Operator balance suggestions:

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Finka

* Ability is no longer is global range, instead has maximum range of 20 meters.

* Nerf the recoil reduction from Adrenaline surge. atm it cuts your recoil by 2/3 or 3/4.. should be maximum of 1/2.

* Keep ress at 25hp, make ressed player make more noise to indicate being revived.

* limit ADS speed bonus from pistols to remove ADS spam abuse from shields. Right now its so fast that there is no way to even contest a blitz/monty ADSing.

* Keep overheal amount at 20.

* Echo/lesion/pulse interaction keep as is.

* Remove extra damage from Smoke's gas.

* duration reduced to 10 seconds, down from 20.

* Slightly reduce the ads/reload/lean buff from the adrenal surge.

Finka is very bloated operator in terms of what her ability does, yet she doesnt see much play in pro league due to how her ability doesnt make executes extrelemy unfair to defenders (like Lion+ying/glaz/blitz) and she can be extreme liability due to interaction with smoke, prolly the main reason you dont see her currently in almost any high level play, especially pro competitive. But if the smoke interaction is removed, she would become non-brainer pick if glaz/lion/ying/blitz are fixed.

After this she would still give:
* Flash duration reduction

* concussion reduction

* faster ADS, reload, lean

* 20hp overheal for 10sec execute.

* 20m remote ress

* recoil reduction

* barbed wire ignorance

She would be more geared towards execute buffer than do-kind-of-everything like she is currently. Her original implementation is confusing, she was made to be rushed and then for outbreak a healer was needed so some sort of healing was slapped on. I wouldnt be opposed to even removing her remote ress ability and make a proper attacking healer in upcoming seasons.

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Lion

Even tho the upcoming nerf makes him less broken, the whole design with global ability is bad for the game Everytime you press the button it has guaranteed effect. Even if you stand on mute jammer it limits your movement to that radius, it masks sounds, stops rotates, retakes etc. While it doesnt always lead to kills it always has an effect.

He isnt fun to play as/with/against nor is it really fun to watch gameplay with him in efffect (current pro league). He's just taking possibility of counterplay away from defenders.He doesnt have any real downsides for using the EE-ONE-D either. Dokkaebi at least has to stop and use her tablet for 2 seconds to initiate her call, echo has to sit on his drone to deny plants etc. All lion does is raise his arm to call it. He doesnt even need to be the one going in to capitalize on it, he could very well be droning from spawn and just calling it in and have teammates do their jobs since everyone will see the outlines if enemy moves. If he was only one seeing outlines he would be at least required to be present to pose a threat.


He should be reworked more to the original concept with special drone that you have to put into position to scan area and even then it should not be outlines, it should at max be Icons like Caveira has. In the meantime following nerf would be good:

* Lion is the only one to see the spotted enemies.

Once he is reworked, do not use outlines, use operator icons like Caveira's interrogation.

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Ela

* Remove Turnrate cap "sensitivity/DPI cap" from her Grzmot mines.

* Give the mines slight trigger time(0.1-0.2 sec) so badly placed mines can be peeked and shot, forcing more skill on Ela's part while still giving advantage for good placement or well timed peek.

* Give her old recoil back

* Reduce magazine size to 30 bullets.

Ela was way overtuned when she was introduced, but the nerfs applied to her were IMO wrong ones. Her problem was two fold: Overperforming gun, easy-to-use gadget with no counterplay other than using EMP/twitch drone to zap them.(unless the Grzmot placement was abysmal) And obviously being selfsufficient 3 speed with impacts was a great thing too. The gun nerfs were bad. Instead of adressing the elephant in the room that was her magazine size and damage(combined with ROF) the recoil was made awful and later damage was nerfed too.
The damage nerf is good thing because of how good TTK the weapon had, but having bad recoil just makes getting kills more RNG than skill when the pattern is all over the place.

Her mine's duration was nerfed but again the main complaint was not adressed: the sensitivity/turn rate limit caused by the Grzmot mines. Another part of the mines that make them frustrating/unfun to play against is that they are only traps in the game that
cannot be shot directly from the entrance you are going in from. Gu-mines, EDD and Welcome mat can all be shot upon entering as long as you know they are there, however even poorly placed Grzmots cannot be shot unless their placement is utter trash. This could be fixed withadding a slight 0.1-0.2 sec delay from trigger to explosion. This would hopefully make it so you could enter and shoot(prefire) poorly placed Grzmots, however you would still be exposed when you did this as you would have to turn to look at ceiling/where ever the mine is laid. This in turn would increase the skill floor for placing Grzmots for Ela as people could just shoot poorly placed/unguarded mines.

In case if these changes somehow make her feel underpowered you can always bring her impacts back so she becomes solid choice for roaming again instead of people defaulting to Vigil.

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Zofia

* Remove turnrate cap from concussion grenades.

* Reduce the number of concussion grenades by 1 or 2.

** Possibly remove Withstand. While it isnt often useful or even something you can pull off, its another layer of powercreep.

Turnrate cap isnt fun mechanic, especially considering the Concussion nades are proximity triggered. Also zofia has too many of the concussion grenades so she doesnt really need to make too smart use of them. You can spam 2 into ADS and not care. Or if you want to deny bandit juggling
You can just spam the concussions in rapid succession instead of pacing them out as you dont really need to optimize their usage. And if you optimize then you still have 2 more concussions remanining after denying bandit. Removing 1 or 2 concussion grenades would force bit more decision making on Zofia's part.

