Kith's Tychus Review + Rework

[Kith-11735]

This post got real long and there’s more than these two posts to reply to. I’ll get to the others later.

@Dagordae-1757

Whoever made your collage of ‘Medium to long range’ gunners is clearly bad at TF2.
The Heavy is terrible at long range and mildly annoying at medium.
His optimal range is close to medium-close.

Weapon Demonstration: Minigun

I won’t argue that the Heavy’s Minigun is more optimal at medium-close range, but it’s not like it’s unable to kill the Soldier and the Medic at the Medium and Far marks. On top of that, TF2 tends to favor short-range combat anyways (as most, if not all, weapons deal more damage the closer you are due to damage falloff over distance) unless you’re the Sniper, so I don’t feel like that’s a very fair comparison.

@Dagordae-1757

Vulcan Raven was also a short range boss, but that was more due to the isometric perspective.

I’m going to have to disagree. While it’s true that the Vulcan Raven bossfight takes place in an enclosed space and most shots will come from close range, he’s more than capable of accurately firing at Snake over the horizontal length of the room (which is not a short distance).

Vulcan Raven's Final Battle - Metal Gear Solid

@Dagordae-1757

And Fallout’s minigun is also terrible at long/medium range. It’s got a longer effective range than a shotgun, but not by much.

I will admit that I have not played the more modern Fallout games - the only ones I’ve played are 1, 2, and Tactics, where the various Miniguns (with the proper skills/perks, although “proper training” is something that should be assumed with any weapon) do just fine at medium to long range.

@Dagordae-1757

And your 40k Terminator assault cannon is for close-medium range combat. It’s actually one of the shorter ranged heavy weapons.

Having played a lot of DoWII, the stats reflect that Terminator Assault Cannons are the Medium-Long ranged fire support compliment to the Storm Bolter’s Close-Medium general purpose. Outside of stats, the Assault Cannon’s role as a Medium-Long range fire support weapon is is further supported by how commonly Assault Cannons are mounted on Dreadnoughts, Land Raiders, and other vehicles and aircraft that are not portrayed by DoWII.

@Dagordae-1757

While the actual use of the weapon system is for long range, games tend to make it incredibly inaccurate as balance. Limiting it to short range killing and medium range annoyance.

Ultimately, I’m going to have to disagree with you. I’m not going to argue that the typical Minigun isn’t easier to handle at close range, but that’s how most guns are anyways, so I don’t think it counts for much.

@Alias-2471

There are plenty of heroes which have far more lower used talents. And in some cases 20% is an acceptable pick rate aswel (niche talents exist).

Oh, sure. But something that’s seen less than one in five games doesn’t say “actively used” to me.

@Alias-2471

First of all however, his kit as it is, is already well designed, the abilities are clear, they synergize with each others and even the ultis are well balanced against each other.

I agree that the core of his kit is well-designed - the Basic Attack > Overkill > Frag Grenade sequence feels very natural. However, in my opinion, being able to kill most Heroes in under three seconds at Level 4 is not something that should be possible for a character that has so many other advantages (health, DPS, ect). I very heavily disagree that the Heroics are balanced against each other, but I’ve already gone over why I feel the way I do in the Review proper and won’t restate my thoughts on the matter unless you ask me to.

@Alias-2471

And its logical they are, tychus has been OP with this kit before, it shows the baseline is good. No changes are needed here.

I’m one of the people who felt that Tychus was fine during the “Golden Age”, and HOTSlogs (flawed as it is) backed that up. His pickrate was crazy high, that much was true, but his winrate was a healthy 50%. He was so commonly chosen because the Double Tank Meta was in full swing, so everyone wanted Tychus’s ability to reliably beat up Tanks.

@Alias-2471

And there is a major reason why no abilities are being extremely visible, and thats because of minigun, which is simply his trait. And a very strong one on that. It makes his kit complete.

As someone who played Tychus a lot before he got Minigun, I have to disagree that it “completes” his kit. The core gameplay loop has been the same since inception - use Basic Attacks for as long as is convenient, pop Overkill when they run, throw Frag Grenade to either secure the kill or (if they’re not low enough) to tack on an extra bit of damage before they move out of range, and use Run and Gun at any step as positioning demands.

The addition of Minigun made the first part much stronger, but I take issue with just how strong it is - especially given how early it’s available and how much general performance Tychus has to sacrifice for it.

@Alias-2471

Yet it could have been quite simple: TTS always triggers after 3 seconds, or at intervals of 3 seconds with each later interval being weakened (ie. 2nd trigger is 50%, 3rd is 25%, 4th is 12.5% etc). It gives the healing, but still provides a gap to attack through. And is always going to be usefull.

Oh man, I begged for Stuff to heal after 3 seconds when that patch came out, but the future refused to change.

@Alias-2471

Only spray and pray is going to be a weak choise. But for this one we could introduce a major buff: spray and pray adds 1 base range. This gives tychus his older range (from the times where he was OP) but still takes away his self sustain. He cant get both. And in this case, it remains level 13 worthy because you dont want this to synergize with the other 2 anymore.

Spray ‘n’ Pray increasing Basic Attack Range by 1 is an interesting concept that would go a long, long way towards making it viable if we’re talking about small changes.

@Alias-2471

With that, it’s (Bob and Weave) a talent that has a clear niche: any hero which doesnt have a gap closer is going to have a pain facing a tychus.

