[SUGGESTION] Electro balls popping on impact

Personally I think the electro is just right the way it is currently.

This.

Yep. Electro is just right imo.

So you guys think that the electro balls never being used intentionally as a direct attack is acceptable? I understand not wanting to change the balance of the weapon for fear of breaking things, but does it really seem right that the electro balls are never used as an attack unless it's on accident, and in their current state impede the combo functionality of the weapon?

Idk, doesn't seem right that we would preserve the orb attack that no one uses for the sake of not changing things. All the while great accuracy and player prediction is being punished when it should be rewarded, imo.

What irks me most about the electro is the ease of which you can use it to spam corridors on maps to keep people out. Good duelers are almost always going to know where an opponent is and will be going, making it very easy to simply pop a few balls off in a hallway as you pass, which if you run into will completely obliterate your armor and most of your hp simply because of the insane amount of damage they do, and in a game like Xon with maps small enough that you can gain a 5 frag lead off spawn frags alone (especially when you can spawn in the same spot multiple times). With the speed you get in xon its also not as simple as turning around and avoiding the shot, especially since the range will still hit you for almost as much. It reminds me of people spamming nades in QL duels, but those travel far slower and don't explode for a while or unless you run directly into the nade. I feel its only going to get worse as we gain better map knowledge, and its getting very annoying.

imo range needs to be lowered and damage needs to be nerfed to be something more deserving of what it is, a spam weapon.

So you guys think that the electro balls never being used intentionally as a direct attack is acceptable? I understand not wanting to change the balance of the weapon for fear of breaking things, but does it really seem right that the electro balls are never used as an attack unless it's on accident, and in their current state impede the combo functionality of the weapon?

Idk, doesn't seem right that we would preserve the orb attack that no one uses for the sake of not changing things. All the while great accuracy and player prediction is being punished when it should be rewarded, imo.

But they are used as a direct attack. Probably not by the pro players, but I've seen many ppl shooting electro balls just as grenades (and not attempting to make a combo shot at all).

Plus others have pointed out in this topic that there are reasonable tactics to use the secondary as is.

Think warpig you need to see it as, primary is the projectiles, and the main purpose of the secondary is for the combo, the balls do some damage anyway, but because the whole purpose of the secondary is the combo and it does great damage I really think it's fine.

Think warpig you need to see it as, primary is the projectiles, and the main purpose of the secondary is for the combo, the balls do some damage anyway, but because the whole purpose of the secondary is the combo and it does great damage I really think it's fine.

Yeah, I agree. I'm saying that the balls bursting on impact limits combo use. If you think it's fine the way it is, I can accept that. I just think it could be better and more reliable.


Another food for thought, if the electro is OP as others have suggested, and the combo damage were to be nerfed, then shooting the opponent directly with the secondary fire would be a viable option(assuming that the average combo damage was nerfed to below 120). I'm ok with this(IF the electro is in fact op) as it would preserve current combo use, while still rewarding accuracy.

If combo damage were to be toned down, please make it exclude ability to combo with a single ball, usually in mid-air, as if it were toned down too, it would become pointless. Maybe do some diminishing returns on how much dmg increases with number of balls.

A bit offf topic but still not that far away:

Last week I ve been playing quite often (especially dm) and I've noticed that there are guys who are specialized in using electro. Ok, THAT was euphemizm. They run around the map and spam the electro so much (they usually are beginners who are experienced only in electro weapon) easily getting frag after frag.

It seems a litlle concerning (when it comes to the weapon balance) for me. As an experienced player I can put up and easily deal with them. But what about the beginners? What they should do?

'grab electro and fight with them! Electro vs electro is the best way!' sound naive and its pretty wrong.
'run away!' is pretty stupid , cause to run away you have to be incredibly fast taking into consideration the range of nicely done electro combo!
'if you see a guy charging with electro - disconnect immediately.' this is the best piece of advice I can give you.

Not sure why am I writing it down here. Probably because I also was a victim of mad players spamming electro combos all around the level. Whats very funny: Electro becomes pretty useless weapon in duels against experienced guys.

