Guard Debuffs

Ships
1

Okay, so with the new patch, guided torpedoes are immune to AMS. Now for the Jericho LRF pilot, this is a good thing. A great thing really; I love removing all the enemy drones in Beacon Capture and then re-position to protect my team’s beacons. Unfortunately for the Guard pilots, this means they’ve lost the ability to protect drones and team mates from “blip blip blip incoming missile blip blip blip.”

 

I like blowing stuff up with torpedoes.
I also like blowing torpedoes up. I also like to play support classes. A lot.

 

Now, the Guard _is not broken. _AMS still pops missiles at range, anomaly generators are sadistically fun to use, pulsar still curb stomps the idiot Interceptor pilot, and the ships themselves are great at point defense medium range combat. They have several modules to choose from, making them versatile ships.

 

My biggest peeves are the AOE debuffs and their range.
Mass Propulsion Inhibitor and Signature Masking are supposed to make an opponent think twice about going near a location where a guard is protecting; these two modules are supposed to punish the fools who dare to tread upon this patch of space grass. That 1-1.6 km patch of space grass. That’s hardly even a comparable to a pallet of sod for my yard; that’s just a plug, and a crappy looking one at that.

 

Which comes to my proposal

 

Give the mods a 40% increase in range. “40%?! What the hell, you’re crazy!” No, not quite, as in application its actually quite modest: on a guard with the 25% range increase buff, you’re looking at 2275 meters on a Mark 3 Mass Propulsion Inhibitor (a 625 meter increase). Which is enough to make an Interceptor feel the effects when they are within range of these debuffs, as most Interceptor pilots feel pretty comfortable with sitting down next to a Guard, drink some tea, have a good chat, and politely bid adieu by killing you or taking whatever you were trying to protect.

 

“Corentin, what do you mean by ‘feel the effects?’”

Well, my good sir, I mean that when an enemy comes into range of an aoe debuff, they should realize that they have stepped into the wrong neighborhood, and have the opportunity to get out before things get ugly. With the current ranges of debuffs, an enemy will simply go in and out of the propulsion inhibitor range simply because of their momentum carrying them across unless they decide to stop inside the field (lol what), or they just stay out of the weapon masking range and throw fruit at the big fat kid that can’t even run away. The increased range will let the enemy know that they need to make the decision to either stay and fight, or leave, and they need to make it now.

_“Corentin, what the hell, that will mean practically all Interceptor weapons will be in range of debuff! That will shut down Interceptors from killing Guards!” _Signature Masking only affects main weapons, not modules or missiles/mines/nukes/sweet rolls. Your plasma arcs will still hurt like hell, and ECMs will still temporarily turn that hard shell into a hard boiled egg. It will mean it takes either time, or teamwork to kill a guard. Torpedoes can be used to ironically beat up the Guards that previously  shunned Jericho LRFs out of combat  

 

To quote from the wiki:

“Guard frigates are designed to protect teammates from enemies and deny areas to the enemy. Guard frigates have strong shields and many defensive abilities, as well as one of the best area effect damaging abilities in the game in the Pulsar. They also have a mobility debuff that is very dangerous to interceptors. However their special abilities are all short range and they are slow to get in position and lack firepower with their primary weapons.”

 

Currently, that debuff is negligible to Interceptors, and the short range makes me want to outright sell the module.

 

A 40% increase in range for the debuff modules will still keep them short range, and actually make them very dangerous to Interceptors.

 

Those are my thoughts, and I welcome any thoughts, suggestions, and arguments. I hope anyone reading this didn’t find my thread to be an eyesore, and I wish you all good luck on the battlefield. o7

2

(Just a quick two cents’ worth…)

 

Speaking from the perspective of a recon and guard pilot, I would say that a range increase will help make guards more effective, so +1 to that. Might need a numbers fix, but we won’t know until we see this implemented.

 

Alternatively, the bonus could be moved to the guard frigates themselves (e.g. range increase, module efficiency); it could be quite insane for a Fed guard to have a huge AoE debuff, considering their speed, so an efficiency increase might be nice as well. But a Jericho guard could benefit from the increases range (at baseline efficiency).

 

Missile shield is another issue: too large a radius means that your shield can be easily ‘distracted’ by a stray missile.

3

Missile shield range is fine in my opinion; you can keep your distance while still able to periodically block a missile. I rarely see a missile fired without it being locked on, so I don’t think stray missiles are an issue

4

Uh i guess you weren’t around when mass propulsion had a range of 3k and pulsar also had the same range. Pulsar also went through walls. The range is good as it is now. It is really powerful to give a 3k range to anything other than missile shield on a guard for an active module.

