How good is the Minotaur Heavy cannon?

[GrimlockWarlock]

Hello Lovely people !

I Have a question: How good is the Minotaur Heavy Cannon?

This question has probably been ask before , but I'm asking it again ! I have barely seen the gun when I played ... and I always wonder if it actually a good weapons or is just dead weight ?! I might try to build a Minotaur Spire build (when I can pilot better !) if the gun any good . Also I know it has a kick-back feature to enemy ships .. but does it actually deal damage or just knocks the ship back ?


Any knowledge about this mysterious heavy gun will be appreciated.
Thank you &  I will see you in the skies   ! 

 

[BlackenedPies]

The Minotaur has a long reload of 9 seconds (lumberjack is 8 ). It has excellent 45 degrees arcs all round which makes it good for defense. It deals piercing and shatter damage with each shot dealing 118 armor and 292 component damage. Good ammos are heavy clip for long-mid range and greased/heatsink for close. It's difficult to shoot at long range due to low projectile speed of 350 (same as light flak). Max effective range is around 700m.

It tends to work best against fish, galleons, and mobulas. For spire you can start off trying it against a galleon with something like lesmok gat and burst artemis at mid-long range. Use the heavy clip Minotaur and spin them while the artemis disables and gat helps kill. Brawling is also an option for spire but hwatcha is almost always better. It's more of a novelty on spire.

I use Minotaur on brawl galleon with banshee/gat-mino-hwatcha carro-hwatcha. The Minotaur is in the front with wrench buff extinguisher heavy clip. The front engi mans the mino-carro and buffs the top deck while the spanner mallet buff burst engi uses hwatchas and repairs engines. Buffed heavy clip Minotaur deals 350 component damage and can be used to help disable (especially heavy guns).

[GrimlockWarlock]

oh. ..wow okay Thanks Blackened pies !  it sound like it a quite cool weapon ! I might try on a Galleon now instead of a spire . Also do you need a decent gunner to fire it ? I can imagine you do !

[DrTentacles]

Requires gunner skill at anything but close range. Also, burning moonshine nearly utterly negates the turn effect.

[BlackenedPies]

It takes two seconds for the shot to reach its max effective range of 700m. There's no projectile drop but it's a bit unsettling to shoot a nearly invisible projectile. It's not hard to shoot but you gotta get used to the speed.

Moonshine reduces effects to 10%, kerosene 33%, and Phoenix claw increases it to 165%. Because it's a disruption weapon it's not necessary to constantly shoot. An aware gunner can watch and see what pilot tools the enemy is using. For example you shoot two shots, wait for them to use claw to turn, then shoot again.

I often tell crew to aim for components especially heavy guns. Minotaur does more component damage than artemis and will take out a light gun in one shot. Even if you don't destroy a heavy gun it will be seriously damaged for precious time. It will throw off enemy's aim , force the pilot to use extra tools, and buy time for your other weapons.

[Daft Loon]

I've been experimenting with the Minotaur quite a lot lately and it certainly can be used to good effect.

Minotaur fish
The standard arc for the Minotaur can overlap solidly with L.Carro, Flamer, Banshee, Mines and Artemis. Using the light carronade makes it into a somewhat unusual blenderfish with superior arcs and maneuvering but difficulty getting kills. A gunner should really be used on this to exploit the ridiculous arcs with stamina. It often requires ramming to assist in breaking the balloon and to finish off the grounded enemy. With a bit of practice and crew co-ordination it might be possible to position above them using a banshee to keep the balloon down while the Minotaur pushes them into the ground.
Ive had some success with this outside of stacked games but it probably does require a superior crew and pilot to be of much use.

