It appears that both Jamming Mix and Magnetic Mix have -50% freezing rate penalties. Magnetic Mix was muddy since it was behind much more of a paywall than Jamming Mix, but Jamming Mix definitely got altered somewhere along the line between December and now. Similar to Blunderbuss having a normal damage coefficient with Viking's Overdrive only for it to be significantly reduced coincidentally when it became available in a BP. A video of Jamming Mix shortly after it came into the game. Back then, the freezing rate for a maxed Stock Freeze was 0.6/sec instead of the 0.5/sec it is now. Here is one posted a few days ago.

As far as I remembered fighting against these Freezes, they always had the Stock freezing rate. Maybe they did silently change it at some point this year. Unfortunately I'm in no position to confirm this personally, so I'll have to go off of youtuber recordings.

Not exactly sure if Jamming augments are meta. Only two of them have no downsides, while the others have downsides to them. I have yet to see a Jammer Twins, but interestinglyenough, on the wikis, Jammer Twins was shown to be a Cryotron/Magnetron copy except the Jammer happened on every shot. But recently, I saw that it got changed to having both +50% increases to minimum damage range and projectile speed, and has a -20% reload speed penaly. It's not exactly a tank-weakining status effect like AP and EMP were in direct confrontations. For sure, Cryo with its negligible/non-existent downsides and burst damage are the meta for solo play. Burst damage has been making itself known for a while now and it'sas blatant as it can get now with Ricochet with Plasma Torch and Beserk being miles better than Stock/Adrenaline practically, and then the balance nonsense that is Helios.

Cryo augments were not nerfed, with the exception of Cryo Railgun with its reduced crit rate to make all status augments an extension of Stock. But it sill has the -100% freezing. Cryotron had its critical damage penalty removed even though it was already very powerful despite that, Cryo Smoky still has no penalty, Cryo Hammer no longer increases the critical hit rate but now has a slight clip reload buff while Dragon's Breath does not. Cryo Ricochet has few practical downsides. It's quite obvious they'd like Cryo augments to be near the top now.

You get the value Stock does, plus 10 seconds of freezing on the crits to slow down and reduce enemy damage output against you.

Ehh, this entire Ricochet change is stupid and only understandable if you had the money to shell out to get the augments. Like AP Ricochet being able to AP targets on a critical hit when Pulsar came into the game, which had the same duration. When AP Ricochet was nerfed to 1 second and Sizzling Field was nerfed to a 50% max temperature heating rate, Pulsar was also affected with its flurry of nerfs. Magnetron came into the game with 1 second of EMP right when Pulsar gets nerfed from 2 seconds to 1 second. Safe to assume that EMP and Stun Rico would have had 2 seconds of status application had these status effect augment nerfs not coming into effect. EMP Rico do not apply the status if the shot that bounces is a critical hit. The two other status Ricochets apply status through critical hits. Yet if you bounce a Pulsar shot and it's a critical hit, it only applies the AP and EMP, no other statuses. It's all a convoluted mess right now. Is there something so DARSTARDLY about a new augment not instantly breaking game balance? Is an augment garbage for not letting you steamroll an enemy uncontested?

Drones that consume additional supplies when activating said supply/drone: Booster (+2 BD) Defender (+2 BA) Trickster (+2 SB) Hyperion (+1 supply) Crisis (+2 supply) Drones that consume a supply only when activating the drone: Assault (+1 BD) Sprinter (+1 SB) Lifeguard (+2 RK)

It disrupts the flow of damage between normal and critical hits, unless you're really lucky. It is much more costly when you kill that 3% HP target with your long-awaited crit. Cryo Rounds keeps the TTK buff of Stock while also applying 10 seconds of speed and damage reduction on crits. Supercumulative Rounds was one of those augments most negatuvely affected by the price hike in 2020. It was worth its previous cost of 30,000 crystals, but it has never been worth as much as 245k.Maybe that will change when Smoky gets its balance change soon.

