Roofer Madness wrote:Asha Starwind wrote:IMO increasing the damage wouldn't do much unless the buffed damage to 3k or something
- limited range
- steep firing arc
- slow projectile speed
- long reload
- lock-up after firing
- charge to fire
- 1-round magazine
- low reserve ammo
Trying to figure out how much to buff it's damage by would be the same thing as figuring out what shade of lipstick the pig is going to wear.
Well, given the known cons what could be addressed?
-limited range
This is fine. Not exactly meant to be super long range anyways.
-steep firing arc/projectile speed/charge to fire/1-round magazine
I would classify these as characteristics of the weapon and not necessarily problems.
-long reload
Fix the reload skill
-lock-up after firing
Doesn't happen if you sprint-cancel it out. I switch to my SMG quickly to finish off people. Still, the animations and workings of the Plasma Cannon really do need to work properly. Too buggy.
-low reserve ammo
I have the ammo skill maxed out and I don't really find this to be an issue. I also rock nice hives so meh.
In my opinion until the bugs are fixed we can never know the true power of this weapon. In true CCP fashion, what will most likely happen is they will buff it and fix the bugs and then it will be OP. I could see the splash radius being increased if the splash damage went down and I could see the direct hits being stronger, but not until the bugs are fixed.
What bugs are you referring to? It's my understanding that the post-firing lock-up is deliberate to try to prevent fast-swap tactics. From using the PLC for the past week, I haven't encountered any problems with it working from a technical standpoint- it just doesn't do enough damage to make it a remotely viable AV weapon.
IMO, due to its shotgun-like range requirement (on the AV weapon scale) and the extreme difficulty of hitting moving targets, it should have both the highest alpha and highest DPS of any AV weapon. The projectile is so slow that, from 50m, a situationally aware stationary nitro HAV can literally see the shot coming and have time to dodge it with a quick forward or backward boost.
For reference, a PRO SL puts out 517 base DPS with no rapid reload skill, proficiency, or damage mods.
To bring the PLC in line with the current PRO SL in terms of DPS, the PRO PLC should be doing at least ((.6*.75) + 3.5) * 517 = 2042 damage per shot.
I would argue that, due to the extreme range limitations and difficulty of landing shots in comparison to other light and heavy AV weapons, the PLC should be rewarded with an additional roughly 20% damage, brining the proto PLC's direct damage per shot up to 2400. Splash damage, of course, should remain unchanged, or even nerfed slightly to further focus the weapon on AV.