Cover Shooting & Charge Attacks

[finite shard]

I recently noticed while playing that enemies can shoot over low forms of cover, but the player can't. Yet even when the player backs up against low cover enough that their animation changes to them bracing against it, they're still completely vulnerable to getting shot from over the other side.

Maybe it was just a glitch with the specific environment I saw it happen in, but if not I think it doesn't make any sense that the player and enemies have different shooting heights like that. How it could work is both the player and enemies can shoot over low cover but both the player and enemies can crouch behind it to avoid incoming projectile damage from the other side. I think if enough environments in the game were built to enable that kind of mechanic it would add more depth to the gameplay since both the player and enemies would have another way to avoid damage.

Also I've played with three characters now and each of them had a charge attack that is extremely unsatisfying and awkward to use because standing still to charge up just results in me getting hit a bunch most of the time. I can hide behind cover to charge up; except enemies can shoot over low cover anyway and some charge attacks require direct line of sight to work.

Unless I'm missing something it just seems like a badly balanced mechanic that in a game where mobility is so necessary there are slow charge attacks that almost guarantee the player will take damage just to get much value out of them. Having to take damage like that just to use a basic ability doesn't feel very good at all to me.

[mild hornet]

On the subject of charge attacks, it’s worth noting that a level one charge is often still significant. If you can’t charge safely, you can just charge less; a weaker effect is generally more significant than no effect at all. As for higher charges, there’s a couple options. In multiplayer, where you have other players drawing aggro (or creating barriers with Pinkyy) to make it safer to do stronger charges. There’s also some charges that can be started or even used before enemies arrive, like Jimmy’s land mine, though the utility there is somewhat gamemode dependent (not very helpful in skirmish, super useful in defense, etc.).
There’s also crowd control solutions as well. One of my favorites is to use Raff’s melee with the stun upgrade on an elite and then charge the keytar point blank while they can’t move.

[finite shard]

I don't have any exact statistics but from what I've seen a first level charge attack looks to be significantly weaker than the others; to the point where it feels like using that time to just shoot the enemy would deal a comparable amount of damage unless you've boosted your skill effectiveness a massive amount.

There's definitely ways to activate charge attacks more reliably but once again, in my experience I can make decent progress towards defeating an enemy by just shooting them outright; thus jumping through hoops to use a charge attack feels more like gameplay flavour than a gameplay asset unless you've built your kit around empowering them.

So maybe they're more worthwhile if you buff them up but I would still say that's a balancing flaw if you need to buff them up just to get decent value out of the activation.

[mild hornet]

First levels are weaker yes, but almost every charge has effects that are relevant regardless of scaling. Seven’s charge will always prime for combo, Ace’s will always draw aggro, Raff’s applies overshield to allies. Pinkyy’s has some interesting knockback options, but I concede that’s not as significant. Jimmy’s gets a bit weird since the function changes with tier, I’m not sure how the math breaks down on the level 1 versus the level 2 so I can’t say whether or not that one contributes to my point, but either way it’s the only outlier.

[finite shard]

Yeah I definitely think Pinkyy's is a problem. Pushing enemies away or shoving them off a ledge is theoretically useful but in my experience it's a niche situation and getting value out of that over more conventional options is dubious as well.

Pinkyy's is also one that requires line of sight and throws her into harms way which is just even more risks associated with activating it at all.

I think it'd be a lot better if the ability had a decent amount of inherent damage reduction while using it, rather than the player having to invest in that just to get any at all.

[mild hornet]

Hm. That is a good point, I imagine a reasonable improvement could be to have a moderate to low amount of damage reduction in the base ability and have the skill tree be able to increase it, the same way it does for things like Iron Will’s life threshold.