Does anyone even use the Lasher or Jackhammer? It seems only the HA minigun is found on the battlefield in action. Anyone else feel that the other two need some serious attention?
Use and see the Lasher being used, but only when there are actual large scale assaults going on. As a situational weapon, carrying it all the time is a death sentence. One on one you will probably lose and getting kills isn't common (assists out the wazoo)... is a great support weapon though, better than the other two for its role. As it requires some skill and common sense to use properly... I'd rather not have everyone using it. I get enough splash from people running in front of me while I am suppressing, don't need it in the back as well.
The lasher is absolutely terrible. I'd put it right there with battle rifles. You have a weapon that: a) Has slow moving massively obvious shots that anyone from medium range out can just move aside from at their leisure. b) At short range it kills the user. c) It will generate you grief in an enclosed area faster than tossing grenades around at random. d) Its damage is pretty awful meaning you lose most 1 v 1 encounters. e) It has next to no upgrades, not even a scope. Its only real use is in a squad of other people with lashers holding down a confined area. Then they just produce a wall of electricity when combined. To call that situational is a bit of an understatement. This is the VS signature weapon. They didn't even bother giving it a sound when it fires meaning it has no feel to it at all. Just pitiful.
But I can shut down a doorway by myself, draw the fire and attention of literally everyone, block a flanking maneuver, with height reduce the available cover of an enemy, chew maxes to shreds, and break an established bio lab/spire entrance defense...... so yes, I can confidently call those situational. Is what I do appreciated or even noticed by players or the game reward system, not really.
The TR minigun is the best of the HA "special weapons". But its still awful. I think the devs were afraid of going into OP so they made them all "meh".
Lasher's highly situational. Don't use it until your guys have the walls. It works pretty well in the courtyard at medium/close quarters, but if you expect to win carbine-range firefights with it you will die. Not that much different from PS1. That said, it works a little better than in PS2. If you find yourself going up a staircase in a building...Lasher's a fun weapon to have. As long as there isn't a Jackhammer somewhere. Thank god there's no third person, the JH would be ripping it up like old times.
jackhammer is pathetic... its a weak sweeper with a 4 second reload and crap for ammo capacity. fixes needed- tighten the pattern to make it a bit more range, give it the piston reload, double the ammo. lasher- only had this used on me, so only opinion is omfgwtfbbq lol... its weak considering its a specialized weapon, the only thing i can say this thing is deadly in hallways and biodomes. massivly effective at locking down area's as long as your fellow vanu don't get in the way. minigun- this thing is useful for every situation every range against every target but heavy armor... do not know why so many TR think its so weak. i absolutly love it with my TR, if i'm in any kind of restricted area like a biodome inside the base area of a tech plant and base in general this thing owns . just hold down the trigger and spray away. it would say if anything it needs a slightly less spin up time or allow the secondary fire to "spin" but your forced to walk only. tapping the button will keep it spun up so your ready at an instant with leaded death.
I feel like the Lasher, the Jackhammer, and even the MCG all need buffs. Last time I tested the MCG, in beta, it killed in 9 bullets, so I'm not sure it needs as much of a buff as the others. From what I've heard, the Jackhammer is just a worse version of the NC's regular shotties. Giving it a massive ammo cap, like some have said in other threads, sounds like a good way to fix it. The Lasher needs both a fire rate and projectile speed increase... badly. Sure, you can sustain fire for 45 seconds with extended mags, but when that fire does pitiful damage... It really needs to be changed. Both the Jackhammer and MCG are CQC weapons, a form of combat the occurs commonly in this game, so why isn't the Lasher similar? I liked it much better as the laser weapon it was in beta. The gun is pretty useless unless you're sitting on a Bio Lab pad spamming into masses of enemies who are too clueless to shoot the guy who has to stand in the middle of the pad so he doesn't accidentally kill himself with splash damage.
All 3 factions HA specials are pretty useless weapons without group support. Jackhammer has no range and is not much different than just using other shotguns, Minigun's wind up time makes it useless for start and stop firefights, and Lasher is just not good all round. The only reason why minigun is at least somewhat used is because at least you can suppress people with it's shear mass of bullet storm. They all need to be buffed imo.
Lasher is fantastic and if you don't like it then you're a COD kiddie that expects everything to fall over in a fraction of a second after you put your crosshair around them and clicked a button. I feel bad for saying something bad about COD's fan base but really, the lasher isn't meant to melt enemies in CQC and if you hate it because of that then I really don't care to hear any other opinions you may have.
I'd be happy is SOE just buffed the damage from direct and indirect hits. I'd even live with self damage as a trade off. This weapon is a JOKE! I've sprayed full auto into a small spawn room and have not killed a single enemy. They just spawned and ran out knowing they could out live the Lasher spam. I'm sure it takes 8 or 9 direct hits to kill even a LA. Try that before you get smoked by any other weapon in the game. SONY!!! Fix the Lasher up for god's sake. That or refund my $7.
7, actually, and that's only with the direct damage of 150. It might need a slight boost but the Lasher isn't absolutely terrible. It provides a unique infantry weapon, unlike the Jackhammer which is worse than other shotguns in all areas unless there's some kind of hidden stat we don't know about.
I do love my lasher. However it's great because it's such a fun weapon to use. Especially where you find a clustered group of enemies who are oblivious to you, then you hose down a lot of people. However that's a rare situation. Majority of times the Rate of Fire is far too low, the projectile velocity is just barbaric in it's speed. The damage for something which has a low velocity and rate of fire is not enough. Pretty much, it's direct damage needs to be upped to 200 or, the rate of fire and velocity need to be increased. The splash damage, could either need a very minor damage increase or the area of effect could do with an increase in range, one or the other, not both. That's my view on it.
With tunnels coming soon, I think you might see a use for lashers. Old PS1 style lasher defences, i.e. 3-4 lashers alternating fire to keep a hallway filled with plasma balls of tickly doom.
I use the Lasher. You don't want to take anyone on solo because it won't kill them quickly enough, but it's a great weapon in support and suppression. Great for groups of enemies or flushing people out of cover. However, I find it frustrating the amount of friendly fire you can accumulate with it, as the explosions will damage friendlies (unlike PS1). Definitely don't use it at almost point blank, because lashing yourself counts as friendly fire.
Never saw someone using a jackhammer, cause those other shotgun can mostly use every class, so its more worth investing into.
I've seen exactly one person on each of the three servers I play on use a Jackhammer, and one of those people is myself. But now that I've hit my goal with it even I'm not touching the thing lately.
I take it back. Decided to test it out a bit just now and 75 splash damage seems to mean very little. A single bar of health little. And the radius is only ~4m which is decentish but not quite enough for its intended purpose. Maybe up the radius just a tad and make the damage always apply full strength to anything in its area? According to the raw data I should've been doing a bit more than what I was seeing so there has to be some damage loss in there somewhere. Is there reduced damage for hitting yourself? That could be it but I'm not aware of any such feature.
