Drone Launcher with Skye is overpowered, needs to be nerfed

[ikke2902]

Let me get straight to the point.

I tried drone launcher with Skye Autumn. My damage output increased very fast, by 6 times at least. This has to do with the special ability of Skye Autumn.
Quote from wiki:
Deals 2% more damage for each hit on the enemy. Each stack of this ability lasts for 4 seconds.
Since drones shoots very fast and you can send 6 of them, the 2% more damage stacks very fast.

It's aready OP. However, then I took a look how to enhance this OP weapon ...
I have used the Tactical Juxtaposition perk.
Your drone launcher has a 200% fire rate and 200% ammo. It became at least 3 times more OP.

The combo of Skye Autumn + Drone Launcher + Tactical Juxtaposition will looks like this:
At some point, the assault rifle deals 1k and more damage per shot (not a weakspot hit!).
Using the secondary fire mode, will drop a bomb that deals 5k and more damage.
The drones it self deals at that moment 200 and more damage per hit (not weakspot hit).
And I haven't mentioned how nuky it is with corpse explosion perk.

If it's not clear how strong it is. I killed the boss Super Heavy within 20 seconds in a 4player game by myself.Yes, the drones from drone launcher ignores armor. They can kill boble heads aswell.

Nerf it :/

Edit: Changed the title. It was "Drone Launcher is overpowered, needs to be nerfed"

[Dedlok]

Sounds more like it is Drone Launcher + Skye's Ability is overpowered. Not the gun itself. If anything an artificial cap to Skye's buff would be better than downgrading a gun everyone can use into possible uselessness.

[Mantid]

Yeah, if a gun is a problem with one character, you don't need to look at the gun, you need to look at the character.

Pensonally I feel that Skye was a bit lackluster compared to the other Core Guardians previously. Her ability could need a bit of a rework to keep her more in line with the other Guardians regardless of which (rapid fire) weapon she uses.

[ikke2902]

You both are right, couldn't agree more.

[MRnok14L]

Is that really OP or you were just given with a effective tool while others are proves to be less so? Well, Drone Launcher is essentially a portable Drone Tower or a hand held miniatured drone carrier. And what drones in Sanctum are designated for is to against heavily armored enemy type that could block a considerable amount or even zero the damage dealt with their capability to ignore target's armor.

So I think the problem here is not in its damage or how could it killed a super heavy for you in 20 seconds, or how it work with Skye's innate passive since Skye's passive is pretty weak in terms of numbers (as I recall it was 0.2% dmg increase per successive hit in a limited time, correct me if I'm wrong) and due to the fact that the drones from both sources does exactly the same thing.

Which is to say, the real question here ought to be what made other sources of drones namely Drone Towers which is also currently the one and only source of drones other than Drone launcher so less favorable by the players?

As this sequel of Sanctum is more action-packed, players are given with powerful weapons and perks to perk them on top of their loadout selections. And as for the towers they'll start out as sidekicks then get stronger as the players upgrade, over-charge with resources over time and synergize them with other things such as maze layout and tactic. Simply put, every weapons used by the players had the nature of strong/enough performance for them to handle punch-you-in-the-face-till-you-die fighting style with the enemies they face in the game while in contrast the performance of towers needed to be developed over time with resources and tower bases.

So as you can see there's really nothing to do about their damage neither how Skye's passive boost their armor ingoring capability to a unbalanced level, but rather more about how the same quality is delivered in my opinion.


*gonna call the drones from tower tower drones and drones from launcher launcher drones.

Tower drones are less effective in many ways compare to launcher drones because their lack in how they select their target and how they reach to it. Tower drones can always send to where they are needed because they are sent through the ability of aiming by the players, and they can pretty much make use of (abuse) their ability in a nonstop pace with unlimited deploy range utterly unlike tower drones on the contrary.

All these factors above did not only made tower drones not capable of being able to utilize their biggest quality but also fettered them within the severely limited deploy range as well as deploy rate of their sender, even the sender has been upgraded they are still nowhere close to be valued as a tower that is utility enough hence able to convince the players to invest their precious resources on them early on because they are not designed to be utility and main battle tower (all-around tower) is not their role.

[codewarrior0]

I agree, this combination (Skye + Drone Launcher + Juxtaposition) is broken right now. I think it could be fixed by changing Tactical Juxtaposition to affect the attack of the launched drones, treating it as a fast attack and slowing it down. Right now it treats the launcher as a slow attack and makes it shoot more drones, which really just makes a fast attack even faster.

[Sartana]

I'll second that, it needs a nerf, i took skye a few days ago "just for the lulz" because i knew it's a less than average character ... and ended up being the biggest damage dealer of the group by far, even pre-patch sweet wasn't that op, and the worst part is that hollowpoint rounds works with this build. finshing any map with this on 5 fos is probably a piece of cake

[arre]

Hi!

