Augment balance: Compact Fuel Tanks vs Shock Freeze

[Me0w_XP 523]

I would like to bring to the developers' attention a very unfair situation:

Recently, Shock Freeze was nerfed significantly, decreasing the minimum temperature limit, removing critical damage, and removing the lowered fuel consumption.

First of all, it's nearly impossible to kill anyone with proper protection plus armor. With the damage already increased, why remove critical damage? And why remove the decreased fuel consumption? The latter was meant to make up for the lower damage, and make it possible to finish your opponent off.

Fuel and critical damage aside, it's clear that Shock Freeze is inherently weaker than its fiery counterpart, Compact Fuel Tanks.

Check it out:
COMPACT FUEL TANKS
Advantages
Maximum temperature limit: 100%
Heating rate: 100%
Disadvantages
Reload: +100% (2 seconds)

Compact Fuel tanks has an increased temperature limit as well as an increased heating rate, along with untouched critical damage.

Compare this to:
SHOCK FREEZE
Advantages
Freezing rate: 100%
Disadvantages
Regular Damage: -15%
Critical hit removed

Decreased damage, no critical damage, and only an increase in temperature rate and not limit? This kills half the point of this alteration at all. I cannot stress how puny Shock Freeze is now, compared to other turrets, its own past self, and its twin augment Compact Fuel Tanks.

Looking at the augments for Fire vs Freeze, it's pretty clear that they're like mirrors of each other, with only a few small discrepancies between them.
High Pressure Pump / High Pressure Pump
Incendiary Mix / Corrosive Mix
Compact Fuel Tanks / Shock Freeze 

If this is the case, why has Shock Freeze been thrown under the bus so badly? I completely fail to comprehend what was going through the developers' minds as they threw nerf after nerf at Shock Freeze, reducing it to a pathetic boost to freezing rate but virtually nothing else to show for it. 

I beg for the developers to restore some power to Shock Freeze. At the very least, return critical damage. At the very least, make the stats somewhat equal to Compact Fuel Tanks. Every other Fire user I see lately has compact fuel tanks, which deals insane damage through the long and deadly burning period. In contrast, Shock Freeze just... freezes you faster. It doesn't even freeze you more, nor does it even effectively finish opponents off.

I hope that even if you're just someone scrolling through the forum, you still see this, because I can warn you against buying Shock Freeze. For the love of God, do not do it. It is arguably the worst garage augment in terms of killing ability. If you want an augment that enhances melee status effects, please go for Compact Fuel Tanks. At least that one deals proper damage.

[TheCongoSpider 8,954]

15 minutes ago, Me0w_XP said:

If this is the case, why has Shock Freeze been thrown under the bus so badly? I completely fail to comprehend what was going through the developers' minds as they threw nerf after nerf at Shock Freeze, reducing it to a pathetic boost to freezing rate but virtually nothing else to show for it. 

If it wasn't obvious from some balance changes in 2021, they do seem to want some equipment thrown under the bus badly, for reasons the players can only speculate because they didn't give explanations. But you can definitely trust that they know exactly what they're doing when these things occur. They know their numbers and main interactions. 

 

All that is left for the players to do is call out blatant inconsistencies as early as possible. Huge changes to a Stock turret warrant relevant changes to its augments. For a long time this particular problem occured with Incendiary Mix and Corrosive Mix. After a very long time, that debate has been settled. They're both good in their own ways. One offers practically infinite ammo with delays between spurts while the other offers slightly less normal damage for an extended duration with triple damage critical hits but less longetivity due to the reload.

When you have another pair of augments such as Compact Fuel Tanks and Shock Freeze, one of them is bound to get the short end of the stick due to Stock paramaters  and the status effect of each turret being different. This time around, its Firebird's and afterburn's time to shine. So all you can do is call out the inconsistency and appeal for consistency as early as possible. Good on you for making the topic. 

 

25 minutes ago, Me0w_XP said:

 and only an increase in temperature rate and not limit? This kills half the point of this alteration at all. 

Context matters here. All modifications of Freeze have the 100% limit. It does not need directly tampering with compared to Firebird, which has a hard limit on modifications because it applies a different status effect with its own properties that needs to be balanced across modifications. 

 

34 minutes ago, Me0w_XP said:

First of all, it's nearly impossible to kill anyone with proper protection plus armor. With the damage already increased, why remove critical damage? And why remove the decreased fuel consumption? The latter was meant to make up for the lower damage, and make it possible to finish your opponent off.

Their explanation was to push Freeze more in the direction of normal damage output. For sure they screwed up with the paramaters and I am surprised it's taking them this long to make a change to it. Perhaps they're still gathering data on it before making a move. 

[Me0w_XP 523]

4 minutes ago, TheCongoSpider said:

Context matters here. All modifications of Freeze have the 100% limit. It does not need directly tampering with compared to Firebird, which has a hard limit on modifications because it applies a different status effect with its own properties that needs to be balanced across modifications. 

 

I see. I was just shocked (no pun intended) at the sudden decrease in effectiveness of the augment. Your explanation does make sense though, so thank you for that.

4 minutes ago, TheCongoSpider said:

Their explanation was to push Freeze more in the direction of normal damage output. For sure they screwed up with the paramaters and I am surprised it's taking them this long to make a change to it. Perhaps they're still gathering data on it before making a move. 

I definitely see what you mean here, but their move doesn't make too much sense to me, as normal damage is heavily decreased by 50 prot at higher ranks.
I really hope you're right in that they'll make a change later. This nerf seemed way too absurd to be permanent. But then again, I've seen stranger "balance" changes be kept for a while.

[Dopamine 2,161]

Shock freeze is a almost useless in most situations right now.

Freeze in and of itself is a very strong turret, so if you only have shock freeze augment, it is better to just use the stock version.

I agree with your point.

 

 

Edited February 24, 2022 by frederik123456

[Abellia 504]

17 hours ago, Me0w_XP said:

First of all, it's nearly impossible to kill anyone with proper protection plus armor.

Wow it´s almost like people got too used to having bogus crits that ignore protection

Edited February 24, 2022 by frederik123456
Please refrain from using all caps

[Incorp 2,084]

12 minutes ago, Abellia said:

Wow it´s almost like people got too used to having bogus crits that ignore protection (edited)

Ooooowch full caps.

And yeah shock freeze needs buff.

Edited February 24, 2022 by frederik123456

[Abellia 504]

 

17 hours ago, Me0w_XP said:

Decreased damage, no critical damage, and only an increase in temperature rate and not limit?

Firebird does not have a status that cuts your ability to deal damage in half (aka far more potent than burning, making it much more valuable to max out freezing on someone vs maxing out burning) and it does not have triple damage crits, hence Shock Freeze needs them removed. I'd just give it normal crit damage instead of 300% like it has now.

Also, Freeze doesn't have a temperature limit. At mk1, you can cool someone to minimum possible temperature, hence Shock Freeze cannot increase the limit. Compact Fuel tanks' increased temperature limit also does not matter for Mk8 Firebirds, as they already can hit the max temperature limit.

The reason for the damage change in the two of them is ammo. Compact Fuel Tanks has 2/3rds the direct damage dealing uptime that stock, Incendiary, HPP, and Adrenaline firebirds have, whereas Shock Freeze only has -15% normal damage.

All that being said: I would be completely on board for a Shock Freeze buff. It is justified in how it designed compared to Compact Fuel Tanks, but it could use something to be on par with Adrenaline Freeze.

[Abellia 504]

17 hours ago, Me0w_XP said:

It is arguably the worst garage augment in terms of killing ability

autocan'tnon