/facepalm

I can't believe that people think taking one extra hit as a striker is somehow not imbalancing (note word choice; not necessarily OP, but certainly not balanced).

Let us assume Bacon never runs back to base to heal and survives for 2 min on average between hits . He's good at dodging, and so never gets hit. That extra health bumps him from a 4 min survival time to 6. A pretty good increase.

...Though the reality is that more likely he gets hit three times, kills the enemy, then runs back to base to heal. Not to mention it feels like he's constantly using ce rez; you take him down/force him to retreat, but he's always back in tip top shape in seconds (and that's for ALL elite strikers; they rarely die, just fall back for a bit, *especially* if you're a slower class and can't catch them).

Then there's the ability bar imbalance that I totally forgot about. Guardians and recons lose their special ability when they get hit, but not strikers. How many hits do you think a striker can negate in one boost bar compared to a guardian? Or recon? What about recharge rates? But that's a whole other thing.

Once while I was playing T2 LD a guy on the other team showed up and I lost the game since it was impossible for my swift Flourish to kill him. At the end of the game headmitted that he had 20 hearts as striker because of his 2 true love trinkets. And also his dusker set had a sword attack speed increase uv of med all together. His weapons also had asi uv's( his hammer had asi high)

I was so mad that day since I only had 6 hearts that day

The next week I ran into an enemy team with asi hammers and heart trinks. My swift was still faster than them and I Penta-killed them like a baws.

I conclude with this. I don't really mind heart trinks since I know that my skill can still trump them.
(ASI hammers are the worst! Trust me)

@Laraso:

Waw. Okay your arguments no makey sensey.

"People say "oh, well he's got max:max AND heart trinkets", but if you go guardian, you can just put on offense modules and have the same health as the striker + the same stats, with a defensive shield thrown in."

Yeah, well then you'd think there'd be more than one or two Guardian pros then. But there aren't many more than one or two. Because despite their stats being the same, a Striker's boost is a hundred and one times more useful than a shield that breaks in a sealed sword slash.

" "well he can just dash back to base and heal, other classes can't do that". Recon only needs to cloak, and they essentially get a free ride all the way back to the spawn. Guardians are kinda' out of luck when it comes to heading back to the spawn for health, but they have on-demand healing, so why even bother returning in the first place?"

Okay step back a second here. Recons take like 15 seconds to walk across the map, assuming they don't get found out. Strikers take more like 3 or 4. Guardian's "On-demand healing" is slower than a Tier 1 Silkwing. If Guardian has anything going for him, his healing is NOT one of those things. I used to play Guardian a lot, trust me. Guardians heal at like 1 pip every 2 seconds...even a Striker without trinkets will heal faster by running to the base.

"Do I believe that the weapon balance in this game is a behemoth of a problems that completely overshadows trinket balance by so much that I'm amazed anyone even has time to complain about them? You'd better bet I do."

I'm just as amazed that you even have the time to defend the LD imbalance that is heart trinkets, but as I've said plenty of times before, and as will be said until the end of Cradle, you can't pinpoint just one thing to say "Fix that and LD is balanced!" - heart trinkets simply amplify the imbalance.

~Sev

@Troupe:
It often takes me 5-6 gf hits with max damage to break one

No, it doesn't. If it takes you 6 max GF swings then you're either completely missing or giving him a disgusting amount of time to regen his shield between hits. A max GF will break a guardian shield in about 2~3 swings, tops.

@Laraso:
but if you go guardian, you can just put on offense modules and have the same health as the striker + the same stats, with a defensive shield thrown in.

Strikers can get max:max and the same hp as guardian on top of an unbreakable booster. Guardians need to use a full damage set and one trinky to get max damage, then UVs+the other trinky to get max ASI, putting them at max:max as well, but at higher cost. They now have the same stats and same hp, but their power is a shield that gets broken in two seconds by said striker, who you can't keep up with.
Basically, you have two different classes. One is a fragile damage machine, the other is a slow, heavy tank. Both have the same weapon stats and the same hp. (and ofc, one can move like a ninja while the other gets to get zerg'd) Doesn't that sound wrong to you? Classes are supposed to be different; the very fact that they can max everything on top of achieving the hp of a tank...seriously, you don't see the problem in that picture?

