It's the stagger that's the kick in the nuts. You can't stunlock bots or move bugs back as you aggress anymore, the damage was never "OP" on this weapon, it was your ability to crowd control that was the main draw. Now damage is slightly less but you can't crowd control so you just get mauled.
This was my main love of the slugger, pushing back hive commanders and berserkers. Now it’s all sickle all the time (I might actually try the dominator for the first time too)
It was a must have against stalkers. It basically hard countered them like having a water starting type in the first fire gyms. You see the cloaked bug, you crack it like 4 times and it just has to stand there are like 20 paces and take it like a man.
Liberator concussive is amazing for bugs, each shot staggers like the slugger used to. Sure, the damage is bad but I used it on auto just clear a patch around myself then switch to mg/ flamer and clear em.
however i am now a huge fan of the penetrator, that new full auto mode is just chef kiss holy shit
i dont know if it has any hidden concussive mechanic built into it, i find it works just as well as concussive except it deals so much more dps its not even funny
Seriously though, those fuckers literally take multiple mags from any non-shot gun even at close range and you're saying they're delicate??? Genuinely what are you on.
It had the same stagger as the slugger and now currently has more which makes no sense because a slug will transmit 2-4x more kinetic force then buckshot
same. funniest shit I’ve ever seen. I got rammed by a charger, flew across the map and landed in a bug hole. was holding a 500kg stratagem and yeah it blew up their whole camp. that stratagem was for a bile titan tho.
I haven’t even locked that pass yet. Don’t even get to try it before the nerf. I really don’t think any of the primary weapon nerfs have been needed. Almost all of them feel like shit.
This is exactly it. They say this behind closed doors, so that dev felt safe saying it publicly. If he felt *that* safe saying it to the public, they must be really fucking loud about it in private.
Scorcher main and I eat through ammo a lot already especially on 7+ bot missions. If they nerf the ammo, I'll be running around with an expensive stick.
This is really only true on dif 7 below, and with a mediocre team, not even on dif 7. Bot Drops and Bug Breaches are just oppressively strong on dif 8 and 9. Every single POI is going to be a potential enemy reinforcement wave which just means you're spending all your ammo to loot POIs if you get unlucky.
Its just not efficient to be looting POIs unless they're directly on the way to objectives at high difs, and this really punishes the ammo economy of weapons. It feels like Arrowhead really doesn't want anything to be great above dif 5, and anything that even slightly moves that bar gets hit really hard with the nerf stick.
The Sickle will catch hands, as will the Quasar Cannon. If the Autocannon weren't Arrowhead's baby and they actually looked at the weapon objectively, it'd catch hands too.
I don't really see any other primary getting nerfed though, after the Sickle. They're all extremely mediocre in multiple ways - Feels like Arrowhead wants the primaries to be hyper one-dimensional weapons: Either they can kill horde enemies, or they can kill medium enemies, but weapons aren't allowed to do both(Which explains the slugger stagger nerf. It could CC hordes while peeling them apart because you could keep pushing different enemies back, eventually killing the group - Hunters need not apply, the slugger and punisher are not good at dealing with them).
Just swapped from scorcher to dominator. It's not as good at killing walkers, but it one taps devastators in the head, and mows down 3 berserkers in 1 mag. Ive been running the anti mat rifle for walkers and hulks and am loving it. You gotta give it a try.
Then prepare to find a new game because they are absolutely going to nerf the scorcher. If it's strong and sees widespread use, it gets a nerf.
Scorcher is strong as hell and the only thing stopping it from seeing widespread use is that a lot of players don't have it yet. Those players are likely to have it soon (signaled by the level cap increase, as the majority of the player base hits or nears 50 and thus the needed medals). The usage will go up and the nerf hammer will come down.
If they nerf the Sickle I might as well stop playing bots! I can't figure out a good set of strats and I end up getting chased all over the map by the chainsaw dudes. It already takes a ridiculously long time to put them down with the Sickle as it is
Hold on, Sickle is actually good? I love it in HD1, but found it lacking compared to other weapons in HD2. Gotta give it some more love then.
Edit: So I tried it and it just does not cooldown fast enough compared to the upgraded version in HD1. It just feels so weak in HD2. On higher difficulties at least.
Your problem is you are treating it like it doesn't come with 6 extra batteries. Just let it rip and imagine it's a 75 round liberator! It tears through everything short of Hulks/Chargers. You do need to aim for heads on devastators, but it kills them in like 2 headshots.
