The patch notes for GU11 claim this: Lasher: This weapon will receive a rate of fire increase and a slight damage buff, which should allow it to be viable in more situations. Also, ally players will no longer take the full AOE damage. What they fail to mention is the massive nerf to the hipfire accuracy of the Lasher. Test 333 RPM 155 dmg, outer splash at 3m lowered 25 to 10, inner splash unchanged. Distance damage still 100. 1.5/2/2/2.5/.1 Live 300 RPM 150 dmg, 100dmg at distance .12/.5/.12/1/.05 Please note the decimal points. Crouch stationary CoF increased by more than factor 10, crouch move quadrupled, Stand stationary accuracy nerfed even harder than crouch stationary, Stand move CoF more than doubled, CoF bloom while firing doubled. Just try killing some infantry in VR on test and check how far away it can be before you have to use incredibly short bursts or single fire to achieve anything. With the starting accuracy so much worse and firing bloom doubled, it's incredibly annoying to use. The already useless near-misses were also nerfed to be even more inconsequential than they already are. But with the new spread, you'll be landing more of those This is a massive effective range/useability nerf dressed up with some fairly minor TTK improvements that only come into play if you consistently land direct hits - with a 100m/s weapon and now massively nerfed cone of fire. Not to mention DOUBLING the CoF bloom while firing makes the increased rate of fire unappealing or straight useless for all but the closest ranges. How they can call this 'viable in more situations' is a mystery to me. If you care at all about the Lasher, get on reddit or twitter, since the devs don't look at the forums much. Spread the word about incomplete or obfuscating patch notes.
I agree, people have noticed this and I hope this is not the final version that goes out with GU11. The one role the Lasher can fulfill is area suppression- both the reduced hipfire accuracy and the splash damage reduction go against this. It's not like it will become a viable direct hit weapon with the small buff in the other areas.
Finally! The hip fire and ADS CoF are switched to make sense!! Noobs don't even know what is you going on! Thank god SOE, now give it a sight.
Yeah, it's great that now you have to use ADS and see nothing due the the continuous blue lighting balls blinding you...
It's not really surprising that SOE nerfing the weapon I personally use it to deny access to doorways and corridors with hip fire and now they're taking that away from me. imagine the Lasher with the Orion's RPM.
MCG is also getting a nerf to its hip accuracy, I don't know what soe are thinking but I'm sure they have their heads up in a dark place with these nerfs.
Sounds right up there with the Jackhammer changes for GU11. Hey guys, we are increasing the mag and fire rate of the Jackhammer. Oh btw we are reducing pellet damage of all shotguns...
I'm actually looking forward to the Jackhammer in GU11. They toned down the mad, screenshaking recoil added in GU10, the burst mode is now blazing fast (faster than an autoshotgun) and with its large magazine and tight spread it'll be a lot less nerfed than other shotguns. The MCG situation is slightly different to the Lasher, since the Lasher started out garbage at ADS but excellent at hipfire, while the current MCG is only ok at hipfire (roughly equivalent to an Adv. Laser MSW-R, but worse than Adv. Laser carbines/ARs) but good at ADS. There's barely any bloom to like, the first 10 shots. Out to mid range it's a great bullet laser. On test, they made its weakness (close range hipfire) weaker, but made its ADS even better. See, the biggest ADS weakness the MCG has on live right now, is accuracy loss while moving during ADS. It was worse for this than the Gauss SAW! They straight up halved its accuracy loss during ADS movement. I understand the frustration with the loss of hipfire accuracy, but they did buff the thing the MCG was already better at, which I appreciate. Excellent mid-range ADS gun. For me, the primary playstyle of the gun remains unchanged. And at least now, bullets start coming out as soon as I click (albeit slowly), so I feel the gun has become less terrible at panic-CQC as a whole. Meanwhile the Lasher's buffed ADS is STILL worse than the old hipfire, so it's a net loss in accuracy even if I were to adjust my playstyle to ADS, I'd still lose range, because it starts less accurate, blooms more when firing, and with ADS, the giant projectiles block line of sight to the target really badly. Jackhammer got buffed to where it can weather the global shotgun nerfs kind of well, MCG got tweaked to make its strong part stronger, and Lasher got changed from a hipfire to an ADS gun, with a net loss of accuracy as a result. In terms of severity and annoyance, I'm happy Jackhammer, most annoyed with the Lasher, with the MCG somewhere in the middle around 'meh'. I don't think the hipfire was good enough to need tweaking even with the ADS improvements.
