Jack is OP in Horde. Change my mind

Gears Tactics
#3

His only two uses are to revive people and to increase power acquirement and if your group knows how to play and have a good engineer then Jack is just using up a spot and not really contributing anything. His little zapper and hijack don’t add up to anything on insane or above.

Honestly, once you have your little kill zone set up I find Jack more of a hindrance than a help. Since most people stay within spitting distance of each other anyways the rezzes are not needed which makes him nothing more than a forge runner between waves.

#4

I agree. Nerf Jack.

Actually just nerf all the heroes. Except maybe Kat. Buff that one.

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#5

JACK is very important, but on Inconceivable and Master difficulty JACK is played more conservatively and is more about being a medic and smelting weapjns at the Forge.

My only little complaint is that JACK is relied upon so much to be the main medic in the team that the Horde meta involves just him and no one else. In an ideal world there would be another viable medic character.

I get that the COG Gear is a possible option, but I just don’t think they’re on the same level by a long shot (as a medic). As the OP says JACK can heal and revive from range, and can cloak.

I had an idea for the COG Gear that they had the ability to revive team mates from a distance away too. Not as big a distance as JACK - maybe the COG Gear can have a revive radius around him of about 3 metres.

Also enable his Team Revive to bring back dead team mates (not just DBNO) and maybe a card which buffs nearby team mates (team mates within 10 metres receive a small health regeneration boost?).

The COG Gear has much better combat ability than JACK, so the healing buffs don’t need to be major. It would give players a real alternative to JACK.

But equally it would be nice if JACK had a little buff in that regard too. Maybe if he had a card which allows his zapper to chain multiple enemies? It’s pretty weak as it is, so would just be for crowd control support.

And on a side note, just to make the Forge more viable for other characters too, maybe add a passive ability to Scout characters giving them an extra boost when they smelt weapons? Again, not JACK levels of power but somewhere in between.

For me personally, it would be nice if each role in Horde teams could be fulfilled by more than one character. I like variety.

#6

Let’s make Horde basically unplayable or a Sentry borefest at the same time as well, if we’re already going that far. I’m sure everyone would love it.

Jack wouldn’t be such a requested tool if the enemies weren’t so ridiculous. At least, in an ideal world which we all know almost certainly doesn’t exist. They deal so much damage that you can’t even fire at them 99% of the time, or move around, or do anything if they’re aiming at you, or you go down, they’re so accurate, or 100% of the cover pieces in the game are so low, that they will still hit you with 95% accuracy even while you blind fire, so it’s almost completely pointless to even try that. Guess why players would want a stealthed up bot that can float around and wait until it’s safe or find a piece of cover to hide behind to heal everyone when a ridiculous Drone Elite decided to down everyone in one second.

The power generation is just a bonus. And unless I’m just doing something wrong I often see Kait players also having a decent amount of power collected, sometimes higher than Jack’s.

#7

Cog gear can revive from a longer range then Jack can. He can also get more than one up at a time. Besides, if you play him right his ultimate should almost always be available. He’s also the tankiest character in the game whereas Jack can go down in one hit as soon as stealth drops.

The only thing Jack can really do that Cog can’t is keep steady healing through walls meaning he can hide and do what he does if your team finds the right setup for him.

#8

Jack breaks the game. He’s OP.

Lol. I didn’t start with the nerf calls, but I’ll be sure to make them look as dumb as they are. Any of them.

And yes, @AmicableWall421, to play the higher difficulties you must accept the fact you are going to go down (or out) several times during a match.

I call it looking for my contacts. Stole that from a guy I played with some. We all love crawling around.

#9

Yes but it’s still reliant on Team Revive being available. Some situations involve team mates getting downed multiple times. I’m referring to master difficulty really on the later waves. I’ve tried COG Gear on this and it’s still tough going as a medic. I think the COG Gear needs a couple of small buffs to be able to compare to JACK in a medic role.

