This weapon is beyond broken. The fact you can't actually counter it whatsoever is stupid and you're basically dead the second someone whips this thing out. You can't avoid it, you can't run from it, it kills you in 5 hits, its got unlimited use and the person can hit at least 1 time every 3 seconds. So people can just hop off their boats and kill you in around 15 seconds providing you haven't already taken damage from the water. How could we nerf this? The damage, the hit speed, the consumption of the weapon. Its just a stupid weapon that in my opinion shouldn't be in the game at all. The gamemode is about destroying the opponents boats and letting them die by the water, things like bugbait and the crowbar are balanced as they aren't strong enough to kill somebody so quickly.
The sledge hammer is not even close to broken. It's a weapon that hits around 20 damage every three seconds, but at the cost of needing to swim in the water or land a really hard to land throw. There's many counters to it but I guess you might need some tips on how to deal with it. So here's a quick list of tips: -Build a boat with enough surface area so if someone tries to swim towards you to beat the shit out of you, you have enough room to just back away so they can't hit you and they will take a lot of damage from the water. -Throw bug bait at them if you see them swimming over to you so they will take a ton of damage if they try to do something like this. -Harpoon away from them, if you run away from them it's really hard for them to melee attack you. (Turns out, you can run from it!) -Don't build right next to people. There's gotta be space on the map that you don't have to build close enough to someone who is going to try and sledge hammer you. -Fight back. Pull out a sledge hammer or even crowbar and do damage back to them, chances are if you fight back hard enough there's no way that player will make it back to their boat. It's very rare to even see someone do this unless it's someone swimming near their boat or it's like the last kill in the round. Doing something like this will cause you to take quite a bit of damage and there's a big chance you don't actually land any sledge hammer hits. You have many ways of avoiding this. It's just a weapon that's nicer for throwing and dealing some damage if you can somehow land the weapon on a player. It's also really good to take out players who swim up to your boat and spam the M249 or any other weapon. If swimming up to your boat and taking 15 seconds to kill you with a melee weapon is considered OP, then we should also remove the M249 since this weapon can slaughter a boat if you swim up and just hold left click. It also seems very hard to stay alive in the water for 15 seconds and still be alive. This means you are waaaaaaaaaaay too close to other players when building during the build phase.
Whenever I tried to sledge Dawson he just whacked me in the face, so it can be countered with another sledge.
Lets just say as I don't have a clue how much damage you take per second, its 4 damage per second in the water, now if I do the math it takes 5 seconds for them to take the same amount of damage as myself when hit with a sledgehammer. So in the 15 seconds it takes a person with a sledgehammer to kill someone with full health the opponent loses around 60 health in the process, unless you throw bug bait at them which roughly end up of a total of 70 damage on the engagement. Now providing the person that attacked you with the sledgehammer took 5 seconds to get to you, he lost 20 health on his way there, so around 90 health is lost grand total. Obviously the further he is the more damage he takes from the water. So lets go with Dawson's idea of attacking them with a sledgehammer too, good way to counter it but at what cost? In the process you could lose around 60 hp if both opponents attacked eachother 3 times and on the 3rd the guy died to the water so he couldn't hit you for a 4th time. You are now on 40 hp. If you have 1 singular boat you're totally fine and this isn't an issue, but if you built multiple boats that require you to move through the water to get to them, you're in a serious problem as you most likely won't last much longer. Obviously this isn't a fault with the game itself it was the players decision to do this, but we all know building a big boat is probably a bad idea as you get targeted and you can get easily destroyed. Now with Silver's idea of building a boat that is high and avoiding it this way. Building a high boat is a massive disadvantage to yourself, but has a couple of benefits that really don't outway the cons. The first big boat a player sees they most likely attack first, why? Because it most likely has a lot of health therefore a lot of money is gained from it, by the time anyone has actually gone down, your high boat has already been destroyed a little and most players attack the top of it as that is where the player is. So you're really back at square one when your high boat has become a regular boat. The main issue with it for me is that you can't actually efficiently avoid it at all. Running away is really not possible unless you have a really long boat which is a bit of a stupid thing to have as players that see it will automatically target it. Avoiding it is kind of pointless, your fate is sealed once they whip out that sledgehammer. And trying to counter someone with your own sledgehammer is a good idea but the cost is great for just 1 person to kill. Building a boat just to avoid being sledgehammered is ludicrous. I don't want to have to scrap all my favorite boat ideas just so I can counter 1 thing that in the end is probably not even worth it. I remember when you actually had to destroy the enemy boat, forget about them or bug bait them to slowly kill them off faster, and you move onto your next target. Now you have to go out of your own way to dance around on your boat to avoid some person you just destroyed coming up and smashing you to pieces when you have a perfect boat that you can no longer use anymore because 1 person decided taking out the boat isn't the answer I will just kill them. Bugbait and the crowbar were perfect as they deal damage to a person but not enough to actually kill them quicker than the water kills you. The sledgehammer sort of defeats the purpose of destroying the opponents boat if you can just beat them to death which seems like a much more efficient way of killing them.
