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.

It was being completely overshadowed by Magnetron. Cryotron and Magnetron both needed a nerf. Cryotron would have been good enough with the base nerfs to Stock applied to it, but Magnetron was evil, brainless and needed toning down in many areas. It appears they would like Cryo augments to take a step up in power compared to AP and EMP augments. At the end of the day, the current Cryotron is basically Stock Twins with 25m more range and freezing on critical hits. That alone sets it VERY far away from Stock in terms of power.

The icon is different albeit subtle, like the difference between Round Destabilisation and Destabilised Plasma. Could have probably done with another name, I agree. Yeah it really does feel lazy after a while. Some of them do look nice when you look at them by themselves the icons should at least be bigger in the battle interface so players can see the differences...assuming they memorised all of the augments' icons and what they do.

Light Capacitors and AP Shaft exist. Unfortunately, they refuse to properly buff Light Capacitors to fit the current Stock template despite the fact that Light Capacitors was the original quickscope-oriented Shaft, and AP Shaft got a significant nerf to its AP duration. RFM simply doesn't fit the direction they wanted to take Shaft but it is shameful that it's been ignored. The changes to Heavy Capacitors was on purpose because it was to discourage a particular playstyle and encourage another, but RFM was just ignored entirely and only indirectly being supplemented by buffs to Stock's arcade damage.

Short answer: Skins do not innately negatively affect the gameplay/economy. Everything else you stated affects it and relevant changes in the game balance, reward distributions etc. would be needed.

I initially didn't make this topic because Crisis is not readily available to use for the majority of the playerbase and the risks associated with pulling off some of the interaction changes, like the interactions when using Viking's Overdrive. You can only be in one supply mode at a time rather than having your boosted damage and armour at the same time with Booster. Additionally, some changes that Crisis has, Booster also has. Recent damage changes have shown that the Crisis drone was taken into consideration when balancing, so while you may not have the Crisis drone yourself, with this you may see the damage they can potentially do against you with certain turrets and/or augments. This will extend to the Camper drone for as long as it keeps its current damage boost. Some interaction changes may seem weird compared to the Booster thread because naturally, Crisis pairs well with a turret/augment that has high burst damage. Along with the Booster thread, these interactions changes occur under the assumption that turrets and hulls are Mk7+, with enemy hulls having a fully upgraded Brutus drone if DA need be applied.

No. Hyperion becomes available in containers when you unlock it in the garage at Generalissimo. Ah yes, I forgot to mention that. Thanks.

Its reload has been 1.2 seconds for almost 5 months now. You'll be able to get one shot off of them while they don't have Boosted Armour enabled, unless you have really bad ping. Anyway, I humbly ask you to adapt. It is about time EMP Smoky be killed and you realise there are other augments to use on Smoky. Cryo Rounds exists for crying out loud. Stop relying on an augment that cuts your enemy's power and life in half and actually play the game.

It's a jack of all trades because it forcefully has everything in some way. Infinite BA, BD and SB uptime, fast repair kits, fast mines. You can lay a mine every 10 seconds on defense with constant firepower, armour, speed and sustainability to match the pace. For offense, you will always have your speed and armour up with relatively fast repair kits along the way for base raids. For one-way base raids like Rugby and Assault, Trickster or Defender would get the job done more reliably. CTF and SGE require longevity between journeys for efficiency. Look at it from Assault's perspective. To get the most value out of Assault, you want a mid-long range turret and probably a medium or heavy hull. Because you do not have faster repair kits or mines. The only longevity you have there is for the durations of BA, BD and SB, and even that is choppy because Assault only reduces currently active cooldowns at the momet of activation. Your BA, BD and SB are activated at different times because it still has cooldowns between the supplies. You play supportive fire, helping out your attacking allies or weakening the enemy from a distance, all while obtaining kills to reduce to activate your drone to reduce your cooldowns. Trying to engage in melee skirmashes can backfire because of the choppy activation sequences stated prior. Hyperion does not need to worry about that. It entirely removes all cooldowns between BA, BD and SB. They all run out and pretty much the same time and you put them back on at the same time. An Assault that's running away and runs out of all supplies that was given to them by a Dictator can use BA + BD or SB + BD. The former leaving you slower and more susceptible to fire on your journey back to your base. The latter leaving you vulnerable to burst/sudden damage for 5 seconds at least. Hyperion has all of those covered. You have both armour to withstand the damage and speed to shorten your journey back, as well as fast repair kits. Hyperion is much less limited in what it can and can't do to be efficient. And it's up to you which way you want to use the drone. You'll likely use more repair kits for supportive play (continuous healing to keep your bulwark presence there on that part of the map) than one-way raids.

