I agree balance discussion. Not bad ideascussion.

This is what is needed for garage augments to equal legendary augments. It's stupid by nature, not by my presentation. This would bring the time between shots for Scout Railgun down to only 1.36 seconds (1.1 +0.26), which would be just over 1/3 of the time for stock (3.9 seconds), at Mk8. So effectively increasing the DPS of Scout to almost 3 times that of stock regular Railgun (without considering the extra +20% to normal damage mentioned), and greatly increasing impact force. Even if we kept the -40% to normal and regular damage that Scout has, that would be far more OP than any current Legendary Railgun augment, and far more OP than Striker's Stunning Missiles. So I think you are making it clear that this is a troll post. As I say, unnecessary. Stunning cuts down the damage output of whoever you're fighting by about 26% (0.4/1.52). 1.52, the reload time for Stunning Missiles, times 0.74% is 1.12 seconds, give or take, with a little added dps for Scout and for Sledgehammer to compensate for the lack of utility from double damage crits and from the stunning, which can interrupt enemy Missile Launcher "Hunter"s, Vulcans, Rails, Shafts, Gausses, and Magnums, along with every overdrive in the game except for Wasp's. I'd say a tiny bit of DPS is pretty fair. As for Round Destabilization versus EMP Rounds - EMP Rounds cuts their damage and armour in half, along with reducing speed. My proposal Round Destabilization has roughly the same effective kill power as EMP Rounds - it doesn't need an extra shot on light hulls, but it falls risk to being repair-kitted on medium and heavy hulls. The two augments, side by side, are on equal footing. The fact that you think this is a troll post shows how ridiculous the idea that legendary augments don't need nerfs is, I think. Quite telling that if you go the other way around, the numbers are hilariously huge.

Actually, it's 1.03 seconds. All of the changes here imply keeping their previous stat changes unless it's mentioned that those are changed specifically. Smoky - Adrenaline is strong, but it is not as strong as EMP Rounds Smoky, which doesn't need to take damage to kill quickly and has much consistently higher power against medium and heavy hulls. Adrenaline Freeze versus status Freezes really feels like you didn't think this through - you can't fully protect yourself from status Freezes, and when you aren't protected versus status freezes, they're much worse to fight than Adrenaline Freezes, because...why? Striker and Vulcan are not worth discussing - both Adrenaline Vulcan and Missile Launcher "Hunter", the best garage augments for the two, are both significantly inferior in practice compared to Stunning Missiles - which offers less DPS than Adrenaline Vulcan with the bonus of splash damage, double damage criticals, and you know, STUN, and it offers the same damage output as Missile Launcher Hunter with stunning added on top. The projectile speed bonus is negligible, given that both fire locked shots, and is actually an advantage with Stunning Missiles since the turn speed is faster relative to the missiles.

"Kindly refrain from provoking other users" It's just a fact, you need some help understanding balance if you think buffing the strongest augments in the game adheres to it.

So you're saying you don't want augments to be balanced.

Well, not just two, there are like four people who genuinely seem to think at least some of the top tier legendary augs don't need a nerf because they don't know how weak most garage augments actually are. So why not just give the weak garage augments ridiculous stats because that's what they need to match legendary augments? If you can't take a terrorist to court, why not blow up his house with a drone strike?

Well, there are other templates you can use, but does that mean you agree that the status rails are busted?

Somehow still needs a buff because it doesn't delete people on touch apparently :kekw:

Let's use Missile Launcher "Hunter" and Stunning Missiles as an example here - if someone takes out 50% Orka and 50% Armadillo, the Missile Launcher "Hunter" player is fully countered, while the Stunning Missiles player still has their stuns. If you add in Stun Immunity, both are now fully countered - except they're still basically on equal footing. Why should Stunning Missiles still be as powerful as Missile Launcher "Hunter" when it requires more pieces of equipment to be fully countered? This is an especially bad problem with Railguns because they have an increased critical rate, so their protection module is already less effective than usual - and then you stack status effects on top and call it balanced? It's even worse with status Freezes because you can only take one status immunity at a time, and they turned Freezing into a potent status on its own.

