Gauss cannon - For the convenience of the players we decided to make charge accumulation smoother. Now the player can follow the enemy, not the charges.
Was this change effective? I don’t think so. Here is why:
I have made a chart showing the effective damage dealt by the gauss cannon, keeping in mind the patch notes: “Full damage stays the same”, “full charge accumulation time does not change”
I understand that the graph is not completely accurate to the in game results, however I think it does show the problem with the new gauss cannon. (the repeating units on the time axis represent the time taken for each change in damage)
This clearly shows that for the first 2 charges the old gauss cannon dealt significantly higher damage, while the new charging system is only more effective for a short period of time near to maximum charge. This means that to deal a similar amount of damage with the new cannon, you have to pay close attention to charge the cannon for at least 1/2 a charge until you can achieve similar alpha damage. This goes against what the developers were aiming for: “Now the player can follow the enemy, not the charges”. To compensate for this the cannon has a faster fire rate, however this is not useful at close range, since the few shots that will hit are doing a tiny amount of damage.
To fix this, I only have two suggestions:
- return the gauss cannon to how it was prior to 1.0.17
- increase the alpha damage of the new gauss cannon to similar levels as before, and to balance this reduce the fire rate, however leave the new charging mechanic
I only ever played with Gauss once before the patch, and to be honest, it seemed much easier to use then. Just like positron, it was easy to get a “feel” for exactly when the charge accumulated. Now, it’s very difficult to tell when you have the full alpha ready, since it charges faster than most folks can easily keep up with. On top of that, it’s now harder to tell by looking at the aiming reticle, too. Essentially, the alpha damage was completely removed in favour of a ridiculous rate of fire weapon that ruins mice.
But I can’t really have an opinion, never really having used Gauss much before.
Regardless, +1
I have mixed feelings. Old gauss was great with charging, but very punishing when you miss something up close. Quick snapshots of new gauss eliminated it, at cost of charged damage.
With new gauss, after some testing, best optimal shooting is charging and releasing to shoot gaining fire rate similiar to old gauss (2-3k per shoot). Holding to max charge have almost no sense.
I have mixed feelings. Old gauss was great with charging, but very punishing when you miss something up close. Quick snapshots of new gauss eliminated it, at cost of charged damage.
With new gauss, after some testing, best optimal shooting is charging and releasing to shoot gaining fire rate similiar to old gauss (2-3k per shoot). Holding to max charge have almost no sense.
I don’t have the same experience with the gauss cannon as you did. As the graph shows, they both perform pretty much equally with long charging, perhaps the new cannon is even better in terms of dps. While the new cannon is effective with medium charges, it is far weaker than the old cannon for uncharged shots and lightly charged shots. This is due to the high alpha damage which rewarded accurate uncharged shots with the old cannon, allowing inteceptors to be killed in only a few hits. Misses could be compensated for with improved fire rate from iridium heatsinks, so I didn’t find it too punishing. The new cannon is too weak to kill anything with uncharged shots, so the fire rate buff is useless.
+1
The old gauss relied on alpha damage, the new one doesn’t. This defeats the point of having a gauss cannon, as the high-RoF kinetic weapon is supposed to be assault rails.