Spiral Knights - Catalyzers and why no one uses them

Catalyzers and why no one uses them

21 replies [Last post]

Tue, 04/15/2014 - 16:42

Holy-Nightmare

Catalyzers are interesting guns that can let a player take a monster down to 0 hp in an instant (with setup time). This is a useful mechanic when having to deal with silkwings or menders.

These guns can turn an enemy into a walking (crawling or sliding) Bomb capable of dealing high damage to anything nearby, and with an amazingly short charge time this gun can set up quickly.

This all sounds so good, so why isn't anyone using them?

The answer inconsiderate teammates.

Suppose you are trying to setup a slime to lead in to the rest and blow them all up, then some striker nut comes up and nukes it with their Acheron. There goes all that work, planning and preparation down the drain. The bombers and gunners you get teamed with seem to only care about spamming Nitronomes and Polaris attacks, and soon you are reduced to spamming your regular attack in hopes that this damage can make up for the fact that your charge attacks can’t seem to be of any help to your team.

My general respons to trying to work with uncooperative players like this can be summed up in a few words....

http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/2/2e/Demoman_autodejectedtie04.wav...

Tue, 04/15/2014 - 17:23

Flowchart

Happens with shard bombs and pepperbox too. No point using them unless others are too. Then people complain why isn't anyone using these weapons.

Tue, 04/15/2014 - 17:36

Dibsville

As a Neutralizer and Biohazard user, I concur. There's really no point to use them with other party members since they always end up murdering the enemies anyway. Sometimes it just seems better to use an actual bomb rather than the wicked bomb-guns that are Catalyzers.

Best solo weapon 10/10 though.

Tue, 04/15/2014 - 22:37

The-Vindicar

Catalyzers take too long to

Catalyzers take too long to set up, plus their bullets are slow, making Blight Cannon line hardly useful against Gremlins despite it's shadow damage and poison effect. It's quite fun, indeed, to attach five orbs to that pesky Mender and send his poisoned corpse flying across the room... but usually you need something that deals constant stream of death, especially if you're in a party.
I wonder if it's a good gun to deal with RJ, though.

Wed, 04/16/2014 - 06:33

Bopp

too slow, with nothing happening along the way

Catalyzers are fun, just because they are really different from other weapons. I would expect bored veteran players to use them a lot.

The problem is that Catalyzers have a really long build-up-the-charges period, during which nothing is happening. I mean, the monsters are not getting knocked back, status-afflicted, or anything like that. There is no immediate improvement to your safety or other reward. You're just running around dodging, dodging, dodging, dodging, dodging, dodging, dodging --- and then everything dies.

Compare to Combuster/Acheron charges, where the monsters are pushed away from you as you kill them. Or alchemer shots, where the ricochets sometimes hit extra monsters, drawing their aggro onto you and making you happy. Or Blitz Needle charges, where the target dies without such a long build-up.

Wed, 04/16/2014 - 07:12

Seiran

If you're in a party, you can get away with doing one-charge-one-explosion.

If you're dealing with a lot of monsters, you can combine a vortex-style bomb with a catalyzer then aim for the right side ("eastern-most" side) + instant explosion for reliable effect. If you aim at the right, the bullet will spawn at the top then circle CCW to the top-left. Combine this with Vortex's CW rotation and you basically get your explosion to happen in the middle of the bomb.

Also, just like Lockdown, there's a bit of a factor prediction where you can watch your teammates' angles and shoot ahead of where they'll push the enemies so your charge (or normal shot) will be there waiting when they actually do push them.

I use Neutralizer as part of my gun-only PVE loadouts (including FSC) - party or not, I expect people to do things, so it usually works out :3

Wed, 04/16/2014 - 17:08

Fehzor

You guys are just bad at using your catalyzers, as are most people. Except Seiran, she gets it.

Lets say there are three turrets in a line, and that they'll each die in two charge hits.

1 -- 2 -- 3

If I tag turret two, then I can hit 1+2 or 2+3.
If I tag turret two a second time, I have the choice of hitting either 1+1+2+2 or 1+2+2+3 or 3+3+2+2 but no matter what, I'll have to hit turret number 2 twice and kill it.
If I tag turret two a third time, I'll hit turret 2 three times KOing it and plausibly 1 or 3, but not both.
If I tag turret two 4 times, I'll KO turret 2, and maybe 1 and 3 but probably not both unless I time it right in which case I could.
If I tag turret two 5 times, I'll KO turret 2, and probably 1 and 3.
If I tag turret two 6 times...

And my team is sitting there patiently as I stack 7 or 8 charges onto a single enemy, just so that I can leave a crater and be like "LOOK GUYS I KILLED IT :D :D :D WOW DAMAGE :D :D"

If I have 3 other people in my party, I should be dealing 1/4 of the work towards killing the thing. If I detonate one shot on the turrets and hit two of them, I just did 1/3 of the work towards killing all of them. Tagging them more than that is tempting, but forcefully unnecessary and even detrimental to my success.

