[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.

the reg ar is fine right now the tac ar got a damage raise and hmgs did to much damage really fast anyways and they still do lots of damage.

what u pl really should have been complaining about its damage mods..

they make every gun seem over powered..

if u got obliterated really fast and u have decent shields and armor u likely got killed by some1 with 20 stacked damage mods.

ar never really needed damage mods as its effective enough as is.
of course im using free miltia fits and im pwning but that's just cause I actually have skill...

if u want to complain about op weps blame damage mods they make weps op...

Been trying them on an alt... quite disappointing.
Sure splash damage is a big advantage, but the range, firing arc, and low DPS compared to the AR (even with direct hits) balanced it. Now it seems like a pointless trinket for novelty, not something actually meant to be used for serious conflicts.

And then there's the ammo, when a weapon takes ~4 rounds to kill and holds ~18 rounds it's useful life is very limited and supply dependent. The ammo limit was a great balancing aspect prior to the nerf, now it's more like insult to injury.

And we haven't even talked about trying to fight an opponent who has any elevation advantage.

I would like to hear CCP explain what battlefield role they see the Mass Driver filling and how this nerf properly supports that role while still keeping the weapon viable.... because quite frankly I don't see that it does either.

0.02 ISK
Cross

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.

Anyone else notice everything except the AR got a damage nerf?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RucZsGn0W_o

Luckily I had a corp mate recording some matches last night. Here you go. The video isn't of me, but I'm in the match. You can go to the end if you want to just look at end of match screen. I went 11/0 using the Freedom as my primary, and I was pinned down by 2 tanks through part of the match. He recorded another match where I went 12/9 using the standard mass driver as my primary. Maybe you just aren't as good as you thought you were.

Because hes a fraud..

HIs MD skills are Garbage..

Dude as a fellow MD enthusiast, I want to like you. But you're acting like a spoiled 12 year old throwing a tantrum because his mom canceled his WoW account. Chill out, take a deep breath and help us figure out a solution instead of pouting.

Anyway, I've been screwing around with the MD and noticed how drastically straighter the trajectory is now. It seems like they're trying to make it into a slayer weapon when it shouldn't be. Instead of shooting from the hip, I've found with practice it's easier to actually ADS, aiming just a few degrees higher or lower depending on elevation and consistently landing direct hits. This could explain why they felt the need for the damage and radius nerf.

Before, we used to aim upward and lob rounds, making the larger blast radius and high damage almost a necessity. Now, it's much easier to hit your mark. After a while with the standards and assaults, I thought "what if..." Bingo! The breach is a freaking monster now! Seriously, take some time to get used to the more straight trajectory, focus on trick shooting at targets and get used to it. But even with all this said, I miss the awkward trajectory and larger blast radius from Chrome. Turning the MD into a slayer weapon when it wasn't being used as one was a bad move in my opinion.

Also, to add insult to injury, people are actually picking it up for the first time and getting kills easily and thinking that it really was a noob tube in Chromosome. It's making us all look bad.

Funny how the video got pulled. I wonder why.

Thank you. Finally something constructive. I've found that I do 10x better using the Freedom rather than the EX0. If you had read into my posts, you'd see that I've been saying this the whole time. Perhaps all of you should try builds with it rather than the EX0. I'm starting to think the Freedom has higher stats than it states. I promise it makes a drastic difference.

I'll reiterate this basic point again as I have done in various threads regarding all sorts of weapons and game mechanics.

Balance needs to be derived from the average not the outliers. What this means in a general context is that if you are in the top 20% then you are not an appropriate case for balance assessments. Nefing things so the they "take skill" (i.e. are significantly more difficult to use) for those with the top gun game is bad game design. It's net effect is to take those few who are already excelling and give them an even greater advantage. This creates more pub stomps, red lines, and blow outs. Meaning that ultimately this creates a more boring play experience and diminishes the over all player population.

Not all weapons function the same, nor should they. Weapons, like any of the other gear, or indeed many of the skills in Dust ideally should fill a role and be evaluated with regards to the success in that role. At bear minimum evaluations need to be more complex than is "X weapon good/bad" and they certainly need more context then anecdotal debates between various players about their KDR in a smattering of matches (matches which often aren't even put in any sort of context).

