Board Thread:Suggestions/@comment-29781728-20170115145633

Everyone knows Brutes are weak. Sure, you may die to them every now and then and complain about them being "overpowered" and that they actually need a nerf, but 9/10 cases, they don't do anything. They spawn, someone notices them, and they can't do anything.

In R2D, a good tank could rock down an entire team. This helped with the fact that it needed to be close up to do most of its damage. The rocks travelled extremely quickly, but also flew at a strange angle from the tank when thrown, which meant you had to compensate for this.

Brutes on the other hand have a pretty slow moving club. On paper, they seem pretty strong, but at their speed they aren't going to get close enough to a survivor to actually stun them. Hitting the club is quite hard as well, unless the survivor isn't moving. It's just too slow.

Also, the Brute has a glaring weakness that probably shouldn't be there. For example, being vulnerable to stuns. Seriously? You can literally stunlock the most powerful enemy in the game. That's ridiculous. You can also in certain cases kick him off the map, which absolutely should not be there.

Finally, the shield is useless. Basically completely useless. It can only protect you against pipebombs and grenades. Anywhere else, it's useless. You stand still while shielding while five survivors point their AK47s at you. After a few seconds, you're dead. It just prolongs your life for a couple seconds. That's it. It's like a worse Cryo Freeze.

To summarize this:

Brutes are strong at close range, but due to their size and speed, will never get to close range except in rare cases. Their ranged attack which is supposed to compensate for this is basically useless at most ranges, especially far range. It's weak to stuns, leaving it open to be kicked once and mowed down. Finally, one of its abilities is useless.

How do we remedy this?

We DO NOT remove the Brute limit, as Place recently said he might do. RAISE the Brute limit to 2 or 3. Two is probably good enough.

Buff the Brute walkspeed to a normal zombie's walkspeed.

Grant the Brute stun invulnerability.

Up the HP to 1,500.

Finally, allow the Brute to shield while walking. Perhaps make him slow down to his normal walkspeed if he does this, and double stamina loss from the shield.

This would allow him to safely traverse open area and get into cover to slowly close the gap with survivors, which is currently basically the only way to get close to them.

These changes would let the Brute do what he's supposed to do - tear up enemies at close range like every other zombie. The club throw would stay the same to compensate for the new playstyle these buffs would bring in.

I do have to acknowledge that Brutes are good on certain maps (NoMercy, Last Harvest) mainly because you can't see them coming easily. Once you see who the Brute player is, you just have to remember that name and you can see the Brute coming from a mile away on most maps, so if all these buffs aren't strong enough, perhaps adding no name tag to the Brute is a good idea. 