Saxton Hale: Too Easy?

[ChickenPanda 66]

Hello friends.

Today, I'm here to talk about Saxton Hale and give reasons on why the Hale may need buffs, or the players may need nerfs.

 

1. Homing everything.

 

Balls:

Anyone who's played Hale knows this is your worst enemy, specifically the balls. The balls from a max range do SEVEN seconds of stun. Here are the stun times based on distance.

 

16 ft: 1 second

32 ft: 2 seconds

48 ft: 3 seconds

64 ft: 4 seconds

80 ft: 5 seconds

96 ft: 6 seconds

112 ft: 7 seconds

 

The first 3 stun amounts allow the scout for a quick escape if hale is chasing them, just fire the ball straight into the air, and you have an easy escape. This is one of the hardest things to deal with as Hale, and is fairly frustrating. Obviously, this is not the largest concern I have for the balls. Seven seconds is a long time. Let's put this into perspective:

A scout has just launched his homing ball as Hale is trying to kill a sentry nest of 2 sentries/engineers. For this example, we'll use level 3 sentries (otherwise, it wouldn't be too hard to destroy!) Level 3 sentries do a DPS of 128, double that if wrangled. Now, let's do some math. Keep in mind it's 128 every SECOND. That would be 896 damage for the entirety of the stun. Wait, that's right. We have two engineers! Double that. 1792. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. They both have the wrangler. Double that once more. 3584 damage in seven seconds. Did I forget something? Yep. The rockets on a level 3 sentry. Remember me saying he was trying to kill the sentry nest? That means he's about as close as he can get. 1 rocket every 3 seconds, times two for each sentry. 150*2*2 = 600 MORE damage. This comes out to a total of 4184 damage in seven seconds.

 

Obviously, this is assuming Hale does not rage mid-stun and both engineers hit all of their shots at close range! However, even if hale does rage, the chance of him getting stunned by the other scout in a couple seconds is VERY high. This is absolutely ridiculous.

 

Possible fix: I personally vote homing balls need to be removed entirely, or possibly toned down to half their normal stun duration (if possible.)

 

Arrows:

Ah, possibly one of the most fun things to do in Saxton Hale. Shoot your arrow straight into the air while you hide in a secluded area, and watch as your damage racks up. If the round lasts long enough, it's a breeze to do a good 6000 damage or more. If combined with the Bushwacka to get to high places, this loadout is incredible.

 

The damage?

Each shot gets 495 damage, and if you pull out your SMG to get some extra damage on the boss, you can get 1000 damage in two easy shots.

Fun, right? Great amount of damage for a little amount of work. The damage actually does vary on only two conditions. The first is obviously, if your shot doesn't even hit, blocked by a building or similar. The second is if the Hale recently raged. This will do 302 damage, and I think that's actually a fairly decent amount by itself, the 495 is rather ridiculous. This build is rather overpowered, and is contributing to making it so hard to play Hale and so easy for the players to kill him.

 

Possible fix: Simple, remove crits from the huntsman and fortified compound. Nice and easy. Another easy fix would to be just remove the homing arrows.

 

Rockets:

In my honest opinion, I think the rockets are perfectly fine, maybe even a little UNDERPOWERED at times! Although these are fine by themselves, I would like to see cow mangler rockets homing, and (again, if possible) removing the bug where you can have the high explosive rocket and homing rocket in one. THAT is overpowered, considering the charge time. Besides that, I think it's fine!

 

2. Speed boosts. 3fast5me.

I think we can all agree that hyper heavy and 520 scout are a tad bit out of hand. They're hard to catch, and it's slightly annoying.

 

Alright, there is a rule put down that Hale can cap if it's only a 520 scout (or hyper heaver) left. Great rule, however, I don't think we need it if we can fix the issue! I think speed is one of the most fun things to play with in Hale, and personally, it's totally fine. BUT. When Hale rages, the scout or heavy moves at the same exact speed as he did before. Annoying. Similar to rolling snail in RTD, I think when raged, they should slow to that speed. This would give the heavy and scout a strategic mindset rather than just running around like an absolute retard and hitting them with a frying pan. I'd love this change, and it's something to think about.

 

3. Conclusion

I LOVE Saxton Hale as you can probably see. But, it's become boring and too easy. Each round should feel like you're up against THE greatest combatant in TF2. For me, if one person on that 20-something player team fighting against him, it's so easy to win. A mix of homing balls and a good spy can just destroy the hale. I'd love to see changes made to the server that will make the game in its entirety harder, and will have more strategy to the game. That's what the game should be, strategy to live. Not run around like a retard and hit the Hale with a frying pan every few seconds. (I'm looking at you, hyper heavies.)

 

Thanks for reading if you did, and I hope that some of these changes will be considered!

 

tl;dr:

Chicken Panda is complaining about Saxton Hale again bc he's a retard.

[Muzzle 9]

+1 didn't read

[MuffinMonster 4]

You ain't trying hard enough as saxton, I can still wreck nerds even with all these buffs to players

[Moosty 148]

+1 homing balls need to be gone. I played a round against 3 scouts,two pyros, and a demoman all working together while I was hale. The scouts stood max distance apart and timed their balls so a new one was there as i was unbonked, every time, so I was bonked indefinitely. The pyros got on me while bonked and backed me Into a corner with alternating airblasts, holding me in one place, when I raged the demo would detonate his stickys in the corner and shoot me across the map so I couldn't harm them. I couldn't do a single thing the entire rest of the game because I was continually bonked. Just a slow death by fire I could do nothing about. If there are multiple scouts with homing balls it's entirely possible for the hale to be absolutely powerless the entire round. The homing balls make it incredibly difficult and irritating to be hale. Plz remove it's a nightmare.

[Barmithian 63]

We already had multiple discussions about this. I agree with muffin, that you can still win if you play smart. I still think it should be removed however

[Gugomo 0]

I do agree that Saxton Hale is easier than regular servers. The best option is to either remove or tone down Homing balls, 520's, homing arrows, and Hyper Hoovy. Homing Rockets aren't very OP since they deal damage based on the the location of the hit and the location of the soldier that shot it. So if it hits Hale from very far away, it'll do less than 100 damage. If close-up, it'll do more damage, but Hale is more likely to kill you and homing takes a while to begin it's curve.

[Charing 0]

+1 I think having some sort of ability to stun hale is good. Just...not as OP as homing balls. And more OP than holiday punch.

[Gugomo 0]

Holiday Punch is useless in Hale, especially if it's a Hyper Hoovy. Since a heavy can punch even while spook and runs at a constant speed, you might as well just equip Warrior Spirit and keep punching. In practice, all the spook does to the heavy is prevent him from jumping.

[Fink 64]

@MuffinMonster @Barmithian This is TF2 we are talking about. There aren't many smart players.

[Forge 77]

If its so bad, play Freak Fortress 2?

[Gugomo 0]

Unforunately, FF2 isn't as popular as our Saxton Hale server, for some reason. Maybe we should put a message advertising it on all the servers for a few days.

[Scootaloo 124]

I prefer FF2 myself, but it never seems like anyone wants to play. =(