Removal of Striker

[ThirdOnion 4,898]

On 7/11/2021 at 3:25 PM, wolverine848 said:

Old ... when... when it came out?  It sucked then. 

Came out at least a year before magnum, and you still hardly see any in battles, but there were lenty of magnums.

When it first came out Striker was indeed underwhelming. But not even a month afterwards it received a buff that made it more competent, and then towards the end of 2018 it received another buff. Since that 2018 buff it has been a very formidable turret. Striker was/is underused because it has a steep learning curve, and not because it was ineffective. 

On 7/11/2021 at 5:12 PM, Crossbone said:

I disagree. I think they did the right thing and gave it a buff when it needed it. Striker is fine now.

Have you played with Striker recently? It is a monster now. It makes stock Smoky and Thunder borderline irrelevant. The ridiculous rate of fire and ridiculous critical hit damage allow it to bully virtually any turret at medium range and, if you are good enough, at longer ranges as well.

Edited July 13, 2021 by ThirdOnion

[wolverine848 13,097]

21 minutes ago, ThirdOnion said:

When it first came out Striker was indeed underwhelming. But not even a month afterwards it received a buff that made it more competent, and then towards the end of 2018 it received another buff. Since that 2018 buff it has been a very formidable turret. Striker was/is underused because it has a steep learning curve, and not because it was ineffective. 

It's better now.  But regardless of the "steep learning curve" it was bad for quite some time.

augment-hunter is the only way I equip striker.  Can't stand the laser out there for so long that 1) makes the striker a beacon and 2) gets interrupted by just about anything, including team-mates.

Shaft has a laser, but that laser can be hidden for an ambush kill. Striker has no such luxury.

[ThirdOnion 4,898]

11 minutes ago, wolverine848 said:

augment-hunter is the only way I equip striker.  Can't stand the laser out there for so long that 1) makes the striker a beacon and 2) gets interrupted by just about anything, including team-mates.

You don't have to suffer from those problems if you stick primarily to arcade mode.

[Crossbone 516]

55 minutes ago, ThirdOnion said:

When it first came out Striker was indeed underwhelming. But not even a month afterwards it received a buff that made it more competent, and then towards the end of 2018 it received another buff. Since that 2018 buff it has been a very formidable turret. Striker was/is underused because it has a steep learning curve, and not because it was ineffective. 

Yeah during that time, it was starting to become a viable turret to use, even the release of magnum didn't stop its momentum. And then all that changed when that hideous abomination (gauss) was released, pretty much without reason or warning in June of 2019. It was as if the devs gave up on striker, thunder, smoky, magnum, rail gun, and shaft, and simply decided to bring out such an uninteresting turret that was simply designed to be a hybrid.

1 hour ago, ThirdOnion said:

Have you played with Striker recently? It is a monster now. It makes stock Smoky and Thunder borderline irrelevant. The ridiculous rate of fire and ridiculous critical hit damage allow it to bully virtually any turret at medium range and, if you are good enough, at longer ranges as well.

Well, since striker is basically the only turret I use on this account, its pretty hard not to have played with it recently.

Sure, striker is strong now, but that doesn't mean that smoky or thunder aren't viable options either. Thunder is still pretty good, and so is smoky.

I do agree that they may have overdone it with the critical damage, but I think the real turning point for striker was the release of hovering hulls, more specifically crusader.

32 minutes ago, ThirdOnion said:

You don't have to suffer from those problems if you stick primarily to arcade mode.

Striker didn't just suffer from that. It also had to take in factors like keeping your distance, leading your shots, remembering which barrel it shot from last, barrel being short. Etc.

[wolverine848 13,097]

1 hour ago, ThirdOnion said:

You don't have to suffer from those problems if you stick primarily to arcade mode.

Then what's the point of having salvo.

When it came out, and for a long while after that, might as well use Thunder if you're just relying on arcade.

Of course many things have changed in last two years...

[ThirdOnion 4,898]

1 hour ago, Crossbone said:

And then all that changed when that hideous abomination (gauss) was released, pretty much without reason or warning in June of 2019. It was as if the devs gave up on striker, thunder, smoky, magnum, rail gun, and shaft, and simply decided to bring out such an uninteresting turret that was simply designed to be a hybrid.

Just because Gauss was OP doesn't mean other turrets needed a buff.

1 hour ago, Crossbone said:

Sure, striker is strong now, but that doesn't mean that smoky or thunder aren't viable options either. Thunder is still pretty good, and so is smoky.

