Just picked the game up yesterday, and I've put in several hours of time, almost exclusively on Hunter. So far I've really enjoyed the experience, but the discrepancy in power between Hunters and Scavengers is pretty staggering. Now obviously I'm not as experienced as other players, but I'm no stranger to FPS games or PvP experiences, so even without a deeper understanding to the gameplay it's pretty obvious just how mismatched the two are.

The mobility kit of the Scavengers is fun and extremely powerful when utilized correctly. This much is obvious and is a main draw to the experience of the game, so I don't think altering it in a major way would be a good choice.

However, when coupled with the incredibly powerful perks and interactive toolkits the Scavengers have, a decent group of randoms with comparable skill level to the Hunter can function pretty damn well, and a well coordinated group is almost completely unstoppable.

So here I'll propose a few moderate changes to Hunters, Scavengers, and the general play loop, as well as reasons as to why I think they should be changed.

Hunter

• Allow Hunter to Sprint while reloading. A chasing Hunter against even a halfway decent Scavenger will almost certainly expend most of both their clips unless they're a Poacher. In a game with such a focus on mobility, the slowdown from reloading your weapon is such a detriment that against most Scavengers you may as well just call off the chase. This change would allow Hunters to at least continue pursuit in most scenarios.

• Show downed players for a period of time corresponding to their carried blood. I'm hesitant to straight up suggest that downed players are highlighted at all times since it's clearly an aspect of encounters, but with the ragdoll launches and the Scavengers blending into the dense foliage and color pallete, I'd argue that it's a fair bit excessive in just how rough it can be to track down a Scav you managed to polish off from more than a few meters. This change would at least let you close the distance on players who were toting around blood from a distance, without completely removing the aspect of searching them out.

• Allow stuns (melee) to be used midair. Stuns require you to be completely planted on the ground to utilize, which makes air-bombing blood banks nearly worthless, as the Scavs will hear you coming and react before you have a chance to actually land. Additionally, there are some times where uneven terrain or small drops will prevent the use of the stun in a critical situation and prevent you from finishing off a Scav. This change would allow for surprise fly-bys to be more effective and increase the reliability of the move in general.

• Give Hunters a slightly larger mantle window. Obviously Hunters shouldn't be as mobile as Scavengers, but requiring use of your Alt to get over moderate ledges can be extremely detrimental. As the game is procedurally generated, there are times where un-seen pits will force you to do rings around the edge with your Alt in order to escape, as simply going from one end to the other isn't enough distance to hit the mantle window. I think that to balance this change, mantling from greater distances is slower, so it's not so effective to continue a chase (allowing Scavs to still use cliffs to their advantage) but at least allows for quicker escapes from moderate elevation changes, as opposed to forcing Hunters to sit in a pit like a fool while their Alt recharges.

Scavenger

• Remove or reduce passive health gain rate and cap to 1 bar. This is probably the most drastic change I'll suggest, but one I feel is the most important. Giving Scavengers good mobility restorative / protective abilities natural passive health regen is just overkill. It completely decentivizes the need to gather HP crates (closing off a tracking method for Hunters) and essentially forces Hunters to kill in a single encounter. This change would make sloppy escapes more taxing, and further encourage closer teamplay.

• Change all healing to HoT as opposed to instant. This would go in tandem with the above change to make escaping and healing a bit more difficult, but not hamper its overall effectiveness. This would mostly counter Scavengers simply juking to a health crate and instantly popping back to full with no repercussions.

• Slightly reduce wall latch time. This maneuver is a bit odd with uneven geometry and its general purpose use. It is possible to chain wall latches on certain sloped surfaces indefinitely, and the length of time it allows is already quite large. This shouldn't be a massive change, but just one to slightly tone it down. Around 20-25% reduction I suggest.

• Reduce effectiveness of ranged revives. This one is also rather drastic, but I still think it should be done given how easy it is to do. Ranged revives should only revive Scavengers with one health bar as opposed to 2, so that Scavengers can't just negate Executions from range with only a small downside. This would at least allow a Hunter to re-capture a Scavenger if the team doesn't follow up on the revive instead of just getting them for free.

• Add damage falloff to Scavenger bolts. I'm not entirely sure if this already exists as my playtime with Scavenger is limited due to the disparity in queue times, but if not it should be. It is far too easy to snipe drones or turrets from far away with very little threat to your own cover. As a Hunter it IS easy to notice it happening, and if foliage is nice to you, you can even see what angle the bolts are coming from, but even with that information it's extremely difficult to utilize it against Scavengers who are mid-long range out, as they can instantly reposition after the drone's destruction with a wide angle of possibility.

Gameplay

• Change total "exit" number based on blood banked. A major point of contention I've noticed so far is how, quite frankly, unnecessary it is to actually complete objectives. I suggest that at <60% blood, only one exit will open. At >60% two will open, and at 100% all three will open. This will at least make it more difficult for players to just fan out and wait out the clock, which seems to be the chosen strategy for most players.

• Prevent downed or ragdolled players from using exits immediately. This is one that quite frankly I think is ridiculous. Scavs don't really need to be cautious approaching an exit, since if they just aim in the general direction of it, they can get killed midair and their limp ragdoll will still flop into the exit and they escape. I do think it's cool for a narrow escape while downed, so I suggest that for downed players (not ragdolled) there is a moderate window of time before they can actually escape. 3-5 seconds would be appropriate, so that if they have good distance they can still escape the Hunter before the distance is closed.

• Add a small window of time to exit while a Hunter is nearby. I've seen it happen to other players, and been on the receiving end of it myself, but getting bullied at the extraction is awful. Given how easy it is for Scavengers to just crawl, ragdoll, or dodge roll with DR into the exit, there is, once again, no real peril to approaching an exit. I suggest that while a Hunter is within range of an exit, Scavengers must stay on the pad for ~3 seconds before they are teleported out. This would mitigate bullying of newer players and slightly urge cocky players to lay off it a bit. As far as "in-range" goes, I would suggest a ring of maybe 3 meters around the exit, similar to the donation range on blood banks. So at least players won't get instantly stuffed if a flying Hunter manages to get within eyesight of the exit.

Overall I feel the power given to Scavengers is a bit too lenient, and there isn't really any peril to Hunter encounters if you know how to juke and use your skills even moderately well. These changes, I feel, would at least punish overly aggressive play and make avoiding the Hunter more important.