Let's Discuss Smoky!

[2shots2kills 2,367]

12 hours ago, wolverine848 said:

Back to smoky... played it some more.  It's almost like there was a secret nerf to it's aiming.  It absolutely stinks when you are on the move.  The number of misses is more than double compared to when it was insta-hit.  It's terrible, even with the modest buff to damage.

That, and with hovering hulls that strafe around is a real headache trying to hit anything. And when your aim is good, the shots go UNDER the bloody hovercrafts. (it happens all the time)

[Abellia 504]

@wolverine848 

Yeah, Smoky aiming is really inconsistent - I think the delay on the html5 highlighting might not just be visual, it could be something with vertical autoaim messing up and not connecting to targets properly thanks to a ridiculously thin line of sight.

I'd disagree with Smoky being terrible after the buff though. On paper, almost every Smoky augment (exceptions are Assault, Supercumulative, and Paralyzing Rounds) now shreds through tanks at a similar pace to Striker. Hell, I've been able to make Explosive Rounds work of all things - and I know firsthand just how terrible it was prior to this buff, but it was significant enough to let me make use of the splash to land multikills. And don't get me started on EMP Rounds - it could actually somehow rival pre-nerf AP Rail, (on paper at least)...

I don't disagree that an aiming change would be nice though, the highlight timing being off of when I know is when I've aimed correctly throws me off if my aim gets knocked to the side (which happens a lot with low ping, apparently).

[wolverine848 13,097]

12 minutes ago, Abellia said:

@wolverine848 

Yeah, Smoky aiming is really inconsistent - I think the delay on the html5 highlighting might not just be visual, it could be something with vertical autoaim messing up and not connecting to targets properly thanks to a ridiculously thin line of sight.

I'd disagree with Smoky being terrible after the buff though. On paper, almost every Smoky augment (exceptions are Assault, Supercumulative, and Paralyzing Rounds) now shreds through tanks at a similar pace to Striker. Hell, I've been able to make Explosive Rounds work of all things - and I know firsthand just how terrible it was prior to this buff, but it was significant enough to let me make use of the splash to land multikills. And don't get me started on EMP Rounds - it could actually somehow rival pre-nerf AP Rail, (on paper at least)...

I don't disagree that an aiming change would be nice though, the highlight timing being off of when I know is when I've aimed correctly throws me off if my aim gets knocked to the side (which happens a lot with low ping, apparently).

It's the aiming that causes me to rate it as terrible.  Moving-and-shooting throws the aim off by a ridiculous amount.  The misses more than offset the damage duff.  I don't have this issue with other turrets. Heck - I think I hit at higher % with Striker than I do smoky.  That's just wrong.

[Abellia 504]

@wolverine848 Yeah, I'm running some tests with Smoky - I genuinely think that the moving and shooting problem is caused by Smoky's vertical autoaim either straightup being off, or not adjusting fast enough to the change in angle of your hull when you're in motion/changing directions. As for the higher hit rate with Striker thing, I kind of have to disagree out of obligation as an RRE player :P

[wolverine848 13,097]

13 minutes ago, Abellia said:

@wolverine848 Yeah, I'm running some tests with Smoky - I genuinely think that the moving and shooting problem is caused by Smoky's vertical autoaim either straightup being off, or not adjusting fast enough to the change in angle of your hull when you're in motion/changing directions. As for the higher hit rate with Striker thing, I kind of have to disagree out of obligation as an RRE player :P

It's like a WWII tank without gyroscope that needs to come to a stop before firing to ensure decent accuracy.

[2shots2kills 2,367]

4 hours ago, Abellia said:

I genuinely think that the moving and shooting problem is caused by Smoky's vertical autoaim either straightup being off, or not adjusting fast enough to the change in angle of your hull when you're in motion/changing directions. 

Either that, or as I mentioned before, it could be caused by the "new" ricocheting ability of the shells. It's like the game prioritizes the ground/walls instead of the enemy tank, so the shell can bounce, but by doing that, it misses. 

You can do a very simple test. When there is an opponent that is sitting lower than you, start rocking your hull back and forth and shoot. You will see that instead of hitting the tank, the shell will bounce on the ground, ricocheting up in the air. I do that all the time with Thunder, Railgun etc, and I always hit the target, but with Smoky is almost impossible. 

Edited October 3, 2021 by 2shots2kills

[Abellia 504]

4 hours ago, 2shots2kills said:

Either that, or as I mentioned before, it could be caused by the "new" ricocheting ability of the shells. It's like the game prioritizes the ground/walls instead of the enemy tank, so the shell can bounce, but by doing that, it misses. 

You can do a very simple test. When there is an opponent that is sitting lower than you, start rocking your hull back and forth and shoot. You will see that instead of hitting the tank, the shell will bounce on the ground, ricocheting up in the air. I do that all the time with Thunder, Railgun etc, and I always hit the target, but with Smoky is almost impossible. 

