Volatile Impact Reactor

[Iluszachane]

I am at my wits end with this accursed overclock. Engineer brings it into the mission, and every time there's a horde of bugs you see him hold m1 and flail his mouse all over the place like he's having a seizure, killing every grunt in the cave in a matter of seconds. Nobody else gets to play with their toys when VIR man is in the cave with you. Something must be done, before I am overtaken by madness.

How would y'all nerf VIR?

[Qua2ar]

VIM is the strongest OC for the Laser gun. It's sticky flames with infinite range.
I use it alot and I agree that it's op, I can kill ten grunts with 3 ammo by just kiting them through the line I drew, on haz 5 btw.
Against bigger enemies it still does decent direct damage, the reduced aoe doesn't matter.

It's best paired with stubby for the damage boost, shoot bug till electrified and then laser them.

This means the gun has no downsides, it has amazing aoe damage with the fire trail and still great single target damage with the weak spot and vs electrified damage boost.

[kestrel]

i think a fair nerf for VIM would be to add a firing speed penalty. base shard's RoF is 13, so let's reduce it to about 9 or 10 (a %25-%30 nerf)
with less RoF you wouldnt be able to create as many magma "tiles" so you'd have to move your mouse slower to ensure even coverage. less RoF also reduces direct DPS

having said that - although i do agree VIM is very strong i wouldn't consider it overpowered. it doesn't have any synergy with any of its T5 mods* and it's also competing with multiple other strong options such as overdrive, feedback loop, and arguably plascrete catalyst
*you can kind of get away with T5A for direct damage but given the OC's reduced mag size it's not optimal. and again, there are better options

it has the sticky fuel/minelayer problem where it's only good if your team knows not to shoot bugs that are walking on the magma. 9/10 players don't understand this concept, they just see bugs and click on them thoughtlessly. if they do that, it just results in wasting ammo for everyone

[Frisky]

plascrete catalyst

[Iluszachane]

Publicado originalmente por Bookslayer10:

Publicado originalmente por Iluszachane:

How about a range limit for the beam's magma effect?

No, I definitely don't want anything that actually harms the weapon's intended use. If it needs to be nerfed, raise the skill floor, don't lower the skill ceiling.

I think "skill" is a really strong word to use in the context of VIR. I also doubt that the way VIR is used by players (nearly 100% of the time I see it on my team) is how it was intended to be used. These devs wouldn't intentionally put something that dumb into this game.

Publicado originalmente por Victor:

I mean, simple. No slow. None. Slightly lower DoT damage.

The farther away the target, the more precision or effort it would require to lay out enough lines to net worthwhile results.

Currently that is not the case. It is practically just as easy to make a fully effective trail at 10 meters as it is at 300, and if anything you lay more area down spazzing the mouse on an open cave roof then in a tunnel.

Great, simple idea, thank you! I also agree fully with the latter paragraph. In open caves, the silliness of the OC really shows (or, rather, the silliness of the player who brought the OC).

Publicado originalmente por Sokaku:

Simple, play at a higher hazard level.

I only play H5 and up.

Publicado originalmente por boilpoint0:

I also have some words for OP.

It's pretty normal to see an engineer gets most kill on ending statistics, this class just have too many good tools(breach cutter, fat boy, sentry, shreddr drones, etc) in his kit to boost the kill counts, no matter he is using VIR or not.

Also, Kills means little about the true contribution of a player to a team without watching the gameplay from second to second. For example, a scout can trigger as many as swarmer tunnels as possible, destroy as many as brood nexus as possible and spend all his time/resources to get those juicy kills, this kind of act can easily boost his kill counts to the first place.

Personally I don't care a whole lot about kill count at the end of the mission (although I admit it's tickling to get top kills). My issue with VIR, Fat Boy, and even NTP is the way they deny other player from participating in taking out a given wave of enemies. VIR is like Fat Boy, in that a player can spot an emerging crowd of bugs 50m away on the ceiling, press m1 for a second, and completely eliminate them in an instant. Nobody else gets to play the game while that's happening.

Publicado originalmente por Frisky:

plascrete catalyst

Speaking of which, this is what I've been testing out lately, and it's great fun. So much interactivity, planning ahead etc... in that sense it feels like an iconic Engineer weapon. I was using it in Deep Scan last night with another Engi who took VIR, and I barely got to do anything when the other Engi was around because of how he used VIR. Right when he'd spot the bugs spawning in, he'd just spasm all over the area and take them out before I got to have fun with Plastcrete Catalyst. Obviously you can directly read somebody's IRL mouse movements while they're using a weapon like the Shard Diffractor; every time, it was just a complete seizure lol. It's like opening up MS Paint and scratching the pencil tool all over the screen. SO incredibly lame imo. Hence this thread :[

[SCamp]

Publicado originalmente por kestrel:

i think a fair nerf for VIM would be to add a firing speed penalty. base shard's RoF is 13, so let's reduce it to about 9 or 10 (a %25-%30 nerf)
with less RoF you wouldnt be able to create as many magma "tiles" so you'd have to move your mouse slower to ensure even coverage. less RoF also reduces direct DPS

having said that - although i do agree VIM is very strong i wouldn't consider it overpowered. it doesn't have any synergy with any of its T5 mods* and it's also competing with multiple other strong options such as overdrive, feedback loop, and arguably plascrete catalyst
*you can kind of get away with T5A for direct damage but given the OC's reduced mag size it's not optimal. and again, there are better options

it has the sticky fuel/minelayer problem where it's only good if your team knows not to shoot bugs that are walking on the magma. 9/10 players don't understand this concept, they just see bugs and click on them thoughtlessly. if they do that, it just results in wasting ammo for everyone

