OMF:BG Message Board

[Cloudagain]

Back in the days when i first posted on these forums and I hadnt got to know the game properly i just took it forgranted that mantis was the god of all the BG bots. However now that I actually know a little bit about what I'm talking about I beg to differ.

Mantis is NOT!!! overpowered in any way whatsoever. The best results I can find come from using High power High Focus pilots and they are still not that amazing.
Mantis' LK isnt all that useful, yes it fragments, yes it hits behind the opponent but it does have (even if its low) a warmup time meaning that using it in the middle of a combo requires either an opponent who doesnt evade or cant (stunned, lagged w/e). If an opponent evades it you can sometimes catch them with other moves but not with 100% certainty.

Super slide is one of THE buggiest moves in the whole game, I only get a full slide on someone who died in the combo i just used before the slide or 10% of the rest of the time. This means that if ur unlucky you can be hit by the person you just attacked when your attack was successful.

Mantis' overall damage is pretty [filtered] low, especially when going up against the higher armour 'bots, although he does get a lot of hits in it only takes a couple of heavy whacks from an opponent to level the score.

BTW dont just purely flame, if you can actually point out things that do make mantis uberly strong then all well and good.


P.S.
Pyros IS! overpowered to the point of being (imo) the best har in the game the only thing he lacks is a fast (reach) move and even then rk and rp do pretty well.

[Mordax]

Pre-Empative Answer:

Yes Savage Strikes IS Buggier than Berserker Dash

Berserker dash works ~80% of the time and always finishes when it starts, Savage Strikes starts ~30% of the time and finishes ~20% of those

Take it from someone who plays both Jag and Mantis

[TheUnknownFactor]

Mantis is the second best HAR in the game, the fact that he has 1 poor normal attack and 1 buggy super wont change that.

Reasons:
-His moves thrust, thus its easy to approach an enemy.
-His moves have high priority, thus it's also safe to approach
-He's got the best fragments in the game, no it doesnt use LK to fragment.
-His super fly swarm is one of the best supers in the game
-His RK slide is pretty much unbeatable
-He can start lengthy, hard to evade, combo's from his side attacks
He can cancel RK in to LK (stop RK halfway through, this is IMO the only good way to use LK outside of combo's.)
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All errors in spelling and grammer are entirely by design in order to enrage those who have nothing left to add to the discussion and therefore seek superiority through personal attacks.

[Lurker]

[Mordax]

His normal attacks are yes, better than other bots, but his specials are mediocre and his super moves just suck

Flies is NO where near as unbeatable as people think, its just super CC with less range, the spiders can be dealt with simply by running most of the time and Savage Strikes never works at all

The fly and spider specials DO have their uses, I'm not saying they dont, but they are NOTHING compared to what most other bots have

A for some of TUFs comments:

1) Every HAR has its strengths, this is one of Mantis', having strengths over other HARs does NOT make it overpowered because other HARs have strengths over it, thx for getting rid of most of those btw, I'm sure it made the game more diverse

2) Yes, Mantis has its strengths to make up for its weaknesses, well done for pointing them out

3) Thats right, his normal attacks make up for his sucky supers

4) No way in heck, weather you choose to accept it or not, the move can be blocked and counterd just like any other, it has warm up and can be evaded, and your stuck in it after it starts JUST LIKE ANY OTHER SUPER MOVE, the only difference is that this one can only hit people who are either in the air or right on top of you

5) On the contrary, the slides are very risky moves, both of them, they might have decent priority but they have massive cool down if you miss with them, and they can be beaten by evades still

6) Learn to evade properly

7) Yes, his normal attacks are good to make up for his sucky supers, its called Variety, different HARs have different strengths and weeknesses and this gives them variety and still allows them to be balanced

Which combos are we talking about? all HARs have unnavadable combos, so does mantis, maybe he has a few more but I dont see how that makes much of a difference, a little more choice for the mantis user is all

9) I dont understand, try elaborating on what your trying to say

10) Well we all have our opinions, personaly I think lag is just lag and only serves to favor people who are on the same continent as the server

[Discomb]

Lol, the evade comments are courtecy of me and my highly acrobatic Chronos playing style.
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[TheUnknownFactor]

Mordax, that you suck at mantis doesn't make it a bad HAR.
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All errors in spelling and grammer are entirely by design in order to enrage those who have nothing left to add to the discussion and therefore seek superiority through personal attacks.

[Mordax]

But you havnt responded to any of the comments I made, I might be bad at the game but at least I know how the HARs I play Work

You claim to play all of them, so the fact that you and others are still in the opinion that the HARs are unbalanced is dissapointing

All your demands to DE about balance have done nothing for it, the HARs are balanced, have always been balanced and now that thankfully DE isnt listening to your childish whining they always will be balanced

All you have done is swap the roles of HARs around, and lower the variety of them, it used to be Jag that had easy to use basic tactics, now its Mantis and Katana, it used to be Pyros that was the versitile one, now its Jag

And the trend is that all of them are closer to one another now, they are all closer to that standard HAR framework and stop them being different

The keyword is TACTICS

Just because certain HARs are initialy easier to use than others doesnt make them overpowered, every HAR has tactics, and the more tactics they have for them the better their potential, its a balance between Ease of Use and Tactics that determines weather something really is overpowered or not, where its strengths lie makes absolutly no difference

So what if Mantis' combos and attacks in general are better than your personal HAR choice, its super moves suck and it only has 2 viable special moves (Spiders and Slides, the flies are only useful in VERY specific circumstances) and that keeps it balanced, it isnt overpowered its just different from the other HARs

And the story repeats itself for EVERY HAR in the game, they all have things that are better than the others, Foce's Super Moves, Pyros' areal combos, Warlords damage per move, the list goes on, and they all have things that they do worse than the rest as well

This whole community needs to understand that, and I hope that now I've explained it in a way that you can

Go look at the situation, apply a little logic to it, think it through without bias and you should see that I'm right

If you lack the capacity to do that then do Rob a favor and keep your mouth shut when he eventualy makes another game

[TheUnknownFactor]

yeah yeah, again "You" "made de do bla bla", shut up dork, I never asked for specific nerfs.