You're not going to get many of that, then. This is the template for most augments, you have to live with that. An increase in one place, a decrease in another. Each augment has a purpose for the turret's gameplay. Whether or not that nets you higher score on average than Stock will vary. Shock Freeze - Gimmick Freeze. You lose out on a lot of your damage potential, which is Freeze's main draw. Not ideal when on a budget and looking for something for general gameplay. Slugger - The thing about Slugger is that its range increase is not really worth it. Only +25% of the minimum damage range. Your damage fall off is still quick and you have a 4.4-second reload to contend with. Slugger'smain draw used to be forced accuracy on targets at range. Now that all Hammers can do that and then some, Slugger has fallen down to the lowest. Not ideal when on a budget. Assault Rounds - Not much harm in buying it in a sale. It is only 96,000 crystals outside of it. I would suggest you maybe try to get this one as soon as possible if you're really looking forward to using Smoky. In the near future, it will be turned into a 245k augment and will have its own new balance to adust with whatever change they make to Stock Smoky and its other augments. MLH - No longer worth the price after its recent (and long-needed) nerf. It no longer has any unique features and now serves as a springboard for AP and Stun Striker to directly powercreep in a way that is not over-detrimental to game balance. Not ideal when on a budget, go for RRE instead. ML Cyclone - Gimmick Striker. 4 missiles are usually enough. Not ideal when on a budget and looking for something for general gameplay. Mortar - Gimmick Magnum. Splash isn't greatly reduced, it is completely disabled. You either hit direct hits or you place a mine on the floor. Very bad, do not buy. Harpoon - This is the augment that has the reduced splash damage. Going into numbers, its splash damage distribution is 2, 5, 20 - 100, 25, 5. It will deal 100% of total damage at 2m from ground zero, drops linearly to 25% of total damage between 2m and 5m, and drops linearly to 5% of total damage between 5m and 20m. For comparison, Stock Magnum is 2, 5, 20 - 100, 50, 5. This augment is a horzontal Magnum that locks it to 3 degrees, limiting its range. However, the range being limited means your accuracy against close range targets will be at near 100%, which allows you to make 100% velocity shots comfortably, decreasing your overall reload. Decreased splash damage distribution and critical splash damage radius decreased to 2m means it is meant for high-accuracy shots and not to rely on the splash. Magnum itself is not ideal when on a budget or looking for something for general gameplay. Avoid this turret for now. Heavy Capacitors - If you're going to be seriously playing Shaft, pretend that this augment does not exist in your garage, that is all. Light Capacitors - Good enough in a vacuum. The problem is that the current template of Shaft does not favour Light Capacitors in the damage-dealing department. There is a very slim margin in quickscoping in which Light Capacitors is superior to Adrenaline/Short-Band Emitters. When you pass that margin, you start getting more damage with Stock and SBE relative to the reload coming afterwards. It's nice if you got it for free in the challenge or in a contaier, but for purchases on a budget for general gameplay, Adrenaline and SBE exist. Some of these augments are gimmicks. Unfortunately with the way the game is set up today, what's powerful comes first in your journey. Gimmicks/fun augments come after as a luxury when you have enough of the essentials. If you're fortunate enough, an augment may be both a gimmick and powerful, like Plasma Torch, Beserk or RRE. It's not worth doing that when Cryo Rounds and Adrenaline exist. It's another example of essentials vs gimmicks.

The game balance has been volatile for the past 8 months. With container rewards being reduced, you'd need to make an informed choice that would pay off. What I recommend today may not be the best choice next week/next month for newer inquirers. You'd have to look at the patterns of changes in the Patch Notes and make your choice. A rework for a turret may come into effec suddenly that makes one high-tier augment drop to the lowest, or a low tier one going up. If you're on a budget and want a safe pick for augmets of each turret with the current game balance: Firebird - Adrenaline Freeze - Adrenaline Isida - Adrenaline Tesla - Adrenaline, Acceleration Protocol (up to your preference in gameplay) Twins - Any (up to your preference in gameplay) Ricochet - Plasma Torch, Beserk (they do the same thing in different ways) Hammer - High-Capacity Ammo Clip, Adaptive Reload (they have similar outputs, up to your preference in gameplay) Smoky - Adrenaline, Cryo Rounds Striker - Remote Rocket Explosives Vulcan - Adrenaline, Shooting Speed Regulator, Reinforced Aiming Transmission (up to your preference in gameplay) Thunder - Any (up to your preference in gameplay) Railgun - Round Stabilisation, Round Destabilisation, Electromagnetic Accelerator "Scout", "Death Herald" Compulsator, Hyperspace Rounds (up to your preference in gameplay) Gauss - Adrenaline Magnum - Any except Reinforced Gun Carriage (up to your preference in gameplay) Shaft - Adrenaline, Short-Band Emitters (they do the same thing in different ways, up to your preference in gameplay)

That was a net buff to Dictator all things considered, though.

