I really like the bayonet and armor piercing charge of the Lucious pattern lasguns. Problem is, despite their rep as the “Accuracy/Power focused lasgun” aiming them accurately is extremely difficult due to 4 factors.
The gun fires when you let go of the trigger rather than when you hit it. With fast moving wobbly enemies like we face in the hive city, we might get mere instants for aiming and firing. The split seconds it takes to hit the trigger and release it, is deceptively detrimental to the goal of hitting the target.
The charged shot fires automatically. Yeah, if you are charging your shot you have about a second before the gun fires itself regardless of your input. This really adds difficulty in hitting your mark as you can’t wait for your target to pop his head out from a corner and release your shot. You need to start charging your shot before you see him and hope he immediately sticks his head out or just start charging when you see him which is also bad option as it means he’s going to shoot you first, hurt you and mess up your aim. And he might be back behind cover by the time you can accurately return fully charged fire.
The huge sprite of the gun itself. The first person aim down the sights view the shooter has leaves the shooter with zero visibility of everything in the center of the screen at and below the aimpoint. If you are trying for a headshot on a human sized target you literally can’t see nearly the entirety of what you are aiming for.
The glow. The gun barrel glows brightly as you charge your shots. This makes acquiring a headshot even more difficult as it creates a rapidly flickering glow right where your target is. Combined with the giant rifle sprite, it makes targeting a human sized target an exercise in guesswork. You Look, guess where your target will be in a second, aim and blindly fire. And either you guessed right and hit or you guessed wrong and missed.
Fixes
I don’t have an answer for this one without removing the charge functionality…which I honestly would not mind happening.
Make the charge shot only go off when you release the trigger. Obvious, really.
Move the gun sprite forwards a bit while in ADS mode. So it is smaller and takes up less screen. No real life gun is designed so that the shooter puts their face right up to the rear sight when aiming.
Reduce or remove the glowing barrel to improve visibility of the target. You could just make the gun’s receiver glow instead.
Bonus suggestion! When holding down the bayonet attack button, make it so the gun counts as blocking like the Bretonnian Longsword so that you have a way to parry melee attacks while fighting with the bayonet. That would be so cool and add some extra depth to bayonet fighting. Heck, why not go nuts and do this for all ranged weapons with a bayonet attack function?
Here’s an example of what i am talking about. Aiming for a headshot leaves the target almost completely obscured. imagine trying to do it during a chaotic battle!
Agreed. As it stands getting charged weak point hits reliably is almost impossible, and the bolter performs better in pretty much every situation. Kind of bonkers to design something to be used as a precision weapon and then give it terrible sights that are obscured by the charging effect. Getting off well-aimed shots in a low-visibility horde shooter is hard enough as it is.
I’d say all suggestions are worth considering and trying out. Then they should stay with what works well. For me personally, better sights/scope plus full charge shot on release of the trigger, would be enough. I would not mind really if they even put on it Anti-aicraft MG sights, as long as you can see your whole target while aiming for the head.
I’d still like to see the gun get some improvements, but I tried one with decent stats and a quick charge rate yesterday and it actually slapped through a match. I don’t think the trade off for worse weapon sights and slightly increased damage per shot is worth the slower effective fire rate, but it’s close to being competitive. It just needs a nudge.
Oh yeah the bayonet sucks - instead of a quick stab it has a super slow windup to the point where melee enemies will get a hit on you while you’re waiting for it to swing
@Lovetruffle: Yeah, lately I’ve been using one in most of my matches. Mostly because it’s cool rather than because it’s good.
It does at least have an advantage over other lasrifles in that it easily penetrates armor so VS armored enemies like the armored ogryn with the maul, you can benefit your team with quick kills. It’s just not good at all for accurately picking off enemies; which is what you’d expect it to be good at…
This was my first weapon of choice, I really enjoy it! it is difficult to use the sights for headshots because of the particle effect but luckily for me My style of shooting is flick shooting. I aim beside my target then flick over to headshot. Very effective and fun. I will go back to it from time to time to keep things fresh.
(Also it helps that I have a high stat roll on charge up and damage combined with the perk that ramps up charge time the longer you aim down sight)
That being said a few changes would be nice
once beam is charged, can hold onto as long as required
bayonet, the thrust animation is quite good (perhaps a little more damage). The swipe animation could be more usable (luckily you can still thrust when aiming down sight)
seems like it should have a 2x-4x power scope…but thats just me
and personally, Id like a perk or trait that allows it to penetrate…rail gun please lol
the only use i see is with more than one Veteran in a Group.
One brings Kantrael for sniping, one brings the Armour-Killer.
Plasma works fine, Bolter should work too, or Lucious.
But believe it or not, Lucious feels more clunky than even Plasma. Slow to fire, hard to Aim with, and it eats Ammo so better not miss.
I wish i could add a scope to it, then i would consider using it.
Yeah, you basically have to invent tricks to compensate for the inherent difficulties this gun presents when aiming. I personally often just fire from the hip with it. It’s more accurate than firing from the hip with the Kantrel lasgun and it may miss at times but at least I can see my target.
Been leveling a vet and played around a bit with a mk I hellbore I got. Visibility while charging is definitely an issue, as well as not being able to hold onto your charge shot. The thing that really kills it for me though is the lengthy equip animation. That makes sense as a balancing factor for bolter but I can’t for the life of me work out why this gun needs that hindrance. If you could pull it and immediately start charging a shot that’d probably be enough on its own for me to seriously consider it. Some of the other changes suggested here would be nice too though.
Does a high stability roll help the weapon sway much?
Kantrael is better in every way. A fully charged lucious does only a bit more damage than a normal kantrael shot.
Kantrael has better sights, better ammo, better damage, better rate of fire etc etc.
Lucious should be the heavy hitter of the lasguns but is one of the weakest.
