Hwacha and Pyramidion Balance?

[Kamoba]

The hwatcha used to be balanced in terms of damage because heavy clip was necessary for range and burst was only good up close. Now since the jitter was reduced by 1/3 burst is the only effective ammo and it's damn good. Rather than decreasing damage it should be reverted back to near the old jitter. As much as I love the new buff burst it's too powerful. Because I'm biased I think the jitter should be increased to 5.

Reducing the explosive damage wouldn't hurt balance much. A small 10-20% reduction might help. One clip of burst deals 948 dmg if every shot hits hull.

Personally, I'm all for hitting the explosive damage pretty heavily. Considering how effective the weapon is at ship-wide disables, if used by a gunner worth his weight in salt, I feel it's still a viable option if reduced almost entirely to a support role. Keep its shatter damage stupidly high, I say, let em break all the things, just remove its ability to kill. I feel doing so would put it on par with some of the other heavy guns, in that it is a situational weapon, not a spam weapon. After all, the others all have very specialised roles; why should one be more versatile and commendable in all the fields it is used in?

Breaking everything, pulling engis away from their cycles, or the hull, can spell death for a ship. Giving the source of that the power to one-clip most ships up close (especially considering said ship is likely slowed due to having only just repaired engines, so closing the gap is easy) is broken, I think. It feels that the only viable counter for the hwacha at present is to stay out of the way or snipe it out before it unleashes a payload of screen-shaking despair.

I don't feel the current hwacha is broken in terms of the game. We've all fought enough quad hwacha galleons to know how deal with it, but the fact that everything else is so niche makes me feel like something isn't being looked at right in terms of its stats.

I don't know. I guess I'd prefer it to be less of a dumb weapon. It feels dumb in comparison to the other heavy guns, wherein you aim for the general area of a ship you want to make stop working, and can unleash on a downed hull for a kill.

Again, I could be very wrong. I'm still new to the community and a lower-mid-level player. I could be overlooking a massive downside besides the huge reload time, so feel free to correct me. I'm just brainstorming possible nerfs that won't do to the hwacha what happened to the minotaur.

I actually agree with this.
In its current state Hwacha is over used, and more so than before..

[Daft Loon]

For a starting point - Buffed burst hwacha currently destroys the armor or hull of a spire with 21/24 shots maybe reducing the explosive damage to make this 25 or more shots would be a good starting point for thinking about the balance in numbers.

Another thought - How about reducing the rate of fire:
-Biggest impact on using burst rounds
-Maybe makes greased a real consideration (see my every other post for opinions on how ammo choices/variety should be)
-Allows for more partial evasion
-Allows for armor rebuilds to cancel some shots more often - effectively a nerf to hull damage
-Raises skill level somewhat
-Reduces the proportion of time spend waiting for reload
-Nerfs DPS overall

The downside to nerfing the kill potential on the hwacha would be that there would then be no viable novice galleon or goldfish builds, which are all rather painful to crew already. I would say in that case the spire should replace the goldfish in the novice ship selections, IMO it is easier to use already (200 extra hull health be praised).

[Newbluud]

For a starting point - Buffed burst hwacha currently destroys the armor or hull of a spire with 21/24 shots maybe reducing the explosive damage to make this 25 or more shots would be a good starting point for thinking about the balance in numbers.

Another thought - How about reducing the rate of fire:
-Biggest impact on using burst rounds
-Maybe makes greased a real consideration (see my every other post for opinions on how ammo choices/variety should be)
-Allows for more partial evasion
-Allows for armor rebuilds to cancel some shots more often - effectively a nerf to hull damage
-Raises skill level somewhat
-Reduces the proportion of time spend waiting for reload
-Nerfs DPS overall

The downside to nerfing the kill potential on the hwacha would be that there would then be no viable novice galleon or goldfish builds, which are all rather painful to crew already. I would say in that case the spire should replace the goldfish in the novice ship selections, IMO it is easier to use already (200 extra hull health be praised).

Perhaps a small arming time could help, too? Due to the jitter, would it not mean that, if there were a small arming time, pincushioning a ship with the entire clip would be virtually impossible?

There's also the idea of hitting the arcs with a small reduction too. Doing so would increase the chance of evasion even for the more cumbersome ships and increase hydro/chute's usefulness when timed correctly.

However, I do like your idea of a reduced fire rate. Although, it would be sad to see, as, despite the simplicity, I still find a lot of fun in letting loose a completely overkill stream of rockets. The gun feels powerful to use. Nice for the ADHD-addled mind such as my own.

Lastly, your point about a lack of novice builds for ships based around heavy gun placements is pretty viable. Making the hwacha a gun you have to think about would probably just increase the amount of people reliant on the standard metamidion, as it'd be one of the only builds with a simple set of instructions on the box. I know I started welded to my metamidion back when I played in the novice matchmaker. However, there has to be a better way of making a novice-friendly heavy gun without breaking one of them.

[MightyKeb]

....Guys, just bring back the old jitter and heavy clip and find another fix for the heavy carronade if you think it needs to be fixed. The old hwacha was just like the new flamer - It only really did damage to whatever you exposed to it unless you got up close. And I personally found out fun that way, it stopped you from fighting back but you still had some options depending on the situation. Nowadays it entirely stops you from doing anything at medium.

[Mr.Bando]

I think what made the pyra strong and used by many players was that it was it was good enough at everything. Exactly as Gilders said, a multirole fighter. You load it up as an assault ship or stick in ranged weapons and it would perform well at both those roles. Can't turn or move as fast as a squid but fast enough. Not as durable as a galleon, but durable enough. It's blindside is still pretty large and is often the best way at dealing with them, but it really should be up to the player to learn to flank or at least redesign maps with more paths to encourage more flanking gameplay. Not just resort to quad hwatcha galleons.


But yeah... choose. Either a slow tanky ship or a glass dagger ship.

[BlackenedPies]

Old hwatcha was balanced but it could be argued the explosive damage was a bit high. If it's decided to reduce explosive then I'd say no more than -20%. The arcs weren't a problem before because they're only 20 degrees up and down. In contrast the gat has 25 degrees up, and with gunner stamina hwatcha vertical arcs are increased to 28 degrees- light carro has 30 degrees up.

The issue with current hwatcha is the range of burst ammo and the uselessness of heavy clip. Heavy clip hwatcha was balanced and burst was only close range. I used to use buff burst at around 400m max now it's 700m.

To me the pyra speed was it's offense and defense. It wasn't good at range but worked because it's easy. A slow tanky pyra would be just as easy to kill just slightly longer and an extra 150-200 isn't a big bonus. I'd much rather fly a pyra with 550 hull than with 2.25 m/s2. Glass dagger not slow average