Let's Discuss Smoky!

[LambSauce 1,883]

6 minutes ago, SporkZilla said:

I haven't done the numbers on it ( @TheCongoSpider probably has though) , but my gut feeling on it is good because it's a longer lasting effect and not many players use freeze immunity

A lot of players have EMP immunity and quite a few are now using Jammer immunity (since the latest BP) so barely anyone has Freeze immunity equipped.

That makes me really want to play Cryo Smoky now…

Edited May 10, 2022 by LambSauce

[TheCongoSpider 8,942]

36 minutes ago, SporkZilla said:

I haven't done the numbers on it ( @TheCongoSpider probably has though) , but my gut feeling on it is good because it's a longer lasting effect and not many players use freeze immunity

 

On 4/30/2022 at 9:20 AM, TheCongoSpider said:

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. 

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

[LambSauce 1,883]

1 minute ago, TheCongoSpider said:

 

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

Is it now 50% of the minimum temperature? Or did it not change like most Burning augments did.

[TheCongoSpider 8,942]

Just now, LambSauce said:

Is it now 50% of the minimum temperature? Or did it not change like most Burning augments did.

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. 

[LambSauce 1,883]

6 minutes ago, TheCongoSpider said:

It's quite obvious they'd like Cryo augments to be near the top now.

Yep, Cryo and Jamming augments seem to be the new meta (apart from Helios and Pulsar, of course).

Edited May 10, 2022 by LambSauce

[TheCongoSpider 8,942]

10 minutes ago, LambSauce said:

Yep, Cryo and Jamming augments seem to be the new meta (apart from Helios and Pulsar, of course).

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. 

[krokorok 835]

1 hour ago, TheCongoSpider said:

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. 

Seems the Wiki aint accurate, e.g., the Jamming Freeze is mentioned to not have any disadvantages, but I could swear the freezing effect is severely reduced just like with AP Freeze

[wild001 1,422]

7 minutes ago, krokorok said:

freezing effect is severely reduced

Because you use these augment to destroy enemy faster, they die sooner then why freeze them, shock freeze is for freezing in fast run ctf

[Thankxtu 286]

6 minutes ago, krokorok said:

Seems the Wiki aint accurate, e.g., the Jamming Freeze is mentioned to not have any disadvantages, but I could swear the freezing effect is severely reduced just like with AP Freeze

I havent been able to properly look into it since i got jammer freeze from a container few weeks back cuz i have been playing on mobile but it did feel like it had a reduced freezing rate but its hard to specify on mobile so I could be wrong.

[Thankxtu 286]

Just now, wild001 said:

Because you use these augment to destroy enemy faster, they die sooner then why freeze them, shock freeze is for freezing in fast run ctf

He means to say its freezing rate is reduced from stock parameters when in wiki it was specified there were no downsides.

[LambSauce 1,883]

2 hours ago, krokorok said:

Seems the Wiki aint accurate, e.g., the Jamming Freeze is mentioned to not have any disadvantages, but I could swear the freezing effect is severely reduced just like with AP Freeze

YES! This is it!

I noticed the exact same thing. After placing this augment in the battle pass the devs may have silently decreased the freezing rate (if it wasn’t already weaker).

[TheCongoSpider 8,942]

4 minutes ago, LambSauce said:

After placing this augment in the battle pass the devs may have silently decreased the freezing rate (if it wasn’t already weaker).

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. 

[TheCongoSpider 8,942]

On 4/26/2022 at 4:39 PM, TheCongoSpider said:

 

 

The bug mentioned in my quote was supposedly fixed on Friday. I cannot confirm whether that is true because I currently have no means to play the game.

If the bug really is fixed, then that first part about losing out on a lot of its advantage over other Smoky augments isn't true anymore. 

 

Anyway, at endgame, Sorted Ammunition's performance was heightened in the Smoky damage buff last year, which essentially makes a combination of its normal and critical hits need at least 1 fewer shot to kill an enemy on average. 535 + 535 + 800 + 535 would kill a light hull before the buff, but after that buff, Smoky only needs 580 + 850 + 580. This extends both to medium and heavy hulls. Being able to control when you deal critical damage with a generous crit rate has its merits. This makes it destructive at low ranks but better balanced at high ranks. At high ranks, augments like EMP Smoky will take it over due to its raw power but Sorted Ammuntion is still a good Smoky augment. Just because EMP Smoky exists doesn't mean all the other Smoky augments are trash. 

@2shots2kills

 

Sorted Ammunition, as far as I had used it before the patch earlier today, still is bugged. It does not accumulate chance on misses and its order of critical hits is not exactly as it is stated it should be after spawning, but everything else in the second paragraph still holds true. This is more of a comfort augment and not a "I equip this, I instantly win the game" augment like previous EMP Smoky, Helios, Magnetron Twins etc. 

 

Its power vs other options at endgame definitely took a hit after the status augments' critical damage penalties have been removed, but I reiterate, it is a comfort augment. Try it out and see if you like it. I am unsure if this exactly happens at endgame because the Sorted Ammuntion I have is on a 2nd Lieutenant account, but after spawning, you will either get:

 

Normal, Crit, Normal, Normal, Normal, Crit, Normal, Normal, Normal, Crit, etc.

