Approved [VSH] THE Hale Buff Discussion Thread!

[mub]

To roughly paraphrase Bottiger's quote on VSH statistics, for about every 20 players, half opt out, and only 1 of the other 10 win.

Intro;

From veterans to regulars to newcomers, I've been hearing an increasing pattern of the same viewpoint: Hale's gotten harder over time. Hale's getting less fun to play. Hale isn't worth playing anymore.

This gamemode was meant to be a boss battle against one of the most popular, most intimidating figures of Team Fortress 2. Back in the first few years of this gamemode, the flow of gameplay was far different.

You fight Hale to see how much damage you can manage before your inevitable death, you are rewarded for your damage equally with queue points, and then you get to play the Hale to beat the crap outta 31 players. And, once in awhile, Hale would lose, and RED would celebrate over impossible victory. And Hale often did not lose. In this regard, the gameplay system rewarded good players by letting them play Hale. You worked hard to try and stop him in previous rounds, and for your efforts, you would get to play him, and enjoy destroying REDs.

Now? Playing Hale is no longer a reward. It's a challenge. Hale doesn't win all the time. He loses all the time. There are RED players that 1v1 Hales with ease. It's no longer about when RED can win. It's about when Hale can win. And when the main reward of playing VSH, the part that's supposed to be fun, is now so un-fun that people don't even want it, that people are OPTING OUT of it HALF the time, what was supposed to be the best part of the gamemode, why even bother?

This thread is for figuring out ways of buffing Hale and Hale variants for the sake of fun and increasing his chances of winning to the point that he wins more than loses, and for making it so more players want to play him.

For the sake of simplicity, these buffs are geared toward the stock Saxton Hale, but most of these ideas are general enough to be applied to all or most of our VSH Hales.

Here are some ideas I'd like to put forth to start the discussion;

1) His Health.

This one's easy, but crude. Saxton Hale's stock health currently for a full server of 31 REDs is 44000. A small increase to this number would benefit the Hales who get close to winning, but don't quite secure the victory due to a lack of remaining HP. Since RED has mechanics that do percentage-based damage, such as backstabs, market gardens, etc., I would recommend a generous buff of 25-50% (55000-66000 health max.)

2) His Melee.

Hale's current melee deals 202 damage, and is stock attack speed.
We could increase his rate of attack to better dispatch crowds of players, and consequently change his damage if needed.
We could increase the knockback of his melee attack. This is one idea in particular I would like since you could use it to knock away ubered Medics, overhealed players, Battalion's users, Heavies, Phlog Pyros, the list goes on. This would, in turn, create a new dynamic where players who can tank a hit can't just get up in Hale's face without consequence.

3) His Rage.

For Saxton Hale, he scares people near him, takes no knockback, and reduced damage. This sometimes doesn't do very much, and it's not always the worst thing in the world to get raged unless the Hale is really targeting you. Most of the time, people nearby get stunned, a couple people die, and that's that. Sometimes even, nobody dies, because a Medic jumps in with Uber, or a Battalion's user jumps in, or a Pyro comes in to airblast, etc. We could make this rage actually scary.
We could give him increased damage, like crits, during his rage.
We could give Hale a faster running speed during his rage.
He could take far less damage during the rage duration.
He could have a longer duration of knockback resistance.

4) His Mobility.

Especially on larger, or more elevated maps, it can take awhile to get around as Hale. Hale's mobility also becomes an issue when dealing with extremely mobile classes, such as good Soldiers, Scouts, Demomen, etc. This type of change would be focused on alleviating that issue. We could increase Hale's running speed slightly, to better chase down fast and jumpy opponents.
We could reduce Hale's superjump cooldown, good for quickly traveling large distances, and chasing explosive jumping classes.

5) His Knockback Resistance.

This is a suggestion I hear a lot, or rather, knockback is a common complaint of Hale players. It's not an uncommon sight to see Hale getting pushed away hard from crowds by RED's damage, or even floated, suspended in air, by this knockback. We could give Hale a passive knockback resistance, for example, of 50%, to cut down the effects by half. We could also give Hale a passive knockback resistance specifically for being airborne to better help him get to where he wants to go during superjumps.

