If you reduce Vulcan's DPS by 33%, it will be a downgrade from what it was before the rework.

The main issue is its synergy with Viking's Overdrive. Outside of the Overdrive, you'd want a stable hull with Autocannon. Such hulls are Titan, Mammoth, Hunter and Dictator. You want to hit as many shots as possible on the enemy and having a slippery hull like Viking with low weight wouldn't be effective. So there are some issues outside of Viking's Overdrive, now with the Overdrive, you are a downgrade from Stock Smoky. With Autocannon + Viking's Overdrive, you retain the 75% damage penalty for non-critical shots during the Overdrive. Let's take Mk8 Smoky for example. Mk8 Stock Smoky deals 550 damage on average for a non-critical shot. Autocannon deals 137.5 damage on average for a non-critical shot. With Viking's Overdrive, Autocannon shot 18 times while Stock shot 20 times. So assuming they get critical hits at the same time, this is how their damage would be with Viking's Overdrive: Stock: 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,600 - 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,600 - 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,600 - 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,100 - 1,100 Autocannon: 275 - 275 - 275 - 1,600 - 275 - 275 - 275 - 275 - 275 - 1,600 - 275 - 275 - 275 - 275 - 1,600 - 275 - 275 - 275 In total, Stock did 23,500 damage during those 7 seconds, while Autocannon did 8,925 damage. Much lower damage, and a light hull with 50% Smoky protection and double armour activated can survive those 7 seconds if it uses a repair kit. Viking's Overdrive recharges very slowly, and has a short duration, so you'd be spending nearly the entire battle outside of your Overdrive. Autocannon is better on stable hulls and their Overdrives benefit Autocannon much more. Yes, Hornet is a light hull with less weight than Viking and is slippery as well, but its Overdrive is very powerful with double damage and it has the 2nd fastest charging rate of all Overdrives. So what you couldn't do outside of the Overdrive, you can make up for with it.

Diesel summarised it. Plasma Torch gives you high burst damage allowing you to take down two enemies quickly. Your ammo depletes very quickly, that's the main caveat of Plasma Torch. Minus-Field Stabilisation allows for you to compete with mid-range turrets. The faster projectile speed allows you to maximise your turret's impact force as most projectiles should hit the target on their screen. The increased range allows for your damage to drop off much slower from 100% damage to 25% damage after your maximum damage range. Stock Ricochet is fine imo. Minus-Field Stabilisation will give it a really good edge over other players at higher modifications due to the increase in shot reload not being as significant as in the lower modifications. Beserk can do wonders if the enemy team has little to no protection modules. I often see Ricochets stealing kills from other turrets and less often the other way around, so you'd be refilling your energy bar often.

Ideally, you'd want to use both double armour and double damage before you use speed boost, so that you will have them both available when those run out. It's a support drone but can be used solo if you choose so. It's a great survival tool, allowing you to use two repair kits in quick succession and refresh you double armour or double damage if you need them on the spot. The drone also activates with speed boost drop boxes, so if your speed boost is on cooldown or your speed boost is currently active but you need another repair kit or to disable the cooldown on your DA or DD, you can go over a speed boost drop box to activate the drone. It also cancels cooldown for mines. The caveat is that your repair kit usage will be indirectly increased. The Trickster drone is supposed to work like Defender, Booster, Miner and Mechanic in that it is supposed to speed up the cooldown of speed boost by manually using other supplies (DA, DD and RK). This however does not happen with Trickster and has been like this for a long time. Even without this feature, it is a great drone and can help your teammates out in a pinch if you decide to be more supportive with it.

Yes, however, it takes time for the Incendiary damage to overtake the Stock critical damage. The extra damage from Stock Smoky's critical shot is instant, while Incendiary Rounds' extra damage spans over 5 seconds Advantage of Incendiary Rounds is that for a critical shot it will do at least 1,500 damage to an unprotected enemy regardless of if they have double damage or not. Stock Smoky requires double damage to reach that number on a critical hit. Because your reload time is much faster, you will critical hits quicker. The % chance for a critical hit is the same as Stock Smoky, it's just that you shoot more often so the chance for a critical increases quickly. You can use Autocannon to see how well you'd do with Stock Smoky in terms of gaining critical hits. Autocannon due to being a Smoky Augment has some luck factor to it. You may be able to get a critical shot 3 shots after your last critical, or you could get a critical shot 7 shots after you last critical. If you choose Incendiary Rounds, use it with your Viking, Titan or Hornet. If you choose Autocannon, use it with your Titan or Hornet. Do not use Autocannon with Viking.

Wait, when Firebirds ignite a target and leave the battle, the target ignited will immediately return to neutral temperature upon the Firebird leaving. That didn't happen in your case?

Yes, it is.