Yeah, I just tested and that's definitely something to do with vertical autoaim - it doesn't adjust fast enough and shoots where your turret is pointing instead of snapping to enemies. Weird...

[Spy 14,694]

I would highly recommend everyone to use Smoky. It's really good, especially with status effects augments.

[Spy 14,694]

6 minutes ago, At_Shin said:

Yeah, Smokey's Exploding rounds are good for CP. It can be better than Thunder if the enemy is using modules against thunder.

Rubber rounds is good for places with buildings and flat, vertical surfaces. You can destroy enemies not in your line of sight but hidden behind a cover.

EMP Smokey is really powerful now.

Stun Smokey is good with supercharge effect.

Supercumulative rounds and Auto-cannon are good with Supercharge effect. Use them with either Hornet or Dictator.

Sorted Ammunition augment is also good overall.

 

My favorite augment for Smoky is AP.

[Marekos1111 3,091]

3 hours ago, At_Shin said:

Yeah, Smokey's Exploding rounds are good for CP. It can be better than Thunder if the enemy is using modules against thunder.

Rubber rounds is good for places with buildings and flat, vertical surfaces. You can destroy enemies not in your line of sight but hidden behind a cover.

EMP Smokey is really powerful now.

Stun Smokey is good with supercharge effect.

Supercumulative rounds and Auto-cannon are good with Supercharge effect. Use them with either Hornet or Dictator.

Sorted Ammunition augment is also good overall.

 

My favorite augments for Smoky are EMP and AP. 

[Tidebreaker 1,669]

Unpopular opinion - I actually really really like Assault Rounds. The impact force is crazy good, the bullet velocity is phenomenal, and not having crits means I don't have to worry about when they will happen, or if Armadillo or Paladin will nuke my crit damage.

[jujo 15]

Autocannon with Hornet´s overdrive is really OP, best combo with smoky for me

[TheCongoSpider 8,943]

1 hour ago, jujo said:

Autocannon with Hornet´s overdrive is really OP, best combo with smoky for me

Just hope it stays so after the nerf. 

[Namir 340]

2 minutes ago, TheCongoSpider said:

Just hope it stays so after the nerf. 

yeah i agree

[Frylock 1,617]

On 10/20/2021 at 8:26 AM, Tidebreaker said:

Unpopular opinion - I actually really really like Assault Rounds. The impact force is crazy good, the bullet velocity is phenomenal, and not having crits means I don't have to worry about when they will happen, or if Armadillo or Paladin will nuke my crit damage.

*Puts on dolphin module with heavy weight augment on* XD

[Tanker-Arthur 2,971]

Just now, MysticBlood said:

*Puts on dolphin module with heavy weight augment on* XD

*Proceeds to die from one of the other 14 turrets with a status effect* XD

[stat.padder 225]

 

Why is autocannon completely unbalanced (extremely weak) and definitely not worth 245 000  crystals?

I have analysis which explains why it is so bad. 4 important points are inside >>NOTE<<

Autocannon has high rate of fire so it makes sense to find what is its average damage per second(DPS) so it can be compared to a weapon that is similar, e.g. Vulcan which is also same class of turret – medium range.

DPS is pretty hard to find, because it fluctuates constantly. It requires knowing probability and I have some knowledge in that area, but even that might not be enough. 

n=number of shots fired (3rd shot is the first one that has positive crit.chance(25%))
Probability for the 3rd shot NOT to be critical shot= (3/4)^(3-2)*100%=75% 

Next…-||-… NOT 4th shot=(3/4)^(4-2)*100%=56.25%

…NOT 5th=(3/4)^(5-2)*100%=42.19%

…not 6th=31.64%; not 7th=23.73%,; not 8th=17.80%; not 9th=13.35%; not 10th=10.01%…

>>NOTE1:10% that there will be NO criticals in TEN shots which means there is decent chance that player will be stuck dealing only 116 DPS(basically NOTHING) for first 4.5 sec! Exactly this happened a lot to me causing almost certain death and beeing increadibly frustrating<<

Percentages above can be imagined as different occasion(events). E.g. In 30 out 40 events 3rd shot is not crtical or in other words 10 ARE critical. 4th shot critical does not happen in 22 out of 40, but since 10 events already had critical in 3rd shot, it means 4th is critical in 18-10=8 events. 5th is in  23-10-8=5; 6th is 27-10-8-5=4 ; 7th(31-10-8-5-4=4);8th(33-10-8-5-4-4=2);9th(2);10th(1),11th(1);12th(0.75) and last 40th event can have critical in shot number 13th(0.56)or 14th(0.42):in theory in can go even further. 

average number shots at which critical occurs=sum of all (n scenarios(e.g.10) * n when critical occured(e.g. 3))/40=…= 216.16/40=5.404=5.4

