Last year I remember it could quickly poison groups. I checked some clips from late last year—explosion mode used to poison every target in a small area on hit, whether shot an enemy or the environment. Today, after my own testing, that on-hit spread is completely gone. Now it just deals a literal 1 damage. I went through the patch notes since then—nothing mentioned. So this has to be a bug, and a pretty nasty one that influences the weapon’s whole vibe.
As for how it works now—see the screenshot. It’s not super obvious from the image though; you’d really feel the difference if you just take it to the range and try it yourself.
Steps to Reproduce (Required):
1.pick needle pistol
2.shoot
3.see the difference between before and now
OK. To be more specific, I am talking about needle pistol MK2.
According to this video, since 2:18, needle pistol MK2 should have a small ontarget and terrain AOE, applying one stack of toxin. But in my test just now, it didn’t work—just dealt 1 damage. Some people said that this bug’s been around for a while, since March or April maybe. IDK. And I don’t know if MK6 has a similar bug.
I’ve heard that enemies killed with MK6’s blue mode SHOULD explode on shot and SPREAD poison from that explosion too. The difference between 2 and 6 is 2 will speard poison again after target dead and 6 will cause a boom with little damage and stagger after target’s death. But I haven’t really used it myself when it functioned properly, and I can’t find any clear video to confirm. Would be great if some early-version players could chime in and fatshark maybe look into this too and see if it’s actually broken.
Your explanation sounds logical. But this change wasn’t listed in any official hotfix notes, so I still think it’s a bug. More importantly, this bug strips most of Explode Mode’s functionality and seriously weakens the Needle Pistol’s strength and design cohesion. If it’s being gutted just because of a bad interaction with Bulwark, I strongly disagree.
Besides, a bulwark’s feet aren’t covered by the shield—if poison needles explode at their feet, they should get poisoned. That’s intuitive. In game, inferno, flamethrowers, and flame skulls can all dot bulwarks through shields. So if other aoe weapons can damage bulwarks but explode mode can’t, that doesn’t feel right.
I dug through some old forum threads and found that this bug was introduced by patch 1.10.6 on February 10. Hopefully this information helps you fix it faster.