Honestly, by this point I don't know if you're just being difficult or not; we've explained it in so many different and clear ways that you should be with us by now. Honestly, it's not a matter of opinion, it's a fact: they do make a huge difference. It's quite as simple as that. The problem is that you're looking at numbers and not seeing all the practical aspects that amplify them. 2 hits to 3 doesn't sound like much. 1.2 hits to 2.5 hits sounds like more. On the field, it's even more. A lot more.
Why else would every striker in the game use them? Why would they sacrifice ASI bonuses and spend 20k ce on ASI UVs just to wear hearts, if it makes so little difference?

One final example:
Equal skilled strikers against each other. Skill and gear being the same, they'll get roughly 1/2 hits on the other before they get 1/2 hits on them back. After that, it becomes about who got the first hits in and who has better ping.
Remove hearts from one of them and suddenly he's dead before he even gets a chance to retaliate; those 1/2 swings just killed him outright, he can't fight back. Even if he gets the first hits in, the heart clone will survive and hit back, killing the no-heart before he can finish the heart clone. Same applies to that same striker against every other class. Suddenly they go from being fragile and needing to be careful to being able to just survive all attacks against them and let them zerg rush in.

"Strikers have around 13 - 15 HP without HP trinkets. If getting hit once leaves you with two pips, that means dual penta-hearts will only let you take one more hit. Am I missing something here? If 90% of strikers use them, like people are saying, then who really has any place to say they are overpowered?"
T2. Goes from 3 hits to 5 hits. 3 to 5 is much worse than 2 to 3. That's not even factoring in the ability to take a few more stray gunfire shots. Also, in T2, it's usually 2 to 3 people tops that wear them, not 90%. Makes easily stacked teams, if there's only one person, they typically win each round. I've got low ASI on each weapon, so I can occasionally turn the tide, but ASI is not as strong as +8 HP.

"190% is essentially double the health. The fact is, Strikers don't have much HP to begin with, so when people start throwing around things like "It takes TWIIIICE as LOOOONG to kill them!!!", they make it sound like it's a massive difference."
That's twice as long to kill what is probably the most powerful class in LD. Double health is a massive difference. Plus it prevents you from quickly killing people by getting the jump on them, a strikers main weakness.

Yeah, its worse in T2. Like Orangeo said, it goes from taking 2-3 hits to 3-5 at best and assuming you have a hammer. If you have a toothpick it takes more like 6-7 to kill a hearts striker. Brandish line is no better. I can take out a striker in 3 hits with my fireburst, regardless of the final swing or not. I instantly know if I'm facing someone with heart pendants because they don't die to my initial or follow-up assaults. I can slap a heart striker 4-5 times with my sword and all they do is laugh and zip around to slay me.

And this is assuming I don't land any shots with one of my alchemers, which I regularly do land quite a few in a normal match up. Fact is, if anyone thinks heart trinks leave T3 LD imbalanced, it screws T2 over. I don't even want to think of what it does in T1.

PS: Orangeo, what's your IGN? I might have played you a few times in T2 and never known it.

"Orangeo, what's your IGN? I might have played you a few times in T2 and never known it."
It's Orangeo. I'm colored blue, do not question the ironic curse OOO hath put on me.

"Because when we say 2~3 hits, we mean 2~3 from a DA/GF."
I think I said hammer a few times. The closest thing to DA/GF in T2 is sealed sword, but since it deals only normal/wolvers have more normal/ it's less popular than its T3 versions that breach swordie defense.

Ok, try it like this.

Set up a GVG.

Pair yourself up with an enemy.

Have your enemy first wear Trinkets, then not wear trinkets.

Try and kill each other.

Repeat in all Tiers.

Having an enemy just not die in the hits he should is much more annoying than it sounds. Especially when it was hard enough to kill them in the first place.

Heart trinkets are a significant advantage. Back in the day, before players could construct heart trinkets, I had a pair of 2-star trinkets. I played with as a guardian with fused demo and was essentially unstoppable. Even nut-swingers like Blueberry would have to go home crying. (Honestly, it was ridiculous and totally unfair in my favor.)

I've run hundreds of games as a striker now and heart trinkets make all the difference. Nobody can be perfect all the time, especially with poor latency, making the ability to soak up even one more hit a big deal.

