Pre nerf they were significantly overpeforming, post nerf claymores are significantly underperforming to the point of almost being eliminated from the Auraxian battlefields altogether. Can we just admit that claymores can't be balanced and give the TR a proxy mine-bouncing betty equivalent? Either that or revert the claymore nerf and make proxies and betties insta detonate as well.
All mines are based on lag... 50% of the time I run over them as a non nanoweave infiltrator and take 25% damage ... maybe. They are all bad.
I had the 1160 kills in no time pre nerf. Tried changing the placement but the lag as said above really hit the success rate.
I still get plenty of claymore mine kills. It does require different placement and the fact that a lot more people can run mine sweeper now that there are two implant slots does decrease your chances for kills, with or without reversion to the old insta detonation claymores. Between qrom on emerald and zumaxx on connery I have around 35,000 claymore mine kills, but the rate has gone down to no more than 2-300 a month rather than the old 600-800. I doubt changing to a proxy mine option will improve things.
Just make all the mines instant. Then there's no "run fast" and live. And no "One is instant, and two need a delayed target"
I agree with zu2 about kill rates - mine have fallen and the traditional places to drop them are no longer much use (beside doorways etc.) On the other hand, they are still OHK weapons for the most part and people do still run into them. What I have found is that I need basically the same tactic for all AI mine types nowadays i.e. putting them behind something where planetmans are going to be likely to pause or stop.
Mines are in a bad spot: You need to hide them behind conors, so they cant been seen easily. But then someone runs by and due to delay he has often time to sprint jump (best with catlike, other also survive), get run past/back. Heavys may activate overshield, LA fly and if you have flakarmor you are fine. Killing off wounded targets is also hard, cause no wounded enemy rushs. I made around 700 kills before the mine update playing regular, but now my best bet is to sucide run with them. or throw them in painfields where they auto-detonate
I still get plenty of claymore kills. I find just placing them at a 45 degree angle to a door instead of straight on allows for that slightly longer detonation. I've got about 5,820 clay kills and I can't say they're any less effective than they were pre-nerf.
Placed at an angle like JobiWan says still works but I get most results in obscure room corners facing a cap point (the Tower cap points are best) or where enemies are likely to sprint for cover when they come under fire and tend not to be looking too hard
Any concrete evidence that claymores are significantly underperforming the other 2? I'd love to see some stats. Not being facetious or sarcastic. It's impossible to talk performance without comparative analysis. Otherwise it's all just anecdotal evidence. Which of course proves nothing at all. Could be the operator, could be lag, could be the actual weapon. How will we ever know for sure without reliable statistics?
I never had problems with mines, implants. AI mines I just kinda ignore, just run past and unless I'm walking right over one, I don't take damage or at least nothing that gets past the shield, if I do find a mine, I just heavy over it, but then again I play a lot of light assault so I almost never find mines in general.
If you think you have it bad now, a bouncing betty equivalent would be worse. Remember it generally takes an NC or VS twice as many mines to get those kills due to the mines only being instantly lethal at extremely close range. Hence why you see so many of them in one room - they're spaced out so that a victim will be in the lethal blast of both. In doing so however most of the mines damage is wasted. So while we might get the same number of kills with mines, it generally takes twice as many mines to get that kill. The trick with the balanced claymores is that you have to set them so that the lethal zone not only covers where the victim is when triggering them but where they will be on detonation. For example (wish I had a drawing handy but Winslug 10...) if you wanted to trap a doorway using the above method, put one mine in one corner and the other opposite, but facing away from the door by about 30 to 45 degrees. That way the smuck setting them off will still in the blast radius when they detonate even if they keep running ahead. As an added bonus for that sort of effort you will also kill the guys following behind him, and with their bodies well inside a room that might be covered by your side they probably aren't going to be getting out before the respawn timer runs dry. I can't speak for the NC myself, but I would happily trade a bouncing betty for a claymore. Though I would warn you that you might regret it later if only due to being put on the "TK on sight because this is all his fault" list of every TR who gets killed due to my tendency of mining the living hell out of whatever room I'm in. Oh and its not instant detonation that makes Claymores more effective. Its that their lethal zone is further away than either a proxy or betty. And if you buff that up you will hear a massive amount of whining by TR who suddenly get one shot because someone in their rush didn't watch where they put their feet.
especially with sweeper implant available and its a common implant explosive device now really need to kick hard, most of them getting destroyed before even target gets int he range.
Now the all can get Sweeper Implant i think that all AI MINES need to be more lethal, without delay activation.
Claymores were pretty much guaranteed kills before the change while the other mines were mediocre at best. The sad truth is AI mines will never really be balanced, they're either too powerful or next to useless with no inbetween.
Everyone could get the sweeper implant before, infact the previous version was better at handing you 50 copies of it. Devs don't want no skill free kills, it's simple, so they nerf whatever they think is skillless.
