Appia Vibbia
Molon Labe.
General Tso's Alliance
2721
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Posted - 2014.06.02 15:52:00 -
[1] - Quote
Jaysyn Larrisen wrote:Issue:
With the impending changes in Hotfix Alpha to grenades having a significantly increase tiering in Locus variant damage and nanite resupply cost this has brought up a parallel discussion on REs due to how both are employed and their relative combat effectiveness.
Discussion:
1) Tiering the locus damage will incentivize SP investment to maintain lethality.
2) This may have the effect of increasing the use of Flux or Fused nades
3) Nades have had their base ammo reduced to 2x and REs can carry 3 to 4
4) There is a high CPU/PG cost for proto hades that may well deter the usage based on the benefit
5) REs have become at least as prevalent in usage as the Core Locus used to be which triggered much of the concern over grenade spam due to lower CPU/PG cost for significantly increased lethality at lower tiers and multiple employment tactics.
6) REs can be thrown fairly well, particularly if you have a height advantage.
7) If the base number of available REs is higher than grenades you begin to establish a situation where it will limit ability to clear objectives prior to hacking
8) If resupply of grenades is further restricted (removed or limited to supply depots only) in the future this will exacerbate the disparity between the two equipment types.
9) Locus grenades have become somewhat devalued not only by RE usage increase but with the increasing number of players using Heavy suits with significant resistances and eHP or even well tanked scouts (above the damage threshold that even a Core Locus can deliver),.
Recommendations:
a) Level the amount of carried equipment and resupply rates between grenades and REs. Recommend 1 / Standard and 2 at Advanced & Proto for both and keep the nanite cost and any future resupply constraints the same.
b) Lower CPU / PG cost for grenades and REs by 15% or allow additional reductions in resource cost with SP investment to maintain incentive to use proto gear
c) If future Dust balance iterations indicate that resupply should not be allowed for grenades or REs then increase the damage noticeable to increase the criticality of employing the weapon.
d) Consider adding some minor level of armor damage to flux grenades to increase the utility of flux grenades.
1) If DUST were to keep the tiers and remove the skill level requirement for items (e.g. Grenadier I gave you access to all grenades) then the tiered damage would make sense. But the numbers don't incentivize spending SP on the skill, but rather they make the disparity in SP more noticeable.
2) Flux grenades are, and should be, the grenade of choice in matches with Friendly Fire turned on. It took most of the PC crowd a very, very long time to realize that locus grenades get you more "-50 Team Kill" than "+50 Kill" displays. Zatara Rought has still killed me with more blue grenades than he has as an enemy and we haven't been corp mates for 7 months.
With AV grenades being buffed FF matches should be favoring AV and Flux over Locus. And with the Core being buffed by 50HP in pub matches it's just going to be spammed more.
3) I can only carry 1 cloak, but I can carry 2-9 nanohives.
4)That is how all modules should be. It's a minor improvement for a steep increase in fitting cost. STD should cost Y. ADV should cost Y+X, and PRO should cost Y+3X. That's very general concept and in actuality the cost comes close but none have those number specifically but it's pretty close.
5) This is a problem with the fuse time, Pretty sure "Lock on time" is the name of the category it falls in. The REs have a lock on time of 1 second and a reload time of 1 second. Lowering the reload time to 0.8 seconds would greatly increase it's use for deploying them on tanks. While increasing the lock on time to 2 seconds would give any suit that sees an RE thrown or dropped on them to safely move away from it. With a change like that REs could still be used for ambushes and traps as well as AV but would hinder the use as superior grenades.
6) Hmm. I'm too biased to answer this one. Personally I like to throw my REs above eye-level so no one sees them and with hope that enemies will be within my 5m radius while the RE is outside the 5-7m radius of a Flux grenade thrown to clear my trap.
The distance thrown is also incredibly useful for placing REs on vehicles. I think that with an increased minimum time to detonate this issue would be less severe, and something to talk about at a later date.
7) This isn't really true. Most REs are usually placed within the blast range of each other allowing a single flux grenade to take out 3+ at a time. While if in FW or PC where friendly fire in on then blowing up 1 will set off the others.
8) I think the proposed changes on nanite cluster cost for grenades in the Hotfix Alpha Numbers post is at good place. I would not support further increasing the nanite cost.
9) You post is mostly hyperbole.
A) This is in poor form because it makes grenadier skill far too vital to play DUST514. It's a nerf to AV, one we don't need in this game. It's a nerf to the tactical use of REs
B) I disagree with this based on my previous statement of PRO being a small difference in effect for a large cost in fitting.
C) OHK grenades are a terrible, terrible, terrible idea. It favors twitch shoot gameplay over tactical game play. The same reason short fuse time on REs needs to be changed, the same reason fuse time went from 2 seconds to 5 seconds.
D) I don't like d. That would make Flux Grenades way too powerful if they did armor damage. They already have a huge damage value. Enough to take out a Shield tanked proto Cal-Sentinel and deplete a gunnlogi's shields with 2 grenades. Giving them any value of damage to armor would need to completely redo the flux grenades.
Appia Vibbia for CPM1
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