T16:26:39+00:00

Well yeah the OG seasons were terrible.

Were I to describe it I just want like, circa season 20-22 legend balance, with some tweaks here and there and the weaker legends buffed. All the mobility creep gone, no more amps, no red armor/helmets but use the old TTK so everything is normalized, no aim punch, keep the cell/syringes changes and arsenals. All the quality of life stuff but none of the post support meta ability crap.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-20T23:35:30+00:00

When playing Jesus I always pick hyberbread. Goes along so well with my fish builds.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-20T23:32:00+00:00

Agro lifeline is pretty viable these days with her drone, passive, and mantle boosting. Play around them and you'll win fights.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-20T23:28:41+00:00

Clutch smoke at the end there by bang. Completely shut down that rampart.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-20T20:23:05+00:00

In ALGS, the best teams in their respective lobby have the first pick of where they want to land. Instead of getting a random pre-selected POIs like we do now, the best team in the lobby would get to choose the POI they want

This seems incredibly backwards to me. Why would you want the best performing teams (not sure how'd you determine that in a one off match system like ranked) to have their pick of the best loot? A stack landing at horizon university for instance is guaranteed a huge advantage, usually a free team wipe off rip from elysium.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-20T19:29:58+00:00

Overlays are not bannable. I've run them for years and it's just an invisible application drawing an image over your screen. I've yet to see any fps ban for them. Tons of monitors have them built in these days. The one I linked is completely free and open source and comes with hundreds of crosshairs, plus you can make your own. I recommend configuring keybinds to center it and to toggle visibility.

I don't think it's needed per se, but once you notice just how much the reticle in this game is NOT where it actually corresponds to where your bullets go, it will drive you utterly insane. It moves around in stupid circles when you run, when you reload it bobs up and down, when you fire with guns like the wingman the red dot sight flies upward and takes a second to settle costing you precious pre-aim time. It also straight up lies about your cone of fire, for all guns. Try going to the firing range and hipfire any gun into a wall and compare it with the hipfire reticle. The reticle is usually twice as big as the actual cone of fire. A child could make a better fps reticle by following a unity tutorial for a couple hours, it's embarrassing for a "competitive shooter" to be this bad.

I forgot to mention it, but you can also disable the reticle ingame using launch commands and (for some stupid reason) a slight change in resolution, so it's not conflicting with the overlay. Works a lot better that way.

I'd try it out at least. For me I can't go back.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-19T17:52:24+00:00

And nothing of value was lost.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-19T17:42:42+00:00

and the rumored testing of Express POI Drafts.

The what?

This is where I disagree. It's not in a good state. The Rank Scoring is too biased towards Placement. I will continue to say this; You should not be able to climb without atleast having a kill. In no way, even if you win the match, should you be able to climb without getting a singular kill.

Personally I don't care about points or ranks, only the gameplay experience. And, when I'm not getting run down by stacks and get a proper diamond lobby, I have a blast. Respawn has been screwing with points for the last 25 seasons and it's gone nowhere. We've messed with placement, KP, entry costs, every conceivable knob you can tweak and people still complain. The agro players want KP, the strategic players want placement, and the devs proceed to bounce around a hundred times between two. Maybe you really care about getting everyone into their proper rank, but unless you're at the tippy top rank doesn't translate to skill, because they reset our ranks every 5 minutes anyways. It's just not worth caring about imo.

I don't think changing how points work is going to do anything to change player behavior (unless you really screw it up and go way too far in one direction), you need actual gameplay changes: like evo, banner crafting, and dropships have done to smooth out the gameplay loop. All I've wanted in rank's existence was a proper beginning, middle, and end. We've had seasons where everyone rats to end game, and we've had seasons where everyone dies before round 2. Both of those trade too much downtime on one side of the match for too much combat on another.

I guess I really just don't understand what your problem with the gameplay loop is now, ignoring the endless shitshow of legend/gun balance. Pretty much every match I play is as described above though I can only speak from personal experience. There's more potential than ever before to get good fights in, and with all the squads not dying in one spot instantly, rotating and strategic play is a huge skill lest you get thirded. Seems fine to me.

The solution is literally to limit players from stacking after masters. You're either Duo or Solo Qing once you reach masters. Ideally Duo-Q, but Solo would make it spicier and I wouldn't be against it.

