Reduce the detonation timer to be near instant on contact, like half a second or so.
That’s all.
Every second counts in gun fight and by the time that a player identifies a situation in which to use smoke grenades, the enemy guns are usually already in the process of being aimed at the player. From there on it takes about 3 whole seconds for the smoke grenade to actually detonate, plenty of time to lose all toughness or for the team to position themselves away where they’re unlikely to utilize the smoke grenade.
The bigger problem being that in this small time period the enemies will start attacking and the smoke grenade does not interrupt enemies if they’re already in the process of attacking. Gunners, snipers, reapers, etc… are all capable of shooting through the smoke, so I believe the sooner the player is able to get the smoke out the less likely it is that’ll happen.
What I’m suggesting is a simple change that should be simpler to implement as opposed to changing enemy AI to stop themselves whenever smoke comes out, or whatever crazy buffs some people have come up with.
It’d also be cool if grenade tinkerer made the AoE bigger instead of/in addition to 30s which is usually not relevant besides events. I also think it should have 30s recharge time/10% drop chance on elite or special kill and have a second grenade detonate after the first smoke grenade ends with those nodes.
A shorter fuse time wouldn‘t hurt the krak grenade either.
While doing the vet penance, it became pretty obvious, that the fuse time of krak nades is also too long.
So long, that it is quite common for the enemy to be killed by someone else, before the grenade blows up.
Other grenades have a considerable aoe, so they are not really used to deal with a specific target and it is not likely for all potential targets to die before the grenade goes off.
However, the krak grenade has a small aoe (which is fine) and homes in on specific targets.
When that specific target is taken down in the meantime, the grenade is wasted.
Kraks should blow up much faster, if they are attached to carapace armor.
I suffered through that for many months, but at least you have more than 2 of those.
Then again, the target gets a shiny blue mark and teammates still focus them down like their life depends on it, which comes with its own frustration.
Yeah… Every Emperor damned time. Add to it that I’m trying to pop enemy with Disrupt Destiny and if you listen carefuly you can hear my autistic screeching traveling though warp…