The issue is that besides Smoky's more frequent criticals, there isn't really any characteristic of Thunder and Smoky that makes them more attractive than Striker. Striker has higher DPM than both of them. Its massive critical damage gives Smoky a run for its money. Like Thunder, it deals splash damage, with the smaller radius offset by the higher rate of fire. It doesn't have any damage drop-off at range. On top of that it has a secondary fire mode. Even now Striker protections are less common than Thunder and Smoky protections. While before it could be convincingly argued that Thunder and Smoky had significant advantage when it came to projectile speed, even that argument holds little water now, since now (1) all three turrets have a projectile, (2) Smoky's projectile has been misbehaving (at least on PC) since the day it was implemented, and (3) Striker's projectile speed has been buffed so much that the slower speed hardly matters at all but the longest of ranges (at which Thunder and Smoky suffer damage drop-off anyway).

1 hour ago, Crossbone said:

Striker didn't just suffer from that. It also had to take in factors like keeping your distance, leading your shots, remembering which barrel it shot from last, barrel being short. Etc.

All of those things can be mitigated with practice. Lock-on is really the only aspect that it is largely up to luck.

54 minutes ago, wolverine848 said:

Then what's the point of having salvo.

When it came out, and for a long while after that, might as well use Thunder if you're just relying on arcade.

Of course many things have changed in last two years...

Salvo mode is for particular situations (for example against slow hulls, distracted players, Juggernaut). I hardly use salvo mode at all while playing Striker.

Thunder had lower DPM and unlike Striker, suffers from damage drop-off at range. Unlike most other turrets Striker required an effort investment in exchange for a higher damage output. For the first year and a half that it came out I didn't think that the reward/effort ratio was high enough to bother using it, although a small number of Striker players did get good results. This is not to say that it was a bad turret - rather that given the nature of the game at that time when hulls and turrets required saving crystals for a fairly long time it wasn't worth it for most players. Since its 2018 buff I think that the reward/effort ratio has been either sufficient or too great (right now) - and this topic was made in 2020.

Edited July 13, 2021 by ThirdOnion

[Crossbone 516]

15 minutes ago, ThirdOnion said:

Just because Gauss was OP doesn't mean other turrets needed a buff.

No, but the point I was trying to make here was that gauss should've just been scrapped when it was still just an idea. It was a pure hybrid of all the mentioned turrets. It had different parts of each turret that made them unique over each other.

26 minutes ago, ThirdOnion said:

The issue is that besides Smoky's more frequent criticals, there isn't really any characteristic of Thunder and Smoky that makes them more attractive than Striker.

Both of them are alot more simple go use than striker.

Striker has more interesting augments than thunder, but that's the devs fault for not giving thunder some more augments.

And smoky is just flat out boring to use despite being able to do well.

31 minutes ago, ThirdOnion said:

All of those things can be mitigated with practice. Lock-on is really the only aspect that it is largely up to luck.

And where are you gonna practice? Can't practice in MM, you'd rank up faster and consume more supplies, and face massive imbalances where you mostly can't practice properly.

Can't practice in parkour battles, everyone will target you forever.

Don't have a training area.

Only place is pro battles, but you can't always rely on them.

You'd have to know how to use it, to do well, even now.

 Point is even with all the buffs it received, it still requires alot of skill to use effectively.

[ThirdOnion 4,898]

2 hours ago, Crossbone said:

Both of them are alot more simple go use than striker.

You'd have to know how to use it, to do well, even now.

 Point is even with all the buffs it received, it still requires alot of skill to use effectively.

Yes, this has always been the case. But I'm talking about power, not ease of use. My point is that the reward you get for mastering Striker is far higher than it should be.

2 hours ago, Crossbone said:

And where are you gonna practice? Can't practice in MM, you'd rank up faster and consume more supplies, and face massive imbalances where you mostly can't practice properly.

You get better by continuing to play the game; playing MM is practice.

Edited July 14, 2021 by ThirdOnion

[Crossbone 516]

50 minutes ago, ThirdOnion said:

My point is that the reward you get for mastering Striker is far higher than it should be.

I don't see this as a problem. And neither does the majority of the player base.

[ThirdOnion 4,898]

1 hour ago, Crossbone said:

I don't see this as a problem. And neither does the majority of the player base.

You don't see it as a problem that a turret is OP?

[Cleric 1,385]

Striker itself is fine. The stun augment though, screw that thing

[Crossbone 516]

31 minutes ago, ThirdOnion said:

You don't see it as a problem that a turret is OP?

Its strong sure, but not OP.