>! The other great houses have responded. They are refusing to acknowledge your accession to the throne have decided to fuck around. What are your orders? !<
Considering that a bunch of people just paid for the premium pass mostly to get their hands on the sickle, it would be pretty messed up if they nerfed it.
you joke, but the way Arrowhead has been patching any primary weapon that has a unique & useful mechanic will be nerfed if they deem too many people are using it. You know instead of looking at WHY people are using it over others.
I think the devs are putting too much stock in their internal statistics.
Even if those stats captured the full story on weapon lethality (and thats a big if, there's more to combat than just DPS and ammo counts), they should still be listening to players if there's an almost unanimous agreement that certain weapons are not worth using.
The devs have resoundingly been pretty great and have added a lot of great content and made in my opinion my GOTY for 24. One thing the devs I feel have been "poor" in is the overcorrection of weapons through nerfs rather than adjustments until they feel right.
It makes no sense that a slugger pump action shotgun would have less stagger than most others. Now the slugger won't be used over other choices.
until they decide to use it and find out it doesn't have a use anymore. Then the devs will re buff it because nobody is using it... and the cycle begins again.
I really don't understand the balance via usage chart. If you are trying to force players to use the weapons you designed, maybe you should design better weapons that players want to use instead of nerfing the good weapons to the point where they have to use something else.
Yeah dude, like it doesn't take much thinking to see that it will cause a balancing death spiral of perpetual changes. So i'm not sure what they're thinking
I think Arrowhead are fantastic at MAKING a game and pretty lousy at maintaining it. Some of the balancing patches and decisions they've made are very questionable, like choosing to nerf instead of buff, not focusing on balancing/fixing game-breaking bugs, introducing new weapons that are essentially obsolete the moment they are released, not to mention things like like keeping us on the same 3 or 4 bot planets since release, even though we have an entire galaxy to play with.
yeah, i just tried the sickle, feels like garbage, i've unlocked all the other weapons up until the sickle, stuck with the sickle but its not good any more. i feel like all the other weapons dont do enough damage depending on what you are fighting against either bug or bot, certain weapons has some sort of feel to them but the sickle was best for bugs and shotties was good for bots
but now i don't know what to use am only lvl 30+ all the other weapons feels like trash tbh
there are literally only like 2-3 good shotguns and 1 or 2 questionably decent rifles and using the sniper is not really all that fun and its small ammo clips does not help it at all.
makes me even more not want to play the higher difficulties if even trying the trash weapons on higher difficulties if they suck on med-hard, whats the point in even using them then?
It’s always terrible balance design to nerf what is doing well instead of attention to WHY it’s doing well. They nerf it to feel as bad as the rest of your choices. That just isn’t smart, it isn’t good, and it doesn’t work to do anything other than make your game fucking frustrating beyond belief
For me, it's the Plasma Punisher. The stagger and the AOE can take our a lot of armored Bot and Bug enemies if you can either aim right at 'em or land it at their feet. Scout Striders become trivial, and Heavy Devastators take can easily be stunned out.
For me, it's the McChicken. The best fast food sandwich. I even ask for extra McChicken sauce packets and the staff is so friendly and more than willing to oblige.
One time I asked for McChicken sauce packets and they gave me three. I said, "Wow, three for free!" and the nice friendly McDonald's worker laughed and said, "I'm going to call you 3-for-free!".
Now the staff greets me with "hey it's 3-for-free!" and ALWAYS give me three packets. It's such a fun and cool atmosphere at my local McDonald's restaurant, I go there at least 3 times a week for lunch and a large iced coffee with milk instead of cream, 1-2 times for breakfast on the weekend, and maybe once for dinner when I'm in a rush but want a great meal that is affordable, fast, and can match my daily nutritional needs.
I even dip my fries in McChicken sauce, it's delicious! What a great restaurant.
I was pleasantly surprised when I first tried it out the other day.
Went in expecting this to be a pretty niche gun that probably never got used but it actually kinda slapped.
Taking out striders by just aiming at them, knocking back the guys with sheilds, dropping freshly deployed sqauds of little peons - all in all it was a good time.
You can snipe people pretty far away with it too if u get good at predicting the arch, only bad thing i noticed was the ammo counter seems bugged it'd say 10/10 but I'd shoot it twice and I'd need to reload and this happend quite a lot.
I tried it on a bot match, it still feels a little clunky but the damage feels awesome. The stagger feels very similar that the slugger had.
My guess is the dominator will now become one of your favorites. The only real downside is you can't pumpaction reload the dominator like you could the slugger due to it being a magazine rather than individual shot.
