OgTheEnigma
The Rainbow Effect
183
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Posted - 2014.05.16 21:51:00 -
[1] - Quote
I'm primarily a Scrambler Rifle user and my suggestions on how to improve it are related to how the overheat mechanics work. Previously, my main fitting combined a shield tanked Caldari Assault with the Scrambler rifle, which I was generally quite successful with. The damage nerf to guns in 1.8 made my original fitting fairly redundant and forced me to switch to Amarr Assault to still be viable with the Scrambler. My opinions in this post are mainly in relation to using the gun with level 5 Amarr Assault in the current build.
First of all, 'heat buildup to damage ratio' (for lack of a better term) is heavily weighted to making to making uncharged shots much more efficient in terms of the damage produced before overheating. Right now the gun is perhaps too easy to spam hipfire shots at close range. Personally I feel that lowering the accuracy would make the Scrambler much less fun and satisfying to use, so instead, my proposal in this area is to increase the heat buildup of uncharged shots. I don't want to over-nerf the gun at close range either, so I believe an uncharged shot heat increase in the region of 10% to 20% would be acceptable. This may be anecdotal, but currently most of the hatemail I receive on the ground is from people I killed at close range with rapid fire shots (I definitely don't use a turbo controller :p).
Naturally, the other two kinds of shots that the Scrambler can produce are partially charged and fully charged, which I will address now:
Fully charged shots, in my opinion, are the most balanced mode of the Scrambler in relation to heat buildup. Currently with the Amarr Assault, I can follow up 3 or 4 max charge shots, with a second or so delay between each shot as I line them up (not including the time taken to charge up). As this is the most alpha damage attack method with the gun, I primarily use it at medium to long range whilst popping in and out of cover if I'm under fire. It works great against low ehp scouts, but struggles a lot against armour tanked mediums and heavys. Overall I feel that the fully charged shot is in a good place, not too overpowered (except maybe against scouts) and produces a very viable combat strategy over medium range. I believe the fully charge shot is best when you have plenty of time and space to line up shots and is great for getting a surprise kill on enemies who are already wounded. The heat buildup is large enough to prevent overuse of the full charge so I don't think it needs to be altered in any way.
Partially charged shots are where my main concern lies. Right now, this is the one firing method which causes me to overheat more than anything else. I believe this firing method takes the most skill to continuously hit enemies with, but the overheat drawback is way too high. If the overheat penalty of partially charged shots is reduced then I believe it will reward skilful play better and make the using the Scrambler more attractive in its role as a medium range weapon, especially if combined with increased heat buildup of uncharged shots. I'd even advocated raising the overheat of fully charged shots to compensate for reduced overheat of partially charged ones. This may even introduce a risk/reward element where it's best to fire a fraction of a second just before fully charging, but this of course requires a certain amount of timing and skill to pull off consistently. It would also reduce the attractiveness of holding on to a fully charged shot for a period of time without firing (which some people have complained about being OP in the past).
Finally I think it would be a good idea to reduce laser weaponry heat buildup on non-Amarr Assault dropsuits. Currently the Amarr Assault gets a 25% heat reduction at max level. This should be changed to 10% max (at 2% per level). I'm not proposing to nerf the Amarr Assault in any way, but to buff the baseline heat reduction so that a 10% bonus will be equivalent to the current 25% bonus. This will go a long way to making the Scrambler viable on other dropsuits, but still providing a nice racial bonus for people wanting to max out the weapon.
Well I'm done. Sorry if it sounds like a bit of a ramble, but I absolutely love the Scrambler Rifle, perhaps more than any other gun in dozens of other FPSs I've played. I only want to see the best for it, without the weapon becoming too weak or too powerful (I have a strange sense of pride over how its the most niche primary rifle in Dust). I do want to emphasise the alterations I suggested to partially charged shots; it's the single area of the gun I feel needs the most improvement. Hopefully a few people are interested in what I've got to say and I welcome any criticism or alterations to my suggestions. |