Stable Plasma with 1 second of AP attached to critical hits, minus the impact force buff. You can't apply the status in a group like the other augments, but it provide great survivability in 1 v 1s compared to Stock.

Horizontal Magnums by default have their elevations set at 12 degrees. The only Magnums that can manually change their elevations are vertical Magnums, those being the Reinforced Gun Carriage, Automated Gunpower Loading Mechanism and Mortar augments. If you were to set those 3 augments to 3 degrees and shoot a 100% velocity shot, the distance the proectile travels before hitting the ground will be slightly reduced as Harpoon has a slightly weaker proectile gravitation than Stock. Not...necessarily, since it is meant to be a close range, high-accuracy augment for Magnum. You'll still need to get accustomed to using it so you'll have the muscle memory needed to use it to its full potential. Harpoon is the Magnum augment best equipped for close range encounters, yes. This is thanks to its low elevation that does not penalise you for prioritising high velocity shots, and the decrease in overal splash damage which lets you take less self-damage when hitting enemies up close.

Because the angle is fixed at 3 degrees, your range is artificially shortened. In order to hit targets that are far away, you will need to rock your hull in a way that pushes your elevation upward. Hunter, Dictator, Hornet and Wasp do this well. Here is a video of Harpoon so you get a gist of what it feels like to play it compared to the other Magnum augments.

The description just gave you the gist of the augment, it's not to be taken literally. It has no auto-aim. What changes is that its angle of elevation is fixed at 3 degrees upwards with a slight decrease in projectile gravitation. This will make it shoot in a straight line in front of you for a relatively short range. Because the range is short and accuracy is high due to the elevation of the turret being low, you are encouraged to fire 100% velocity shots, like throwing a Harpoon at something with maximum strength, hence the name.

Pulsar and Helios are canceorus for different reasons. I'm not refuting that. Because you stated that Helios' burst damage output is not problematic because the Ricochet protection module exists. You see it as perfectly fine for a light hull with Boosted Armour and 50% Ricochet protection to have 75% of its HP deleted in 0.6 seconds by a turret that can reload that damage in 4 seconds, and freely interrupt it for more damage during the reload (unlike Duplet).

With Crisis, that light hull is dead if one of those 7 initial shots is a critical hit. Not to mention that immediately after the 7 shots are fired, an 8th trickle shot occurs. And you think it's perfectly fine for a turret to dish out that kind of damage in 0.6 seconds with an interruptable 4-second reload? Yeah, clearly the majority of the playerbase has the luck with Ultra Containers and the at least 4,000,000 crystals it takes to fully upgrade Armadillo. And again, you think it's perfectly fine fo a turret to dish out that kind of damage in 0.6 seconds with an interruptable 4-second reload? Who's handling them exactly? You alone, or you along with teammates. What makes you think a Helios on Supercharge with teammates can't take down a swarm of player with its burst damage?

In which you'll be dealing -90% damage for the entire duration. Pulsar on Supercharge is a poison that can be circumvented with Heat Immunity. Helios on Supercharge boosts its already insane burst damage by 59%. A light hull with Boosted Armour and 50% Ricochet protection will still die to a Booster Helios' initial burst in its effective range, a burst that can be achieved in 0.6 seconds. And oh dear, even if it's not in its effective range, it still has +200% minimum damage range and projectile speed. And even if it happened to survive, it is a team game. That Helios has allies. You could be trying to get to the objective, get damaged along the way and because of that, the Helios waiting on the point bursts you down and kills you. Or, you sneak over to the base unscathed, ready to tackle the enemies defending, when suddenly you lose half your HP and then get killed by the Helios' allies. What's repulsive about this is you reload this god-forsaken burst damage potential every 4 seconds. You have NO weakness after your ambush. You immediately get a leg up on any Riccohet the moment you start firing at someone.

