Author Topic: The new Minotaur  (Read 36447 times)

Offline Daft Loon

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The new Minotaur
« on: November 12, 2015, 01:36:14 am »
Misc. observations on its usability since the patch. Primarily relating to experience using it on a spire.

Ammunition choices:

Heavy Clip - For long range scatter reduction, same as before
Greased - Valuable out to 500m or so, provides rather devastating push force and armor dps
Lochnagar - Eliminates scatter entirely and deals 405 armor damage making it lethal against spires, goldfish and squid (if you can hit them). Also has some merit for long range heavy gun sniping. Due to the delay between shots lochnagar actually has higher dps than heavy clip.

With 3 useful ammo choices and use for stamina in compensating for the turning speed a gunner is worthwhile for the Minotaur now.

Armor damage:
Highly dependent on the target. When lochnagar can be used it is the superior piercing weapon, this can be used against the Pyramidion as well by using lochnagar after a full clip of heavy connects or another weapon makes the armor likely to be <400. The Galleon has enough armor to force a reload and recover most of the damage in that time while the Junker and Mobula are difficult to get full hits on the armor.

Component damage:
Variable, the incidental damage is worthwhile and the front gun of the goldfish in particular is vulnerable because it is exposed and in the ideal target zone for turning the ship too.

Range:
I have inflicted useful disruption with the Minotaur out near the maximum range and useful damage at around 1000m max. On the other hand bringing it into within 300m for optimal greased rounds gets the maximum damage and disruption. The most effective tactic seems to be to use it at whatever range your opposition is weakest by disrupting them as much as possible while you advance or retreat from their optimal range, the Minotaur will almost certainly lose to Merc-Art at 1200m, Hwacha at <500m or Gat-Mortar at 200m but can choose to attack from any other range.

Weapon combinations:
Hades, Lumberjack and Light Flak benefit greatly from the ability to remove opponents from arming range.
Artemis can be used to disable the engines of a turned opponent which will additionally be more exposed and potentially damaged by kerosene use.
Banshee is the ideal second weapon for a Minotaur gunner, a full clip can be fired during the reload and the fire and damage is enough to prevent full repairs on armor.

Weaknesses:
Damage. The Minotaur is next to useless at 50% health and even fairly weak at 75% health. It becomes far too slow to shoot and turn. Even an out of proper range burst Hwacha or scattered Carronade hits will limit it severely.
Outflanking. A Minotaur spire can lock down a single ship but takes a fair while to kill compared to a Hwacha or Flak and is faster to recover from than being sunken by a Lumberjack. It also takes longer than most weapons to turn and have an effect on a new target.
Kerosene/Moonshine. I haven't noticed this being a problem but its possible people just don't know to use it, the higher push force spread over a longer time make it harder to use also.

Ethics: (This needs an ethics section  :-\)
It is still really annoying and most new pilots cannot deal with it at all. Set up your ship and tactics to actually get the kill, being pushed around the map unable to retaliate for several minutes is incredibly frustrating. If your opponent requests you not use Minotaur don't use it (unless they took Mobula to your Spire in which case you have every right to Minotaur if you can pull it off).

What have you found fighting with or against the new Minotaur?

Out of 7 how annoying do you find the new Minotaur?

Offline Byron Cavendish

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #1 on: November 12, 2015, 01:45:33 am »
My testing:

The minotaur's ideal ammos are: heatsink, lesmok and heavy. Heatsink puts out the most damage per clip, but fires the slowest and fires the slowest bullets. Therefore it is only viable at extremely close range. With a buff, the ammo will put 448.2 damage to armour per clip. With normal and lesmok ammo it will put out 432 damage per clip to armour. The perk of lesmok is that it increases the speed of the pellets from 550 m/s to 935 m/s! It moves from slow as a turtle to a much more reliable speed. This allows the gun to be much more reliable for tracking and hitting at mid to far range. This also makes lesmok the best overall ammo. Heavy is only for sniping critical guns like enemy hwachas. The damage is the same as normal at 432, but the speed of the shot is a mere 550 m/s, so not reliable for much else.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2015, 01:47:14 am by Byron Cavendish »

Offline Daft Loon

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2015, 02:05:08 am »
I can see heatsink being a good alternative to greased, the +50% turn speed could be very nice.
I'm not sure about lesmok, by the time you get to range where its needed the scatter means most of the shot will miss anyway and the slight speed buff made heavy easier to hit with, maybe I just tend to have more predictable opponents though.

