Artemis

[geggis]

If I were to make a few possible suggestions, based mainly off my distaste of burst being the preferred/sensible ammo type for the Artemis:

1) Increase jitter slightly to make heavy clip useful for surgical shots on engines and specific guns at range or,
2) decrease rate of fire slightly to make greased a possibility or,
3) reduce turning speed further to bring it more in line with the Merc's reduced arcs without sacrificing its ability to gain trifectas. Gaining and holding a trifecta would take more time due to the slower arcs, and would become especially restrictive at closer ranges just like the Merc (and without bringing arming times into it). The time commitment getting a vector would make heatsink more attractive and possibly greased to quickly unleash a salvo so you can hop off to attend other matters.

The second suggestion may be a little heavy handed (or too slight to matter) but the third seems quite reasonable unless I'm overlooking something. The first suggestion would make extreme long range disabling much trickier and give that territory back over to the Merc.

Or alternatively make burst reduce turning speed? Or do less AoE damage?

[Mattilald Anguisad]

Any ship with a trifecta will be strong. Two gats and a mortar on a mobula is a lot more dangerous, or three hades on a mobula. Nothings really changed with the Artemis. Sure its annoying, and it disables, but it takes forever to whittle the hull down. There are a lot of weaknesses to the build. The only reason people are now noticing, or now complaining, is because not everyone and their mother are taking gat/mortar. This all happened as soon as the game was balanced to create viable threats at close, mid and long range. Any nerfs to the artemis will put us right back to cookie cutter meta gat/mortar.

The issue is really with the players. They've gotten so used to charging straight at ships with impunity for a close range brawl. You've got to get out of that mind set and adapt. There is plenty of competitive material from the last few weeks showing triple arti junkers being used, and many times of them being wrecked. Every time they were wrecked, it was due to smart teams doing smart things. And likewise, the artemis is working really well with the Gents because we stay immobile, we go high, and we use open lanes to shoot. We could change guns, and change tactics anytime and still succeed. It's about knowing what to do with your build, the issue isn't the gun itself.

With any ship, any build, look at it's weaknesses. An artemis can't shoot up, and it needs time to target areas. If it's just hitting the balloon or hull it's really doing nothing. You need to use terrain, or different elevations. Go high, take a mobula. Stay out of 1330 meters, take a lumberjack. Go fast with a squid, take a carronade. There are proven easy ways of defeating this build, and it's up to each player to make his wins happen. Lamenting over the fact that you can't just shrug off artemises as you charge in a straight line at them isn't going to help.

How am I supposed to go up and above the triple art junker when you are camping at the flight celing? Literaly the only way we could get any kills on you was by ramming you to death. and we used EVERY bit of cover the Fjords provides to try and get close to you.
The only reason we managed to "wreck" (as you expresed yourself) your build in TSR16 becouse you weren't camping at flight ceeling. You need expert LJ gunners to hit targets hiding behind cover at LJ's max range, and our both Gunners have been absent last 2 weekends. Artemis on the other side is so easy that even I hit 4/5 shots on moving targets.

I'm also sick of getting advice to snipe, to deal with the crap like this. I hate playing sniping matches. I hate repairing, I hate piloting, and I hate gunning in sniper matches. As if sniping wasn't entrenced in the meta enough.

Mobula needs to use it's everical maneuverability to keep out of enemy arcs, becouse it's slow and can't turn very well. If enemy is at the bottom of the map and is sporting carrorades or at the top of the map and sporting LJ or Artemis you can't break arcs verticaly, and then you are forced to either merc with 2 mercs or are huge tasty target. Squid has great horizontal maneuverability, but is somewaht lacking in vertical maneuverability + carrorade puts you into artemis arcs of fire. Squid has as hard time killing anyone alone as has triple art junker. Squid can be a distraction, but in high level play unless you force the OTHER junker to deal with something else, the other junker can gat artemis the squid easily enough (or carrorade artemis - squids have poor armor, you can blast thru their armor realy realy fast - heatsink is invaluable whaen it comes to dealing with squids). Dealing with entrencehd sextuple art build is possible, but enything we have had come up with so far is a soft cunter as opposed to a hard counter. It's a hard uphill struggle.

