@AkameYour black friday bundles are here! Good deals to be had!

Yeah I think it's going to be a powerhouse, it looks like it's going to easily be equal to AP, maybe even EMP Smoky once you factor in that it suffers much less versus people with the respective immunity or against protections. Absolutely nuts.

I think with all the extra buffs other turrets are getting (Striker and Vulcan directly with this new autoaim change, Smoky indirectly with Cryo Rounds being accessible and now extremely strong), Thunder is falling further and further behind the other mid-range turrets and the buff it needs is getting more and more extreme. I'd set minimum critical chance to -200%, step chance to 100%, and max chance to 100% now, so that it crits every three hits, or give it a flat 40% crit rate, and then adjust the rest of its parameters from there - the template desperately needs completing right now.

Goddamnit, why'd you jinx it? The new freezing changes... I have no clue where Cryo Smoky is going to fall now ?.

Tanki X vibes ?

Huh, really? I've had a lot of luck with HPAS. The thing about Supercumulative is that I'm really not sure of its value vs Armadillos versus Adrenaline and in my experience, it's fallen flat in other scenarios, so again, I think I'll cede to you on that one, since you do seem to be quite certain about how you fight critical protection. What I meant by putting Adrenaline too low is that I would add another slot above where it sits in most of your chart though, so that there's another "tier" above where it sits. As for the Viking and Thunder thing - it's ironically mostly Striker/Hornet with RRE, Smoky/Viking with Rubberized and Explosive Rounds, Smoky/Crusader with Adrenaline and HPAS, and then for Thunder either Crusader or Dictator, since Thunder with Viking OD feels awful nowadays. (Fun thing about HPAS - it's nearly identical to Subcaliber Rounds Thunder. Both sit in the 750+ damage barrier, and reload at almost the exact same rate, and their average crit chance is pretty close too, after the recent Thunder change. The only difference is that Subcaliber Rounds Thunder has faster projectiles and more impact force.) The main thing to get with Adrenaline Smoky is 900 damage criticals with 600 damage normal shots, so you need to be at about 65% health, since that gets you to 1500 damage with one normal + one hit. 1000 damage at once helps but I find that because of the lower health requirement and because you don't really get consistent crits anyways, it isn't one of the big draws of Adrenaline Smoky.

Are you aware that PirateSpider and DieselPlatinum are the same user? Even if you're placing them together, I still think you're placing Supercumulative too highly and Adrenaline/HPAS too low, there should be a pretty significant gap between them imo. Maybe your experience is different from mine with the number of Armadillos and Paladins you face and that's why you have it so high, since matchmaking treats us all differently, but with my playstyle, I find that it's a direct downgrade from Stock.

You rank Supercumulative Rounds far too highly and Adrenaline/HPAS too low. The benefit of the recent Smoky buff is that your normal and critical hits work in tandem to do good damage. Supercumulative throws that all away for mildly stronger crits that don't interact well with your normal shots, and acts as a direct downgrade to Smoky, if anything, because of how rare your criticals become. Adrenaline, on the other hand, doesn't kill your crit rate and gives you the same interactions out of your shots, such as normal + critical = 1.5k+ damage, which is the main draw of any damage boosting augment for Smoky. As for High-Precision Aiming System, the draw is that it now does 750+ damage on normal shots, and it essentially replaced the role that Scout once had, of being a splashless Thunder that deals critical damage more often. Generally I'd say Adrenaline > HPAS/Incendiary > Cryo > Stock > Supercumulative > Assault Rounds > Autocannon, with a couple changes for Incendiary being on par with Adrenaline in the case of protections, and down to Cryo in the case of Heat Immunity and down to Supercumulative in the case of Heat Immunity. Just because on paper Supercumulative hits the hardest at once doesn't mean it's any good in an actual fight - I've done quite a few battles with Smoky, and I can't say that this is anything other than a worse version of Adrenaline or even Stock,

Depends on whether or not they're getting paid, most of them who are getting paid probably support the greedy decisions... ...because it just means a bigger paycheck for them.

Isida doesn't need this change though, it'll just have isidas making their allies invincible. Also, this makes stock isida override the current identity of one of its augments - one that there is currently also no reason to change. That identity cannot stay without either overtuning the augment to a ridiculous degree, i.e. changing the augment to have such a high heal/second so that it makes allies invincible, or adding new features to it, which would require coding changes. The former is clearly a huge balance issue, and the latter is something that inherently makes no sense - there's no reason for a coding rework of a turret or augment that's just fine as it is.

I don't really know what I have to justify - if you'd like to specify, be my guest. Also, I don't see how my argument is no longer valid - nothing behind it changed. You didn't play Thunder at high ranks properly so you had an uninformed opinion on how good it actually was up there fighting proper legends. That has not changed, and it cannot change now, as that previous thunder that relied on regular splash distribution rather than critical splash is gone and you cannot get more experience with it.

They didn't like people who were camping with shaft, so they fixed it by removing shaft's ability to do anything ?

I don't like getting wrecked, but I'm not a coward - I play battles at legend rank against other legends with Thunder, you see, under the majority of conditions rather than just optimal ones. ?

Then I'd better not see you playing around Thunder critical splash and using those tactics if it gets a proper critical system in the future ?

