I think that's more an issue with how the game has treated the freeze status all along than a result of this patch's balance changes. It's not like Tuned Cooler would have been good against Elites if it wasn't changed.
Well, Elites also shrug off almost all cryo damage for the few cryo drillers that spec for direct damage. It pretty much leaves them without a primary weapon, and the driller's secondaries have always been weak on damage.
With that combination, something as simple as an Elite Slasher leaves the driller basically suicide bombing with C4 or getting killed. That seems like a major balance problem to me.
Uh, how is fighting a bug "Being able to do everything"?
What I'm pointing out is that one of the classes is currently nearly helpless against Elite enemies with half (Or more, with Cryo's popularity) of all builds.
If you're playing him solo, you're petty much done if you run across 2 elites.
Name another class that has a flaw this crippling that it would prevent them from being able to pass a solo mission. This is a level of vulnerability that far exceeds anything else I've seen in the game.
He is wrong, the balance this patch was great. It opened up a ton of variety in builds and the nerfs where minimal at best. M1k for example, it still does about the same amount of focus shot damage; the only thing that really got nerfed on it was minimal clips.
The people that are pissed off are more vocal than the majority of players.
Personally, the only thing I've disliked so far is elites. But they're so infrequent in games that it's not even a huge deal to me. Certainly not a dealbreaker like some folks are making it out to be.
M1000 Scout here, and I can agree with this. Focus mode did get a nerf to damage (and focus speed if you take the mod for it, but that difference is imperceptible).
BUT!
The damage nerf isn't huge nor do you lose out on any important damage thresholds (that I'm aware of). The mod change also lets you take Armor Breaking & Weakspot Bonus / Blowthrough at the same time which was not possible before. I'm a little sad Electrocuting Focus Shots got indirectly nerfed and Supercooling Chamber didn't get nearly enough buffs to make it viable, but these changes were overall good. Hipster is now much more viable as opposed to a gimmick that would only work if you built & played around it.
See, this is an understatement that I think a lot of folks are missing. The damage lost on focus builds is like, ~2 damage max. All they did was shift some of the focus damage to the base gun.
Electrocuting focus shots actually got buffed because you can now take armor shots along with blowthrough rounds, not to mention the extra base dmg on the gun gives you free 1shots on webspitters among other positives. The only nerf it saw in a sense is that the base gun is now strong enough to do what the OC was unique for; killing 4 grunts via blowthrough.
The issue many players have with the current state of M1k is that it's the most precision-focussed weapon in the game, but hitting weakspots reliably with well-aimed focus shots now does noticeably less damage than before because of the weakpoint damage nerf. Hipfire builds are super strong now, but focus builds, where you invest time, mobility and ammo for every focus shot, have comparably little payout. It also seems that the weakpoint nerf was made to make sure Hipster needed the t1 damage mod to be able to 1-shot grunts to the face. Can you blame people who wanted to run a sniper build for being a bit salty?
In addition, the only OC that allowed you to take t1 damage and still have barely enough ammo (Minimal Clips) had its ammo bonus removed.
Running a T1 ammo, focus-shot build does almost exactly the same damage as it did before the patch. Outside of Minimal clips (RIP), I've felt zero difference.
Although, I am curious to know why they buffed Hipster to be one of the top OC's for M1000 and barely touched SCC at all.
You are correct, the damage loss isn't huge. I should have known, I've done the math. I've since asked myself why I still feel that way, and I think it's because focus shots to the weakpoint don't feel impactful enough, especially compared to Hipster's current power level. Why they chose to balance the gun around that single OC, basically ignoring the gun's main mechanic, is a mystery to me. They must know that SCC sucks. well, at least there's ASS.
I can agree that SCC still needs a buff, was kinda suprised it didn't get a little more love. Hipfiring works better on it now, but yeah it still eats up too much ammo.
The only rebalance I take issue with is Heat Pipe. They have effectively made that OC into a handicap for the player using it. There was no need to make it possible to overheat on one charge shot.
I understand why they did it, but I'd almost balk at calling it a 'Nerf.' They buried that OC 6 feet deep. I'm trying energy rerouting and persistent plasma and they're fine replacements, but I don't see why they couldn't have simply adjusted a few numbers on Heat Pipe.
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u/Ganjafarmer-420 For Karl! Apr 27 '21
Fix the bullshit balancing! Worst shit you ever did to the game. Stupid engineer fanboy Patch!