One aspect of the game that I don't see much discussion from the player base is versatility. Every now and then, you'll get someone who can actually play more than one class and do it well, complimenting someone else on their team. If I am on the same team as a gifted striker, I'll try to run as a guardian to provide support. More rarely, I'll see an excellent guardian running bombs and I'll tag along and keep gunners off of them, when I can.

Ultimately, it's a team game that can be won without having the most skolvers with trinks and ASI gear. Of course, there is a lot to be said for the strikers' ability to cover ground and capture points.

Laraso does make an excellent point on class balance. A guardian with a ton of health and decent ASI can effectively neuter all but the best strikers.

Laraso does make an excellent point on class balance. A guardian with a ton of health and decent ASI can effectively neuter all but the best strikers.

Not really. All you have to do to slaughter a Guardian is back up and polaris him to death. Then when he starts to run at you take out a Valiance and ping him till he dies, because you can out-run him all day. The only way Guardians beat Strikers is when the Strikers are foolish enough to run up close, or don't have any guns.

So, while a guard with dual trinks can, only the very best guards do. When I played as a Guardian, Polaris is your weak point. You move as slow as the bullets, and have virtually no defense or way to fight gunners. You just sit tight with your shield up praying for a teammate to come fight him off or side-track him.

Anyway, there's a reason there are more "Striker pros" than you can count, and like I said before, you can count the "Guardian pros" on the fingers of your right hand.

Laraso does make a good point that the classes are already unbalanced. The thing is that heart pendants just magnify that imbalance.

~Sev

I myself can be witness to that. I do better as Striker (Glass Cannon version - no trinks) than Guardian, despite having the health of a Striker with dual pentas.

In both caps and damage averages mind you, not just damage.

~Sev

You said from 2 hits to 3 hits. Strikers with pentas last more than 3 hits from a FF, iirc.

We've explained it to you so many ways and so many times, if you still don't see the magnitude of it, words will not make any difference.

If someone said to you "HP TRINKS R DA UNLY TING RONG WIT LD", and you're trying to understand that, then of course you won't. You can't understand people who are raging because they just lost a LD game.

They are just one of several factors that make Strikers the best class to play - and as I said before, magnify what's already unbalanced.

Simply said, it is easier to remove HP trinks and restore some balance, than to completely revise Lockdown as we know it behind-the-scenes to make it balanced. That's why there are petitions to remove them. Simple solutions for a company that is obviously understaffed.

PS: Sorry for blowing up there. Ask anyone, I never do that. I just got really tired of saying the same things.

Edit: ""I can't understand how taking three hits before death instead of two is even noticeable to anyone but the ***user*** in an actual battle situation""

Most people think I'm already at low HP when they OHKO me with the 2nd hit of a sealed or with two FF swings. Anyway, the fact that the user knows the difference is quite enough...because it changes the way they cap, the way they play, and the outcome of the game.

~Sev

but what I was failing to see is how anyone else could detect someone using a heart trinket without doing an inspection.

Well, I don't see what having your mandatory car check every year has to do with LD (hurr durr lol).

On a more serious note, sometimes you can't because you never know how weakened a player is. You can't tell if they're full HP, or have a hit on them, unless you're stalking their base. So yeah in the heat of battle you can't always tell who is or isn't using them. After slaughtering said non-trink user a few times, I'm pretty sure you'd pick it up near the end of the game anyway though.

Though yes, I'm sure if you play LD and listen to people there, you will hear that AT is the only reason LD is unbalanced (despite being overshadowed by virtually every other imbalance), heart trinkets are so OP, hammers are the best weapon evar, go to [Firestorm], etc. etc...

There are a few things we know though. How exactly to fix LD is really hard to do without testing. See, like the Athenians in ancient times, we'll come up with Four Main Elements, and there end up being a Periodic Table of problems. This is why we need to test hypothetical realities, not just talk about them like the Greeks.

What we do know is that Pure-Damage weapons (hammer, FF, BTB) are more advantageous than comparable weapons in LD, but less advantageous weapons in the CW, the classes are unbalanced - but this is a huge problem with a huge solution. There would be many ways to "fix" it, and we'd only know from testing them. Maybe day OOO will open a Test Server with rounds of LD with different loadout bonuses, but until then, a hypothetical discussion to tackle this problem is practically impossible. Finally, heart trinkets amplify said unbalance. Oh, and also Swordie-gear, primarily Skolver, is the most effective armor set(s) to use.

