With the newest patch the Gunners have been buffed to be much more threatening at any range, and mobile to boot.
I don’t like this change since it punishes mistakes even more heavily, without doing anything to alleviate the actual core issues that makes them unthreatening to the best of players - that they don’t get hit in the first place.
I can keep sliding throughout the entire mission, but I don’t believe that to be a fun form of gameplay. And I think the gunner buff was brought in as a response to the best of players considering them to be a non-issue. I can understand that point of view, but I don’t think the entire game should be tailored to 0.01% of it’s community if it becomes much less enjoyable to the majority of players in the process. Sure, the game should favour skill expression but there are limits.
Instead of players learning to powerslide throughout the entire mission (or “getting better” as those advocating for this kind of playstyle would call it), it seems people just opt for taking counters such as Telekine Dome, Voice of Command etc. more often without adapting their behavior in the slightest. Which is exactly what anyone with half a brain would have expected to happen. The most meta things became even more meta, and the only surprise for me here was that Smoke Grenades still don’t see much used - that is until I gave them another try recently and it became immediately apparent that they don’t help in countering the Gunner/Shooter mobs half as much as the solid defensive measures.
I don’t like this state of things, so I thought I should voice my opinion here. It feels like the Gunners are being balanced around the 0.01% of players who run around with Dueling Sword or Knife and powerslide for the entire match without taking a single shot and all the VoC veterans with triple stacked 20% Gunner Resistance curios who can just facetank an entire ranged squad without batting an eye. I don’t think it’s healthy for the game in any way.
My proposed solution is in the title: Nerf the gunners to reasonable levels, and nerf the powersliding as well to make them a threat in that way instead. I don’t think it to be some controversial opinion if I claim that powersliding meta is laughable, unimmersive and not really fun.
As for Gunner Resistance on curios, I don’t think that should be a thing either. You can’t balance their damage output properly if it exists - you either balance around players who don’t take it and then you can pretty much ignore them if you do, or you balance around those resistances being present and suddenly players are forced to either do so or become an ice-skating sweatlord. That doesn’t sound like a healthy state of matters either.
I have some dim recollection of Fatshark saying that curios will be reworked somewhere in the future. If that is the case, then I believe we should nerf the gunners now, as I do not trust the Fatshark to remember to do so at a later point when designing the new curio system.
And if I’m mistaken in that regard and no curio rework has been announced, then some slight alteration could be done instead (eg. reducing the Damage Resistance bonus from curios to 8-10%, perhaps stacking additively).