All i know about the mass driver is yesterday i was slaughtering everything that was put in front of me

the guy who killed me the most ......had a mass driver

1. all weapon do less damage because weaponry does not increase damage any more.

2. lets be honest, the all MD was just too good. I used it before and often I was sitting somewhere and aiming at the general direction of an enemy squad trying to take an objective and I was collecting kills left and right due to the huge splash without a big effort and no chance of retaliation. the "nerf" brings it on par of other weapons, now you have to aim better thats all.

This thread is a joke. I run the MD at a proficiency of only lvl 1 and I'm regularly going 21/3, 14/0, 16/3, etc. with the Freedom. I think the worst game I've had with the Freedom was 12/6 with like 18 assists. If you aren't doing well with it, then your aim is off. I've even pissed off my own corp mates using it during q-synced matches. I reply with "you have nothing to complain about anymore since the blast radius got nerfed. You actually have to have SKILL to use it now."

And when PC hits and friendly fire is on, everyone will be rejoicing the fact that the blast radius got nerfed. It will still be a viable weapon in CQC even with corp mates around. If it had the Chromosome blast radius, all MD users would be holding their shots a LOT more so or risk getting yelled at by their own team.

[quote=Daxxis KANNAH][quote

It sounds as though most of you are bad shots, yes. Tons of people on this thread say the weapon is unusable, which is just not the case. And I don't think I can say this enough. It is a GOOD thing the MD got a blast radius nerf. Because when PC hits and friendly fire is on, you want to be hitting your enemy and not your own team. It didn't need the damage nerf though, but whatever. It still works.

*puts dev hat on for a second*

With the new trajectory, rounds fly straighter, making it easier to land a direct hit. If it dealt the damage it did in Chrome, the MD would probably would be OP, so they nerfed it. By that same logic, since it flies straighter to its intended target, they decided to nerf the splash damage to compensate because we don't need the extra help with finding our targets anymore. So in a way, the Mass Driver is more like an RPG than a the M-32 it used to be. It's much easier to get kills, but at the cost of usefulness in its support role we all used it for.

Edit:
@Cross: It takes a big man to make a decision, but a better man to own up to it. No worries man, we're cool.

I've already compiled some suggestions from this topic in that thread. Let me know if I missed anything in my post and I'll go back to edit it.

Hello,

Prior to uprising I had mass drivers up to five and the spec to three. Mass drivers had great effect and they had two variants. Tight blast radius high damage or great blast radius but low damage. Considering these guns are not the average point and shoot variety in which bullet goes in straight line and hits target next to immediately it was considers a good thing that it had the blast radius.

Good shots with it where rewarded whit Nice chunks of HP taken away from the opponent when they used the high damage variety and poor shots could benefit from the low damage variety as a sort of support damage/ area of denial type of thing to help the team out as well as get in some war points.

As it stands in uprising, I skilled my mass drivers up to 5 and spec to 2. I knew they had been nerfed before putting my skill points there but hey, I'm not the best shot and prefer the area of effect aspect even if it was halved. As it stands, the high damage models keep being that High damage tight radius but the low damage ones are too far into the tighter range than should have been made.

One shot of the low damage high Explosion radius of the mass driver does 70 base splash damage. Considering it is a grenade launcher one would expect these explosions to be at least as wide as the grenades we throw. It's now game breaking in the sense that it does almost 1 tenth of what an actual grenade would do taking ten shots to get anything done with splash damage.

If you also factor in damage reduction to shield, you have a weapon that does less than 1 tenth the damage to any group of people than a grenade would do.

Bring back old radius, it was not bad. Lower Splash damage or direct damage if needed, as it stands it is not an area of denial weapon as much as a water balloon thrower, mind you i get kills with it, but it's not effective at it's role.

Here is the thread where Smokey trolled me. If anyone else can test what I wrote about, I think it's part of the problem too. https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=781115#post781115 Not sure why the other link didn't work.

O man.. I thought you said they changed it with the update??? its Still CRAPpeeee...

I am fully speccd with proficiency and was using an Exo Mass..

I CANT KILL ANYONE PERIOD at ANY range ...

