Commando Archive
Thread: HAR broken? I think it's the flamer that is bugged really
OK, having aquainted myself with these weapons today with a marathon amount of play time I have to say that aside from the accuracy mods for the HAR not stacking which is an annoyance on the whole it's not a bad weapon at all. Indeed the aiming is a pain however that is something I can see them easily hotfixing sometime soon now that player cities and mounts are done with. When using the flamer though I noticed that it really does have a several disadvantage without its specials, on the whole heat resistances is so common that your often never causing as much damage as you could be. Yet.... as we have seen the enemies quite literally drop like a sack of potatoes once you have them burning.
This is where I think the problem is in reguards to people thinking that the HAR is useless. The flamer should be hampered by it's heat damage limitation however the BURN DOT is recognised as a BLEED and thus bypasses all of the defences the critter has. This should not be happening as something which is 100% heat resistance shouldn't suffer from burns at all. If you corrected this oversight whereby the burn is actually effected by heat resistances then you'd start seeing the HAR becoming alot more viable a weapon since almost every species and enemy has a weakness to acid damage.
So rather than asking for the HAR to be rebalanced I think that the devs need only correct the burning to be effected by heat resistance, that would solve a huge gap in their effectiveness which I honestly think is a bug where the designer didn't think to seperate bleeding dot from burn dot.
OK, if you take a pairing of a HAR and Flamer with 400-800 damage. With 4.0 for the flamer and 5.0 seconds for the HAR then it works out that indeed yes the Flamer comes out with more damage per second.
However.... the issue is that you're dealing with two radically different damage types. If you just look around at the game you'd see that many enemies has a vulnerability to Acid meaning that acid damage totally bypasses all of their armor and resistances. Thus when you compare the functionality of the HAR and the Flamer you'd see that while the HAR is slower it makes up for that by being used in more situations, in fact if you look at a Rancor then by all accounts the flamethrower should be totally useless while the HAR would be one of the few weapons to make a significant dent.
But that isn't how things work. If you hit a Rancor with flame1, flame2, flamecone1 and flamecone2 then you end up causing no initial damage however the damage over time burn will reduce them to ashes within a minute. But it's 100% heat resistant.. it shouldn't burn! So the problem as I see thing is that the flamer DOT is bugged, it's working like a normal bleed which bypasses the armor and resistances. If you were to remove that bugged DOT and fix the accuracy skill mods than the HAR instantly becomes viable and a perfect counterpart to the flamer.
As for needing to be light armor piercing... no need, if it's acid vulnerable then the damage will go past everything (even heavy armor) and if it isn't then you have the flamer and launcher pistol to fall back on. The whole reason why the DX2 and such has AP1 is because they are a multi-purpose weapon for a very specialized profession. The commando however is designed to have a multitude of weapons for every situation so each weapon is designed for a fixed purpose.
The ONLY multi-purpose weapon we have is the Launcher pistol, and that is where I'd like to see some armor penetrating qualities.
here's the problem with your comparision between the two...
go back in time, to before the last patch.
ask ANY pistoleer how often they used an FWG5. then ask how often they used a DX2.
or, if you want better data... ask weaponsmiths how many FWG5's they sold, compared to DX2's.
AP0 heat FWG5's were a lot more commonly used than AP1 acid DX2's, and not just because of krayt enhancement.
there are LOTS of mobs that resist acid. there are also a lot that resist heat. you have to pick your weapon based on your target. NOVICE commandos can choose between blast, heat, stun, and energy already (never forget your marksman skills), with AP ranging from 0-2.
Tal-N wrote:If you corrected this oversight whereby the burn is actually effected by heat resistances then you'd start seeing the HAR becoming alot more viable a weapon since almost every species and enemy has a weakness to acid damage.
Almost every species and enemy has a weakness to acid?
Forgive my contempt but have you been off a starting planet? Quite a few NPCs and creatures have acid resistances. Go to datooine. There are plenty of acid resist creatures there. Different types of the same species may have varying levels of effectiveness / special protection, but there most definately is not enough of them to use the phrase "almost every".
Consider that in addition to the insult that we have one of the ONLY non-AP1 acid based weapons, and I'm pretty sure you'll see the HAR could use some fixing.
Almost every species and enemy has a weakness to acid?... Forgive my contempt but have you been off a starting planet?
To name a few things from hunting yesturday, the Kwi guardians are 80% resistant to everything by Acid damage. Rancor are vulnerable to alot of things but acid is one of their weaknesses and there are actually alot of others. There is of course species which are resistant, mainly insect and poisonous species. One of the Voriter lizards we went huting yesturday were 80% resistant to it but the others of the species had a weakness to that but resisted heat. Being a Bio-engineer on another server from my commando character I know that there are many wild species that are vulnerable to acid or are weaker against it, take a look around sometime and you'll see what i mean.
