Oooh boy... well, here we go.
jwenting wrote:launcher and autolauncher are now extremely OVERpowered compared to other skills, especially in pvp battles.
To dispel a possible misconception first, ranged
has not been changed in all these years. It's still just as powerfull as it was 5 years ago. The only changes to ranged in those 5 years have been:
- The ammo is now stackable up to 999, rather than 40 for pistol, 3 for launcher, etc, that required you to manually reload all the time.
- The changes to stamina (that effected all weapons) have made pistol and rifle cost much less stamina than they did before, making them a little more viable.
That's it. No real rebalancing of ranged has ever occurred. The reason it's used so much more today than it was 3 years ago is simply because people *discovered* it's use in outpost battles.
It was just as powerful when outposts were introduced, just nobody realised it yet because we were all stuck in the "ranged is underpowered and useless" mindset.
blaah wrote:targets need to wear light armor.
Launchers are actually pretty good against medium or heavy armored players because their damage far overrides the max vs on armor. At level 250, a launcher does 1656 damage per shot, HA decreases that by 661 at the most; still 995 damage per shot. Far more than what a 2h axe will do to a HAed player.
norvic wrote:True you may have high burst damage under the right circumstances that a spell chucker could only dream of but that is limited (I carry 12 shots only in meduim)
Indeed, technically the high power of the big guns is balanced by the fact that you carry limited ammo. However, as we see at OP battles, currently this downside can be almost completely compensated for by bringing along your 3 packers all full of ammo and constantly following you. Ammo can be transferred from packers to bag instantaneously. The packers are pretty much untouchable and even make it harder for the enemy to target any healers that might also be behind you. Hence why people argue packers of OP-tagged people should also be attackable.
norvic wrote:Launcher/auto are not overpowered in PvP weighed up against the effort involved.
The reason it's considered overpowered is because, if you had an army of people who are 250 in everything, and ammo mats aren't an issue, the way to make your army the most powerful possible is to have
everybody use launcher in HA with 3 packers of ammo. No mix of skills, just everybody the same skill.
It doesn't matter how the enemy army has their roles distributed either, putting everybody on launcher would always be your best option. If that's not the definition of an overpowered skill, I don't know what is.
norvic wrote:Cant comment on pistol because only made 211 so far and not tried it much maybe Roland/Marelli/Kyerna could comment.
I feel pistol is the same as rifle here. Bit less range and less damage over time, but faster hpm so more interrupts. Principle is the same.
vonzuben wrote: It’s not a useful skill for most other things because it’s high maintenance.
So, ofcourse, all the above is discussing PvP. In PvE, which I assume the original poster is most interested in, ranged is still the same as it was 5 years ago; quite underpowered.
The reasons for the difference, I believe, are.
- Most PvE fights are stationary so the mobility that's an advantage of ranged is useless there.
- Mobs generally don't do any spellcasting that can be interrupted.
- Mobs generally have far higher physical protections than magic protections, and no damage limit on those physical protections.
- The AoE of the big guns is a liability in PvE, just attracting more aggro on you.