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Gyn Wallace
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
130
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Posted - 2014.09.22 14:51:00 -
[1] - Quote
KA24DERT wrote:Again:
1) Splash is the PRIMARY mode of damage for the mass driver.
2) No other dropsuit in the game has such a high resistance to ANY other weapon type.
Instead of one or two dropsuits being resistant to explosive splash damage, all dropsuits in an entire class are resistant by 25%, instead of the usual 10-15% race specific bonus.
It's unbalanced.
Heavies were way too easy before. How are you using the MD? Are you maintaining range whenever possible, using its long range with no damage reduction out to maximum range to full advantage? Are you using its superb accuracy out to maximum range (once you get used to the arc and aiming/ranging with the bottom of the hip fire reticule)? Are you using corners to fall back, while inflicting damage to the advancing heavy, whenever you meet a heavy up close?
IMHO, the mass driver has never been as well balanced as it is right now. The Exo-5 is my primary weapon; usually with no secondary weapon on my logi suit. I'm much less likely to survive a 1v1 with a shotgun scout than a 1v1 with a heavy. Heavies are still fairly easy to deal with unless you stumble on one without any corners to retreat around. In any other circumstance, I have a range and mobility advantage to leverage against any heavies I come across.
Even in close quarters, if I have corners to retreat around, I can constantly splash an approaching heavy, without giving him direct line of sight long enough for him to waste me. Use the mass driver's slow travel time to your advantage. You get to fire at the ground ahead of him while he pushes around the corner, while you retreat around the corner, at the same time backing up to the next corner you'll be using for cover. You can kill them without them ever getting direct line of sight, without them ever getting a shot on you.
The only heavies that give me trouble in close are just better players than me, or average heavies with burst HMGs, so even a moment of exposure or lag gets me killed.
If you told me I had to duel someone and I had to use the mass driver and I got to chose their suit, I'd put them in a heavy suit.
The one huge weakness (every weapon should have one) is running out of ammo when using the MD. The nerf to nanohive clusters was a bigger MD nerf than buffing heavy splash resistance.
Mass drivers and heavies are very well balanced IMHO. If scouts were just a little bit slower or squishier, the class/weapon balance in this game would be outstanding.
I'd love to see hard data, since the above is just my sense of things. I'd love to see weekly kills/deaths/isk destroyed, broken down by suits/weapons.
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Gyn Wallace
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
131
|
Posted - 2014.09.23 13:55:00 -
[2] - Quote
KA24DERT wrote:Gyn Wallace wrote: How are you using the MD? Are you maintaining range whenever possible, using its long range with no damage reduction out to maximum range to full advantage? Are you using its superb accuracy out to maximum range (once you get used to the arc and aiming/ranging with the bottom of the hip fire reticule)? Are you using corners to fall back, while inflicting damage to the advancing heavy, whenever you meet a heavy up close?
C'mon dude, your argument against this nerf boils down to "Don't be Seen", in a game where being seen for 1 second by a good rifle/hmg user means DEATH. A smart heavy will begin advancing out of cover to a position where you can't have any cover as soon as the first MD round lands, he's not going to be hugging corners. Splash him with an entire clip, even after a flux(for armor builds), he'll be getting a bead on you while you're fumbling with reload.
Bolded above for emphasis. If you're standing in full view of a heavy for 1 full second, no weapon can save you. Can't you back around a corner when you get surprised by a heave in about a quarter of a second? That's why the burst HMG is so devestating; against a burst I entirely agree with you. Even pulling back as fast as my reflexes and lag allows, I frequently get toasted by a burst HMG, but against other HMGs, I more frequently than not can break contact when surprised by a heavy. And that's as a brick tanked, kind of slow logi. Heavies are the only suits I can outmaneuver, IF they aren't running KinCats. Are you having a different experience with breaking initial contact when surprised by a heavy? How are you approaching corners?
I asked you the questions quoted above, not to be rhetorical, but to genuinely inquire. I guess a more general way of putting some of those questions: On average, how far does a round from your mass driver travel before it hits something? If its less than a third of your maximum range, can we agree that you're not taking full advantage of your ability to out range an HMG's damage?
Does your playstyle with the MD more closely resemble a shotgunner or a sniper, if we consider those two roles as the extremes on a continuum? |
Gyn Wallace
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
131
|
Posted - 2014.09.23 14:09:00 -
[3] - Quote
Michael Arck wrote:Okay it just seems that some want the sentinels to be a joke suit. If you remove splash damage then you will further turn sentinels or heavies, into a instagank situation.