I wouldn't recommend Nanomass Reactor, especially at the price it is now. Out of all the energy restoration Augments, Nanomass Reactor is arguably the worst. From being melee range, to having a smaller cone angle than FIrebird and Freeze (easier for you to lose focus on the target), it's just not effective unless you can survive long or deal high damage quickly with a drone. Against someone with protection, you will have a very hard time killing that person in a 1 v 1, far less a 1 v 2 against turrets with strong impact force. And if that's not enough, you will randomly stop dealing damage to the enemy. So you could walk up to someone from behind, surprise them with your beam, do 3 ticks of damage and then suddenly you aren't dealing damage anymore despite your beam still being on the target. You just used 4 seconds of ammo and and only did 0.75 seconds of damage. This last point really drives home why it is definitely not worth the price it is now. When this bug gets fixed, then it will be at least decent. You will only feel frustration trying to do well with this Augment.

Light Capacitors.

Ah yes, this nerf will make me survive a stream of Vulcan bullets for 2.1 seconds instead of the current 2 seconds. They are both sore spots in today's balance, but Vulcan in the higher modifications is too efficient. It is evidenced by seeing so much Vulcan protection in the higher ranks being equipped and the sheer number of Vulcans on the battlefield now.

How do you figure that Thunder needs to be reworked and not Striker as well? They both deal the same damage for a shot.

Mk7 and Mk8 is where the real imbalance is.

For now, I say Twins as well.

You have 0 deaths, you refresh the page. Your tank "partially" leaves the battle until the 2 minutes are up. You come back and your stats are restored to what it was prior to refreshing, allowing you to have 0 deaths. I've encountered a few players who were obviously doing it whenever I went out of my way to kill them and almost succeeded every time.

It was a nice 3 v 3 Juggernaut battle for 2 minutes until everyone else showed up.

Some golds I dropped after.

I was meaning to test this some time ago. I believe I did this with Supplier and it didn't count so it may not work with Engineer. I'll have to make sure though.

Have you never gotten a quintuple common opening before?

I play on multiple accounts and need to complete missions on them all. Missions also motivate me to stay in bad battles. Those above are for when I'm playing on Flash for missions. When I'm playing on Mobile for missions as well, it's much less strict. I'm already at a disadvantage when I'm using Mobile so being dominated doesn't feel as bad as on Flash (where I'm at my prime). Though on Mobile, I still do leave some battles immediately, mainly Stadium battles. Even with an underpowered team, I can have fun depending on the flow of the battle. My team could be getting dominated from start to finish but could be fun in its own way such as me having a mutual rivalry with a particular enemy, me using drones like Miner to fortify a specific spot and watch enemies kill me and still die to the mines, and lastly, predicting how interactions with teammates with the enemies would go down and how screwed my team or the enemy team is in different scenarios. Sometimes stuff happens in the battle that make me laugh. I try to find as many positives as I can in all the negativity in battles.

More players are going to have EMP Gauss now.

That is inoptimal. Hornet does not receive Overdrive charge for the first 3 seconds of the Overdrive, but whatever actions it completed during those 3 seconds, the % charge it would gain pools up and is then added 3 seconds after the Overdrive is activated. For instance, if a Gauss Hornet activated their Overdrive right as it shot onto a Siege point and got 7 instant kills, then their Overdrive charge would stay at 0% for 3 seconds, and then jump to 49% (Hornet gets 7% OD charge for each kill). The optimal thing to do is to use it and kill as much players as you can during those 20 seconds. If you only use it for the last 2/3 of the Overdrive duration, you're wasting potential.

