CCP Logibro wrote:Arkena Wyrnspire wrote:CCP Logibro wrote:
I'm slightly worried that the increase in fire rate will mean that some people that previously managed to dodge part of a burst will now be completely hit, so I would like to hear how many people have had that happen or it's already so fast that it's not a factor right now.
Dodging bursts is not really a thing. The intervals we're talking about here are fractions of a second. It's much more noticeable when you miss part of a burst when you're actually firing the weapon - it's very difficult to tell how much of the burst you took when you're on the receiving end.
Also, you tend to be dead.
I'm in favour of increasing the burst interval. I can't see it making much of a difference in 'dodging' bursts but it increases the possibility of user error and missing becoming slightly more significant rather than just tap-tap-tapping and then receiving +50, regardless of the target.
I do have one concern though. Increasing the RoF in a burst, then increasing the delay between bursts, leading to the same overall RoF.
This approach leads to more alpha, does it not? That's mildly terrifying considering the already impressive alpha capability of the weapon.
No actually, it does not. The ROF increase just compresses the burst into a shorter timeframe that was already previously very short, but overall each burst now will actually do less damage due to the decrease in damage per round. In some cases this will result in more rounds hitting the target than would otherwise, but for the most part it's already so fast that it makes no difference, and the reduction of damage per burst makes more a difference in most situations.
Sure, you're getting slightly less damage per burst (still looking at something like 550-600, off the top of my head) but that burst is being delivered twice as fast. If the burst HMG user can aim properly, this gives
even less time before someone gets instasplatted if they're not stacking HP or are another heavy. Even if it takes more bursts it's an advantage to have a higher alpha mix because shoving all your damage up front works really well.
The burst time drops from almost half a second to just under a quarter of a second. Twice as fast, that's really significant.
Even with the doubled burst fire interval that's an advantage. Here's why:
Assume a target takes two bursts to kill. If it only takes one the new burst HMG is at a massive advantage but let's ignore that for now.
Old burst HMG: First burst (0.45s) --> Burst interval (0.45+0.225=0.675) --> Second burst (0.675 + 0.36(this is 0.45*0.8 to account for damage advantage) leading to a TTK of 1.035 seconds.
New burst HMG: First burst (0.225s) --> Burst interval (0.225+0.45=0.675) --> Second burst (0.675+0.225 = 0.9s) leading to a TTK of 0.9 seconds.
That advantage is true for almost all types of target. You're getting slightly more of an advantage over the old burst HMG. I see this as undesirable considering the current burst HMG is already massively powerful. Even with the damage reduction the TTK of the weapon actually decreases.
That example was for multi-burst targets as well. For lighter targets which only take one burst, it's going from lightning fast kill to instakill and helping the burst HMG even more.