Yup, that's SOE's mentality with the nerfs. Buff an area that isn't even that important but nerf the most important part of that weapon.
So for a <10% DPS boost on a weapon with (AFAIK) the highest TTK by an order of magnitude, we lose any accuracy. This means that you will still lose CQC-short range engagements, but will now not have the accuracy to achieve anything medium-long range. That is indeed a strange definition of "Viable in more situations". I can understand reducing hip fire accuracy, but ADS as well? This has got to be the biggest joke ever.
It takes some guts to sell this as a buff. The only good thing is the sights. It's been slightly improved at the things it's still worse at than any other weapon for that slot, while everything we bought it for has been nerfed (can't see the aoe in the list, not sure they forgot it, took it out, or plain didn't list it) . It's less accurate, deals (probably) less AOE damage, has massively higher recoil and bloom, and they didn't remove that ugly animation that blocks all of the screen the projectiles don't already obscure. -.-
Had a bit of a play with it and the accuracy is horrible now, coupled with nasty recoil and that stupid animation means you cannot see let alone hit things you could before. JH seems a neutral change, worse and better in different respects. MCG seems a slight buff overall (not counting the removal of spin-up-bypass bug). Lasher has been nerfed hard with a poxy RoF increase that is like adding insult to injury considering the CoF/recoil changes. SoE, just take this "buff" back. If this is your idea of improvement, then I would rather you didn't bother.
That one. That one there. As long as the Lasher carrier is _also_ an "Ally Troop"... Trading some hipfire accuracy for ADS accuracy the Lasher is less a run-and-gun weapon now, you should now be crouching and/or aiming for any kind of sustained fire, and to encourage this, they've given us sights.
Optical sightsl; including the 6x Trigon and NVS. Also, the recoil drift and lift is now predictable and can be managed (it used to be completely random which meant you couldn't compensate). It looks like you should be able to hold the Lasher on a MAX at long range now...
oh you mean a stand still and shoot the most obvious and slow stream of low damage projectiles to suppress a door? or reworded, become the easiest most obvious target to anything in the next 3 hexes while not being able to hit the broad side of a galaxy at 50m
did you ever use the lasher before? as the lasher is my second most used weapon (since launch) i seriously doubt you have a clue what you are talking about
I'm reading a lot of whining about a weapon that finally got fixed and improved, have you guys actually field tested it or just read the patch notes and want forums-side to complain about it?
The Lasher used to have some of the best hipfire accuracy in the game. It's ADS is just pretty good now, instead of terrible like it used to be. Pretty Good ADS accuracy is going to be enough at most practical ranges, and reflex sights are quite good, now you move around at half the speed while accurately firing. Giving it a few spins, it's a solid change for the "The Lasher sucks and is only good for splash!" crowd, or people who teamkill or suicide with it a lot. For me, it's mostly just trading away ease of use for 10ish % more damage. Ok. I'll adjust.
Look at it from an NC perspective for a minute here. Since the patch, I have been killed by the Lasher more times in six hours than in my entire playing career. Since the patch, I have been killed by the MCG more times in six hours than in my entire playing career. Since the patch, I have killed more freedomless slaves with the Jackhammer in six hours than in my entire playing career. Believe it or not, they all seem to be more effective killing machines than before. At least, that's the way I see it.
