MASK/Riot-shield/"herded" vs OVERWATCH/"primed" - opinions needed

ATLAS-Z · February 2022

Right now, enemies herded with the Whisperer Mask/Beta/Riot-shield can (and are) still targeted by Overwatch attacks, to include overwatch attacks generated by the new armor trait "Primed"

At the moment there is no plan to fix this because there is some concern that some players find this interaction useful... Somehow?

Please give your opinions below if you think this needs fixed... Or left alone.

Thanks!
-ATLAS

WellyLuga · February 2022

Yeah I agree this is definitely up there amongst some of the much needed quality of life updates. Herded walkers should have been ignored for overwatch attacks from the start since they're technically classed as friendly. I was actually on the lookout for a new armour with this trait for Beta without considering what it might do for herding

This and the cripple/herd problem. If you cripple a walker you can root it to override but you can't herd it which I find really annoying.

Yikes · February 2022

Agree with WellyLuga on both the overwatch vs herded walkers and the inability to herd crippled walker as issues that should be fixed.

The overwatch vs herded walker feels like a bug since players have no control over the target. It also makes Prime incompatible with Beta and the Whisperer’s Mask.

The inability to herd cripple walker is a poor design choice especially at some point, walkers will be crippled for 2 turns. It’ll make players not want to upgrade dog because it’ll be harder to use with Beta and the Whisperer’s Mask.

Cronus · February 2022

It needs to be fixed as in herded walkers are ignored in overwatch and during activation of the primed trait. If I have the primed trait on any ranged survivor's armor I basically can't use the mask support. It's really annoying.

ATLAS-Z · February 2022

I tried to be impartial in my OP @Lexia but I think my opinion may have leaked thru

Needs to be fixed IMO

Yikes · February 2022

Here is another way to look at it in case more persuasion is needed. The overwatch attack vs herded walker should not happen for the same reason that there’s no friendly fire or self harm in this game. Right now, if I throw a grenade or fire the Decimator on an enemy and my hero is within the blast radius, he/she is unscathed. An overwatch attack on a herded walker, however, can get me into a struggle (causing self harm). I see it as being inconsistent with how other skills, tools, and weapons work in the game.

ATLAS-Z · March 2022

Top reward in Brawl & Order is another herding tool... Make your voices heard of you have one.

Burmeliinis · March 2022

Fully agree with this. So far this has not been a huge issue as overwatch wasn't really a thing, but this has changed hugely with the Primed trait, and will change even more with the new Shield.

I'm afraid it will be hard to fix (as overwatch also is buggy in that it targets walkers that are attacking freemen) but it would be really important to do anyway.

And while you're at it, change overwatch so that if several survivors are overwatching, they will attack different targets. It's stupid that 3 survivors with cripple pistols will all overwatch the same walker and letting two others attack.

Firekid · March 2022

I completely agree with this, if we have herded a walker we have done this for a reason and there is no reason we would want to them in herd it on overwatch. We already have to be careful/tactical when herding not in herd walkers on our own turn. To have that hard work ruined by a stupid overwatch shot is incredibly frustrating.

JayZ · March 2022

1. Overwatch should not attack herded walkers
2. You should be able to herd crippled walkers
3. Dog should not cripple walkers that are herded, munching on bodies, distracted by flare, etc.

ShadowWalker · March 2022

Leave it alone. Not all traits and strategies are compatible with each other and that's perfectly fine.

Also, if the logic is that they shouldn't get targeted because they're "friendly" then shouldn't that mean we can't attack them on our turn if they're herded either? I know that's not what people want, but it seems like people want to have their cake and eat it too.

I would rather see NG devote time to:

1. Fixing actual bugs.
2. Improving the badge crafting system.
3. Improving the rerolling system.
4. Creating new enemies.
5. Buffing more heroes.
6. Rosita in a bikini.
7. Getting out of GW Beta.
8. Separate Expert Leaderboard for Last Stand.
9. Jerry in a bikini.

10. Making new Challenge sets.
11. Create a weapon crafting system for making your own infused weapons.
12. More trade offers in BM (like trading Red Gas, or one tool for another).
13. More community events.
14. Updated hero skins based on the current season, but also bikinis for everyone.

P.S

I get the frustration, last week in GW I left Yumiko in OW one space in front of a Spikey, but I forgot I used the Mask to herd a walker that was two spaces away. Guess which one Yumiko targeted 😐

I would not be against this if NG tries to implement it. I just think there are more important issues to focus on. Meanwhile, we can at least control what supports and armor to equip, so this is only an issue if you let it become one. You wouldn't put a Piercing weapon on Sasha so don't put a Primed armor on Beta.

