Carronade is uniquely hampered by it's talent tree

TL;DR: Make defense damage reduction for Carronade based on total damage, not per pellet. Rearrange Swift's Talent tree to only have Carronade vs. Overboost/Nitro choices and not Carronade vs. ship choices.


The Carronade is one of the most difficult weapons to use, if not the most difficult. It has the least range and is penalized multiple times by opponent's defense points.

On top of that, the Carronade is the ONLY WEAPON THAT HAS A COUNTERINTUITIVE TALENT TREE.​

I am suggesting 2 changes to the Carronade to make it a viable weapon at all infamies and levels. Right now, the Carronade is only really effective at the highest levels. The reason is because you also have your turbo, overboost and nitro highly leveled to make up for the Talent tree costs of using the Carronade.

Change One: Total Damage Reduction due to Defense Points
The first change is simple and should never have even been a problem. The issue is that if you shoot somebody with the carronade, each pellet suffers from their defense point reduction. So if you are shooting 7 pellets, the reduction is SEVEN TIMES THEIR DEFENSE. The Carronade is the only weapon that suffers so much from this. This might not seem like a massive issue to someone sporting a Tier 5 Epic Carronade doing 200+ damage per shot, but what about the uncommon/rare Carronade user that does under 100 per shot? A Defender can negate almost all of the Carronade's damage, rendering it useless. The damage reduction for Carronade needs to be changed to a total reduction rather than a per pellet reduction.

Change Two: Rearrange Swift's Talent Tree
I believe that Swift's Talent tree needs to be rearranged to where the Carronade does not conflict with ship speed or hp. I am okay with it conflicting with overboost or nitro talents since there has to be some trade-off and not just pure gain.


Follow me for a second while I connect the dots... The Carronade is on Swift's Talent Tree, which is focused on Speeders. The Speeder is really the only ship that can use a Carronade effectively. However, the most important aspect to a Speeder is it's speed. Finally, using a Carronade requires you to give up speed, as well as turning and health.

There is not a single other weapon that requires this much sacrifice. You are basically hampering your Speeder by choosing to use Carronade.

In order to effectively use a Carronade, you MUST give up this:

• 10% speed to all ships
• -10% Nitro cooldown
• 10% improvement to Overboost
• 20% faster Speeder

And you MIGHT give up this:

• 5% faster turning for all ships
• -20% Nitro cooldown
• 4% boost to Speeder hp

Why is it that a weapon meant for Speeders actually hampers a Speeder for choosing that weapon? There is not a single other weapon that does this...

For comparison, I have listed what each crew member's sacrifices are for their respective weapons in the pictures below.




Before you clamor and say "well you trade off a lot of frost stuff to use Grenades", observe that I have listed the Grenade costs as "without synergies" because using frost does not directly affect using Grenades. From what I've observed, grenades and frosts are usually not used together since frost is typically paired with mortars or torpedoes and grenades are usually paired with cannons. This is different for Carronade since every Speeder will be using overboost and many will be using Nitro.

From the images above, the only other weapon that has common conflicts with another item on it's talent tree is Fire Bomb and shields. However, that conflict is for EVERY ship, not just for the specific ship that is on that talent tree (Defender). Also, none of the trade-offs greatly negatively impact the other item and the Fire Bomb is still perfectly viable without the conflicting talents.


It is time for a change. I do not believe that making these changes will make the Carronade overpowered. I think that you will see it more often, especially on Speeders and Enforcers (and maybe Fixers). I think the major impact these changes will have is it will make the Carronade more used in lower infamies and levels. You won't have to have a maxed out Carronade and Swift, as well as maxed out turbo, overboost, nitro and shields, in order to make the Carronade effective.

-Help I Cant Swim
#careforcarronade​

 

I would use a carro if these changes were made. However, the carro has one of the largest unperked single shot damage of any oneslot on the game, plus those badass slowdowns. At higher levels, it would probably become the new assassin speeder meta. I'm not qualified for the Nightmare effects of this, though.

 

I really don't think so. It still has a huge risk if not used properly. In Nightmare league, the speed costs probably don't even matter because they can have a maxed out turbo to max out speed anyways. The 10% overboost improvement is probably negligible; Nitro is usually traded out for Tesla Shield at mk6; 5% turning is negligible. The only real loss at the top would be 4% hp, which is only for an additional 10% turret slowing, but it can be overcome with shields.

I think that the large majority of players (non-Nightmare) would benefit without really changing it's role at the very top.

 

Agree on all points. But I personally think that the defender gains too much immunity to carro way too fast, making carro worse than useless at lower infamies.

 

I agree that there are other weapons that also need buffs. I can make a case for those too, but this case was just for Carronade .

I would be perfectly fine with Missile Launcher receiving the same change as the Carronade. It seems silly that the defense points are per pellet/missile for a multi-shot weapon and therefore compound the defense towards those weapons.

This would not make it any less of an anti-Speeder weapon. It will just make it more of a pro-Speeder weapon.

 

Could there possibly be a middle ground? Maybe a reduction in defense points per pellet landed. For example, the first pellet that hit gets the full defense, second gets 75%, third 50%, fourth 25% and anything after that hits full force. The numbers might need tweaking, but the idea might be a good compromise.

 

Ikr? He'd make an awesome diplomat(if he isn't already?)

 

Why not make a two slot "armor-piercing carronade" for those who may wish to make it a pro-speeder weapon? A carro with no slowdown, but which bypasses armor like @ViscountSniffit said? The 50, 75% decrement.