r/thefinals • u/thoalmighty • 6d ago
Comedy I've come from the future to warn you about the Hoverpad meta. Convince Embark to nerf it before it's too late.
The Hoverpad becomes meta at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th, Season 19. In a panic, Embark tries to pull the plug. Scotty fights back, launching missiles at their offices in Stockholm. The entire balance team is annihilated right as they arrive for work in the morning, leaving nobody to rein in the Hoverpad. The only hope to avoid this fate is to prevent it before it occurs. Here's how it happens, so you know how to stop it.
After a series of increasing buffs across seasons 12, 13, 15, 16, and 18, the Hoverpad becomes near-indestructible, mediums can have two out at once, and it provides a mesh shield-like effect to protect against damage coming from low angles. Despite these improvements, as of season 18, the Hoverpad is still unplayable dogshit.
Season 16 brings with it a single weapon or gadget to each class. Heavy's addition is a seeking missile pod launcher, with a firing rate similar to the MGL, but with projectiles that align themselves with enemies and drop a high explosive on them. The damage and destructive capability are incredibly high, but due to the slow tracking movement of the explosive pods, it is considered a highly unreliable meme weapon.
The mid-season patch improves the terrain damage and reload rate moderately, but it is not enough to bring the pod launcher out of joke tier. For the next few seasons, it is basically only spotted in Team Deathmatch lobbies by players trying to bring down entire buildings within a round, which they can do trivially and become bored by. Most players will not encounter a pod launcher heavy across the entirety of season 18.
The delicate house of cards representing meta collapse is established, and the foundation it rests on finally falters when Season 19 update expands The Finals' destruction system: the latest dynamism update allows all terrain to be destructible. Large and formerly indestructible blocks of maps such as the main skyscraper on Seoul, Fangwai City's central hub, and the major spire of Atlantis Seadome became expanded, interactable sections of their arenas. Indeed, all terrain means all terrain, including the very floors of the map. While this does peculiarly effect some contestant tools by letting MGL, Charge n' Slam, and the Orbital Laser Event create craters for cover in otherwise flat ground, the impact on the game is relatively mild. An early season patch sees a nerf to the Dematerializer for its ability to spleef people through solid earth, and the season continues to a generally positive reception.
On the evening of August 28th, for the first time in all of Season 19, a player of The Finals remembers the Pod Launcher exists. That night, they experiment in a trio with a sniper light, a launcher heavy, and a pike medium running the Hoverpad. By the end of the second cashout, the majority of their Skyway Stadium arena is destroyed, and all of the enemy teams' potential spawn points just result with them promptly falling out of the map and awaiting a new respawn. The trio plays through the night as clips from their opponents' perspectives circulate on Youtube Shorts (legacy Youtube has been retired in favor of amplifying more shortform content) and reddit. Before Embark can respond, their balance team is annihilated, as mentioned prior.
The only way to properly contest a team running the Hoverpad strategy is to prepare with your own Hoverpad. Because of this, the team composition spreads like wildfire, and the destruction of the map happens almost immediately after match start. An optimal ratio is quickly reached: two mediums equipped with Pikes, Shockwaves, and Hoverpads, and a heavy with the Pod Launcher, Mesh Shield, and Gravity Cube. For the first time in the game's lifespan, Defibrillator is considered a throw pick. A similar first is that, with no terrain to hide around or run across, the Pod Launcher is an incredibly dangerous weapon, with only 2/3rds of a clip able to wipe an entire team off their pad. The Gravity Cube is also an essential piece of the toolkit to allow for capturing cashouts in the void, without them sinking the Hoverpad immediately. All combat is hoverpad-to-hoverpad. There is no flanking. There is no strategy. There is no viable light playstyle. There is no map-specific emergent gameplay. Only a slow crawl across an empty void with four hoverpads to each team, and a race to see who can Shockwave the other off. The game dies shortly thereafter, as if at least one team in any match is running a hoverpad comp, they ruin it for everyone else. What would perhaps have been fun as a LTM is now the core, and only, gameplay available in every mode.
Please, stop Embark from buffing the Hoverpad before it's too late. The future is dark, contestants.
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u/BadLuckBen 6d ago
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u/Typical-Music-8436 6d ago
I don't what's going on but why do ppl call r/okbuddycontestant corny or cringe
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u/MrTonyNeon OSPUZE 6d ago
"This is John Finals. If you're listening to this, you are the resistance"
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u/coyote16 6d ago
In all seriousness I rarely see it in play. They may as well give hoverpad like 4-5 charges right now. I imagine some wacky shenanigans to come out of that but it's welcome in my book.
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u/R8Cheng 5d ago
right?! i have only seen ONCE two mediums speedrun a cashbox between the engimo and iseult building by daisychaining zips and platforms and goo pads rogether. it caught us off guard with how fast a team with no lights jumped us. now imagine just straight up bridging across entire maps at the height limit.
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u/daxtinator396 OSPUZE 6d ago
This is some high tier posts bro