Serial Nerfs

[chrisb]

So, I seem to be in a nerfing mindsite this morning so I thought I would throw Serial under the bus now that I've shot all my Gunners!

Serial I think we can all agree, if used properly, is incredibly broken. The simple fact that you can theoretically drop 24 aliens in 1 turn is completely absurd. Making it a 7-turn cooldown really does nothing to balance this perk, you could make it a 70-turn cooldown and the only difference would be how long you spend waiting for it on waterworld

I was listening to JoINrbs mention it briefly in a recent video he put out. He highlighted the point that Serial is only really OP if you know how to use it effectively. The other options, for less skilled players may be more attractive simply because they 'just work' and don't require a lot of tactical knowledge and setup to use effectively. And to this I agree. But the part I don't agree with is that balancing this perk from it's current incarnation is hard.

In a time long ago, when I swore we kicked the aliens ass, we had a lovely little perk called In The Zone. It was just like Serial with 3 differences. It required a flanked/exposed target, each kill reduced the damage and crit chance of the next shot and there were no autoloaders! This made it still quite powerful, but was not always an autopick. There was a place for double tap, though I'm not sure mayhem seen much love.

I could imagine Serial being changed to something like this.

• 5-turn Cooldown
• -1 Dmg, -10% crit after every successful kill.

I think the change to 5-turn CD is mostly just a QOL change. I really don't think a 7-turn CD does anything but make you wait around for 2-3 turns after the battle is over for it to come back up in untimed missions. In timed missions or retals you probably only get to use it once regardless. I find it's more of an annoyance than any sort of balance since most engagements are typically over with in 3-4 turns, then you can just sit back and wait for it to come off CD. I suppose there are probably a couple of mission types where it makes a difference, but on those I'd typically want 2 Serial snipers anyway.

The dmg/crit debuff was what really put some semblance of balance into ITZ. The flanking part mostly made it kind of gimmicky and simply made it reliant on cover destruction to be useful at all. You normally want that anyway as it makes for more 100% shots. The dmg/crit debuff would be plenty to give it some balance.

[LordYanaek]

This is exactly how Reaper works now and i don't really understand why Serial keeps doing full damage. The logic is probably the clip size limit but this logic is put to failure by autoloaders. The side effect is that autoloaders must either stay crappy as they are now (wasting them on first useless reloads) or be overpowered if fixed to work in a sensible way (as per -bg-'s mod where you use them when you need them).

I would be totally favorable to nerfing Serial as you describe and fixing Autoloaders along the way.

Oh BTW i did use Mayhem (now Alpha Mike Foxtrot) because it's a reliable increase in damage every turn. A crit DfA nest sniper with AMF will only kill one bad guy per turn but he will kill the big bad guy every turn and aim again for the next turn so it's an extremely reliable build as long as you can find some high ground. Very few enemies can resist a crit from such a build and they crit pretty reliably even behind full cover so the idea is to stack damage to ensure every shot is a kill. "One shot, one kill".

[chrisb]

Yup, outside of serial, snipers are a reliable 1 shot, 1 kill. And they spec well into pistols, especially with AMF.

I'm mostly fine with how autoloaders are now. I find that most of the timed missions barely run through an adv autoloader. And longer missions tend to have a massive brawl for about 5 turns, then your down to 1-2 pods left which are easy pickings. I remember when I first got one in my first campaign and thought the same thing, would be nice if I could choose when to use it. But I realize now that would be quite unbalanced especially with mags to match. 24+ shots without an action spent on reloading is already a little crazy.

[LordYanaek]

I guess they can be useful on timed missions where your squad can't spend a round to reload if the entire squad has autoloaders but for me that's about it. If a single soldier doesn't have a free reload he will lag behind and chances are the rest of the squad will end up wasting a move to wait for him and thus won't be better than manually reloading. Admittedly i never had a full squad equipped with autoloaders to keep moving on non concealed timed missions such as VIP extraction (but past the early game i mostly stealthed those with 2-3 shinobi scouts anyway).

The latest video i watched from xwynns (the Smash and Grab preview) was a fine example. After the first fight he reloaded with most of his soldiers but didn't reload with the gunner who had used a single shot to avoid wasting the free reload. When the next pod showed up he wanted to use demolition (5 ammo in 1.3) so he had to reload anyway and used the free reload for a single bullet, then used demolition and was left with an empty magazine and no free reload. With a T1 mag he would have reloaded at the same time as everyone, used 5/6 with demolition and still would have 1 bullet left. This is exactly how i feel each time i try to use autoloaders without -bg-'s fix.

