Author Topic: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?  (Read 39252 times)

Offline Corporal Ravioli

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Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« on: January 18, 2017, 09:14:13 am »
I've been witnessing a lot of captains/crew mates insist that Burst ammunition is in fact the ONLY ammunition type that ought to be used in the Manticore Heavy Hwatcha. While I typically agree, especially at medium/close combat, I have to say that I completely disagree with this assertion, and that it holds the Manticore back from its full potential.


If I am running Engineer and expect to man a Hwatcha, I will ALWAYS take Burst. However, when playing as a Gunner and can afford the ammo slot, I will typically run Burst/Heavy Clip. It's amazing how many middle-high level players have straight-up scoffed at this notion, insisting that if you're not shooting Burst, get off the gun, get off the ship, log off, uninstall.


Why is this the case? Heavy Clip shots maintain their grouping for a considerable distance when volleyed from a reasonably stable platform, which has been invaluable for standing ground against middle-long range vessels, approaching brawlers, and special circumstances. Yes, you don't get as many rounds, and you don't get the AoE boost, but a crack shot will be pulling Engineers and Gunners off their jobs, and will possibly spook the Captain for the Burst volley that'll come if they get any closer. Especially at range, this warning shot is basically "free money" considering the reload time of the weapon. Why there are Captains that prefer one volley over two, I will truly never understand.


Am I just on the wrong end of a Captain issuing a blanket recommendation? What's going on here?

Offline Atruejedi

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2017, 09:40:55 am »
I think it comes down to how the pilot flies whichever ship is equipped with the Hwacha.

On a Galleon, Heavy Clip is a great supplemental ammo after Burst because you're never really sure at what range you'll be engaging. If paired with a Heavy Flak and a Gatling Gun, for example, the Hwacha on a Galleon can absolutely benefit from Heavy Clip when engaged at medium ranges. The problem is... if there's a Gunner on that Galleon, he/she is most likely using those multiple ammo slots to take Greased/Lesmok/Burst to make the Heavy Flak easier to fire and to address arming time. Because of this, the poor ol' Hwacha doesn't even get a chance to use Heavy Clip. "But what if you have Quad-Hwacha Galleon, Atruejedi?" Well, if you have even a single side stacked with more than one Hwacha, why bother engaging the enemy at anything more than point-blank range? So, again, Heavy Clip is rendered moot, even when carried by that Quad-Hwacha Galleon Gunner.

On a Spire, you have a situation similar to the one described in the previous paragraph. If your Spire pilot is taking a Hwacha, what are his/her other three light guns? Usually you'll end up with at least one Gatling (and more likely two), which is a closer range gun, even when paired with Lesmok... so, yes, while Heavy Clip can and will, on occasion, actually be loaded into a Hwacha on a Spire, it's a rare occurrence.

With a Goldfish, however, some pilots (myself included) insist on loading Burst because of the flanking potential and devastation the Burst-loaded Hwacha can have upon an unsuspecting enemy. There's no point in hitting them from afar with Heavy Clip if it's just going to alert them to your presence, fire fewer rockets, and have less AoE spread. It pays to wait until you're close enough to give them a punch in the gut with the Burst Hwacha.

Just another reason for Muse to #NerfBurst by removing the clip increase ;D That way, players might actually be encouraged to use other ammos in weapons like the Hwacha and Artemis.

Or, perhaps Heavy Clip needs an ever-so-slight buff by not reducing the clip size as much. Even a 5% change would help.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2017, 09:43:38 am by Atruejedi »

Offline BlackenedPies

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #2 on: January 18, 2017, 09:41:54 am »
Heavy clip has a limited use at longer range. The risk is that you'll still be reloading at burst range, or use too much stamina. There are situations where an initial heavy clip gives you an advantage, and ideally there'd be no risk of losing the right-timed burst shot should you miss the initial disable

An alternative to gunner with heavy clip is spanner mallet buff burst engi. Buffed burst increases range through increased damage, and the spanner mallet give full repair power - which is especially useful on heavy guns. A well timed mallet can be the difference between winning or losing your gun and the engagement

Offline Solidusbucket

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #3 on: January 18, 2017, 10:58:12 am »
I have experimented with heavy clip vs burst.

Heavy clip is good when their armor is down. However, the timing is difficult to pull off when receiving fire. Also, hard to hit if the enemy is moving.

Burst, even at range, is preferred for me. Even when half the clip misses with burst it still gets more disables than heavy clip. This is my personal experience and attempts at using heavy clip as both gunner and pilot in various scenarios, ships, and levels of play.

Offline Schwalbe

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #4 on: January 18, 2017, 11:30:47 am »
Depends on the captain you are flying with and on the map frankly.

1. If the map is Canyon Ambush, Paritan or Labirynth, there hardly ever will be situations in which you would benefit from heavy rounds, simply because there isn't much space to actually gain such distance the burst isn't the best choice.