Takes like 6 direct hits to kill anyone .. AND IM TOP OF THE LINE MD..

NO splash damage at all..

This needs to be corrected ASAP.. I dont know what you did to the range.. IM not even going there yet.. BUT the damage and RADIUS is RIDICULOUS>. ABSOLUTELY UNPLAYABLE..

IF you have a different opinion you are WRONG.. bye

EDIT: I know thats not being very specific.. so here you go..

Ok look let me try to break this down a bit more in depth..

Problems in order from Worst to least

TRAJECTORY: If im standing in a perfectly flat open field with no walls/rocks etc.. and my target is directly in front of me, my only choice is to hit his feet... and i gotta be very accurate .. since the weapon now shoots straight forward this makes it very difficult to land accurately... *remember we are already at a huge disadvantage on terrain with hills whether we are looking up (impossible) or down ..even if we manage to snag a rock outcropping and make it close to him.. the texture bug usually eats it up..WE NEED OLD TRAJECTORY BACK


RADIUS: (width AND height) This is where most of my frustration sets in.. Ok so we know you don't aim AT the MAN.. because for some reason even if you directly hit him it goes THRU him .. So all MD users have to aim at a wall or the floor.. I think when I started to really excel at this weapon was when i became proficient at hitting these walls at just the right time etc.. BIG PROBLEM.. the blasts are not radiating out correctly (or have been nerfed so hard as to not work) ..
EXAMPLE: theres a guy 10 feet away with his back to a wall .. I hit the wall and hes not injured.. Or BARELY injured ..where in the past that was a KILL/ huge dmg depending on suit/ shield etc.. Ive heard people saying its just a flat .. not 3D blast radius now.. that makes sense and is DRIVING ME NUTS...


RANGE: This gun at the top level needs to have waaay more range. A MD cannot effectively deny an area if they cant shoot more than 50 feet.. Ive had my shots "fading" into the distance at very close ranges.. the range was fine before..

DAMAGE: Ok Ive been thinking about this alot and.. I (holding with the last builds balance) This gun needs to

1. Be effective at lower levels

2. At the level 5 Proficiency with dmg mods this gun needs to have ability for 1 shot 1 kill on the "weaker" builds, this enables people at lower levels to be able to perform area denial with some success.. (this is why i loved this gun, because even when I was 1milllion SP's I could do some WORK) this got me hooked and kept me in the game.. then the payoff came when I was able to get Proficiency up with Dmg mods..


CONCLUSION
This weapon was pretty much perfect as it was conceived originally.. (kudos to the guy who invented the mechanics of this gun because it WAS original and DAMN fun) .. And im sure he felt a slight twinge when 50% arbitrary reduction nerfs completely ruined his VERY precise and balanced stats... I dont know how hard it would be to just copy and paste the exact stats from previous build and hit APPLY would be.. but thats the solution to this WEAPON ending patch..

Thank you and goodnight..

* I really could go on and on about all the bugs and stuff that I didnt even cover, but this is just what comes to mind ATM

I'll add my two cents.

I'm a mediocre player. I can lead in a match where none of the really good (top 15-20% or so) players show up. I thought the old Mass Driver was slightly OP. Sometimes, rarely, the old MD made me feel godly, which was awesome. (I suspect that it was those rare long range direct damage headshots that would one-shot kill somebody that lead to the cries that, "MD are OP!")

All it needed to be balanced was maybe a tiny nerf to damage, particularly direct damage. But, CCP achieved this slight nerf by buffing shields. Once CCP buffed shields, nerfed nanohives, and added side sprinting, they didn't need to do anything at all to the MD directly to balance it. They could bring back the old MD exactly as it was, and the other changes to the game effectively nerfed the old MD into a more balanced state.

If they test the old MD stats in the current build environment (weaker nanohives, stronger shields, side sprinting) and still feel it needs a nerf, do something modest. Cut the old MD's direct damage by 2 or 3 %, and cut its old splash area by 5 or 10%, but not 50%. That's not even remotely balanced.