 

or

 

Crit, Crit, Normal, Normal, Normal, Crit, Normal, Normal, Normal, Crit, etc

 

Ideally, you'd want the second occurence. @SulfuricAcid said that there was a bug with it that made it deal 1,000 flat damage for a while now but they have yet to send evidence of this. 

[TheCongoSpider 8,942]

On 4/2/2022 at 4:48 AM, frederik123456 said:

Already have EMP smok, is this even remotely comparable to that?

 

On 4/25/2022 at 1:53 PM, Fuchsia said:

why y'all laughin'? is it a bad augment?

 

On 4/30/2022 at 7:19 AM, LambSauce said:

Is Paralyzing Rounds any good these days?

@2shots2kills

 

Sorted Ammunition is now working as intended. Your initial critical chance is 100%, and you will advance your chance step on any shot. However, this means that it is possible for to miss a critical hit and start back from -200% minimum chance. It is both a blessing and a curse. If you want to use it to its full potential, you wil need to be very accurate with your critical hits. It's certainly an easy task to perform with how much Smoky's projectiles like to ignore hull hitboxes. 

From spawn, you'll want to take advantage of your critical hit. Afterwards if there are no enemies to shoot, you attempt to queue your current chance to 0% (shot #3 after a critical hit). From there, you can engage an enemy and have a critical hit on the second shot. If the first shot happens to miss, then you will be able to re-aim for the second which will be a critical. This is especially handy for current Sorted Ammunition players that use Booster. If both shots hit, you will be able to kill an unprotected medium hull with your normal and critical damage. 

 

I like the current Sorted Ammunition but it is really frustrating to use when your Smoky projectiles often decide to have the radius of a Vulcan projectile. And then you have this; whatever they have been doing to Sorted Ammunition since January, it has been affecting the other Smokies, positively. After respawning, there was a chance that your Smoky will deal critical damage on its first hit. Not only was it good for a boost in damage, status Smokies were able to weaken opponents that were near them straight out of spawn. This has been fixed, evidently, as of Friday. But with Sorted Ammunition receiving the ability to advance its chance step on every shot regardless of missing or not, it seems the other Smokies have inherited that in some way. Of course, this benefits status Smokies even more, what with them no longer having a critical damage penaltyto go along with their potent effects. EMP/AP/Cryo Smokies are more formidable now as the overall crit rate has increased. Assuming it works the same as Sorted Ammunition, you have a much more leeway for not accidentally shooting critical hits because their maximum chance is fixed at at most 50%. Sorted Ammunition got a buff and a nerf. The other Smokies, namely the status Smokies, got quite a buff. 

 

That also includes Paralyzing Rounds. It doesn't seem to have the -50% chance step penalty anymore and gets critical hits roughly the same as the other Smokies now. Unfortunately, Supercumulative Rounds is for some reason quite behind Paralyzing Rounds despite their downsides being very similar. Maybe this is a big or unintentional. All signs point to it being intentional if you ask me, but Supercumulative must be looked at. Its penalty has been too high for far too long. 

 

I would imagine that if Smoky's hitreg gets fixed, it will become a top turret (for those who can aim) with these current parameters. 

[LambSauce 1,883]

Stun Smoky is surprisingly strong these days, especially since not many players are equipping Smoky protection.

[Cor7y 13,862]

3 hours ago, LambSauce said:

especially since not many players are equipping Smoky protection.

That's true, I’m mainly seeing Thunder/Rico/Magnum/Shaft protection these days

[Me0w_XP 523]

On 6/26/2022 at 11:44 PM, TheCongoSpider said:

(for those who can aim)

A hefty requisite. /j

[ekf 88]

It it just me or does it seem like Smoky's shots sometimes miss/go through tanks when it should without doubt hit? I suspect it's either a glitch or server lag issues.

[HEAVYWEAPONMOBILE_1 11]

Since i have a considerable amount of smoky augments, I'm going to ask in wich order you would rank all current smoky augments and what score you would give to them in a scale of 1-10 in two categories: skill dependency and advantages over stock smoky (assuming that smoky is at MKmax, no drone except brutus is used and I'm expecting to get in a future even more augments for smoky).

[CompleteDeception 2]

I think that shot effects should be added to Thunder and also Smoky. These two turrets have been in the game since the beginning and are two of only four turrets that don't have any shot effects the other two being Tesla and Scorpion. I think that their longevity grants them a need to have a shot effect added. The Thunder explosion could be different colour similar to the way the striker effect was done and the Smoky one could be the trail behind the shot and the impact explosion. It would also be possible to do shot effects for Tesla and Scorpion. The Scorpion rocket trail could be different colours and the tesla ball and electric jumps ( I cant remember the technical term sorry) could be coloured. 

Its just a thought but i thought it would be a cool idea.

[demon09 89]

I used to think that Smoky's aiming was bugged because shots would randomly seem to fly through enemy tanks without hitting them, but now I've realised that you have you aim at their turret at a certain range (mid-range) to hit them. This makes it much harder to hit tanks than with any other mid-ranged turret.

[Dumbledore6969 243]

On 5/16/2024 at 5:57 PM, demon09 said:

I used to think that Smoky's aiming was bugged because shots would randomly seem to fly through enemy tanks without hitting them, but now I've realised that you have you aim at their turret at a certain range (mid-range) to hit them. This makes it much harder to hit tanks than with any other mid-ranged turret.

Topic merged