Offline Byron Cavendish

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #3 on: November 12, 2015, 02:17:28 am »
I've been finding with the speed that lesmok is quite reliable at far range. In fact so reliable that it was often pushing the ship too far for even my hwacha to hit, which is when I switched to heavy flak. Now paired with a lesmok mino, a heavy flak can do the work it wants to do. Don't take my word for it though, try it out. The other nice thing is that my buffgineer on mino has time to fully buff the h. flak and get back to his gun in time while the gunner can make any ammo changes to the mino if needed.

Offline Daft Loon

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #4 on: November 12, 2015, 03:23:30 am »
By my calculation the scatter at 1000m is 61m so if the target ship fills enough of that space to collect 3/5 buckshots it compares well to missing 1/3 heavy clip shots and for an engineer who leaves the gun to buff etc every reload missing only 1/3 heavy clip shots might be generous. I shall give it a try if I'm crewing/flying a ship with Minotaur secondary.

Offline ZnC

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #5 on: November 12, 2015, 05:34:39 am »
Interesting point about Lochnagar; however, it's strange to me how Heavy Clip was nerfed to 70% but Lochnagar is left at 100%. As an ammo type, I appreciated it more when both had their roles more defined - to reduce spread and arming time respectively. Now, it seems Lochnagar is a superior choice to reduce spread for low ammo guns like the Heavy Carronade or even Minotaur.

I mostly have the same view as before regarding the Minotaur - effective range is too close to Hwacha because they have similar spread. It is a lot easier to hit now, however, because of high projectile speed. Can't think of any situation where it would replace the Hwacha on my Spire; wouldn't sacrifice a reliable, burst disable and killing power for a mediocre "disable". Perhaps it works well on a Galleon as Lumberjack/Hwacha support, or maybe a Minofish with side guns usage and rams.

Offline BlackenedPies

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #6 on: November 12, 2015, 09:26:12 am »
With a buff, the ammo will put 448.2 damage to armour per clip. With normal and lesmok ammo it will put out 432 damage per clip to armour. The perk of lesmok is that it increases the speed of the pellets from 550 m/s to 935 m/s!

Buffed Minotaur deals 864 armor damage per clip and lesmok and heavy do 648. I don't find lesmok useful due to the large spread. It's not hard to hit ships at over 1k and doing so yields more push than lesmok with the large dispersion. You're best off practicing with heavy.

Lochnagar increases dps to more than a buff engi only if there's an immediate mallet. Otherwise you're stuck at 69% reload speed for at least 5 seconds. Lochnagar is very useful for gunner. I prefer buff engi because it does overall higher damage, pushes more than loch, and is better at disabling. Along with all the other benefits of a buff. Gunner stamina is useful but you won't be breaking many components so you're stuck with the slowest stamina regen.

I regularly use Minotaur on spire and galleon. Spire is artemis top buffed banshee bottom and is especially good against fish. Galleon is banshee-taur-hwatcha carro-hwatcha. With the spanner mallet buff burst hwatcha in the back and wrench buff ext heavy in front you can have a fully buffed galleon with moonshine.

Offline Richard LeMoon

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #7 on: November 12, 2015, 05:25:23 pm »
It has gone from a multipurpose gun to a one trick pony. It used to be OK at close range for defense and long range disruption (though needed better balance). Narrowing the arc to 'balance' the higher damage and more force makes it next to useless close range on anything but a Spire.

Offline Daft Loon

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #8 on: November 12, 2015, 06:38:50 pm »
It still has the best overall arcs of any heavy gun and an effective range from 0 out to 1200+. The pre patch arcs with stamina felt rather silly to me when using them sometimes and would be too strong in the downward arc with the new force.

Offline Richard LeMoon

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #9 on: November 12, 2015, 10:37:46 pm »
Adding more force was a mistake and I don't feel was tested enough. I was doing testing, and did not know it was changed. Same actual change notes would be nice next time so we know what we are testing.

Offline Daft Loon

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #10 on: November 12, 2015, 11:51:26 pm »
With the somewhat plausible assumption that the force from each shot applies for 1 second greased Minotaur averages to 604KN force including reload time. For reference the spire has the highest thrust at 675KN with the pyramidion lowest at 450KN. The old Minotaur averaged 580KN also with greased albeit starting any engagement with a much lower push per clip.

At 30 degrees downwards arc the down force is 221KN average compared to 375KN minimum lift on the junker making it fairly significant.

I would probably be in favor of reverting the changes to force, jitter, turn speed and arcs. Retaining the changes to damage, reload and rate of fire. It would have less force overall with lower rate of fire but that won't be a problem with damage that can't be simply ignored.