2. If your captain says he needs burst, he probably means he want to engage on close distance mostly. (assuming it's not a moron)

3. Burst are somewhat easier to hit moving ships with, due to the huge spread.


However, why I think a gunner that exclusively mans the hwacha should always have heavy at his disposal, even after that fucking heavy nerf (seriously I'm still salty):

1. Sometimes the situation needs that heavy weapon to stay fucking down after the salvo. Putting every single rocket in the clip there is usually good way to do so (tell me that I fucking suck, but I could count and count situations in which I unloaded hwacha at enemy not to bring his heavy guns down with burst. -_- ).

2. "Hwacha duel". When two goldfishes open burst hwacha fire to disable each other fronts at the same time, RNG decides who actually fucks up the other gun, with some luck and skill perhaps.
When one of those ships have heavy rounds, he 1) fires his rockets faster (burst has ROF penalty as far as I remember) 2) more of them actually hit that hwacha down 3) thus bringing the gun down faster and minimalizing the number of burst rocket the enemy can fire.

3. You may get on board with captain who doesn't exactly know how hwacha is being used, or just cowardly enough to keep too much distance.


Unfortunately after heavy nerf, heavy rounds became somewhat situational type of ammo, instead of viable option I'm affraid.

Also I ain't no expert, I can speak bullshit.

Offline Corporal Ravioli

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2017, 11:35:31 am »
Thank you all for your informed responses. I've been quoting as the replies come in but you guys are getting too fast for me, so I'm just gonna post!

I failed to specify that in my initial post, but I'm mainly focusing on when utilizing the Hwatcha as a main weapon. If it's a secondary/panic weapon, I totally agree that it's only worth bringing Burst. As a main weapon, I just think that there's so much more potential within reach.

I have experimented with heavy clip vs burst.
Note, I'd like to focus on Heavy Clip AND Burst. Burst is always going to trump Heavy damage-wise. Heavy Clip is for the utility.

Burst, even at range, is preferred for me. Even when half the clip misses with burst it still gets more disables than heavy clip. This is my personal experience and attempts at using heavy clip as both gunner and pilot in various scenarios, ships, and levels of play.
One of my favorite facets of this game is how, even with a fairly rigorous competitive meta, personal preference and style does play a role on an individual level. My personal experience has led me to try to land as many rockets in as tight of a cluster as possible when at long range. I've been gaining the confidence to essentially snipe by leading the enemy with a dense packet of rockets towards a specific target on the vessel. I don't find myself having to rely on the AoE and missing half the shots when most or all of them hit dead-on. It's also more scary to receive a well-aimed stream than a cough when at long range, IMO.

Well, if you have even a single side stacked with more than one Hwacha, why bother engaging the enemy at anything more than point-blank range?
[...]
There's no point in hitting them from afar with Heavy Clip if it's just going to alert them to your presence, fire fewer rockets, and have less AoE spread. It pays to wait until you're close enough to give them a punch in the gut with the Burst Hwacha.

I agree that the one well-placed Burst volley is devastating, and that it pays to wait when the battle allows for it. What about if the enemy already knows where you are and is making moves to eliminate you? Say a Mobula/Spire plucking away at you from a decent range, or backpedaling away from a pair of brawlers? When on the defensive, giving them as hard of a time as possible as early as possible can discourage an aggressive attack, harass a member of a formation, or draw a line in the sand. This could just a be a contrast of the silent opportunist versus the loud and angry... keep your enemies close versus come up and get me. Doesn't it pay to be both?

An alternative to gunner with heavy clip is spanner mallet buff burst engi. Buffed burst increases range through increased damage, and the spanner mallet give full repair power - which is especially useful on heavy guns. A well timed mallet can be the difference between winning or losing your gun and the engagement

This is a great suggestion. I usually fly on tri-engineer ships when the weapons are predictable and simple. As of late I've been affording to play Gunner to get my hours in, and have taken that as an chance to be diverse and opportunistic when flying with a crew I trust.

If it helps, my inspiration for this post came last night when flying on a Whirlwind/Banshee Banshee/Manticore Spire. I brought Burst, Heavy, and Greased. This allowed me to get a volley of Heavy off when I could, run to the Banshee for either Burst or Greased, and then stam the rest of the Hwatcha reload (if necessary) with Burst for the real whallop. The crew I flew with was an absolute treat, and facilitated the shooting style we decided on for that series of matches. The results left me warm and fuzzy, and with a real sense that I was being a /proactive/ Gunner with the support of our Pilot and Engineering/Engigunning team. As an aside, what are your thoughts on that ship loadout?
« Last Edit: January 18, 2017, 12:04:06 pm by Corporal Ravioli »

Offline Fynx

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #6 on: January 18, 2017, 12:07:21 pm »
This is not a comment about low/medium level matches where you can do what you like and most likely you're going to get away with it.

It takes a number of very high level matches, players that focus on what they want to do, do it right, and a bit of ingenuity on your side to prove or disprove some sort of theory.

This answer is not a proof that heavy clip is useless in hwacha. Maybe you will find, one day, a repeteable situation where it is. More likely the game will die or get completely rebalanced, still.
Last of all, some questions can be answered only by statistics in specific situations and it's damn difficult to provide those.

It's an answer based on competitive and casual experience, but also lengthy discussions. And I probably forgot about a number of situations.


