Good.

Correct, but the upside is that the critical damage from Smoky will not be reduced by Smoky protection modules.

The Wiki always said that. And nothing will change with your Sorted Ammunition's critical hit chances.

Ignore that in-game garage parameter. Focus on the inner workings of the new critical hit accumulation that was implemented in January. All Smokies currently start at -50% chance at spawn, and can only go as high as +50%. The chance step parameter is how much your critical chance increases with each shot. Mk7+ Smoky had a chance step % of 40%. Meaning at spawn, the critical hit chance scene would look like: -50%, -10%, +30%, +50%. That means your third shot has a 30% chance to be a critical hit. Your 4th shot has a 50% chance to be a critical hit, and any other shot after that will have at most a 50% chance, until anl critical hit occurs and puts the chance down to -50%, starting the cycle againd. That is the maximum critical chance. This update will limit the maximum critical chance for modifications lower than Mk7+. Mk1 Smoky will now have a maximum critical chance of 20%. Mk1 critical hit scheme before update: -50, -30, -10, +10, +30, +50, +50, +50, +50, +50, +50 (maximum critical chance is 50%) Mk1 critical hit scheme after update: -50, -30, -10, +10, +20, +20, +20, +20, +20, +20, +20 (maximum critical chance is 20%)

That critical damage is going to ignore Falcon modules. If anything this is a huge improvement, because rather than getting a 10% chance to crit like other turrets, Railgun is getting a 50% chance. Your maximum critical chance will be 50% at Mk7+, which is what it currently is now for all modifications. It's saying that whenever you get a critical hit with Smoky, it will apply the burning status, just like it does now.

Well practically, if I'm reading this upfatae6 correctly, it will become better as Smoky's new critical damage will ignore Smoky modules. So it's not all bad.

I use Adrenaline on my Smoky most of the time. Yes it is good, but do not expect a lot out of it. Due to Smoky's balance in terms of damage output per shot, the TTK for Adrenaline and Stock Smoky is practically the same most of the time. You will take 2 shots to kill an unprotected light hull, and 3 shots to kill an unprotected medium hull. It is good to use if you are fighting against maxed drones. Smoky is one of the only turrets that has its ineractions with full HP enemies changed with drones' passive damage reduction. Due to Smoky's average damage being close to 500, passive protection from drones can reduce that to below 500, making you have to use an additional shot to kill a light or medium hull with a maxed or near maxed drone. Having to use an additional shot often has you using a critical hit on them when they are at <5% HP. I cannot stress how many times I've lost an engagement because of this. Adrenaline solves this problem, as being slightly injured is enough to bring your final average damage against that enemy to above 500, allowing you to 2-shot and 3-shot the light and medium hull respectively like you were supposed to in the first place. That is for Legend-rank gameplay. I have no experience using Smoky in the mid ranks, but with a modification advantage over your enemies, you can start 2-shotting medium hulls with non-critical hits when you're at low HP. For Legend-rank gameplay, potential gains are, Slightly injured/half HP: With DD, the increased damage of each shot adds up to you need 1 fewer shot to kill medium hulls with DA and 2 fewer shots to kill heavy hulls with DA. At very low HP: You gain the possibility of killing an unprotected medium hull of the same modification with a non-critical + a critical hit. You gain the possibility of 3-shotting an unprotected light hull when you yourself do not have DD active. You gain the possibility of one-shotting an unprotected light hull with a critical hit. You gain the possibility of 3-shotting an unprotected heavy hull. Considering that Smoky's critical hit damage will be turned into the critical hit damage imposed by other turrets, that means it will be a buff to Smoky, as its critical damage will no longer be reduced by Smoky protection modules. So technically, Adrenaline wil be even better after this update.

Heat Immunity is not a necessity for using Vulcan on its own. If it's a necessity for you then I'd have to say the problem is you and not Vulcan.

I don't think it would be worth writing a set of paragraphs over this. I'll keep it short. Viking is fast and hard to hit for a lot of my favourite turret hull combinations, not to mention a deadly Overdrive. The population of Viking since the Overdrives were released in 2019 has been too high, and something needs to be done about it. There urgently needs to be more hull diversity. Agree or disagree?

Don't take it so seriously. Lol. It's just the Test Server, with obviously inflated numbers.

Is that not because Hunter has 32k HP on the Test Server?

Well now I have personal visual proof that 1,000,000 crystals exists inside containers. ?

Can you provide a picture or video of this?

I did, and it looks like your shot narrowly missed the hitbox of the Smoky. I practically only use Smoky on this account, but I use it on TO mobile so it may be a different experience. I have had shots that seems to miss players when it looked like it shouldn't but I presume it's the horizontal auto-aim causing that. I can't really test the ricocheting thing, since mobile has auto-aim for ricocheting projectiles. Most if not all of my ricocheted Smoky projectiles hit enemies because of this.

Crusader is wide and easier to hit. Has a slower maximum strafing speed. Ares is very wide and very much easier to hit. Has a very slow strafing speed. You're expressing your distaste for Viking's retention period. The only turret that will be dealing any substantial amount of damage during Viking's retention period is an LCR Railgun. I was explaining why Viking's retention period is a non-issue. It is too short to do much if any good even if it retains some charge (and it won't retain much), it will take very long to get back to 100%. Its maximum strafing speed is still the highest, because it is a light hull.