I don't think a ROF nerf would affect ammo efficiency/coverage like you'd think it would. It would do the opposite and make it easier to control/conserve ammo with. (The nerf basically does nothing but give an advantage to players with good "light coverage" habits..) Though a ROF nerf would hurt direct-fire DPS, it would make it easier to stop firing when an enemy dies which makes it easier to use with Biomass Converter.

Most importantly a ROF nerf would make it easier to draw dongs on the walls.

EDIT: If I were to give it a nerf, I would just give it a recharge nerf. If they draw a patch, they have to commit to it, or wait some time to draw another one (instead of fixing it). This also makes taking mag size more appealing (if they weren't taking it before in order to set things on fire with beam).

[kestrel]

Publicado originalmente por SCamp:

I don't think a ROF nerf would affect ammo efficiency/coverage like you'd think it would. It would do the opposite and make it easier to control/conserve ammo with. (The nerf basically does nothing but give an advantage to players with good "light coverage" habits..) Though a ROF nerf would hurt direct-fire DPS, it would make it easier to stop firing when an enemy dies which makes it easier to use with Biomass Converter.

well first off, high RoF builds being "less efficient" is only true if you don't know how to control your weapon. RoF only affects how fast ammo is consumed, you do the same amount of damage regardless if your RoF is 1 or 20

second, the point of reducing RoF is to slow down how quickly VIR can saturate an area in magma. VIR creates magma as fast as the shard fires. for each unit of ammo, you create one magma "tile" that exists in the world. so if you reduce the RoF, you reduce how quickly the shard can place magma tiles

try it for yourself. if you wave your mouse around fast enough whilst firing VIR, you can see tiny gaps between each individual magma tile which is where you've moved faster than the weapon's RoF can create the magma trail. it's more obvious if you play with a high mouse sensitivity

so, if you give VIR a RoF penalty, you'd have to move your mouse slower to ensure there's no gaps in the magma trail that reduces your coverage. this requires you to be more precise with how you place magma tiles, so you can't just walk in, spaz your mouse around and cover the entire map in magma
it would also reduce the shard's own DPS, restricting the viability of hybrid builds

EDIT: If I were to give it a nerf, I would just give it a recharge nerf. If they draw a patch, they have to commit to it, or wait some time to draw another one (instead of fixing it). This also makes taking mag size more appealing (if they weren't taking it before in order to set things on fire with beam).

i guess i'd be fine with that, but i also don't think it would really do anything unless it was an extremely long recharge time penalty (2 seconds minimum). and at that point you're not actually making VIR less effective, just more annoying and less fun to use

[Ethical Lune]

Yeah it's wildly overpowered but I don't think the devs care enough to fix it.

I'd probably change it to create electrified plasma goop on the ground instead of magma, dealing far less damage but still being quite capable and would have even more slowdown.

[SamuraiCheems]

Publicado originalmente por Iluszachane:

I am at my wits end with this accursed overclock. Engineer brings it into the mission, and every time there's a horde of bugs you see him hold m1 and flail his mouse all over the place like he's having a seizure, killing every grunt in the cave in a matter of seconds. Nobody else gets to play with their toys when VIR man is in the cave with you. Something must be done, before I am overtaken by madness.

How would y'all nerf VIR?

Play harder difficulties, where it is not as broken and you can play harder difficulties.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDGRAHBojWE

[Niczu]

VIR is indeed a funny one. Its not as widely talked about as Fat Boy (or even ECR when it comes to primaries), but it is extremely powerful. In my belief, it is probably one of the most strongest OC's in the entire game. I enjoy it, use it often and it is fun, especially given how ammo efficient it is for a class who is generally considered very ammo hungry. Some people say its a budget Sticky Flame but I highly disagree; Sticky Flames are very limited by range while VIR can just shoot across everything.

All that said, I wouldn't mind some nerfs for VIR in exchange for better overall ammo economy for Engi.

[GατΠιсЭ]

...haz 1-2 issues. Moving on....

[Niczu]

Publicado originalmente por GατΠιсЭ:

...haz 1-2 issues. Moving on....

If thats the level of your capability to give any sort of feedback, then its probably better if you just move on.

[kestrel]

Publicado originalmente por EntirelySoulless:

Play harder difficulties, where it is not as broken and you can play harder difficulties.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDGRAHBojWE

Publicado originalmente por GατΠιсЭ:

...haz 1-2 issues. Moving on....

reminder that these are the people GSG balances the game for

[zverozvero]

Flamer with range. Take away range.

Or dont cause flamer pierce with better slow and duration.

[Chibbity]

VIR is over rated.

Max AOE Feedback Loop with Bio Converter. <3

[zverozvero]

Publicado originalmente por Chibbity:

VIR is over rated.

Max AOE Feedback Loop with Bio Converter. <3

Now thats what Karl would 'ave wanted