My Torb Buffs: H A M M E R T I M E

General Discussion
1

This makes Forge Hammer a much more important part of Torb’s kit and turret’s uptime is significantly increased from its current abysmally low uptime.

Forge hammer:

  • With Forge Hammer equipped the secondary attack (right click default) manually redirects turret for which enemy/object to target
  • Turret repair per hit increased from 50HP to 65HP.

Rivet gun:

  • Primary fire no longer causes turret to lock on to target hit

Overload:

  • Temporary armour granted increased from +100HP to +250HP
  • Can’t use Rivet Gun while Overloading, after the activation animation you will have switched to Forge Hammer (this doesn’t prevent activation + use of Torb’s Ultimate while Overloading)

Deploy Turret:

  • Removed 10 second cooldown when turret is destroyed “in combat”
  • Removed 5 second cooldown when turret is manually destroyed.
  • Cooldown when turret is deployed increased from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.

“Wow, you totally nerfed rivet gun, now my rivet gun fire rate is trash!”

Overload doesn't increase fire rate as much as you assume

Rivet gun fire rate was always low, even with Overload. Look at the real numbers and don’t go by feel, the “cast time” for Overload, 0.75 sec before you can attack, removes almost all the attack rate advantage.

When you activate overload then immediately shoot then in that time you can only shoot 11 shots. If you didn’t activate Overload and just immediately began shooting then you could have fired 9 shots. As the 10 second cooldown begins only after the 5 second ability ends all overload does for Rivet Gun is potentially allow you to fire potentially only 2 more shots every 15 seconds.
Overload is a bad ability because it’s not focused on defence or offence, it spreads its benefits too thinly across all aspects of Torb’s kit. Remember you perform a “backpack reload” while forge hammer is equipped you get a free weapon switch time which can make up for that 2 potential extra shots every 15 seconds.
Without overload, Torb can still fire 18 shots faster than McCree can fire 18 shots (if McCree is saving combat roll for emergencies), and Torb’s bolts do the same base damage without damage fall off.

“500HP damage-hero? Torb. Is. Not. A. Tank.”

Loads of non-tanks have temporary increased defences, still not tanks

A tank having 500HP is a big deal because that entire 500HP can be healed, this health above 250HP cannot be healed. Loads of DPS heroes have abilities that mean they can take more than their base-HP of damage like extreme lifesteal, damage immunity, self-heal, health reset, but their base HP isn’t a long deep pool healers can pour heals into.
+250 armour is something that would really make a significant difference, especially considering the cast time but being limited to using the hammer limits its abuse in just hanging back for safe Rivet spam. If you can’t frag a 500HP torb then you have the option of keeping out or range of his hammer or exploiting how close he is getting with close range attacks. Could mean retreating, could mean booping Torb back, could mean exploiting vertical mobility, could mean counter-charging torb.
The point is that it really CHANGES the interaction, this is significant.
Plus, Hammer kills are awesome.

“Turret needs to be on a long cooldown so it’s not always up”

Turret is now almost NEVER up!

The current delayed cooldown and build time for sentry combined with a slow rate of hammer healing means the turret is almost constantly out of action, either out of action because it’s destroyed and on cooldown or is put in such a useless position. For only 56dps it shouldn’t be so easily kept on constant cooldown, mercy’s beam now means the net damage is only 1hps. This is very very weak.
The ability still can’t be used that aggressively & continually due to how easy it is to pour fire into the immobile turret in its 3 second build time.

1 Like
2

ehhh i dunno, honestly

i think something like this can easily fix him with one simple QoL

but, what idont understand is:

you say this

but i think your changes are an out right nerf to it? unless theres something im not getting

did you change the CD to be on deployment inestead of destruction?

3

RIP torb’s close range damage per second in close range without his shotgun.

Kinda useless as you shouldn’t be repairing it during a fight anyway. Deal some damage. But also why not go ahead buff this.

Goodbye focus fire, now your turret has a mind of it’s own and takes less skill to manage.

Was going to say no because this would make torb nearly unkillable for 5 seconds but then…

You made torb useless for 5 seconds as well! Torb is not a close range hero, he’s mid to close ranged. Torb does not want to be in an enemies face dealing damage. Also rivet gun during overload provides 167dps at potentially infinite range (not to mention shotgun mode which could provide 250dps at 10m range) and forge hammer during overload provides 88dps at 2.5m. Yeah he gets extra health to go brawl at 2.5m but this is actually just a straight up unneccessary change which makes overload stupid.

This is an overall decrease to turret uptime? Unless like the other commenter said you have made cooldown start on deployment rather than when destroyed. And to that I say no because this thing has 250 health and Torb would almost always have it, bad placement and destroying it should be punished with downtime.

