In lots of PC matches lately there has been a lot of explosive spam. From the new Mass Driver ranges and Fused Locus grenades to single and dual flaylock pistols...its been a real interesting few weeks. There are some major problems that I have with the explosive weapons, and they aren't all about the damage; its mainly about mechanics.

1) When a player dies from an explosion they are insta-gibbed. No downed state/bleeding out whatever you want to call it. This doesn't give anyone the chance to revive them and is an extremely strong force multiplier. If there aren't any revives able to go out then offensive pushes against explosive spam is extremely difficult.

2) Damage drop off. I seem to still take an insane amount of damage from the outside of the explosion as I do from the inside. Games like Dark Age of Camelot had a mechanic called 'PBAOE' or Point Blank Area of Effect. These PBAOE attacks did their most damage at the center of the area and their least at the edges of the targeted area. You would take more damage if you were closer to the center of the PBAOE.

3) Direct and Splash damage. I've heard some flaylockers say they've been able to get 600ish damage with their direct damage shots on their FLPs. This is because the target was taking direct and splash damage. I'm not sure that this is true that the target takes direct AND splash damage if hit directly, but I can't find anything specific about it. If this is true, it needs to be changed due to DPS comparisons to other weapons in its class.

Suggestions:

1) The downed state needs to be re-evaluated imo. This change would make ONLY direct shots remove the chance for a revive. It doesn't make much sense that a clone dying from taking 51 splash damage around a corner couldn't get revived because an AP grenade landed within 6 meters of him.

2) Please add this isn't the game mechanics, taking full damage from a fragmentation round at max distance doesn't make sense...especially since we are wearing armor plated drop suits.

3) If a player is allowed to take direct and splash damage at the same time this should be changed. Not only from a balance standpoint but from a mechanics standpoint.

4) And this suggestion will not make sense initially, but let me explain. Change the damage modifiers from 120% to armor and 80% to shields to 100% to shields and 90% to armor. The reason being is how fragmentation weapons work. An anti-personnel explosive weapon is designed to fragment into smaller pieces to cause as much damage to unprotected areas. Since we are all wearing armored dropsuits it would stand to reason that the armor would protect from slower moving projectiles very effectively and the kinetic energy from the explosion would be dispersed evenly over the armor. However when detonating these explosives near a shielding device, the shield field would distort from the kinetic energy released and take secondary damage from the fragmentation of the device.