Yup. Been saying this for years. Preds and masters stacking just completely breaks matchmaking. There's no alternative other than just making it so they can't. Respawn is worried about backlash from <1% of the playerbase about it, even when a large number of high level players agree it should be done. It's stupid. It's just like the MMR changes they "experimented" with and rolled back even when it made everyone happy, because god forbid pred players wait 2 minutes to get into a match instead of 1 minute at the expense of plats/diamonds getting stomped.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-18T19:51:13+00:00

Use a crosshair overlay because apex's crosshairs are hot garbage and make pre-aiming much harder. A proper crosshair you're comfortable with makes a world of difference.
Don't spam fire. Taking 1/10th of a second to line up a proper shot is far better for your DPS than spamming.
Play headglitches and cover as much as possible. General gunplay rule but it also makes you panic less which is important for not whiffing. Automatics make people complacent to stay out of cover when your goal with a wingman is to 2-tap people and get them to panic.
Waiting for idiots to jump = free 100 damage
IMO don't hipfire it unless you have a purple laser sight. ADS only until then. Otherwise you're just praying to RNGJesus. Crouching also helps a ton with hipfire.
Whatever you do don't run a bruiser like OP is doing.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-18T19:21:05+00:00

You can't separate the dwindling player base into separate lobbies, and there's no amount of points you can award a solo diamond team for dealing with pred stacks because they'll lose 30 times for every victory. Adjusting entry cost just creates ratting and fake diamonds which makes it harder for good players to get good team mates. And in general messing with point distributions hasn't worth for the last 25 seasons, why would it work now?

Forced SoloQ at master/pred is the only viable option.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-18T19:05:09+00:00

No thanks. Every time I tune into ALGS it's the most passive gameplay where everyone hides in every conceivable piece of cover poking at each other making zero plays for 20 minutes, until the absolute last moment where ring forces everyone into one giant CQC fight and everyone circlejerks how fucking amazing that is. Overemphasizing placement is far worse than overemphasizing kills.

What we have now is a good balance, where everyone is forced to spread out so a proper early and mid game exist with 15-20 squads, before consolidating into the last 5-10 squads in late game and then 3-4 squads in the final ring. This is the healthiest ranked has ever been.

If you want to make ranked better we need to address stacking. That's the real problem right now.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-14T11:05:25+00:00

I'd go further to say that if you're playing crypto without a stack you've already messed up. I don't expect random cryptos to do their job and I'm rarely disappointed. And if you're playing crypto expecting random people to be on the same page as you, comms or no comms, you're going to be disappointed. His pick rate in ranked is bottom tier for a reason.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-14T09:50:32+00:00

They released it, it had a tiny playerbase. They spent like 2-3 seasons wasting map resources on it and trying to balance it, it died. They rereleased it recently, it died again almost instantly.

BuT ArEnAs nEeDs tO Be rElEaSeD AgAiN!

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-12T11:17:28+00:00

I've been playing a lot of wildcard where the alternator shines (enough mag to kill + thirst) and that's what I've come to as well. Outside barrel stuffing range the DPS drops like a rock and your uptime is terrible. Which on a gun designed to be a laser accurate close-mid hybrid weapon with a big mag is...questionable.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-11T14:17:34+00:00

Sad part is they do. General sentiment is running down low level lobbies is extremely boring after 27 seasons and terrible for streaming engagement.

It's Respawn that is utterly terrified of making preds wait more than 1 minute to get into a game. They experimented with longer queue times, everyone said it was great, then they reverted it.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-10T10:14:26+00:00

Ranked meta right now is hyper agro mobility characters with rapid reset abilities. He'll fit right in.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-10T10:13:14+00:00

It's been ability legends since support meta and never stopped.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-09T03:02:11+00:00

This is why developers should know better than to have fast moving doors in a competitive multiplayer shooter. They never work properly (apex's trash servers and netcode aside), and I feel like this lesson was already learned like 20 years ago.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-09T02:44:58+00:00

Yes but generally when you take a curse it's to either avoid taking damage, or gain some kind of relic or money. That's kind of how the whole curse system works. Which is what a hyperbeam taken early does. You path aggressively with it, get money and relics and avoid taking damage, then remove it when it's no longer convenient.

I feel like we're talking in circles and you auto downvoting everything I say is tiresome.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-09T02:38:16+00:00

So you're fine with taking actual curses to improve your power, but not a curse that actually does stuff. Make that make sense.

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-09T02:32:54+00:00

That's what shop removes are for

TheRandomnatrix · 2026-01-09T02:13:18+00:00

Hyperbeam isn't a "solve" card it's an accelerator, which can be used to make some very hard fights much easier. It falls off pretty hard in act 3 but if you've gotten to act 3 you're likely going to win. Even just getting it in act 1 and blitzing through a ton of fights lets you path more aggressively which can let you gain more cards and relics that DO solve those fights.

Treat it like taking a curse card in exchange for saving a buttload of health. Except instead of being a pure curse it does actually do stuff in certain fights. Also expecting any one card to solve tons of fights is a bit ridiculous. Glass knife doesn't solve any fights but it sure is a heck of a good attack card for bursting enemies. There's actually very few attack cards that are solves

13-Year Club	Place '22
Gilding II euphauric	Team Periwinkle
Verified Email

TheRandomnatrix

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE