Battlerite

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Making this thread because I’m honestly not sure why it hasn’t been made yet.

For those not in The Know, Battlerite is a team PvP class-based topdown shooter. Currently it’s on Steam Early Access for $20. There’s a -10% discount until… I think September 27th? Some time in Q1 2017, it’ll release and go free to play. If you buy into early access, you unlock all current and future characters. There’s currently no uneven playfield stuff, and afaik none is planned, with the payed stuff being purely cosmetic.

Anyways I got PROMOTED today to G10. If I’m not mistaken, that makes me officially Average at this game. I just spammed Pearl in 2v2 a lot. I don’t know how to play her, but she’s really good lol.

My current most-played are Poloma, Pearl, and Taya. Apparently I have really good taste or something because they’re all really strong lol.

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The discount is over. Juli is correct that they are never planning to sell gameplay advantages. They might sell additional champions in the future, though. I expect that they probably will.

Grats on reaching G10, Juli. According a straw poll of the BattleRite subreddit, there’s a pretty good bell curve distribution centered between grades 10 and 11.

Right now, champion balance is pretty good. Pearl and Poloma are currently widely considered to be the “best” characters and maybe in need of slight nerfs, but they’re not oppressively unbeatable, I think. Outside the supports, Ashka is I think considered the “best” ranged, but again, he(?) is definitely not unbeatable. Bakko may also eat a small nerf in the next balance/content patch as the “best” melee. But then again, so might Rook.

I don’t think there’s strong consensus on any characters being notably bottom-tier with substantial separation. I think Oldur and Taya aren’t that good, but they’re definitely both viable.

Right now, the biggest balance problem is that some characters get hard-countered not necessarily by certain characters, but by certain comps. If you play Rook against two ranged DPS, you’re gonna have a bad time. A good teammate can often help compensate for that kind of thing, though. There are also a couple of bad/feelbad specific character interactions, like Poloma dispelling buffs or debuffs that characters rely heavily on. And the fact that there’s no easy way to test which ones she can dispel doesn’t help.

The balance is super, super, super tight. This game is really good, guys. You should be playing it.

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I’ve seen a lot of claims that Rook is the worst character in the game, or at least bottom 3. Mostly I also see people saying Croak/Shifu are the best melee, and Taya/Ashka are the best ranged. That matches up with what I’ve seen in tournaments this weekend, but I only watched maybe a couple hours, so it’s pretty anecdotal.

The only claim to an S tier character I’ve seen so far is Poloma in 3s. I saw one team in the 3s tournament that played a Lucie, and one of the commentators mentioned that he thought it was a mistake. That commentator was Mr2, a long-time BLC player who, IIRC, was one of the best. So when he says it’s a mistake not to use a certain character, IMO that is worth paying attention to, even if it’s an overstatement.

I’d be curious to see what the actual brackets/rosters are for the events at their completion, though, because, as I said, I watched only a little bit of them.

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I think Poloma is definitely the best healer by a substantial margin in 3s. BattleRite is balanced for 2s primarily, where BLC was balanced for 3s primarily, for anyone who doesn’t know. So a lot of Poloma’s stuff that’s just “really good” in 2s is “insane” in 3s, because she scales up with team size. I very rarely see 3s teams without her, and when it’s not her, it’s usually Lucie or Pearl.

I could see Taya being good, maybe, but only in an organized team that really knows how to use her. She needs support from teammates to deal with being focused by other ranged characters (who usually outrange her and have faster projectiles, as well as usually having more escapes) and to really maximize her damage, she needs teammates to help set in CCs so she can land perfect cross boomerangs. If she doesn’t land those reliably, her average DPS drops pretty miserably.

Rook I’ve been arguing with some people about for a while. I think he’s actually really good, but like Taya, he needs teammates that know how to work with Rook. I was going to write more about this, but I’ll have to do that later, because I want to leave to catch a train home now.

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There was a thread on the old FS forums, but now it seems to be lost to the site change.

I’m still milling about Grade 8, but I’m also playing every character to at least level 4, so as to better learn the game, and also so that I can make intelligent commentary when casting (at this point just replays people kindly provide). Hopefully once that’s done getting beyond Grade 8 will be just a matter of grinding (because it takes for-bloody-ever to get rating points.

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I played all characters to 6. Here’s some advice: play some of the characters you’re least-interested in early on. I saved all the characters I didn’t like for last, and it suuuuuucked.

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Okay so Rook.

Rook is kind of like Taya in that he needs teammates that know how to set him up, and he has trouble against ranged DPS. If a teammate can make someone burn their escapes before Rook dives on them, he can wreck them. He’s got good burst and sustain DPS, even without Berserk.

His problem, of course, is that he’s slow and has one bad movement skill. His charge has startup time and is low-priority. So he needs that setup. I don’t think, like I’ve heard some people say, that he needs to proc berserk on the counter to be good. If he can get those procs, he’s fine. But I’ve had decent success with him taking the snare on Berserk usage and just using it as an AoE snare.

Against ranged teams, he’ll probably want to take the charge battlerite, rock-does-armor-break-and-extra-damage battlerite, and then the reduced rock cooldown one. In a ranged duel when playing footsies, he can rack up a pretty high protection score by staying in front of his teammate and being a meatshield, using rock on anyone who tries to use anything with a cast time (or to zone people into setups for his teammate), and using his counter and EX M1 to keep his health up.

I’ve had a lot of success playing him alongside Poloma and Varesh. Rook can protect Poloma fairly well by using rock to peel for her, and otherside can get him out of some tight spots. Alongside Varesh, he can still peel with rock, and shield helps him in tight spots. Additionally, the combined extra-damage-taken debuffs can result in someone getting burned down really fasy if they get caught without escapes. And the two of them do pretty well at zoning enemies out of the center and forcing them to come in or give up the orbs. I did have some games where we just sat in the center and picked up orbs until sudden death forced opponents in, then we smashed them.

People really don’t want to get close to Rook, which means you can bully people around just by walking toward them, and sometimes tossing rocks. I find it’s often effective to do this if my teammate is advantaged against whoever he’s fighting - like a Croak chasing a support, and then when the support runs out of escapes and Croak wants to disengage anyway because he can’t get in again, I dive in. Same on ranged DPS. Then the other person tries to jump on me and the Croak gets to stealth in again.

But I’ve also had some games where either the teamwork wasn’t there or the opponents were just playing it careful. He’s got no escapes, so Rook is actually fairly vulnerable to being dived on if his teammate can’t help. That’s happened to me a few times.

My current feeling is that at the level I play (around 2700), Rook is pretty good. If it turns out he’s too weak, or too swingy, I’d probably look at improving his rush. If in practice it’s actually just that easy to keep him out, giving his rush higher priority (keeps Bakko from interrupting it with his charge) or super armor (doesn’t get knocked back or interrupted by non-melee knockbacks/interrupts) or a projectile reflecting shield (if it turns out that the Bakko matchup is mostly fine but he’s basically dead against ranged) would probably help. Making his Berserk immune to Clarity would help the Poloma matchup. Giving his charge iframes on the startup and maybe early part of the rush would make him much less vulnerable to AoEs. Making his charge immaterial on the early part would help making it less easy to trap him by body-blocking.

Right now the biggest problem I have with him is that you literally can’t get out of some AoEs, because space has a long startup time and you have no iframes. So if an astro wants to stone you, he can. Or any other similar targeted circle of death type thing.

If it turns out that doing that would make him too good in the matchups he’s already too good, probably a solution would be to reduce his damage a little bit?

Anyway, tl;dr for this is that Rook’s power level is hard to evaluate because he has some really easy matchups and some really hard ones, and his performance depends on a lot his teammates not expecting him to play like Bakko or Shifu and engage and disengage constantly.

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This is a thing now: https://masterbattlerite.com/leaderboards

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Neat. Would be nice if there was also replays associated with them, but that’s probably on the way somewhere (not via the Odeum, the camera is far too limited there).

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I played some more Croak tonight. I knew Croak’s EX stealth was amazing. I hadn’t realized how good his EX M2 was. 4-second blind! Wow! And if you have the extra spit battlerite and enough energy, you can fire off two of them. The fact that his EXes are good makes up for his crappy ult!