Yikes · March 2022

JayZ said:

1. Overwatch should not attack herded walkers
2. You should be able to herd crippled walkers
3. Dog should not cripple walkers that are herded, munching on bodies, distracted by flare, etc.

Add to the list:

4. Shooting a walker distracted by flare or feasting on bodies with a crippling weapon should not take it out of its distracted status. If a grenade blast would not grab a walker’s attention while it is eating, then a single crippling bullet shouldn’t either.

euchid · March 2022

Primed armor for mercer to shoot randomly random walkers in GW this makes sense.

Firekid · March 2022

It seems that each status effect has a priority, which if it’s higher than the previous will overwrite it, the order it seems to go in is - Stunned, Rooted, crippled, eating, herded. If they just gave eating a higher priority than crippled (as it should be) then that would solve the crippling flared wakers.

WellyLuga · March 2022

If we were going down that route then I would rather just see them push crippled to the bottom. Of all of the above mentioned it is the one which is least helpful to the player.

ghost_pepper · March 2022

Cronus said:

It needs to be fixed as in herded walkers are ignored in overwatch and during activation of the primed trait. If I have the primed trait on any ranged survivor's armor I basically can't use the mask support. It's really annoying.

And punish!

Carl_Tyreese999 · March 2022

I think now it's possible to circumvent this issue with scouts atleast.... Just use Mercer's axe and then if you do hit a herded walker in overwatch, the scout just interrupts it's turn before it can hit you

ghost_pepper · March 2022

I just lost yet another map because primed triggered and targeted a walker I herded with mask. Wtf. It also woke up the 2nd walker I herded with mask even though the 2nd walker wasn't hit with the overwatch action, double grabbed!

This needs to be fixed! It's all kinds of borked.

BenjaminT · April 2022

I think having different sets of tools which don’t all necessarily fit together adds a level strategic complexity which I quite like.

I’m a mid-level player with only a few good weapons, so I’m coming from a pretty uninformed place. I’ll probably change my mind about this when I’ve unlocked whisperer mask and have a decent collection of top tier tools though! So please take my comments with fistfuls of salt!

Longer term I hope to build up Primed kits/teams as well as Herding kits/teams. Trying to anticipate which is better suited to each map sounds more challenging (and fun) than maxing out all the best kit with a whole bunch of traits which all compliment each other and means I don’t need to make difficult choices going into missions.

ATLAS-Z · April 2022

@Agoatrodeo having different combos of things for different strategies is a good thing. I agree 100%.

I think the problem here is "Primed" is a really great new trait that makes "The Best" strat (SPY/SMY/PMY) even better, but is almost 100% useless to melee. (melee relies more heavily on Herding)

Fixing it, would, in fact, ADD some variety since it would then be useful to different types of teams.

BenjaminT · April 2022

Thanks, Atlas. I’m yet to really explore ranged teams and since my two best weapons are the axe and shield from the campaign I’m only really using scouts and bruisers. Currently I don’t know enough about the game to even properly understand your response but I’ve seen a few videos and it looks like Beta is a staple in all the high-scorers’ melee teams, which I can see might dissuade anyone from investing in primed armour.

The game creators seem to be instigating something new in the guild war shop items; bruiser weapon with interrupt and armour with primed - that sounds like a massive boost to what bruisers can do. I’m struggling to get my head around all the numbers involved but if you leave your bruiser in a vulnerable spot without action points (and you’ve got lucky and dodge on the hero) then you’ve got at least an additional two layers of a chance to avoid being hit.

But from what I understood of your response herding is an integral part of melee strategy and won’t be seceded by the primed/interrupt tactics mentioned above. So ranged gets a massive boost while melee just gets an another strategical approach?

Meaning either we choose between primed and herding strategies because they’re currently irreconcilable, or primed is restructured to not target herded walkers?

Hmm… the latter sure would make things a lot easier, but is that necessarily better?

ATLAS-Z · April 2022

@Agoatrodeo I think maybe we have a little wolf in sheep's clothing? Is that you @Fluxxx ? Or @Lexia or maybe it's Tero??

Ok I'll play along...

Let's pretend we can ignore the simple idiocy of an AI so dense that it can't tell the difference between what can hurt you what cannot. I mean why not let your troops randomly attack each other? That would make it real interesting and certainly challenging. It's about as dense as my dog on a leash walking around a tree and wondering why he's stuck. Just go back around the tree dumb dumb.

No let's ignore that and just talk about game balance, why not? Ok.