Rivet gun with overload has the same fire rate as Mccree. and a naturally higher fire rate than Genji’s buffed secondary fire rate, so I don’t know how you can call this slow.

No it doesn’t. You’e missing that Torb in overload can deal more damage in a shorter time even if he has to wait 0.75 seconds for it. More damage in less time is just better for bursting down an opponent even if he can fire the same amount of shots overall or something.

No this works to it’s advantage, it gives it a wider variety of uses and prevents it being niche. Having an ability be both offensive and defensive is a bonus. And it does not spend benefits too thinly. If torb uses this on cooldown he get’s to have 100 extra armour and a faster rate of fire for HALF THE GAME.

While this is nice. The last thing Torb wants to be doing inbetween shots is charging at the enemy to deal like 2 hammer swings before he reloads and retreats. Forge hammer is as niche as quick melee.

Except like I said with the rate of fire thing, Mccree’s faster rate of fire = more damage in less time meaning he can burst down an opponent. How many shots is irrelevent. If you can fire faster you can kill something faster, even if you end up reloading more frequently those windows of burst damage are more powerful than sustain.

because they’re rare and stupid not because they’re an optimal part of his kit.

Yeah by making him useless, if you encounter a torb at close range in a room somewhere you are now dead if he uses overload but in the grand scheme of the fight it’s absolutely useless to use because you have to charge at the enemy kill with 88dps and then get out in like 5 seconds or you’re dead. THis basically makes overload and escape ability or a 1v1 ability. Neither of which are it’s purpose or happen often enough for it to be viable.

Yeah except now not only is the turret damaging through Mercy’s beam it means someone can follow up on that. and kill the target she is healing because her healing is nullified. 56dps on an auto aim 250 health turret is PRETTY DAMN GOOD. It’s not a frontline offence

Because it’s not an ideal ability for aggression even with a shortened cooldown it just means spamming turrets that never build without the space to set up. This turret is amazing at zoning and holding taken space. It has this start up because it’s basically another half of a player joining the fight. This turret does as much damage as Brigitte with as much health as Brigitte with a 20m range and is autoaim. Stop talking about it as if it’s weak.

TL;DR Torb is already a really good viable pick. Your overload idea ruins overload and makes it useless, you ruin his shotgun in favour of a hammer which does nowhere near as much damage. Ruin the one skill with his turret targeting which is also a nerf because the focus fire helps a lot and just overally make him terrible.

2 Likes
4

Why would you want to rotate the turret? Im pretty sure the turret can track enemies 360°? Besides all that animation for the placement is the definition of clunky, and a lot of vital seconds wasted, it would only make Torb slower and less intuitive

4 Likes
5

There’s already a Cooldown on deployment.

And with this:

There is only one cooldown you have to worry about with turret, the 10 second cooldown on deploying a turret.

That isn’t touched at all.

Are you saying his shotgun alt fire is only good with Overload? Well I have a surprise for you, Compare these 2 times:

Time it takes to activate Overload and fire 6 shotgun blasts:
0.75sec + 0.42 + 0.42 + 0.42 + 0.42 + 0.42 = 2.85 sec

VS

Just immediately fire 6 shotgun blasts:
0.6sec + 0.6sec + 0.6sec + 0.6sec + 0.6sec = 3 sec

By using overload you are a whopping 0.15sec faster

You reduced the time to kill by only 5%

And you have to aim your shots faster rather than have the much more generous 0.6sec to re-aim after each shot which is going to be far more important.

What if you DON’T want to focus fire?

That’s not “less skill” you’re just making assumptions.

If there’s a barrier tank that’s closer than Pharah, the best use of your 56dps turret is not making a pitiful contribution to barrier break but for the turret to target the Pharah and you to slam bolts into the barrier.

[thirty seconds earlier]

You’re all over the place, mate.

Except when he does.

No and I’ve already explained why not, even before the shotgun blasts TTK:

You completely ignored how 0.75sec “cast time” of Overload reduces the damage rate.

The damage rate over that 5 second ability is not 167dps (which is very low by the way) it’s actually only 28dps higher than not using Overload at all.

Overload it NOT key to Torb’s

If torb can keep his turret alive and in the fight for just an extra 2.5sec every 15 seconds then that more than makes up for Rivet gun.

No because the cooldown is now only after deploying the turret, not AFTER the turret is destroyed. If you can keep the turret alive for 10 seconds then you can immediately deploy a replacement turret.

No other hero that deploys anything else has such punishment of a cooldown AFTER destruction.

Barley any more. It’s 11 shots vs 9 shots.

