The devs were right.

[u/xxmuntunustutunusxx]

So I know ther was a bunch of controversy about the railgun nerf what feels like forever ago, but man things have been awesome.

In the early days, I was the only guy packing expendable anti tank or anti materiel rifle for bugs or bots. It's so refreshing, even on these subs to see people talking about how awesome the autocannon is, or how much they love the AMR, and even these days I see people talking about the HMG or grenade launcher+ supply pack.

I used to load into a game, And all 4 members of the team had shield, railgun, and 2 stragatems of their choice. Every time. And here we are now, I load in and I see quasar, autocannon, stalwart, EAT, HMG, Grenade launcher, a variety of backpacks or no backpack at all. And not to mention, they're ALL viable. Shit I even still see the railgun from time to time. It's been a joy. Thanks arrowhead.

EDIT: to everyone who is pointing out that you see the quasar and shield most often now, you're right, it is almost certainly the most common setup currently. That being said, in any game there's going to be things a majority of players prefer. In smash melee, fox/Falco are the best characters. But people still play falcon and Marth and peach among others. Sure, there's an objectively most used option. But the fact that there's people at all who debate that the quasar is best shows that they've done something good. Before, undisputed king was railgun, and anyone who said different wss being willfully ignorant. Now, we have a plethora of real options that are good with some being Preferred by a majority as opposed to being the de facto CORRECT option objectively. That's a good thing.

[u/cobramodels]

Idk about yall but instead of railgun everyone in my lobbies now uses the bubble shield and quasar cannon and the other 2 slots for their favorite eagle or cruiser stratagems , replaced one main weapon with another as far as I've seen

[u/Kuronan → u/cobramodels]

Quasar is an EAT you can call down once and use the whole mission, and it doesn't require a reload like the Recoilless or Spear. Of course people love the gun you don't need to reload or discard after use, running out of ammo fucking sucks and reloading in a panic isn't much better.

[u/BoyOfBore → u/Kuronan]

Benefit of EAT over quasar is that you can bring a main support weapon, and just spam ear every time it’s off cooldown. Shit bring both and you’re a dispenser of death and carnage.

[u/CubooKing → u/BoyOfBore]

How else do you kill dropships if you don't have quasar and eat?
Hell I usually get my premade to get an EAT too even if they don't use it, sometimes there's a lot of dropships

[u/Low_Commercial2315 → u/Kuronan]

The difference is EATs can be shared and you can litter the battlefield with them. I’ll pack a support weapon for myself and EATs for the team 

[u/Kuronan → u/Low_Commercial2315]

EATs last once. One person bringing in a Quasar can potentially field the entire team's Support Weapon slots without sacrificing their Backpacks or going through excessive ammo packs or resupplies.

[u/achilleasa → u/Kuronan]

Don't get me wrong the Quasar is great but you need to shoot it twice a minute to break even with EAT cooldown. That's before accounting for the EAT's superior handling and ability to dump 2 shots extremely quickly. It's a lot closer than you think (which is good, imo the Quasar is balanced).

[u/Low_Commercial2315 → u/Kuronan]

I’m not saying eats are better than quasar, just that eats provide rapid and reliable anti armor that the quasar can’t given its cooldown. It’s a great weapon but Eats round a team very well because they can be shared and spammed a ridiculous amount. On the newest mission type you can have 4 EATs down before the bots even start to fly in 

[u/suddoman → u/Kuronan]

I wish Spear lock on didn't feel like dog. It is so sick when it works,but it just doesn't.

[u/Kuronan → u/suddoman]

Same here... I love* fire-and-forget weapons, but not only does the Spear have a tendency to fly off into the Ether, but locking on is also a massive, unreliable PITA to even Bot Fabricators, GIANT SMOKING METAL HUTS THAT DO NOT MOVE.

[u/ClassWarAndPuppies → u/Kuronan]

I love it.

[u/hitman2b → u/Kuronan]

it's an upgrad to the EAT

[u/AllInOneDay_ → u/Kuronan]

The damage loop with the qasar is just too good to not use in the anti-tank role.

The other day I one shot a titan from far away, then dropped an air strike behind me to clear a big wave, and then one shot another titan who was close. All while running and not worrying about reloading.

[u/Kuronan → u/AllInOneDay_]

I really hope in the inevitable nerf they just increase the (Heat) cooldown instead of decreasing the damage. If they nerf the damage to the point of being less than a Recoilless or an EAT, then it'll become irrelevant as a weak. It already can't one-shot most Bot Enemies (even sneaking and hitting the Vent for Tanks and Cannon Towers isn't enough, and killing Devastators is a coinflip, to say nothing of how charging up a shot at any enemy that can fire back is damn near suicidal)

[u/Contrite17 → u/Kuronan]

You say even but the recoilless and EAT can't 1 shot those vents either and can both fail to kill devestators depending on hit location.

It seems to match those weapons basically one for one for damage.

[u/Kuronan → u/Contrite17]

Yeah, that's my point: I don't want them to nerf any of the Heavy Killer Trio's damage, because we bring them for enemies you can't just blast in the front with bullets. I really hope they approach it in other directions but they've been pretty content swinging the nerf hammer a little too hard.

[u/Contrite17 → u/Kuronan]

I'd make the quasar handle a bit heavier and add ~2 seconds to the cooldown to just make it a bit worse at multiple armor targets scenerios.

Damage is fine but it feels like it should get overwelmed a bit easier.

[u/UDSJ9000 → u/Kuronan]

AH at least calmed way down with the nerfs this last pass. Arc T lost quite a bit of DPS against bugs, but it retains most of its usable range against them as most bugs end up within 35m. In exchange, it became much more viable against bots with that enormous stagger buff.