Thumper is a really fun weapon to use as a primary. It is a semi aggressive support weapon that simply feels satisfying or rewarding when providing direct hits on enemies, allowing you to even win duels at close range, whiling having powerful crowd control capabilities. It has no elements that'd make it toxic. It has lower TTK than the VS Lasher Heavy Gun (on direct hits), Thumper's splash damage is only 3 meters, and its low magazine size doesn't allow for continuous spam but rather careful use. I would even label it as the least toxic weapon in the game. To standard firearms you usually die in .5 seconds. Thumper would take at least 1 second on direct hits, which are incredibly hard to achieve when you put into account the design of low velocity and an arching projectile, against a simple infantryman without Flak Armor. Even pistols would out damage the Thumper. Or yesterday I remember this incident of the usual Harasser mass ramming, taking out 10 targets including MAXes in a blink of an eye and escaping with more than half HP after receiving direct hits from rocket launchers... You know, like out of everything we have in the game Thumper is the most innocent weapon lol. But it was left in an incomplete messed up state where you search through its upgrades for the ideal choice, and it was ultimately designed to have no ideal choice. It feels as if it was intended to just be a secondary ASP weapon like a sidearm, which BTW is toxic lol, though it has great potential to be a fun primary. _______ So, the Thumper has 3 upgrades: -One that boosts fire rate and allows for automatic fire but at a cost of increased cone of fire (Automatic Trigger) -Other that boosts velocity and decreases cone of fire (Launch Accelerator) -Third, removes movement speed penalty (Lightweight Materials) The Thumper based on wiki slows your character's movement speed by 10%... What is this design choice about? I don't know. But basically, the most reliable and at the same time unreliable upgrade is Automatic Trigger. Like the Thumper lacks velocity and accuracy altogether, but the reason why 'Launch Accelerator' (velocity boost, cone of fire decrease) does not work is because the gun is semi-automatic and the fire rate is too slow. And if you mistime your next click, you do not shoot So often times you are required to frantically spam left click, to not run into this issue and this just beats the whole point of the upgrade because you must stay calm to estimate where you must pre aim and fire to hit a moving target. The reason why the Thumper is not automatic by default is because it has Bloom lol, for again unknown reasons. And if it had automatic fire by default, that would also defeat the purpose of 'Launch Accelerator' because you would mistime your clicks and it would continue auto fire and spread your fire with Bloom after the consecutive shot. And why Automatic Trigger is the most reliable (firerate boost) and ultimately unreliable upgrade is because of the increase in cone of fire... Which is basically RNG. It is already too high by default, but cone of fire is just a terrible mechanic here, because not only you are required to pre-aim your target with estimates factoring in distance of target, and your low velocity and arching projectile motion, you also have a random chance of the round going completely off your crosshair. And this cannot happen because you do not have room to miss. This isn't a machine gun... You have just 6 slow firing rounds. And ultimately this is what I mean of how it's a complete mess. To put it short, the velocity and cone of fire of the gun needs to be buffed by default, unless there is a better design choice altogether.
