I was playing Lockdown today when, after killing a Polaris spammer with a perfectly timed (and a bit lucky) Glacius Charge shot, he began calling me a noob for only being able to spam Brandish Charges.
Disregarding the irony of the situation for a moment, I realized that I have not actually been on the receiving end of Brandish Charge Spam. So I was wondering, how annoying is it to deal with a Brandish Charge Spammer, relative to say... a Polaris spammer? RSS spammer? Maybe even hammer?
As a RSS bomber i find the range quite annoying. The Hit box for the 5* line is a lot bigger then the actual animation and the charge seems to hit faster as well. Not only that but the swing appears quite large, almost 180. When the opposing person has CTr bonuses, this can be quite combersome for a recon. if You run straight away or to the side to avoid the blast you still get hit and statused* and if you try to get close to the brandish user in order to reduce the distance needed to exit the line of fire you will almost definitively get hit by the initial swing. The fact that there is a small animation for putting the bomb down doesn't help either'
All in All, brandish Charges can be nearly impossible to avoid as a recon bomber If you are not careful. Although all this can be avoid by treating bradish users similar to fraust users when bombing
I like Brandish spammers, because they are fairly easy to kill. The range is awesome, so sometimes I get nailed from offscreen. But often, by the time someone decides they have me lined up for a charge, I've already eaten them with my RSS. Works for me. Also, Votaic Tempest makes hash out of anyone who thinks charging is a good idea, including my RSS. Best way to deal with a FoV charger spammer? VT haze all over the freaking place.
I don't mind RSS spammers. Yes, I am one. But when I encounter another one, I see it as a great challenge to try to get them without being got myself. Polaris spammers I hate. But lately I've found a lot of people who can't aim worth a darn, and they are also nice, because they spam one direction, i walk around, RSS, boom, they dead.
Now, if there are a lot of brandish charges going off, that gets hard. And I am annoyed by the one-shot-kill aspect of them. But in general? I do not find them nearly as annoying as Polaris spam.
I don't care about hammers. They don't bug me. Also I loved hammer users when the glitch was up, because they would fly right by me, and my RSS would say hello to their revealed butt.
Sword charges have little place in a joined 1 on 1 battle- even at max CTR you are incredibly vulnerable. Gunners will tear you a new one while you stroll around charging, Strikers will swiss-cheese you before you can finish, and good luck reaching a bomber through haze. That said, charges make for a great opening ambush or support fire in a grand melee. As with most tactics, it's the 'spam' part that is bad- doing anything predictable makes you an easier target. The best players mix it up, either with multiple attack styles, or moving differently within one attack style.
Edit: Personally I have no problem with brandish spammers. Pauling (below) basically sums up my feelings. Although, I play recon gunner so all I have to do is cloak and zap the unfortunate charger with Storm Driver. Incidentally, while damage no longer breaks a completed charge, shock still does, making it extra lethal to those relying on charge attacks (like bombers). Getting a charge brandish to connect with an alert cloaked recon is next to impossible, due to lack of exact location and the brief pause between unleash and the attack actually coming out.
@Mohander: The thread isn't about the practicality of the strategy though.
But, while we're off topic: The reason why I am still getting over 12k damage with Glacius Charge Spam is because if you are caught in one of the MASSIVE explosions, you will be frozen solid. When frozen, I can just walk up to you and hit you again with another charge shot, that will insta-kill most enemies. Predictable? Yeah a bit, but most strikers are just as predictable sometimes. If they know your are about to unleash a Brandish Charge Shot, 95% of the time they circle around and hit you in your back... I cannot count how many Strikers I have killed via just shooting a charge shot backwards in the opposite direction they are coming from.
As a guardian, I love brandish charge spammers for four reasons:
1. You can't use striker dash and charge at the same time, which means that the main advantage of the striker class goes unused.
2. People usually go far away to charge in safety, which means that they're not standing on my control point.
3. Charging takes more time than attacking, so brandish charge spammers spend most of their time doing nothing.
4. Most importantly: there's a brief pause before a charged attack is released. Thus it's very hard to hit an alert player in a 1v1 fight, and- especially- it's very hard to hit a moving player with the full force of the charge.
As a result, what you get is an enemy who spends most of their time being wildly ineffective, at most denting my shield and then giving it the time it needs to regenerate. There are certain team situations where the charged attack can be effective, but using it exclusively takes you out of the fight for more than a single shot every few seconds. So it's best used as the first salvo, rather than your only tactic.
I don't understand, given the game's mechanics, why any of it is called "spam." By the very nature of how the game is played, of COURSE you're going to "spam" your attack with a weapon. Spam has such a derogatory connotation in the game, though.
Don't worry about it. There are millions of things that people can complain about lockdown.
For example, the invincibility frames make most swords useless when swung more than once. How unbalanced is that?
This is an excellent post
And Pauling, as a fellow guardian, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's the little things like that that make my day.
Elegies, I'm with you! Whenever people gripe about me "spamming RSS," I wonder what they expect me to do. In PvE we're all about max DPS, especially Bombers are all about it: Max CTR, best damage you can get, and then go to town! The only time to not spam a bomb seems to be with knockback. And in LD, that's not an issue (for one, knockback bombs are less useful there, for 2, who cares?). I've always wanted to ask them to pause and count to 3 between attacks when they say that.
If I remember correctly, Brandish line spam is quite formidable in T3, and somewhat deal a decent amount of damage (please don;t take my word for it)
In T2, you can barely get a full charge with your Brandish without getting mowed down by Dusker toothpicking strikers or the Polaris line spewwers.
Still, if you ask me, dealing with Trollaris spammers, RSS spammers and hammer spammers are much more annoying than the Brandish line spammers. And besides, how else can you get a more even ground with the aforementioned spammers unless you utilize the Brandish's full potential? So I say go for it, make their lives miserable and revel in the pros' whining and writhing! XD
inb4 being shot down by the aforementioned spammers even here in the forums. C'est la vie.