Balance is about game health, not personal preference, a specific play style or a singular feature/role.

Consider this a request to for all concerned to provide detailed, sober feedback within explicit context, and hopefully to do so with a focus on the macro level of the game rather than simply on their own personal reactions.

0.02 ISK
Cross

I don't understand what you all are saying regarding them making the MD a slayer weapon. How can a reduction of all relevant stats make it more effective at killing people?

It's doubtful that there was any rationale behind these changes aside from "Well, as long as we're tweaking values, let's adjust these too." This is just a thoughtless nerf. If it was some sort of holistic balance attempt, then the smoke trail wouldn't be following the old trajectory path.

Because before, the trajectory had more of a falloff which required arcing the weapon upwards and lobbing rounds. The larger blast radius was necessary because aiming required more skill than just point, ADS, collect kill. Even with the awkwardness it brought on utility purposes with the larger blast radius. Also, back in Chromosome, splash damage was calculated on a 2-D plane for all splash damage weapons which made the MD rounds not register damage on a target that had so much of a pixel of incline or elevation. It was a skill based weapon with a high learning curve and very useful for squad tactics like pinning enemies down for heavies and scouts to close in or simply herding an enemy squad from a downed teammate for logistics to raise them.

Now, since the grenades fly straighter, it's much easier to land direct hits that you couldn't in Chromosome at the cost of the splash radius and damage (10% damage buff in hot fix helped) which causes the weapon to lose its finesse when used for a support role. Being able to land direct hits makes it much easier to kill with the MD meaning that it has been reverted to a slayer weapon at the cost to what made it special: area denial and support.

This blanket statement just points out that all you did was read the OP and maybe just skimmed the rest of the fist page. The problem with the mass driver isn't because it's not this super OP weapon that got nerfed. The problem is the tactical aspects and utility of the weapon has been traded for the ability to slay. Please go further in the topic and read some of the more recent posts. We've been trying to find out the direction the Devs took the MD and why we disagree with it.

My 0.4 ISK

Cosgar

I would like to hear CCP explain what battlefield role they see the Mass Driver filling and how this nerf properly supports that role while still keeping the weapon viable.... because quite frankly I don't see that it does either.

0.02 ISK
Cross

As I've stated elsewhere I had fewer skills (both SP and Levels) into MD in the last build than I do in Uprising and my Freedom now works almost as well as my EXO did then (excluding the price point in both ISK and CPU/PG).
Besides the overall drop in effectiveness the role of the weapon has been nerfed. Dust will live or die by it's diversity and the ability of players to make 'risk v reward' choices. The way this change was handled is been a kick in the pants to both of those (and the poor Heavies got it even worse

SO its constructive to say "this thread is a joke" and You just cant aim.. thats troll ****.. and im not here to make any friends.. Im here to help this game progress in a positive way.. I just felt it was necessary to point out that the guy saying I cant Aim and my thread is a joke.. GETS HIS .... handed to him each and EVERY time he meets up with me..

Im here to represent my weapon which I know better than anyone.. just check time played with this weapon.. and since Ive never seen anyone do as well as I with it.. I cant think of anyone better to represent this gun.. sorry if this offends, maybe I never played against/with you yet..

Ive tried to make my point as clear as possible, but Im not gonna stand by and let tiny insignificant trolls run this game into the ground..

Thanks for your support ACTUAL Mass Driver users...

Okay I give in/don't care anymore. Give us the old MDs back. I killed with them then, and I kill with them now. If it makes the rest of my fellow MD users happy, then let's have it back the way it was. I just got tired of being called a noob tuber, people saying that I used a noob tube, or that the weapon took no skill to use because of the insane splash damage. But whatever, like I said, I don't care anymore.

Please tell me ur not populating the world with more trolls?

Know you or killed you ..lol are u serious.. When you rock a MD you tend to notice when your kill line looks like this

Smokeythebear Mass Driver: M@SS DRIVER

Lol... I hate you in real life.. as a person..not a gamer .. hahaha (i know im feeding the trolls)