Completely agree with OP.

Lol @ blaming AR users, the AR has been nerfed so many times now. Honestly at this point I feel the scrambler rifle is better, but people still point fingers at the ARs and act like they're king of the hill because most people use it. There has to be a versatile weapon, and it makes sense that most people would be using the versatile one anyway.

What do you expect most people to spec into in Dust? Seriously. Obviously a medium dropsuit and a LR/AR would be the standard. The reason for this is really simple, it's a versatile suit, and a versatile weapon. Say you don't know anyone in Dust, and you don't have a corp, why would you pick a suit and weapon that require you to play a specific way when you're going to be running with strangers that will most likely not have your back and won't compliment your fits weak points. It makes logical sense to me to pick the most versatile set up for most situations outside of corp battles where team composition is planned out.

Or people coming from other shooters, they're probably going to pick AR as well because it's going to be the most familiar weapon in many cases. There's a lot of reasons for AR to be a popular weapon, so I find it funny when people use popularity to justify something being OP.

Hell even for those who have found a group to play with, it's not like they're always going to be around to have your back.

It blows my mind when people act surprised that the most versatile set up is the most popular, why does this surprise people? You should expect it. The only games where AR isn't the most popular weapon seem to be ones where the AR is pathetic in comparison to other weapons, to the point of it not being a viable choice.

Personally I blame bad players and CCPs bad decisions for the current state of Dust and terrible weapons. The bad players because they're QQing on the forums and trying to give input on how weapons should be changed when they can't even play their own fit well. Who are you to tell developers how to change other weapons if you're simply a bad player? QQ ARs are too good because you're a heavy HMGer who picked the wrong fight, or didn't stay in close quarters areas. Or QQ your AR can't blow up tanks anymore and you're too bad to spec into AV, you'd rather tryhard it up and spend it all in anti-infantry skills and avoid vehicles completely while you pad your KDR.

Oh I could go on, but notice I wouldn't just point my finger at one type of player because I really do believe that it's bad players in general. People have been crying about heavies for many builds now and claim they can't win toe to toe with assaults, when I play my heavy and I shred everyone who comes at me.. and I see other good heavies doing the same. Just another case of bad players providing input when they can't even play their class correctly.

Then CCP decides to balance around what these people say. I think that CCP should only be getting feedback and balancing based off of what happens in competitive matches. The good, close, knock-out drag-out corp battles between good players. In those matches you see a mix of weapons and not just all ARs; and for a good reason. You may want to say that ARs are the king over every weapon, but I dare you to bring your corp of all AR users against a good corp that has a healthy mix of weapons. You'll get torn a new one.

Those are the matches where you'll see the weapon balance the best, not random pub stomp matches. A good group could go into a random match and stomp everyone out easily with any weapon and those randoms would probably be QQing about how broken it is. It's just how FPS players are and I've accepted that after so many years, it's rare for someone who got beat into the ground to send a GG message or compliment you instead of blaming your suit/weapon and calling you a noob.

Oh and to the ppl who think the mass driver was balanced in the last build ROFL....your hilarious. Yes its balanced that you can 2 shot an advanced heavy with splash dmg only.....and 1 shot them if you hit them directly...yes thats a balanced weapon. Watching tiel in imperfects playing with the MD while laughing at its OPdness was fun but made me question ppl who thought the weapon was balanced. He could clear an entire enemy team in the bowl with a single magazine from his mass driver. (i watched him to it to...2 shots in and he started only getting double....triple....and quadruple kills with his last few shots.

Yeah, public matches without matchmaking is a great way for judging a game mechanic's balance

So let me guess.......the Tac rifle was OP in this build but the mass driver in the last build wasnt right?

So 2 shotting with AOE adv heavies who ran tanking fits is reasonable to you? Heck Tiel 1 shot militia fits with the AOE only. If you ran a MD and couldnt do this then you obviously built it incorrectly. Mass drivers needed 1 of 2 things to happen. It either needed it mag size reduced or it needed its AOE reduced. MAG size was not changed and AOE was reduced to what 3 meters ish? I still dont understand how mass driver can have problems hitting within 3 meters of their target. Our mass driver users in imperfects have no problems with the changes.....in fact every one I have talked to noted that they like the changes because before the mass driver did such large AOE you really didnt have to be good to hit ppl with it. I am sorry if you disagree with this but the fact remains. Just like the laser was OP in the last build (which CCP has now overnerfed )

TAC AR was OP because it could be exploitable, and because it diminished incentive to use the other AR variants by excelling in areas they were meant for.

MD got nerfed 3 times this build: Damage reduction, splash radius reduction, trajectory nerf, and the nanohive nerf inderectly affected a weapon with an already bad field longevity. Also, dropsuits got an HP buff which makes it that much worse. Even with all these nerfs you can still get kills with the MD thanks to the straighter round trajectory, but it got nerfed in utility as an area denial and support weapon. Player skill is another factor you're overlooking too. Anything will be OP in skilled hands.

Edit: But arguing about what's OP or not is neither here nor there because in case you haven't noticed, everything in Uprising suffered from a flurry of sweeping changes because CCP felt like trying to fix things that weren't broken to begin with which is why the TAC AR was over buffed this build to begin with.

TAC AR was OP because it could be exploitable, and because it diminished incentive to use the other AR variants by excelling in areas they were meant for....

Uprising suffered from a flurry of sweeping changes because CCP felt like trying to fix things that weren't broken to begin with which is why the TAC AR was over buffed this build to begin with.

Look, if it wasn't the AR playerbase doing the vast majority of the QQing, then why isnt the AR nerfed into the ground, too?

Um yea ......the way you are talking proves that you have no idea what my lvl of skill is in this game. When I am saying something was OP you can almost guarantee it was OP because I took my time in studying that weapon. MD needed a change was it perhaps changed too much honestly that I dont know....but the AOE is where it should be.

I agree the changes CCP made in uprising was huge with all the range changes.....which honestly is why the TAC and other longer range weapons were used more. If they actually balanced the laser rifle properly you would have seen some of the nooby tac users complaining about the OP laser rifle roflstomping them. Also the TAC was ok in CQC but truthfully the reg AR definitely beat out the TAC in CQC...but I dont bother with the AR anymore. I just use the scrambler and laugh at the ppl who said the imperial scrambler is not good. OHKs and 0 recoil with massive dmg FTW!

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).

Even if the MD needed some re-balancing in Uprising, basing it off of the equivalent of a LAN is not the right way to do it. Also, it gets you to thinking how many other game mechanics did they decide to change through this accurate way of collecting data?

Funny how to a lot of people here, EVE players automatically = bad players