[Byron Cavendish]

Okay but again, that's not a gun issue, that's a tactics issue. Sure the triple arti's were great at suppression (which is what they are supposed to do), but the double lumberjacks also did massive work. Either way, we're playing to the strengths of our build and strategy. The previous week you guys destroyed us with a pyra/mobula and it was absolutely brilliant because you used tactics and terrain to your build.

I understand it's frustrating, it's meant to be. That isn't a fluke. We could have done that all day, and wouldn't have killed you. We always try to bait a team into engagements we create. Any team will be successful when they determine the engagement.

[Feast on Thrones]

If you look at the  Thralls/ Gent games in the last Sunday rumble you will see how effectively they use elevation to completely render the trip artemis useless. It was a very close game that Thralls could have won. If you have a blenderfish or even carronade pyramidion, as soon as you are on top of that junker its the end. I can only guess the Thralls had 2 people on that front carronade all the time at the rate it got rebuilt on Sunday and they were very effective at forcing both Gentlemen boats down splitting the fire whilst one recovered from the balloon disable.

On a separate point both Mattisamo and Chrinus have said the mobula is a good counter, and it truly is. The merc on the top means any attritional war will be won by the mobula since the extra piercing is nice. As Chrinus said and I will reiterate, the fact that the mobula is so spaced out, with components a long way from each; whilst being irritating to fix is invaluable against trip artemis where gunners on the attacking side have to hone in on the guns precisely and they will not be getting multiple component kills with one shot even with the artemis hit box getting bigger the greater the distance that the rocket travels. Mattisamo has is perfected, the question is what can take out the mobula? We saw Sac get ruined by that double gattling on a head on charge. It wins at long and short range. This is the question we should be asking how to kill Mattisamo

[Byron Cavendish]

Ah how the meta shifts. Mark our words, this is evolution. Perhaps in a few months the carronade squid will be the answer to the mobula meta?

[Mattilald Anguisad]

Again pyra/mobula worked only becouse you weren't camping at the flight ceeling (or in te case of dunes becouse we had spit spawn -with pyra spawning behind you- at begining and prevented you from getting too entrenced AND you werent camping at flight ceeling all of the time) - We used terain much more than last week (mobula spent most of the time in the wide open tarain).
I'm not saying you are good aecouse of the guns you use, but gun's balance should be looked in tandem with available tactics. If we want the game to ever to become a recognised esport, balance should be considered at competitive level (casual gameplay should be considered as well, but in this case.

Long range teams, by the very nature of their builds force brawling centered builds to engage on the terms of the long range teams. In cluttered maps like Paritan you can sneak close to long range teams, but on open maps where you have several km or coverless space you can't sneak up on enemy close enough to be able to engage them before at least one of your primary set of guns is dissabled (ussualy both). - In other words you are telling me to go sniping on open maps - witch I have allready stated I hate (allong with [almost] entire clan of ours).

As for double lumbber build, I've seen MM completrely lock down double lumber gallen and hwachafish with merely 1 merc and 3 artemi (on 2 pyras - one with broadside artemi and one with merc artemis front) - and subsiquantly kill - in Season 1 Invitational Tournament on Paritan against Pollaris (and they had much much better LJ gunners than we had last sunday - Pollaris might not be playing a lot of competitive matches, but they still play a lot, their skill with LJ is still devastating).

[Byron Cavendish]

I never said you need to snipe. I offered multiple suggestions to counters, you could really wreck our day with a carro squid for example. And yes strategies are map dependent, certain builds will do better than others on certain maps. That's always been the case in e-sports. You gotta play the map. You recognize that fjords favors sniping, well ya, don't be surprised that we are a lot harder to beat on that map. That's like saying I wanna beat Russia but man I hate how their winters kill my troops, winters need balancing, too op. My team always struggles on Dawn, we accept that as a fact of nature.