6) His Weighdown.

This goes partly with the previous point, but making it easier for Hale to weighdown by reducing the amount of time needed to weighdown would reduce the amount of times he's just getting floated in the air by incoming damage.

Ending notes:

We could make an shorter AFK timer for BLU team to reduce the amount of times Hale is just idle the whole round and RED just farms him for damage.

+1 if you want to buff Hale! If you have any other ideas about buffing Hales, PLEASE post it!

#MAKEVSSAXTONHALEGREATAGAIN #MVSHGA #GAMING

 

[Shady Story]

+1
Coming from someone who exclusively never plays hale, I’m finding it a bit boring that red side always win. Wasn’t the point of VSH to be challenging for the red side? I’m just not see it that way anymore. Back in VSH1 hale was super challenging, but now he’s just a punching bag for red side.

 

[WWHHOO??]

+1
Hale is no longer a formidable foe and some players, including me, have entirely stopped playing as the boss.

 

[0zy]

-1

 

[Pepe ツ]

-1

 

[Old Chuck E. Cheese Token]

+1

Fighting Hale should literally be like fighting The Predator/Alien. Hunting RED Team instead of the other way around. Buffing Hale is needed, especially when 90% of the server is people who either can't play Hale effectively or when the regulars are on and just destroy every Hale.

Also, as stated above many of the older players have just stopped playing Hale altogether because of what VSH2 and Hale nerfs/Red buffs have done. We literally just get the same 9-12 players as Hale every map and only like 2 of them win semi-consistently

 

[Umity]

+1

Back with VSH1, I thought hale was almost too easy to play. All you had to do was super jump properly and you'd most likely get the win.

Now with VSH2, the spectrum has gone the other way where it's like hale is a ping pong ball bouncing across the map. It's so much harder to play hale, which isn't a bad thing. In my opinion, the reason why it's hard is because the knockback. I think this a bad thing because anything that removes control from the player isn't fun to play against. We see this when people whine about getting single raged. Now hale faces it constantly which is why a lot of the people I know either play Trolldier, or just reset their queue because they don't want to deal with that shit. I think there's too much knockback against hale in the game atm.

There needs to be a better balance where the advantage should go to hale, but at the same time the players have a chance against him. That's what originally drew me in and got me hooked on this gamemode but now that feeling doesn't exist anymore.

 

[Dragontamer]

+1

 

[Bottiger]

+1

Back with VSH1, I thought hale was almost too easy to play. All you had to do was super jump properly and you'd most likely get the win.

Now with VSH2, the spectrum has gone the other way where it's like hale is a ping pong ball bouncing across the map. It's so much harder to play hale, which isn't a bad thing. In my opinion, the reason why it's hard is because the knockback.

I am not sure when was the last time you played, but we were on vsh 1.55 for 4-5 years and hale win rate was much worse, it was 10-20%. VSH2 has LESS knockback. Every boss has more knockback resistance. There is now a cooldown on airblast. I only started to make my own balance changes to increase hale win rate when we migrated to vsh2.

I stopped making these balance changes to buff hale due to frequent complaints from vsh regulars, some of them who claimed they quit because of it. And we changed to VSH2 right when Valve released Halloween contracts so we couldn't be sure if it was my changes that were killing the server or not. Our Saxton EU server completely died, it had a high concentration of players who didn't like me buffing Hale win rate.

It is strange that it took half a year for people to agree that boss win rate is too low just like backstab dealing too much damage.

 

[Xerʘ]

+1 to either his health or knockback resistance or even a little to both.
VSH is stale and boring right now, have not played it much recently due to what chuck stated.

In my opinion, when I play as the hale is the only time I'm having any sort of fun BECAUSE its difficult when before it was so easy it wasn't really fun. The part that is boring is playing on red and having to literally fight for damage because each round is just everyone w+m1 on which ever class they're on trying to kill hale having no fear.