I think they are currently impossible to balance simply because of how they interact with Serial. With your proposed nerf you'll never take 24 shots as you'll eventually end up doing no damage and Autoloaders will become convenient but not overpowered. Currently they are useless or overpowered but never balanced.

[aedn]

I would rather have them buff double tap, and possibly AMF by another point of damage, to make them more useful compared to serial. A simple fix to autoloaders resolves the limited scenario issue of serial killing 10+ enemies in a single turn.

Serial in most cases is not that bad, you need to setup a scenario in which its going to work, by doing damage to aliens/advent prior to using it(past the early game), and it has a cooldown that limits its use to once or twice per mission for the most part. Obviously on non timed missions, you can abuse its cooldown, but that can be done with any perk in the game, and really comes down to the player more then the game itself.

Where serial is broken is that autoloaders can be used multiple times per turn, and coupled with extended mags you can get an extremely large number of kills in a single turn if you stage a quality activation on multiple pods at once. To me the simple solution seems to be to put a cooldown on autoloaders. This solves the autoloader/serial spam issue, while still leaving them to be a viable option on most weapons, as in most cases you wont need to reload every combat round, so a simple 1 turn cooldown eliminates the 10-15 kill scenarios with the perk.

[chrisb]

A once per turn limit on autoloaders would sort of work, but that would still leave you with 6-12 kills depending on mag size. Most of my snipers at least go Scope/Mag/Auto. And although I mentioned 24 being theoretical, that's nearly impossible. By the time your hitting MSGT you've typically got Adv Mags which means you can still kill 10 per turn, which is the most you normally would get anyway, so it really doesn't affect the perk at all.

I could see buffing double tap to take away the -10 aim on the second shot. Not really sure why it has that anyway. A MSGT sniper would typically have 120+ aim, so even the -10 is going to be above 110.

Buffing AMF more is kinda tricky. Your already getting up to +7 damage with pistols, does Faceoff really need more damage?

[fowlJ]

Buffing AMF more is kinda tricky. Your already getting up to +7 damage with pistols, does Faceoff really need more damage?

Does AMF actually work with pistols? Both it and Lethal specifically call out "additional points of base damage with your primary weapon.", where Centre Mass just says "You do one additional point of base damage when using guns."

[darkerevent]

Where serial is broken is that autoloaders can be used multiple times per turn, and coupled with extended mags you can get an extremely large number of kills in a single turn if you stage a quality activation on multiple pods at once. To me the simple solution seems to be to put a cooldown on autoloaders. This solves the autoloader/serial spam issue, while still leaving them to be a viable option on most weapons, as in most cases you wont need to reload every combat round, so a simple 1 turn cooldown eliminates the 10-15 kill scenarios with the perk.

QFT. My partner has turned this style of activation and clearing into an art form.

Making it so that autoloaders can only be used once per turn would fix the edge case in which they are overpowered: multi-activations (e.g. on 0% supply raids) engineered to give the sharpshooter ~20 kills in a single turn.

Notably, this would fix the edge case without screwing up normal usage of the autoloader, which for essentially any other character never needs to be activated more than once per turn. (While you're at it, maybe throw in the option to reload manually without wasting the autoloader free action if nothing else is going on, as that's just a good QoL change for autoloaders in general.)

I should add, however, that extreme Serial abuse would also be a lot harder to set up if Shredstorm Cannons were balanced (i.e., if they had their range nerfed), so that's something to consider too.

I think that with Shredcannons nerfed into line and auto loaders restricted to once per turn, Serial would likely be fine enough with no damage falloff.

[Sax2514]

Serial is my preferred perk from vanilla game. If it will be nerfed, I don't think I can continue to play LW2 anymore.

[Autoclave]

I don't see the benefits of killing trash with the sniper when i have plenty of other classes good at doing just that. Technicals, Grenadiers, Rangers or even Gunners with supression/saturation fire.

Since assaults are so extremely situational in this game because advancing into fog of war means more pods activating, Gunners are the only alternative to double tap in dealing with big threats. And then your gunner is out of position and you are left with only your sniper to deal with the big threat.

[Notintheface]

I don't see the benefits of killing trash with the sniper when i have plenty of other classes good at doing just that. Technicals, Grenadiers, Rangers or even Gunners with supression/saturation fire.

Since assaults are so extremely situational in this game because advancing into fog of war means more pods activating, Gunners are the only alternative to double tap in dealing with big threats. And then your gunner is out of position and you are left with only your sniper to deal with the big threat.

Nothing else clears trash as well as serial IMO. All the AOE you mentioned require the enemies to be grouped fairly tightly. Serial can clear things from all around the map. You can control the big threats with other methods while clearing trash with serial. Better than using the sniper to double tap the big threat and trying to use the rest of the team to clear 6-10 guys all around.

