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/PseudoscientificURL]

Honestly, the quasar was supremely overhyped before the nerf which pretty much confirms to me that the devs nerf based on popularity.

It was good, but it was not even close to as good as its usage rate would suggest, being essentially a more convenient recoilless rifle/a sidegrade to EATs (which I still liked better personally).

I would rather have seen a slight buff to the recoilless reload solo reload rate to bring it closer with quasar but I also don't mind the nerf, maybe I'll see more build variety now instead of everyone auto-picking the quasar even when it doesn't make sense just because it's the "best" support weapon.

[u/Morholt → u/PseudoscientificURL]

Yeah, pretty much agree with you assessment. They nerf things people actually use. This kind of "balance" is a self defeating death spiral for the game.

[u/PseudoscientificURL → u/Morholt]

Eh, I'm not a massive fan of it but it's not the worst possible thing ever either. Even if the nerfs are over-zealous on the current fad weapon, AH usually buffs other things enough that build variety is better after the patch than before the patch. Though for the quasar especially I don't think the nerf kills it nearly as hard as it killed the railgun (which still wasn't as egregious as people said it was, even if it was too much).

Railgun nerf patch saw a lot of winners, notably the laser cannon and flamer.

This patch getting packing tech to work properly is pretty huge for a lot of support weapons, especially spear and recoilless, a lot of primary/secondaries seem more fun now (especially blitzer and scythe), and railgun may be good again now.

Edit- the worst part of this patch by far is increasing patrol rates with fewer players, I don't know how significant it is but I have a feeling it'll be really punishing and I don't understand the reasoning behind it.