>>NOTE2:{1 critical and 4.4 regular shots or e.g.5 criticals and 22 regular in overall 27 shots}Average DPS is (4.4*58+1*850)/(5.4*0.5)=1105.2/2.7=409.3<<
Before the update it had 551.1, so it got 26% nerf<<

>>NOTE3:Autocannon before that one recent smoky buff was balanced with 513 DPS, and was rarely used, until the unecessary buff where little increase in its usage was seen, but even then was far inferior to Vulcan.<<

Now stock vulcan has almost 2x DPS than autocannon, which gets even worse comparing it to adrenaline vulcan, which on average gets more 10% of its damage boost benefit making it possibly even 2.2x stronger. Argument can be made that this vulcan needs heat immunity, so I will add vulcan augment that can be used without it if player is good. Shooting speed regulator, the least popular one, has even 696 DPS. 

Less important.Also comparing autocannon to other similar turrets(augments), it still obvious that it is far inferior. Plasma accelerators for twins have 661 DPS + splash dmg, helpful impact force and on phone it feels less “buggy” than autocannon and while it does not have criticals all the time it can still sort of “ignore” module, overall much better so no wonder it is one of the most used twins augments, also it is my second favourite after adrenaline.

>>NOTE4:Other smoky augment even surpass the DPS of autocannon, e.g.supercumulative rounds(485.2 DPS), incendiary rounds(679.1 DPS-no boosted armor,551.5 DPS-boosted armor,455.9 DPS-added heat resistance,424 DPS-added heat immunity). Other advantages are player can shoot and hide with these and initial dmg is way higher-that is why even stock smoky can do more dmg against player with module than autocannon user in first 4.2 seconds of interaction(4 shots), which is very IRONIC since autocannon’s main purpose is dealing dmg with criticals in order to avoid module.<<

As someone who bought this augment it feels like I was scammed, because this is NOT worth 245k crystals. I did not buy this with intention to use it for 3 months and then to be forced to ignore it. My 2 accounts overall have all smoky alternations, except for adrenaline, ap, sorted ammunition and stun so I had ability to compare. Even cheap alt like HPAS has more purpose, power and is comfortable to use.

 

Edited November 28, 2021 by stat.padder
Problems with font and colour. Also it is 5 crits and 22 regular, not 5 crits and 17 regular.

[PirateSpider 1,489]

Bought MK7 smoky on my marshal account since it already has the rubberized rounds for it. And since the missions I got today didn't require me to put a whole lot of effort, I decided to try out the augment.

 

So I played with it for 2 battles, since my missions were finished by then. I must admit, the augment actually made smoky really fun to use, and I did pretty well with it.

[Abellia 504]

1 hour ago, PirateSpider said:

Bought MK7 smoky on my marshal account since it already has the rubberized rounds for it. And since the missions I got today didn't require me to put a whole lot of effort, I decided to try out the augment.

 

So I played with it for 2 battles, since my missions were finished by then. I must admit, the augment actually made smoky really fun to use, and I did pretty well with it.

Yeah Smoky after its buff is really good. After I got used to aiming with it, I haven't really had any problems with the turret. I like that they didn't just buff interactions for one type of shot and buffed the interactions for the shots combined instead (i.e. it takes two normals + one crit to kill a light hull on equal footing). Explosive Rounds finally has enough damage to actually sometimes use the splash, Rubberized Rounds with good aim can disorient and kill campers before they realise what's happened, and Sorted Rounds with the new crit interactions lets you melt people if you have the right roll lined up.

Great turret.

[stat.padder 225]

https://prnt.sc/20xwxf8

Image (screenshot) contains ranking of smoky garage augments. 

*30.11.2021. DISCLAIMER: this is oversimplified ranking. It is based on predicting the outcome with math and experience in battles with neutral drone Brutus. Different conclusions can be made depending on drone or hull(OD) someone uses. E.g. adrenaline is a lot better (1st in all) with booster.

 

Columns show what opponent have equipped, rows show ranking based on performance against protection module or tank's augment. Performance is relative (!!!) to other augments. It is based on in-game experience, which follows closely theory (calculated DPS, projectile speed, critical chance, other mechanics). Theory is mostly covered in my analysis of smoky autocannon and can be applied on all augments from screenshot.

Dark green = excellent, green = very good, yellow = good, orange = neither good nor bad, red = bad, dark red = really bad

If colours overlap, that means there is such a small difference that augments can be ranked either way.

White line = performance of smoky with standard settings. It is close to cryo rounds usually.

 

If there is problem with image, I would ask mods to fix it or alternative option could be offered.

Edited December 1, 2021 by stat.padder
Added (!!!)=Important: NOT apsolute, it is relative to each other

[Abellia 504]

24 minutes ago, stat.padder said:

https://prnt.sc/20xwxf8

Image (screenshot) contains ranking of smoky garage augments.

