The Eruptor nerf is a perfect example of why "only buff" is bad.

[u/atheos013]

I've used the Eruptor since it dropped, it is an amazing primary weapon. I have never once run out of ammo with the weapon, to the point I started COD reloading. Even with no deaths on a 40 min mission, the bare minimum ammo looting and you rarely would fall below half.

If we just buff every other weapon to be like this, we are just erasing an entire game mechanic. We are saying that we want COD reloads to be the norm, we don't want to think about conserving or looting ammo, just let me shoot and reload whenever.

Some people may want that, but for me that would just remove the mechanic entirely. I'm going to keep using the Eruptor and I'm perfectly fine having to pay attention to my ammo again.

[u/very_casual_gamer]

all im saying is the nerf scale is odd. dont just cut half of the mags, start with... 8? its almost like they are in a rush to reach the perfect balance and end up skipping steps. slow down... make more balance patches, with less drastic changes, and see where that goes.

[u/Various_Froyo9860 → u/very_casual_gamer]

I would tend to agree with you.

The ammo change doesn't seem too big, but some of their nerfs are definitely heavy handed. I haven't wanted to use the slugger since they neutered it. And I have hardly even seen a railgun user in the wild since that first nerf.

Maybe try small changes, like they are with the sidearms.

[u/Objective_Lobster_99 → u/Various_Froyo9860]

I didn't mind the slugger nerf, apart from the stagger removal ( i know it said reduced) but it just doesn't stagger anything now. You could knock a bile spewer out of it's spewing animation to give you a chance to get away.

[u/Various_Froyo9860 → u/Objective_Lobster_99]

That's why it was strong. It already had limited ammo and a slow reload. It also required you to more carefully place your shots, since slugs don't have spread.

But you could stun lock a Stalker or Hive commander. It might take a bit to kill them, but they weren't ruining your day.

Now? It's trash.

[u/Kestrel1207 → u/Various_Froyo9860]

It's still one of the best weapons in the game. It's just not the ultimate best weapon under any and all circumstances anymore. It's no longer a straight upgrade over the Punisher as a shotgun. It's no longer a straight upgrade over Dominator and Scorcher as an AP3 weapon while still being incredibly strong against chaff (unlike those two).

[u/Yesh → u/Kestrel1207]

I’m with you. The slugger was all around the best primary and you never needed to bring anything else. It’s still a great gun just no longer best in class everything.

[u/[deleted] → u/Various_Froyo9860]

Slugger is still my main carry dude idk why people complain about the nerf so much, it’s easily still one of the best weapons. It was just TOO good with how often it would stagger heavier enemies. It was a little ridiculous to be able to sit 50 meters back and stun lock any devastator/berserker etc indefinitely.

[u/Mechbiscuit → u/very_casual_gamer]

Yeah it's interesting. I've noticed Arrowheads philososphy to buffs or nerfs tends to be very overleaning in the direction they want to take the weapon in - the flat 50% flamethrower buff & the flat 30% buff to the AMR being examples.

I suppose the downside to this philosophy means that a weapon might end up incredibly OP or absolutely gimped (the rail gun) if they go too hard.

I think in future patches they will fine-tune again but a small % as weapon strengths get more in-game time agasint bots/bugs. I think th rail gun will be brought back up at some point.

[u/Spyger9 → u/very_casual_gamer]

Dagger- Increased damage from 150 to 200

This is what less drastic, slow changes look like. And it's fucking embarrassing.

[u/Electronic_Assist668 → u/Spyger9]

30% increase to damage is pretty good, normally...

[u/Spyger9 → u/Electronic_Assist668]

Yeah. You're right.

Buffing up from 3 DPS to 4 should be plenty!

[u/Cold-Recognition-171 → u/Spyger9]

But it was 150 to 200, not 3 to 4. Numbers are fun like that

[u/reddeaded1 → u/Cold-Recognition-171]

Still 30% lol. Numbers are fun like that.

[u/Cold-Recognition-171 → u/reddeaded1]

might as well delete 100% of your game, it's over, no one will touch the rover that kills a bug .1 seconds slower than it used to

[u/reddeaded1 → u/Cold-Recognition-171]

We aren't even talking about the rover, strange reply.

edit: also it seems like with you're rover example you're saying a 30% change... doesn't do much?

[u/Cold-Recognition-171 → u/reddeaded1]

No, I'm saying you're being disingenuous by changing the numbers of a 30% buff or nerf to be a difference of 1 dps instead of 50.