Wasp starts to gain Overdrive charge immediately as the bomb is planted. The bomb explodes exactly when it reaches 3%. It may also deal with estimations. Since the Overdrives' release, I had observed that sometimes, if you're at 0.8% Overdrive charge and you get a kill, it would it would give you how much % charge you get for a kill, and restart the passive OD charge accumulation. For example, having 11.7% OD charge, getting a kill which gives you +10%, the charge would then be out to 21% exactly and then starts accumulating. For more clarity, Wasp gets 1% per second. Let's say it had 11.7% and it got a kill, it would go to 20%, and instead of taking 0.3 seconds to get to 21%, it takes an entire second. Sometimes it does that, sometimes it doesn't. I made sure at times to observe any sudden jumps in passively accumulating charge whenever it did it and observed no such jumps. This is why a while back when I was in total control of the situation, I would wait until my OD charge hit the next number and then kill them. It came in handy a few times where I would have died without it. And mistiming it has also made me die as well in the past. This isn't a concern for me at the moment since things have changed and I don't see it happening often anymore. Now for this rounding thing Titan and Viking may be getting 7.5% for a kill. Whenever I got a double kill with these two hulls, my OD charge would go up +15% rather than 14%. To have the most accurate single kill OD charges, I used all hulls on my dedicated Shaft account where I can specialise in single target kills on stationary targets whenever I need to. I first make sure that my Overdrive is charging in consistent 0.8% and 0.4% per second for Titan and Viking respectively before waiting for the next number and releasing the shot immediately. And almost every time, it showed the regular speed of 0.8% and 0.4% per second after the kill. Sometimes, it blended in with an increase in the number from the passive OD charge and went up 8% rather than 7%. This is likely what occurred with Wasp and the other hulls because I wasn't looking at them meticulously back them. I will agree thought that there may have been changes under our nose. For instance, Wasp and Dictator used to get the same % Overdrive charge for capturing an Assault flag. Now, Wasp retains that % but Dictator is getting more than that %. I remember Hunter being on the same league with Hornet, Viking and Titan, but now I'm seeing Hunter getting almost the same amount for everything that Wasp does. This may have came from that "sneak" update with Hunter where they "changed" stuff with Hunter's Overdrive and didn't specify what they changed. And now I'm looking into the Driver drone and seeing inaccurate predictions. So I'm trying to figure out how exactly Driver works by looking at the charge gained from each hull for every action and comparing them to see if I find a pattern. This will prompt me to do a recheck on how quickly each Overdrive passively recharges.

UPDATED (As of today) % Charge for each hull when obtaining a kill: Wasp: 9% Hornet: 7% Hunter: 9% Viking: 7% Dictator: 10% Titan: 7% Mammoth: 9% I need to look at Dictator more closely. It may be 11% but taking into account other actions, it will likely add up to 10%. @Viking4s Remember in the Overdrive introduction thread you mentioned that gaining anything higher than a double kill will decrease the total amount of Overdrive charge you get? Well, that doesn't happen. Wasp simply gets less than 10% OD charge for a kill, which was the number we were working with at that time. So it makes perfect sense for you to get back 21% Overdrive charge instead of 23% after getting a double kill with the bomb.

The surprise is Ares being delayed for another 3 months.

There are more modes that I would rather play on than modes I would rather not. TDM is too bland so I won't pick that. And I won't pick ASL. That leaves me with 5/7 modes that I wouldn't mind playing in. That is a good chance to join a mode that I wouldn't mind playing in. Any of those 5 modes will do. If I choose one, I will likely have to wait long. Not exactly great if I'm strapped for time. So I click Quick Battle so I can get into one of those 5 modes quicker. That's...specific. Usually when there is an EMP Gauss on the enemy team, the battle is in the Gauss' favour. It takes away something crucial for victory, and thanks to its buff, it can keep you without supplies as long as it wants before you die, unless you get to cover. And even if you get to cover, just getting a hint of their splash damage if they target someone else will still disable your supplies. There aren't many safe spots. Or Hornet Vulcans. When the enemy team has two of those, the battle is instantly lost unless our team has one or two. Based on personal experiences for players, they can deduce whether a cause is lost or not depending on their recent experiences. If they notice the pattern and it repeats, they'll act accordingly. A casual player's lost cause has less requirements than the lost cause of a player who takes each battle with a hint of seriousness and tries their absolute best. Sometimes controllable variables hold you back. Sometimes uncontrollable variables hold you back. It's all random. In the case of me being a Support Nanobots Isida loading in at the start of a battle and seeing meme teammates spawning, I'd know it would be nothing but frustration trying to get score. If I leave as early as possible, someone can join them. Lots of times a team that scores first in Siege wins. Lots of times I, as Support Nanobots, spawn first and only until near 20 seconds later, my teammates spawn and start moving. By that time, many enemies already made it to the point and captured. I can't do anything because my entire ammo clip isn't even enough to kill a medium hull practically, far less multiple enemies who probably have protection against me and are using ranged turrets to kill me before I even come to contest the point. That in my opinion is a lost cause, proven by the team that captured starting to spawnkill mine. What I will say though, is that there were battles where I decided to stay and we either almost made a comeback, or we made one in the last few seconds. The main reason being that we were lucky in some aspect. Either the enemy team mismanaged their Overdrive usage; someone crucial on the enemy team lagged out; a crucial enemy was flipped due to two tanks accidentally colliding with each other with one going atop the other (I've had many battles lost because of this); the enemy team losing sight of the objective and allowing someone to sneak past and capture multiple times (to this day it still amazes me how this happens) But it's not all positive, because those things also happen to my team at times and worsen the problem. There are so many factors that can randomly pop up and inconvenience players. And those with a shorter fuse will be likely to leave quicker. It could be that battles generally aren't worth staying in for a lot of players. The comebacks were very enjoyable battles, but they aren't common enough to consider.