Since you people don't seem to think nerfing strong augments is a good idea, how about we buff the weakest augments in the game to match the strongest ones instead, hmm? Let's start with augments that used to be absolute powerhouses, Duplet, Rapid-Fire Mode, Scout, and Sledgehammer, compared to their modern overpowered equivalents - Blunderbuss and Stunning Missiles. Let's start with Duplet. 2022 Legendary Duplet: Shot reload -86% Vertical scatter -50% Horizontal scatter -50% Impact force -30% Clip reload -10% This gives Duplet a few advantages and tradeoffs versus Blunderbuss. It has a slightly faster reload and more consistency, at the cost of needing a bit of extra time to do its damage and not being able to ignore protections. I'd say this is pretty fair! Moving on to 2022 Legendary Rapid-Fire Mode: Recharge rate +100% Sniping shot damage -33% This gives Rapid-Fire Mode a few advantages and tradeoffs versus Blunderbuss. It has a more consistency, more damage, and a long range burst damage option at the cost of no multikilling, no ignoring protections, and a longer reload. I'd also say this is pretty fair, would you look at that! Now let's talk about Stunning Missiles for a second. How do we decide the reload of Sledgehammer and Scout? Well, to start, we can look at them in a 1v1 scenario, where with the 0.4 second Stun timer, Sledgehammer needs about 0.4 seconds less to reload than Stunning Missiles does, to put them on fair ground shooting directly at each other, but we can't forget that Sledgehammer doesn't have criticals and it has terrible splash distribution along with a terrible range penalty that I'm going to reduce somewhat, so I think we should put it up to 0.5 seconds less than Stunning Missiles. Scout can stay at 0.4 seconds, since it has a 50% critical rate to compensate, but I think it should have its normal damage put up above 750+ in order to kill enemies as quickly on equal footing with the other two. So, let's start with 2022 Legendary Sledgehammer: Reload -55% Max damage range = 50m This gives Sledgehammer just a little more effective kill power than Stunning Missiles has with more impact force, with the tradeoff being that it has a range limitation, no double damage crits, terrible splash, and no utility from stun. Would you look at that, they're also on pretty equal footing! Now for 2022 Legendary Scout: Normal damage +20% Reload -90% Yes, 90% You read that right. This is what you people want. This gives Scout effectively equal kill power to Stunning Missiles with more impact force and a 50% crit chance, with the tradeoff that it doesn't have double damage crits or utility from stun. Wow - completely ridiculous stat buffs and they're on equal footing. Bonus round - 2022 Round Destabilization! This time let's put it next to EMP Railgun. Critical damage +50% Normal damage +40% This gives Round Destabilization a little bit more raw power than EMP Rounds, with a little bit more raw damage at the cost of status! It mimics the number of hits it takes to kill pretty closely - at least one critical for a full health light hull, at least two criticals for a full health medium hull, and at least two criticals plus a followup shot for a heavy hull. And this puts them on equal footing. +50% and +40% buffs to equal a status effect. I hope you like these changes - why nerf legendary augments when you can just make the garage ones busted too?

You put the quotation around the wrong words. I believe you meant current "balance" trend, because that isn't balance, that's called pay to win. You put the quotation around the wrong words. I believe you meant current "balance" trend, because that isn't balance, that's called pay to win. What, nerfing overpowered augments? That's not something I forsee coming any time soon, I'm post You put the quotation around the wrong words. I believe you meant current "balance" trend, because that isn't balance, that's called pay to win. What, nerfing overpowered augments en masse? That's not something I forsee coming any time soon. I was debating addressing this at all, but that's like saying Striker crits aren't busted because they only happen 10% of the time, on average. Does this mean they're balanced? No. It does not. Not by any means. Also, "balanced augments that are statistically equivalent to stock except on top of people needing an extra module to counter them they need an immunity" moment

See one of my previous posts about continuing an argument when I know I'm right and I know I have the sound argument to follow through with it. I have nothing else to say regarding this - if you're here to pick a fight, try again. Unfortunately, they are not. They are too difficult to counter for being as strong as they are, objectively and they are far from being the weakest status augments. Those two factors make them in need of a large nerf. You simply cannot have something both be hard to counter and be any more powerful than other options, that does not balance it - if something is harder to counter, once it is countered it should be much weaker. Same point as above - status rails are uniquely hard to counter, and they cannot be strong as other augments are when their counters are in play for this reason. As for them being above average - yeah they're above average for legendary augments. They're absurdly busted compared to the majority of garage augments, and still eclipse the strongest garage augments by a small amount thanks to the utility they give you. Now, I do want Large Caliber Rounds and Scout to be buffed, but I'll be putting garage augments into a different post starting from the bottom and working my way up. Also, they're not balanced to be equal to Large Caliber Rounds and Scout - they're balanced to be around their level with an extra status slapped on top. Addressing this point specifically: "Railgun's status augments are currently just about right - and therefore considered on their own, they wouldn't deserve a nerf - unless other status augments also receive a considerable nerf at the same time." Why do you think I'm putting out so many balance proposal posts targeting legendary augments? They're all balanced around one another.

