Leon is the counter character to Yuri. It just sucks that Leon is in EVERY game played...ever. That's why Yuri is terrible. Without Leon in the game, Yuri is fairly awesome.

I feel this way 100% of the time with Yuri as well. I generally play random because all of the awesomenauts other than Yuri can be super powerful. Yuri just always feels weak.

His laser makes him immobile, which when combined with his small health pool and lack of decent healing, makes him about the easiest kill in the game for clunk, leon and froggy G.

His aura is both ridiculously small and ridiculously short lasting without both upgrades which then only gives him the ability to take a crappy heal, or one of his two useful upgrades. Not much value for the price of the aura upgrades.

The mines are decent, but they really should last a lot longer as Yuri has literally nothing else going for him....

ITT: 99% of the people here don't even know how to play let alone know what is balanced.

No offence.

I think you're exaggerating. I agree that oftentimes, people think everything they're losing to is OP/broken, and everything their character does needs to be buffed, but I think that some valid points have been raised here.
Voltar, as he is, has the edge over most other characters, and Yuri's aura is pretty useless. Otherwise, I would argue the game is really balanced and needs only a few minor changes; I would even say that all the other characters are almost perfectly balanced.

I would like to take this opportunity to say a lot of the game is majorly balanced. There's a few hitbox problems (Clunk's explosion radius not matching the outline; Froggy G's splash dash hitting way higher than it should) but the majority of the game is very, very well balanced. As a Leon, I've had issues battling every character, and even skilled Yuri players can give me some trouble.

I'd like to pre-thank Ronimo Games, though, for not pulling a Blizzard and cycling nerfs from character to character. Each character is really dangerous with the right upgrades. Maybe a few tweeks to upgrade costs, or lengths of debuffs, but no outright 180 degree changes.

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Gamertag: Auburok
Steam: Auburok

Played tonight as Lonestar for once; easily the most balanced-feeling character. It helps that his dynamite require a little finesse to grab some of the crazier kills. Someone recommended a rough build-order that was most-importantly "do not neglect the gun", and that really turned around my win-percentage with him. So thanks to whomever that was.

I'm a bit hesitant to talk about balance of a game so early. My history is in the fighting game scene, and several games have recieved patches way too early before people could figure out how to fight a particular character (MK9, MVC3), in the end they got nerfed AND people figured out how to fight them, greatly reducing their usefulness. I think as a whole the game is fairly balanced, but atm a few tweeks could be made to certain characters.

Lonestar
Overall I think Lonestar is probably the most balanced character in the game, his bull is a great utility tool and his dynamite delivers a decent enough burst damage for him to harass enemy teams and turrets. If I were to make any changes, it would be the starting position of the bull. At the moment the bull starts just infront of Lonestar and will not push enemies who are point blank, leaving him with littlle options to deal with with the upclose and personal characters, particularly Leon.

Froggy G
Another character I think is fairly well balanced, he was clearly designed for hit and run; but the 'run' part of his gameplay appears to be a bit too much since the invincibilty frames on his splash dash essentially act as a get out of jail free card. With both the cooldown upgrades he can harass people that are chasing him down and still get away without consequence due to the stun and invicibility. Just something to think about, but otherwise a very solidly designed character.

Leon
I think Leon is probably the best in the game, but it is very early days. I have one main problem with leon, which is the damage he is able to dish out on turrets and the core. No other character in the game can tear through a turret so quickly on their own, it seems rather unfair for him to be able to do this considering his anti-character abilities also, with this he excels at too much. I think his combat abilities are something we should rest on when it comes to nerfs and buffs, they seem very overwhelming at the moment but it is definitely something we need to figure out how deal with.

Clunk
I dont have much to say about Clunk, I think he is fairly balanced and does not require any changes. I'm almost certain the whole 'getting hit out of the explosion range' is due to lag.

Voltar
To keep it short and sweet, I think his drones dish out far too much damage once upgraded. He becomes a one man army once they're dealing 10 damage ever shot and are firing faster than usual. It becomes very hard to take Voltar out since he's the only character that can run away and constantly damage you, you have to take some major risks in chasing him down. It's not very hard for him to get his drones fully upgraded either since he gains solar at such an alarming rate (which I think is fine).

Yuri
To me, this character is an enigma. I have varying success with him and I'm still not 100% sure on how I want to play him. I think he is the weakest of all the characters when it comes to playing within a solid role on the team, but he only needs some minor tweeks to compete with the rest of the cast. His mines are a great tool and deny a lot of space, which is great for keeping out the enemy team... that is unless they have Lonestar or Froggy G. Lonestar's bull and Froggy's splash dash nullify them completely, the strongest part of his defensive game becomes irrelevant since they can destroy his mines with very little consequence. His warp needs to not have that pause when it starts up, but other than that I think it becomes a pretty good tool once it's upgraded. With the duration increase and both health upgrades he can support a team fairly well. As for his laser, I'm not entirely sure to be honest. The slowing effect upgrade doesn't seem nearly strong enough, but I haven't tried stacking both of them yet. Overall I think Yuri's upgrades are slightly too expensive, he starts off incredibly slow in the solar race and late game the rewards are not great enough since the enemy will have most likely pushed into your base. Paired with the fact he has very little comeback factor and that his mines can be destroyed with ease by Lonestar and FG makes me think this is a bit of a problem.

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I KNEW YOU WOULD BUBBLE WHEN YOU DROPPED IN,
SO CARRY ME NOW,
YOU SPED ME TO PACES I'D NEVER SEEN,
NOW THEY'RE DYING TO MINES ON THE GROUND,
OOH, AAH, OOH, AAH, OOH,
BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE

I'd agree that Voltar's solar-gaining expertise isn't a huge issue if it weren't for symptoms of this very problem, e.g. his drones dealing way too much damage. See, it's already pretty expensive for Voltar to invest in that damage, but when you're going on 1000 Solar up from everyone, you're not going to be held back by measly costs. We wouldn't be dealing with super-charged drones if we weren't dealing with super-charged Voltars.

With that, doesn't it just seem unfair that Voltar is always above everyone else in level almost ubiquitously, despite individual player success? In a game I played last night, Clunk (sokoto) went 11-0. Voltar (Pandemic) by contrast went 0-3, but he still out-leveled Clunk. That seems crazy. I understand discrepancies in builds and playstyle, but it seems like kills minus deaths should be a good indicator of solar gain.

To be fair, that was one of the two points that CREATED this thread...

What's REALLY sad is that a) he doesn't have his healing upgraded AT ALL (+7 is base) and b) his damage is only at level 2 out of 3... He can do MORE damage...

Edit: Volar and Leon reach the base at 12:18. The base dies at 12:29.

Granted, they are ridiculously high level, but you can reach to that damage output a LOT earlier... Kind of insane.