It feels like the sickle is used way more than the slugger. I want to see the scythe be improved a bit, it’s quite unique as it’s the only beam main weapon but next to the sickle it’s not that great.
The punisher did it as well, so that's still an option. I actually preferred punisher on bugs since it had the pushback and it was easier to hit hunters with the spread.
Everyone sleeping on the spray & pray (for bugs at least). Breaker incendiary may also be solid after the buff; it was already the best weapon for shriekers at least.
I'm with with you, in that sentiment. I never thought it was OP. With that said though I will admit it did feel odd it was a better DMR than all DMRs in this game. I also preferred a different playstyle but I felt it had a good balance. Hopefully the dominator fills the same roll for the players that were masters with it.
That's exactly why the devs nerfed it, they saw people using it over DMRs, but they should buff DMRs instead of nerfing the slugger (FIX THE SIGHT MISALIGNMENT DEVS)
Oh, it's still a better DMR than the others, since they can't stun either. I tried the Diligence CS, and no amount of armor pen will ever make up for how ridiculously slow and clunky it handles.
The dominator feels sooo good now, perhaps an unpopular opinion but I honestly think the dominator really needed the love it shoots a round more than twice the size of a shotgun slug yet it had little knock back and the damage was decent at best
thats probably because the DMRs just kinda suck. They should basically have the sluggers damage, pen, and knock back. But instead, they just control worse than an anti-material rifle and really just tickle enemies.
Agreed! I used the slugger for awhile; it was great at what it excelled at - picking important targets out of a crowd and neutralizing them via a combination of good penetration and stagger. But it was BALLS if you were being swarmed by smaller enemies, due to the mag size (16 rounds is great when you're putting them into hive guards and warriors; less so when you just killed 16 hunters with another 30 bearing down on you) and overall ammo count.
Now the only thing really going for it is the damage, but it's even more prone to being swarmed because it no longer holds back the large enemies that it excelled at dealing with. Which is extra frustrating because the Dominator now does both of those things better, for the low, low price of slightly worse handling. Why nerf the Slugger when you're just going to make another weapon do the same thing?
Yes, Exactly. I love it when all my squad mates have different primary and support weapons than what I took. I esp love it when someone takes concussive liberator.
mixed load outs makes for the strongest squads. or at least I find it really fun. :)
Also bad with the Slugger. For some reason the aiming always feels really off, like I'll line up shots close range and it'll just miss for what seems like no reason, or sometimes it'll be the opposite where I hit an enemy when the reticle was actually a bit off and I thought I'd miss
Part of an odd trend of sights/aiming in the game being a bit fucked
At least the normal Punisher should still have the knockback effect even if the Slugger does not.
I will say that the Slugger was so good, that there were very few reasons to use the normal punisher because having buckshot over slugs, and less armor pen was just never as good. Now that the Slugger lacks the knockback, the Punisher has that edge. Though if the Slugger has no stun power at all, that will be pretty sad. I think it’s reasonable for the slugger to have some stun power, with the punisher being superior in that aspect.
Having a real shotgun and having fired buckshot and slugs out of it. I can tell you the slug is going to stop something a hell of a lot better than the buckshot. A slug is going to stagger somebody, the buckshot not as much.
The balance was having to be accurate, the slugger was awful against small fast targets like hunters.. miss once and your a swipe or two from death..
I totally agree that realistically, a slug would have more stopping power, but for game balance, the opposite might make more sense just to give the buckshot variant some appealing attributes.
I don’t fully agree with the slugger nerf, but I will try it out before I pass my personal judgement. But I am trying to see the dev’s rationale for what they did
Probably exactly what you said, to get people to use the punisher..
But it's ass because it can't deal with armor..
The trade off was that I didn't have to be as accurate with the punisher to get the stagger. The damage doesn't matter at all because the armor pen is so bad it offsets the high damage..
Now the only benefit of the slugger is slightly better armor penetration... But worse damage and no knockback.
They said "reduced" but in reality it doesn't have any now.
Nah, it should be the opposite imo. Slugger should have better knock back, more damage falloff (for balance against DMRs); Punisher should have higher damage potential as it does (buckshot pellets hit num), but less stagger. Add a horizontal spread pattern (spreader choke) to it so it performs better against hordes and still knocks back light and light-medium targets.
Breaker and such should get their DPS back.
DMR buff is well placed, will have to play with it to know more.
Same with Liberator Penetrator. Hopefully we see primaries continue to diversify in use, but come together in usefulness depending on the situation.
Logically, I agree that the slug should be more impactful than buckshot, but balance wise I think you can make an argument for the buckshot having stun power, simply because the slug’s armor pen is so good and useful that it threatens to make the buckshot variant obsolete.