I've lost all ambition to play this game mode because of the state it is in now and it might just stay like this forever anyway because... you know.. but hopefully this thread is actually taken into consideration and things change, whatever they may be.

 

[True Darkian]

1) His Health.

This one's easy, but crude. Saxton Hale's stock health currently for a full server of 31 REDs is 44000. A small increase to this number would benefit the Hales who get close to winning, but don't quite secure the victory due to a lack of remaining HP. Since RED has mechanics that do percentage-based damage, such as backstabs, market gardens, etc., I would recommend a generous buff of 25-50% (55000-66000 health max.)

Disagreed, Hale has plenty enough of health, It even got increased when VSH2 came out.

2) His Melee.

Hale's current melee deals 202 damage, and is stock attack speed.
We could increase his rate of attack to better dispatch crowds of players, and consequently change his damage if needed.
We could increase the knockback of his melee attack. This is one idea in particular I would like since you could use it to knock away ubered Medics, overhealed players, Battalion's users, Heavies, Phlog Pyros, the list goes on. This would, in turn, create a new dynamic where players who can tank a hit can't just get up in Hale's face without consequence.

Disagreed with attack rate increase, would make meleeing the hale more deadly than it already is.
Agreed on knockback increase, but only if the target is ubered, Otherwise it's unneeded knockback where the hale will have to travel 20 meters again to finish off that unubered RED that survived your hit.

3) His Rage.

For Saxton Hale, he scares people near him, takes no knockback, and reduced damage. This sometimes doesn't do very much, and it's not always the worst thing in the world to get raged unless the Hale is really targeting you. Most of the time, people nearby get stunned, a couple people die, and that's that. Sometimes even, nobody dies, because a Medic jumps in with Uber, or a Battalion's user jumps in, or a Pyro comes in to airblast, etc. We could make this rage actually scary.
We could give him increased damage, like crits, during his rage.
We could give Hale a faster running speed during his rage.
He could take far less damage during the rage duration.
He could have a longer duration of knockback resistance.

I don't think the hale takes less knockback during rage, I do know he takes less damage during that period.
While I disagree to the first 3, The hale should get maybe about 30% extra knockback resistance during his rage period.

4) His Mobility.

Especially on larger, or more elevated maps, it can take awhile to get around as Hale. Hale's mobility also becomes an issue when dealing with extremely mobile classes, such as good Soldiers, Scouts, Demomen, etc. This type of change would be focused on alleviating that issue. We could increase Hale's running speed slightly, to better chase down fast and jumpy opponents.
We could reduce Hale's superjump cooldown, good for quickly traveling large distances, and chasing explosive jumping classes.

The hale already has an "Escape Plan" effect, the lower his health, the faster he goes, The hale can take advantage of superjumping for a higher movement speed.

5) His Knockback Resistance.

This is a suggestion I hear a lot, or rather, knockback is a common complaint of Hale players. It's not an uncommon sight to see Hale getting pushed away hard from crowds by RED's damage, or even floated, suspended in air, by this knockback. We could give Hale a passive knockback resistance, for example, of 50%, to cut down the effects by half. We could also give Hale a passive knockback resistance specifically for being airborne to better help him get to where he wants to go during superjumps.

Yes please, Knockback is just too much sometimes, I can get launched away with the power of the Force a Nature from a PISTOL!
In my opinion, These should be the knockback reductions per boss:

• Saxton Hale: -35%
• Vagineer: -20%
• HHH Jr.: -35%
• Easter Bunny: -20%
• Christian Brutal Sniper: -15%
• Trolldier: Unchanged, Still -100% when on the ground.

6) His Weighdown.

This goes partly with the previous point, but making it easier for Hale to weighdown by reducing the amount of time needed to weighdown would reduce the amount of times he's just getting floated in the air by incoming damage.

Not needed, it's already easy to trigger weighdown, I don't want hales to be able to use weighdown at every standard superjump.
Right now you just need to superjump from a platform and land on a lower platform you jumped from to trigger a weighdown, that's good enough.

 

[MrLupin]

1+ on everything
VSH is honestly gone boring and I agree with what Mub has to say about VSH, the nerfs towards the hales has gotten to the point of not being fun to play as them.