Needs absolutely no refuting. Helios embodies exactly the direction themeta in the game balance has been heading since the critical hit update, the reason why on-release Tesla was overpowered: burst damage. Previous methods of achieving this were roundabout in the AP and EMP augments weakening targets' armour and subecting them to the full force of the lowered TTK across the game. Now it's just direct burst damage. Turrets with high critical damage, Duplet being forced to have 100% accuracy, Firebird's paramaters turning from a turret that relies on afterburn to a burst damage turret with afterburn attached, Tesla, AP Striker, Plasma Torch, Beserk, ad changes to Stock turrets that just made them generally kill faster. Helios takes that and knocks it out of the part. Plasma Torch was obnoxious to fight, but it was balanced out by having little longevity. Well they went behind that with this new high-critical damage Ricochet and calmly gave it infinite ammo. Immediately after, Beserk gets turned into another burst damage option, with a fast reload even when you mess up. Helios takes Plasma Torch's issue and strenghtens it. You get enough damage to kill a light hull on equal footing with a base firing rate that is faster than a Stock Ricochet with's Viking's Overdrive. You get that sweet deal and how long do you have to wait to do it again? The lengthy eternity that is 4 seconds. You don't just get unparalleled burst damage. You get that burst damage with unparalelled reload. You have almost no downtime on the destruction you can cause. Perfect for someone who drools at their keyboard and shudders at the thought of having to put in effort to dominate. However, as bad as that sounds, I don't think Stock Helios is too bad like a certain excreme- erm, augment called Magnetron. But what it offers as its base is what damage-enhancing drones will use to alter interactions. Booster, Crisis and Camper can be used with every turret and augment in the game. Helios is one drop in the ocean and needs to be toned down when used with damage-enhancing drones. Crisis especially, because along with Booster, it upgrades from being able to burst down a light hull with Boosted Armour to being able to burst down a medium hull with Boosted Armour. Video evidence of its destruction can be seen here: It is obvious that nothing major will change with Helios naturally. It is a new toy for the ones keeping the game alive that has infinite replayability through primitive balancing, and because it is deeply baked into Stock Ricochet's energy parameters, similar to Beserk and Plasma Torch. My suggestion is this: Old; New; This will allow it to have its ambush properties, but not have as much longevity as it does now. This will be the start required to make it into and actual augment and not an exotic tactical nuke with no weakness.

The German WIki. After each Patch Note, it is updated relatively quickly. Some things you may not see immediately, like the chance step of Hammer and Tesla being 6% instead of 4%. Some you can see faster, which is Isida and Freeze's chance step being 1% instead of 4% and 7% respectively, or that hull discharge times/retention periods of Overdrives was reduced from 2 seconds to 1.25 seconds. Overdrive parameters are better explained rather than giving the gist of it like the EN and RU Wiki.