 

Columns show what opponent have equipped, rows show ranking based on performance against protection module or tank's augment. Performance is relative to other augments. It is based on in-game experience, which follows closely theory (calculated DPS, projectile speed, critical chance, other mechanics). Theory is mostly covered in my analysis of smoky autocannon and can be applied on all augments from screenshot.

Dark green = excellent, green = very good, yellow = good, orange = neither good nor bad, red = bad, dark red = really bad

If colours overlap, that means there is such a small difference that augments can be ranked either way.

White line = performance of smoky with standard settings. It is close to cryo rounds usually.

 

If there is problem with image, I would ask mods to fix it or alternative option could be offered.

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,

[stat.padder 225]

 

39 minutes ago, Abellia said:

You rank Supercumulative Rounds far too highly and Adrenaline/HPAS too low. The benefit of the recent ...

...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,

???

Oh, it's you, the one that bashed diesel platinum for no reason.

First of all, do you have problems with sight or you can't read?

Same colour means pretty much same performance. The only column where I gave supercummulative shots clear advantage is against armadillo, which is absolutely true both "on paper" and in battle. Supercummulative rounds were sometimes even necessary for me when I face paladins which FYI is currently almost EVERY round.

 

I have done more than 150 hours with smoky, have 2.96 k/d and it's on rise + plus 30 hours on my main account. So as for experience there is no comparison. Edit (I should add): 3.6 million exp with smoky.

 

Incendiary rounds are not that good since in more than 50% of the battles opponents equipped heat res./immunity which renders it useless almost.

 

Currently my most used augment is adrenaline, more than 60% of the time then it's 30% for supercummulative (I have started to see even multiple armadillos per battle + insane number of paladins).9% incendiary and 1% cryo, HPAS... And 0% autocannon.

Edited November 28, 2021 by stat.padder

[wolverine848 13,097]

17 minutes ago, stat.padder said:

I have done more than 150 hours with smoky, have 2.96 k/d and it's on rise + plus 30 hours on my main account. So as for experience there is no comparison. Edit (I should add): 3.6 million exp with smoky.

KD is irrelevant.  Anyone can have a good KD if they just camp and never put themselves in danger.  It is a terrible evaluator.

And as for your exp with it... your only hull is Dictator, so you've padded your stats with the hulls bonus scoring feature - the OD.

You seem to have chosen your user-name well though... 

 

[stat.padder 225]

 

1 hour ago, wolverine848 said:

"KD is irrelevant.  Anyone can have a good KD if they just camp and never put themselves in danger.  It is a terrible evaluator.

 

And as for your exp with it... your only hull is Dictator, so you've padded your stats with the hulls bonus scoring feature - the OD.

 

You seem to have chosen your user-name well though... "

 

My 180 hours with smoky are certainly relevant, no doubt about that. As for k/d, you can camp with whatever weapon you want if it is weak, that becomes pure hell. If I were to play with autocannon, my k/d over time would become lower than 2 definitely OR I could preserve it, but exp would drop to bellow 10k per hour with drastic drop in efficiency simply because I would have to quit many battles. However, I am afraid there are far too few in this forum, which can understand what I am writing.

 

I live by my name, what can I say...In a forum full of hypocrites including me (hard to escape that), being honest with my name is like breeze of fresh air.

Well...the only way for me to improve myself in reducing errors when discussing turrets balance is math and analysis of battles, which has helped me a lot so far, way more than "camping".

"Campers" when I see their profile rarely have even 10k exp/hour (they all have premium and most of them play during boost, so that exp/hour is still really low). When compared to my 20k, with the fact that I even play when there is no boost or premium (at least daily missons), that makes my camping look kind of weird. Also when it comes to experience, the best tanks for that are viking, crusader, paladin etc. these tanks get kills easily which gives a lot of exp. However, dictator has rare OD and it is better for efficiency (high score means a lot of crystals) rather than exp. With dictator it is easy to have high score.

However, again, rarely anyone over here understands anything. It's not surprising that people are leaving forum and game. And now I see, how it's possible that some insane statements ("magnum or thunder do not deserve buff", etc.) exist.

Edited November 28, 2021 by stat.padder

[Abellia 504]

23 hours ago, stat.padder said:

Oh, it's you, the one that bashed diesel platinum for no reason.

Are you aware that PirateSpider and DieselPlatinum are the same user?

23 hours ago, stat.padder said:

Same colour means pretty much same performance. The only column where I gave supercummulative shots clear advantage is against armadillo, which is absolutely true both "on paper" and in battle. Supercummulative rounds were sometimes even necessary for me when I face paladins which FYI is currently almost EVERY round.

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.

Edited November 29, 2021 by Abellia