What I suggest is:

Deathmatch is home to spammy weapons. In my experience, the crylink dominates in DM. It deals great damage while using little ammo. The electro uses a lot of ammo. DM is difficult for judging weapon balance. because a weapon like the nex, which is a godly weapon in 1v1, does a slower dpm thus making it impractical in comparison. A spammy weapon will dominate because you have multiple targets to take out at once, and killing as many people as quickly as possible is the goal.

Personally, I think balancing any weapon based on DM is a bad idea because it will affect better game modes, like CTF and 1v1. I've never been able to take DM seriously because of the dominance of the spam weapons.

DM FFA is spammy normally, specially with some of the maps on the public servers in Xonotic (simply not big enough), as if were being honest, at this moment in time Xonotic lacks good med-large well designed (structually) DM maps (not competitive one's per se but in general). Most of the enclosed maps are too small for 16 player use, I've got no problem with maps with tight corridors and some space as long as there suited for 8-16 player gameplay and not like 2-4 players.

Please don't tone the damage down Samual!

The shock rifle in UT is exactly the same, a lot of noobs use that (and the good players, but they can dodge it a lot), and they use the Flak as it's easy to use and strong, and never hear a problem with them weapons and that game is over 11 years old and the shock combo is ridiculously strong. Always going to have these situations, never going to balance it out completely, if everything was completely balanced, it wouldn't be any fun.

At the end of the day, yes the combo is strong, but you have to hit pretty much exactly right to do the possible 190 damage, how often is this going to happen? Not very often, if you make it less strong, all the times you do 80-120 odd damage now would end up being like 50-90, as I said before, there's nothing more annoying then people walking through well place predicted shots with a weapon that then get's made too weak. I compare it with the UT shock rifle, as it acts similarly, and also does what feels to me similar type of damage.

Anyway, I've gone way off topic! I'd leave it as it is for now, I think Samual did a excellent job on the damage output of it.

It's funny you mention UT. The balance in UT is very different, it seems to follow the idea to "make every weapon OP". In UT you can almost 1 shot someone(with a good stack) with nearly every weapons. The Shock Rifle, LG, Rockets, Flak, and Bio Rifle are all extremely powerful weapons. However, the dodging and shield gun were very effective techniques for avoiding certain death.

As for the balance of the Electro, I don't think the verdict is in. Some people believe it is theoretically OP, and a few can tell anecdotes in which the weapon has dominated the match. But in my experience, everyone that plays doesn't comment on it being OP(which is usually the obvious sign that something is OP). At this point, it seems like a rebalancing would be jumping the gun.

"make every weapon OP"

Now there's a nice idea for a mutator ;-D.

OH SHIZ the secret is out

I don't have time to read all this now, just flew over a couple of posts. In any case I wouldn't change a bit about the electro. Yes, it's a weapon you can do a lot of damage with in dm. Electro simply is a weapon that you can use for huge splash damage which is especially useful against a bunch of players that are close together - which is something very likely to happen in deathmatch. In other game modes it is something that you NEED a weapon for that's able to deal with, think about rushing for the flag or escaping with it. Plus you can use other weapons very effectively in dm, too, like the Crylink which I have fond memories of using in ffa dm on stormkeep for example. Electro's ecological niche is setting up traps that do a lot of damage with reasonable splash. It takes time to set it up, and that pretty much compensates for the damage reward. That way it also is one of the few weapons that enable you to regain control in duels, setting up an electro trap at the spawn time of a mega item at the right time is one of the best strategies to counter a fully stacked dueller in control of the map.

Bottom line is I don't see a reason to change anything about the electro and would even oppose any changes to it.

I just reread this entire thread replacing the word "balls" with "testicles" LMAO!!

e.g. when I fire my balls at people they tend to explode when my opponant has hopped over them.

e.g. if I shoot my balls at my opponants balls...is that gay?

e.g.if i fire down at my own balls can i jump really high?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OMFG
You get me crying there

+1

should i make a poll ?