Stop using Hydrospanner, it's a bad ability.

[Buggleslor]

I'm with tomato squish above it isn't optimal . But for a mainly solo player who never knows what your team mates are fielding it can be -a life saver if you get isloated or ambushed .

 

You know what can save your life more reliably in either of those situations? Any other defensive CD. You might not even USE a defensive CD.. you're flying scouts anyway, just burst away. I'm sure there are times you can remember where you feel hydrospanner saved you, but the simple fact of the matter is that if hydrospanner saved you, you would have lived either way OR gotten out with even more to spare if you weren't weighing yourself down with a suboptimal copilot ability.

 

If only team mates could share load outs and change them when the match is queued up we could fine tune our ships to respond . A marker beacon for repair probes would be a great QOL improvement too. It's a fine lIne between healing up and being out of combat for a while or risking all by attacking with a close-to death-and-easy-to-kill ship.... But for the record I fly scouts about 90% of the time so maybe this has a bearing .

 

"Risking all" = "risking a 5 sec respawn timer and a 10 sec flight back to the fight." If you sit around for 30s waiting for your stupid healy security blanket to come back up, you have hindered your team more than if you had just died and come back. One way they lose your (impressive, I'm sure) contributions for 15 seconds, and the other they lose it for 30. The only way that the second is better is if you care more about a line on the end-game loss screen showing you had fewer deaths than you care about your team winning.

Edited October 2, 2014 by Buggleslor

[Storm-Cutter]

I actually agree that HS isn't optimal -so fair comments - I tend to go for speed / evasion heavy builds and run hit-and-fade tactics . To hold a quickly-taken node for a few extra seconds or finishing of a GS deep in the enemy half sometimes a small HoT can appear to be marginally more useful than a death and re spawn though the latter is probably marginally better.

[Ryuku-sama]

I actually agree that HS isn't optimal -so fair comments - I tend to go for speed / evasion heavy builds and run hit-and-fade tactics . To hold a quickly-taken node for a few extra seconds or finishing of a GS deep in the enemy half sometimes a small HoT can appear to be marginally more useful than a death and re spawn though the latter is probably marginally better.

 

Well.. Hit'n'fade would have better use of Wingman, CF or RI. RI for the survivability, Wingman and CF for the burst.

[Itkovian]

I fly with Hydro Spanner because that's what my Astromech does, and my Pike needs an astromech!

 

That said, I do agree that it is a rather weak ability, and it could use a buff.

[nyghtrunner]

I'm with tomato squish above it isn't optimal . But for a mainly solo player who never knows what your team mates are fielding it can be -a life saver if you get isloated or ambushed . If only team mates could share load outs and change them when the match is queued up we could fine tune our ships to respond . A marker beacon for repair probes would be a great QOL improvement too. It's a fine lIne between healing up and being out of combat for a while or risking all by attacking with a close-to death-and-easy-to-kill ship.... But for the record I fly scouts about 90% of the time so maybe this has a bearing .

 

I understand the sentiment, because I truly did feel the same way. No repair probes around, what to do, what to do?

 

I queue solo probably 60-70% of the time I play, and often run into situations where I wish I could find a repair probe or something, and with the red flaming mess, you're definitely a target. But I would really suggest at least trying a different ability for a while. Wingman and Concentrated Fire are my favorites, but there's a good case to be made for Running Interference (which is actually a better defensive than Hydro-spanner), and several others.

 

The thing is that the total heals (245) really is irrelevant. A single hit from any railgun negates it and then some. A max range hit from BLCs more than negates double the heals without critting. A Quad hit at max deals roughly 1.5x the max you're healed. A single Light Laser Cannon hit from mid/close range negates it. Even RFLs in range negate about 90% of the ability with a single hit. If something like Running Interference causes even a single shot to miss, in almost all situations, it has helped more than Hydro-spanner.

 

And again, even if you want to use a defensive CD, I'd recommend something like Running Interference because it can be used as a proactive defensive, rather than exclusively a reactive one.

 

One last way to look at it... If you're on a strike fighter, running largely stock components, your health should be 1440. You heal 2.4% of your health every second for 6 seconds, which ends up being about 17% total. If it was 245 healed instantly, there's a much stronger case to be made for the ability, but if you're being pelted, 35 health (2.4%) is literally nothing, especially when it's on a minute CD.