Minotaur galleon
My current attempt is lumberjack-Minotaur-l.flak. It is somewhat limited by the need for a good light flak gunner, a good lochnagar lumberjack gunner and a good Minotaur gunner which is not an easy crew to find. When it works however the Minotaur keeps them outside of the lumberjacks arming time and disrupts outflanking and once they drop below you the Minotaur accelerates them downward. If you get all 3 guns on them when grounded they will die very fast. Success has however been limited by the crew requirements and my own mediocrity as a galleon pilot.
I've also been gunner a number of times on a double Minotaur-L.flak/banshee galleon. It can be a very hard ship to attack and can kill reasonably well, it is however utterly useless on large open maps because the target gets pushed out of effective range almost immediately.

Minotaur spire
Possibly related to my being far better at spire than fish or galleon this has been my most successful experiment.
The loadout and crew roles i use are a little odd but have proved highly effective so far:
Top left - Hades
Top right - Artemis
Bottom left - Light Flak
Center - Minotaur

A main engineer with burst mans the Artemis and repairs the hull and main engine
A gunner or buff engineer mans the Hades and exclusively fires it.
A main engineer with heavy clip mans the Minotaur and Light Flak (leaving normal rounds in the Flak) and repairs balloon and lower engines

This solves a number of the problems with the spire and the particular guns on it.
-A mercury clip into the main gun on some spire builds will disable the 2 main guns, the gunner has lost their gun and the top engineer will leave theirs to repair the hull. In this case you lose the artemis to hull repair and while the lower deck engineer has the option of rebuilding the Minotaur or firing Flak as the situation demands, the hades can continue firing full time.
-The Minotaur does a good job of keeping the target outside of Hades and Light Flak arming time.
-Avoiding having the primary gunner focus on the Minotaur prevents your main firepower from being nullified by effective kerosene use.
-The pressure from the hades makes it harder to counter the Minotaur with kerosene.

It is from my experience so far a completely effective build and having significant killing power avoids the severe annoyance that Minotaurs can cause when you push someone around but cant kill them. I have yet to test it against squid or Hades/Merc - Art-Art mobula which will be likely the most challenging opponents.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Utter and useless crap is what it is. All thanks to the community for making a fuss about a weapon that went through testing and was approved as balanced. People got it nerfed for no reason. Now everyone is complaining that it is too weak and useless...gah, if ya freaken listened to the testers and gave it a chance, not been stupid about handling it and being unwilling to use your head with it, then this thread wouldn't need to exist.

[BlackenedPies]

It used to be an extreme range sniper gun that could one shot heavy guns. It became the only viable spire gun against ranged spires because it was so easy to one shot the other heavy weapon. The nerf made it more difficult to shoot which was perfectly reasonable. It had very fast projectile speed and no drop. It was OP because it was too easy.

Now it's got a low speed and can't one shot which is ok but it needed a corresponding change: reload. Being a super long range sniper gun it didn't matter it had a long reload. Now that it's a mid range gun the reload is too long.

[Mannson]

Minotaur galleon
My current attempt is lumberjack-Minotaur-l.flak. It is somewhat limited by the need for a good light flak gunner, a good lochnagar lumberjack gunner and a good Minotaur gunner which is not an easy crew to find. When it works however the Minotaur keeps them outside of the lumberjacks arming time and disrupts outflanking and once they drop below you the Minotaur accelerates them downward. If you get all 3 guns on them when grounded they will die very fast. Success has however been limited by the crew requirements and my own mediocrity as a galleon pilot.
I've also been gunner a number of times on a double Minotaur-L.flak/banshee galleon. It can be a very hard ship to attack and can kill reasonably well, it is however utterly useless on large open maps because the target gets pushed out of effective range almost immediately.

I actually tried something similar, but instead l. flak I had hades. The results were surprisingly good. No, it's not a self-sufficient killer ship but its variety ways of either popping balloons, breaking armor and spreading some fire among pushing ships around proved to be quite useful in large skirmishes, 3v3s and 4vs4. The other side had double hwachas for close range or when my crew wanted to saturate a target with rockets. It was fun setup and I'll try it more for sure!
 Took some more piloting than pointing left side, in most hectic scenarios I kept turning about so one broadside could fire while another was reloading. Wouldn't have worked as well if it weren't for the awesome caps on the teams who coordinated their fire.