Tal-N wrote:
The flamer should be hampered by it's heat damage limitation however the BURN DOT is recognised as a BLEED and thus bypasses all of the defences the critter has.
I am not sure why you think the flame thrower should not be put in with other bleeds but if they ever fix the bug with bleeds ignoring resistances then it will also fix the flamethrowers bleed.
OK, so you want proof. I'll come back tomorrow and post a list of critters and enemieswhich have resistance to fire but are vulnerable to acid. This isn't trolling, this is trying to get you people to realise that there's more to weapons than damage per second, HAM costs and accuracy.
It'a kinda pathetic when a community of combat players accuse someone of trolling when they should understand their enemies and know this to be a fact anyway.
OK, having aquainted myself with these weapons today with a marathon amount of play time I have to say that aside from the accuracy mods for the HAR not stacking which is an annoyance on the whole it's not a bad weapon at all.
Ok I accept your honest evaluation and your right to have your opinion. I also applaud your courage to state what you believe as the results of your observations. I however, respectfully disagree. The HAR is a broken weapon from top to bottom. Accuracy, damage, cool down time, specials, range, lack of AP, terribleanimationsetc. Thesemake it a BROKEN weapon not just a underused weapon or misunderstood weapon.
In concept we should have a powerful weapon to attack any vulnerability including vulnerability to acid. I want to point out in this context that the HEAVY ACID RIFLE is the only acid weapon with no AP ability and it has no DoT. I would agree with Maddogs that the HAR should be a weapon along the line of the LLC.
Comparing the HAR to the FT is like comparing apples to oranges. As I stated earlier we should have HEAVY weapons that attack all vulnerabilites. They should all be powerful. Gutting the FT to make the HAR look better is ridiculous on the face of it. They should both be powerful, relatively quick to use on regular attacks, a sweet spot of about 36m, and the HAR should have no less than AP 2.
If anything the HAR should be more like the FT and not the other way around.
The HAR is a broken weapon from top to bottom. Accuracy, damage, cool down time, specials, range, lack of AP, terribleanimationsetc. Thesemake it a BROKEN weapon not just a underused weapon or misunderstood weapon.
Frankly a 'broken' weapon would be something which cannot be used and isn't even remotely combat effective. The accuracy yes is a problem, however going to within 25m and crouching means that even without theAR1 box I'm hitting around 2/3 of the time which is around the same as a novice rifleman. So on that front it's still hitting decently but it's limited to only used as a support weapon. The damage itself is actually very good, mine easily hits for around 1100 damage without specials almost each time every 3-4 seconds. Having just gotten AR1 and the first special attack (acidsingle 1)I agree the cooldown time is horrendous for the damage it causes. Massive 12 seconds of cooldown time and the damage typically is around 4000-6000 which is more or less the same that I cause over the 12 second period with normal fire.
The range is indeed a problem, since I have to be within avery close proximity to the target to even get a +0 range modifier. I'm not going to debate that issue cause I agree it's something which bothers me too. The terrible animations? if you mean the generally poor 'feel' of such a beefy looking weapon then I agree but thats really aesthetics. The fact is has no AP isn't really an issue as I see it, but thats something I'm gonna cover in a large topic I'm gonna post.
In concept we should have a powerful weapon to attack any vulnerability including vulnerability to acid.
Not true, no single weapon or line of skills within a profession should give you carte blanche coverage of all enemies. The commando as a whole does indeed give the player full access to EVERY damage type as it is. I'm gonna cover this more in detail in another topic I'm gonna start but ultimately a master commando should get an advantage over someone who dabbles. In this case a master commando can cause large amounts of damage in every type of damage in the entire game.
If however I have misunderstood you and you're saying we should have a weapon for each I'll point out that we already do in the form of grenades and disposable weapons.
If anything the HAR should be more like the FT and not the other way around.
I'm not suggesting that the FT be like the HAR, I'm saying that every weapon within commando has it's place but because burns are not reduced or defended against by heat protection then it becomes a universally damaging weapon. The way to look at it is this... the FT from looking at it's accuracy and such is a heavy version of the launcher pistol. It's designed to be an alternative commando's solo weapon. The HAR looks like it's designed to a group support weapon. Requiring you to get a decent aim in as you exploit the very common acid vulnerabilities. Once they fix the burn dot to not ignore resistances and let them fix the accuract skill mods then I think you'll start seeing the HAR becoming more viable instantly.
But anyway I'm gonna cover this in more detail for another topic cause there's no single thing I can say here which summerizes a few points I think people should be aware of.