Napalm on hurricane is so damn painful to use.

[Syro System]

So this is clearly a "combo with necrothermal" configuration for the hurricane, but it is so incredibly painful to get it to work.

I've tried every configuration I can think of and in every single one of them you run a VERY high risk of grunts dieing before you can hit them with the coilgun shot after igniting them (and you want to explode grunts because guards need to get shot a lot before the coilgun can finish them and beefier enemies are even worse in this regard, slashers are the only thing you can reliably ignite and explode quickly).

This feels so bad since running napalm without a fire synergy combo just feels like nerfing the weapon, but trying to run it with the necrothermal combo just fails more than half the time and ends with you getting killed because you aren't putting out nearly as much damage as you would have done by just not taking napalm and keep shooting normal missiles (every failed detonation = you're dps suffers a lot).

[Frisky]

volatile bullets bulldog would be a better fire combo to use with it, hurricane already has good AoE but is not as effective against praetorians or heavy targets outside of specific OCs, volatile bulldog is very fast to respond with for hitting burning targets and doesn't require a chargeup like coilgun

that being said napalm rounds is terrible, its got a brutal damage penalty and doesn't ignite most targets well, grunts die from the rockets before they're ignited for any significant amount of time and the reduced damage means lighting bigger targets on fire is a very costly investment of ammo, not to mention taking napalm means losing out on stun in the same tier

only way I've gotten napalm to not feel like a penalty is with minelayer which kind of bypasses the penalty with it's oversized damage bonus, even then it mostly ends up feeling like a meme without some fire synergy to capitalize on it

if you wanna do ignite combos, try burning hell minigun, it gets much faster heat buildup and doesn't smack you with taking away almost all damage on the weapon

[Chibbity]

Originally posted by Frisky:

only way I've gotten napalm to not feel like a penalty is with minelayer which kind of bypasses the penalty with it's oversized damage bonus, even then it mostly ends up feeling like a meme without some fire synergy to capitalize on it

I still think Fire is the correct choice in that tier, since Stun can actually work against you by preventing bugs from moving forward into more mines.

That said, I can also see the argument for using Stun to give yourself time to lay down more mines ahead of them, but eh; idk.

For me, Fire is the better choice for Minelayer.

[Frisky]

Originally posted by Chibbity:

I still think Fire is the correct choice in that tier, since Stun can actually work against you by preventing bugs from moving forward into more mines.

That said, I can also see the argument for using Stun to give yourself time to lay down more mines ahead of them, but eh; idk.

For me, Fire is the better choice for Minelayer.

I do agree that stun is a less than ideal choice for minelayer (I think in another post while back I said something similar about stun working against minelayer)

its the one instance where fire is very much arguably the better choice, though unless I'm using something like volatile bullets with it I'd probably go for either no T5 upgrade at all or Nitroglycerin Compound even if it is effectively nothing

[Ser Pounce]

The point of the napalm mod is to save some ammo and to combo it with some other weapons.

Sadly, the fire missiles is kind of an "in limbo" mod: on one-hand, it's pretty mild as a weapon mod. On the other hand, it's pretty much on the verge of being absolutely busted.

When the hurricane first hit the open testing, the mod had issues. It was giving 50% heat from damage, for free.
The problem when the mod was too good was the following : the mod allowed for easy lighting up on fire of regular enemies and allowed you to save a TON of ammo for free (think NTP but for hurricane).
There was no reason to pick any other mod because it was amazingly good.

So they nerfed it. Then, the mod wasn't good enough anymore : there was no point in using it against regular enemies because they would die before catching fire, reducing it's use to only bigger enemies - which is limiting the interest of the mod massively.

So then they increased that number again, but to avoid the first problem, they switched from added heat to direct conversion. Many variants were tried until it all settled on what we have right now.


What can be done to help the mod ?

- Increase the number even further ? No. I don't think people will be thrilled to lose 50% of their damage. It wouldn't solve the issue.