As it is right now, melee has come a long way. Yes, herding is a big part of melee strategies, with Beta, Whisper Mask, and now with the Riot Shield. Maybe a lot of middle range players didn't get how to use Beta very well, and maybe they don't all have the mask or know how to use it, but certainly many of them now have this shield. And soon... Very soon, they will have the premier guild wars treasure of the season; a pretty suit of bruiser armor to go with their new Riot Shield. Maybe they'll find their way here after realizing this how useless these things are together. Yeah melee has come a long way but most people still cannot use it very well at the highest levels Guild Wars and certainly not the highest levels in challenge. Yeah maybe on a couple missions, but for the most part at the highest levels range teams are still King by a fair margin. So do we really want to split hairs by making people who want to use melee decide between which versions of melee they want to use? When they are both inferior to the current meta range teams?

And again this is assuming that we are willing to ignore the fact that it is just an incredibly stupid AI that should be fixed.

For the longest time the very inept OverWatch AI has not been a huge priority because no one used it. But now we have Cripple, primed and a recently buffed interrupt trait and probably more things on the way, all of which are drawing attention to just how much the OverWatch AI leaves to be desired.

At a very basic level, ending your turn and triggering OverWatch should make the computer driven AI Heroes make somewhat smart decisions even if they are not overly complex decisions. They should make decisions that make sense. Don't you think?

I mean no player would ever deliberately attack a walker they had just herded (excluding PMY) so why would the computer make such a decision for you?

Its asinine to say the least.

zbot · April 2022

@ATLAS-Z sometimes a new forum user is a new forum user

ShadowWalker · April 2022

Sometimes... Hmmmm...

ATLAS-Z · April 2022

zbot said:

@ATLAS-Z sometimes a new forum user is a new forum user

Sometimes 😘😘

ATLAS-Z · April 2022

Since i DO like to be constructive rather than only pointing out flaws, I was trying to think how this might be addressed if they did decide to "fix it".

One thought came to mind. @Yikes comment above.

What if herded status invoked invulnerability to all attacks? Similar to how your troops cannot damage each other, since they are on the same team?

There a definite down side to this, since no punish-Perseverance-stunning etc could occur on these enemies?

I'm not saying this is THE solution, but perhaps it can be discussed?

Firekid · April 2022

@ATLAS-Z as punish is actually at the start of your turn (hence fast walker retaliation and perseverance working) then you’ll still be able to punish them as they would no longer be herded… it’s a nice idea. Worse would be not being able to charge princess up on them but don’t think many people do that anyway.

ShadowWalker · April 2022

@ATLAS-Z please tell me you mean only during the enemy's turn and not that you can't attack a walker you herded on your turn.

ATLAS-Z · April 2022

ShadowWalker said:

@ATLAS-Z please tell me you mean only during the enemy's turn and not that you can't attack a walker you herded on your turn.

Nah bro, always, if it has herded status. Give me some scenarios where this would be super bad.

ShadowWalker · April 2022

I often used Beta leading Rick (Spear/Bident) and Daryl (CE). Daryl would prowl, hit two walkers but one of them will get herded once I pass, then I would move back and prowl again. If herded walkers were immune, then I wouldn't be able to deal damage to that walker on the 2nd prowl. This would greatly reduce the damage Daryl is capable of doing per turn, and make it harder to get kills that can reduce the threat counter.

Even with just Beta, I would do a short run past a walker to try to get a charge point and then hit them with the Morningstar to deal damage/stun. If you hit the walker first and stun them you can only get a charge point from PSV or a kill, you can't herd them (and get a chance to charge) if you stun them first and then move with tactical.

Sometimes I leave a walker that has low health alive so that I can herd it to get a charge point, but I still want to kill it that turn with someone else.

Honestly I attack herded walkers all the time.

Yikes · April 2022

ATLAS-Z said:

ShadowWalker said:

@ATLAS-Z please tell me you mean only during the enemy's turn and not that you can't attack a walker you herded on your turn.

Nah bro, always, if it has herded status. Give me some scenarios where this would be super bad.

A possible downside scenario: on last week’s Fish in a Barrel challenge with Eugene Lead, I used Eugene to do a charge attack with the Riot Shield & then followed up with Yumiko hitting a walker which gets Princess charged because the herded walkers have a status effect. If the herded walker is invulnerable, would I still be able to get Princess charged up?

Another possible solution to attacking herded walkers: what if herded walkers are weakened on their turn when they come out of herding. Weakened to the point where they do no damage or lower their effective level by 50% so they do little damage.

Thinking this through further, the issue we’re trying to solve or prevent here is an action that the player did not initiate caused the player to cause harm to himself. This can be solved if the game allow us to pick the overwatch target. The game can assign a default target but let the player reassign it. If the target is not in range, then the overwatch attack is not performed.

If all of this is too difficult to implement, then simply allow us to toggle overwatch on and off per hero within the mission.

MASK/Riot-shield/"herded" vs OVERWATCH/"primed" - opinions needed

Comments

Categories