In my opinion, I think the reason why I liked played Hale was that the hales were powerful while RED would have to communicate a way to defeat a particular boss/hale. If a player died like an Medic or Engineer, it would be harder to win as RED since you have no healer/builder to resupply with ammo and health. Nowadays, it's either several pro Hales that are good enough that they can take out most/all of the team and the rest are either hales who are not that good enough at playing the game or who are good before hand but are getting constantly hit by the following (Very Easy w+m1/2 and/or Gassed by Pyros, Easy Backstabs and getaways by Spies, Telefrag being instant kill instead of 9001, Snipers that can result in stalling/knockback when it. etc.) thus the fear of being killed by the hales is no longer a thing RED worries about but instead it The Hale being afraid of RED since they have several mechanics that can harm a new Hale if they fall for it.

I propose either a huge Nerf towards Phlog/Gas Pyros and Spies with Kunais or Dead Ringers by the following:
For Pyro: Reduce damage for Phlog and make either reduce Gas Passer damage when thrown and hit while on fire, or outright ban Gas Passer from VSH until we can find a suitable Nerf.
For Spies: Make backstabs no longer uber. Yes, that would make people mad but it gives The Hale a fighting chance against Kunai Spies who use the Uber to run away everytime he backstabs, which is very unfun to play against. Probably the most controversial change for a class, but I think Spy should use the Dead Ringer only once per round. This means he can only fake death once per round, which means he won't be able to use it again for the remainder of the round, thus either having to find another way to evade Hale or to fight back the Hale. These changes might not be good for some players which I propose the idea for a rework of The Hales in general. Almost forgot, maybe bring back the Sniper Class Limit?

For the Hales, I propose that we should rework them to not be Overpowered, but instead be more like what chuck said, The Predators to the Army (The Hales to the RED team). For this, I propose that we use Mub rework since it doesn't make The Hales too overpowered nor too weak because it helps The Hales be more like an actual powerful boss instead of just a somewhat powerful boss.

Overall, I love these changes and I really hope one day these can be applied. Yes people will get upset on some of these changes, but for the better of VSH in general, it would be good.

 

[mub]

...I stopped making these balance changes to buff hale... It is strange that it took half a year for people to agree that boss win rate is too low just like backstab dealing too much damage.

I hope that means we can start buffing again :D

1+ on everything
VSH is honestly gone boring and I agree with what Mub has to say about VSH, the nerfs towards the hales has gotten to the point of not being fun to play as them.

In my opinion, I think the reason why I liked played Hale was that the hales were powerful while RED would have to communicate a way to defeat a particular boss/hale. If a player died like an Medic or Engineer, it would be harder to win as RED since you have no healer/builder to resupply with ammo and health. Nowadays, it's either several pro Hales that are good enough that they can take out most/all of the team and the rest are either hales who are not that good enough at playing the game or who are good before hand but are getting constantly hit by the following (Very Easy w+m1/2 and/or Gassed by Pyros, Easy Backstabs and getaways by Spies, Telefrag being instant kill instead of 9001, Snipers that can result in stalling/knockback when it. etc.) thus the fear of being killed by the hales is no longer a thing RED worries about but instead it The Hale being afraid of RED since they have several mechanics that can harm a new Hale if they fall for it.

I propose either a huge Nerf towards Phlog/Gas Pyros and Spies with Kunais or Dead Ringers by the following:
For Pyro: Reduce damage for Phlog and make either reduce Gas Passer damage when thrown and hit while on fire, or outright ban Gas Passer from VSH until we can find a suitable Nerf.
For Spies: Make backstabs no longer uber. Yes, that would make people mad but it gives The Hale a fighting chance against Kunai Spies who use the Uber to run away everytime he backstabs, which is very unfun to play against. Probably the most controversial change for a class, but I think Spy should use the Dead Ringer only once per round. This means he can only fake death once per round, which means he won't be able to use it again for the remainder of the round, thus either having to find another way to evade Hale or to fight back the Hale. These changes might not be good for some players which I propose the idea for a rework of The Hales in general. Almost forgot, maybe bring back the Sniper Class Limit?

