1.2 Goon. Is Chomp worth it?

[OhaiReapd]

I've just been thinking..... 1.2 chomp sucks more than Thor. And it takes "skill" but is it worth it to be able to use it? Pounce is far superior. What do you think.

[TANK]

I like it.
Pounce tacktick can kill one battlesuit without any problems.
The only thing that can irritate a bad ping and dodging humans.

[Celestial_Rage]

Yeah, chomp rapes, you just need to be able to aim. A healthy mix of chomp and pounce makes a strong goon.

[Dracone]

Pounce displaces you and will confuse you, thus always being the weaker option against good groups of 3 or more. You need chomp if you're alone, or with smaller aliens, against a couple of people who move well, if only to get in some extra damage after pounce since you can chomp immediately after landing now.

[Meisseli]

Chomp works in some places where pounce doesn't e.g. ramps.

HS1 chomping is effective (1 chomp vs. 2 pounces).

And in some situations where moving towards a particular location is bad, chomping is much more effective.

[Kiwi]

Chomping also provides insta-kills vs s1 humans, where pounce doesn't.

[superspirality]

Chomping also provides insta-kills vs s1 humans, where pounce doesn't.

Pounce does, but only against completely naked humans, and a headchomp gives you a frag not depending on human's armour. Till s2, of course.

[OhaiReapd]

Did chomp exclusively for 2 days. I know it works better in a pair. I only found chomp useful against s1 humans.

[Dracone]

The bottom line for right now is that if you can't use both of them you're going to suck compared to people who can, even if pounce has the most value in terms of what it provides.

[Mr.Mustashio]

Pounce makes you a Luigi, whilst chomp turns you into pac-man. 



As in one is effective vs singular targets whilst the other is slow and ironically better in crowded confrontations.

[Venkman]

I've gotta disagree about GPP pounce not being useful when fighting solo against multiple attackers. For one reason: the knock-back.

As most of you know, 1.2 Goon's pounce actually knocks the human back when it connects, which has several effects on the player:

1.) It causes them to stop firing for a brief moment.

2.) It momentarily disorients the human.

and...

3.) It pushes the target several feet away, which can be used to knock them off of a high ledge or into another human's line of fire. It can even be used to put some much needed cover between you and your attacker.

Sure, it may sound tricky. But with the right finesse and timing and enough space, you can keep at least 3 humans disoriented long enough to kill each one (plus, it makes you look super bad-ass )

Just tonight, I was able to take out 3 s2-humans all by myself simply by pouncing each one in turn and using the knock-back to drive them into each other's line of fire.

Now, this was on Arachnid 2 at the foot of the stairs outside Alien default's front entrance, which meant I had a good bit of room to work with. I DO NOT recommend trying to pounce-waltz with multiple attackers in close quarters. That's just a waste of a good Goon.

[EliTheEpic]

If a human is in a corner, it is always an advantage for the goons because they can pounce to get on their heads, and then chomp aiming down- instant kill most of the time. One of the few times where its easy to get a good headchomp. Comp and pounce are best used together for kills.

[swamp-cecil]

I'd have to say, The pounce is way too strong. Just like 3 pounces to a humans head in 3 seconds and theyll be dead. I would say make pounce weaker and slightly longer to charge. This way the chomp would come back, because pouncing is stonger and faster than the chomp i think.

[Nux]

The problem as I see it is that though you can find uses for chomp if you try, pounce covers the vast majority of situations as the better attack method in GPP. The key to this is how quickly you can spam small pounces (something that actually doesn't make much physical sense) compared to how long it takes to chomp and the fact that you can just swing your aim around until it connects rather than having to time the attack well yourself.

This isn't me advocating longer waiting times either, as I've found waiting times to be the #1 grievance of mine with GPP. It feels like such a needless frustration that makes changing from and to blaster, for example, much more annoying than the old reload bug (of which I feel it's a slapdash solution for). At least in 1.1 I knew I could switch to blaster the split-second I needed it.

[Cadynum]

Chomp can be good sometimes but it's often a bad choice as pounce is pretty much equally good and a lot easier to execute.
More or less pounce requires less skill but is better, which is not how it's supposed to be.

The slow blaster switch really annoys me too.

[Dracone]

More or less pounce requires less skill but is better, which is not how it's supposed to be.

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH there we go.

But yeah, the maximum impact a good player can have on the game using skill (mostly on aliens, one good human player can do almost as much as he could in 1.1) was intentionally brought down because of the idea that enabling a player to become too skilled with their available tools allowed them to "ruin" public games for unskilled players.

Unfortunately looks like that same idea will continue to drive the game's future.

[Conzul]

Basically, just use it whenever you're in a confined space. I use chomp almost exclusively during hs1, especially near corners and doors. It can make you wish you had a bigger wallet (9>) XD

[Kiwi]

More or less pounce requires less skill but is better, which is not how it's supposed to be.

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH there we go.

But yeah, the maximum impact a good player can have on the game using skill (mostly on aliens, one good human player can do almost as much as he could in 1.1) was intentionally brought down because of the idea that enabling a player to become too skilled with their available tools allowed them to "ruin" public games for unskilled players.

Unfortunately looks like that same idea will continue to drive the game's future.

I agree completely with this.

[swamp-cecil]

I was thinking a longer charge time and it has to charge a lot more before pouncing. The chomp should also have a couple millisecond increase repeat

[Celestial_Rage]

I think chomp is fine. If anything, the repeat should be lessened and pounce damage and knockback should be decreased. I hate when I am chainpounced and can't dodge it due to the knockback.

