The Breaker Incendiary was not nerfed, but it needs one

[Vandom]

Yes I read the patch notes, the number of magazines went from 6 to 4. But hear me out.

The Breaker Incendiary is OP

Take a step back from the 'meta', and compare the BI to the base Breaker, and the Breaker S&P. They are all the same weapon, but with slightly different key stats.

The Breaker is an average weapon that does a high amount of damage.
The Breaker S&P does significantly less damage, but has twice the magazine capacity, with a slight increase in reload time, and slightly less recoil.
The Breaker Incendiary does slightly less damage than the Breaker, but has a powerful Fire ability that can affect AV4, and also does significantly more damage to durable. A decent trade off, as both have pros and cons.
However the Breaker Incendiary also has the double magazine size, just like the S&P, without the extra reload time, but also less recoil than both others.

That is what makes it OP, having the strengths of both the other variants combined, with none of the weaknesses. Decreasing its spare magazines does not weaken the overpowered performance of the weapon. It just makes it less usable.

Players are still bringing the Breaker Incendiary, they are just doing so with supply packs, or acting like ammo goblins. The ‘nerf’ did not solve the problem, and now everyone is angry.

How to nerf the Breaker Incendiary

The Breaker Incendiary is a breaker variant, and it should be balanced as such. Start with the Breaker, add the fire effect, then add a downside that counterbalances that powerful effect.

What does that look like? Changing the magazine size to be 13, just like the base Breaker. Yes, it really is just that simple, no need to take away all its ammo. Players can still use it, and have fun using it without it being objectively OP.

AH are idiots

Even if you have a balance team that doesn’t play the game, and uses nothing but spreadsheets, this was an obvious fix when you just looked at the numbers. Why are they making this so complicated? Every single one of these Breakers have slightly different recoil values, and even different number of pellets per shell. It’s baffling why there is so much unnecessary complexity, when you don’t even have the fundamentals done right.

The HD2 community should be rightfully upset at the state of things. The balance changes in this patch sucked. It took way too long to make far too few changes, half of which were braindead. (BI ammo, FT against groups, Guard Dog pathetic, Slugger has spread!?)

TLDR: It’s a skill issue. AH just needs to get gud(at balancing).

[Zero]

Originally posted by Vandom:

Yes I read the patch notes, the number of magazines went from 6 to 4. But hear me out.

The Breaker Incendiary is OP

Take a step back from the 'meta', and compare the BI to the base Breaker, and the Breaker S&P. They are all the same weapon, but with slightly different key stats.

The Breaker is an average weapon that does a high amount of damage.
The Breaker S&P does significantly less damage, but has twice the magazine capacity, with a slight increase in reload time, and slightly less recoil.
The Breaker Incendiary does slightly less damage than the Breaker, but has a powerful Fire ability that can affect AV4, and also does significantly more damage to durable. A decent trade off, as both have pros and cons.
However the Breaker Incendiary also has the double magazine size, just like the S&P, without the extra reload time, but also less recoil than both others.

That is what makes it OP, having the strengths of both the other variants combined, with none of the weaknesses. Decreasing its spare magazines does not weaken the overpowered performance of the weapon. It just makes it less usable.

Players are still bringing the Breaker Incendiary, they are just doing so with supply packs, or acting like ammo goblins. The ‘nerf’ did not solve the problem, and now everyone is angry.

How to nerf the Breaker Incendiary

The Breaker Incendiary is a breaker variant, and it should be balanced as such. Start with the Breaker, add the fire effect, then add a downside that counterbalances that powerful effect.

What does that look like? Changing the magazine size to be 13, just like the base Breaker. Yes, it really is just that simple, no need to take away all its ammo. Players can still use it, and have fun using it without it being objectively OP.

AH are idiots

Even if you have a balance team that doesn’t play the game, and uses nothing but spreadsheets, this was an obvious fix when you just looked at the numbers. Why are they making this so complicated? Every single one of these Breakers have slightly different recoil values, and even different number of pellets per shell. It’s baffling why there is so much unnecessary complexity, when you don’t even have the fundamentals done right.

The HD2 community should be rightfully upset at the state of things. The balance changes in this patch sucked. It took way too long to make far too few changes, half of which were braindead. (BI ammo, FT against groups, Guard Dog pathetic, Slugger has spread!?)

TLDR: It’s a skill issue. AH just needs to get gud(at balancing).

You're right. We need more nerfs, we need this game to be abandoned by everyone, and arrowhead ot be remembered as a company full of incompetents who will never be able to get a good sale on their games again as everyone remembers how terribly they did at both balancing, and not having a busted game that constantly crashes.

[BalgaBear]

I would be fine if breaker incendiary actually stopped hunters who got hit by it, and are now on fire...from launching their (now...in the air....at this time) deceased corpse, smashes me in the face.

There's plenty of downsides, however the main reason why I use it because I like shooting 5 shots as artillery toward a group of bugs off in the distance and knowing the scavengers and hunters will just burn to death.

[Beatlejuice]

If it's OP it's only because everything that was it's equal or better was nerfed. If the Breaker gets nerfed something else will be top and it will be nerfed. It's a vicious cycle.

It's funny, when a game is really bad, sometimes developers abandon it like Anthem or Arkham Knights. Seems when a game is good developers can't help but mess it up with tinkering. OWI did it with Squad and Arrowhead is doing it with this.