How is this even a question in 2022? Thunder has almost 1.5 times as long a reload as Striker does, and none of the augments help to meaningfully reduce it, they just destroy its damage output. Thunder has terrible splash now, if you didn't know. The average damage is 25%. Missile Launcher "Hunter" solves the last issue entirely because you can spam tracking shots, increase your projectile speed, and reduce your reload all at the same time. Smoky it's pretty close, but I'd say Missile Launcher "Hunter" just barely edges out Adrenaline Smoky, since Smoky needs to take a bit of damage to really get going whereas Missile Launcher "Hunter" is a constant powerhouse.

ah yes the best kind of evidence E V I D E N C E L E S S A N E C D O T E

I think there certainly are stupid/illogical arguments, and in the context of suggesting changes for balance, anything that is vulnerable to being countered by literally two points is not a good argument. Any argument that uses "the augment should x powerful" in the context of an archetype does not work when you are using it in the context of bringing an augment to balance - for example, "AP Freeze should be stronger because it's a legendary augment". Also, I made it clear that you can go ahead and post it if you want, just that it'll get destroyed. Meaningfully and respectfully.

Okay, so status rails - double dependency on crits and their status, bigger nerf. It's the same logic the devs used making the critical changes to begin with, so I don't see an issue with the nerfs proposed here - they fit the balancing scheme that seems to have been used most recently. Let's start with the biggest offenders. EMP Rounds: Critical damage -20% Normal damage -20% Status duration -20% (4 second EMP duration) Very simple changes here. It can no longer break 1.5k+ (twoshotting medium hulls) on criticals and it can no longer break 750+ on normal shots (fourshotting medium hulls) when used in conjunction with Booster, Crisis, and Camper. It also has a tighter window to get a followup shot after it deals EMP. Incendiary Rounds: Critical damage -40% Also simple changes here. Instead of being stock railgun with a ton of extra damage from burning, it is now stock railgun with a small amount of extra damage that it takes additional time to deal and that can be prevented with the use of a repair kit. Before anyone screams this is too far, against a brutus player with DA, the crit STILL deals 2286 damage if all of the burning goes through. Shut your mouths. Now, the second biggest offenders: Stun Rounds: Shot reload -90% Shot warmup penalty removed Normal damage +20% Still a simple change. This is a 1:1 copy of Large Caliber Rounds, except you trade your 20% critical damage buff for Stuns. It's a stun augment, for crying out loud. It stops whoever you crit from playing the game. Practically speaking, it still has a 50% chance to stop overdrives, it still works for stopping Strikers, Vulcans, Gausses, Shafts, Magnums, and Rails. It just doesn't do damage anymore, and it shouldn't with how much utility Stun offers. Super Armor-Piercing Rounds: Reload -15% Shot warmup time 0.77s(-30%) Max critical chance = 100% (consecutive critical chance stays at 0%) Critical damage -50% Normal damage buff removed Impact force -40% Status duration -40% (3 second AP duration) So, if this doesn't already look familiar, this is Electromagnetic Accelerator "Scout" with a couple of interesting tradeoffs - the crits are guaranteed to happen every other hit, the crits don't break 750+, and it has a slightly slower reload. Don't worry, I was a little bit nicer this time, both shots still break 750+ with booster, it's just that it still can't chain two critical hits together. By the way, it can still fit a second shot within its AP duration - I left it a generous 0.02 second window to do so. Now for the least offensive Railgun. Cryo Rounds: Reload -20% Shot warmup time 0.77s(-30%) Critical damage -50% Impact force -40% Target's temperature reduction lowered from -100% to -50% I don't really see a need for this one to get a massive nerf, so this is more of a rework than anything - it's like Super Armor-Piercing Rounds where it's an alteration to Scout with less critical damage, except it has identical reload and critical chance to Scout, with the ability to constantly apply a temperature reduction rather than a massive amount of it once every few hits. Now before anyone complains - consider the following. 1. These changes are meant to bring about balance to the game 1a. Balance means all pieces of equipment are relatively comparable in power to the other pieces of equipment in their category, regardless of how they are acquired. This means that all augments are to be pushed towards a "target power level" which in my eyes is where the strongest garage augments currently sit, which dictates nerfs for most legendary augments and buffs for most garage augments. 2. Status railguns operate on a double dependency, and thus need two times, or close to two times the nerfs to compensate. 2a. A double dependency means that they require an extra piece of equipment to fully counter - status augments are already a doubled dependency relative to regular augments, and Railgun is by default a doubled dependency thanks to its innately high critical chance (although the balance for its garage augments already compensate for its high critical rate, leaving the status augments closer in practice to a double dependency than triple) 3. I do not care about how powerful you think an augment "should be because it's hard to get" I will tear your arguments to shreds using the above two points if you post something similarly stupid.

They could have released it by now. They're holding on to it to drop it with whatever the heck they have planned for contracts. I'm guessing kit prices are going to be much higher than they were in showcase and they're not going to give us back the supplies we lost from containers and dailies, and THAT is why they need the interface to appease people.

