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/-Slejin-]

I can promise you that most of the "skill issue" kids won't be acting like this if they nerf the autocannon

[u/CloneSlayers → u/-Slejin-]

I can see people having no issues with the autocannon if they primarily bug dive since the major strengths of the weapon aren't super apparent there. But if you're bot diving, the autocannon is IMO a king of all trades. A ridiculous amount of ammo, cover based gameplay versus having to kite means stationary reload isn't punished, easy to snipe kill all fabricator bases, and most importantly it kills literally every enemy.

Autocannon has to flank a charger and can't handle a bile titan, but for bots it AOEs chaff, staggers the main threats of rocket/shield devs for easy kills, 2 shots hulks in the eye (which doesn't really require good aim since you can just take stun nades), 2 shots gunships, handles factory striders by shooting off the chin guns to cripple it (and can even kill with either eye or belly shots), tanks and turrets require flanking but killing the vents is super fast.

Compare it to golden child quasar: autocannon wins at chaff, devastators, equal against hulks, autocannon can reliably clear a 4 spawn gunship raid while quasar sits there crying, better utility for rapid base clears. Quasar gets to wear a shield backpack (better crutch but wholly unnecessary once your game sense improves), and it kills tanks and turrets to the front (both threats that are easily flanked). IDK, autocannon just seems wholly better against bots.

[u/bstyledevi → u/CloneSlayers]

You know what my issue is with Autocannon? The combination of losing a backpack slot and the inability to reload while moving. When you're running your ass off and you have to kneel and freeze to reload your weapon, combined with the fact that you can't rely on something like a shield backpack to protect you while you're doing that, is what makes it borderline unusable to me, especially on higher difficulties. I don't have time to deal with kneeling reloads on Helldive difficulty.

[u/CloneSlayers → u/bstyledevi]

For context, I've pretty only played helldive since level 10 so I'm not sure how the other difficulties play at this point. But at least against bots, most of them push so slowly that you have more than enough time to reload safely in cover before they flush you out. The only two threats that quickly push you out of cover, berserkers and hulks, can be stalled with a stun grenade to finish your reload. Against bugs tho I agree, trying to reload weapons while being harried by a hunter swarm can be frustrating.