To be fair, PF JPAs are among the easier bugs to deal with. Yes, if they win the RPS game, they'll maul you quickly but they're also much more susceptible to ranged attacks compared to the other melee weapons. Try deying him the close combat and pistol his face. Will make him reconsider that PF sooner or later. On the greater scheme of things: I would support the PF becoming a GA only weapon under the condition that JPA retain some AV capability. PM is lackluster there and you won't get far with Kraks. The general balance of melee weapons and the system itself still require quite some overhauling before redistributing weapons among the classes could be considered.
OK so you seem to have ignored or missed half of my post. As I said, the part of the lunge animation that actually damages an enemy player is minute so it has less effective range than the Fist. Coupled with the slower animations it is no wonder it seems smaller - a fleeing/back pedalling enemy will get further away before it fires. Since you haven't addressed it in your previous post and response to mine - I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the animation quality and their impact on the weapons use. Do you agree that the effective damaging part of the Klaw animation is far less than the Fist? Do you understand what I mean by this? There is clearly a delay, as with all Klaw animations it seems, before the slam attack fires. You can see it as clear as day in your video. With regards to the Klaw being a superior ambush weapon compared to the Fist I disagree. The animations are far too sloppy for the weapon to truly be effective. With regards speed and its impact on combat - this is a much larger problem than you have made out and here's why; 1. Agreed power attack is unusable and this is a massive problem. 2. If you're caught out by a Dbash you're likely dead, most decent melee players will punish you so you have very little health then pistol you to death. 3. Due to the damage only applying at the end of the animation it is incredibly easy to miss your target when a hit should connect. 4. The double Dbash bug still exists, so even when you do pull off a successful Dbash, you often immediately do another (that the player dodges) and end up being unable to connect a proper hit. 5. It's easier to interrupt the Klaw users mega slow animations. In fights with multiple combatants they become useless unless able to sneak up on the enemy. 6. You aren't able to recover from a mistake as quickly as any other class as you have to sit and wait for your animation to finish. The Klaw is a mess when compared to the Fiat - we have been shafted by the cry to "fix our animations" because apparently players couldn't tell what was coming in the RPS system. This is across the board too and is the reason Ork melee is slowly fading out. I'm glad you've posted the videos, it's made our glaring issues with the Klaw and with melee in general obvious - when you see the animations compared side by side like this it's clear Orks have it rough.
Yea I was in that game, he was not happy lol. I think we had less players too which didn't help. And here we get to the crux of the discussion I think - why should the JPA have any more av capability than a krak grenade and power weapon? Aren't they supposed to be anti fortified infantry positions with a particular focus on wrecking devastators and their equivalents?
I understand what you're saying but testing to see if it is the case or not is a little too much effort for me right now so I really can't confirm or deny if you're right or not. I havn't felt like it's the case, at least not significantly, when I've used the Klaw but it could be, I don't know. I can help you with your point 4 by the way, there is an option in the settings that allows you to disable two button defensive bash, activate this then bind 'Parrying Blow' to a single button. This should prevent the dbash from triggering unintentionally. Just to clarify again if I'm not making myself clear, I do think that the Fist is far outperforming the Klaw, I am merely pointing out that the Klaw does have some advantages, minor as they may be, which should be considered as if the Klaw was sped up to Fist speed or the Fist was slowed down then these lunges would surely need to be equalised as well? I personally believe the Klaw and Fist should function identically. I do find it particularly amusing that so many marine players flipped tables over the banshee's power attack recovery being ~0.1 sec quicker than that of a marine whilst having slower fast attacks and a broken sprint attack, yet there is little uproar over a more than 1 second difference between the Klaw and Fists power attacks. That said I am all for equalising attack speeds across factions, but if this does occur it's important not to forget to equalise other aspects as well, like lunges.
No the intended mechanics is supposed to be like space marine where it actually switches your equipment to your melee setup. They havent however gotten to this bug yet., if you look the character does everything else they need to besides swap the pistol. and if you really experiment like in garrison with a friend what you see happening on your screen is not generally the same as what is actually happening on the server ..... if it were intended the server would see the same thing .....