 

As an aside, if you do just write it off as a death at some point, at the very least, your getting an ammo refill, which I sometimes want more than a repair probe! It's the worst when you DO find a repair probe, are out of secondary ammo, and it refills your shields...

[SithEater]

I die 2 maybe 3 times a match and I use hydrospanner all the time. No its not going to save you when someone is blasting you but when you've killed 2-3 guys on your strike fighter and the accumulated damage has left your hull red it lets you build it back when you are solo queued and there is nary a repair drone to be had. I'm slowly creeping up on the grease monkey title and I've never flown anything that could drop a repair drone even once.

[Drakkolich]

I die 2 maybe 3 times a match and I use hydrospanner all the time. No its not going to save you when someone is blasting you but when you've killed 2-3 guys on your strike fighter and the accumulated damage has left your hull red it lets you build it back when you are solo queued and there is nary a repair drone to be had. I'm slowly creeping up on the grease monkey title and I've never flown anything that could drop a repair drone even once.

 

I really think this is the embodiment of our whole argument that hydrospanner is bad. Your post can be summed up as I did not need an extra cooldown to kill 2-3 people therefore I'd rather heal afterwards and I want to get an achievement so I'm using a subpar cooldown for now to get it.

 

I have already explained that if you do not need a crew member cooldown to kill someone then sure use hydrospanner cause it doesn't matter what you use anyways. However when you encounter a pilot of equal skill then you and he has wingman on his strike fighter and you have hydrospanner assuming all other choices of ship and upgrades are the exact same YOU WILL LOSE THAT FIGHT.

 

I'd just like to say for everyone in this thread saying but hydrospanner gets me an achievement I want. That's great we arn't saying never ever use hydrospanner under any circumstance. We are just trying to help people that want the absolute best build they can to help their team win matches. These achievement arguments are like discussing Quad laser cannons and Burst laser cannons and saying well clearly Burst laser is better for me because I'm farming the turret killing achievement and it has armor pen. Another would be saying the best gunship of the 3 for me is the dustmaker/cometbreaker because I'm farming the achievement to get it mastered.

 

Getting achievements is great but it should have no weight in a balance discussion.

Edited October 3, 2014 by Drakkolich

[SithEater]

BLAH BLAH ACHIEVEMENTS I SAW ONE WORD AND DIDNT COMPREHEND ANYTHING ELSE YOU SAID LOLZ

I am not doing it to get an achievement, I couldn't give a **** about achievements as all they are is an epeen boost, I know what I've done and dont need to link anything to anyone to prove what I already know. But hey if its easy argument points you are going for by taking what was said completely out of context then achievement completed. /highfive /cheer /link to guild

 

I was referring to the accumulated damage over time taken and the ability to stay alive in fights where I wouldnt be able to without hydropsanner. I cant even count how many times I've gone from red to full to red to full in a single fight without dying once.

[Drakkolich]

I am not doing it to get an achievement, I couldn't give a **** about achievements as all they are is an epeen boost, I know what I've done and dont need to link anything to anyone to prove what I already know. But hey if its easy argument points you are going for by taking what was said completely out of context then achievement completed. /highfive /cheer /link to guild

 

I was referring to the accumulated damage over time taken and the ability to stay alive in fights where I wouldnt be able to without hydropsanner. I cant even count how many times I've gone from red to full to red to full in a single fight without dying once.

 

Alright so clearly me talking about the achievements upset you, maybe I should've made the achivement thing its own paragraph it really wasn't meant to be directed at you specifically I just saw multiple people making that argument and thought I should address it.

 

Lets talk about everything else you said, which was you die maybe 2-3 times a match and afterwards use hydrospanner to recover the lost health from said fight.

 

In your own words you did not need a crew ability to win a fight vs 2-3 guys. This is exactly what I talked about in my second paragraph, which had nothing to do with achievements I might add. This was wear I was addressing your post.

 

If you can defeat 2-3 pilots without needing a crew ability you are fighting inferior pilots and don't need a crew ability to defeat them. In this situation hydrospanner is fine if still not the best ability, as even a mediocre heal is better then nothing because you didn't need an ability to win the fights anyways. But if you fought lets say yourself that had wingman or running interference instead of hydrospanner this is where you would realize hydrospanner is an inferior ability.