As of the time being, the only situation where heavy clip can be negotiated, is when you need to use hwacha as a close range defense weapon, rather than something for offense.

It may be hwacha on long range side of a sniping galleon, where gunner takes over the hwacha while some evil mobula gets into dangerous arming time of lumberjack. But hey, in most such situations, the huge majority of legit pilots will put another long range gun for better support and let's hope we can turn to close range side when we have to. If one of enemy ships is close range, it's already better to bring burst for engineer in the first place.

It may be hwacha on a long range spire that pretends to be a mobula (double art plus hades/merc). In most matches with long range ships enemy pilots will instantly switch to double mercury pyras, cheese pyras, double hades pyras, mercury mobulas, hades mobulas, meta galleons etc. while congratulating themselves the knowledge of how to bring proper ships in proper situations against proper enemies or because they wanted to. Assuming this situation didn't actually happen and we have some sort of hope that it's going to work, we'll have the gunner shooting one of the light guns usually from long range. But, since the hwacha sits idle, he might as well fire a heavy clip of hwacha occasionally. The problem is, either he's going to miss, or the enemy will intentionally dodge, or the hwacha will hit and not do anything, because it's heavy clip and not burst.

Finally, there may be a super weird situation where you need to stay at range for some reason (like first enemy just died, ally finishing off an enemy, we're waiting at their spawn), or charge to enemy spawn in a long range map where you just died and hope your ally will survive. At such times, you will have time to reload the hwacha before getting close to the enemy, so there's a tiny little little chance that it's going to help something, even on a hwachafish. Most likely though, you'll be wasting a gunner ammo slot instead of using something that has low probability of being useful, but still better than long range heavy clip hwacha (such as heatsink).

Otherwise, the most mistaken notion is shooting the charging enemies because they're still far away.
You're wasting your time getting close to them, not giving enough fire support to your ally. This also happens regularly in so-called high level matches.
Or they're going to get close much sooner than expected and you will die because no reloaded burst hwacha.
Or they're not coming any time soon anyway and you might as well be shooting a harpoon at a passing skywhale instead.

Offline Unarmed Civilian

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #7 on: January 18, 2017, 07:59:29 pm »
Usually if you're carrying a hwacha, you typically want to be the aggressor and be on the offensive. Even if you're no the aggressor you still want it to hit hard since it has a whopping 14 second reload. If you're using Heavy Clip, compared to Burst you are reducing your potential damage output by 37.5%. If that doesn't sound like a huge deal, then I don't know what would.

Not to mention that one of the Hwacha's past nerfs was reducing the speed of its rockets, making it harder to snipe with Heavy Clip. This was on top of Heavy Clip being nerfed to have -25% clip size. You're better off trying to snipe with Charged, or just plain Burst.

Offline Corporal Ravioli

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2017, 09:20:36 am »
If you're using Heavy Clip, compared to Burst you are reducing your potential damage output by 37.5%.

Doesn't this rely on every rocket landing on target?
« Last Edit: January 19, 2017, 09:32:02 am by Corporal Ravioli »

Offline BlackenedPies

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2017, 12:42:00 pm »
If you're using Heavy Clip, compared to Burst you are reducing your potential damage output by 37.5%.

Doesn't this rely on every rocket landing on target?

Yes, but it's not counting the +50% burst radius: from 7m to 10.5. For normal hwatcha, full burst damage is dealt up to a 3.5m radius, and damage decreases linearly to 20% at 7m. With burst, this is increased to 5.25m full damage
« Last Edit: January 19, 2017, 12:43:43 pm by BlackenedPies »

Offline Unarmed Civilian

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #10 on: January 19, 2017, 02:07:47 pm »
If you're using Heavy Clip, compared to Burst you are reducing your potential damage output by 37.5%.

Doesn't this rely on every rocket landing on target?

I'm just counting raw damage to the hull. To calculate the average for component breaking would be a lot harder, but it's probably safe to say it be around the same or less if using heavy. Burst rounds have the benefit of simply doing more effective damage in a wider radius and having more shots fired with the downside of being less accurate than heavy clip, making it so you can't snipe out components as precisely. However, you don't have to be precise if you can hit 5 meters next to something and still hit it, and you're not realistically going to disable an entire ship with heavy at long range.

Offline Corporal Ravioli

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Offline Rareform K. Rozhkov

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #12 on: September 27, 2017, 09:48:52 pm »
Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
«  on: January 18, 2017, 09:14:13 am »

Offline Schwalbe

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #13 on: September 28, 2017, 08:09:39 am »
Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
«  on: January 18, 2017, 09:14:13 am »

So?

The rounds been changed since the original post, so I'd say bringing the discussion back up is a valid thing to do...

Offline Corporal Ravioli

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Re: Exclusively using Burst in the Heavy Hwatcha?
« Reply #14 on: September 28, 2017, 09:40:47 am »
Surely. As well, my initial point was on utilizing ammunition for /application/, not stuffing my nose in a spreadsheet. The jitter numbers may have shifted, but that video could have been from pre-change and my point would still be valid.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2017, 09:43:00 am by Corporal Ravioli »