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I've been delaying finishing my campaign to unlock a bunch of end game toys like the Plasma Blaster, and boy is that thing a disappointment. I know Shredder guns (the ones that come with EXO Suits) are being nerfed, but the balance of all these items is wonky.

1) Shredder Gun - Free with an EXO Suit, easy to unlock in May-June, utterly godlike when you first get it, and still useful even in Sept and beyond, just for removing cover, shredding armor, and softening enemies up. EXO Suits with Shredder Gun are kind of broken, because they're straight up better than rockets, explody grenades, and saturation fire.

2) Shredder Cannon - The upgrade at Advanced Coil Tech of the Shredder Gun. If Shredder Guns are OP, then these are... beyond broken. They have a range that is like 1.5x visual range, you can hit unactivated pods. It's cover destruction is really good, shreds 4 armor, and does loads of damage. Probably the strongest action you can take in the game is firing a Shredder Cannon. At least they're expensive.

3) Plasma Blaster - Unlocked with Plasma tech, fires a single line medium range beam, kind of like null lance. Pretty much guaranteed to destroy cover, does +1 damage over Shredder Cannon, but doesn't shred armor and of course the number of enemies you can hit is way fewer. Far far weaker than Shredder Cannon, which is pretty odd given it's place in the tech tree and the cost to build them.

Anyways, seems like these three items need a pass to balance them against each other, and with the rest of the game.

Absolutely agreed on that with you.

Plasma Blaster was bad in Vanilla, Plasma Blaster is still bad in LW2
I actually never even bothered to equip the prototype!

I've only ever found the Plasma Blaster to be useful on a SPARK with Rainmaker. With a 3 tile width, it does a fairly good impression of a Shredstorm if you can't roll one up in Vanilla.

So basically PlasmaBlaster does the best environmental damage and slightly more regular damage (+1 over Shredstorm). However, Shredstorm and Shredder Gun shred armor, which is more valuable than the armor piercing effect on Plasma Blaster.

I've found the Plasma Blaster's 1 tile width to be the biggest drawback. It's difficult to consistently hit more than 1 enemy. It's the same problem I have with aiming Null Lances.

Tuhalu wrote:

Code: Select all

ShredderGun_BaseDamage =		(Damage=6, Spread = 2,	PlusOne = 50, Crit = 3, Pierce = 0, Shred=2, Tag = "", DamageType="Projectile_Conventional")
ShredstormCannon_BaseDamage =	(Damage=9, Spread = 2,	PlusOne = 50, Crit = 4, Pierce = 0, Shred=4, Tag = "", DamageType="Projectile_BeamXCom")
PlasmaBlaster_BaseDamage =		(Damage=10, Spread = 2, PlusOne = 50, Crit = 5, Pierce = 4, Shred=0, Tag = "", DamageType="Projectile_BeamXCom")

ShredderGun_iEnvironmentDamage = 12

PlasmaBlaster_iEnvironmentDamage = 25

ShredstormCannon_iEnvironmentDamage = 17

So basically PlasmaBlaster does the best environmental damage and slightly more regular damage (+1 over Shredstorm). However, Shredstorm and Shredder Gun shred armor, which is more valuable than the armor piercing effect on Plasma Blaster.

Yeah, but the really big difference is the range and cone size. Plasma blaster has shorter range in a single tile line, while Shredder Cannon is well beyond visual range, and has a pretty fat cone shape.

Yep. The 1 tile width is annoying (and restrictive of how many enemies you can get), but guessing which tile you need to stand in to hit the maximum number of targets is always annoying, no matter what size or shape the template is.

Tuhalu wrote:Yep. The 1 tile width is annoying (and restrictive of how many enemies you can get), but guessing which tile you need to stand in to hit the maximum number of targets is always annoying, no matter what size or shape the template is.