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Glaz

* Give Glaz Two(2) special smoke grenades he can see through with his scope and make him unable to see through regular ones. Make the smoke from these grenades indentifiable by color much like Smoke's gas.
This is to prevent teams from stacking smokes to extend his window of opportunity to take unfair fights.

* Glaz no longer can penetrate/destroy Castle Barricades by shooting.

Glaz' current thermal scope gives him extreme advantage with smoke grenades that can be extended by having more operators with smoke grenades like Ying or Blitz in current meta, montagne, ash, thermite previously. Re-shuffling the smokes around is just applying bandage to the real problem. Either Glaz should lose his
Ability to see through smokes alltogether or he needs to get special smokes for himself so his window for this extreme advantage is kept in check. Making the smokes identifiable via colour/shade would let defenders know they prolly should not challenge those smokes or risk the extreme disadvantage, but it would also allow glaz
to bluff defense with them.

This second nerf is basically removing old relic that was implemented as "buff" back in Year 1 before rework. Its minor buff to Castle and removes cheesy way to abuse those barricades.

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jaeger

* Make ADS zap all 6 xkairos pellets with one charge. This allows jager to protect mira windows, castle barricades and on-site cover from hibana and waste normal amount of utility from attackers.

ADS currently cannot do its job because hibana can just dumbfire throught the room and burns possibly all 3 ADSes.even if they arent stacked next to each other.

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hibana

* X-kairos barrage gets zapped by one charge from ADS.

* Bearing-9: reduce mag size from 25 to 20.

X-kairos counters so many things right now, Mira, jaeger, can even counter bandit tricking to an extent if put between 2 reinforcements. Great for opening hatches, exposing cover, blowing up barricades etc from safe distance, only really countered by bandit as one pellet is enough to do the damage. As far as I understand the engine
doesnt really support differnt kind of destruction model for many of these things so she needs more counters. She also has 3 flashbans available unless want claymore, to clear those ADSes on her own.

Bearing-9 out performing SMG-11 shouldnt really be a surprise when you look at numbers. SMG-11, while having lower TTK due to higher ROF, has a lot smaller magazine which means its far more punishing to miss shots and you cannot waste your ammo prefiring everything like you can with Bearing-9. The downside of this nerf is that it
will affect Echo slightly, tho Echo is generally played with MP5 so its not nerf to his primary gun.

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Fuze

* Make him 2speed 2 armor when shield is not equipped. Alternatively make him 2/2 and remove shield as it doesn't have anything to do with his ability unlike monty and blitz.

* Fuze no longer can use his cluster charge on a Castle Barricade.

Changing Fuze to 2/2 would make him bit more versatile operator as he isnt so slow anymore. He'd still be a niché operator because how limited his gadget is. Making his gadget deployable over reinforced walls without rappeling could be one way to make it less niché but not sure how you would go about doing that.
His gadget also has nothing to do with him having a shield and the shield is main reason he currently is 1 speed. So either make him like recruit where with shield he is 1 speed or remove shield and make him 2/2.

The second change is more about making castle easier and more viable in low level play. In high level play you less-often see castle barricades on windows that you can easily fuze, and picking fuze specifically because of it is even more rare so this change's impact on high level play would be minimal.
If the cluster charge is made easier to use over reinforcements this would be fine trade-off.

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Ying

* Make Candela mini-flashes consistent pattern.

* Nerf Ying's candela immunity to just resistance. You should get full flash but with reduced duration due to her goggles.

Ying is another operator who currently has extreme advantage by being immune to her own candelas. While its not always used to run straight into one popping around her, it happens very of then that you chain 2 or even 3 candelas while pushing through all of them. While making the ADS->xkairos function change it
could end up somewhat nerfing the amount of candelas ending up deployed successfully. However the candelas alone without complete immunity would already be rather strong abilities to blind off enemies. Having slight resistance to the flashes would leave Ying bit leeway with flashes so even if they werent perfect it wouldnt be completely wasted.
The candela flashes also need to be made consistent, so you can rely on them flashing at least the immediate area they are deployed to.

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Castle

* Refer to Glaz and Fuze changes

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Blitz

* Revert armor/speed change. Back to 3 Armor 1 Speed.

Blitz never needed much buffs, mainly fixes but he received both over time and currently is almost un-dealable in 1v1. He can hide his hand while closing the distance spriting, and can just spam crouch to hide the feet making him pretty much impossible to hit while approaching. If you turn your back, he can just ADS and 3 tap you unless you are 3 armor.
The other 2 factors to nerf blitz are C4 resistance and pistol damage values that are explained further down.

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Echo

* Buff MP5SD6 recoil to offset the Bearing-9 mag nerf.

* Fix / change how Yokai attachs itself into the ceiling or allow camera to tilt 90 degrees so you can actually see what is above you.

Echo's big issue is the drone's ability to stick to surfaces. Either you need to be able to see 90 degrees up to check if its flat surface, or the drone have to be able to ignore small ledges when docking. Otherwise you are limited to having yokai pre-placed to intercept plant, making him much less versatile operator.



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Shiels in general.

reduce explosive resistance to C4s. There is no reason that a montagne should be able to tank 5 C4s that are literally under his feet just by facing them. Bring back little bit of the skill required to avoid / bait C4s. Impact grenade direct damage should stay as is cuz those are far easier to hit on the shields.

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Pistols

The new recoil animation made them far more useable, there was no need to buff the damage of them. Blitz and montagne can 3 shot 1 and 2 armor operators. Fuze and recruit shields can even 2 shot. Nerf pistol damages across the board. There is no reason a pistol's dps should be higher than some of the main weapons such as T-95.

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Barbed Wire

Increase the level of sound walking through the wire makes.

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