- Go back to added heat and leave it at 33% ? Pointless. Regular enemies will still die before catching fire, and we'd be back to the same problem it did hit back then. Putting it at 40% isn't doing much either, grunts will still die before catching fire. 50% was the sweet spot but it was too damn overpowered.

I guess they could nerf the whole damage of the gun and go back to 50% added heat but that's making a huge mess to solve the problem of one mod being niche.

[RUCKUS RELOADED]

it should just be a free %50 heat bonus again

exchanging damage for heat works for PGL because it's doing a lot of damage in one instance. you can very easily ignite tons of enemies with PGL in a big radius, which leaves them to die due to heat spreading the enemies actually have time to burn to death

it doesn't work for a gun that's only doing 20 area damage (at base) in a significantly smaller radius. heat doesn't spread fast enough because you aren't igniting enough enemies, plus

it was balanced because the GRS doesn't have nearly as much ammo and mag size as something like NTP does, alongside being a projectile weapon which limits its range. there was never any need to nerf it. just yet another kneejerk reaction from GSG because of unbalanced pickrates, and the weapon's build variety is significantly worse for it

not to mention it's competing with the stun mod, which is extremely good and arguably even better than the free heat damage in most cases

the only way it could be overpowered is maybe in combination with PBM if you were to sweep a large number of missiles through a crowd, but that's not generally what you do with PBM. you want to take the stun mod for the improved safety and the ability to lock down targets whilst you dump missiles onto them

[Bookslayer10]

I feel like stun on Minelayer makes the gun more efficient. By stunning the front bugs in a group, you get them to clump up more which improves the AoE effect of the mines. Stun also makes the gun a lot safer, because you can stun enemies close to you to buy time to lay down mines in front of them.

Napalm generally makes Minelayer worse against grunts. It's only really worth it when it gives a way to ignite HVT's for Volatile Bullets. At that point though, Burning Hell is probably overall better, because Minelayer sucks at igniting HVTs.

[RUCKUS RELOADED]

stun only makes minelayer worse if you play passively and wait for the bugs to walk into your mines
if you're aggressive and you place mines under stunned bugs you do significantly higher damage

[Iluszachane]

Originally posted by Frisky:

volatile bullets bulldog would be a better fire combo to use with it, hurricane already has good AoE but is not as effective against praetorians or heavy targets outside of specific OCs, volatile bulldog is very fast to respond with for hitting burning targets and doesn't require a chargeup like coilgun

So glad somebody mentioned the VB combo. Piggybacking from the other thread that briefly dipped into discussion of "class roles", I'd like to present what I think is a very interesting Gunner build that leans into Scout duties. I'm gonna just copy-paste from my steam 'guide' and expose my dorkiness for a second:

BUILDSET:  GREEN DRAGON (Gunner)
 TYPE-C:    "Falling Embers, Blazing Strike"
  Category:  Generalist, Balanced
  Primary:   Overtuned Feed Mechanism 21221 (Hurricane)
  Secondary: Volatile Bullets 21311 (Bulldog)
  Grenade:   Molotov
  Notes:     Quick, long-ranged VB nukes stationaries and most HVTs.
             Struggles against Oppressors and "big" bosses.

P.S. If you haven't tried this build before, your criticism will be firmly ignored, unless you manage to provoke me, which let's be honest, is not hard to do.

[Frisky]

Originally posted by késtrel:

stun only makes minelayer worse if you play passively and wait for the bugs to walk into your mines
if you're aggressive and you place mines under stunned bugs you do significantly higher damage

fair, but even as someone who plays fairly aggressive I feel there are a lot of instances where stun isn't exactly playing to minelayer's strengths

a good example would be missions where bugs are mostly approaching you and you do end up being on the defense more (stuff like salvage and escort duty) in those instances the enemies are mainly approaching you and you are either waiting for them to enter a killzone or you're actively moving back from them like on escort, in these cases minelayer with stun can cause a bit of trouble

I don't think stun is a terrible choice or makes the minelayer worse significantly, it certainly has moments (especially given hurricane stun in general has always been busted) but I also think it's more a sidegrade choice that has it's ups and downs

[Bookslayer10]

Originally posted by Frisky:

a good example would be missions where bugs are mostly approaching you and you do end up being on the defense more (stuff like salvage and escort duty) in those instances the enemies are mainly approaching you and you are either waiting for them to enter a killzone or you're actively moving back from them like on escort, in these cases minelayer with stun can cause a bit of trouble

How exactly does stun cause issues? It's not like the stunned bugs do anything disruptive. They just sit there and give you more time to lay down mines, and often die to a different mine's AoE which improves the efficiency of the build.