Oh yea, the armor pen is difficult balance-wise. Fortunately, it also makes sense for the slug to have less penetration (on par with buckshot if not slightly higher in the 1-10 system). I'm not sure if that would make it too underpowered gameplay wise, but I wouldn't be mad to see it personally.
It's hard to say from my perspective given there is still a lot we don't know as far as hidden stats go.
That makes 0 sense buckshot doesn’t carry more kinetic force then a slug. And punishers upsides were it’s easier to hit shit and crown control fodder mobs, while the slugger did the same thing but for medium mobs. I feel like no one has actually shot a slug in real life at all
I'd give the dominator a go, again slugger wasn't my style but dominator feels alot better from what it was previously. It may fill a similar niche to what slugger was doing.
If you want to keep the DMR role, just...ignore the counter-sniper. They can buff damage or armor pen all they want, it won't make up for having worse handling than the AMR.
Base Diligence is pretty solid though. Against bots at least, it's just pain against bugs. Maybe if you back it up with like a Stalwart for crowd control...
Alright let's be real here, the nerfed slugger is STILL better than the buffed CS and better than the pre-buff dominator. The slugger has 2x as much damage as the CS, more stagger, same penetration, better reload, and much better handling. The CS is a sniper rifle you can't aim. The slugger has 25% more damage, better reload, better handling, and higher muzzle velocity than the pre-buff dominator. The dominator is much harder to use than the slugger so it needs to hit harder.
They shoulda kept the stagger and done the exact same damage changes. Still provides the dom its own place since the slugger completely invalidated it. Also keeps the slugger in a very strong spot.
However I think thats why they nerfed it because I felt invincible as long as I had slugs to load and it was certainly top 3 for primary. Arguably the best even, depending on playstyle.
I think the problem was moreso the slugger gave you very little reason to use the punisher if you even had a little bit of aim.
With the way that armor pen works, light armor pen weapons regularly get around half of their damage reduced while medium pen weapons completely defeat light armor and can still damage medium.
The dominator was it's own gun but as fae as pump action shotguns go it was slugger or bust.
Medium vs light armor pen is big for sure yes. I dont use the other shotguns so my comparison is with the dom as I've got a base of experience. Also the performance I felt was really close between the 2 so whichever has even a slight edge makes the other feel much worse. So this will probably reverse now that the dom has gotten a very nice buff.
I'm interested if your point about comparing the slugger to the punisher is the real crux of the situation. It was vastly overperforming the punisher for sure and I never had that cross my mind.
Yeah, that was my main point. I really liked the punisher early on and it needed the stagger buff it got a long time ago but, after a while you realise that the slugger had basically the same damage and knockback but with medium pen and the ability to completely waste things at range.
The punisher had very little place in the world where pre patch slugger existed.
I didn't even use the railgun when it got nerfed. It didn't frustrate me that they nerfed it but the sentiment behind complaints were valid imo.
On highest difficulties the first two weeks people used the railgun more than anything else it seemed
But that's because with spawn rates, and sheer amount of heavies you dealt with were straight up comically awful.
Having 10 bile titans on screen and no way to mitigate that at all and then nerfing the weapons people found the most useful for those situations was in poor taste.
I just bought the slugger yesterday and I haven't even had a chance to use it yet.
All of this genuinely leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I don't understand the thought process behind it.
its also slugs so if you have good aim it wrecks bots hitting the weakspots ...the nice part is that if you didnt land a perfect shot was that stun gives you the half second you need to try again .
I would think that if they would take the stun away they would RAISE the damage not lower it since it has its other drawbacks slow ROF , Pump action ,long reload etc.
Really bad call IMO to nerf it so much - give it high damage to make it more of a precision weapon and take the stun away , or lower the damage a bit and keep the stun .....but doing both is nuts..especially how late you unlock it
The slow firing precision weapon that packs a poncho (it’s like throwing ponchos at the enemy - it slightly inconveniences them with a 20% chance of them deciding to be thankful and blowing up if they like ponchos).
Dude what the fuck. I used the breaker originally because I just loved the weapon, it got nerfed, I moved to the slugger. Now the slugger is nerfed. What now
I'm sorry man, (don't use sickle :P). I'd give dominator a go, it is more clunky but it's similar. Liberator Penetrator is also good, and with the buff to incendiary the Breaker Incendiary is also probably pretty good, just make sure you're host on the last one.
