Punisher Plasma is really good against bots

[Forblaze]

I see this weapon getting dogged on a lot, but I love it. It's great. It's like an autocannon in primary weapon form and takes a *lot* of pressure off of your support weapon slot.

Every shot is a damaging AoE that staggers, allowing you to easily deal with groups of devastators (especially heavy devastators) with needing the pinpoint accuracy that would be required from a sickle. Since they're staggered, you don't even need to worry about their aimpunch.

Against jetpack nerds, you can shoot it in front of them to push their exploding bodies away from you, making it much easier to survive their kamikazes.

Scout striders are dealt with effortlessly, with the explosion easily killing the driver with minimal effort.

Entire groups of berserkers are just stunlocked in front of you, completely trivialized.

While the scorcher doesn't have to deal with the arcing projectile, the size of the explosion from the punisher is *much* larger, letting you deal with multiple enemies simultaneously in a way that the scorcher can't and requires significantly less precision in your aim.

[Zaidah]

The reason people avoid this weapon is that you really can't use it efficiently past short range. Shotguns in general are already rarely seen against bots.

I don't doubt it can be very good if you're willing to specialise against close range threats for your team, although you will have to rely on your support weapons and stratagems at medium and long range.

[Forblaze]

Originally posted by Zaidah:

The reason people avoid this weapon is that you really can't use it efficiently past short range. Shotguns in general are already rarely seen against bots.

I don't doubt it can be very good if you're willing to specialise against close range threats for your team, although you will have to rely on your support weapons and stratagems at medium and long range.

It's not *really* a shotgun, though. The arc of the projectile takes some getting used to, but you can send it fairly far by just aiming up.

[Gnome_Bandit]

It needed Eruptors AOE.

[Chaos]

So does the Eruptor that did the same thing but much better?

[napagi]

OP you are ridiculous. I tried the Eruptor once and it was clearly better than the Punisher Plasma in that situation for the way i play therefore it is the best gun in every situation for everyone.

[Forblaze]

Originally posted by Gnome Bandit:

It needed Eruptors AOE.

Originally posted by Chaos:

So does the Eruptor that did the same thing but much better?

Originally posted by napagi:

OP you are ridiculous. I tried the Eruptor once and it was clearly better than the Punisher Plasma in that situation for the way i play therefore it is the best gun in every situation for everyone.

I don't know if I'm just missing something with the eruptor, but it seems just completely inadequate on difficulty 9. It has a much slower rate of fire, to the point that a stunned heavy devastator can resume shooting at you before you're able to fire again. Its handling is also very poor and you can't adjust your aiming easily.

Punisher Plasma is much snappier and you get much of the same results without working nearly as hard for them.

[Quadsword]

I'm not wasting 60 medals on that trash weapon.

[adobo]

Anything that isn't a point and shoot weapon will always be unpopular because people suck at aiming point and shoot weapons already.

[Hand's Hermit Permit]

Its really only great at killing mediums like devastators, but even then it isn't better than just slamming them with the autocannon. It's also fairly awkward to use against small bots.

It's definitely serviceable, but you notice almost a complete inability to hit anything past mid/short range.

[Forblaze]

Originally posted by adobo:

Anything that isn't a point and shoot weapon will always be unpopular because people suck at aiming point and shoot weapons already.

If anything, this is why it's good. It's much easier (imo) to land an explosion between 3 devastators than to perfectly land a hail of scythe bullets into each of their faces. Then once you've landed the first shot, you can continue to stunlock them until they all die.

Originally posted by Quadsword:

I'm not wasting 60 medals on that trash weapon.

What else are you buying? You have to spend medals on something if you want to get to page 3 of the warbond.

[Forblaze]

Originally posted by Hand's Hermit Permit:

Its really only great at killing mediums like devastators, but even then it isn't better than just slamming them with the autocannon. It's also fairly awkward to use against small bots.

It's definitely serviceable, but you notice almost a complete inability to hit anything past mid/short range.

Yeah, but devastators are the biggest threat the bots have. I agree you don't need to take it if you have the autocannon, but I would say that the point of it is to let you take a support weapon that *isn't* the autocannon.

[adobo]

Originally posted by Forblaze:

If anything, this is why it's good. It's much easier (imo) to land an explosion between 3 devastators than to perfectly land a hail of scythe bullets into each of their faces. Then once you've landed the first shot, you can continue to stunlock them until they all die.

But that requires learning how the gun works. And its been proven time and again that anything that requires you to make an effort to learn and adapt is very unpopular.

[JStorm]

The end of the day it suffers from the same issue as others - there are other weapons that are just more practical, relegating it to just a "mess around" kind of gun. Scorcher > bots

[Sanglaine]

I think punisher plasma is pretty decently actually and I swear by scorcher. Though the lack of precision and range is too limiting IMO. It's one of the few decent weapons, but I don't use it because it doesn't cover enough. And good luck shooting down a gunship with it.

[Forblaze]

The Punisher Plasma has been upgraded to "Good as hell" with this patch. After the suicide interaction with the shield generator is patched, it'll probably go all the way up to "slugger circa march 2024" tier.