For the Hales, I propose that we should rework them to not be Overpowered, but instead be more like what chuck said, The Predators to the Army (The Hales to the RED team). For this, I propose that we use Mub rework since it doesn't make The Hales too overpowered nor too weak because it helps The Hales be more like an actual powerful boss instead of just a somewhat powerful boss.

Overall, I love these changes and I really hope one day these can be applied. Yes people will get upset on some of these changes, but for the better of VSH in general, it would be good.

I agree that some of RED's mechanics could still be looked over with a fine-toothed comb at some point, such as the ones you pointed out, Lupin, however,
Buffing Hale is one idea that can be tested and implemented to level the playing field on a broader scale.
Once this is accomplished, it'll be easier to make these multiple smaller tweaks with a clear idea of what Hale is like.

Nerfing aspects of RED now before the suggested buffing of Hale might make certain changes to RED meaningless in time, so we should hold off for now.

 

[AruKim]

+1
Melee, Rage, and Knock-back Resistance.

Personally, I believe hale, or more accurately all bosses are weighed down by a lot of different factors. The whole objective is balance, and when many parties have many ideas as to what the balance should lean towards it can create lots of conflicting ideas when coming up with solutions. Some people like the challenge of being an underdog against all odds, while others prefer to have an easier time. I myself prefer a challenge, so I'm biased towards those types of changes. Since most of the time spent playing vsh is when you're red, alive or dead, the things that would make it more fun during that time would be much better than things that make it too easy. Imho, the most prominent factors that prevent this are as follows:
1. It's too easy for players to tank/avoid hits.

I find it hard to deal a lot of classes unless you take them by surprise since all classes except for engineer have a survival tool at their disposal. You can only keep your focus on one target for so long before you have to switch, so most of them live the first hit. Now you might think that's intentional, but my point is players receive little to no consequences for getting caught too close to the sun. Classes such as scout, soldier, demo-man, and medic all have insane damage voiding abilities and often live till the end of the round. It's the classes that most of the top regulars play.
2. It's too easy for players to deal damage.

The classes I've mentioned before not only have mobility/tankiness, but also insane DPS to boot. Anyone who's half decent at the class knows this, and abuse the hell out of it leading to matches that drag on and on, especially with the first 2. Even I, with barely any hours on soldier or demo can easily get top 3 damage on a hale because of that mobility, tankiness and damage.
3. It's too easy for players to deal knock-back.

The common thing that is the bane of hales everywhere is knock-back. I don't know the specific attributes of each boss, but I do know it's not enough for all of them except trolldier since he has enough mobility to deal with it. Half of the time spent as hale is spent in the air, so when some poor vagineer, CBS, or even hale sometimes, gets sent flying because they used the only movement option they have, it feels cheap in my eyes. I know they have tools to deal with it, but it's not enough. Although in low player servers, it's due to the skill of hitting an airshot pipe or dh, servers with high player counts just overwhelm hale leading to games where the hale hides for like a minute, reappears to kill players, rinse and repeat. It's no longer a boss fight anymore, which is what I believe the spirit of vsh is supposed to be.

I believe the most important thing to buff hale with would be things that can more easily deal with these factors.

First of all, buffing his melee to deal around maybe 275+ damage instead of 202, would help with the problem of demos surviving due to eyelander buffs, medics & soldiers surviving due to relatively easy overheal amounts, etc. You are now able to 2 shot non-overhealed heavies, one shot any medium class without health bonuses, and even one shot cloaked spies if i remember the damage resistance correctly, Maybe make it deal less damage to buildings, since it's basically a heavy as well, I'm not sure. Also, buff arrows 200+ damage, I wanna airshot those pesky trolldiers. Increasing his range to the eyelander's or maybe even longer might make red players angry, but it could help with poor hitreg on hale's part and snag those who seem to be just out of reach. Those with more mobility like scouts, soldiers, demos, and pyros with the detonator would have to be more cautious when getting close, because now there's more risk that you wouldn't be able to escape, and harder to 1v1 hale which is honestly just insane to do in a gamemode that supposedly relies on team fighting.