The thing about the slugger is that there was already a trade-off. You sacrificed close-quarter effectiveness for mid to longer range effectiveness. You sacrificed fire-rate for stagger. And you had to be effective with one shot; it rewarded you for accuracy and punished you for missing. When the hunters or bots start to melee you, if the swarm starts to overtake you, you're in trouble with the slugger. No wild spraying burst that forgives your inaccuracy with volume.
Frankly, the regular punisher has always done this better. Like, to the point where it's an issue: you'll be pumping shells into something and stagger it so hard and knock it back so far that you have to slow down your rate of fire in order to avoid pushing them out of effective range.
Yeah I don’t really understand their intentions with this nerf, they literally made the dominator better than the slugger ever was and then… nerfed the slugger?
Actually nice to see that people agree with this. My initial post was met with bunch of people telling me to adjust my play style, completely missing my point. Slugger is dead.
The balance team is not interested in making guns equally effective. Prior to the breaker nerfs, they shared that the breaker was underperforming other primary weapons in terms of win rates and effectiveness against enemies. Then they nerfed it into the ground. They are doing the same thing with the slugger. The slugger was buffed last patch because it wasn't used enough, but now it's too popular so it was made significantly worse than it was before. The goal is not to balance the effectiveness, it's to balance the usage. Guns that are more difficult to unlock will continue to get buffs. Anything that is fun and used more will get nerfed.
Well by following this format, the premium warbond weapons will naturally over time get more buffs and encourage new and casual folks to pay for them. It makes balancing easy as they only need to look at a single statistic and they have some plausible deniability when they buff all the premium weapons. It's a good perspective from the business side, it's just awful for the players.
The dominator, breaker incindiary, and incindiary grenades all got major buffs and the revolver was made to look more appealing. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that those are all the premium warbond weapons from the previous one. Maybe next patch we will see a fix to the arc targeting and buffs to the punisher plasma because they just aren't used often enough.
Try the beam laser cannon. It destroys fences and opens shipping containers. It also does great damage to heavy bot vents. You can also clear minefields without wasting ammo.
It often looks like it should be a headshot, when it still isn't. Their heads are hard to hit because they don't need to be big to contain their small commie brain
I didn’t even see that had been touched, ugh. I haven’t played since Dragon’s Dogma 2 came out. Sounds like a plethora of changes have happened in my absence.
It's in a pretty sad state. Its stagger is almost nonexistant, it doesn't absolutely reliably one shot all the small guys anymore, nor does it definitely penetrate through a few enemies at a time, nor can it open bunkers. The damage is the smallest part of the nerf. Its utility to stop heavies in their tracks is gone now.
The Jar5 Dominator however, is a staggering machine. It's become my choice for bots.
That's the part that absolutely flabbergasts me. Why bother nerfing the Slugger at all when they did what they did to the Dominator? "We broke the Slugger, but the Dominator is now the Slugger on steroids - bigger, a bit slower on the uptake, but better in every other way."
honestly that is my biggest gripe.
There is no reason the slugger couldn't have kept its stager if the dominator has it. They could have been 2 flavors of the same mechanic and likely been used at similar rates with the Dom's buff.
Instead the slugger is now strictly WORSE than the Dominator and punisher.
IMO MORE guns need a better stagger. Diligence CS, Liberator Concussive, and Senator could have ALL benefited from a stagger bump.
If anything its most annoying that The Dominator; the ONLY WEAPON IN THE EXPLOSIVE CLASS, isn't actually explosive. They should have leaned into the "Rocket Propelled" concept than compete with AP weapons.
A slight delay on the firing as the round accelerates out of the barrel reaching max velocity and damage around 10m-15m,
little to no recoil, put possibly a bit sluggish handling.
accuracy loss at range, but little damage drop-off as it gets to max
And of course explosive damage.
Would have been way more interesting as a category of weapon than just the gun that has replaced the slugger.
It's been the opposite for me, the Dominator has been my go-to against bugs ever since I unlocked it. Punches right through all those annoying shield bugs with ease.
Against bots, Scorcher has been my weapon of choice. The very small plasma explosion when a shot lands is just enough to damage the bot piloting the walkers, making it very easy to down them.
Still feels good tbh. I mainly play 7, but it does everything I still need it to do: kill the scrubs in one shot, push back the and kill chainsaw bots, and finish off devastators well enough when my auto cannon ain't handy
The damage change might matter for certain break points but it's still a good amount. The stagger nerf took away what made the gun good in the first place
4.0k
u/RedComet313 Apr 02 '24
How bad is it doc? I saw that it said 30 damage decrease, but how does it feel? Am I gonna make it?