1. only make it overheat when ACTUALLY repairing stuff. often enough, the allied vehicle/max you're repairing moves away a bit and if you still hold down left-click your repair tool is overheating even though it's not even repairing! 2. give us a proper visual indication of the overheating on the tool itself (as well as a sound maybe). that little red hud bar in the lower right corner just isn't enough. we need something like smoke coming out of the repair tool or the tip glowing burning red to warn us about the overheating 3. occasional bugs are still present: like the repair tool suddenly losing connection to the vehicle that's being repaired. or the repair tool stopping to repair a max if the latter changes loadouts at a terminal 4. (optional) make the repair beam omnidirectional (just like the medicgun beam) so that it doesn't interrupt when the engineer watches around
#1) If you are holding the trigger, you are shooting nanites, so it overheats. #2) Enable centralized HUD in the options, you will then have bars in the middle of your screen where you can see them. #3) Aim at center of the vehicle, this is working as intended and has been tweaked in the past. #4) I would vote for making the medic gun work like the repair gun, not buffing the repair gun.
1) no, it doesn't. there is no beam or animation, unlike when repairing. so it overheats unnecessarily 2) no, why should i be required to look at the hud at all? i want to focus on whats around me. thats like saying "check the minimap" when an enemy is right in front of you 3) true, it used to be worse. it still isn't fully fixed though 4) what the hell? you know this would totally ruin medic gameplay right? simple healing would become a chore when the beam disrupts everytime someone runs outside of your field of view (which happens almost always because wounded people have a tendency to run around wildly in order to not get hit ... guess you never play medic?)
Same with medigun healing when someone changes class. Medigun was buffed many times since beta, originally it didn't even stick its beam to healed/ressed person, it was so annoying. People move around, through other people, move behind you, etc. We certainly don't need nerf for the tools. Have you tried to play Natural Selection2? There is a repair tool that works very similar to PS2 beta tools, guess what? Unless you're using Exo suit, nobody will even try to refill your armor [in combat] because it's freaking tedious and inefficient job.
What I meant by make medic tool like repair tool is that it should have a heat bar and have to aim at your targets. I cant tell you how many time I would go to heal someone and my beam decide it wants to heal some guy 90º to my left instead.. It seems silly that you can put 2 medics behind a resit heavy and just hold mouse 1 forever, but cant do it with a repair gun... #1) Yes it does, it counts it as infantry shots fired and missed. #2) because that is what HUD is for... just like you check your hud for your HP and bullets.. #4) If you are healing someone and they run from you, then the beam should break just like when a max walks off.
If you mean, aim to stick the beam, then it's actually QoL improvement. But if w/o sticking the beam, then it's huge nerf, it worked like that and it was horrible, that simply doesn't work in game where people can move through each other. Heat mechanic for healing... does anyone even abuses that? I hardly even see medics who try to outheal possible incoming damage after rezzing . Repair gun got very deserved nerf back in beta, that's for sure.
Or we could just remove the heat mechanic, like the Medic Gun has... When I first tried medic after a long stint playing engi, I was like "WHAT SORCERY IS THIS?!?! NO OVERHEAT?" And since medic guns are infinitely more valuable and game changing than repair gun, I don't see what the problem is. Or at least remove the heat mechanic for the last level of repair tool.
Heat mechanic was added because Repair tool was too strong. They could nerf repair speed and it would be worse, you would spend way more time repairing, staring at the repair indicator.
Agree with all of this, particularily number 1. It is incredibly annoying how overheating happens not because you are actually repairing something, but just because you are holding LMB. Quite frankly it feels like a case of rushed coding, although I can't quite put my hand of that obviously. However, I should point out that number 4 is partially done now, smaller vehicles can be repaired while looking around as long as you're close enough. This was a side effect of a repair range detection change that increased the repair range for all vehicles due to it no longer being calculated from the exact center of vehicles in a fixed radius (particularily noticeable with Galaxies and Liberators).
I would be fine if they nerfed the repair rate, and removed the heat mechanic, but kept the Rate or Repair For instance, now it is like this: (Example numbers) Current setup: 30 seconds of repair @ 5 HP per seconds = 150 HP/S + 5 second cooldown= 35 seconds to repair 150 HP Possible setup: 35 seconds of repair @ 4.2857 HP per second = 35 seconds to repair 149.9995 HP That way, you would eliminate the cooldown everyone hates, but keep it just as effective.
As a very dedicated Engineer, I can attest that I have no problem with the heat mechanic. I refute your claim about the HUD not being enough but an animation QoL wouldn't be unwelcomed. Minor visual glitch only, fortunately. The circular visual that reports on the condition of the target vanishes, but you're still repairing the target and get credit for it. Re-press M1 to bring it back up. It already is to some extent, but you still need to be more or less facing the target Not perfectly looking at it but it needs to be there, before you. There's only a certain radius in which you can turn completely around, looking away from the target, yet still repair it.