Offline Atruejedi

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #11 on: November 19, 2015, 11:29:46 pm »
I played one game this evening. Then I had to take a break out of frustration. I flew a mid-range junker with a level 1 Pyramidian ally (who tried his darnedest, but was a level 2 engineer... sigh). Our opposition was a Hwatcha Goldfish and a Galleon with minotaurs. Everyone on the Galleon crew was under level 10, yet they dominated the match. My crew consisted of a normal friend I play with often and two novices (level 2 and 7, I believe). Those novices ragequit five minutes into the game because 'I wasn't giving them angles' because of constant minotaur hits. We proceeded to get wrecked to the tune of 4 to 1 until two solid players joined me and we brought the game back to 4 to 4. But we ultimately lost. Why? The minotaur. The @#%@# minotaur, which I already hated, but now I hate even more because it drove away my noob crew and put me at a supreme disadvantage for more than half the match. "Why, Atruejedi! Why didn't you use pilot tools to counter the bounce?" I was asked. I did. I used tons of kerosene, and I tried to time it properly. But it didn't matter. "But why fly a junker at all, then, Atruejedi? They are prime minotaur targets!" Do you want me to fly a more complex ship with people brand new to the game? No, thanks. The novices didn't repair dependably and the AI crew wasn't much better. The match went on for 40 or so minutes as my ally ran from place to place as I begged him to stay alive (he died 4 times by the end with zero kills) and tried to kill the enemy ships. I did destroy four of them, but the minotaurs made my life hell.

Is anyone familiar with Team Fortress 2? Minotaurs are like the items in that game that take control away from the player, and NO ONE ENJOYS THAT. Valve completely nerfed the baseball bat that immobilized players because of the outrage. How is the minotaur not suffering the same backlash? People love USING it, but no one enjoys fighting AGAINST it. It's the most rage-inducing weapon in the game, first an all-too-weak-yet-evil weapon, and now an extremely effective and therefore even more annoying weapon!

THE RAGE IS REAL.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2015, 11:33:27 pm by Atruejedi »

Offline DJ Logicalia

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #12 on: November 20, 2015, 02:49:23 am »
The minotaur is really good in pubs against uncoordinated players in the same way the flamethrower is. It's too weak to be used reliably against experienced players, but buffing it makes it far too strong against fresh blood, and nerfing it causes it to teeter on the edge of complete extinction. I would have rather this gun never existed and Muse focused on making a different one. Oh well. Too late now

Offline Daft Loon

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #13 on: November 20, 2015, 02:53:40 am »
I recently sent a feedback email in one part of which was more or less 'I can't use the Minotaur as much as i want to because...' see above. It would probably be worth them hearing from several people that the probably in my 'probably not very fun for the other team' isn't needed.

Edit:
I'm wondering if there is anything to learn from the minelauncher which has its place in the game quite well including disruption of steering and the harpoon which does the same but has never been more than a novelty.
« Last Edit: November 20, 2015, 03:04:27 am by Daft Loon »

Offline Atruejedi

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Re: The new Minotaur
« Reply #14 on: November 20, 2015, 06:07:25 am »
The mine launcher is acceptable because you at least have a choice when engaging a ship with it. If a pilot gets him or herself into a position where mines from the enemy are actively bouncing the ship around, well, that's on the pilot. The ship shouldn't have gotten close enough for mines to be an issue. The deployability (that's a word now) of mines and the short range of the launcher and the high skill ceiling of using it give plenty of risks to the pilot and crew of that vessel but rich (and hilariously mischievous) rewards when executed properly. I'll admit, I was hesitant to use mines at first... and I'm personally awful at launching them... but holy hell, flying a mine Mobula with three skilled crew mates? Fly high and get into a good position and... wow. Risky, though. But when pulled off... satisfaction!

With the minotaur, the obvious difference, which I'm sure we all agree on, is the range, which removes the choice players have when engaging the enemy. Hell, on a map like Water Hazard, I'm pretty certain all ships spawn within range of the minotaur. Eek. Hellish. Compared to mines... I can avoid mines by maneuvering my ship or shooting mine launchers before they become a problem, or taking longer range weapons to engage the entire ship. Not so with the minotaur, where, even if I chose to "counter" it with mercuries, artemiseseses, etc., I still might not be able to do so because I'm busy getting spun in circles...

To answer your original question, Daft Loon... SEVEN. A RESOUNDING SEVEN. I'm at the point where I feel like a bully even flying on a ship equipped with one and just find another ship... karma, y'know?

#playerchoice #boycottbouncing #minotaurmalfeasance #ridingonspinners #nerfnow #removetherage
« Last Edit: November 20, 2015, 06:09:58 am by Atruejedi »