Man, if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black. But anyways... I'm saying that in my experience of "normal play", it genuinely doesn't seem OP. Yes it kills quickly, but its downsides seem to balance it out. It's very easy to get taken out outside your range or by melee. And trying to take down vehicles genuinely poses a threat. In my experience, it plays as an "easy to use, difficult to master weapon." No joke, my K/D has actually gone down compared to when I was using a Bolter. My use of the weapon has never involved taking another couple of skilled and organized players and spending the whole game at the weapon's niche range in order to exploit it. And honestly, I've never seen that tactic deployed, which is something I would've expected if it's really that powerful. There are groups in this community that aren't shy about using exploits, so it seems odd that this one wouldn't have caught on. I'll admit, I could be wrong. And I definitely have some bias. But that's my genuine, honest thoughts on the weapon.
Stopping the melta weapons from applying heat to infantry is just imersion breaking. They fire a beam of superheated plasma: if they can heat up a rhino, they can heat up a marine. It would also create the bizare situation where a weapon has two completely different damage schemes (one for infantry and one for vehicles) and in my opinion that is poor design. I don't think the multi-melta requires that much of a change but I agree that it is a bit too effective against infantry. Personally, I think the best way to change it would be to make it slightly more unweildy. Increase the wind up time by no more than half a second, slow down the turn speed ever so slightly and slow the character's movement a bit more whilst firing. This allows people to attempt to use their mobility to get into a position to kill the user. Crucially these would be very minor tweaks aimed at making it just a bit harder to hit infantry. As many others have said the problem lies far more with how much worse the storm-bolter is right now. It definitely needs some help but I'm not exactly sure what. Its problem seems to be that it is only useful at very close ranges unlike basically every other ranged weapon in the game. Maybe reduced clip size in exchange for more accuracy at range? Finally the melta-gun simply needs to be better against vehicles. There was a video somewhere a while back showing that a plasma-gun kills vehicles equally as fast as the melta-gun which is just silly. It doesn't have to destroy vehicles as fast as the multi-melta but it needs to be much better than it is currently. This would then give it a nice niche as the anti-vehicle tactical weapon.
Clearly you have not encountered certain Chaos guilds, which recently switched from plasma to MM then. Combined with MoN it is a tough combination to fight against, but I hardly see it as an exploit. As with every tactic, it just needs a different counter. The thing is, it's not supposed to be a designated close combat weapon. Multimelta is cancer, spammed more and more because it is too effective. I would preserve it's lethality, even increase it a bit over distance - but only, if braced. If not - make it charge up a 0.5 sec before firing. Right now, it's killer flashlight mode is just meh - in mid to low rangeU dont even have to aim it proper.
I avoided the stormbolter when it was Op, but now there is no reason to ever take a storm bolter. Tac marines are better off using vanila bolter and combat knife at close ranges. MM is easy to deal with if its not in a choke point, just roll and they cant track quickly enough. The problem is a weak stormbolter if anything.
My two cents are: Multi-melta: 1. You cannot move and fire. TT has snap shot which make a hit possible but extremely hard. With these mechanics, and the large area, just do not allow move and shoot. 2. Reduce ammo so that it is only enough to maybe take out two rhinos. 3. Reduce the range a bit. Storm-Bolter 1. This weapon must be far superior to the boltgun that is why in lore only the vets and special characters can take it. Troops can't. 2. Make it as accurate as the boltgun. 3. Let it shoot twice as fast. 4. Let it have the same ammo capacity as the boltgun. So basic you shoot faster but you chew through your ammo faster. Meltagun: 1. Make it as powerful as the multi-melta. 2. Allow it to move and shoot. 3. Reduce the range. 4. Reduce the ammo. Plasma-cannon (while we are here): 1. Do not allow it to move and shoot. 2. If you charge and move you charger is gone. 3. If you let it over heat you are dead. 4. Over charging does not increase the power of the super heated gas, it just increases the area of effect. More charge, more gas, more area. Lets face is a water balloon splash (not-charged shot) of super heated gas will effective burn through half your body. Death by super heated gas should not follow the same principle as ballistics where the larger the caliber the deadlier the weapon. You are already getting splashed by super heated gas. Plasma Gun: 1. Remove charged shots, only allow rapid fire like the TT. 2. If you let it overheat you are dead. Frag Grenade: 1. Damage should be equal to a boltgun shot. Per TT frag grenades are weaker than boltgun shots. The advantage is AOE. Bolt pistol: 1. Increase the capacity to 15 or 20 shots.
Meltagun is not on the brink of being useless. It is useless after all the nerfs. It doesn't have range, it doesn't have enough damage, there is only few second difference in TTK for rhino or pred for meltagun and plasma gun. Previously it at least melted shieldbros effectively, not its just plasma gun for poor people. @Nobb_of_Waaagh Haven't read a post with so many suggested changes and every single one being equally horrible in a loong time if ever.
Yeah, I'm still using it as my Tactical Anti-Vehicle gun, but only because I refuse to use Plasma Gun.
Why? What are you going to do while capping if your Storm Bolter is out of ammo? What are you going to do if you get caught in a fight between ammo supplies and run dry? I rarely run dry with my boltgun. I would expect the downside for all that fire power is running dry. EC has all this melee in the game but never addresses why melee is used--melee is normally used when you run dry. Rather than ratchet up the effectiveness of melee class, let melee happen naturally when there is no more ammo.
Thank you for proving my earlier speculation right in http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/melee-delivery-system.54175/#post-1108069 You do indeed want to have an instant kill gun.