Similarly, lets say there are 15 slimes chasing us, and we're all running away, shooting back. If they're clumped up and I detonate a shot, it will hit some number of them in an area. If they're evenly spaced and I detonate a single shot, it will damage about 1/3 of the enemies mayhaps. If I detonate 3 shots, it will damage about all of the enemies. If the jelly cubes are 2 charges away from death to begin with, one shot would be enough to deal 1/6 of the total needed. A few normal shots and I'm effectively done; I don't even need to blow up EVERY SINGLE SLIME EVER because I'm a part of a team.

The reason people don't use catalyzers isn't because their team mates are jerks, its because the learning curve of getting over the above is tremendous, and the end result is underwhelming due to catalyzers lack of anything but damage + ability to miss everything ever due to slow derpy projectiles that fail to hit laggy enemies that aren't really there.

Wed, 04/16/2014 - 17:51

Seiran

oh my goodness

If I have 3 other people in my party, I should be dealing 1/4 of the work towards killing the thing. If I detonate one shot on the turrets and hit two of them, I just did 1/3 of the work towards killing all of them. Tagging them more than that is tempting, but forcefully unnecessary and even detrimental to my success.

This is exactly the mindset I have when I play in PvE teams, and why my catalyzer shots don't go to waste.

At D24 with max damage, neutralizer does 500 damage per charge. Add in a few normal shots (detonation shot and all those), and you basically have something between 700-900 damage on one enemy for very minimal setup. If you can tag one enemy and maybe do a quick push+detonate (the shieldpush-shot is difficult to aim when you're doing it in one smooth motion) but it can make the difference when you're trying to be effective with catalyzers.

Of note, I tried comparing my DPS between neutralizer and nova driver (strong non-status gun, effective vs undead) in FSC, and catalyzer shines when you have 5+ monsters clumped together via vortex, while nova is better for 2-4 at a time. It really scales - vortex fixes all of catalyzer's problems :D

Mon, 04/21/2014 - 12:21

Putkinen

Hmm.

The shots should be reversed. Regular shots tag, charge shot kills. The charge should preferably be fairly slow to charge, fast moving and fairly highly damaging on its own to make CTR mod havers not cry foul. Do keep the flinch animation though, it gives it a good feel.

You know, as much as I like the Normal damage version being a viable choice for once, they kind of screwed it up anyway. Zombies are just the best targets for this thing. I think the damage should be equal since the thing barely works on Thwackers, negating the upside pretty much entirely. The regular one could just have Stun.

Mon, 04/21/2014 - 15:56

Xephyris

Sometimes what I do is get a

Sometimes what I do is get a whole party with catalyzer line guns. This makes the set up time a lot shorter as three people can tag an enemy and one person can shoot the normal bullet in he time it normally takes to do one charge. Catalyzer parties are awesome fun, especially since everyone in the party knows how to play with them.

Mon, 04/21/2014 - 17:45

#10

Fehzor

@Putkinen

Doesn't that strike you as being a bit... absurdly powerful?

Mon, 04/21/2014 - 18:05

#11

Midnight-Dj

My suggestion, change the catalyzer's charge attack. Make the charge time longer and release more charge shot at a time, this allows a player to instanly tag multiple target before detonate with a normal shot. Sounds good to me.

Mon, 04/21/2014 - 18:44

#12

Fehzor

@Midnight

That would be a nerf. You and you alone must control how many shots are fired, and forcing the player to deal more damage than is necessary isn't going to help the gun along.

If anything, making the bullets travel faster through the air and not dissipate off of charged enemies over time would be the best solution to the issue. Think argent peacemaker speed. Think of the utility.

Mon, 04/21/2014 - 19:52

#13

Midnight-Dj

@Fehzor

Think argent peacemaker speed. Think of the utility.

Yet Utility is something that I am trying to get rid of. Like I said to others before, if you want a weapon with Utility, just go for valiance and leviathan blade. Catalyzer, like the pulsars, should be able to have their unique 'NICHE' within the gunner's arsenal, while the antigua and the blasters are for general purpose. Pulsars and Catalyzers are clearly designed for crowd control, and guess which one of them did a better job?

The reason why pulsar is popular is due to its bullet can deal crazy knock back, shock and AoE damage, for exchange, its charge attack is crap. The reason why I want Catalyzer to charge for longer and with more charged shots is due to I want it to be just as good of a crowd control weapon as pulsar, only in another way. While pulsar can lock down single target with knock back shots, Catalyzer can engulf a single target with three orbs before one shoting the target with one normal shot. Hence solve the problem of single target DPS for cata.