The first one is a legitimate miss. The second one is weird though.

What is this replying to in particular?

Viking's retention period is short, just like everyone else has been except Hopper and Hornet. Moreover, it takes significantly longer for a Viking to get back to 100% if it ever gets killed during the short retenton period. Viking's retention period is a nonproblem. I only started using Hopper after the acceleration nerf (because I got a skin for it), and if that acceleration nerf had a huge negative impact on its performance then I don't want to imagine what it was like before. Twins players practically can't hit me at all unless they corner me somewhere. I can almost comfortably evade Thunder, Smoky and Striker projectiles. I can easily reduce the incoming DPS from Vulcan users. I can sometimes avoid Hammer shots. I can sometimes avoid Railgun, Magnum and Gauss arcade shots. I'm even able to avoid Shaft shots fairly easily. I can attest to that Shaft part because I use Shaft on multiple accounts and the hardest hull for me to hit is always Hopper due to the fact that: It has a very slim hitbox It is levitating off the floor It can move erratically to the left or right

It has, but not to the extent that you would personally see. The retention period of Hopper was one of the most disgusting things about it, and it was long overdue to be removed, which is what happened in the last Patch. I presume you use Heat Immunity on most if not all of your accounts, so Hoppers abusing their retention periods would have had little effect on you. But for those without Heat Immunity, the nerf is a blessing.

Do you have a problem with that?

Driver gang.

EMP Immunity in August.

So thankfully, Hopper's retention period is being removed in the update tomorrow. This was the change they should have implemented in the first place.

A penalty to gaining Overdrive charge from score for 10 seconds after activation. Hopper has been considerably toned down from what it was pre-January but it's still overbearing because of some other factors. Imo, they nerfed it in the wrong direction. Fast Overdrive recharging is a very valid excuse. Since release, Hopper's Overdrive charging parameters (along with the effects it gives) has been pissing me off every time I think about it. In terms of parameters that govern Overdrive charge, Hopper had, and still has, the best of EVERYTHING. Fastest manual recharge Fastest passive recharge Longest retention period Having the fastest manual and passive recharge on its own is a big thing. It will be the hull to most likely have its Overdrive get to 100% first, and when the retention period comes into play, it allows it to bounce back from its blunder much quicker than other hulls. That last one, the retention period. THAT is the thing about Hopper that most makes me want to smash my head against the wall. It has the longest retention period in the game. ON TOP of having two strong instantaneous status effects, it gets to retain a large % of its Overdrive charge if it was killed quickly after activation. Hoppers would just go up to you and if they were gonna die, they'd just use their OD on you. What happens? You get stunned and set to maximum temperature, while they die, retain 80-90% of their Overdrive charge, to come and do the same thing 20-30 seconds later. Rinse and repeat * the number for Hoppers in the battle. Want to know another issue with the retention period? The ability to internally store manual Overdrive charge for use on the next jump. If a Hopper used its Overdrive, killed two people, and then died before the retention period ends, it will have that 20% charge internally saved for the next use. So the next time you use your Overdrive, you'd see you'd suddenly get 20%. This was ESPECIALLY heinous with Hopper when it was capping all the rugby balls and ASL flags and then dying right after they touched the capture point. It was even possible to transfer that internally-saved Overdrive charge into a different battle! I've SEEN it happen with my own eyes. That past Railgun Hopper event earlier this year genuinely angered me because every time I jumped, I was reminded of the mechanic I had to tip-toe around every single battle that had Hoppers on the enemy team. My allies always did not know any better and because of that, they continued to suffer for months, and they still do to this day. Hopper was overtuned to hell and back and forth and back and forth. Thankfully, the score penalty nerf it received stopped that internally-saved Overdrive charge mechanic as well as the asanine feedback loops it created in CTF, RGB and ASL. Rant over. I was going to say all this in an I&S topic I was going to create the day after the Hopper Railgun event ended, but I had decided against it.

Sledgehammer's maximum damage range is the size of a Viking dude. ? Meanwhile SCCM's maximum damage range is the size of 19 Vikings. Sledgehammer's damage starts dropping below 100% right in front of your face. Before the conversion, Sledgehammer and SCCM basically did the same thing but in different ways. Decrease damage while increasing the reload speed. However, you are right. While they both practically did the same thing, Sledgehammer was proven to be the superior of the two. Michael828 did a chart showing Sledgehammer's effectiveness compared to Stock when it was hitscan here. So you also refer to 70 metres as mid range, alright. This I agree with, in that within that distance, it should be easy enough to hit the Sledgehammer projectiles if you're versed with it. I was talking more about 100 metres, where hitting enemies with SCCM would be easy compared to Sledgehammer. Alright. But would you really say it's useless? Players throw around that word a lot on almost everything that doesn't do their dishes while getting penta-kills every 2 minutes. To me, nothing in this game is useless. Some things are just less useful than others. There are many scenarios where SCCM would be more practical to use then Stock, that I've personally seen on the receiving end, which is where most of my experience with Thunder comes from. That's why I'm asking theses questions to a Thunder users, as you have had experience both on the giving and the receiving end. ?