All you're saying is that every HAR has strengths and that they've been nerfed, guess what einstein, mantis has never been nerfed. EVERY other HAR has been.

He doesn't have sucky supers, you just suck at using them.

Every HAR has unevadable combo's, oh wait no they don't.
Pyros has none, jaguar has upto ~ 20 hits (of which 10 are a super), Warlord doesn't have them.

That's against 40 hit combo's from mantis side that can be preceeded by a 10 hit fragment. (Total of ~300 damage).

And whether you like it or not, balance is being abled to deal damage equally well, don't go calling mantis good side being abled to slay nearly any other HAR a good point of varyitty, unless you really want to make people believe you're stupid.
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All errors in spelling and grammer are entirely by design in order to enrage those who have nothing left to add to the discussion and therefore seek superiority through personal attacks.

[Mordax]

This is why I play in FREE FOR ALL

OMF was never meant for 1v1 play, Sure you can get up to however many hits with a combo, but your never gonna go up above 7 hits in a free for all game, Mantis or otherwise

1v1 is Unbalanced, Free For All with Apropriate Server Settings is

And if you think balance is just being able to cause the same ammount of damage then you really are stupid

What about the defensive stuff? evade speed, counter reliability, ability to reduce damage when hit, I suppose it doesnt matter?

This is the problem, your all comming into balance and demanding things without a proper picture of what is going on, this is why I think balance should be left to the developers because they DO have a proper picture of what is going on, they made the game, they know the exact stats and can easily see where the flaws are, you cant

Like it or not, all you have is opinions, ones based on facts that you can only get an educated guess at, you dont know all the facts, your not qualified to make changes, the community should never have had the power

Granted, developers need a little help every so often, but thats what beta-testers are for, a select and chosen few who can be trusted to look at a situation logicly and make suggestions, and if it can be varified by a developer, implimented for the good of the game

Thats not what happened here, when we made our balance suggestions we did it based on snap judgements whenever something seemed unfair, annoying, or we just got jelous of something another HAR could do that ours couldnt, and it doesnt work

We did it then, and evidently the rest of you are still dong it now

[TheUnknownFactor]

Jaguar failes in FFA, Warlord wins in FFA, FFA doesn't have balance either.

And:
And if you think balance is just being able to cause the same ammount of damage then you really are stupid

What about the defensive stuff? evade speed, counter reliability, ability to reduce damage when hit, I suppose it doesnt matter?

Those included, who ever does the most damage in the least time is likely to end up winning, that might need evades and defence etc.

And about "we did it" and "developers wouldn't", to be honest, Rob nerfed Red tac's the first built after player abused them versus him.
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All errors in spelling and grammer are entirely by design in order to enrage those who have nothing left to add to the discussion and therefore seek superiority through personal attacks.

[Discomb]

You're talking about Demolition. He's talking about regular FFA. In demolition yes, but in regular FFA you can run away from Warlord and Jaguar can interrupt the combos of others. In fact he doesn't fail all that much because the TACTICS would be to isolate players and take them 1 on 1.

EDIT: I don't mean LMS by FFA. I mean an actual fight where people play to fight, not to win.
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[Mordax]

Oh I dunno, maybe that was because the player abused something about them

Cuasing the most damage as quickly as possible is useless if you get pummeled right afterwards

Sure youve killed someone, in Demolition you got a lot of points and in LMS you took out a threat, now your getting pummeled, in LMS your likely to die and have to sit on your thumbs bored for the rest of the round and in demolition someone else is getting points, and that makes you less likely to win, Defense matters, you have to be able to stop people causing damage as well as causing it yourself

I play Jag better than I do Mantis in FFA, you just have to change your tactics a little, use Lasers instead of CC, use OT more regularly, stuff like that

Maybe you could give some reasons that warlord owns jag in FFA and I'll discount those as well

[ouch]

ok, I'll jump in here.

in my honest oppinion Mantis probably would be over powered if there were no problems with the game. fortunately we play in a world of auto targeting, lag, and just plain wierd crap that happens in the average game. mantis largly uses the autotargeting for almost all of it's moves. when it changes or de targets mid move (it almost always does) the move gets screwed up and misses or partially executes. this worsens with lag as the player most likely isn't exactly where the autotargeting thing turns the mantis. hence it causes a mantis player to miss constantly in high lag. and forces them to use less extravagent moves to try to compensate. and in fact some of it's extravagent moves don't even work on a few hars period. (gargs, especially)
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"Float like a Mantis, sting like a Cheatlord..."

ouch

scientifically engineered to hate StarForce

[TheUnknownFactor]