Mass drivers werent that great in Chromosome once you began to encounter proto suits and shield tankers. They are needlessly nerfed and i gather much of the MD data comes from how they performed against all the ppl running militia gear in pubs during beta.

Perhaps with proficiency all these weapons become their ultiamate form.

To me Mass Drivers were expecting the nerf, as it made it rather easy to kill 2-3 grouped up people with a freedom last build. This time it takes much more skill (which I like).

They just need to fix the damage application. Because jumping (which isn't 3 meters high) completely negates most of the damage, as well as being on some sort of incline, even though you are well within the blast radius.

To me Mass Drivers were expecting the nerf, as it made it rather easy to kill 2-3 grouped up people with a freedom last build. This time it takes much more skill (which I like).

They just need to fix the damage application. Because jumping (which isn't 3 meters high) completely negates most of the damage, as well as being on some sort of incline, even though you are well within the blast radius.

You can say it was rather easy to kill 2-3 people grouped up, of course those people could always decide to separate themselves, and then you couldn't. grouping up was their choice and grouping was not smart against a MD..you can still kill 2-3 people that are grouped up with a grenade..grenades do far more damage. Now you cannot kill 2-3 people with a MD Why shouldn't we be able to? Isn't this our wheelhouse? isn't this our function? to disrupt the enemy, make them move disrupt their visibility? when faced with a MD driver, grouping up should be contra-indicated, now nobody cares.


MD shouldn't be a forge gun depending on direct hits to kill. right now we have to aim so close that I'm getting a lot more direct hits (Wee I'm an arcing AR with a 4 second reload, 6 shots a clip) Joy.

To me Mass Drivers were expecting the nerf, as it made it rather easy to kill 2-3 grouped up people with a freedom last build. This time it takes much more skill (which I like).

They just need to fix the damage application. Because jumping (which isn't 3 meters high) completely negates most of the damage, as well as being on some sort of incline, even though you are well within the blast radius.

Sounds like you like this blob warfare...


"Everyone huddle up and move as a flock, no worries about ANY AoE because we have to be piggybacking each other for them to hit more than one of us!"
Game has gone from stale to broken, not happy about it either.

CCP needs full disclosure on what they want to tweak going forwards, they have proven time and again they can't balance without breaking 5 things for every 1 they get right.

Lets compare the exo-5 and the freedom splash damage. Direct impacts are great and all, but most effective against heavies... And do they even count at this point?
Exo-5
51 CPU
7 PG
3.1m radius
110.2 HP splash damage
6 round clip -- 1 shot a second
4 second reload.

Freedom
93 CPU
14 PG
3.3m radius
115.5 Splash damage
6 round clip 1-- 1 shot a second
4 second reload.

So for 42 CPU and 7 PG you get...
~6.5% accuracy bonus
~31.8 damage a clip
Over the 10 second Fire/reload cycle that equals about 3.1 DPS difference... for double PG and 42 CPU

Furthermore, if every shot is a direct impact, the damage per 10 second reload cycle only increases to about 60 a clip.

Compare this with the 90 damage a clip for Gek vs Duvall... And the higher time spent firing (Basic AR clips last about 5 seconds w/ a 3 second reload. 4.8/7.8 VS. MD's 6/10)... Did I mention that the accuracy bonus between those two is also about 10% as well? For 1 more CPU and the same amount of PG....

Oh and ARs have another 3X multiplier skill that makes their shots more accurate as well...
Scale better much?

Just using an AR as an example... Not trying to say that the MD should do the same amount of damage as the AR, just saying that it doesn't scale well enough right now.

But if I WAS trying to make that arguement....

Duv DMG per clip (every shot hitting) 2040.
Freedom DMG per clip (Direct impacts every time!) 1452.

Ill leave it to the viewer to decide which of the two events are less likely... direct impacts every time -- or hitting with the AR.
Never mind the TAC duv...

To be perfectly honest, I'm a little baffled at what's happened with the Mass Driver. The reason for the splash and blast range nerf was that in playtests we found the MD to be so effective that at one point almost half the people in the office were using it in battles. Clearly, that's not been the case with Uprising and after getting the engineers to go elbow deep into the code it appears there may be a few reasons beyond dry numbers that are contributing to the MDs underwhelming performance.

One, there appears to be a de-sync between client and server so that (more often than it should) the server and client think the projectile exploded in different places. They're not far off, but enough so that shots you *think* are spot on are off the mark enough to do only minor splash damage. And two, I'm told splash occlusion is getting blocked by a single player character more than it should, contributing to the "randomness" of the damage dealt and the sometimes smudgy feeling of the weapon.

I'm hesitant to rebalance the weapon until we get these issues looked at (which is happening right now).

Remember when people did ragdoll gymnastics when you blamed them?

*sigh*

It's like losing a best friend...

Tell me something I don't know. This was an issue LAST PATCH. One player eats up all the splash damage if you miss. And by miss I mean direct impact or don't hit exactly in the center of them all. This isn't so much of an issue this patch because..... THE SPLASH RADIUS IS TOO SMALL TO HIT MORE THAN ONE PERSON.

I am still doing OK with the MD. I put that on the strength of flux gernades and not the MD itself.

I refuse to give in to flux, I will not carry a grenade to make my grenades work...I will not do well either.

as far as I can tell, nothing changed