I'm using an alt with a tac AR most of the time now. I encourage other MD fans to do the same. Our (particularly the OP's) complaints are less likely to really convince CCP that something is wrong with the MD, compared to the stats they gather, and now show us at the end of the matches. When they see that tac ARs are now doing 100x the damage MDs are doing, they'll hopefully restore the MD to some of its former usefulness.

At the same time I see perfectly your sarcasm, I do also feel you are comparing only the basics and making the TAR shine a little bit to much.

With the Chromosome MD, you could (which can't be done with a AR:
- Direct hit people, not only dealing splash damages
- Damage people getting covered
- Damage people on the other side of a corner.
- Damage more than 1 people in a single shot, Direct hit on one, splash on others.

TL;DR Wait and see before asking for things you aren't sure of the impact after CCP's changes

hah... spoken by someone that used the MD just to splash people to death.

honestly, thats the only thing i see is the issue anymore, is the face we have lost our splash.

but when we get the balanced MD back, oh the fun we'll have [they're probably gonna have to beef the old damage stats 10% like they did with every other gun though]

i'm sorry it sounded like an insult, but i STILL use the MD, i rather love it still, i want it to go back to how it once was. and i sat it'd get the 10% damage boost still cause all other weapons did, since our weaponry skill killed the potential for early damage improvements.

and seeing you with an AR would make me sad.. please still with MD, us that use the mare far too outnumbered

I have not taken the time to try MD's out as I have been waiting for the general population to say that explosion damage is up to par.

I can agree though being shot at by them that Mass Drivers and explosion/ splash damage in general needs much more work. If someone is shooting a MD at me I laugh as I sprint and bound all over the place while their grenades give me an interesting light show with minimal damage.

Summary: Explosions in DUST are weak, end of story.

dude... defensive bomb central, i want to see you in action big time... lets get you into Demolitions so you can use mines and remotes

Hit detection is not the issue.... If a grenade launcher splashes with a radius of a firecracker it's not a grenade launcher. Splash radius makes a grenade launcher just that; a grenade launcher. Anyone saying the splash radius is ok is using the weapon wrong and are using it as a direct hit weapon in which case they are better off using assault rifles or any other direct hit weapon. Mass Drivers throw grenades and grenades explode. If you consider the mass driver doing just over 1 tenth the damage of a grenade in splash damage we have a weapon that makes no sense when it does not even have that splash radius necessary to emulate at least the effect of a grenade. A direct damage grenade launcher is no grenade launcher.

Those of you who only use the Freedom variant have no clue of what crowd control or area of denial means no matter how much you say you do. 3.3 meters is not a large area, and unless you have a nearly direct hit no damage will be applied to suits that have a minimum movement speed of 3.6 meters (heavy militia suit) and a sprint speed of 5.1m/s minimum (militia heavy ).

I'm not saying, and it's been said many times in this thread, that the Mass Driver is not a useful or handy weapon; I'm saying it's role as an area of denial weapon ( as per description of the weapon ) is not fulfilled.

alright, i'll give you that much, since the reliable hit detection has been an issue, but havint it like in the old builds seems a bit counter productive. the boost it needs is not big when it comes to the splash, woul'dnt you think we only need a 0.5 m at most? we dont need it being called a noob tube again, especially by those that have never really tried it

Agreed. I strictly played MD in Chromosome, and I got pretty good with it. Sure, I would go 0 - 2 sometimes, but I had plenty of 20 - 1 matches as well. Love the darn thing. Specced back into it a couple days ago and finally got to dive into Uprising. MD nerf hurt at first, but I'm getting used to it. The main problem, as has been stated, is the severe lack of hit detection and ability to bunny hop over my blasts and flux grenades. Fix the hit detection, add maybe the .5 meter radius increase, and I think it will be "close" to where it was last build. I'll keep using it in the mean time, and hope the Dev's keep working with us to get this crucial support weapon back to where it deserves to be.

To Smoky, thanks for heading in the right direction with this thread. You've done the MD community a service. Just slow your roll with the rage a tad, lol.