[chrisb]

I don't see the benefits of killing trash with the sniper when i have plenty of other classes good at doing just that. Technicals, Grenadiers, Rangers or even Gunners with supression/saturation fire.

Since assaults are so extremely situational in this game because advancing into fog of war means more pods activating, Gunners are the only alternative to double tap in dealing with big threats. And then your gunner is out of position and you are left with only your sniper to deal with the big threat.

Nothing else clears trash as well as serial IMO. All the AOE you mentioned require the enemies to be grouped fairly tightly. Serial can clear things from all around the map. You can control the big threats with other methods while clearing trash with serial. Better than using the sniper to double tap the big threat and trying to use the rest of the team to clear 6-10 guys all around.

Also none of these classes clear 15+ hp 'trash' to the tune of 10-15 in a single turn. A fully equipped sniper can land 25+ dmg crits over 50% of the time. This is what balanced ITZ. You lost damage and crit chance with each kill. Your first couple of kills were easy, after that you had to start weakening them with other soldiers, then taking the kill shot with the Sniper/Jaeger.

It is a very skill-capped perk. It's really easy to waste Serial on 0 kills repeatedly. Typically you want those Gunner/Technical/Grenadier to destroy cover so you have flank shots that push your crit chance to near 100%. If you build some of your squad around Serial, it's a super power.

[Veneficus]

Quit trying to nerf the sharpshooters, they are already under powered compared to the Shinobi, Gunner, and Grenader.

[LordYanaek]

Buffing AMF more is kinda tricky. Your already getting up to +7 damage with pistols, does Faceoff really need more damage?

Does AMF actually work with pistols? Both it and Lethal specifically call out "additional points of base damage with your primary weapon.", where Centre Mass just says "You do one additional point of base damage when using guns."

No. AMF only works with the Primary Weapon (unless the description is wrong but i would suspect if it works with pistol then it's a bug).

A 1 turn CD on Free Reload would certainly help avoid some abuses.
Another option would be to simply prevent free-reload to work with serial (similar to how you can't trigger Close Encounters after R&G) so you could use the free reload before you start the serial run (to guarantee you have a full mag) but once you start Serial you can empty your magazine but not reload and keep going. This would definitely solve the mass murder situations as you could kill 6 targets but not more. Without coding some weird interaction this could actually be part of how autoloaders work : you could use them whenever you want but only as your first action on the turn. That's when you'll want to use them most of the time anyway (before you shoot).

[chrisb]

Buffing AMF more is kinda tricky. Your already getting up to +7 damage with pistols, does Faceoff really need more damage?

Does AMF actually work with pistols? Both it and Lethal specifically call out "additional points of base damage with your primary weapon.", where Centre Mass just says "You do one additional point of base damage when using guns."

No. AMF only works with the Primary Weapon (unless the description is wrong but i would suspect if it works with pistol then it's a bug).

A 1 turn CD on Free Reload would certainly help avoid some abuses.
Another option would be to simply prevent free-reload to work with serial (similar to how you can't trigger Close Encounters after R&G) so you could use the free reload before you start the serial run (to guarantee you have a full mag) but once you start Serial you can empty your magazine but not reload and keep going. This would definitely solve the mass murder situations as you could kill 6 targets but not more. Without coding some weird interaction this could actually be part of how autoloaders work : you could use them whenever you want but only as your first action on the turn. That's when you'll want to use them most of the time anyway (before you shoot).

I don't know this for sure, I haven't tested it enough yet, but I think many of the perks that say Primary Weapon actually do work with pistols even though they maybe shouldn't. I'm not 100% on this, but I've heard people mention it before, could be just a case of misinformation.

As for free reloads, that could balance Serial quite a bit. It was ultimately what balanced ITZ in LW1, you simply ran out of ammo before you could clear the map. If you have the autoloader you can simply reload on the start of next turn, if you don't you can reload after the last kill. Having Serial capped at 6 kills is not a bad compromise. On short missions your still clearing 25% or more of the map, on longer missions you can often use it 2 or 3 times or afford to take a second Serial with you.

[Autoclave]

I don't remember any perks stating wrong facts in regards to pistols.
Pistols benefit from hunter instincts and center mass. And they are both worded in a way that it's clear that it's not just primary weapons.
Locked on, Lethal, Alpha Mike Foxtrot, you can read form description that they dont work with pistols.

[chrisb]

Sure, but tooltips have a habit of not matching reality. If someone can show the code for them, or prove it by actually using a pistol with those perks, then I'll believe that. Tooltips are devious critters.