[Mysterious Medic]

The thing about the Minotaur is that I don't doubt it can be useable or even effective in certain situations, but why the hell would you pick it instead of any other heavy gun? A hwacha can completely disable an entire ships components. A caronade can take down a balloon in one shot or two. A lumberjack can also take down a balloon in one shot, but more importantly it can take down a balloon at long range. A heavy flak can kill just about every ship with two charged shots. A Minotaur can maybe sometimes spin a ship around if a pilot isn't paying attention and disable a few components. Heavy guns are meant to be devastating. I just don't see the place of a Minotaur except for when you are bored of other guns completely (and want to nerf yourself). Muse does say it's a "support gun" but hell I don't think I've ever said "thank god my ally has a Minotaur" in any situation.

[Daft Loon]

As far as my spire build above goes as well as being an attempt to find a use for the Minotaur its also an attempt to avoid the chronically disabled heavy gun syndrome that plagues most spires by having the "main" gun be the hades. This rules out lumberjack which needs fairly dedicated gunning to be effective, carronade is too short range for a spire and with a light flak and artemis a heavy flak is somewhat pointless. The hwacha is arguably a better choice but the Minotaur does have some advantages:
-Slightly longer range
-Some ability to disrupt at much longer ranges
-Superior arcs for close range defense
-The ability to push people out of arming range of the other guns
-Superior armor damage
With the old velocity and old heavyclip the Minotaur would have been clearly superior.

There is also the question of other builds being superior.
-Does the Minotaur offer much advantage compared to an otherwise identically armed and superior mobula with hades-artemis-flak?
-Is it as effective as just taking a standard lumberjack sniping or hwacha brawling spire?
As it is at the moment probably not, as it was before its nerf and the heavyclip nerf probably the opposite to the extent of justifying a small nerf.

I think if they had given the Minotaur compensation for the heavyclip nerf instead of the hwacha it would have much more of a place.

[BlackenedPies]

The thing about the Minotaur is that I don't doubt it can be useable or even effective in certain situations, but why the hell would you pick it instead of any other heavy gun?

The minotaur is weak because it's a mid range gun with a long reload. Reduced jitter and higher projectile speed would help but the big problem is the 9 second reload with 4 shots per clip. It has a place over other heavy guns in some circumstances. Here's why I use it on brawl galleon:

I need a gun that works at both mid-long and close range, doesn't need a gunner, and preferably uses heavy carro ammo. The advantage of not having a gunner is a fully buffed top deck and ability to use moonshine with a spanner mallet buff engi on the engines. With the minotaur we get heavy clip which is the best ammo for the right side carro (can also be preloaded in hwatcha), great arcs, and full range of 700m. Depending on the enemies we bring a greased banshee or lesmok gat. The minotaur helps disable with the hwatcha, breaks armor, and disrupts.

Having fought many brawl galleons this is my favorite loadout and I wouldn't replace it with another hwatcha. The minotaur is weak due to the long reload. I've asked for an 8 second reload but 7 would be more fair.

[Kamoba]

Its great as a defence weapon on a galleon when against blenderfish or disable squids because it makes it harder for the fish/squid pilot to keep off your arcs... But it is difficult to find its niche and can often be replaced with something with more kick.

[Arturo Sanchez]

great counter vs lumber jacks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkRqmTCMErk

freaking nightmare to fight in the open. If that mino wasn't on that galleon, the match up would be fairly equal, but with the mino forcing important shots to miss.

[GrimlockWarlock]

Just a Note: Since the new update (1.4.4)  the minotaur has Finally been improved (Thankyou Muse !) Now the minotaur has seen a lot more play. I seen it more in a couple of days then I had in the last couple of months .. It seem now the Minotaur is officially Playable again!! WOOP WOOP!
PS: The minotaur spire are fun to play as (Maybe not so fun against !)