i know pox busters are bugged right now but i absolutely despise them, and half the time i hate them because of my team mates.
i would like to propose some ideas to change how they work.
first of all “if i push a pox buster and it stumbled backwards they SHOULD explode guaranteed”
next the explosion radius/ sphere, i feel like changing it to an explosion cone similar to a claymine would make allot of sense with how they work, this means they have little to no damage behind them, but tons of damage in front/ above them
when they are running at you, then lunge and jump etc, they will still deal damage to you obviously, but if you knock them on there back, now there explosion is going “up” and “away” from the direct you knocked them
i am not the best artist but, this is a side on view, blue is friendly red is pox buster, explosion direction is indicated by the grey cones.
as you can see if you are to simply shoot the pox buster at point blank range “it will get you” due to the forwards explosion cone (effectively the same as how they currently work)
if the pox buster lunges at you, doing a normal attack, it will get you (effectively the same as how they currently work)
if you knock the pox buster backwards. you are now “quite safe” even if you are close to it, the explosion damage will likely not hit you, this is important when your busy fighting the hoards, you knock the pox buster back, but you can not clear it’s distance, or if the lightning from a smite psyker decides to “hit that pox buster you were about to push” you will likely not get punished unfairly because of that since, the explosion is now directed away from you
you may be able to accomplish similar things with adjusting the explosion radius depending on how the pox buster is dieing, maybe pushing the pox buster simply lowers the explosion radius, that would have a similar result. but i feel like the clay more idea to make the damage directional is pretty solid as it is.
and at that point, if i am safe from the pox buster by “doing the correct thing” hell increase the range of it’s explosion damage, punish people that shoot it even more, or increase the damage, i honestly don’t care at that point, as long as you are “rewarding good game play and punishing bad game play” do whatever you need to do to balance this idea, but please, reward good players better. and stop punishing the rest of the team for one persons mistakes.