#10

Jack nerfs are the last thing we need anyway. Unless they actually want to make him useless. It’s not like I was being serious myself anyway.

At some point getting downed by any enemy just because you decided to shoot something or tried to relocate to a better cover when there was nothing shooting you a second before - even when you’re just playing Elite - gets really tiring though. It’s like the game just goes, “Oh, you didn’t commit a mistake? Well, take a punishment from the uber ridiculous enemies anyway.”. Of course, doesn’t always happen as I’ve had enough experiences with Insane and Incon in Gears 4 to have a good idea when I should move, but sometimes the aforementioned incident still occurs.

1 Like
#11

Every character / hero has something OP going for them. Jack’s damage on higher difficulty or Master or with More Health on, sucks. Every other character does more damage than Jack.

/end thread

Kat needs to be nerfed.

3 Likes
#12

I see people claim to rarely go down if at all. I’d love to play master with them. Either they are hiding behind a sentry wall or lying.

You will go down.

#13

Ok. Kat too then. :joy:

Good to see you back.

#14

Master is supposed to be tough going lol.

Not sure I am getting your point here.

Jack has a very high probability of going down once he pops stealth whereas Cog gear can take more hits and still be doing fine. I think it balances out.

Also remember that Cog gear and put out some DPS which Jack can’t on that level of play and besides, on Master you are all in the same little area anyways meaning another teammate can get you up just as quick as Jack without blowing the team revive on it.

Honestly you shouldn’t need either of them with a good group but those are hard to find so your points are valid.

#15

Claiming to rarely go down when it is not realistically possibly on a higher difficulty is a bit strange. Unless 5-10+ downs in a single Horde match is considered “rare”. Who knows.

#16

I get that master is supposed to be hard, no doubt about that and I like a good challenge. My view is just to balance other characters better so that all of them are, as much as possible, viable as each other.

I think there’s a distinction to be made between a strong and viable character, and strong players of good ability. A good player can compensate for the limitations of a poorly-balanced character. Thing is the game needs to be catered for the majority rather than the strongest players out there. Not dumbed down, but balanced enough so that peo[ple can get something out of using them.

My personal view of a balanced Horde character, is one which has an active role for the majority of the wave and doing something which benefits the team in a non-generic way. Del for example doesn’t need to be shooting, but his role requires him to build and upgrade; and once that’s done to actively maintain the base. JACK’s role is to heal and smelt weapons. JD is to deal high damage. These are all active roles. Trouble is, some characters’ skillsets mean that they struggle to be as active; and some characters are better at certain roles than others. As a result there are several characters who end up sat back using a Tri-shot, which is pretty generic. I don’t want to turn this into a “nerf JD” thread cos we have one of those. I think balancing characters is extremely difficult, so I don’t envy TC. The current Horde meta is very orientated around the same style and the same few characters.

The COG Gear is a character I don’t see very often, certainly not as an alternative medic. I think good players can definitely make it work very well in place of JACK, but this comes back to my point that good players can probably make any character seem viable,

#17

Jack can stunlock drones and scions. I think that is pretty amazing.

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#18

He can also do so with Stumps.

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#19

No, ■■■■ it. All chars should be nerfed. ■■■■ ppl having fun.

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#20

Jack is a flying box of glass which gets targetted the instant he decloaks. His primary usefullness is a mobile medic, with initial energy boost a nice early game benefit. Ability to takeover and blow up a damgerous enemy who maked it into the base is nice too.

Hijacking an enemy and running around, killing bad guys, that interferes with being a medical and can easily lead to wipes on higher levels.

I play jack a lot, I n master.

I also like cog, but he is not a replacement for jack. He is an addition / backup to jack.

Cog wouldnt be able to do much here, for example:

#21

Agreed. If they bring out some serious nerfs for all characters, I will consider coming out of retirement. The only buff I see any place for, is with Elite Drones. Up their rate of fire, movement speed or… something!

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#22

I know the perfect thing : Give them more damage and accuracy, they are absolutely lacking in that aspect.

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