Not really a specific response to you Michael, but I think the OP's point could be more persuasively made, if instead of just flat out nerfing heavies, he proposed a tradeoff.
For example, how many heavies would take advantage if CCP offered a heavy suit variant that traded the splash damage resistance for 25% or 30% resistance to shotgun damage?
If you've got an uplink inside a building where distant MD users don't have a good shot on you, you're probably more worried about a SG scout shooting you, uncloaking, and shooting you again.
Instead of posting "let's nerf heavies" I think a much more interesting discussion could be had by asking heavies how much shot gun damage resistance they'd need to voluntarily give up their splash damage resistance. I suppose remotes would still be a huge problem...
I generally have the sense that the mass driver's arc, slow ttk, and ammo inefficiency keep it rare enough that its not anywhere near the leading cause of heavy deaths. I certainly wouldn't complain if it got a slight buff. But I remember the days of the OP mass driver and slayer logis, and the subsequent nerf. Its good enough right now that I don't want CCP to mess it up by putting it back on the buff/nerf roller coaster track.
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Gyn Wallace
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
131
|
Posted - 2014.09.23 14:33:00 -
[4] - Quote
Logi Bro wrote:I'd be OK with removing that bonus if in its place you put a headshot damage resistance.
That way my sentinel isn't being constantly OHK'd by charge rifles post-Delta.
There you go, that's much closer to the kind of proposal I think CCP would take seriously. What kind of numbers would that require? How much health should you have left after a charged sniper head shots you, in the new-and-improved sentinel with headshot resistance? Should a follow up shot to the body be able to finish you off? A head shot followed by two body shots? |
Gyn Wallace
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
146
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Posted - 2014.11.10 23:14:00 -
[5] - Quote
Victor Moody Stahl wrote:
Finally, DPS is a poor measure of performance to use with the MD, given that it has a high(-ish) alpha and also has a generally large-to-obscene amount of splash area.
Just noting that describing the MD as an alpha weapon is a bit of a gross simplification, since a RR user and I can open fire at the same time, and he can shoot me dead before my first round hits him. How about calling it a high Beta or Gamma weapon? 
I agree that balancing the MD is tricky. However who is getting killed by MDs too often? Are MDs producing even 1/5th as many kills as shotguns? There is room for a tiny buff. Not jumping back on the buff/nerf rollercoaster, just something small, like increasing the base splash for the Exo5 from 4.0 to 4.2 or something similarly slight.
That might help me marginally increase my performance against scouts from horrible to just "disadvantaged." Heavies are easy to deal with, as an MD wielding logi, in comparison to scouts.
All the above is IMHO/experience of course. Better and worse players than me may have wildly different experiences.
The Dust/Eve Isk Exchange Thread
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Gyn Wallace
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
147
|
Posted - 2014.11.11 17:17:00 -
[6] - Quote
Victor Moody Stahl wrote:I admit some surprise that the result is the same as the CalSent. However, you are still ignoring the fact that the MD is still delicious explodinating murder to all armor mediums and 90% of scouts.
I don't get that last bit at all. If the argument is that Sentinals should be the Achilles' heel of MD users, because the MD is so awesome at killing mediums and scouts, why do I have a wildly worse track record against scouts than against heavies? I don't think my gun game is completely terrible; I think I'm solidly mediocre as far as my gun game goes. Scouts wreck me. They can jump across the diameter of my splash. They can close so quickly, so stealthily, that getting in close where the MD is suicidally weak is easy for them. MD ammo is so restricted that most side arms can kill more enemies before running out of ammo; I can't just spray and pray MD rounds wherever there might be a scout. If I did, an enemy doesn't have to wait long before I'm out of ammo.
If the MD is supposed to be effective against Medium suits, the "wait and see" approach might work out just fine. I agree that if there were more mediums and fewer scouts on the field, a MD user's playtime would become a little less morbid. If the next couple of hotfixes improve mediums enough, I agree that there might not be any need for a MD buff.
The idea that the heavy is supposed to be the MD's weakness in a game of rock-paper-scissors, because MDs beat scouts, is just contrary to my experience with scouts. I'd LOVE to see some stats to place the MD's recent performance in perspective. I'd like to know whether my experience of having an easier time killing heavies than scouts is atypical.
The Dust/Eve Isk Exchange Thread
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