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I suspect that EXs are the main way to use meter for most characters, with Ults being largely kill moves, but that’s possibly a playstyle thing. I find the lack of energy post-Ult often debilitating.

Also, Incapacitate for 25 meter is awesome, and it’s not uncommon either. It scales better with skill, though, since not everyone knows Incapacitate only lasts as long as the hero isn’t hit.

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im glad most of the croaks I play against in 2s don’t know what ex moves are

I was blinded by a croak once and I’m still mad about it

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I’ve played against a lot of Croaks in the 1900s and 2000s and this is the first time I hear about him having a blind. :smiley:

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This is so typical of bad Croaks. They want to just dive in face first, stick in forever, and stick to someone until one of them dies.

Better Croak play involves switching targets a lot. Croak is super duper mobile with recastable Frog Leap, his lunge, and movespeed from stealth. His biggest problem is that he tends to want energy before he initiates, and he has a hard time getting energy. I’ve seen a lot of mediocre Croaks hang back because they don’t want to initiate and just stay out of the fight until they get a chance to stealth and jump on the enemy healer.

Which is dumb. Stay relatively near your teammate. You know what makes someone really reluctant to attack a ranged DPS or a suppert? A Croak hanging around in the area waiting to stun anyway who jumps in!

Getting maximum sustain out of him requires using his weapon recharges on Stealth, Frog Leap, and R effectively.

And yeah, it’s totally legit to dash in on someone, hit them a few times for energy, then blind their teammate and go back to hitting them.

I used to think that Croak didn’t have good CC. Now I think maybe Croak has the best CC of any melee - maybe even better than Freya.

Here’s an annoying thing you can do that is guaranteed to annoy Juli: Use EX Stealth, incap someone, stun the other, and do some damage. Then just before the incap expires, break it by hitting them with EX M2. ~3.5 seconds of incap followed by 4 seconds of blind should be a pretty darn solid advantage.

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I played the tutorial this morning while waiting for a project to deploy.

Ultimates are on a super meter and there’re EX moves. I AM SOLD.

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And these two things are sadly not related at all. :smiley:

Other useful things the tutorial doesn’t mention:

  1. You can cancel your casts/attacks with C.
  2. Mount with Z. Hitting Z while mounted gives you a speed boost.
  3. You have invulnerable frames during all kinds of jumps.
  4. You can get around counter stances by attacking with AoE effects.
  5. Getting last hit on the large orb in the center of every arena restores health to your team and grants energy.
  6. Dead team mates drop their energy for you to pick up.
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What!?

Ass tier tutorialising! But A Tier game design!

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To be fair, the game is in early access.
If I were in charge of the tutorial, I’d probably split it into a basic one and an advanced one.
The current tutorial includes all the stuff I’d put into basic, so maybe they have the same plan and the advanced tutorial isn’t finished yet?

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[quote=“Zejety, post:16, topic:714”]
You have invulnerable frames during all kinds of jumps.
You can get around counter stances by attacking with AoE effects.
[/quote]You also have iframes if your model isn’t there. So any teleport, or things like Ashka or Croak’s ult. And note that cones aren’t AoEs, they’re attacks.

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It’s more accurate to say that anything that isn’t a projectile or melee attack can be tranced. Placed AoEs, beams, and PBAoEs cannot be tranced. Meanwhile, a projectile or melee attack can be tranced regardless of if they have an AoE or not. So e.g. Shifu’s R or Jade’s ultimate are tranceable, even though they’re AoE. This is just a general rule, though, there are some exceptions and ambiguous stuff. Like I’m pretty sure Shifu’s ult can’t be tranced, even though it’s a melee attack.

EDIT: Also I made this Lucie Deadly Injection No relevant battlerites. Petrify Bolt Unaffecte - Pastebin.com

Sometimes battlerites affect EX abilities. Sometimes they don’t. This is a list of every EX ability and whether or not they’re affected by battlerites that alter their non-EX counterparts. The thing it says about the Tazer battlerite is wrong, btw, it’s just glitched and doesn’t bounce on target dummies for some reason.

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