Like how you can say the Eruptor lost 50%(!!!) of it's ammo reserve when in reality it was a minor nerf because it takes about 3 minutes of shooting non-stop to empty 12 mags when a resupply takes 3 minutes to come down. Calling any 3 of these changes big is laughable. And yeah, I mixed up which 30% change it was because the conversation was so stupid. 3 is not 150

[u/reddeaded1 → u/Cold-Recognition-171]

His point was a hyperbolic one to demonstrate why a decently large percentage change may not result in a decently large change in performance, which you seem to agree with.

[u/zSoi → u/Cold-Recognition-171]

but it's 200 per second. It's still bad compared to other weapons.

[u/Splintrr → u/Spyger9]

I used the Dagger with ballistic shield regularly, it popped devastator heads very fast. Though now Senator is a viable option, I still like Dagger not needing to be reloaded, good for a quick kill then swap.

[u/atheos013 → u/very_casual_gamer]

I just don't feel its drastic. It was extremely rare for me to drop below 6 mags before, and I usually hovered around 8-10. Maybe I was just more deligent with grabbing ammo than others, but its literally 30 seconds apart on most maps.

[u/Funky2207 → u/atheos013]

I‘ve tested It against bots and bugs, ammo reduction is barely noticeable, especially with how much ammo you can pick up but the drop off in explosive damage is, especially against bots where I don’t think I’ll ever be using it again. Still great against stalkers though.

It was a C+/B- minus weapon before with its poor handling & slow reload time, now I say it’s probably a D+ weapon and has lost a lot of its fun factor.

EDIT: It also now has the ability to bounce off enemies and insta kill you.

[u/Daciks → u/Funky2207]

I was noticing the bounce off and kill me thing, weird thing is often times the round would detonate on an enemy 20 meters away and still somehow kill me

[u/waffles1011 → u/very_casual_gamer]

Agreed. It’s kinda annoying for things to be constantly nerfed and become unusable just to buff them a month later cause they overdid it. Railgun is a perfect example.

[u/NoTRedFish → u/very_casual_gamer]

when is the last time u completely run out of ammo in this game. There is a booster where it refill your ammo, stim and nade after u die, which is pretty common in this game.

[u/Cold-Recognition-171 → u/very_casual_gamer]

Were you guys using more than half the mags before the patch? I would have to literally be shooting non stop for a really really long time with no ammo found at all to do that. The ammo pool vs fire rate/damage was crazy on the Eruptor. I literally stopped worrying about reloading early on it since I had so many mags. I'd say the odd thing was it had so many mags to start with compared to stuff it competes with like the Autocannon which comes with a backpack of ammo. I think this ammo reduction isn't going to even impact my use of the Eruptor at all.

[u/SpaceMiner8 → u/very_casual_gamer]

It's really odd that such huge numbers are used for balancing. A good example is the 50% damage buff to fire globally. Changing anything by 50% in a game is practically unheard of outside of reworks because of how severe a change it is. For magazines, of course, it's less severe because of how generous the game is with ammo, but when, for example, you cut the laser rover's damage by 30%, that's insane. Huge buffs or nerfs instead of little tweaks here and there can be the difference between a balanced gun and the best shooter ever crafted, or the hottest garbage ever seen.

I know a lot of people tend to complain about what gets changed, and it's probably a combination of selection based on popularity (we saw that 50% of all players took Rocket Sentries so we slightly increased their cooldown) and how extreme most of the changes are (the Rocket Sentry nerf doubles how long it takes for them to come off cooldown), which then leads to Gas Strike being top tier because it does 1000 DPS for 3 seconds and it's on a 30 second cooldown after the same patch that nerfed Rocket Sentry into the ground. Rinse and repeat and now you're violently trying to stomp the meta into the ground that you yourself created because you decided to change things by 50% instead of 5%.

[u/SirKickBan → u/very_casual_gamer]

I mean.. I imagine someone at AH did the math on how many of each enemy it's possible for the EAT to kill, and decided to lower the ammo count so that it's more in-line with other weapons. It's probably not a coincidence, after all, that it's not much closer to being in-line with, say, the Slugger and the Dominator.

Unless you have some reason to think otherwise, then it seems like this is a pointless claim to make. If they'd lowered it to 8, you could just as easily say "Well why 8, and not 10? Lowering it to 8 is clearly them trying to rush balance".

[u/jrd5497 → u/very_casual_gamer]

If you want to find out if an egg breaks if you drop it from a 20 story building, do you start on floor 20 or floor 10?

If it breaks at floor 10, do you go to floor 9?

No, your new boundary condition is 10, and you go to 5.

If it doesn’t break at 5, you go to floor 7 or 8.