Then, make all rages give a 100% knockback resistance in all environments like the vagineer without uber during the duration of the damage resistance. It already takes a lot of health to fill up, so when you get knocked back even if you use it, it feels useless such as when dealing with nests, which is literally what rage is supposed to counter. I use CBS most of the time, and the rage is often completely useless because of poor range other than the arrows it gives you, then nullified because you can just barely gain some distance on a sentry gun firing on you. The only option is to snipe the engineers with arrows, which relies on both luck that they stand still, and skill which a lot of players don't have (myself included). A flat knockback resistance similar to what the user "True Darkian" said would also play a big role in stopping this as well.

Finally, a few minor tweaks I reccomend would be making HHH either be immune to, or take reduced damage against telefrags as having a single class able to one shot an entire boss for using his unique ability is cheap and unfun to play against especially since he is already one of the harder bosses to use. Giving all hales more rage instead of just vagineer when airblasted would give pyros more consequences for spamming this annoying move, making it a more strategic 'get-off me' move to save teammates in trouble. Making players able to jump when raging would put more skill into avoiding attacks by using the environment instead of being completely dead upon falling into a 6 inch dip in the map. Buffing hale's rage radius vertically would also make it easier to catch escaping trolldiers and scouts in time. Maybe slightly decrease recharge time on super-jump since most of the damage hale takes is while he's on the ground, indirectly increasing his health pool.

These aren't too game changing, but I didn't want to tip the scales too hard in the hale's favor, still making it challenging for both parties no matter how good you are. That's all I have for now, but I might be wrong about some stuff since I'm not a veteran like most regulars, so take this with a grain of salt.

 

[Tonomas]

-1 to everything except knockback (trolldier needs to get knockback tho), just learn how to play saxton and you'll see it's already op

 

[BigChapAlien]

+1

VSH2 has really hurt my enjoyment of the mode. I used to feverishly anticipate playing the boss and killing people. Now I only play the boss on one VSH server - the 24/7 military map - and it's only because there aren't constantly a huge group of players. But sometimes I won't play the boss there either because the group will be so small that I won't have enough health to deal with the handful of mercs that challenge me. The health to player ratio only gets fair about 10 players in. Anything under that and you have less health than you need which should always be about 1000 per player. Under 7k health to deal with 8 players is stupid.

I get on VSH2 servers and there's just so many things to worry about for Hale. There used to be a priority order with these things but now there are so many classes with so many different ways to ruin Hale's ability to fight. There's so much CC going around that Hale is constantly getting flung around. There's so many defensive options that Hale is constantly denied kills. What does Hale have to make up for this? More red team buffs. And more nerfs. I know people don't like getting "Solo Rage'd" but at this point solo raging someone is virtually useless unless you're right on top of them.

A perfect example of the flipped power dynamic in the OP is Spy. In VSH1, Spy was high risk high reward class. If you got the backstab, you took out a huge amount of Hale's HP! But now you have to dodge because you can't do anything for a little while. It was a big risk for a big reward and was balanced. Now? If you get a backstab, you get temporary uber and a HUGE amount of health. There's no real risk to it once you've gotten the backstab - and in the chaos of fighting 30 other players it's VERY easy to get backstabbed. There are literally games where Spies just chase Hale around backstabbing him and Hale can do nothing about it besides run away from the rest of the team because if he goes for anyone else the Spies will just keep stabbing him. I've watched two people get over 9k just playing Spy and stabbing like mad. But the flipped power dynamic isn't just about Spy anymore, it's the team in general. Hale is not the boss fight anymore, the team is.

I hate to say it but I really wish we could go back to VSH1's format. It felt way more balanced. Right off the bat I knew something was off about VSH2 and why the boss felt so much harder to play but now that I've played VSH2 long enough I feel like it's really obvious why it is that way. VSH just doesn't feature the boss battle it used to offer anymore.