And as for a crowd of jellies, three orbs should tag to random targets and a crowd can be instantly reduced to dust with just another normal shot. So instead of blasting jellies away with pulsars, you can now have a weapon what can deal damage to a group of enemy with just one charge attack. Now imagine implement this new mechanic with a bit of freeze status, you have your self a shivermist X gun hybrid.

Specialization > Generalization, I think you know this better than everyone else. Every weapon has its rols and niches, don't change them.

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 02:02

#14

Altmetal

BOOM

Catalyzers are ever so fun used w/ maskeraiths.

Fire a few charged shots onto the enemy/enemies, use cloak, fire a single shot, and all charged shots will have the increased dmg! :D

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 08:00

#15

Putkinen

@Fehzor

Nah, you'd still flinch when firing. Other guns prove the engine can handle it. The only thing that would be gone is the brief charge per shot and you can easily adjust the damage to compensate. ASI already determines how fast you fire the shots, CTR only applies for that quarter of a second and need to constantly charge makes it a bit inconvenient to use. I'd imagine charging it for the catalyzing shot that blows everything up would slow your movement speed so having it be fast would be useful still so those UVs wouldn't be wasted by any means. The real reason I'd want the primary fire to do no direct instant damage are thematic, really. As is, it can be used as a fairly powerful 3-shot handgun and that directly leads me to using the charges less. Why tag the turret with two charges if I can catalyze it once and finish it off with the inexplicably powerful regular shots?

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 09:19

#16

Vigale

input

Im primarily a bomber with 2 exceptions. 1 a troika line sword because its my favorite bomber side arm. 2 the catalyzer cos its practically a bomb anyway! Seiran has got it spot on when you are in a party you just use 1 charge explosions on regular enemies. However in a full team iv found it easy enough to do 3 charge explosions on big or stationary enemies like lichen colonies, battle pods, turrets, jelly king.

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 11:45

#17

Fehzor

@Midnight

No other weapon lets you move enemies around from afar in exactly the direction you're thinking of-- and THAT is the utility you were supposed to be thinking about. Other guns do however, let you fire off more than 3 shots and spam faster- so yes, argent peacemaker/carbine/supernova/polaris would still find use.

Another thing is that it needs to be able to cut through crowds to detonate shots. Why can't it do this very well? Because the slow shots make it easy for enemies to block the charged one.

@Putkin

The flinching when you fire mechanic isn't the problem with catalyzers. Well, it contributes, but it makes it better to fire it from further rather than up close... which makes sense cuz its a gun. The problem is that it takes a lot of time and effort to predict every single thing that's going on with your party in order to make use of the gun.

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 01:55

#18

Putkinen

Hmm.

I don't think you can fix it for party play. It fundamentally requires minimal chaos to work.

I do like the idea that the charged detonation shot would pierce. It'd be too powerful to add that mechanic to the current 3 shot handgun model, no such issue if it's on a slow charge.

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 05:37

#19

Kuratius

I think that what the

I think that what the catalyzer series needs is either a bullet speed buff or the unique ability to keep moving while firing charge shots.
Atm it is both frustrating and dangerous to use the catalyzer the way you're intended to.
Personally, I think allowing you to fire charge shots without being locked in place would be the best possible course of action.
Thoughts?

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 07:41

#20

Shadowstarkirby

I like Catalyzer as it is

Yeah, it's niche in use, but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it if you have people in a party that aren't using brandishes, heavy swords, or some other high knockback weapon like Nitronome or Shard bombs.

All it really needs is a bullet speed increase, not even a lot, just to be able to detonate charges faster, because when you aren't dealing with partners slaughtering enemies more efficiently (which they're suppose to be doing btw), you're busy planting charges slowly at enemies, like zombies, that shuffle around each other and you, risking yourself getting hurt since you're taking so long in set up time.

Besides that, it's a very great weapon that's very powerful when used properly. It's heavily underestimated in lockdown as a Biohazard and both lines work well with Valiance in both PvE and PvP.

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 09:49

#21

Seiran

...

I'm mostly fine with how they are right now, with one main problem:

Chaining catalyzer explosions isn't very intuitive right now. For the longest time, I thought you couldn't chain catalyzer explosions (across multiple enemies) at all, but in reality, it was because explosions were only triggering the rotating 'tagged' shots in range of them.

So basically, charge explosions can only happen this way:
- Normal bullet hits a tagged enemy (all tagged shots explode)
- Tagged shot triggers any other tagged shots in range of itself (but not ones associated with their parent enemies)

See here for example:
http://imgur.com/rxerCEq

>_> you know, with a name like "catalyzer", you'd think that chain reactions would be a thing, but nope.

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Catalyzers and why no one uses them