Sledge was nerfed lots of times before. Right now its in the perfect line of "balance", since you need to know how to use it in order to get at least 1 kill with it. And if you know how to avoid encounters with a swiming sledgeman that about to cave your face in - sledge is no a problem to you. At all. First of all - Its a Melee Weapon, which means it has a very limited range. You just need to carefully walk away from the person that about to smack your booty (in both sences). Second of all - From the very beggining this weapon aquired very slow animaions. Both equiping and charging animations. There is a plenty of time to predict your opponens next move and apply countermeasures for em. Step back, or throw bugbait, or swim away, or DONT BE A PUSS PUSS AND SMACK HIM BACK! Third of all - People can throw sledge in your face, and this was a first topic on nerfing sledge (a while ago. And not just a single one). Now, in 2k17, throw was balanced AF. You can't predict traectory of your sledge, and if player got hit by a hande of it - damage nullifies completly. And it flies so god-damn slow, you can just take a step left\right (or even crouch) and evade it. Easy as that. There is a lot of things, good and bad, that you can find in this weapon. But ammount of those things are equal to their opposite. Weapon is balanced. Or, if you simply dont care or understand those PRO's and CON's... Then Cranky has an advice ready for you: Spoiler: Cranky's Advice
Sorry to disappoint but walking away from a sledgehammer isn't how it works, and I have tried it before if you think I haven't well i'm not sure if you understand what exactly i'm saying. There is also no skill involved, its a melee weapons, its pretty straight forward to use, i'm surprised you'd think something like that actually requires skill as I could give a 5 year old a mouse and keyboard and watch them beat the shit out of anyone with a sledgehammer. Also i'm not sure if you read my full reply as I clearly stated why I wouldn't counter a sledgehammer with another sledgehammer, it hardly works as your most likely going to like 3/5th's of your health in the encounter, and for you to actually have to counter a sledgehammer with a sledgehammer is quite stupid as its just common sense that they would both negate eachother. I'm pretty sure you can't see your opponent take a massive swing at you in the gamemode, so I don't quite understand how i'm supposed to just get out of the way of something that I have no clue when its going to happen, as it also happens instantly. I also have no problem with it being thrown, infact I think its the only balanced thing about it. Now as you know so much of its counter parts (The crowbar and the bugbait) how about you explain to me why I should use one of those to counter a sledgehammer? Because you'd have to be a bigger idiot to pull out a crowbar when you have a sledgehammer, or use bugbait when you can swim over to them and slap them once which in total is more than twice the amount a single bugbait does to a person. Now seeing as I like my boats small as it has quite a large strategic advantage to it, I can't exactly walk or swim away, unless you want me to swim across the map to only die to the water anyway which definitely changes the outcome of what was going to happen previously. Before you tell me to go and make a bigger boat "you pussy" then think of this, I have a play style I like to play, and many others do too which is respectful and some boat designs are very unique. But a bigger boat = bigger target = being targeted. So i'm not forfeiting my strategy because this insanely OP weapon can 5 shot me which isn't the actual point of Flood anyway, if I wanted to play a "Beat some fucker up with a sledgehammer" I would have gone to a PVP server, not a Flood server. I think most of you forget the whole concept of Flood and how it works. You destroy the other opponents boat and you move onto the next target, not "I have a sledgehammer that can 5 shot someone and I might aswell build a shitty boat and beat the shit out of the player next to me and he really can't do anything about it but sit there and watch". I don't know if you have ever actually been killed or engaged with the current sledgehammer, because its so good that once everyone realizes that guns are fucking useless and you might as well kill people with a sledgehammer as its more efficient at killing someone than destroying their boat, then you will complain because its been poorly implemented and nothing really counters it but itself.