Also you guys have beat us like 3 rumbles in a row and we had to train super hard to beat you. It's not really in good taste to whine over one loss. Ever hear us whining about being beat? Super salty.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

I'm not whining over 1 lost matchup. I'm complaining what brawly builds have very hard uphill battle allways against artemis. Everytime we did win it was very close and very hard fought battle what could very easily have gone either way (most of them 5-4 and I allways fellt very stressful & at least as much luck as skill, and even then I needed help with faster rebuild on hull to minimise permahull damage). For example 5-4 victory on Duel in TSR14 we won simply becouse The -G-ent's Pagoda poped our baloon right at the end allowing us to drop bellow it fast enough to get out of flak arcs and rebuild and get back in to the fight (I was literaly, thank gods the poped our ballon - 1 heavy flak clip would have probably hit as at the point where we dropped below guns arcs). And we did train hard agains your type of builds hard too (just find the crorect team in Ducks and you'll get same effect).


I didn't complain on forums becouse THAT would have been in bad taste. We have been complaining over our TS for a while now.

We did use A triple art junker in a competitive match once (1 single match not whole bo3), we had a hwacha-merc spire. It was agains The Bully Boys on Northeren Fjords - they had a double marc junker and a heavy flak- merc spire. It was relatively close 5-3 victory for us. It was the first time I was a gungeneer in a competitive match (since Claiming the Fjords tournament where i was on the prya's front flamer), and triple artemis junker felt like easy sailing - we couldn't get out of our sking and ended up in a mid-range brawl witch we could force becouse the were the blue team.

[Byron Cavendish]

Well all I can say is any well organized team is gonna be tough. You're gonna be stressed, fatigued, that's just part of competition. I don't wanna sound arrogant but if we took instead a brawling build I think the results would be similar and you'd feel just as stressed. I really don't think that has anything to do with the gun. We'll train the hell out of any gun and make it work.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

Not realy. Brawling builds destroy less components. The main focus is mow many spanner hits you can use before you have to switch to repairing with mallet. No matter wether you live of die, it's fast. If you get double focused, it's ussualy too fast to do anything about it - it's over before stress can acumulate. With artemis you have to ussualy deal with engines, hull and a gun (depending on the ship the amount of guns and engines can vary) - all of them gatting damage at the same time - non hull components constantly being down.

Wolfpack never let anyone have enough time to regroup and plan against their onsalught - for a while they were the best brawling team in the game. Agains snipers you can hide and plan. the fristrating part is when you execute plan as perfectly and the situation allows and you get dissabled and die despite of it, that's when frustration comes in.

[Feast on Thrones]

Then the plan was flawed?

[The Djinn]

I think more maps need moving cloud cover. Dusts DM is a lot easier to close distance now that it uses the moving dust clouds, and I feel wide open maps like Fjords might benefit from some shifting clouds or some more terrain. Thoughts? Anyone else notice it getting markedly easier to sneak around Dusts?

I know that would make me feel like there are a lot more tactical options for going up against 3x Art.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

Then the plan was flawed?

The flaw was probably the fact the sextuple artemis is unassailable if set on the height ceeling in the midle of open space with 1000m coverless space around them.

[Feast on Thrones]

Thats your opinion. I have given feedback on my thoughts further up this thread which you ignored. If you know you are going up against 6 artemis, change your tactics?! No use making a plan fully aware of what the enemy have and then cry about the plan not working. I dont want to sound mean but that is exactly what you are doing. I would have assaulted us differently.

[Thomas]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXTQeTBsPSM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbrLI59Uqws

Here's a couple videos of a standard pyra vs an arty junker in a king of the hill on labyrinth. You can see a few times where we start getting disabled and just fly above them to recover and retaliate.

In other situations where they're flying as high as they can, you can generally fly low down beneath. The closer the better of course. This forces them to start lowering themselves to get better shots on you. The gap closes and you can likely fly above them or at least be in range to start dealing damage and forcing them to repair.



One thought on the gun itself is that it might help to change the explosive damage type to something else. Possibly forcing the gun to be a pure disable, instead of a disable and a hull destroyer (I'll often pair my arty with a field gun for long range take downs. The piercing/explosive combo does wonders on top of the strong disables).

I really like the disable aspect of the gun, and would hate to see that go. I'm not so attached to it's destructive potential however.