1900h, vet main here, in case someone will doubt this build (I will because I doubt 5% aura) I want to say this man is absolutely right, the most broken weapon in the game, in my opinion, is Braced Agripina. It can snipe, have insane ammo pool its not how everyone think about “just” based capacity but how many bullets you gain in small/large boxes/surv aura divided by kill potential, based dmg, based cleave and scaling with 2 dmg blessings allows to ignore the whole melee system for the whole match nearly in every game. Even without Veteran’s supremacy B-Agri is insane as Gun Zealot weapon with duelist, momentum and close dmg node. Everything you need to do - holding LMB and WASD. But 90% dont even know about it because sitting on needle of WS keystone which is useless for shooting. B-Colomnus and Graia are insane too but least favorite for me for my own reasons.
Reading whining on Plasma is always give me a chuckles because the main problem with Plasma gun isnt cleave or dmg, its just stupid AI director which spawns mobs in one row each for other. Cleave on Plasma and Zarona should be as it is but It should be a reward for taking good angles, stupid AI director just neutralizes it. Ones the elite pack takes different postions plasma and zarona turns from “OMG NERF IT” into super mid weapons.
Im sharing my version, B-Agri - Maniac/Flak Deathspitter/Fire Frenzy
So you don’t feel that there are enough patrols or elites mixed in horde spawns? I feel that there are no other gun that can take out high value targets in the thick of things.
I still feel that you are to hung up on the overall ranged damage and I can’t stress it enough that if it had risks to accompany it cleaving power I would be fine with it.
Revolver can keep some of its cleave (so it can take out specialists hiding in hordes), but ranged damage falloff needs to be increased. It should not be a pocket sniper rifle.
Absolutely… the cleave of revolvers should falloff quickly above close range.
But still, hand cannon should be nerfed (I would say that the rendering max should be 40%).
This explains a lot… you play a lot with it and so you don’t see how it is too powerful compared to other weapons.
I played a lot with zorona (but actually not cause it is too powerful) and still I ask a nerf. And this is one of my favorite weapon…
Braced Auto does this just fine as well, unless the target is a crusher.
Because along with kills, this is a much better metric than an occasional situational multikill. The heavy braced typically outperforms the plasma gun by a notable margin, therefore I find it superior. It’s not complicated.
Another metric would be completion time. If I have to have only one or another on the team, a competent heavy braced results in a much faster completion time than plasma under most conditions. Monstrous specialist may favor plasma slightly, but again, kraks can largely make up the difference most of the time.
I don’t find the Plasma Gun all that offensive. The Plasma gun is really great at blapping groups of enemies and short but intense firefights. If you get a group of gunners in a doorway or ragers in a line on a gantry, or a big horde stuck around another player, the Plasma Gun is going to be insanely killy. What it’s really bad at is sustained pressure engagements and boss fights. Plasma Guns have a garbage damage output against enemies like Plague Ogryn. If enemies are scattered about instead of clumping in nice tight groups and just keep coming, the Plasma Gun tends to be slow and awkward next to other weapons.
For me, on these counts, it tends to depend on map and what the director throws at you (and what difficulty you play at) as to how powerful it is.
The old sights/crosshair used to be a problem, you could have something across the room that looked perfectly centered and completely miss it because the crosshairs were so wide, the weapon’s accuracy often would get wasted because the sights were so wonky, though I don’t think this is an issue anymore.
The biggest thing to me is that the Plasma Gun largely build-agnostic. Your talents don’t really impact it that much, you can’t really build into the plasma gun the way you can other weapons. It doesn’t benefit insanely from additional crit chance or weakspot damage for example the way something like Lasguns do. This opens up builds and allows players to spec into more survivability stuff.
But not all enemies are equal, some are more likely to end a run then others. Taking out key targets, no matter what they hide behind should warrant some risks.
I think we have different ideas what constitute as a thick layer of enemies protecting the special enemies.
If you have a few minutes, grab the Creature Spawner mod. Equip a decent Plasma Gun and a decent lasgun or autogun of choice, and load a Plague Ogryn into the Psykhanium. Go all out and see how long it takes you to kill that Plague Ogryn with each weapon going ham.
In my experience, it takes substantially longer with the Plasma Gun. Yes, the PG has a lot of raw damage on a single hit, but it’s raw RoF isn’t great, it doesn’t get huge crit or weakspot bonuses, and with an enemy like a Plague Ogryn you’ll be spending more time dissipating heat than the other weapons will reloading.
The heavy braced will just kill that thick layer of enemies while also hitting the special enemy, and each of those kills makes it stronger and gives it more cleave.
Heavy Braced is just insanely strong, and like I and someone else mentioned, it’s so good you can basically just shoot everything that comes at you with very little concern about ammo.
Ranged only auric damnation runs that aren’t staffs are very, very difficult under normal conditions. They’re downright tolerable (though still not usually optimal) with Heavy Braced.
Basically, the heavy braced is the closest thing in the game to the old OP autopistol, but slightly harder than that weapon to use.
I still think we have different ideas on what a thick layer is, while I have no doubt that you can kill things with the braced autogun, by perhaps relocating to another angle or rush forward to get to the special enemy, there we will be some layers that it cannot penetrate where as the plasma gun can.
I like it aswell, but the thing is, if the game wants to throw a large amount of enemies and have us fight them in corridors or that they form a line when they rushes at us from whatever spawn point they came from, there should be some risks involved while using a gun that can penetrate through them all. Having some of the power from normal shots go over to charged shot so that there will be risks and/or situations where you cannot wield it properly seems like a fair trade off.
Are you comparing the viability with a specialists/elite weapon against a horde weapon in a game mode that heavily favours one of them as a guideline for that the plasma gun is fine?
Sure, plasma has more cleave, but if these enemies are spread out at all, the heavy braced still wins out, and if they’re lined up, the heavy braced still does incredibly well.
The Heavy Braced does it all, that’s the point.
I’m fine with the plasma gun because in my experience, it’s not even in the top 5 of dominating builds, and as I’ve made clear, in my opinion, not even the best gun on average. I just don’t encounter plasma guns killing everything or trivializing the game in the same way that psykers can.
Its only crime is being S tier. And I rather it be S tier than the abject garbage it used to be before the buffs.
I think we have different ideas on how to balance the plasma gun, in my mind it pretty much stays the same but moves away from spamming normals shots for more charged shots. I don’t want it to be garbage aswell, it should be good in its niche… but it should have some risks attached to it.