Kazareen puts it nicely. The changes that are being made to the game are inconsistent. It simply can't be simple case of forgetfulness at this point. Important information is being omitted, especially with critical chances. The chances shown in the patch note are the maximum critical chances but: This does not mention that the chance step was decreased from 4% to 1%. One might have thought it would simply be 9, 0, 4, 8, 9, but it is actually 9, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. This does not mention that the chance step for Tesla was increased from 4% to 6% This does not mention that the chance step for Hammer was increased from 4% to 6%. This does not mention that the chance step was decreased from 5% to 2% This does not mention that the chance stepwas decreased from 4% to 3%. This does not mention that the minimum critical chance was reduced from 0% to -8%. One might have thought it would be 2, 0, 1, 2, but it is actually 2, -8, -7, -6, -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2. You were so happy to keep changing the damage coefficients with Viking's Overdrve for Railgun's augments each week. Large Calibre Rounds which is supposed to increase damage, gets less damage during the Overdrive. Status Railguns had unnecessarily high damage with the Overdrive. You reduced it after it was pointed out. You made changes to Railgun that had the status Railguns' critical damages be reduced. To compensate for that, you gave it a specific coefficient to make it have the same critical damage as Stock. Three weeks later, you revert all of them to Stock Railgun's critical damage, yet you did not reduce the coefficient with Viking like you were so happy to do just previously. The end result is status Railguns once again have unnecessarily high damage with Viking's Overdrive. After that, it's general inconsistencies with some augments. It is the not known by players what the devs think about the state of the game balance. They can only make inferences based on their experiences, the specific numbers the devs use, the changes made to the equipment and the pattern of changes made. This was ALL that was needed many updates ago. The ball being slow allowed it to deal damage when it eventually pierces someone someone came into its path. Doubling the ball speed did not allow that to happe and players often survived driving through the ball. Each update expecting proper buffs to Ares, we get meaningless range buffs on it when all it needed was to deal more damage or deal that damage more often. now we get piling range buffs, and then for the last one, we get another range buff and the long-awaited buff that it should have gotten weeks ago. We now have something more powerful than it should have been when the simple solution was right there. I guess it was to coincide with more Overdrives becoming powerful at the same time so it's justified. Sizziling Field is understandable. It now has a ricochet that it can use to shoot around corners with its short range and to prevent lost damage from firing at a retreating target. Perhaps Incendiary Railgun and Dragon's Breath as well, but the Vaporiser nerf makes absolutely no sense. It already had a hefty penalty to its projectile speed which that alone reduces its damage output. It doesn't have the huge direct damage that Heavy Plasmagun has yet it now also gets halved critical damage whenever it happes? That feels like they just tried to find an excuse to nerf it because it happened to be an incendiary augment, no matter how good or bad it was compared to fighting the other Twins. A not-so-subtle way to hint that you want Cryo augments bumped up in power, even though they were already strong enough as they were. At least with Wyvern's Breath the critical chance was significantly reduced. Cryotron gets to have Stock Twins' higher critical damage AND gets to have 25m more range. Along with that, you get to reduce the damage players deal towards you. Magnetron was evil, but Cryotron was also overpowered and for some reason is given more power relatively. A completely unustifiable change. It was already one of the weakest Smoky augments if not the weakest. Things that should be consistent or in order are all over the place and we have no way of knowing what they're thinking when making these updates. But at this point, we can most certainly say that the ignorance is on purpose.

EMP and AP Gauss have a -10% sniping reload buff.

Your reload with AP Gauss is 3.6 - 2.7 seconds. I didn't use AP Gauss but EMP can get an unprotected hit in since it takes some time still for the enemy to reactivate boosted armour.

It is statistically bad, and made even worse unnecessarily with the duration nerf from 2 seconds to 1 second. Stock Smoky's unique strength in damage comes from the combination of its normal and critical damage. Adding them together in a chain results in at least a -1 shots to kill a specific enemy. The most basic example being the previous Smoky needing 535, 535, 800, 535 to kill a light hull, while the current Smoky only needs 580, 580, 850 to kill the same light hull. This also extends to medium hulls with 535, 535, 800, 535, 535 being 2,940 damage, but 580, 580, 850, 580, 580 being 3,170. Any augment that reduces critical damage potentially upsets this. Besides the obnoxious EMP, a big reason EMP Smoky never really fell down was because its critical damage penalty was not high enough to deter it from getting this bonus when maxed and utilising EMP's effect. 722 (DA removed) + 1160 + 1160 still gives above 3,000 damage. 680, 1070, 1070, 1070 was not enough to kill a heavy hull after you EMP'd them, but 722, 1160, 1160, 1160 did. Looking at AP Smoky before the nerf, its critical damage reduction was high enough to push it below 3,000 damage after AP'ing a medium hull. Stun Smoky halves both your chance step, meaning considerably fewer critical hits, AND your critical damage. You unnecessarily take longer to kill people for little gain, even fewer gain now that the duration is only 1 second. They tried to breathe some life into it by letting it accumulate crit chance on misses, but that was bugged and never happened. And even then, it was a roundabout way of fixing the solution rather than properly looking at it. You're better off using Stock.