 

I can see how you thought I directed the achievement portion of my post directly at you but that just wasn't the case and apologize if it upset you. Look forward to your reply.

Edited October 5, 2014 by Drakkolich

[Asbetos]

I am not doing it to get an achievement, I couldn't give a **** about achievements as all they are is an epeen boost, I know what I've done and dont need to link anything to anyone to prove what I already know. But hey if its easy argument points you are going for by taking what was said completely out of context then achievement completed. /highfive /cheer /link to guild

 

I was referring to the accumulated damage over time taken and the ability to stay alive in fights where I wouldnt be able to without hydropsanner. I cant even count how many times I've gone from red to full to red to full in a single fight without dying once.

 

The arrogance is strong with this 1.... There is a bunch of experienced veterans around here making arguments that have a mathematical background and you come along and say "you're all wrong because I say so" ignoring 5 and a half pages of this topic.

 

If you can defeat 2-3 pilots without needing a crew ability you are fighting inferior pilots and don't need a crew ability to defeat them. In this situation hydrospanner is better of course as even a mediocre heal is better then nothing because you didn't need an ability to win the fights anyways. But if you fought lets say yourself that had wingman or running interference instead of hydrospanner this is where you would realize hydrospanner is an inferior ability.

 

I disagree. As you yourself pointed out a few posts ago along with many others, even 1 shot avoided from almost any weapon is worth more than what hydrospanner can heal. So even if you're fighting foodships, you pop RI when being shot at or Wingman when shooting and you're better than having hydrospanner for when the fight is over because you've avoided (at least) 1 shot, probably even more than that.

[Drakkolich]

I disagree. As you yourself pointed out a few posts ago along with many others, even 1 shot avoided from almost any weapon is worth more than what hydrospanner can heal. So even if you're fighting foodships, you pop RI when being shot at or Wingman when shooting and you're better than having hydrospanner for when the fight is over because you've avoided (at least) 1 shot, probably even more than that.

 

I definitely phrased it wrong by saying its better in that situation what I meant was what I had said in my previous post to his situation that if you don't need an ability to kill 2-3 people then you can go ahead and use w/e you want because it doesn't matter.

You are absolutely right though Running interference would prevent way more damage then Hydrospanner would heal, and wingman would make you kill the target faster meaning you would take less damage that way too.

Thanks for catching that.

[Asbetos]

I definitely phrased it wrong by saying its better in that situation what I meant was what I had said in my previous post to his situation that if you don't need an ability to kill 2-3 people then you can go ahead and use w/e you want because it doesn't matter.

You are absolutely right though Running interference would prevent way more damage then Hydrospanner would heal, and wingman would make you kill the target faster meaning you would take less damage that way too.

Thanks for catching that.

 

Thought you might just have phrased it wrong, just had to make sure people don't grasp for that straw

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I fly with Hydro Spanner because that's what my Astromech does, and my Pike needs an astromech!

 

That said, I do agree that it is a rather weak ability, and it could use a buff.

 

Maybe if it was a % heal instead of straight heal? I kinda feel that scouts get the best deal with HS since they don't have as much health to begin with so it's a larger percent of their total health.

 

And I do feel that there's something wrong with strike fighters that don't have astromechs.

[Asbetos]

Maybe if it was a % heal instead of straight heal? I kinda feel that scouts get the best deal with HS since they don't have as much health to begin with so it's a larger percent of their total health.

 

With that I can agree, making it a, say, 30% would be quite a nice buff to it, might make it worth considering on ships that have a large hull.

[mattycutts]

@verain

 

As promised i would report back after few days testing and be honest.

 

in most cases you are right, i did see some signifficant increase in accuracy, etc.

 

only time it was missed is games where i was the only pro in my team and had more or less everyone after me in a TDM and couldnt stop moving, had little kills etc every where i went i got a hit and kept draging them around and those games where it was more about staying alive than damage/kills the hydro spanner was extremely useful (still needs buffing ofc).

 

But overal hands up i conceed this one.

[Itkovian]

Maybe if it was a % heal instead of straight heal? I kinda feel that scouts get the best deal with HS since they don't have as much health to begin with so it's a larger percent of their total health.

 

And I do feel that there's something wrong with strike fighters that don't have astromechs.

