So…
That took around 1 second or less.
In a full-tank Endeavor, all shields and hull, with my buffs up, it took around 4-5 seconds for the Swarm to singlehandedly get my shields and hull from 100% to 0.
A sidenote - anyone noticed that shooting Swarm with Singularity Cannon seem to have no effect on it?
This was around 2-3 secs, just because he missed me for the most of it. And no, you cannot escape it or defend against it if you are flying frigate. You are doomed and the only thing you can ask for is that enemy ZeTa will focus sb else next time.
1 hour ago, Viriyath said:
A sidenote - anyone noticed that shooting Swarm with Singularity Cannon seem to have no effect on it?
You just need to hit its hitbox, the hitbox is only the head, everything that is longer then the idle size of the swarm doesn’t count towards the hitbox and doesn’t take dmg.
Aim for the head with laser weaponry, it kills it really fast. One other way is to build a command and hit the Zeta with the ion missile OR just ECM it. Takes a bit of effort in comparison to the cheap tactics you’re playing against but to see 0 kills at the end of a battle i think it’s worth the hassle. Sometimes you can win by sabotage on specific targets in the enemy team.
Good for you guys to have found a way to kill the swarm - but 1 ability of the ze’ta shouldn’t be dominating the whole game in the first place. 70% of every pvp match is a match where I have to fight against an enemy that isn’t there but instead hiding behind a rock on the spawn of the opposing team… I’m kinda fed up with this.
2 hours ago, ORCA1911 said:
Aim for the head with laser weaponry, it kills it really fast. One other way is to build a command and hit the Zeta with the ion missile OR just ECM it. Takes a bit of effort in comparison to the cheap tactics you’re playing against but to see 0 kills at the end of a battle i think it’s worth the hassle. Sometimes you can win by sabotage on specific targets in the enemy team.
Hitbox seems extremely small and inconsistent for something big like that(I know that head is the only valid hitbox) and some weapons like proximity mortar doesn’t really work on it. Taking ECM to deny it effectively also removes you from the battle because 80% of Swarm Control users sit in spawn zone behind some obstacle, you need to fly there and only most incompetent teams won’t rush over an enemy player flying in spawn zone so you won’t return alive after doing this.
Covert Ops with deconstructor and plasma arc can work and at least can remove Zeta from the battle for a while. You can use radar invisibility to sneak in.
But then you have a TDM battle where there are 3 swarms flying around destroying your entire team and even taking a covert ops won’t do anything.
Anyway, such thing that takes zero risk for that insane amount of damage and reward shouldn’t even exist. It should have a short timer, have a limited range and destroying the swarm controlled by player should have a high penalty like hugely increased time for swarm to recover. The swarm should just allow Zeta user to remain in at least very limited way in the battle in case of having to recover from heavy damage. Even the regen buff provided by the module shows that it should work like that. It shouldn’t be the main damage source of Zeta.
1 hour ago, Jonagoldz said:
Good for you guys to have found a way to kill the swarm - but 1 ability of the ze’ta shouldn’t be dominating the whole game in the first place. 70% of every pvp match is a match where I have to fight against an enemy that isn’t there but instead hiding behind a rock on the spawn of the opposing team… I’m kinda fed up with this.
“dominating” just means that most people haven’t learned how to fight it yet. Get a gun and use it.
%THis is an issue if:
You fly near a ze’ta
enemy ze’ta has controlled swarm.
This is like one of the countless post pointing out something that is absolutely fine and not broken.
Positioning is key and prioritize targets.
Also fun fact the swarm is affected by all slowing/halting/stun/etc effects that can be applied to normal ships.
4 hours ago, LYoshiiro said:
%THis is an issue if:
You fly near a ze’ta
enemy ze’ta has controlled swarm.
This is like one of the countless post pointing out something that is absolutely fine and not broken.
Positioning is key and prioritize targets.
Ze’Ta was far beyond my range (5km Dagnith) each time.
7 hours ago, TheDarkRedFox said:
“dominating” just means that most people haven’t learned how to fight it yet. Get a gun and use it.
Can’t hit something that takes you from 100% to 0 in one second from behind your back each time you respawn. “Change the ship”, I hear? No, one skill shouldn’t effectively remove any frigate they want from the game.
4 hours ago, TheDarkRedFox said:
Also fun fact the swarm is affected by all slowing/halting/stun/etc effects that can be applied to normal ships.
Sure, slowed it down with my tackler, then did nothing to it, as singularity cannon just passed it without doing it any harm (and I was hitting the swarm’s center, the point where my slowing beam connected to it). It brought me down with collision damage two seconds later.
9 hours ago, Gon009 said:
Anyway, such thing that takes zero risk for that insane amount of damage and reward shouldn’t even exist. It should have a short timer, have a limited range and destroying the swarm controlled by player should have a high penalty like hugely increased time for swarm to recover. The swarm should just allow Zeta user to remain in at least very limited way in the battle in case of having to recover from heavy damage. Even the regen buff provided by the module shows that it should work like that. It shouldn’t be the main damage source of Zeta.
