Ben Richards wrote...
1) Yes "technically", but at reduced damage and only with the right Ammo Type/Weapon Mod/Cover Thickness. Smash basically exerts its full utility whatever the case.
2) Edit - nvm too tired.
3) That is true. But it is sometimes the case where constantly priming/detonating a stong target is the most effective way to take out an entire mob particularly in choke points like on FBW and FBG. Another utility thing which doesn't necessarily mean that the Piranha is vastly superior.
4) This argument I'm scratching my head at a bit. Yes it's true that Smash's full utility is only fully realised when there are other biotics/techs on a team, however, at the same time you're saying that the Piranha requires that it be in the hands of a Destroyer to be fully effective and you're also assuming every pellet actually hits the intended target.
1) Fair enough. Difficult to quantify the effect, but even if you reduced all of your damage by the requisite amount, the Piranha would STILL come out on top.
2) N/A
3) That can be true, but only if shooting it isn't faster. That's a realistic problem with the Piranha: the damage output is so massive that it outdoes AoE damage attacks in their times of greatest utility. Absolutely anyone can put out more damage than a biotic explosion per shot and can do so at 2.5 shots rounds per second. Unless you're setting off a biotic explosion per second and hitting more than an average of 2.5 targets, you're at a disadvantage. We know from cooldown times that it really takes about 4 person-seconds to set off a biotic explosion. It's hard to visualize sometimes just how insanely overpowered this gun really is.
4) See above for what I'm talking about with BEs. Thing is, it's not just the Destroyer. Just shooting the Piranha is superior utility for any character over spamming powers. Arguing that you get more utility out of the powers is sketchy -- even my generous calculations have you pretty far behind in total damage, and damage is your role and goal. Even if you convince yourself that you could get equal utility out of the powers compared to just pulling out a gun, there are characters who are. That's the crux of the issue: the weapon masters are balanced such that they get better utility out of weapons while others get better utility out of powers. When power users get greater or at least equal utility out of a weapon compared to their powers, the balance is totally lost and the weapon masters are the objective winners, being quantifiably superior to the alternative. That is the situation that the Piranha places us in.
Weapon masters are not inherently unbalanced. As I suggested in the balance thread, prior to the Harrier, Krysae, and Reegar, the weapon with the third-highest sustained DPS was the Rev (after the slightly-higher and slightly-heavier Claymore and the promotional Hurricane). A Destroyer with a Rev X is pretty comparable to that power-happy Phoenix. He's putting out 2323 sustained DPS with all his bonuses up, which puts him pretty reasonably in line with the Smash-spammer. He gets slightly higher DPS, but has to take hits to deliver it. He doesn't get stagger on everything and isn't as effective through walls, but he can shoot things at longer range. That's properly balanced. Then comes the Piranha.
The weapon-using Adept can outdamage the Rev-carrying Destroyer by 30%.
Really. Seriously. No, it's not perfect at all ranges, but come on, man! Weapon classes are kept in balance by keeping weapon power in check; if weapon power explodes, then damage powers become completely useless in comparison. That is more or less what we've had come to pass at this point. Weapon classes have and will continue to dominate until weapons are brought back down to the level of powers.
nicethugbert wrote...
Because some people do not want to
coop. They want to score. They're playing PVP on the sly. Don't count
me among them.
While this is true, it's also almost entirely unrelated to the issue at hand.
Kenadian wrote...
I'm going to go out on a limb and say
it's not OP on the Destroyer. This may be a repeated argument but ****
if I'm going to read through 50 pages. The Destroyer (along with the GI,
HSo, and others) are classes meant to produce high DPS with weapons.
Calling what they are meant to do OP is kind of silly.
Producing twice the damage output of the glass-cannon adepts is not the purpose of the weapon-based classes. See above for how weapon classes are supposed to be balanced.
nicethugbert wrote...
Math is subjective?
Attempts to quantify the relative value of certain things are difficult. For example, you could express value of Stasis mathematically. You could consider the value of the direct damage, the indirect damage (increased headshot frequency, for example), the direct damage mitigation, and the indirect damage mitigation. Now, assigning weights to the indirect damage is already difficult enough: what is the frequency with which you will have the time to line up headshots on this target? Is attempting to exploit this going to cause potential survival issues? In this case, the value is likely to be quite high because the target is stationary and is easy picking. Singularity's hold, however, is much more difficult to quantify, both in terms of the value of the damage dealt and the amount of damage dealt. That much requires some amount of subjective judgment which is subject to some amount of error. However, the largest issue comes with assessing the relative value of dealing damage and mitigating damage. Most would agree that "it's not worth your life", but how much risk is acceptable? You certainly wouldn't enjoy spending 3 hours in a Bronze match being hyper-careful. This is also partly a value judgment: you decide how much risk you are willing to accept based on how much time you are willing to accept in playing the game -- even if victory is not assured, you may prefer not to wait all day. So on top of all that error, you've placed pure subjectivity.
Furthermore, when balancing between classes, you must assess the relative value of certain roles and compare them to other roles. Being a husk-murdering specialist has little value, for example. Then you have to assess what is a reasonable difference in efficacy between and among roles. It's all quite complex and unfortunately quite resistent to direct quantification. When seeking to compare two damage-dealers, it is much easier because you have a single, well-defined goal; however, when balancing on the whole, you are comparatively weighing goals.
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