5

Uh i guess you weren’t around when mass propulsion had a range of 3k and pulsar also had the same range. Pulsar also went through walls. The range is good as it is now. It is really powerful to give a 3k range to anything other than missile shield on a guard for an active module.

No I was not around; i joined in July and don’t play often. If you had read my proposal, the math would never even go near 3 kilometers. Hell, even I feel 3 km is absurd.

6

Uh i guess you weren’t around when mass propulsion had a range of 3k and pulsar also had the same range. Pulsar also went through walls. The range is good as it is now. It is really powerful to give a 3k range to anything other than missile shield on a guard for an active module.

 

Was that in 0.7? I joined back then but I was still in T1.

7

Guards are still dangerous to interceptors. I can’t really remember but it was around march and april i think when it was able to do that. It would be a stand off to see how many times you could pulsar and then rotate with people in your squad that had a guard so that you could constantly pulsar while on the other side of a rock or wall. Then torpedo while on CD. It was pretty silly.

 

But even at a range of 2100 m  that is still way to far and would be OP. Pulsar is really good at cleaning interceptors off you then changing phase shields to EM then Torpedo nuke them. Hit Emergency shield get back all your shields and rinse and repeat if needed.

8

Pulsar isn’t that dangerous. A recon can drain enough shields to tank a pulsar. Pulsar only deals DoT, so a good alpha strike is still a viable counter. 

9

When I see an Interceptor coming toward me, the first thing that comes to mind is, _“The closer you are to danger, the farther you are from harm.” _I would much rather feel like a spider catching a fly on its web.

10

^It’s funny when you realize that one of the ceptor is designed based on spider.

 

I like to shoot em up from a far, a ceptor at close range is always a pain to deal with.

11

You know what else? Mass Propulsion Inhibitor  looks like an Interceptor…caught on a web…

12

The problem, is, Devs changed the range of the Signature Masking, it was 2100m for MK3 before the 0.9.0. Now 1300m. And of Course it was a Ninja Nerf.

 

Guard pilotes have to let the Little Interceptor use their new weapons.

13

guard debuffs are fine as they are.

 

For the love of god, mass propulsion inhibitor is on the verge of OP as it is! The moment you are in that field you lose any ability to accelerate or deaccelerate and, if caught in a bad position, you are most likely dead because you can’t turn around!

14

guard debuffs are fine as they are.

 

For the love of god, mass propulsion inhibitor is on the verge of OP as it is! The moment you are in that field you lose any ability to accelerate or deaccelerate and, if caught in a bad position, you are most likely dead because you can’t turn around!

 

The propulsion Inhibitor always kept the same range. (After the little 0.9.0 hotfix because it have been reduce to 800m if i remember correctly)

15

The propulsion Inhibitor always kept the same range. (After the little 0.9.0 hotfix because it have been reduce to 800m if i remember correctly)

They ninja buffed it to exactly 1 km at mark 1

16

They ninja buffed it to exactly 1 km at mark 1

 

Guard

* Mass propulsion inhibitor: effect radius increased by 25%

 

 

A notified buff after a Ninja Debuff

17

I didn’t see the notification of the change; I assumed it was hushed in. 

 

Edit: Ah, update #2, I see it now

18

Was In the First or Second 0.9.0 Udapte.

19

guard debuffs are fine as they are.

 

For the love of god, mass propulsion inhibitor is on the verge of OP as it is! The moment you are in that field you lose any ability to accelerate or deaccelerate and, if caught in a bad position, you are most likely dead because you can’t turn around!

I got caught in a mass propulsion inhibitor, with the bomb about a half an hour ago. I stopped for a moment to ponder at the irony of my situation, pivoted around a bit to find out that thankfully turn speed isn’t affected (apparently this game doesn’t factor in those tiny side thrusters that help you pivot, turn, and yaw), laugh, and then just flew through the rest of the sphere, and I felt I should have been punished more for being so bold (I was being lasered by the Guard but the pilot’s aim was…lackluster). Granted, I was shot down moments later, but that was after a good 4 km of distance away from the initial debuff. I still think it needs some range increase.

20

Guards are fine. You want area denial, fly the Neuron Zealot, Tormentor-S and the Inquisitor. Otherwise, surprise Pulsar to the face is always a good tactic.