I do appreciate you spending your time to make this thread Sylar and I do agree with you on some points. I know it's pretty gay & frustrated for players to build a fairly decent boat to then get suddenly whacked by some douche that uses an extremely cheap one just so he can piss you off. But I believe it's fine as is right now since melee weapons aren't really viable besides getting rid of some guy charging you with an M249. The Long draw time Short delay before and after swinging Compensates for the 20 hit points imo but we could always think of another alternative (as you've proposed to Nerf the damage)
I understand its intended purpose of getting rid of people charging you with an M249 but its just too good at everything else it does. A guy with a small boat has no chance in defending himself, its either sit on the small boat and die, or jump in the water and die. I personally think that the movement speed using this melee weapon should be decreased. So you move a lot slower through water and it can be used to for its intended purpose. Not to mention a person attacking you with a sledgehammer will die in the water slower than you do being hit by one 5 times. If people want to use this weapon on the offence then you should be particularly vulnerable in the water, slowing them down by perhaps half the normal speed would allow you to think the situation through longer and counter it a hell of a lot better, then bugbait would be viable and a harpoon too. I would like to hear your thoughts on this Counter as I think instead of nerfing the damage perhaps thinking of slowing the users speed instead.
Tbh i dont see the problem here. If you dont want to get sledgehammerd, it's simpel build a big enough boat or wide enough boat too move away from the guy, or harpoon away from him, when i'm playing i see maybe 1-2 guys get sledgehammerd maybe once every 30min. Also if a guy gose suicide in water too kill you with it he will be dead aswell right after he killed you, so personally i dont think it's op.
Harpoon is way too slow to do anything, the guy just has to go to the infront of the boat and just attack you like that, and I don't think building a big boat is the way the issue should be resolved, as that just cuts down boat designs to 1 sort of boat and makes the gamemode so much less fun. The thing is taking someone down should you be coming out as the victor, but you can't when someone sledgehammers you to death, you both become the victims and for what? You can't do anything really to stop it, building a wider/big boat makes you a bigger target anyway, so I doubt you'll last long enough to even get sledgehammered.
I like your proposals and all but i feel like it's nonesence at this point. Sry for the harsh words but that's just what i feel, it's not that op what you're makeing it seem like it is, also if were talking about nerfing some weapons i dont think sledge is the biggest problem of them all.
As a quantity over quality boat user I personally think that the weapon is just OP as its just not suitably counterable. We all know 2 sledgehammers can negate eachother but thats stupid to bring up as a counter as its just common sense. I want an actual counter to this weapon or it to be nerfed as it just ruins the whole point of Flood. Its not even a challenge when someone pulls out a sledgehammer as it ruins the fun for practically everyone. It is exactly how it sounds, I have never nor will I ever see anyone counter a sledgehammer, why? Because it just isn't possible. The weapon can hit further than you think, it can also kill you faster than the water will, its a weapon thats just OP and not suitably counterable. No boat can stop it, I don't think many people understand that your boat is going to be mostly destroyed before anyone whips out a sledgehammer, so there is no point in trying to counter it with your boats design as it simply won't work, and saying it would is just a lie.
If you make a lot of small boats every round where someone can just swim up to you at the start of a round and end you, that's your fault not the sledge hammer being overpowered. Like I said if you build far enough away from people it's really hard for them to sledge hammer you because they will most likely die in the process. If you know a sledge hammer counters a sledge hammer then why are you complaining there are no counters? I do believe if you build a fence around your boat or have enough surface area to back up, you will be fine. And if your boat is mostly destroyed by the time someone sledge hammers you, it sounds like you were about to lose the round anyway so why does that matter? You keep saying there's no counters but just go look at the first post I posted.