Also, PUT A LIMIT ON EVERY CLASS. Does Skial know how difficult it is for Hale to try and fight 10 Engineers on the tiny 2fort desk map? Do devs think it is fun to have to deal with 8 Scouts and 6 Soldiers along with the other classes? 4 of one class is already a handful, but every class is so powerful in VSH2 that more than 4 of any class can be very annoying.

 

[The Vindicator]

+1 to everything but rage

One thing I need to see put back in are class limits. As hale, its annoying and almost impossible to kill a well coordinated group of medics without rage. Also, having to deal with 5+ sentries on a small map such as minegay almost allows no movement without taking an absurd amount of damage and KNOCKBACK. Some classes are fine without limits like demoman and soldier (to an extent), but others like engineers, snipers, scouts, pyro get annoying and become no fun for hale. Rage should not be the only way a hale can win. This is supposed to be a gamemode boss fight, that allows the hale to beat the crap out of most of the red team (if not all of red team). Victory for red team should be hard earned, not stupid easy.

 

[Bottiger]

VSH2 has really hurt my enjoyment of the mode. I used to feverishly anticipate playing the boss and killing people. Now I only play the boss on one VSH server - the 24/7 military map - and it's only because there aren't constantly a huge group of players. But sometimes I won't play the boss there either because the group will be so small that I won't have enough health to deal with the handful of mercs that challenge me. The health to player ratio only gets fair about 10 players in. Anything under that and you have less health than you need which should always be about 1000 per player. Under 7k health to deal with 8 players is stupid.

This is very strange because as I keep saying, things were worse in VSH 1.55.

Bosses had less knockback resistance, there was no airblast cooldown, many classes did MORE damage in 1.55 such as backstab, market gardener etc.

 

[mub]

+1 to everything but rage

One thing I need to see put back in are class limits. As hale, its annoying and almost impossible to kill a well coordinated group of medics without rage. Also, having to deal with 5+ sentries on a small map such as minegay almost allows no movement without taking an absurd amount of damage and KNOCKBACK. Some classes are fine without limits like demoman and soldier (to an extent), but others like engineers, snipers, scouts, pyro get annoying and become no fun for hale. Rage should not be the only way a hale can win. This is supposed to be a gamemode boss fight, that allows the hale to beat the crap out of most of the red team (if not all of red team). Victory for red team should be hard earned, not stupid easy.

+1
Also, PUT A LIMIT ON EVERY CLASS. Does Skial know how difficult it is for Hale to try and fight 10 Engineers on the tiny 2fort desk map? Do devs think it is fun to have to deal with 8 Scouts and 6 Soldiers along with the other classes? 4 of one class is already a handful, but every class is so powerful in VSH2 that more than 4 of any class can be very annoying.

I would rather see classes reworked instead of limited. All classes should be available at any time for anyone, just like vanilla. If a class is being looked at for placing a class limit, it would be better to rework the class to not be so powerful that it needs capping. I want Hale to win more than lose, but I absolutely do not want it to come down to limiting player choice.

Not necessarily on-topic to the thread but I would say Medic having 40% uber every time to start out with contributes heavily to constant ubering in current meta, and could be removed.

Increasing knockback resistance on Hale would make it easier to deal with far more things across the board such as multiple heavies, multiple engie nests, scouts with FaNs, etc. It would make Hales who are good even better but I think this would do a great job in increasing wins for a lot of players; knockback I believe is the most common complaint/gripe I hear from people who play Hale.

EDIT: Bottiger posted new VSH changes.
https://www.skial.com/threads/large-vsh-balance-changes.87277/

 

[Evan s]

Intro;

From veterans to regulars to newcomers, I've been hearing an increasing pattern of the same viewpoint: Hale's gotten harder over time. Hale's getting less fun to play. Hale isn't worth playing anymore.

This gamemode was meant to be a boss battle against one of the most popular, most intimidating figures of Team Fortress 2. Back in the first few years of this gamemode, the flow of gameplay was far different.

