Forums › English Language Forums › General › The Arsenal

Search

Are the Catalyzer lines even viable in LD?

13 replies [Last post]
Thu, 06/28/2012 - 18:34
Kermamrek's picture
Kermamrek

I was trying a few hilarious item combos in T2 and T3 lockdown, and then the Catalyzer came to mind. I have a Virulent Catalyzer, but haven't really been able to use it in lockdown. Does anyone really know if this is even viable at all in lockdown? Seems like people would just GF you before you could even lay charges on anyone.

Thu, 06/28/2012 - 18:42
#1
Traevelliath's picture
Traevelliath

Nope. People move too fast, the Catalyzer shoots to slow, and the projectiles are even slower. Hard to hit, and doesn't do spectacular damage in the first place.

Thu, 06/28/2012 - 19:02
#2
Atacii
Invulnerability frames.

Regular shot registers and the target ignores all damage for a short while including any detonating charges you happen to have landed.

Without the charge attack you are left with a pretty awful gun, especially against the very mobile strikers.

Thu, 06/28/2012 - 19:06
#3
Dukeplatypus's picture
Dukeplatypus
Not in the slightest.

Not in the slightest.

Thu, 06/28/2012 - 20:43
#4
Tenkii's picture
Tenkii
lol

What a well-timed thread lol.
Recently, I have been trying to give them a serious attempt, and surprisingly, they're... almost viable?

...With normal shots.

My gunner-loadout in lockdown uses justifier set (max ASI as recon), and when I'm in my shooting rhythm, I can have 4-5 shots out at a time, constantly blanketing an area. As a slow gun, you can kinda use them as mines to redirect people's movements, or just straight up block them. If you want to hit, you'll need to have ASI/shooting technique fast enough to kind of spam-blanket areas, but the prediction ability to know WHERE to lay them, especially to interrupt movement/attacks.

Good luck landing charges - those are nearly unusable. You can maybe get lucky landings while doing cover fire or shooting into a group, but the most reliable way to land a single charge is to capture people in a vortex or freeze bomb (and only expect to land 1, then attempt to detonate it immediately).

I tried with some others and it seems stacking multiple charges is useless in lockdown - only one or two charges will actually register for damage. Even tried it during the week of no-invincibility frames, we had no luck doing anything near a 1-detonation kill.

PS.
biohazard - usable in PVP due to poison and shadow damage
neutralizer - keep it for PVE - it has a stronger charge, but charges don't land and everyone has normal defense.

Thu, 06/28/2012 - 21:26
#5
Traevelliath's picture
Traevelliath

I stand corrected...

Fri, 06/29/2012 - 00:13
#6
Lukehandkooler's picture
Lukehandkooler
@SeiranI dont even pretend

@Seiran

I dont even pretend to know as much about LD as you, but wouldnt Trollaris serve the same purpose with the added bonus of larger projectiles, AOE explosion, and shock > poison?

Edit- Nevermind, in hindsight Trollaris vs Cata isnt even relavent to OP's question.

~Luke

Sun, 07/01/2012 - 09:08
#7
Tenkii's picture
Tenkii
@luke

Possibly, yeah.

I actually don't own the pulsar line, though I'm sure people would hate me more for it if I did, because they're pretty similar in terms of speed.

Biohazard doesn't have the denial effect though (slow AND small bullets), so people are more likely to run in /around if you're shooting Biohazard bullets in one direction - use that information as you will.

---------------

edit:
last night I broke my old bio record of 10011 with this:
11068

The guy who left ragequit complaining he couldn't swing his sword. Well-timed shots ftw lol.

After a little more watching and experimentation, it is actually pretty nice as a fading shot (retreating from someone) against someone shooting you because not only does it have long natural range, but the slow bullet lets you gain distance that you can use to get out of your opponent's sight and shooting range (which is oh-so-valuable as a recon).

Sun, 07/01/2012 - 10:35
#8
Atacii
...

Hmm, I am intrigued. Maybe I'll give it a serious try. Until now it has only ever resided in my Troll load out.

edit: http://i.imgur.com/H0j2R.png Screen shot from my first game with biohazard only. Doubt I could do all that much better as there was only one other decent player in the match. Still prefer alchemers, but landing hits with the Biohazard was surprisingly easy and the poison's a nice bonus.

Ah, I play on Kongregate as Dakini. Atacii is my alt account so I can post here on the forums and whatnot. Stupid Kongregate. -__-

Wed, 07/04/2012 - 21:49
#9
Okniwy
unique interaction with recon

While not a count for it's viability, I've had personal experience using the Virulent Catalizer on Ghostmanes in OCH and found that it's charge has a unique property on recon shields, that is to say, it makes them less effective because the charge gives away the position. I have not attempted to see if it is the same in lockdown, but I would assume as such.

Wed, 07/04/2012 - 22:44
#10
Tenkii's picture
Tenkii
@Okniwy

It does work that way, yes - a tagged recon will have a visible orb around it, even when cloaked.

Still though, landing a charge is nearly impossible, and detonating a charge is sort of... ineffective in LD, sadly (I don't even think it's because of invincibility frames - they just don't seem to deal the kind of damage expected).

Thu, 07/05/2012 - 04:51
#11
Zeddy's picture
Zeddy
It is

It is invincibility frames. The problem is that even a single orb will not do damage because the knight got hit by the regular shot required to detonate it first.

Thu, 07/05/2012 - 05:05
#12
Orangeo's picture
Orangeo
Seiran, each of those games

Seiran, each of those games had a quitter on the opposing side. Not exactaly a controled testing ground.

Thu, 07/05/2012 - 10:56
#13
Tenkii's picture
Tenkii
:;

@Zeddy:
I forgot to mention the reason I said that was because during the week where there were no invincibility frames, I stacked 5-6 charges on someone (we wanted to test it) and exploded them all. He said it barely took 1/5 of his health. Granted, he had Shadowsun (shadow defense vs Biohazard), but even then, each charge should feel similar to a Gran Faust slash1 - considering how powerful their charges are, that's pretty pitiful. I just don't think they're registering correctly.

Though, if anyone wants to test again later, invincibility frames are removed during the shock animation, so a viable experiment would be to stack a bunch of charges on someone, then shock them and detonate. My whole regular playstyle as a recon takes advantage of status removing invincibility frames, so I can vouch for at least shock working in that way.

@Orangeo:
What is there to test? In the first pic (and many other pics from that first night), my team lost lol.
In the second pic, the guy quit when we had around a 120 point lead, shortly after getting locked by Biohazard shots.

The point of me posting my Biohazard-only records is to show that it IS possible to actually use it in PVP and hit players that aren't just sitting there doing nothing but taking hits (in the second pic, 3/4 of the team did 9-10k damage each - they weren't sandbags), so in that sense, they're... viable. I defended and captured points using the gun lol.

---------------

and not related, I gave Iron Slug a try in PVP yesterday and hit 9.2k damage on my first attempt trying to use ONLY that gun for the whole match. Iron. Slug.

wat.

everything is viable now (yaoming.png)

Powered by Drupal, an open source content management system