We playtested the drone launcher with Skye before the DLC went live. It's an awesome strategy, but we want to test it a little bit more before we nerf it to shreds. Not all fights are timed one-on-one fights with a super heavy - there are a lot of other factors involved in a good strategy than a good character and secondary weapon combo. Skye's special ability only lasts for 4 seconds as well, so you won't be doing huge damage all the time. Another important factor is that the drone launcher doesn't do instant damage as soon as you fire, like most weapons do. It actually takes a second or more for the drone to reach it's target, which effects the efficiency of the weapon (i.e if you see a walker warrior running towards you, you want to kill it asap with a well-aimed sniper shot in the weakspot, and not wait for your drones to stack up on him). Finally, dps isn't everything either, in terms of versatility, the drone launcher doesn't do very well as it isn't as effective as other weapons at handling pups, runners, etc.

I just wanted to drop a comment to let you know that we're having a look at it, but that there are a lot of other factors in gameplay balance than just the damage output a weapon does on a super heavy :)

[codewarrior0]

The game feels *substantially* easier with this combination equipped. I went from being stuck on wave 5 of the first level of the new DLC, to breezing through that level and the next one as if the five feats of strength weren't picked at all. It is clearly more powerful than pre-patch Sweet with long range spec.

This combo also killed Pliskeblaske on 5 feats of strength before the third magazine was fully emptied. The waves leading up to it felt much easier than they ever did before.

[fjtheman2005]

I honestly don't see any real problems with this. Considering what went for Sweet, I don't think we should cripple Skye for this.

[Fluffy of Borg]

As someone who uses skye while leveling. I'm 15 right now, recently new to the game and I'm doing co-op with a friend. He is using Sweet, I have to say, his rocket attacks realy help out. We hit a brick wall during the mishions, (train yard I think, 3 enemy spawns, wierd loop-de-loop) My inate ability is a double jump, I do see the damadge when I use the assualt rifle, or with the smg 3 round acid (for soakers). Outside of that however, the fire dot out classes me compleatly in terms of damadge! I don't know what level the drone launcher is, what I do know is I feel kinda week compared to the damadge he can do. I swear the smg poision dot, applies his fire dot as well! I'm running Core health/phenoix/Core stune pulse. I know he is using the tower damadge boost, and some persional ones.

It's midnight, I will edit this in the morning, when I'm more awake. I know this is a call for a balance change regaurding a combo, however it sounds more like a nitch tool. If I could rip apart armor stuff, and leave the smaller junk to my friend. I think we would get much further. As it stands, dot spam+AS spam into the heavy walkers, just isn't cutting it as Skye. My newbie two pennys on the matter.

[AiLA - Singularity]

I couldn't agree more with the developer, i mean yes itrs true that two magazines of drone gun on supperheavy rip it to shreds in few secoonds with juxtaposing (24 drones) but try this strategy on runners when there is 60 of them in one big group with 5 FoS, here sweet with juxtaposing and corpse explosions is like a meatgrinder you want to nerf that too? just because you found a good strategy on bosses doesnt mean that it works on everything, yes i agree against heavys and bosses this is rather op, but my sweet with juxtaposing and hip firing can take the normal heavy apart in 3 magazines (6 rockets per magazine) plus everything around him, soo, isnt that op too?

and plus you need level 30 just to get the drone luncher so most of the game is way past you and now you are just mostly having fun...

and dornes dont attack faster to my observation, they are just lunched faster

[Oridox]

I feel like it's a reason to actually use Skye now. She's always felt too "well rounded" to me.

[Supernatural Cookie]

Honestly, the Drones feel well balanced to me. Sure, they rip bosses and heavies to shreds. But for lesser enemies they seem extremely weak. They have a delay on firing and activating as well as they seem to explode a lot faster on weaker enemies. Meaning you'll wind up needing to spawn more after one or two enemies, which in turn leaves a rather long delay for them to get pretty far in.

On skye, its pretty good, but I feel its sort of balanced by her already somewhat weak primary weapon. Her secondary also tends to use up all of the ammo as well and leaves a noticiable delay before you can switch weapons.

Then you have to factor in that firing the drones don't seem to always target what you want them to. With waves of enemies crowding a super heavy, some might wander off to do attack something else, while other times the drones seem content to just buzz around in the sky without targeting anything.

All in all, Skye with the Drone launcher feels much more specialized now. She seems to be more of a heavy/boss killer but kind of weak when dealing with weaker enemies. Especially fast runners and the like.

[Ninjo]

yup. drone launcher is awesome against heavies, but runners, these guys on 5fos are lightning fast.

[Sartana]

On weak enemies, you just have to fire 11 out of 12 drones, and detonate them, boom, no more enemies, as long as you're playing solo. While i agree it's nowhere near the right click from gatling rifle on weaker enemies, the drone gun can handle everything as long as it's used right.
I recently did the end 5 FoS again on solo while just firing drones on the side of the map, and ended dealing more damage than towers, every boss just melted as soon as it spawned.
While I agree it shouldn't be overnerfed, (it's good to see some good builds for skye, i was getting tired of survival runs with only sweet and haigen) the damage output seems really too much right now.