Because they aren't only anti fortification, they are flush, shock and awe, and burst damage style infantry and that includes tanks ... their job is to get in hit their target and get back out again. What their target is entirely depends on their load out .... i don't like the idea of eliminating power fist from thier lineup entirely but i could definitely support vet/elite locking it in line with the scorpion claw, and have the power Klaw suffer the same fate ... but open up melta bombs to JPA's because thematically the melta bomb fits their role better they "jump in plant and leave" the problem with the game presently is the leaving part never takes place the mechanics related to JPA make them super good at just staying in a fight and never leaving .... there is no "point of diminishing returns" why would you choose an "infantry" over "identical infantry + extreme mobility" this all plays into some of the other posts ive made about more clearly defining the roles of the classes ..... because JPA and GA don't have more defined roles on the battlefield more nuance between them people will always pick the JPA because it gets to melee easier, and the GA doesn't really serve any better purpose for being slower ..... additionally due to the way LP works and how hard it is to buy defensive gear vs high pen and damage gear ..... offensive gear is just more LP efficient so who benefits ? the best offensive class ...... so if you are going to be assaulting or attacking, you just about doubled the amount of JPA's right there ... Tactical despite having much better balance than it did a while ago is still a very high skillcap class compared to ANY other LSM class save maybe devastator and devastator's difficulty isn't really in the same vein its more based on awareness and positioning as the tactical mechanically is one of the most nuanced and complex classes to field and equip presently. so the skill ceiling makes people who might play TaC choose JPA because "mechanically" its easier, so now you have a situation without game power considered AT ALL where most other people are going to choose the JPA just on GAME mechanics. continuing on this chain of logic someone in EVERY shooter game pops off and gets kill streaks or "has a great game" not to mention there are skilled players out there who constantly match to match top leader boards .... who do you think statistically speaking you are going to see at the top of leader boards with so many JPA's in the pool just on game mechanics alone in an unorganized environment where players whims are all that decides what class gets picked ? JPA of coarse, to say nothing of the allure of rocket packing around has its own allure completely outside this context of mechanics everyone at some point or another wished they had a rocket pack in real life this phenomenon will further add to the JPA players. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- now step aside for a minute, and imagine a different scenario devoid of the "whims of players" I'm going to call this scenario "ToC's every single event night scenario" and say it happens 5 times a week for a couple of hours a night since launch where your squads are organized people have a designated roll and they play it all night unless there is a specific reason(AV Killing, or getting rid of a particularly pesky balcony on certain siege maps), squads are managed to have a certain amount of each class, most of your squads are primarily Tac's and apoths because why would you in an organized situation where no one is lone wolfing not choose apoth as your ground pounder .... you have 0 lone devastators every devastator has a buddy likely a melee like an apoth or GA or last case a Tac guarding their butt all game. every player is trained to flank/flush/trench/deny zone etc. this team also uses voice calls and q pings and keeps a reasonable amount of players in any given spot unless there is some dire need to "go all in" on a point for time extension. I'll tell you what happens ..... the devastators get 30-60 kills, the enemy JPA's get 1 for 1 attack runs at best on average, and you win games against primarily JPA teams ..... the only "melee centric team" we've had a hard time against lately is LASH and that has very little to do with JPA it has everything to do with LASH being very tightly skilled in melee, and using lash of slaanesh/warp instability on their sorcerers to compliment their close in fighting style ... i truly believe that presently even if they deployed as all CTAC's they would still likely out melee us on the whole ... and when you play against like minded individuals you will see a lot more rage gets brought up about the AC/Ace dakka and trucks/Grav/FD as they have a much larger impact on wins besides a "big kill count and high death count for yourself" the AC/Ace Dakka makes positions nearly unassailable if they are backed up and defended properly , Grav weapons make the primary method of keeping mobile spawns safe obsolete and maybe boogers up melee more than it should, and FD can use WS or Falcons to "Pin" transports and gib them so fast your head will spin, and against good Ork guilds like DLB you CANNOT ALLOW a truck to exist ANYWHERE near one of your points when you hear Waaaaagh or you might as