Wow there are some VERY good suggestions here. The only thing I would add is yet another stability increase for super [b][u]BAD[/u][/b] advice, on top of everything else you suggested. Hopefully Bungie takes a look at this because your suggestions are really the ideal solution, to help some of these "exotic" weapons post patch.
Also, I thought it would be cool if the ricocheting rounds of Hardlight actually bounced off a target and hit nearby enemies, thus furthering its ability to remain proficient at crowd control.
Bump!
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I feel as though implementing my SGA buff on top of another stability increase would be overkill. Because SGA's recoil is randomized instead of mostly linear, its Achilles's heel would be the random misses that slowly deplete the magazine. To mitigate, a player needs to either very precisely control their fire (rewarding skill) or get very close to the enemy (which puts them at risk of shotguns, fusion rifles, melee, and panic supers). If Hard Light's rounds ricocheted towards enemies with a sense of purpose, I would have to then impose that such rounds would deal reduced damage. Like Explosive Rounds, you would be able to hit enemies hiding in cover, but not for full damage. It would be somewhat unreasonable otherwise, but it does need some sort of value in its exotic upgrade besides Thrall control (which even then it is not the best tool for the job).
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Edited by Elite-Hunter_17: 1/16/2015 1:54:54 PMI mean no offense, but as it stands it's really difficult to precisely fire with super good advice. Especially in situations where the target has a smaller than average critical spot or point on their body (such as the head of a guardian in the crucible). With super good advice bouncing around as much as it does now getting closer would seem like the better option, but when it comes to getting closer to the target with SGA, the risk definitely outweighs the reward in crucible unless you get extremely lucky. As it stands I feel as though if you want to land a critical shot with SGA, it takes a certain amount of luck to achieve that rather than skill. No amount of recoil compensation, or recoil pattern predictability on the player's part is really going to help lessen the severity of SGA's randomized recoil pattern. I'm not saying that SGA should be a laser beam, but the player should be able to RELIABLY keep their crosshairs on the central body mass of a target without having to get within EXTREMELY close range. What's the sense in using an exotic heavy weapon that underperforms at close range due to the shotguns and fusion rifles that specialize at that particular range, when you can use other legendary and exotic heavy weapons that can very reliably pick guardians off at a distance with or without tracking rounds.
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By all means. Controlled fire doesn't necessarily mean "100% accuracy under fully automatic fire", however. Recoil compensation is nigh impossible with randomized recoil, but shot pacing is certainly possible. Idealistically, SGA in the crucible would perform similarly to most other machine guns in the common player's hands, 2-4 kills before someone shuts you down. But in the hands of someone skilled with both the weapon and map control, it would become a veritable force unto its own, such that the opposing team would begin outlying strategies to remove the wielder rather specifically. [i]"That guy needs to go. Now. Use your supers, if anyone still has rockets..."[/i] The vicious recoil would represent both a skill gap and a pivot in the weapon's efficiency; where one sloppy kill with Thunderlord or Corrective Measure is pretty easily forgiven, it could drain SGA of half its reserve. It has to be this way. If it's too easy to use, even a decent player could very easily become virtually unstoppable. I'm sure there's a gray area between its current state and "no recoil whatsoever" which could be explored, and I would leave (as none of us have a choice either way) the final state of the design in the hands of the developers themselves. Seeing as they believe the most recent stability buff to be all it needed, when it works against its current exotic effect, I would surmise that they wouldn't both increase it further and make it also beneficial to utilizing its exotic effect.