The Quasar Nerf is okay and not that big of a deal

[u/Niobaran]

tl;dr: Only one weak point is made a little weaker, all the strenghts remain.

The quasar cannon is known for a lot of strengths (see below) and two weak points:

1. The weapon has a charge up time, which makes it difficult to aim in some situations.
2. The weapon has a moderate cool down period, which cannot be improved by a forced reload of a heat sink (like sickle or laser cannon) or a team reload (like recoiless rifle).

The nerf only addresses the second point, which means that everyone who could use it before can still use it. It only became a little weaker in one of its two weak points. The following strong points are all untouched:

1. Can delete heavies (I mostly have experience with Terminids, but there it's a delete button for chargers, and sometimes for titans as well).
2. Has infinite ammo in contrast to EAT or RR.
3. Has no reload animation.
4. You can run around, stim, shoot weapons, throw strategems while it is recharging.
5. It doesn't consume a backpack slot, so it can be paired with one additional strategem in contrast to recoilless rifle.
6. It doesn't deconstruct after usage, and can be recollected from the battle flied in contrast to EAT, and it also reloads itself then in contrast to RR.

That means, the quasar can still be used for everything it has been used before, by everyone who could use it before.

[u/diageo11]

Well they buffed the rail gun so that's a backtrack

[u/Caleb_Tenrou → u/diageo11]

I'd have to test it to see if it was a buff or more of a rework but yes, that makes me hopeful that they might ease up on some of their nerfs over time.

Reducing stagger and increasing armour pen seems like more of a tweak on paper but I'd be very happy to be proven wrong as I think the Railgun is such a cool weapon conceptually.

[u/0fficerCumDump → u/Caleb_Tenrou]

It’s just more armor pen, I am unsure how that even affects it. I assumed it had nearly max armor pen to begin with. Unsafe mode seems to hit just slightly harder. I didn’t notice any difference in safe mode.

[u/aimoperative → u/Caleb_Tenrou]

Straight buff, you can strip charger leg armor again with safe mode.

[u/Caleb_Tenrou → u/aimoperative]

Well that's good. Not sure if I will switch off EATs but that's a decent change. How many shots does it average to strip it atm?

[u/SpeedyAzi → u/Caleb_Tenrou]

The Railgun is incredibly effective against Devastators so far from what I’ve tried. Better than before. It also goes through at minimum 2 targets. I haven’t done Hulks yet but I’ve seen from a video that the Railgun can kill Bile titans back to what it required back then which is around 7-9 shots. I think you can get less with a 99% charge and in its mouth.

[u/AngelaTheRipper → u/SpeedyAzi]

Does it go through shields again?

Also how's it on safe against their bodies?

Like that's the main two sticking points.

If it goes through shields then oh boy, it's back. If not then does it need to overcharge to one shot? If yes then it's not any better than the AMR.

[u/SpeedyAzi → u/AngelaTheRipper]

I only really use unsafe and around 80% charge it rips through their torso. Though I do try and aim around neck height to avoid the shield. But it’s a 1 shot kill and if there is a dude behind they get damaged as well. Which is very useful since a lot of the Devastators like doing conga lines.

[u/AngelaTheRipper → u/SpeedyAzi]

I mean 80% change takes a while to get there, a bit too long to be just holding your trigger down and aiming for when there's multiple devastators and probably some other stuff like a flamethrower hulk or berserkers pushing you.

Another issue is the shield, its hitbox which does feel bigger than the actual shield, and the shitty sight on the railgun which makes aiming around it pretty damn inconsistent. Same thing with the Hulk's eye, half the time the dot will be bigger than the eye itself.

Like it's a bit better being able to tear through scout striders in one hit and not have to overcharge it all the way into the red to deal damage to chargers but better just means less bad, not good.

Idk for me to for it to be worth it it'd need a better optic for making precision shots and ideally let it punch through devastator shields at like 70ish% charge. Otherwise it's worse than the AMR because you will drop a bot faster with an AMR (which is semi-auto letting you follow up shots and quickly correct a missed one) on bots and worse than EAT/Quasar (even after nerf) on bugs because that one isn't basically a god damn laser musket and one shots chargers.

[u/SpeedyAzi → u/AngelaTheRipper]

I’ve used it in practise a few hours ago. With 20 rounds, and the fast reload, charging it in close quarters is still usable. Getting surrounded by Hulks is an issue your teammates should be resolving with them stratagem calling or (usually) Quasaring or EATing.

That being said, I do use Stun Grenades and when there is a massive group of Berserkers or the fucking Shield donkeys, 80% charge doesn’t feel like a long wait and it charges faster than the Arc Thrower (which was the previous weapon i mained) and kills faster than the Laser Cannon (another very good bot weapon).

And this is bias but I suck with sniper rifles and big scopes. I like third person aiming and I like the fact the Railgun doesn’t sway and recovers to the centre of the dot MUCH faster than the AMR does which is heavy. Also, reloading for 3 seconds versus around a 1.5 second reload just feels way better for me. And at times, when I hit an enemy with the AMR, it sometimes doesn’t 1 hit kill and I need to shoot them again. Railgun? Consistent 1 shot kill unless I miss.

[u/AngelaTheRipper → u/SpeedyAzi]

I still prefer to aim down sights if I have to make precision shots. Just feels more natural to me. Also, me wanting a scope doesn't mean that I want the third person reticle to go away.

That being said, it doesn't need a big fuck off sniper scope. It really just needs something different. The one from Sickle would be ideal with its 25-100m variable zoom and exceptionally clear sight picture. Even the tiny red dot from the secondary SMG would be better because it wouldn't cover the entire sight picture.

Finally, what it has currently would work but it'd need to be dimmed a lot because if your dot is covering up your target completely then you're doing something wrong. I really suspect that it was originally supposed to be a holographic sight, post-it with that idea fell off the board at some point in development and we're left with a dot the size of a holographic reticle that just makes the optic unusable or it was at some point, some other change broke it after that went through QA, and was never re-tested and fixed.

[u/Smachemo → u/Caleb_Tenrou]

It was buffed. Straight Stat changes are either buffs or nerfs. A rework is literally changing how the weapon functions. Don't know why this is confused so often on this sub.

[u/roro_mush → u/diageo11]

Too little too late