The problem is that there is a large dev team, but most of them do not understand how to make changes without screwing up the many, many mechanics that they have introduced. Mechanically speaking, everything was relatively simplistic prior to the introduction overdrives, their conversion to status effects, and the critical system. Prior to that, everything could be tweaked without much worry, except because of the way they went about with their development, by turning overdrives into status effects and reusing their code, there are some sensitive interactions that they didn't plan ahead for. Similarly with the critical system, crit chances for Smoky were screwed up rather badly recently, and the mechanics of supercharge are not fully known yet. There is also the matter of the way they have coded things reusing objects, where tesla balls were using the same "template" so to speak as ares, and thus they checked if they were in proximity and then tried to make each other explode, but they weren't programmed to explode and so just kept on checking against each other, causing mobile players to lag (fixed now). Basically, spaghetti code. Oh right, about the new interface - from what I can tell, it's just going to be a giant reskin for the most part. The REAL update there is going to be whatever they do to the economy with contracts. I think the recent changes might have been prepping the game for those, and they knew players would react negatively, and so planned the interface as a way to compensate all of the people who are easily distracted.

For a tldr: Nerf all the big legendary augments down to the level of the mediocre legendary augments, and then bring garage augments up to the level of the mediocre legendary augments. But then we have geniuses saying that the most oppressive status augments need buffs because they're harder to get. As for AP Freeze being meh - lol no it's still overpowered as hell

Such a change isn't balance. That actually pushes things away from a balanced game, good change ?

Tbh it's still an S+ tier when it comes to group usage because of the annoying double status - the toxic mix user will always provide a good amount of utility to teammates, except because it's impossible to fully protect against, people typically take a protection + immunity set against a different player with a status effect, and open themselves up to being reamed by you.

Yes plz don't use it the ap freeze users need all the help they can get ok ?

Why does this have the "Balance" category stuck on it? This change clearly does not pertain to balancing the game, it's catering to those who abuse the augment and want it stronger. Forum moderators need to do a better job categorizing posts.

I'm hesitant to post this, since Freeze is still in the process of "content generationᵀᴹ", but I'll give it a shot. So, AP Freeze, Jamming Freeze, and now EMP Freeze are three of the four most busted augments in the game with the change to cooling disabling damage enhancers, giving them two strong statuses. So, I have a simple solution - AP and EMP Freeze prevent you from doing damage to enemy tanks as well as preventing your protections from stopping incoming damage, so why not prevent them from doing the same amount of damage as stock and turn them into pure support augments? AP and EMP Freeze: Normal damage reduction increased from -45% and -50% to -60% Critical damage reduction increased from -45% to -60% for AP Freeze and introduced at -60% for EMP Freeze Status time = 1 second Freezing rate -50% for EMP Freeze Essentially - they'll still be crippling to whoever they're fighting, but they will not be able to finish them off themselves, and their statuses will only apply when they are still attacking the enemy tank. (Whoever thought that EMP needed a longer duration than AP because it has a penalty if you let it wear off... it's a melee turret. You should get punished if you waste ammo, and other EMP augments get punished harder for doing so compared to their AP counterparts... What kind of logic was that?) Now, Jamming Freeze is a different story. The problem is that it trades away being able to disable drones for… nothing. I think it should have a trade-off – the best case scenario is that it disables a Defender player, shutting off both their boosted damage and taking away their extra armour from their drone, and the worst case scenario is that it does almost nothing, against a Brutus or droneless player. To balance this: Normal damage reduction added, -20% Critical damage reduction added, -20% At -20% normal and critical damage, it will remain advantaged versus opponents with a supply boosting drone, but will be generally slightly weakened in comparison to stock freeze when fighting all the other types of drones in exchange for the utility of blocking overdrives. Thoughts? Note that this post was written prior to the announcement of the "EMP no longer resets repairs and mines" update, patch #677. Following that patch, the reasoning for EMP Freeze having a 3 second duration has become even more unjustified - the point about melee turrets being capable of stopping the over time healing is no longer relevant because the enemy no longer even gets their repair kit. In addition to the EMP Freeze changes above, I would like to append the following: Freezing removed for EMP Freeze Come on. AP and Freezing in conjunction are equal to EMP in power now, at least in this case. The AP+Freezing combo gets to disable protection modules, the EMP Freeze gets to prevent repair kits happening at all. There's no justifiable reason for EMP Freeze to still have the slowdown benefits from from cooling ON TOP OF THE EMP. There is no more risk of the enemy getting away and using a repair kit - not that there ever was, with the nonsensical three second duration.

I would like to note that similar nerfs would have destroyed any other combo, making it completely unplayable and/or a joke. A good example would be the changes to Duplet and Rapid Fire Mode, former powerhouses, and immediately after their nerfs they were completely unplayable - and stay so to this day. Tesla and Paladin were hit much harder and they just went from being the most broken combo by an obscenely large margin to being the most broken combo by a large margin. Comical.