[Frisky]

Originally posted by Bookslayer10:

How exactly does stun cause issues? It's not like the stunned bugs do anything disruptive. They just sit there and give you more time to lay down mines, and often die to a different mine's AoE which improves the efficiency of the build.

maybe "causing issues" isn't the right wording for me to use here

what I'm arguing is that stun minelayer is a situational pick and in some cases like with large groups of grunts, doesn't perform as well as something like napalm mines which can do the same crowd control but does so by killing enemies through heat/DoT spreading instead of slowing enemies down until they either move up into another mine or a teammate finishes them off

[Chibbity]

Originally posted by Bookslayer10:

How exactly does stun cause issues?

It's certainly not the end of the world, and Stun is a valid choice, but 3 seconds of Stun can be the difference between your Mines (which only last 15 seconds) getting to do any damage before they expire or not.

[Bookslayer10]

Originally posted by Chibbity:

Originally posted by Bookslayer10:

How exactly does stun cause issues?

It's certainly not the end of the world, and Stun is a valid choice, but 3 seconds of Stun can be the difference between your Mines (which only last 15 seconds) getting to do any damage before they expire or not.

I mean, maybe that could happen sometimes, but I've never personally seen that happen because I generally only shoot mines in front of live enemies and not defensively. Plus, minelayer already has tons of ammo, so a bit of wasted damage isn't a big deal.

When it comes to Napalm, I haven't found the fire spread to do much against grunts because of how fast they die to the basic rockets. I haven't done the math, but it might actually be less ammo efficient on average than stock due to the decreased raw damage.

Considering these points, the safety that Stun provides on minelayer for when enemies get in your face is definitely the best option for me. Being able to stun close-up enemies is invaluable when you need a few seconds to lay and arm the mines.

[Chibbity]

Originally posted by Bookslayer10:

I mean, maybe that could happen sometimes, but I've never personally seen that happen because I generally only shoot mines in front of live enemies and not defensively. Plus, minelayer already has tons of ammo, so a bit of wasted damage isn't a big deal.

When it comes to Napalm, I haven't found the fire spread to do much against grunts because of how fast they die to the basic rockets. I haven't done the math, but it might actually be less ammo efficient on average than stock due to the decreased raw damage.

Considering these points, the safety that Stun provides on minelayer for when enemies get in your face is definitely the best option for me. Being able to stun close-up enemies is invaluable when you need a few seconds to lay and arm the mines.

Well, it most likely depends on when and where you use Minelayer, personally for me it's a Salvage/Escort build specifically; so I'm always using it in a defensive position where I can setup large fields of mines.

Fire is great for mopping anything up that survives the mine field, or failing that; just adding some more damage over time onto any target that survives.

Maybe if I was taking it to something more mobile, I'd use the Stun.

[RUCKUS RELOADED]

at worst, stun minelayer might be an anti-QoL as the mines require physical contact. for example if you set up "rows" of mines for bugs to run through, they'll get stuck at the first row if they get stunned and will be unable to take damage from more mines. but the long lifespan of the mines means this isn't really a hindrance, and it opens up aggressive usage by placing mines right under enemies

yes there are some times where you can't do that (salvage ops for example) but they're limited, and the value of the stun is still extremely good. %25 for 3 secs is amazing uptime on a gun like GRS which fires a lot of projectiles

all the fire mod is doing is making your ammo less efficient because minelayer is still going to blow up everything in 2-3 hits. minigun is just better for igniting HVTs because it works faster at longer ranges, and doesn't waste your damage for the privilege