Although, I guess from a very simple bottom-line point of view, the answer to your question of why everyone is so hostile toward them is because it makes them lose or gives other players an advantage or other classes an advantage over other people.

~Sev

Wow, what a long thread I missed.

Well, simple solution is to invent a time machine to go back in time when heart trinkets were not that easily accessible (back in those days, only very few ultra rich player had them from love puppy drops).

I was a guardian, and I'm still one actually. Here is the comparison :
- vs a no-heart striker, they had to be ultra careful. Else I literaly one combo kill them back to the spawn. Against very good strikers, it was ALREADY HARD to kill them, because landing 2 hits on a careful experienced striker is HARD. In case you didn't notice, it's hard to retaliate because their hits on my shield makes me flinch, and by the time I can hit back, they are already out of reach.
- vs a heart-striker, they no longer need to be that careful. Now even a careless striker won't die from a full combo. And once I do, he will just run away to base most often than not. A very good striker is now IMPOSSIBLE to kill as a guardian, unless I get ultra lucky (especially since I have just high enough ping to make LD impractical).

To add insult to injury, strikers are the only class who have a fair chance of getting out of getting shocked. Oh, and they have double med bonus to a weapon type, while other have at most a med. Oh, and their special skill doesn't break on hit. Oh, and in the event they don't die in a battle, they have a WAY shorter time to refill health.

But well, if I was able to actually kill them in the first place, all those things wouldn't be as much of an issue. Hence why so much people ask for heart trinkets removal (I'm still torn on that issue. Before the hearts trinkets, strikers were actually too easy to kill. But they improved overall since then too).

Oh, and in the event they don't die in a battle, they have a WAY shorter time to refill health.

No-hearts fill fast, sure but what's the problem with that? Heart clones fill up at the same speed as recons and only like quaarter of a second faster than any guardian who decides to heartpad heal. Mind, they have the same hp as the other classes, so they fill up no quicker~

then what do people think of the visasuit deluxe??

@laraso

Allow me to relate the difference between 2 hits to die, or 3 hits to die with a real world example. (power of percentages combined with power of analogy).
...
Would you rather make $10 an hour, or $15 an hour.
...
If you were doing the same job as someone else, how would you feel that they got paid %50 more than you, and argued they don't even see how you can notice a difference in what a person can do with that %50 difference?
...
That is the proportionate size of the difference.
...
That being said, if people really love lockdown that much go buy some heart trinkets. C'mon, they aren't hard to afford. If you can invest that much time in lockdown, invest a few days in Vana or Buy/sell stuff. :/

Sheesh, a couple hours a day buying and grouping monster bones/beast scales/shards could pay for your trinkets. Sell modules. I give up.

Striker go op with heart trinket? It is useless for recon? No difference for the guardian? really?

-All the heart trinket do is increasing the hp, if every player wears it it have no noticeable differences as not wearing any heart trinket...>_>...aside for the longer fun time :P

-As for heart trinket being useless to recon....lol...it increases the survival rate >_> , that doesn't make any difference? I mean after your shield broken, you can survive a few blows before it recharge again...>_>

-I play all the 3 classes, striker, guardian and recon...and I also play different play style, pure swordie, gunner, bomber and abomination (mix) :P ...striker being op is a bull...I usually get higher damage output as a guardian>_>...and I can defend the point against 3 striker until reenforcement arrive as a recon noob bomber ...in t2...>_>

"then what do people think of the visasuit deluxe??"
Vitasuits gives more health but has less defense and is at a sub-par star rating.

"Brady, could you please tone down your aggression?"
He doesn't seem too aggressive to me. I say that about everyone though...

Stop being so aggressive psyco >:3

Solution is simple

Make Strikers on have 5 hp on default, so those heart trinkets only negate that huge loss of health

GRITTLE LOGIC FTW

"Idk if it was mentioned before but it probably takes just as much time (if not more) to run back to spawn and heal then it takes to just die and respawn in 15-ish seconds."
I'd say, from the second base, its better to run back than respawn. Also, don't forget those maps with healers in the middle. Heart pendants troll even harder there.

again, was going to post... don't have to.

LD isn't much beyond taking a point and keeping it, you have 3 or 5 points to hold, if you keep 'em you win, if you can't KEEP any of em (you can make 20 caps and still lose) then you're as useful as the "0 damage noobs" who were playing.