Nerf, but there are the seeds for a rework in here. Look at that critical splash radius and the increased crit rate - it's heading somewhere (hopefully.)

I thought you were a fan of my proposal for critical splash? This is just the first part of its implementation. I'm cautiously optimistic that this is just one part of a series of changes to rework Thunder. Besides, this does, or at least could wind up giving Thunder an actually interesting role where it has to count hits to get criticals, which could be very interesting with the huge new critical splash radius. I find that a lot more interesting than the brainless shot spamming that it was from 2019 up to this nerf that Striker has now taken the mantle of with all the buffs to it. I have high hopes for this turret - not a whole lot of faith in a successful rework, but I'm being optimistic about it - Rail had a relatively successful rework, same with Freeze, as overpowered as they were at some times. They gave the turrets a distinct identity with criticals, with Rail being on-paper weak but having criticals to ignore the walls of protection it was facing, and with Freeze doing potentially more damage than Firebird via criticals after cooling was reworked. I'm hoping a similar thing will happen to Thunder, where it will have critical splash to do large unavoidable amounts of damage at once, more than Striker or even Gauss, with careful setup.

Alright, I was probably getting a little sassy there, I'll tone it down.

Too easy = too many people do well with it = gets nerfed = becomes weak. Back to mudslinging. Goodbye.

I've been able to aim just fine on the move, it takes a LOT of getting used to though. Autocannon might be your problem - it was nerfed into the garbage bin, then it got put in a trash compactor, then they lit it on fire. I mostly use High Precision Aiming System and Explosive Rounds. I'd suggest out of the crystal augments High Precision Aiming System, Adrenaline, and Cryo Rounds.

When will you read my posts? Thunder was too weak, and it got that way because it was too easy. "Thunder having the easiest to use splash isn't enough." "Thunder having the easiest to use splash was part of the problem with the balance before." I don't see the issue - Thunder was weak to compensate for being ridiculously easy to use. Is this your response to any kind of logic disputing whatever is going on inside your head? If you take offense to people telling you to play Thunder in proper conditions and not just only finding perfect battles for it before you talk about it in said proper conditions, that's not their problem. It's like telling someone to read a book so they can write an actually good essay on it. I said it three times hoping that you'd have read it. I'm not sure if you even did, judging the other contents of your post. No clue what you mean by that last bit about buddy buddy boyfriends, but I don't have anything more to say to you. I don't think it's worth trying to convince someone who is so deep in denial of what's actually going on in the game. Also, what happened to all your previous arguments? Dropping them in favour of insulting me is...not exactly helpful to convincing me.

That was the problem with the previous Thunder - the splash distribution was too consistently available and too strong, so people could just brainlessly spam shots with it and do damage, which was also part of how the protections got so prevalent. Now, you will hopefully only be able to do that on certain shots, making it less of a zombie turret (assuming they go all in with this template and don't just give it more critical rate). Criticals ARE the splash now - if you don't like that, then go play Striker. You can deny it all you want, but having critical splash replace its previous splash doesn't mean splash is gone. The problem is that you say that you have an informed opinion. You do not. I don't see any hypocrisy here other than you calling us toxic after being the first one to stoop down to mudslinging. If you'd like to call us telling you to get more experience with Thunder played where we're playing it as an insult, I think you should reconsider what you're doing on the forums. I'm going to stop you right here and say that arguing "I didn't pay for x, why'd they make y into x" doesn't go very far, especially when said aspect of turret is still intact. You can be indignant at the nerf that's happened to Thunder, but that argument for "splash is dead i didn't pay for this" when it's still intact in the form of criticals (third time saying this in this post btw) is ridiculous. As a final note, I'm going to tell you that you need to play Thunder against the majority of scenarios in MM to get a real view of it and not just in the most ideal of conditions. If I wandered into the Shaft thread and said it was fine because I only played it on Highways, Scope, and Brest, nobody would take me seriously.

Really? I got good at aiming with Smoky and I can pretty consistently do very well with it now, with pretty much any of the augments.

They're pushing it in the direction of splash - just that it's using criticals now, and I've seen decent results out of lucky matches with shooting for criticals to abuse the splash. Go read the patch notes properly. We aren't toxic - we don't insult people ?, we argue properly, and we don't hate your guts, we just don't think you should talk about a turret's balance in set conditions whilst refusing to actually play the turret in those set conditions. Are you leaving, or are you, PirateSpider, and Crossbone leaving? ?

This template is so, so close to being good. During lucky games if I play thoughtfully, I can ALMOST do as well as I would be able to playing brainlessly with Striker. All it needs is a way to consistently get crits - give it Sorted Rounds' ability to always crit after the fourth shot, and it will be perfect - weak in a straight fight, amazing for those who have mastered splash and count their crits. I suggest giving Subcaliber Rounds a crit always after three shots though, since it doesn't have the critical splash that this new template is so dependent on.

You know what? This new Thunder template can work, but we need a way to reliably control when we crit. The easiest way to do this would be literally just ripping off how Sorted Rounds Smoky works, I think one crit every four hits should work fine for Thunder too - one crit every three hits for Subcaliber Rounds, as it doesn't have Splash. I hope to god Thunder doesn't get stuck with an incomplete template for the holidays while development is stopped and that it gets something by Christmas/New Years.