It can be a main source of damage, I don’t mind it, but I do mind its speed, its hp, and like you said, inconsistent hitbox. It should be brought down by one-two rockets, it’s a damn swarm of small crystals, ffs, yet killing it is harder than killing a fighter. And I so agree with having a huge penalty for loosing a swarm. A paralysis, system shutdown, something like that. Or it should have joined hp - you hit the swarm, you damage the Ze’Ta. Hiding at the spawn shouldn’t be a thing unless you can kill the Ze’Ta via killing the Swarm couple of times.
2 hours ago, Viriyath said:
Ze’Ta was far beyond my range (5km Dagnith) each time.
> That just means its using swarm control.
Can’t hit something that takes you from 100% to 0 in one second from behind your back each time you respawn. “Change the ship”, I hear? No, one skill shouldn’t effectively remove any frigate they want from the game.
> Again Swarm Control.
Sure, slowed it down with my tackler, then did nothing to it, as singularity cannon just passed it without doing it any harm (and I was hitting the swarm’s center, the point where my slowing beam connected to it). It brought me down with collision damage two seconds later.
> Tested against it using Ion Emitter 13 took the whole swarm down in about 1.5-2s.
It can be a main source of damage, I don’t mind it, but I do mind its speed, its hp, and like you said, inconsistent hitbox. It should be brought down by one-two rockets, it’s a damn swarm of small crystals, ffs, yet killing it is harder than killing a fighter. And I so agree with having a huge penalty for loosing a swarm. A paralysis, system shutdown, something like that. Or it should have joined hp - you hit the swarm, you damage the Ze’Ta. Hiding at the spawn shouldn’t be a thing unless you can kill the Ze’Ta via killing the Swarm couple of times.
> I agree that the penalty for losing the swarm should be greater; shot down the swarm then about 2s its up again… I have no idea how some people restore their swarm so fast, while when i use it, its pretty much disable for like forever… Maybe fox can point out how? or someone knowledgable? Anyway right now waiting for a Ze’ta guide to pop up on the forum…
4
The swarm’s combat effectiveness is out of proportion to the risk it involves. Making it easier to kill likely won’t change that much either. It functions essentially like a guided torpedo, but with infinite range, duration and constant dps on slower targets.
It is a death sentence to any frigate, most fighters and some interceptors to get targeted by it. You cant deterr it either, since the swarm’s host doesn’t risk a destroyed ship.
The design of the module is flawed. Its active range should get reduced to about 7,5 km, to not make torpedo lrf obsolete. Its active time needs a cap aswell. About 20 seconds should be sufficient. The cooldown should not start up until the modules deactivation.
Damaging the swarm should give some thermal feedback damage to the host.
Damage needs to get lowered aswell, maybe by 20%. The speed is fine.
The swarm control should be a situational tool to hunt fleeing targets and to shoot behind corners. It shouldn’t be a way of hiding and riskless fighting.
As Ze’Ta player i can certainly say no to all of this.
At first i thought it was totally overpowered too. I thought wow they gonna nerf this thing hard but i came to realize while it may be strong yes it is by no means unfair or unbalanced. The more i’ve been playing PvP the more i’ve noticed that if anyone with a beam laser notices you and start shooting you, you’re instantly dead. If just one in the entire enemy team has an eye out for your swarm and shoots you, no dodge skill in this world will help you, lasers are high damage, good range and they are hitscan, they will make your swarm absolutely useless.
I know its funny but i keep yelling “hacks” whenever i get almost oneshot by a laser dude. I just cant understand how you can hit the swarm with such a wonky hitbox even long enough to do a single full damage tick listed in the weapon, let alone 20k damage, especially since this thing has interceptor level maneuverability. Ohwell…
Fact is, it only looks overpowered and if you get surprised by it or you’re simply not geared to get rid of it, you’re toast but this applies to most if not almost everything in this game. It’s a stone, paper, scissors game. Besides, nerfing the swarm in any way, be it lower damage, limited range or anything will immediately and completely destroy this module and make it completely useless. A special module like this is almost impossible to balance in a sensible fashion without making it either game dominating or completely useless and i think for once they have actually hit a good balance between the two.
The only reason that the Swarm Control is "out of control"heh is because it is bugged, duration is supposed to be no more than 20 seconds, having a maximum control range, or having not only the healing effect but also the control effect be interrupted by taking damage should be considered, damage wise it’s hard to tell, high risk, high reward, but since most people don’t really put up a fight it sure seems like it’s out of proportion, I haven’t played pvp lately so I can’t really comment on it with much detail.
