Give Liberator concussive medium AP/more stagger power

[Zaidah]

That's honestly the only thing this weapon needs to be viable. Right now :
-It can only kill the weakest enemies in a reasonable time
-It it otherwise useful against very few enemies (Brood commander and berserker, basically)
-It's not accurate/powerful enough to take advantage of weak spot

If it had medium AP and could also stagger/knockbackmedium enemies like Devastator or Bile spewer, it would have a niche as a "stunner" role (since it also has a big magazine). Currently, in practice, almost no light armored enemies need to be stunned as most can (and should) easily get killed by other weapons/stratagems.

[zidj]

at 35 stagger, it's on par with the punishers for stagger. it's also got the most pushback force in the game at a value of 60

accuracy is a problem, rate of fire is a problem

IMO if it at least had the RPM of the slower SMGs (defender, pummeler, reprimand, somewhere in that spectrum) it'd be a lot better than it is currently

It can stagger medium units you just need to hit their light AP weakspots. for devastators that's head, limbs, stomach, ammo backpack. For spewers that's the butt. For hive guards that's behind or below their frontal armor

[Zaidah]

I mostly used it against bugs to be fair (as I feel like it's the most efficient against them), and it doesn't stagger bile spewer when you hit the unarmored parts (bile sack). Doesn't slow down charger either when hitting the back.

I guess it's not too bad against devastator since they have that stomach weakspot, although some bullet will still hit elswhere because of the accuracy.

I'm not too sure about firerate because of the knockback : it would still be hard to kill light enemies (because you make them move a lot with each shot), and still struggle against medium (even with reduced recoil, the RoF will still make it hard to land everything in the weakspot). Maybe it could apply a short slow on targets ? It's concussive after all

[Zaidah]

Unless they changed it recently, I could never stun/stagger bile spewer even when hitting the butt. They would slow down slightly, but could still move and attack as usual.

Edit : after testing again, shooting bile spewer (in their green sack) with that weapon indeed won't stop their movement/attack. They will still attack if they are at range (at which point, shooting under their mouth is the way to cancel it - like with any other weapon), and they will sometimes drift left and right (like they are drunk) when moving, but don't get slowed much from doing so.

[Khloros]

They should make both the punisher and the concussive be really good at blowing off armor plates from overseers.

[LoveTruffle]

Originally posted by Khloros:

They should make both the punisher and the concussive be really good at blowing off armor plates from overseers.

Yeah, I found it to be good at stunning them but it didn't do much to their armor or health. I was hoping Siege Ready armor would make the Lib Concussive more viable, but it doesn't kill fast enough for me. Concussive weapons by nature could be a reasonable route to breaking armor.

[Alice]

What it NEEDS is FIRE FATE.
Seriously, brng it up to 550 or 600, this 350 rpm ain't cutting it. Like when there is no difference between tap firing and automatic, there is no point to making it automatic. Double the fire rate at least, and then maybe it'll be useful.

[Alrik]

It's a good combo with a Autocannon on maps with long range visibility.
At the moment you can fire manually short burst (even single bullets) to stagger and hold the trigger as panic button to kill.

A higher RPM would be nice to make it more viable for killing, like zidj suggested around the lower SMG rpm range.

[Botji]

Another idea could be to give it explosive damage, pretty much 0 AoE and only like 50 damage but it would put its DPS more on par with higher RoF weapons and not be completely useless against medium armor(AP 3 explosion ofc).

Idea being that the explosive component can have a decent stagger as well to help with medium armor enemies not just bouncing the bullets and be unaffected.

Imo that is the main reason I never use it abysmal damage and struggles against medium armor, why use it when I can bring a Slugger to do the same job but 200% better?

[Shy]

Yeah I'd rather take a gun that could kill something, rather than just slightly stagger it. The mag size is great it just seems to do less damage than advertised in the stats.

[LoveTruffle]

Originally posted by Shy:

Yeah I'd rather take a gun that could kill something, rather than just slightly stagger it. The mag size is great it just seems to do less damage than advertised in the stats.

It's pretty effective at stun locking targets, but it needs to bring more to the table to be worth picking when the alternative is taking a weapon that will kill outright.