Geeze, I'm glad I'm not the only one - trying to use any kind of cover and a cone based attack with an enemy attached to that some cover is frustrating to say the least. I basically resigned myself to only really using it for max enemies if I can stop in the open, at least 1 tile from the first enemy and then command move that soldier after the fact in to some cover.

Out of curiosity how do you know they are being nerfed?
I don't see it in the patch notes.

Also they are pretty useful when fighting off large pods of 20 - 30 guys at once in swarming.

The|suit wrote:Out of curiosity how do you know they are being nerfed?
I don't see it in the patch notes.

Also they are pretty useful when fighting off large pods of 20 - 30 guys at once in swarming.

JolNrbs mentioned it on his twitch stream, not sure what form the nerf will take.

Any info on 1.3 realse date? I have just finish my campaing. That became a vanila experience by the end. Cannons just obliterate the whole map. I would like to start again and meet some challange.

The hitting unactivated pod thing seems very overpowered. It's like having your saturation fire stealth opening repeatedly.

Notintheface wrote:The hitting unactivated pod thing seems very overpowered. It's like having your saturation fire stealth opening repeatedly.

As far as I can tell, the shredder gun and cannon have the same range and area... am I missing something?

dstar3k wrote:

Notintheface wrote:The hitting unactivated pod thing seems very overpowered. It's like having your saturation fire stealth opening repeatedly.

As far as I can tell, the shredder gun and cannon have the same range and area... am I missing something?

Long War 2 attempts to change the template of the Shredstorm Cannon, but fails. It's the same width as the Shred Gun, but with a lot more range, resulting in a weapon capable of taking out pods beyond visual range.

Tuhalu wrote:

dstar3k wrote:

Notintheface wrote:The hitting unactivated pod thing seems very overpowered. It's like having your saturation fire stealth opening repeatedly.

As far as I can tell, the shredder gun and cannon have the same range and area... am I missing something?

Long War 2 attempts to change the template of the Shredstorm Cannon, but fails. It's the same width as the Shred Gun, but with a lot more range, resulting in a weapon capable of taking out pods beyond visual range.

Ah, so it's got a longer range than the gun does despite both showing the same range in the ui?

dstar3k wrote:

Tuhalu wrote:

dstar3k wrote:
As far as I can tell, the shredder gun and cannon have the same range and area... am I missing something?

Long War 2 attempts to change the template of the Shredstorm Cannon, but fails. It's the same width as the Shred Gun, but with a lot more range, resulting in a weapon capable of taking out pods beyond visual range.

Ah, so it's got a longer range than the gun does despite both showing the same range in the ui?

I don't know about you, buy my shredstorm cannons highlight tiles out to a crazy long range in the UI, and do indeed hit things that are highlighted.

stefan3iii wrote:

dstar3k wrote:

Tuhalu wrote: Long War 2 attempts to change the template of the Shredstorm Cannon, but fails. It's the same width as the Shred Gun, but with a lot more range, resulting in a weapon capable of taking out pods beyond visual range.

Ah, so it's got a longer range than the gun does despite both showing the same range in the ui?

I don't know about you, buy my shredstorm cannons highlight tiles out to a crazy long range in the UI, and do indeed hit things that are highlighted.

I think he meant tooltips.

stefan3iii wrote:

dstar3k wrote:

Tuhalu wrote: Long War 2 attempts to change the template of the Shredstorm Cannon, but fails. It's the same width as the Shred Gun, but with a lot more range, resulting in a weapon capable of taking out pods beyond visual range.

Ah, so it's got a longer range than the gun does despite both showing the same range in the ui?

I don't know about you, buy my shredstorm cannons highlight tiles out to a crazy long range in the UI, and do indeed hit things that are highlighted.

I literally just ran into this... had to do a 0% supply mission, started out with an 8 man pod visible on the screen as I spawned, and when I tried to kill them with an SC, I activated two other pods, or maybe three. That was not a fun mission. (I lie. It was a hell of a lot of fun.)