0.5 meters isn't going to do much of anything. The standard MD max spread has to be increased by at least a meter for it to be doing anything outside of 1 vs 1 combat. MD is meant for crowd control; how are you controlling a crowd with a max spread of 4m or 4.5m? It needs 5 for it to do its job. Right now there is no reason to be using any MD other than the Assault MD, and Assault is pitiful against ADV suits or above with complex shield extenders if you don't use damage mods, especially if you don't have MD prof. 5.

I'm seeing way too many people in this thread asking for half measures.

The two bugs that Wolfman outlined do not negate the radius and damage nerfs the weapon has received. Yes I was aware that sometimes a little bump, staircase or box could prevent an enemy from getting splashed, I don't care. Yes, there's a desynch issue with where the projectile lands. I don't care.

When the round does land, and when it does apply damage, it is pathetic.

I tried running the EXO-5 again with a single damage mod and it was terrible. The only reason I can stomach the game right now is that I run a Freedom with 2x damage mods.

Enough with these silly compromises you traitors are asking for, give us back the old Chromosome mass driver.

Smokey don't give up it's just these forums.

Seriously these forums can be notoriously bad. I'm not kissing any a$$es here but CPP is a pretty serious company, and this game is still being worked on intensively.

I've posted on a fair number of game forums and this is the only one that has inspired me to lay down some gratuitous s**t.
There are some really smart respectful people here, and some real idiots too. Just don't take it too seriously and pay attention to what happens with the game and it's changes. Patience, thick skin and or indifference will see you through.

I've not worked with the Flaylock yet, but I've been considering it. I hate fused grenades too, but they are only comparable in CQC. You can't throw a nade as far or as accurately as you can with the MD. The fact that they are both in the isk and aur market is a terrible decision, but that's getting off topic.

I don't know, I'm not here to argue with you guys. I just feel that we need to moderate our requests, since CCP can't moderate their balancing. Demanding big sweeping changes, or full reverts is counter productive, and often ends with a weapon being severely OP'd or drastically nerfed. We can't possibly know how a weapon will perform and without a test server available to the public, I think we need to go about making changes little by little.

There is nothing wrong with wanting a weapon that does its intended job. There is something wrong with saying "it's my way or the highway". I'm doing what you're wanting with the EXO every day. Could it be better? A little, yeah. But honestly, I consider myself a below average player, and I have good success. I don't want everyone and their mom using it, cus I know what I can do with it. If you're on your way out, don't forget to contract your MDs to me. Thanks for playing. Come back and tell us how Ghosts is.

+1 for Massholes

So no fixes until next major update... even though you have it working now? lol.. lies

When all they need to do to make it work is rollback to Chomosome stats? Instead on making us wait until next update, only to find out its still ...... and nerfed? No thanks, its gonna take more than a quote of a quote, to satisfy me...

Cowards cant even address the situation directly in the thread where it matters..

Done with this kind of game, This may have worked great for a bunch of spaceships but this is a shooter.. and you are completely lost CCP.. sorry truth is what it is

Yeah, sorry about that. I literally just got finished rage quitting a skirmish where I was getting killed by militia ARs because of... what else? ghost rounds going through them. Adding insult to injury, it was my favorite map, the city where B is next to the CRU and I used to lob rounds in that little room and flush people out for my squad to deal with. Even with flux grenades, I was getting people down to slivers of armor, and just couldn't finish them off. Not because I have crappy aim, but because the hits just weren't registering. I didn't even see the news of the MD getting an expected fix and posted my laments like some spoiled brat. For that, I'm sorry.
I wish the MD can get fixed sooner than Uprising 1.2, but I guess I need to Adapt or Die, or HTFU in the meantime, right? At the same time though, we still need to address the actual nerfing which has put the MD in just as worse shape as the laser. Rounds just don't deal enough damage to threaten anyone, it takes almost an entire clip to kill someone in a proto suit... with the Freedom, which deals around the same damage as the EXO-5 back in Chrome, splash radius is non-existent for area denial, the arcing trajectory ruins the tactical aspects of the weapon, and the nanohive nerf starves the MD more than any other weapon in the game. Something has to give to make people want to use this thing. Blob tactics are actually viable again with so many assaults in conga lines as if they're mocking us. We need some, if not all of what made the MD a proper area denial weapon back. And if I'm not mistaken, that those issues could be easily resolved with hotfixes similar to the TAC AR, right?