EVEN WITHIN THE 5 SECOND BURST

Only when it’s sufficiently defensive nor sufficiently offensive.

It isn’t either sufficiently good for attack or defence as if it was good at both the ability would be too good.

It’s NOT half the game, don’t you know this hero at all beyond a cursory glance?

The ability has a 5 second duration and the cooldown doesn’t begin until AFTER the 5 second ability has ended. That’s a total cycle time of 15 seconds. 5 is not half of 15.

7 hammer swings before the ability expires, for 385 damage potential. It’s not great but it’s not terrible.

That’s 385 damage which is quite reliable due to the properties of melee:

  • very reliable hits due to the large and lingering hitbox
  • can hit multiple enemies (most relevant with a grav)
  • can penetrate barriers
  • can penetrate DVA’s DM
  • Can penetrate Sig’s KG
  • don’t have to worry about Genji reflecting damage, only blocking it
  • Getting close causes many explosive damage heroes to self-damage

It’s got a lot of things going for it other than damage and one of the main weaknesses of melee - the difficulty of getting into range as they easily backpeddle - is nullified by the speed boost of Overload.

So immediately after acknowledging the “backpack reload” you then act like it doesn’t exist.

Wow.

No, quick melee is quick melee.

Yeah, so?

The point of this is NOT to make McCree a pointless hero.

The point is that for targets with more health can can be burst down Torb is the equal or superior of McCree. McCree rightly has an edge in the burst of the first 6 rounds.

This is circular logic, they’re not optimal for Torb in his current state but even if his state was different so that Hammer would be optional “no no no, I just fixed the idea that hammer is stupid… we can’t change our thinking with new information”

Hmm, okay, lets see your reasoning.

Oh so it’s NOT absolutely useless.

Never mind that it’s actually better against multiple heroes as you can hit multiple enemies with a single melee attack.

Never mind using this to keep your turret alive while surviving damage, sometimes you can’t counterattack because the enemy has Dva + Sig staggering their 100% immunity abilities, you just have to survive for 4 seconds. You can’t always simply counterattack.

It’s not because it’s so weak, it’s so simplistic and so easily hit with damage due to its immobility.

If you were constantly healing it and directing its fire then it would be good but then it’s nothing like you’ve got a 7 hero team, you and the turret are working as one.

You’re obviously ignoring all the advantages Brig has over turret and cherry picking similarities.

Not it doesn’t, by your own admission:

You may then claim 1 vs 1 or needing to escape doesn’t happen often enough but that’s blatantly untrue.

Loads of heroes have abilities that are only useful for escape or 1 vs 1.

Shotgun is COMPLETELY unchanged.

All that’s changed to do with shotgun is Overload where you’re missing out on a potential 0.15sec reduced time to kill on a target that needs all 6 shotgun blasts.

That’s the point.

You’re trading damage for defence.

Loads of heroes do this, Reaper trades 100% of his damage for defence. Soldier can escape at high speed with sprint but can’t attack at the same time, Brig can raise a 250HP barrier but can’t melee attack and has reduced movement speed (though can obviously still shield bash).

6

because where the turret is facing matters!

if its facing the oposite direction the turret will take a small delay to turn, meaning that oponents can corner peek it and take cero damage,

or if a flanker jumps your backline, that little delay it will take to turn arround might make the difference

7

Torb is already overtuned. Don’t need anymore buffs

8

Well

Somehow I forgot the title after reading your changes.

So basically, reinhardt with a turret but no damage of his own and an extremely underwhelming shmack?

No thanks

9

This is in no way a buff.

10

Only buff torb needs rn is 60 damage hammer and then he is perfect

11

It probably won’t. The turret’s turn speed is very very fast.

It’s a problem that you now can’t have a turret anywhere except where you can place the market.

This is just trying to make it like TF2 but the Engineer sentry guns in TF2 have a much longer lock-on time than Torb’s turret in Overwatch.

No.

Not “basically”.

You have identified exactly one similarity which is number of hitpoints…

… and denied a genuine similarity.

55 damage every 0.62sec is higher damage then 75 damage every 0.96 sec.

For what reason? Let’s go through all your possible reasons:

That’s an objective buff. It’s straight up fake to say this isn’t a buff. This is a 30% buff to heal rate.

That’s an objective buff, you can far more reliably and accurately direct your turret where to shoot, you can direct it to shoot targets you otherwise couldn’t hit with primary fire.

This doesn’t stop focus fire, this allows you do do anything other than focus fire, this allows you to shoot the pharah which is far away and not the huge barrier that’s close. While you’re hopelessly trying to hit the pharah with one rivet gun bolt, the turret is slowly chipping away at the rein barrier and you’re missing against the fast mobile hero.