 

Aye, 30% heal might be useful. Somewhat (like people said, that much HP is still going to be burned through in one shot), though it may be of some use when you get pegged with a slug railgun. Assuming you avoid the follow up shot, it would allow you to "reset" the damage, as it were.

 

Either way, Astromech is needed.

[Verain]

For the "lets buff or redesign", I really have to wonder why healing is so restricted in the first place. I mean, the baseline healing of all ships is 0, and that seems odd. What if every ship type could repair some hull per minute? Maybe like 50 hull repaired per minute. With that mostly inconsequential amount as a baseline, you'd probably see people less likely to do the other things.

 

Second, a heal over six seconds is a little bit cheesy. I think I see what they wanted- they didn't want a little pop of visible hull change instantly, but nor did they want a long term HoT. I think that if you had hydrospanner, it would be cool as either a long term HoT (aka, you don't press the button, it is always on) or a 15 second HoT. Both of these would allow the amount healed to be more substantial.

 

Third, I do think that the heal should be based on the base hull, but there is a balance concern here. With ONE exception, this makes perfect sense- a scout takes a lot less damage than a bomber in general, with a bunch of evasion shoring up his shield and hull defenses, endless boosters, and very fast turning and speed to get out of the way. Getting back 100 hull on a scout is better than getting back 115 hull on a strike, etc.

 

The issue is that ships with charged plating who have a reasonable assumption of long life (mostly type 1 bomber, but also type 3 strike) get a LOT more out of heals. These ships, when played in such a way as to avoid armor piercing weapon hits, are essentially invulnerable to damage. And while the type 3 strike has a solid heal, the type 1 bomber does not, and actually can PLAY with hydrospanner on live. There's definitely room for a buff even here, but if you were to ramp up hydrospanner indefinitely, this is where you would have your first balance problem- at the point when you have buffed it enough to be totally balanced and great on a Rampart, it will still be too weak on all other ships.

 

But there's still plenty of reasonable buffs that don't push into that exact strength.

 

 

Ideas:

 

1- Make it heal like 2.5x the current.

This is probably the best call. I could be wrong on the magnitude. This would STILL be a weakish ability most of the time, but the niches where it is useful would be moreso, and the players who play it in suboptimal situation ("I kill people on my strike but then I took hull damage") would be a LOT less wrong for doing so (and these are generally the folks who should have a nice heal to pick).

2- Make it heal about 3x the current, but the healing is slow initially and picks up. It takes about 20 seconds to heal the full amount, and any hull damage taken cancels the heal.

This would encourage antisocial play, which seems to be what the move is about on live, but would instead actually demand a price besides "press button", and deliver a reward besides the placebo effect.

3- Aim it at about double the healing, but make it scale with hull size.

This is ok for making it a solid choice on strikes and bombers, without making scouts entirely unable to use it. It would still be a weak power.

4- Make it an area cast, like repair probes. Much like Wingman shares some overlap with Combat Command, this could allow you to deliver small repairs to allies nearby. In this example, you wouldn't need to buff the healing much.

5- Make the healing something you don't press. It just happens constantly- every six seconds, you get back a bit of health.

 

 

Those are mostly off the top of my head or stuff I saw discussed before. The move could safely be doubled- that's how you know it is a weak move on live!

[Bolo_Yeung]

I started using it a while ago.... it is good for helping to get the 'savior' medal (24 to go ).

But overall, I agree with the topic title. Aside from charged plating bomber it doesn't do much good in game.

Edited October 7, 2014 by Bolo_Yeung

[nyghtrunner]

I started using it a while ago.... it is good for helping to get the 'savior' medal (24 to go ).

But overall, I agree with the topic title. Aside from charged plating bomber it doesn't do much good in game.

Just to mention... There are much better ways to get Savior medals. For instance, I can almost always guarantee I can get a Savior medal in a Bloodmark/Spearpoint using repair drones. With Hydro-Spanner, I can't even guarantee that the game will last long enough for me to actually be able to heal the full 245... what, 17 times? Savior is 4k, and Mechanic is 2k, right? You practically have to fly into an object at the beginning just to get the ball rolling, and hope the match lasts a long time... Either that, or die a lot, but not so fast that you can't get max use out of each HS press. Just to point out that getting those medals using Hydrospanner is... less than efficient.