well pack it in, that point is lost. Trust me, you walking your devastator variants from base to battlefield does more to screw your win than a JPA can any day, or not taking the high ground from an enemy HW team through flush tactics. I'm not trying to side walk into a debate about the balance of these items/mechanics I'm saying they are of greater concern generally speaking in the current meta, and in some cases the JPA is a part of those discussions but generally the powerfist is not a important tactical concern to worry about. power fists don't scare us ..... power maul is in general a better melee weapon and in some cases "cheesier" since it has a stunning quality on fierce attacks and clangs like the dickens without giving up much speed, if you want to kill a vehicle grav weapons and melta weapons get the job done a lot safer particularly against better guilds that guard and or keep their transport moving since its really hard to fierce melee a moving vehicle if its specifically trying to avoid you. and having a whole kill team or squad go "Kraks out" is even safer or more efficient. imagine for a second if GA was slightly slower than regular infantry but had say 15% more armor/toughness for the same cost and the "shield adds toughness in its presently facing arc" idea as opposed to complete blocking stuff, and the JPA got more of their damage for using the jetpack momentum to land their hits and less from their static regular fighting .... there would be a defined reason to pick one over the other .... one is the slow and steady front line grunt the other is a more "assassin" like feel who can lay the smack down but he cant stay .... presently i think the reason you have so much JPA's is a combination of issues that isn't entirely their "opness" though their perceived "op ness" is certainly a factor .... map design, ease of use, lack of necessity of discipline or organization to reap rewards, no real detriment for not choosing something else save capping power, too much LP efficiency for offensive items or too little for defensive items however you want to look at it, Shock and Awe/flush game play is more fun. Strategically speaking against unprepared individuals flush/shock and awe tactics are more effective than trenching, The average player mentality of doing whats best for them instead of whats best for the team(clanging a JPA on top of a grenade persay so they cant escape or allowing yourself to be weapon broke on a clang to set up a friends backstab), and a very culturally injected "JPA's cant be stopped in melee or at all" rhetoric running around scaring people out of playing other classes. There is just a pile of reasons we see more JPA's than other classes, and if they got nerfed tomorrow i think they would still see a lot of use in the PuG queue because .... it takes less investment to get normal rewards out of JPA but a very experienced player will in my opinion find that other classes bring more to the win by far than JPA does save some very fringe cases like maps FILLED with dev's on high walls or balconies like the 2 siege maps. and even then only really when taking that particular field of space .... adn they still die like flies trying to take those spots.
Look im not insulting your intelligence nor am i really saying your wrong .... its more like im saying your right, but only because it sounds like your playing in a "PuG pool of players", the JPA is a pub stomping tool.... you can easily hop from inexperienced CqC player to inexperienced CqC player and reasonably expect their friends to scope in and ignore you or if they dont you can expect them to panic and riddle everyone around them with bullets friend and foe as long as they feel that "keeps you away from them" you can expect them to throw a grenade into your 1v5 melee when you as the jumper have the easiest escape ...downing all his friends and leting you out of a hairy situation that would have cost you a life for sure .... i still find the power sword to be infinitely worse on JPA than a powerfist its speed and mod capability/lp efficiency is insane. I don't think you will see a decline in JPA players until the skill cap goes up, and we make JPA's "play well to get their damage" like rewarding them more for assault slams, and skate attacks(take off autolock in flight for these 2 attacks) but less for normal attacks or implement some other "losing steam" type game mechanic ... the hardest moves to successfully pull off should be the most rewarding and at present its the exact opposite .... the air slam pretty much guarantees you get hit while getting out of it and puts you at a disadvantage for doing it yet staying in the fight is generally more rewarding especially with lifesteal mods and power swords. i think lifesteal aught to be a Khorne thing .... and LSM should be relegated to a slower regen rate that is always on instead of lifesteal .... or maybe temporary heal buffs for achieving an execute on JPA to nearby friendlies that includes yourself. Also GA's game mechanics are really poorly implemented in that they go from indestructible to instant dead while being stunned in the blink of an eye, and frequently one of thie most expensive items just "doesn't function" and bullets or attacks pass right through it.