You fight Hale to see how much damage you can manage before your inevitable death, you are rewarded for your damage equally with queue points, and then you get to play the Hale to beat the crap outta 31 players. And, once in awhile, Hale would lose, and RED would celebrate over impossible victory. And Hale often did not lose. In this regard, the gameplay system rewarded good players by letting them play Hale. You worked hard to try and stop him in previous rounds, and for your efforts, you would get to play him, and enjoy destroying REDs.

Now? Playing Hale is no longer a reward. It's a challenge. Hale doesn't win all the time. He loses all the time. There are RED players that 1v1 Hales with ease. It's no longer about when RED can win. It's about when Hale can win. And when the main reward of playing VSH, the part that's supposed to be fun, is now so un-fun that people don't even want it, that people are OPTING OUT of it HALF the time, what was supposed to be the best part of the gamemode, why even bother?

This thread is for figuring out ways of buffing Hale and Hale variants for the sake of fun and increasing his chances of winning to the point that he wins more than loses, and for making it so more players want to play him.

For the sake of simplicity, these buffs are geared toward the stock Saxton Hale, but most of these ideas are general enough to be applied to all or most of our VSH Hales.

Here are some ideas I'd like to put forth to start the discussion;

1) His Health.

This one's easy, but crude. Saxton Hale's stock health currently for a full server of 31 REDs is 44000. A small increase to this number would benefit the Hales who get close to winning, but don't quite secure the victory due to a lack of remaining HP. Since RED has mechanics that do percentage-based damage, such as backstabs, market gardens, etc., I would recommend a generous buff of 25-50% (55000-66000 health max.)

2) His Melee.

Hale's current melee deals 202 damage, and is stock attack speed.
We could increase his rate of attack to better dispatch crowds of players, and consequently change his damage if needed.
We could increase the knockback of his melee attack. This is one idea in particular I would like since you could use it to knock away ubered Medics, overhealed players, Battalion's users, Heavies, Phlog Pyros, the list goes on. This would, in turn, create a new dynamic where players who can tank a hit can't just get up in Hale's face without consequence.

3) His Rage.

For Saxton Hale, he scares people near him, takes no knockback, and reduced damage. This sometimes doesn't do very much, and it's not always the worst thing in the world to get raged unless the Hale is really targeting you. Most of the time, people nearby get stunned, a couple people die, and that's that. Sometimes even, nobody dies, because a Medic jumps in with Uber, or a Battalion's user jumps in, or a Pyro comes in to airblast, etc. We could make this rage actually scary.
We could give him increased damage, like crits, during his rage.
We could give Hale a faster running speed during his rage.
He could take far less damage during the rage duration.
He could have a longer duration of knockback resistance.

4) His Mobility.

Especially on larger, or more elevated maps, it can take awhile to get around as Hale. Hale's mobility also becomes an issue when dealing with extremely mobile classes, such as good Soldiers, Scouts, Demomen, etc. This type of change would be focused on alleviating that issue. We could increase Hale's running speed slightly, to better chase down fast and jumpy opponents.
We could reduce Hale's superjump cooldown, good for quickly traveling large distances, and chasing explosive jumping classes.

5) His Knockback Resistance.

This is a suggestion I hear a lot, or rather, knockback is a common complaint of Hale players. It's not an uncommon sight to see Hale getting pushed away hard from crowds by RED's damage, or even floated, suspended in air, by this knockback. We could give Hale a passive knockback resistance, for example, of 50%, to cut down the effects by half. We could also give Hale a passive knockback resistance specifically for being airborne to better help him get to where he wants to go during superjumps.

6) His Weighdown.

This goes partly with the previous point, but making it easier for Hale to weighdown by reducing the amount of time needed to weighdown would reduce the amount of times he's just getting floated in the air by incoming damage.

Ending notes:

We could make an shorter AFK timer for BLU team to reduce the amount of times Hale is just idle the whole round and RED just farms him for damage.

+1 if you want to buff Hale! If you have any other ideas about buffing Hales, PLEASE post it!

#MAKEVSSAXTONHALEGREATAGAIN #MVSHGA #GAMING

Mub you should consider removing super jump penalty from norage hale or atleast cut it by half, doing norage especially 4x needs alot of jumping.