It is one of the only drones worth spending that fortune on. What makes a top drone for general gameplay is longevity. Longevity comes from manipulating supply cooldowns and potency of important supplies. Booster, Defender, Trickster and Crisis, the other drones encompassing the top 5, boost a particular supply's potency and its cooldowns at a time. A Booster, in addition to having higher damage output, will have that damage output available to them for the entire game with no need to worry about downtime on Boosted Damage. Same with Defender for Boosted Armour and Trickster for Speed Boost. Hyperion's gimmick is that it removes downtime completely from the three important supplies. There is never a time where you're vulnerable to burst damage or high sudden damage. There is never a time where your damage output is low. There is never a time where you are slow. You will ALWAYS be on equal footing or have an advantage against any enemy at any moment. There is never a time where you are at a disadvantage. In addition to that, Hyperion significantly increases the cooldown of mines and repair kits. As if your longevity from always being powered up wasn't enough, you can extend it further with a fast, continuous flow of repair kits. You can leave many more mines than you would with Brutus that can catch enemies off guard, or may even save your team from that supply-less Wasp that somehow made it into the base uncontensted and went away with your team's flag. You get infinite supply uptime, and significantly shorter repair kit and mine cooldowns. All of this absolute greatness comes at a cost, though... It would be advised to have a sizeable stash of supplies if you planned to use this as your main drone for the forseeable future. If you really want to stay alive for long, you will have to use the repair kits regularly. If you are interested in the Hyperion drone but you are on a budget in terms of supply stash, then the Assault drone is an alternative. Putting it frankly, the Assault drone is a weaker Hyperion. Hyperion's power is (unfortunately) justified by its supply consumption rate, and Assault (oh, so very unfortunately) has the same upgrade cost as Hyperion. If you have the crystals to instantly upgrade Assault, you probably have enough supplies to use Hyperion instead (wow, such diversity of choice).

At the moment, it is Maximum damage range: 1m Minimum damage range: 20m Weak damage: 5%. It drops linearly from 100% to 5% damage across 19 metres. After the update, it will be : Maximum damage range: 13m Average damage range: 15m Minimum damage range: 20m Weak damage: 10% It drops linearly from 100% damage to 10% damage between 13m and 15m, and between 15m and 20m, it will deal 10% damage. It's another damage distribution being pushed towards being fixed across a radius. Thunder has 60% splash damage across most of the radius, and now Gauss' salvo and arcade splash damage as well as Wasp's damage is following suit.

You use the other augments that exist for it? ?

Gauss once again becomes obnoxious against light hulls when used with Crisis.

And it would still be overpriced as hell, just like all of the drones besides the top 5. Good on you for pointing out flaws, though.

There's also the fact that there is less need to turn turrets if you have consistent burst damage at your disposal. So many things are turning into burst damage options. The prime augment for these kind of players was Plasma Torch, and while it had sickeningly high burst damage, it was limited in its long reload. Well now, it has infinite ammo, and now, Beserk has been turned into another burst damage augment, and now, Helios has arrived, as if its purpose was not blatant enough. Firebird's gimmick couldn't keep up with Isida's increased DPS. Freeze's forced high critical damage with the ability to cancel damage enhancers and Tesla's existence, so they changed it into a burst damage turret. Smoky gets a considerably faster firing rate. Striker still has its easy to use augments with high critical damage and Stun Striker turning into an MLH clone. EMP and AP augments being made more common every day and new ones being made. Who knows what's going to get changed into burst damage next. Probably Isida with the way they unnecessarily halved its maximum critical chance from 12% to 7%.