It’s opposite days.

How it this not a buff?

This is an extremely strong buff.

There is no way such a good buff at this can’t have some downside, this is literally making torb as strong as he used to be with his old ultimate which would grant +300 armour (back when he had only 200HP).

How can being limited to your hammer or your ult during this time be so bad? Hammer isn’t even that bad a weapon, it’s just overshadowed by 18 round clip of rivets.

Is it because you think Overload is such a vital buff needed to keep the attack rate high enough?

I have explained why the attack-rate buff of Overload is a false economy, you can mag dump with alt-fire in 2.85 seconds rather than 3.0 seconds. That’s all the benefit you get from Overload, 0.15sec.

Buffs buffs buffs.

Is this what confuses you:

Do you now understand that all I’m doing is moving the cooldown for turret from when it’s destroyed to only when it’s emplaced?

This is like the difference between when Winston’s barrier went from the cooldown beginning when the barrier was destroyed to the cooldown beginning when the barrier is placed. That is effectively shortening the cooldown.

Right now if you destroy Torb’s turret you KNOW that Torb won’t be able to even begin to place another turret for another 10 seconds. With my change Torb could replace a turret immediately if the turret survived 10 seconds after being emplaced. Even if it was destroyed withing 1 second of being thrown, you could still get a replacement turret quicker than right now.

12

Huh weird, the quote didn’t work for some reason. I was talking about rivet gun not changing the target.

13

The only buffs I want for Torb is an Overload change.

  • No reload speed or fire rate increase, but it’s a free reload and gives 150 armour
  • It gives the turret 100 armour regardless of distance .

Make the ability defence oriented and leave the rest as is.

There's a second opinion for you.
14

makes thread

Comments: ignores post “no, this is what i want” :crazy_face:

anyway, its a little too much for me. sorry.

15

Try symms turrets if you want low uptime. Everything about them is worse than torbs turret hahaha.

16

Oh no it is a buff because what you’d target with the rivet gun is not necessarily the same as what you’d target with your rivet gun.

Rivet gun’s slow projectiles are ideal against the easiest to hit targets.

Turret is ideal against the fastest most elusive targets.

So while you spam Rein’s barrier then every flanker with rivet bolts knows “hey, I can easily focus the turret now, and they have to hit me with a slow projectile to get it to re-target me instead”. This is especially true with Pharah, Echo, Snipers, etc.

The turret needs to be made smarter, the best use of it’s paltry 56dps is against the weakest and fastest heroes. It has one really cool effect: it destroys sombra’s translocator even as it’s flying through the sky. This is a really good counter to EMP.

If sombra uncloaks you want it shooting her ASAP so she can’t hack.

Switching to hammer is a kind of free reload due to the “backpack reload” mechanic in overwatch. When you switch to hammer the rivet gun is effectively reloading. This is better than a reload as if you realised you made a mistake and didn’t want to begin the reload you can effectively cancel the reload and switch back to Rivet gun and continue shooting with however much ammo you have left.

I’ve unbound the reload key for when I play Torb, I have the “switch weapons” function where my reload key normally is. It’s just objectively superior to reloading.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

17

Ah, you must have mis-understood, I intend for it to be an instant reload. To serve as a panic button kind of deal for when you’re caught off guard or in a dis-advantageous position.

There's a second opinion for you.
18

Trying to balance an ability that helps being out of position with more damage is bad because it’s obviously not just going to be used for that. Because it’s inherently damaging the value is just as much a “win more” button, to be used when you’re already on a roll to deal more damage.

Getting a huge armour bonus while also losing your long range attacks has a significant psychological effect.

[1] Because Torb now can’t shoot at you then what’s the urgency to hit Torb? It’s not like it will save you from being shot, you’re not going to get ult charge and if you do less than 250 damage (after armour reduction) you haven’t even left torb worse off health wise.

[2] because torb can’t shoot then he has no reason to face his crit-box to the enemy. Torb’s critbox is unique in that it’s extremely frontal. Very easy to hit from the front but far more difficult to hit from the back, torb has a highly underappreciated advantage to “turn the other cheek” to modify a phrase.

[3] Because you’ve got a melee weapon that can kill a 200HP hero in 4 hits and will quite reliably hit, won’t run out of ammo and is the hardest damage type to block the last thing you want is to chase Torb into a small space that he retreated into.

That’s why I think it’s a much better defensive ability.

A really significant armour bonus, so much that even with a lot of headshots they couldn’t kill torb or even if torb was down to 1HP it’s enough to get out of dodge.