Just played some stalker bolter and i have to say its not as good as regular bolter. It certainly is good at siege or camping and its a lot of fun, but no way it is better than bolter. The only problem with it is that other factions dont have snipers except for lascannons. melee: melee is not so bad as people here say it is, all it needs is a small buff like DJgloriouspinguin for example said: a stun duration reduction. I personally would add 50 durability to melee weapons except for knives ofc and incrased ammo gave option for incrased ammo for side arms. Also CSM needs some variations amongst sidearms would apriciate automatic pistol or equivalent of grav pistol
did the enemy stalker bolter team win the games? did you play fortress and/or hold the line? there are certain situations where the Stalker Bolter is viable, long range engagements come to mind... but tbh I'd rather snipe with the lascannon at fortress maps then talking the stalker bolter... I played 15+ battles with non-lsm races over the day (1p.m.-5p.m. / GMT+2) at european servers and there were a few stalkers which really didn't matter... 'cause in a massbrawl/cqc situation they are quite bad because of possible friendly fire and the strange delay between the mouse click and tge shoot I get (don't know if it's lag or something else)... and a rhino/serpent/trukk helps in getting close to bolter users.
Another thing to consider: melee will never be balanced as long as the game maintains absurd levels of lag and it still has the rps system.
What you mean like Ranged is right now? And that's ok is it? to alienate a huge chunk of the EC community just because its ok for Ranged to be facerolling everything? Fuck sake lol.
I'd rather have guns be good than just see melee roll up and auto win. Which btw now that jpa got buffed back up is happening again. Between power attacks spam thats gaurentees a kill due to stunning through d bash and side arms melee is actually pretty over bearing in the right hands. Its way too easy right now to close in hit once or twice jet back and just pistol finish people. Atm melee has an easier time removing an opponents ability to counter play than a dbash on range. Tbh if you get d bashed by a gun user you should get blasted away. With how many escapes and how easy it is to just circle strafe dodge a d bash its a joke.
Wow. You are so blinded by your hate of JPA it's clouding your judgement of the situation. That part about melee getting blasted away from one d-bash is comical by the way. By your logic it's perfectly fine then for melee "power attack spam" to destroy you. One stunning attack and you're dead! Works both ways! What fun and engaging game play!
When I stop seeing a jump do 4 dodges on each d bash and then just circle strafe I'll stop hating the class. And btw I do play all classes and the jps is a joke with how easy it is to cheese. If you don't want d bash stun deaths then you have to admit power attack stun deaths are equally cheesy.
Strong Attack vrs Standard bolt round will destroy its target before it reaches 9 times out of 10, if your stunned you have enough time to evade or LMB your way to victory. But lets just compare Quick Attack vrs the standard Bolt round for a second and ignore the travesty that is the RPS system. Chain Sword: It takes a good 8 to 13 quick attacks to down your target with a standard Chain Sword. At 1.5 seconds per attack thats a good 12 to 19 seconds to down your target from close quarters combat only Bolt round: It takes a good 5 bolt rounds to down your target with a standard Bolter. At 33.333 rounds per minute or 5.55 rounds per seconds it takes a grand total of less than 1 second to down your target from long, medium to close quarters combat (because Dbash + LMB = better than engaging in the actual Melee system) That is of cause irnoring the fact that Dbash counters Quick and Strong Attacks in the wind up and itself endlessly bailing up Melee in interuptions, staggers and stuns halting their dps entirely while Ranged are free to just shoot straight on through. That's a problem.
Ok how bout this then. A bolter/shoota/ASC cannot fire while being smacked, cannot reload while being smacked, and grenades aren't always throwable while in melee. Now look at this. The second a gun user tries to d bash and ou weren't berserking out with rmb spam you can easily just backpedal/dodge back and just pistol them to death. Shield users can bring their shield up and re engage meaning the enemy will probably be forced to reload. As it stands a melee player that really knows whats happening and how to play their class is an absolute nightmare for a shooter to defend against. If you mess up against good melee players you are screwed. Now on a side note, do I think the pen buff was too much? Absolutely. Do I think what they did to the fist was dumb? Absolutely. But that doesn't change the fact that a sword/mace/axe user that stays with his team and plays the objectives will be useless. On the contrary, a single melee player can tie up a push or clear a balcony. On the flip side rarely does a gun clear out whole squads unless its a heavy that got a super good ambush. (Unless its against eldar. They are too easy to get multi kills against when they are forced to stay in a spot to defend and you flank.)
