The catalyzer mistake
Sa, 09/26/2015 - 15:49
As a returning player (who used to specialize in a Neutralizer), and was really excited for the gunslinger update.
The catalyzer has changed. It now fires tagging shots as its regular attack and detonation shots as its charged attack, instead of the other way around.
This, however acually makes catalyzer much more difficult to use than before. Below are 5 tactics that are lost with this new mechanic.
1. DETONATION
You see, catalyzer's difficulty is not that it has bad damage or tagging mechanic. Detonation is key: you want to detonate a tagged enemy when it is inside a crowd to maximize damage. However, if you let the tagged enemy become buried too far in, you would not be able to detonate it.
In the old mechanic, you were given 3 regular shots to hit and detonate your enemy. Now you only have one charged shot.
2. FINISHING OFF STRAGGLERS
After a successful explosion, there's usually a few stragglers are greatly weakened by barely managed to survive.
In the old mechanic, you would be able to use your regular shots to quickly finish off the enemy. Now, your best bet is to switch to an alternative weapon.
Also, the old mechanic let you use the catalyzer as a regular gun. It was useful to be able to pick and choose when to just kite and when you would try tag and detonate. Now, you are forced to use the tag and detonate mechanic.
3. SHIELD PUSH BOMB
With the old mechanic, one common strategy was to tag one enemy many times, shield push the enemy into a crowd, and detonate it.
Now, you have to wait for a short charge, during which the tagged enemy could move away or be lost in the crowd.
4. FROZEN TAGGING
Before, the tagging shots did not break freeze. This allowed you to freeze a group of enemies and slowly tag them.
Now, both the regular and charged attack break freeze.
5. SHUTTING UP PUPPIES
The detonation is enough to disrupt a rocketpuppy's attack. The timing is rather hard though, it has to occur right as the puppy is attacking.
Before, you would tag a puppy, wait around, push nearby enemies away with shield, and detonate at the right time.
Now, you have to charge at the right time. This tactic is now nearly impossible when there are other enemies nearby.
If OOO is feeling lazy, I beg of them to return catalyzer to its old mechanism.
If OOO wants to make catalyzer a good gun instead of a niche weapon, there is one simple thing they could add to their new mechanic:
Make the charge attack detonate all enemies that the gun managed to tag.
That way, detonation could be easily done from a safe position.
... Do you guys agree? Is there something about the new catalyzer mechanic that I don't know about?
Sa, 09/26/2015 - 17:50
#2
.....
Recently made a suggestion on this problem.
My solution was to make it so that missed shots and early killed enemies don't end up a waste.
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/111974
Sa, 09/26/2015 - 18:08
#3
a lot of threads
At the time of the gunner update, there were a lot of threads about this topic. I don't want to prevent you from discussing it some more, but you might be interested in searching Google for something like "gunner update catalyzer site:forums.spiralknights.com" (without the quotation marks). You will find many threads.
So, 09/27/2015 - 14:55
#4
Thanks
Wait, how does the detonation chaining work? I've had tagged enemies not detonate even after they've been flung across the room by a catalyzer explosion.
Thanks for the feedback by the way.
Mo, 09/28/2015 - 14:05
#5
nostalgic
I miss the old mechanic, too.
It is not like I have not given the new mechanic any chance, it is simply the case that I can not find use for the new mechanic into my playing style. Right now it seems that just spamming the charge is dealing the most relieable damage overall and that attached orbs are morely a little gimmec of questionable efficiency or to spread status (uh well, poision only so far...).
Mentioning the gunner update: I really was hoping for new catalyzers, exspecially a fire-ele version, but only the mechanic got changed back then and no new catas got added.
@Holy:
I like most of the ideas you suggested. Leaving a minefield sounds cool, though I would render the *everything moves to attacked enemy* to morely a *orbs touched by the charge will fallow the charge into its destination* or *orbs that are floating around will simply explode at contact with charge*.Though the second one is the one I like less.
