Torbjorn changes

General Discussion
1

The thing that upsets me most with Torb, is that in early development footage he actually looks a lot better than on live.

Once upon a time, Torb had a claw trap that he deployed like Widow’s mine.
The trap would shoot out a claw on a chain as soon as it detected someone and pulled them in, locked in place.

I can see why this never made it to live, because that would be really unfun to play against.

What I would like to see from early development was his ability to place two turrets, that can be deployed to walls, ceilings and floors.

This part is purely my opinion;

The turrets damage should be reduced by about 33% to account for there being two of them.
When a turret detects you, it should be very obvious, flashing lights and maybe a brief siren sound.
The amount of time the turret requires to lock on should be slightly increased.
Lastly, the turrets should swap focus onto whoever Torb last shot.

I’ve always seen Torb as an anti-flanker, he can make life very awkward for Tracer and Genji, specially if they aren’t given the option to deal with the turret before they are exposed.

Being able to deploy two turrets would theoretically give Torb twice the coverage of flank routes

Each turret will deal less damage, true. But Tracer and Genji don’t want to have taken ANY damage before entering into a fight.

Not to mention the increased damage output from two turrets focusing one person, or two molten core turrets.

Food for thought.

The goal here is to combine the “two types of Torbs,” that I am aware of.
Aggressive Torbs, and defensive Torbs.

You’ll always be able to have a turret near your supports, without that costing you too much in terms of being aggressive.

Edit: Also, Torb shouldn’t have to manually level up his turrets. Repairing them is cool, but they should either progress to level 2 independently, or get deployed as Level 2 turrets but take a brief amount of time to assemble themselves.

2 Likes
2

Removing the whole “stand still and upgrade turret” step would be a huge boon to Torb’s current design. Nothing wrong with letting him still repair turrets but design changes should definitely aim to be more like Sym and focus on the tactical placement of structures rather than how long he can stand in one spot.

2 Likes
3

Oh yeah that part too, he should be able to repair them, but they should level up to 2 themselves after like… 5 seconds of being deployed?

Or heck, remove level 1 turrets altogether.
Maybe give the turret like 4-6 seconds after being deployed where it has to assemble itself.

4

I think with the right kind of balance changes Blizzard could easily drop the level 1 turret outright if needed, but I did have another idea.

They could allow Torb to place 3 level 1 turrets, but placing another one on top of an existing turret upgrades it to 2. This would allow an array of options like sacrificing the coverage of 3 turrets to get more firepower out of one in the middle of a combat. I’d also agree to having his turrets gated by charges, or maybe even rework the scrap system to allow him to draw on it for turrets and armor packs (or a new tool) as well.

1 Like
5

I really like that tbh, because right now Torb has two different kinds of turrets.

Being level 1 and level 2, one is the wrong turret, the other is the right turret.

With this idea you have proposed, at least the level 1 turret has any value at all, and isn’t just a level 2 turret that isn’t ready yet.

6

That’s a great way of putting it too, I hadn’t thought of it like that. As it stands level 1 is really only right if you’re out of options and need quickly drop it before jumping into a critical fight.

Seeing the scrap system reworked would be nice too, rewarding him with turret flexibility if he and his team are securing kills, but the base regeneration or the cost of placing turrets/armor packs would need to be altered so that he’s not completely neutered by it. They could even do something simple like:

-Turret placement now has charges, up to 2 at once, cooldown now affects how long it takes to acquire a new charge.
-Level 1 turrets cost no scrap, but you have to wait for the 3rd one to charge after placing at least one already
-Combining two level 1 into a level 2 turret costs 50-100 scrap, current scrap system doesn’t need to be altered much if at all

For the sake of simplicity they could even make it so upgrading a turret doesn’t necessarily require a turret charge, just the scrap and since it does take up another turret capacity slot and will automatically destroy one of your turrets if you have 3 out already.

1 Like
7

The scrap generation/Collection could use some work imo. Torb is a long distanced fighter for the most part and yet he has to get fairly close to pick up scrap. Scrap that only gives what 12 points to his meter or so? It takes 50 to make one armor pack, thats some where around 4 kills that you can recover.

It promotes rather bad behavior in most cases, going out into no mans land to try and get scrap. I would like to see some kind of way to get it from further away. A magnetic claw or something that you click and it picks up all scrap in that dirrection.

The fact you have to aim, plus it’s on some kind of Cool down would stop it from being completely OP. After all you still have to kill things to get scrap. Only in PVE modes or FFA is there more scrap than you could ever use.

1 Like
8

im a torb main. i love torb as he is right now, he should be left alone, but 4 the sake of noobs and owl he should get buffs to his hammer speed to level up faster and his gun fire speed and bullets should be more. thats all.

but since u brought up the idea of extra turrets i have to say a turret will get shot down fast and a turret is only as good if it can get a kill, if its only wounding it will get blown up every time and make torb replant them and this will lead to disaster when hes cornered with weak turrets.

having 2 kinds of torbs is a bad idea he kills thats all he does, torbs main primary job is to kill, then he gets scrap and makes armor and gives his team armor.

he doesnt need anything, but go ahead and make him better but be warned hes a legend now and messing with him will hurt him in the long run.

9

He’s actually one of the weakest characters in the game and is going to be reworked almost entirely :man_shrugging:t2:

10

this is not what i know torb to be, i rule the game with torb as he is now. just a terrible idea to gut torb.

11

I didn’t want to play this card… but you’re silver.
The average player is high gold low plat.
Clearly Torb isn’t that good, and you don’t know how to utilise him that well.

Wouldn’t be in silver other wise :man_shrugging:t2:

12

yes im silver but thats a story i would rather not tell y im silver.

i only play qp anyway. competitive has no use for torb so i can only play as rein in competitive when i did my 10 placement games i had to use rein and my team was almost always clueless or poor.

u cant judge my torb skills by my being silver when i couldnt even use torb in competitive without being reported and banned.

13

Can’t exactly argue that he’s in a good spot then, can you?

Clearly he needs help so he isn’t a throw pick in most players hands.

14

i can argue 4 how i use him and u can c i can argue that cause i am.

15

Yet you can’t play him in competitive because you get reported?

16

there was a big thread where a player was banned 4 playing as torb in competetive so i didnt play as torb 4 my 10 placement games 4 fear of being banned.

the thread called: “banned-at-least-3-times-for-playing-torb”