1 hour ago, Niran said:
The more i’ve been playing PvP the more i’ve noticed that if anyone with a beam laser notices you and start shooting you, you’re instantly dead.
The problem is you aren’t dead. You aren’t killed at all. Nothing happens, you are just denied from the chance of getting a kill and you have virtually no penalty from doing this. Did you try taking a frigate and going to the middle of the map alone with no cover when there are people sniping with beams in enemy team? Do you know what happens then? It’s far worse than this no penalty of swarm control module.
1 hour ago, Niran said:
If just one in the entire enemy team has an eye out for your swarm and shoots you, no dodge skill in this world will help you, lasers are high damage, good range and they are hitscan, they will make your swarm absolutely useless.
Useless only if you go with it straight through the middle of the map and attack an enemy in from of his entire team with no support of your friends. The same would happen if you went like that with any frigate or empire/jericho fighter that have no escape modules. Except with Swarm you have no penalty for doing this. With real ship you would be more than useless because in TDM you would basically let the enemy win faster.
1 hour ago, Niran said:
I know its funny but i keep yelling “hacks” whenever i get almost oneshot by a laser dude. I just cant understand how you can hit the swarm with such a wonky hitbox even long enough to do a single full damage tick listed in the weapon, let alone 20k damage, especially since this thing has interceptor level maneuverability. Ohwell…
So, wonky hitbox and interceptor level maneuverability are fine? Funny things. I wonder what are thinking these people who are getting virtually oneshoted by your swarm.
1 hour ago, Niran said:
Fact is, it only looks overpowered and if you get surprised by it or you’re simply not geared to get rid of it, you’re toast but this applies to most if not almost everything in this game.
Except with almost anything else you are gearing for a better reason. Yeah, the game feels much like rock/paper/scissors but when you are geared to get rid of enemy, you either kill that enemy or make it run away and disable that enemy from the battle for a longer while. If you are gearing towards countering swarm control then every time you do it you achieve nothing because the ZeTa can just engage with full health. The only benefit is “not letting your team get killed” but that applies also to other things. Another thing is that the only way to counter it is to have long range beam. Coils? Dead. 3k range? Dead. Singularity? Dead. Engineer? Dead.
1 hour ago, Niran said:
. Besides, nerfing the swarm in any way, be it lower damage, limited range or anything will immediately and completely destroy this module and make it completely useless.
It’s mean to help you regen health and not being completely useless while hiding behind rocks to help you regain your health. Not to give you a weapon having more damage than your main weapon. I can tank a destroyer main weapon easily with a guard and even destroy it but swarm can destroy any guard in few seconds and even faster if you also collide with the guard for collision damage.
The worst thing about swarm is a dozen players sitting in spawn and playing with their drones helping nobody. So a 10v10 turns to a 4v4 …
On 1/25/2019 at 11:35 AM, Gon009 said:
The problem is you aren’t dead. You aren’t killed at all. Nothing happens, you are just denied from the chance of getting a kill and you have virtually no penalty from doing this. Did you try taking a frigate and going to the middle of the map alone with no cover when there are people sniping with beams in enemy team? Do you know what happens then? It’s far worse than this no penalty of swarm control module.
Useless only if you go with it straight through the middle of the map and attack an enemy in from of his entire team with no support of your friends. The same would happen if you went like that with any frigate or empire/jericho fighter that have no escape modules. Except with Swarm you have no penalty for doing this. With real ship you would be more than useless because in TDM you would basically let the enemy win faster.
So, wonky hitbox and interceptor level maneuverability are fine? Funny things. I wonder what are thinking these people who are getting virtually oneshoted by your swarm.
Except with almost anything else you are gearing for a better reason. Yeah, the game feels much like rock/paper/scissors but when you are geared to get rid of enemy, you either kill that enemy or make it run away and disable that enemy from the battle for a longer while. If you are gearing towards countering swarm control then every time you do it you achieve nothing because the ZeTa can just engage with full health. The only benefit is “not letting your team get killed” but that applies also to other things. Another thing is that the only way to counter it is to have long range beam. Coils? Dead. 3k range? Dead. Singularity? Dead. Engineer? Dead.
It’s mean to help you regen health and not being completely useless while hiding behind rocks to help you regain your health. Not to give you a weapon having more damage than your main weapon. I can tank a destroyer main weapon easily with a guard and even destroy it but swarm can destroy any guard in few seconds and even faster if you also collide with the guard for collision damage.
I don’t see a problem here at all. My swarm always gets easily destroyed no matter how much i dodge or take hidden pathways, the moment i look out of cover i get oneshot which puts me on a 30 second cooldown in which i’ll fight just like any destroyer before retreating and using it to heal back up in case i get critically damaged. If you’re having problems then its not the swarm being a problem but your team, call out the swarm and have someone geared better towards killing it do it. Don’t shoot with missiles at flies or for that matter don’t try to hit interceptors with a halo launcher.