 

You can absolutely get Repair MVPs with Hydrospanner, but using it for Savior probably isn't going to work 99.9% of the time, unless it's a supplemental with drones/probes.

[caederon]

5- Make the healing something you don't press. It just happens constantly- every six seconds, you get back a bit of health.

I like this idea, since it actually fits with the flavor of the ability. Not that it's important to gameplay for that to happen, but it's nice when it does. After all, isn't it meant to represent your astromech fixing your ship while in flight? From a game mechanic standpoint, I think a constant low level heal would at least make up a bit for the absence of a top-end offensive skill.

[Buggleslor]

This thread (and the appearance of Scrabs on JC) got me thinking and I changed my build a bit. I found that I'd been making similar mistakes to the hydrospanner trap by picking CF over Wingman and Booster recharge over TT--I justified that crit was better than accuracy, and that getting places was better than being able to do anything once I got there. I made the switches, and I've seen tremendous results. My justifications were duuuumb.

 

The big problem with accuracy, I think, is that unlike in the base game you don't see "miss" pop up instead of a damage number when the game decides your accuracy was lower than their evasion. I always assumed I'd physically not clicked in the right place when I wasn't doing damage, and it wasn't until I was consistently popping wingman that I realized how my real-life aim was actually pretty decent and the in-game calculations had been reducing my damage by way, way more than cf had ever increased it.

 

To bring it back to the topic at hand, I think the thing people can't wrap their minds around is how much damage RI avoids. For damage to you there's no "miss" popup. When you pop an evasion ability, there's no way to tell it's working, unless you're experienced enough to know how much damage you would be taking otherwise. With hydrospanner you get friendly green little 35s reminding you it's there, which really can seem like better than nothing.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Buggleslor

[Ryuku-sama]

This thread (and the appearance of Scrabs on JC) got me thinking and I changed my build a bit. I found that I'd been making similar mistakes to the hydrospanner trap by picking CF over Wingman and Booster recharge over TT--I justified that crit was better than accuracy, and that getting places was better than being able to do anything once I got there. I made the switches, and I've seen tremendous results.

 

The big problem with accuracy, I think, is that unlike in the base game you don't see "miss" pop up instead of a damage number when the game decides your accuracy was lower than their evasion. I always assumed I'd physically not clicked in the right place when I wasn't doing damage, and it wasn't until I was consistently popping wingman that I realized how my real-life aim was actually pretty decent and the in-game calculations had been reducing my damage by way, way more than cf had ever increased it.

 

To bring it back to the topic at hand, I think the thing people can't wrap their minds around is how much damage RI avoids. For damage to you there's no "miss" popup. When you pop an evasion ability, there's no way to tell it's working, unless you're experienced enough to know how much damage you would be taking otherwise. With hydrospanner you get friendly green little 35s reminding you it's there, which really can seem like better than nothing.

 

CF with TT is better than Wingman except against evasion scouts. And Booster is viable on some build (StE + Booster being the ultimate 'run-like-a-*****' build.

[Buggleslor]

CF with TT is better than Wingman except against evasion scouts. And Booster is viable on some build (StE + Booster being the ultimate 'run-like-a-*****' build.

 

I can see that; the CF crit chance probably stacks really well with the TT surge, and that TT gives you enough accuracy to almost certainly hit non-scout-evasive targets. Since I made the changes all at once, I've never gone halfway like that. I'll have to try it out.

 

Since the cds don't always sync up, though, it's nice to be able to pop one or the other to get guaranteed damage on a target, reserving both for scout duels or a gunsheep that has DF up.

 

I didn't mean to say that booster recharge was flat-out bad, just that I found the way I personally used it was suboptimal for what I was trying to do. My favorite way to play booster builds isn't just to run away, but play the t1 "collect all the powerups" style that I-forgot-who posted in a "fun build" thread a while back.. it was more fun back before damage overcharges were nerfed, but it's still hella entertaining.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Buggleslor

[Kuciwalker]

CF with TT is better than Wingman except against evasion scouts. And Booster is viable on some build (StE + Booster being the ultimate 'run-like-a-*****' build.

 

CF is better than Wingman only if you are fitting your damage within the burst window. Wingman + TT gives you a lot more leeway.