NEW SECTION: OLD VERSUS NEW STATS

In this section I will post only the changed stats of the weapons which are area of effect and damage. Please note that I am not aware if the page rearranges text if viewed on devices such as tablets of phones so if it does the following pseudo table will not view correctly.

ODD = Old direct damage
NDD = New direct damage

OSD = Old Splash damage
NSD = New Splash damage

OSR = Old Splash radius
NSR = New Splash Radius


STATS--MASS DRIVER--"TSUNAMI"--BREACH---EXO-5---"CYCONE"---EC-3----EK-A2---FREEDOM---BOUNDLESS--CORE

ODD-------- 225 ------------ 247.5 ------- 315 ------ 247.5 ------ 270 ----- 148.5 ---- 346.5 ------ 270 -------- 162 -------- 378
NDD-------- 242 ------------ 242.0 ------- 338 ------- 254 ------- 254 ----- 152.5 ----- 355 -------- 266 -------- 159 -------- 372

OSD-------- 115 ------------ 126.0 ------- 80.5 ----- 126.5 ------ 138 ------- 75 ------ 88.6 ------- 138.0 ------- 82.8 ------- 96.6
NSD-------- 116 ------------ 116.0 ------- 81.0 ----- 121.8 ----- 121.8 ----- 73.1 ----- 85.3 ------- 127.6 ------- 76.6 ------- 89.3

OSR--------- 4 --------------- 4.4 --------- 3.0 -------- 4.4 -------- 4.8 ------- 6.6 ------ 3.3 --------- 4.8 ---------- 7.2 --------- 3.6
NSR--------- 3 --------------- 3.0 --------- 2.2 -------- 3.1 -------- 3.1 ------- 4.7 ------ 2.4 --------- 3.3 ----------- 5 ----------- 2.5

As we can see by the information above, the nerf of up to 39% of some of these, the reduction to splash damage of all but the original MASS DRIVER,the shield buff to most dropsuits and the reduced efficiency this weapon has against shields has made it obsolete for the battlefield.

even though im the ice cream delivery president I still like ice cream!

Got to admit, having watched the trailer for Tom Clancy's The Division I'm really going to be giving it some serious thought when the time comes. Hopefully we'll get a mass driver fix in before then.

No offense intended, but if you are still having difficulties, maybe the problem is you. Lately I have been owning with the Mass Driver, it is very much improved.

Seriously, people are doing well enough that we are actually starting to see QQ threads about the Mass Driver again. When was the last time that happened? Right before the release of Uprising and the MD nerf.

I think the MD is in a sweet spot right now, pretty good but not overpowered enough to deserve a nerf.

My only remaining gripe is the trajectory, which makes it very difficult to fight against either level or slightly elevated opponents. I would prefer they reverted to the Chromosome trajectory, which had a much steeper arc and made it less likely that you would overshoot your targets, like you often do now.

Thank you kind sir for standing up for me.

I apologize, Smoky, if what I said came off as a personal attack. To be honest I have no idea what your particular skill level is.

But I think it really is an exaggeration to say that we only got a 'small victory'. The bug fix improves consistency immensely, and the radius buff was unexpected but appreciated. The Mass Driver is a good weapon now. I have had much success, and witnessed others have much success.

This all I was really trying to say. Call me a sheep if you want, but I don't think the Mass Driver is desperately in need of more improvement like you do.

HAHA! How many people now is it that he's accused of being an alt of mine in this thread. It's gotta be at least 6 or 7. And the funny thing is, I don't have any alts. I only have one PSN account and just this one name. I deleted my other two characters after transferring their funds to my corp. All these "alts" of mine in this thread keep saying the same thing because what we are saying makes sense.

Keep sporting that tinfoil hat, buddy. It's a good look for you.

What if EVERYONE was just an alt for MASS DR1V3R? And they're all out to get you?

*eats popcorn*

Please +1 me, this thread is getting too personal.

Mods please close this thread.

But the thing is, there's no point in this being open anymore. they finally fixed Massdrivers and made them perfect. they don't need anymore changing.


Peace, Godin