Flux Grenades + Mass Driver works pretty good for keeping enemies at bay. The mass driver however is really a situational weapon.

With the RR and CR running around, is it still a reasonable idea to begin running down the mass driver skill tree?

Situationally I always find myself above the enemy and able to easily shoot down upon them. With a forge gun I'm usually squealing in glee as I rack up kills, so would the mass driver be good, or will it just be beaten to death by the OP stick wielded by RR and CR users?

IMO when everyone and their mothers will be switching to scout suits in 1.8 we will see a revival of Mass Drivers.

IMO when everyone and their mothers will be switching to scout suits in 1.8 we will see a revival of Mass Drivers.

With Heavies with immune to it, and Assaults and Commandos resistant to it, I doubt it.

It's still a great weapon. I only have prof 1 in it and boy it wrecks people

I've been using it since closed beta and I still use it but if you haven't already spent a lot of SP on it, don't bother. This build is all about combat rifles, rail rifles, and tanks. Even with proficiency 4 I still struggle to get kills and every rail rifle and sniper targets you when they see you up high.

During one build, hit detection was crap and everyone decided to make the MD the FOTM. This lead to tears and eventually a big, unnecessary nerf. So now it's near worthless.

With Heavies with immune to it, and Assaults and Commandos resistant to it, I doubt it.

So? You can still flux them and use the MD's indirect fire capabilities to finish them off, occasionally. They can't run away.

I'm not saying that the MD will be good against every combination of suits and mods, and it does not have to be, but it will certainly find its niche.

Mcfurious is another bitter MD vet that I have known to use it for quite some time. I think that the current **** poor state has more to do with improvements in other styles than any direct MD nerf, but the thought remains the same....

Don't bother skilling into the mass driver. It is all I know how to use and would GLADLY take a respec out of it(at a 30% SP loss even).

Someone hasn't used the MD competitively I see. If you're bad to useless against half of the suits in the game, you're not viable competitively.

And Core Grenade > Flux because Rifle DPS is too high to take advantage to the Flux with the MD.

What would you think about a direct damage buff? I'd be ok with leaving the splash damage and radius where they are now if it had an extra 40 points (or more) direct damage across the board. That way you could still kill things with it but you'd have to actually hit people rather than relying on the splash.

It wrecks standard and advanced suits. It destroys the great unallocated masses. But try to kill a suit that isn't LOLSPEEDTANKED and you will die.

And then you will start camping on buildings like a ***** o the top of a roof(While I don't mind dieing so long as that it accomplishes something, the manner of deaths I have just related are almost entirely pointless- you barely even hurt people if you try to straight up them).

And then you will get destroyed by Rail Rifles that will make you find a hiding spot within your roof hiding spot... Or you will die.
Combat rifle somehow has the range to do this as well(Wasn't this supposed to be a SMG/AR hybrid?)

So you have two choices: Hide really well or die. It does kill equipment pretty well. Hiding and killing equipment is about as good as you are going to do.

Even at its peak, I only really saw two players dominate a game with the weapon... Regular Trooper and Kaughst. And they were REALLY good with it. Alldin kicked ass with it in Chromosome, but that isn't relaly relevant to this.

You have to trust me on this. I wouldn't be saying that it is dead unless it was 100% dead. I would still be using it if there was enough upside... I have to relearn the entire game now.

I don't camp roofs with it (or if I do it's like 1/27th the time)
The Mass Driver is definitely not a primary weapon though. Your primary is the sidearm. I call it a half weapon since it relies on how well you fare with your sidearm and well, I love my sidearm more than any other weapon so my Mass Driver is pretty effective in general.

Pop Pop Pop with the ScP
Switch
One round of the mass driver
*Lights victory cigar*

The thing I noticed now is that it can't compete in CQC like it used to. RR and CR and ScR will eat you alive. So I tend to be at a much longer range, like 80+meters and bombard when I come across long open stretches.

Flux Grenades + Mass Driver works pretty good for keeping enemies at bay. The mass driver however is really a situational weapon.

So far the mass driver has worked decently for my cheap "minmatar" commando set up. Like with the flaylock and plasma cannon, an increase in ammo both total and per mag, along with less drop, higher velocity, and proper sights would work magic for it.

Competitively? You mean that huge mess that is PC? No, I'm sorry, I stopped caring about that a while ago.

But really what would you want the MD to be capable of? Killing people no matter what suit or fitting they use in <2 seconds like the rifles do at the moment? That'd be 1-2 shots from a MD and you're dead. Does not sound like it'd be fun.

Of course you are going to lose if you attack a rifle user head on. The MD is a niche weapon, like the Laser Rifle, Shotgun and Plasma Cannon. What makes these weapons unique is that they are NOT useful in a "fair" fight. You have to pick your fights.

I'm not saying that the MD is good as it is, in fact I think that it needs some work, same as Laser Rifle and Plasma Cannon, and I think that rifles are a bit too effective in what they do. But at the same time I don't want the MD to be a kind of rifle that shoots explosive rounds and is useful in every situation.

The MD is infinitely more fun to use than a rifle and if you pick your fights it still is a decent weapon. I would never recommend people to not bother with a weapon they think is fun solely because at the moment there are better choices for competitive play.

tl;dr if you have fun with a weapon skill into it; stats are constantly changing; what is useless today might be FOTM 3 months form now