The best part imo though is the *not detonated orbs on dead enemies start floating around instead of disappearing*. Because a main issue with catas in a team is that enemies gets often killed too fast before the orbs can get exploded.
Di, 10/20/2015 - 13:52
#6
honestly I think OOO needs to just add an option of changing the mechanics of the catalyzer between old and new. You would not be able to do this at anytime due to how easy it would be to spam, but it would be like changing equipment in that you would only be able to change at arsenal stations/haven.
So, 10/25/2015 - 16:02
#7
Yea this is pretty much spot on. There are a few new tactics that you can try to pull off, but the weapon has remained quite dysfunctional for exactly the reasons you say with regard to detonation. The easiest fix would indeed be to just make the charge detonate all shots in existence.
Personally, I hate the new catalyzers and I wish the old catalyzers were back. However, Holy-Nightmare recently showed me the light (or rather, I was challenged and I found the light on my own), and I understand that catalyzers simply work differently now. Yeah, the loss of being able to kill off stragglers makes it much worse than it was before, but it is still useful, so I'll go down your list.
"1. DETONATION"
Catalyzer charges chain together, meaning that if your tagged target gets buried in a crowd, you can simply shoot the outside of the crowd a few times and then let off a charge-- when the charge connects, it will chain all the tags together and make its way to the middle enemy that you initially tagged. The fact that tags seem to last longer after the update helps a lot here.
"2. FINISHING OFF STRAGGLERS"
Yeah, there's no way to make up for this. Catalyzers are no longer usable as a staple support gun. There's not much else to be said here.
"3. SHIELD PUSH BOMB"
A way to circumvent this is to shoot a couple of tags at the group you shield-bumped the enemy into, and then letting off a charge. You can now detonate tags simply by touching the tags spinning around the enemies, instead of actually having to hit the enemy dead-on. This, paired with chaining the tags, allows you to still abuse the old shield-bump strategy because even if your initial target moves, you're still going to detonate the whole group (but now there's a new problem in that the detonation does pretty horrible damage in comparison to how it used to be).
"4. FROZEN TAGGING"
Yeah, it's a shame this was lost as well. I don't understand why the regular shots have to do one damage-- sure, it needs to do damage in order to break blocks, but they could have made it break blocks without having to give it damage. This also leads to another problem: when trying to abuse a straggler or kill lower-end enemies, you have a chance of accidentally killing them, and then all those charges goes to waste (yeah, it's rare, but it happens and it's horrible when it does happen).
"5. SHUTTING UP PUPPIES"
You can now effectively stunlock puppies to death because the new Catalyzer forces a cooldown on the puppies attacks, whereas the old one did not. Basically, as soon as you see a puppy open its mouth, you can hit them with a charge, and they'll reset to their idle position for a few seconds (as if they had fired), but before the update when you detonated the charge they would reset to their attacking position (you'd interrupt the first attack, but they'd go into a second attack right away). The new way is also a bit more consistent because you just need to land the charge, which is easier than landing a tag + a regular shot.
The problem with Catalyzers isn't necessarily how they were changed, but how other guns behave. Because Catalyzers now rely almost solely on charge attacks, they are almost a direct downgrade to Pulsars, which do what Catalyzers are trying to do but at a much better pace, more safely, and more effectively. Additionally, Catalyzers are almost completely overshadowed by the new Magnuses, which has the similar AoE effect on its regular shot that Catalyzers have on their charge shot (not detonating tags), but Magnuses have better crowd control and crowd clear due to the Catalyzer's inadvertently nerfed damage, and Magnuses have the similar flinching mechanics of Catalyzers, without putting your party at a huge risk because of the random spread from detonating tags. They inadvertently made Catalyzers weaker, less consistent, harder to use, less useful in more situations, and in general took away from their interesting nature. Yeah, Catalyzers have a cool niche, but they were better before the update when that niche had huge power behind it. Now they're just... they're like the Shard bombs of the gun world.