Silver have you ever played on a server with over 20+ players on it? Because its pretty hard to build away from everyone on one. And I have said this countless times using something 2 of the exact same things to counter eachother is just a pathetic. They don't care if they die in the process, they are gonna die anyway, but I suppose the person that deserved to win the encounter should die too according to what you're saying. I also don't like that you are unsure of this working, as it very much won't. Your points from before are useless, I have stated that previously so go back and read what I said. I never said it was my boat, I stated if you made a big boat to counter it, it won't work as you would have been mostly destroyed by the time a sledgehammer is even thought of. I would gladly back this up by asking you to join a server and seeing exactly how making a boat that has a big enough surface area is not a suitable counter. You aren't factoring in the person with the sledgehammer has his own boat and hasn't already destroyed parts of it, or the players around you. As I stated before I shouldn't have to change my entire boat design for 1 weapon in the gamemode, if I have to its saying something. I also want to point out none of you play this gamemode regularly, so I can see why its so hard for most of you to actual know what im talking about. Most of you haven't touched it in a week or a lot longer. A fence isn't going to help you, not at all, I guarantee it gets destroyed in the first 20 seconds so thats not exactly a viable plan is it. Also I would like to say this again, as none have you have brought this up (probably due to the lack of playing the gamemode) that the sledgehammer kills someone faster than the water kills them, so if you'd like to tell me that isn't OP at all that would be a nice addition. As I obviously need to state this part again, someone has the time to kill you with a sledgehammer in the water, and make his way back to his boat alive, that is how OP it is.
How often do you actually get killed by a sledge hammer lol. You're making it out to be like this shit is game breaking and makes the entire game mode unplayable. It's a good weapon but not broken. You don't have to change your entire boat design because like nobody sledge hammers that often. I honestly feel like you're triggered from getting killed by it once. It's not overpowered and this thread is pretty pointless.
This will be implemented once the weapon systems releases. (Players won't be able to run & gun in water)
Silver do you purposely avoid what I say or are you just that blind you don't actually care? Because if you want to actually have a discussion about this instead of trying to dodge everything I have said. You aren't helping at all, you don't take in what anyone says, so the only pointless thing here, is you. You seem very confused Silver, I want to also bring back up the fact you haven't been on for a week, so you clearly know how it works because clearly you play the gamemode regularly and actually do your job as a Mod. Do you know what nerf means? Because I do and so does everyone except you in this discussions. I don't see how you don't get the point, its to NERF a weapon that is actually OP. And no I haven't been just killed by it once, I have been killed by it multiple times. You said I did have to make an entirely different boat design so are you contradicting yourself or are you just having second thoughts?
First and foremost, this is a discussion thread. People are going to disagree with you. Deal with it. If you don't like it, then stay away from discussions. Since we're on the subject, lets not take anything said in a discussion thread personally. Because thats when threads get locked and people get warned Next, What actually makes something OP? Seriously, I want to know. A sledgehammer alone is certainly not going to earn you an easy win. It's a tool and a very good one. If you know how to use it properly, then you also know how to avoid it. The same goes for rockets/nades/snipers and so on. Boat designs... Your boat design is going to change depending on the situation. You can say that a particular weapon forces you to change your boat design. That doesn't make that particular weapon OP. That just means you are not adapting to changes. Change your boat styles often so that people don't pick apart the flaws... because they will! IMO: What makes a weapon OP is when it excels at everything it does. Long-range/Short-range/DPS/AOE ect. When we first added grenades, they did 50 damage and a single person could throw 4 grenades (200 AOE damage!). Those were OP because you'd destroy 80% of someones boat with a single weapon, leaving them with almost nothing. Combo that with a team of 4.... You get the idea. In short, the sledgehammer doesn't really do this. It just adds an extra layer to the gameplay. If you can prove me wrong, I might make it worth your while. Until then, enjoy your discussion!