TL : DR : make smoke nades deal direct HP over dealing AP damage and find a balance between visual distortion of smoke nades while not compromising fps issues for certain players
I know I made a thread on smoke nade changes that Dave has accepted and approved. (More damage, a slow effect, and faster activation)
That thread was made before I noticed that the damage that smoke nades deal was switched within an update. It used to be that smoke nades dealt direct damage to HP regardless of AP. But it seems that that has changed to dealing damage to AP firsr before hp. I would like to see the damage reverted back to HP directly. Why? Because even with using all 6 smoke nades on one player (who is stationary) only brings the player down to high yellow hp.
Now I know smoke nades are used more for the visual distorion and advantage so im not trying to suggest to make smoke nades deal massive amounts of damage to the point that they're more preferred over explosive nades.... But I think having them deal direct HP over AP is a great advantage because it'll force the enemy to run away quicker to avoid dying quickly to the smoke. Where as when it deals to AP a player can sit in the smoke for the entirety of the pop and still have AP left over.
Now I also know that Dave has agreed to increase the damage, so maybe the damage increase will balance out well enough to the point that the smoke nade doesn't need to deal direct HP damage. But as stated by Faky, the smoke radius has been nerfed to deal with fps issues between players, which is totally understandable. But nerfing the radius combined with it dealing AP damage first, I think, is a huge nerf that brings the nade back to being almost useless again?
As stated by Faky within a debate between the two of us,:
"Last patch was nerfing smoke nades to fix crashes and fps drop issues lol. did you remember 5-10crashes in 1hr games? Lots of PPL complains about it"
And:
"In the last patch, crashes fixed when they nerfed smoke radius and exploding delay."
While I dont disagree with smoke nades causing crashing issues... I dont think they were the main culprit. Especially since smoke nades dont see much use to begin with. Ive played in more rooms that crashed without the use of smoke nades than i have crashed in rooms with people using smoke nades. I feel like a lot of the crashing has to do with just items in general (molotovs, flash, mine, nades) combined with players leaving at the right moments. So I dont think putting a lot of the blame on smoke nades (and nerfing them) is the way to go.
I'd like to think theres a way to balance the smoke effect/particles to reduce the fps issues with some players, while still making them viable (distorting enemy vision to use to your advantage) and hope that a perfect balance can be achieved to encourage players to use smoke nades more (in a tacticful way...not to just troll) instead of having them nearly forgotten about.