IMO they already do - Frag Grenade to get them out of your personal space, Run and Gun to get some extra distance, Overkill to prevent them from mounting/stealthing while you make your escape. I just feel that the other options are more viable: Tychus is a very all-in type of character and Level 20 Teamfights are typically very all-in, so mobility and range don’t seem that great by comparison (especially when you get better range from Odin and good burst/AOE).

@Alias-2471

And note: The 15% for level 20 talents is a quite high value. and it just proves it by competing with Focusing Diodes. They take about 30% away from the other talent options, but as you stated both dont go below 20%, its very likely that both other talents are near the 40% range. A 1/3 pick rate compared to the highest pick rate in a talent tier is an excelent pick rate.
And this tells me that a 20% pick rate isnt too bad. i rather focus on talents that go below 15%.

That’s fair.

@Alias-2471

Combat tactician however is indeed a talent i would consider useless. Simply because to get the real value out of it, you need to be level 20 and take Bob and Weave. You are better off getting the globe quest and gain extra mobility that way. And the only problem is that to get the advantage to dodge more often, you need to AA, which is often at a range where dodging doesnt happen as often due to the quick responses required from the player.
So here is the first talent i call truly useless.

yeah combat tactician is not good to the extreme

@Alias-2471

Now looking at the next <15% talent i havent talked about: Concussion Grenade
Knockback is nice, but extra range on a decent damage ability (especialy past lvl 16) on a hero which already has range issues is simply just better. This talent is on the wrong tier and would better belong on level 1. And at that point it can synergize with level 4 allowing more reliable knockbacks to happen.
Its not a bad talent in its idea, just placed incorrectly.

I don’t think that it’s placed incorrectly - it makes Frag Grenade shunt enemies a pretty significant distance and with enough practice becomes a pick-generating machine. Allowing Tychus to take both Concussion Grenade and Quarterback in their current forms* would make breaking apart teams and isolating enemies insanely easy.

*It’s important to note that I very specifically said “in their current forms”. The reason that I did exactly what I warn against in the rework (allowing Concussion Grenade and Quarterback to be taken together) is because I cut the increased Radius from Concussion Grenade, making it much harder to get value out of the knockback.

@Alias-2471

Lead Rain is a talent i dont realy see having a lot of uses except in the case of maybe lunara (but why would you attack her as tychus in the first place?). The problem is that at this time in the game your team already should have enough CC to lock down a target for you.
And on this i have no idea how to fix it other than just removing it and trying to come up with a new talent here.

Personally, I could see Lead Rain at Level 7. You’d need a replacement for the empty 16 slot, though.

@Alias-2471

But yeah, thats only a few talents that need a rework, and a few talents that need to be moved.

If you’re trying to maintain Tychus’s current status quo, sure - but in my opinion, he needs a lot more than that.

@Alias-2471

And specificly here… this game has multiple skill levels, and not all talents have to suit the higher skills. If a talent benefits the player much more on lower skill levels, it can be fine. If a talent would have a 60% pick rate on gold, but 10% in diamond+, maybe the diamond+ talent is simply too difficult to use for gold players?
Sometimes options are only there to allow diffirent skill levels to adjust better towards their skill level.
For example on medivh, if you play at silver, you realy dont want to use the portal talents too much, your teammates wont use them effectively. It can be fine.

It can be. However, I believe that most of a character’s talents should have solid pickrates across all skill levels. Of course, there are always going to be outliers here and there, but to me having more than three talents at a sub-20% pickrate (let alone sub-10%) is a solid indicator of an issue.

@Alias-2471

And your statement about it feeling clunky, i think its part of how he should play. Not all heroes have to be the same. For some lunara feels clunky, and for others valeera does. Players can vary a lot, and i personaly cant tell that tychus feels clunky.

I don’t feel that all heroes have to be the same, but I do feel that all heroes should feel good on some level. There’s a world of difference between a Tychus with 4.5 range and a Tychus with 5.5 range, and it’s not just because I’m old and I remember how things used to be that I feel that way. When I play other Ranged Assassins, I don’t feel their Basic Attack Range is a limitation - even if I’m playing Cassia or Mephisto, who also have reduced Basic Attack Range.

I think the greatest difference between Tychus and the other reduced-range Assassins is that they have short-cooldown, medium-long range skillshots that allow them to participate in ranged fights consistently. Tychus… doesn’t. He’s too all-or-nothing for that.

@Alias-2471

The current tychus is also not a hero that is ment to be used as solo laner (and blizzard did a good job at removing that capability from him), he benefits most when his teammates can pull enemies towards him. And thats when he can burst out some very dangerous damage. And thats his key feature. Allowing some talents to take back some of his solo laning capabilities can be fine, but it has to go at a cost somewhere.

IMO Tychus is actually a great solo-laner because of just how quickly he can use The Bigger They Are… to kill someone. Granted, it’s a trick that doesn’t work multiple times in a row because your opponent quickly learns to stop letting you shoot them, but he’s a lot better at it than you would expect.

@Alias-2471

Tychus is one of the heroes which has a fairly balanced talent tree, a tree where most talent tiers dont have a talent with an over 80% pick rate. And 2 very clear ways to build (ITR + Nanocoat or TBTA + TTS), which both also make the tychus player capable to play in a very diffirent way.

IMO, two clear builds isn’t good enough - especially when Level 1 and 7 are basically set in stone.

@Alias-2471

And its a poor example when comparing to this game because this game doesnt involve range dependant damage on most heroes (hanzo’s R is one of the few exceptions).

I feel that you misunderstood the purpose of that particular point. I’m not trying to compare game mechanics in their entirety, just point out that miniguns are typically not considered to be reduced-range weapons in popular media.