[Gundug]

It sounds like this solution is to make the Breaker Incendiary a lesser version of the new Cookout in every way. I don't see how that would be helpful. Have you used the Cookout yet?

[Vandom]

Originally posted by Gundug:

It sounds like this solution is to make the Breaker Incendiary a lesser version of the new Cookout in every way. I don't see how that would be helpful. Have you used the Cookout yet?

No I haven't unlocked it yet, looks fun to use with the stagger. The cookout has less than 1/3 the fire rate, and a much smaller mag size so the BI would still be better against chaff, in theory.

[BalgaBear]

Just forced myself to use the Breaker Spray and Pray...
Did you know, you have to land EVERY pellet on a hunter to kill it in one shot?
I was running difficulty 4 and never stopped shooting the entire time, there was always another patrol, another breach, another damn bug hole I need "structure" damage for.

[Vandom]

Originally posted by BalgaBear:

Just forced myself to use the Breaker Spray and Pray...
Did you know, you have to land EVERY pellet on a hunter to kill it in one shot?
I was running difficulty 4 and never stopped shooting the entire time, there was always another patrol, another breach, another damn bug hole I need "structure" damage for.

It is pretty terrible, only doing 64% dps of the base Breaker.

[Pigeons555]

I agree the Breaker Incen. needed to be nerfed. You can literally effortlessly, without aiming at all, spray hordes of bugs and kill them with DoT, but also direct damage them like a normal gun if you need to.

Also, the nerf is the tamest thing you can do to it. Lowering total mags, increasing recoil just makes people aim their shots more. The tyranny.

The Sickle was nerfed (justifiably so) but no one was outraged because it was a total mag size nerf, and came along with some buffs to weapons (a lot of very minor buffs that changed nothing, but it made people realize the base Liberator is a decent gun).

THE PROBLEM WITH NERFING THE BREAKER INCENDIARY IS THAT THE BALANCE PATCH DID NOT COME WITH BUFFING OTHER WEAPONS TO THE BREAKER INCENDIARY'S LEVEL. ALL IT SEEMINGLY TRIES TO ACCOMPLISH IS TO TRY TO PREVENT A META FROM FORMING. Which is literally futile.

Was the original Breaker really overpowered and needed to be nerfed from 16 mag size to 13? I don't think anyone can legitimately make the case it was overpowered. But it was seemingly nerfed because it was the best option, not that it was an overpowered option. Despite the Breaker Incendiary being arguably OP, the same logic seems to be continued in the balancing team: nerf the most popular option for being popular (i.e. the best option) not necessarily for being OP.

[Sasha Mason]

Why is it that people are always so obsessed with the META?
I'm here just playing with whatever combo feels best for me regardless of what its considered by others. Even if there is one, so what? It's impossible to make everything perfectly equal.

[ander_smith]

Originally posted by Sasha Mason:

Why is it that people are always so obsessed with the META?
I'm here just playing with whatever combo feels best for me regardless of what its considered by others. Even if there is one, so what? It's impossible to make everything perfectly equal.

good question, they don't have to run meta so why care if someone else is? if the game is to easy bring worse and worse weapons until you are good to go. so that the rest of us can have our fun.

[joeredner]

Originally posted by Vandom:

Players are still bringing the Breaker Incendiary, they are just .......acting like ammo goblins.

Standing over here with my Spear frowning.

[Sasha Mason]

Originally posted by ander_smith:

Originally posted by Sasha Mason:

Why is it that people are always so obsessed with the META?
I'm here just playing with whatever combo feels best for me regardless of what its considered by others. Even if there is one, so what? It's impossible to make everything perfectly equal.

good question, they don't have to run meta so why care if someone else is? if the game is to easy bring worse and worse weapons until you are good to go. so that the rest of us can have our fun.

Exactly. But wait, people aren't doing that because they will very quickly learn that being ill-suited for the selected difficulty will just be a painful experience for them first, and then for everyone else when they fail to hold their own weight.

But seriously, I couldn't really care less whether or not people pick "meta" gear or not. So long they get the mission done well, they can roll with whatever they see fit. I'm not obsessed with other people's equipment choices.

[Beltway]

The Breaker Incendiary doesn't need a nerf. The other primaries need buffs. The Breaker Incendiary is the only reliable primary.

[Sasha Mason]

Originally posted by Beltway:

The Breaker Incendiary doesn't need a nerf. The other primaries need buffs. The Breaker Incendiary is the only reliable primary.

*Me maining the Sickle, I'd beg to differ*
But ngl, the fact that the Sickle practically has infinite ammo while also performing really well has practically invalidated the standard Assault Rifle, and even the other variants of it are very questionable picks.

[Vandom]

Originally posted by Sasha Mason:

Originally posted by Beltway:

The Breaker Incendiary doesn't need a nerf. The other primaries need buffs. The Breaker Incendiary is the only reliable primary.

*Me maining the Sickle, I'd beg to differ*
But ngl, the fact that the Sickle practically has infinite ammo while also performing really well has practically invalidated the standard Assault Rifle, and even the other variants of it are very questionable picks.

Why would anyone pick anything else when the Sickle has the advantages of both laser and assault rifles, with none of the downsides.

The Sickle nerf also happened to decrease its spare magazines, which just made the reload mechanic less used. It having twice the dps of the Scythe never seemed to get noticed.