Thoughts on Supervive after 52 hours
Hello again.
Over the past several weeks, I've been sharing my thoughts on Supervive as I've continued to play, learn, and improve at the game. This time, I would like to share my experiences after playing for 52 hours.
I just want to remind people that the purpose for sharing this is to provide the devs with feedback and to generate discussion within the community. Just because my rank is mid and my skill level is mediocre doesn’t mean that my feedback is any less relevant than anyone else’s feedback in the community. The devs need our feedback to make the game better, and I make this post to do my part in helping Theorycraft to make this the best game it can be.
Things I've Been Learning ----------
The main things I've been learning this patch have to do with either the changes from the recent patch (which I think are, broadly speaking, a step in the right direction, even if it's not perfect), but there's a lot of stuff I've been learning too.
The big thing I've been learning about are that I've been trying out a lot of different level 4 upgrades for the hunters instead of defaulting to RMB max every game, which I'll talk about when I talk about individual hunters.
The other thing I've been learning is that I started playing arena. I was sort of struggling with PvP last patch, and wanted to get a lot better at it, so I started playing a lot of Arena to learn. Arena is a lot of fun, although I frequently think I'm not really helping my team enough because the matchmaking isn't great. It seems like ~80% of games are stomps one way or another, although I don't think it's the fault of the matchmaking system.
What's interesting is that at the times I queue, duos and arena tend to have different populations coming on at different times, so I can start hopping into a few games of duos around 4-5, eat some dinner somewhere between 6-8, and then hop back on around 10-11 for some arena games, all while having decently consistent queue times. Because of this queue nuance, I have still been playing a fair bit of duos. I climbed up to Plat II, although I had to make a sacrifice along the way.
Beebo -------
I had to drop Beebo and I hate that I had to do it. Unlike Oath, where I had mostly general gameplay reasons for dropping him, Beebo I felt had some severe tuning problems that made him not fun to play once I actually learned him that came in three forms:
1. Level 4 Upgrades. Beebo's level 4 upgrades don't really feel all that exciting when you actually use them in practice. Level 4 RMB doesn't feel great because the base cooldown is so low and arguably isn't healthy because the cooldown gets so low you're encouraged to not play around which zeep you get, level 4 Q doesn't feel great because the cooldown starts on cast instead of recast or the bomb being destroyed, and level 4 shift doesn't feel great because the shift itself doesn't feel great, and is only really the best option because it makes the ability less terrible
2. Durability. Beebo's kit feels like it requires that he has some amount of durability to make most of the kit functional. His LMB and ult are both melee-range abilities, his shift is a terrible movement option, and his RMB benefits from Beebo having enough durability for the RNG to even out over time. He shouldn't have less base health and toughness than Celeste, because he's a hunter that would seriously benefit the game if he could build tank for his team.
3. Beebomb's Power Budget. Beebo's Q is perhaps the most frustrating part of his kit. It easily chunks enemy squishies for well over half their health once you charge it (I've seen him take over 75% of a target's health when playing as and against, at least in arena), but it deals so much damage that his other damaging abilities aren't allowed to feel strong and it restricts how good his shift is allowed to be. I strongly believe that power from Beebo's Q needs to be redistributed into his other abilities (particularly shift) in order for him to feel like a fair hunter in the future.
I will close the Beebo section with this message to Theorycraft: releasing a new hunter that's a bit overtuned is perfectly fine. You can rely on player unfamiliarity as a balancing mechanism when players are unfamiliar with a character. You have to be afraid of boring your players, not afraid of making something imbalanced that we're still going to play.
Bishop ----------
Overall, it just felt like I had to put in a lot of excess work to mimic a fraction of Bishop's power.
What I've been learning with Bishop has been centered around using her Q a LOT more. I've been learning her dash-punch combo, and started running Q max on her. Remember, I play tank Bishop, but spent a lot of time playing her with RMB max as a way to simplify the learning process while also failing to realize that I wasn't taking advantage of RMB max because I was never punching my bombs. Q max is so much more fun on Bishop because I can afford to spend a lot more time soaking up damage for my team, especially when I initiate.
I'll probably spend some time learning her damage build too, since that seems to be what's strong on Bishop right now.
Celeste -----------
The new wall is a lot more fun to play with. Previously, it felt like it was exclusively a defensive option, but now you can use it as an aggressive option to control space.
I haven't had a good reason to try her shift max, but I tried her Q max and... it's all right. I feel like I don't have enough damage more often than I feel like I don't have enough control over the areas I'm in, so I always feel like I'm forced to run RMB max out of necessity to have enough damage.
Myth --------
I started playing Myth more this patch to experiment with different builds other than RMB max. Q max and shift max both feel pretty nice when they work out, although I don't feel like it's at all important to run shift max in arena considering there's a lot of open space where you can't phase through stuff.
I also feel like I've gotten rusty with her, and need to get back into playing her a lot more.