[Nux]

longer charge time

charge a lot more

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!!!

Can we please stop trying to slow the player down. There are far less frustrating ways to balance things.

[Cadynum]

longer charge time

charge a lot more

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!!!

Can we please stop trying to slow the player down. There are far less frustrating ways to balance things.

Yeah, yuck. Did you know that the goon is slower than it was in 1.1?
Slower charge, shorter pounce and longer delay between chomps.
The goon was a lot more fun in 1.1 when it was an agile chomper instead of a spammy pouncer.

[Dracone]

Yeah, the goon's fully charged pounces are pretty much the same as 1.1 but the shorter pounces are completely useless except at point blank.

In 1.1 the skill was in how, with the best way to kill the enemy being chomp, you had to also use pounce against intelligent dodgers, as they would get distance from you. Shorter pounces were used to catch up, land near them quickly, and chomp them. If you try that in GPP, you will barely go anywhere with the short pounce, not even coming close to catching up to them, and even if you do, they will immediately dodge out of the shortened chomp range.

Kinda feel it's necessary to state here how retarded it was to double up on things. The chomp range was shortened considerably along with humans being given a way to dodge it. That's just stupid, one thing at a time or gtfo. And don't bring up MGDev to contest my knowledge of the chronological order of these events, that was shoddy at best and this whole GPP "phase" thing should've started long before then and MGDev itself was a joke.

[SirDude]

The problem as I see it is that though you can find uses for chomp if you try, pounce covers the vast majority of situations as the better attack method in GPP. The key to this is how quickly you can spam small pounces (something that actually doesn't make much physical sense) compared to how long it takes to chomp and the fact that you can just swing your aim around until it connects rather than having to time the attack well yourself.

THIS

Yeah, the goon's fully charged pounces are pretty much the same as 1.1 but the shorter pounces are completely useless except at point blank.

In 1.1 the skill was in how, with the best way to kill the enemy being chomp, you had to also use pounce against intelligent dodgers, as they would get distance from you. Shorter pounces were used to catch up, land near them quickly, and chomp them. If you try that in GPP, you will barely go anywhere with the short pounce, not even coming close to catching up to them, and even if you do, they will immediately dodge out of the shortened chomp range.

Kinda feel it's necessary to state here how retarded it was to double up on things. The chomp range was shortened considerably along with humans being given a way to dodge it.

THIS

[Meisseli]

I don't mind it that much but what does bug me is that pounce has a higher DPS. It is actually much faster to be on top of a reactor for example and pounce it to death than chomp, which is really absurd. It makes no sense at all.

What I think could be done is either 1) increase the chomp damage, 2) make it so that you must charge even more to get the full damage so that those fast, small pounces up close wouldn't be possible, 3) decrease the pounce damage or 4) make some kind of a combination of the above.

[jm82792]

I don't mind it that much but what does bug me is that pounce has a higher DPS. It is actually much faster to be on top of a reactor for example and pounce it to death than chomp, which is really absurd. It makes no sense at all.

What I think could be done is either 1) increase the chomp damage, 2) make it so that you must charge even more to get the full damage so that those fast, small pounces up close wouldn't be possible, 3) decrease the pounce damage or 4) make some kind of a combination of the above.

MerryChristmas has been abusing the short pounce for awhile
A goon that I really fear...

[F50]

I'm getting the impression that people generally feel the new goon pounce is retarded. Is it possible that we could have another phase with this balanced out?

[Lecavalier]

The problem as I see it is that though you can find uses for chomp if you try, pounce covers the vast majority of situations as the better attack method in GPP. The key to this is how quickly you can spam small pounces (something that actually doesn't make much physical sense) compared to how long it takes to chomp and the fact that you can just swing your aim around until it connects rather than having to time the attack well yourself.

THIS

Yeah, the goon's fully charged pounces are pretty much the same as 1.1 but the shorter pounces are completely useless except at point blank.

In 1.1 the skill was in how, with the best way to kill the enemy being chomp, you had to also use pounce against intelligent dodgers, as they would get distance from you. Shorter pounces were used to catch up, land near them quickly, and chomp them. If you try that in GPP, you will barely go anywhere with the short pounce, not even coming close to catching up to them, and even if you do, they will immediately dodge out of the shortened chomp range.

Kinda feel it's necessary to state here how retarded it was to double up on things. The chomp range was shortened considerably along with humans being given a way to dodge it.

THIS

I'm getting the impression that people generally feel the new goon pounce is retarded. Is it possible that we could have another phase with this balanced out?

People have been complaining about pounce all along. While I agree it can make the game a bit frustrating at times, I don't think it is going to change.

[Dracone]

I don't mind it that much but what does bug me is that pounce has a higher DPS.

A note on DPS in regard to goon chomp; if you chomp a full hp bsuit, and they use medkit, they will get the hp lost from that chomp back before you kill them with chomps, even if you hit them every time.

Without looking at the numbers I would assume regular goon's chomp has a lower DPS than adv mara's claw.

[Cadynum]

People have been complaining about pounce all along. While I agree it can make the game a bit frustrating at times, I don't think it is going to change.

Probably not as the one balancing dev, Norfenstein, likes it. The issue was already brought up by a lot of proficient players during the mgdev time, 2 years ago or whenever it was.
There are several different opinions how you should balance 1.2, us in ddos tried our own ideas in our river mod: http://ddos-tremulous.eu/projects/balance/
But as ggp got so few players to start with you can probably guess how popular it became