[FaeLenx]

The more I look at this skill, the more iffy I feel about it. It's an 80 FP (130 FP if you use MAP to get it in range) skill combo that can pump out 320 damage a round to an unarmored target. Takes either 6 momentum or 12 if they move out of its range and you need to use the MAP.

For those who aren't familiar, the combo basically goes:

Round 0:
3 Momentum to throw down a MAP
3 Momentum to throw down a railgun on top of the map
1 Momentum to jetpack on

Round 1:
3 momentum to move so it's in range
3 momentum to overclock the railgun
1 momentum to do whatever else you want

With this, in two turns, you deal 320 damage And can deal 320 damage every other turn you're not interrupted from there.

What are its strengths and weaknesses?

Weaknesses:

It's susceptible to forced movement or knockdown. If you move the railgun off of the MAP and the engineer in tandem, it's stuck in place without any way to move. It becomes battlefield denial, but unless the engineer can either retrieve it by moving onto the MAP and then back right next to the railgun, it's just going to be there with the engineer having 100+ less FP. With knockdown, it can't fully invoke and its invoke can be broken.

Silence can ruin it. No one takes bashfix. Maybe this is a reason to take bashfix? New meta? Probably not.

Takes all of that windup. During that time, the other player is presumably doing much more than just sitting there waiting. Even with higher CEL, this is still a full turn of windup.

Can be ignored. It just cuts the battlefield size in half. Not many other skills do that.

Without overclock, it's not going to do anything. You can outrange it or simply ping it for damage with any number of light chips of damage you have. And if it's on a MAP, you'll easily get hit with small AoEs. With overclock and against other summons, it will not win a prolonged fight. Losing 20% of its HP a round means it'll die in 5 unless you put heals into it.

If someone has a higher range than 10 tiles, your turrets effectiveness is greatly diminished. You'll need to be by it to MAP it around or just use it to deny battlefield space. Neither of these are great.

Easily dodged by cobra.

Susceptible to anything that's there to negate single target big hits like body of isesip, metalaegis whenever that gets fixed, ST create shades, last chance, etc.

Strengths:

Great damage. If you can get it off, you'll generally open someone up while also being able to throw down more bots or skills.

Good HP. If you have only single target attacks, you're going to need to peel this thing open to get rid of it for good. Unless you can bait out invokes that you can break using knockdowns to wear down its HP while overclocked.

Can cut the battlefield size in half. On a class with decent mobility but with a bunch of summons with poor mobility, this can save you in a fight against skukuchi monks and the like.

If you're fighting against someone who can't deal damage at over 10 range, you're pretty much free to use the railgun to beat them up. Next to no one will win that exchange in any way that puts them well off for fighting against you and whatever your second class offers you. If you can outrange them through that, you pretty much win. Monks/ghosts/archer classes will be fine against you, but mages suffer as they're both squishy and can't nuke the turret down completely with a single charge minded invoke.

Thoughts?

[Autumn]

This is a rather kneejerk thread that probably won't get much traction very quickly, but all I can share atm is that its downright mean power spike is solely on Overclock and not the skill itself, the skill is balanced around being an invocation that only a bot can use. While Overclock allows it to use it every turn instead of every 2 like its probably intended to.

I'd say the most elegant solution to this is making Overclock grant 2m instead of 3m, which hardly effects the other bots overall, as that'll make bots have 9m instead of 10m, able to perform 3 actions but just shy of hard casting Railgun every turn.

[FaeLenx]

The problem with that is that lacking overclock, the railgun is next to entirely useless. Every class has the ability to chip away at a bot to break the invoke.

The best solution is lowering the damage. Breaking the only combo that overclock has atm that's worth much is also kneejerking and makes the bot much less useful to have.

Unless scapegoat shield would protect the invoke from breaking, then there's the combo there.

Also, I'd rather have a knee-jerk discussion thread than a knee-jerk immediate change to the skills.

[Autumn]

After a bit of discussion, you could end up changing Railgun itself to be a skill instead of a spell with a 1 round cooldown, this way Overclock doesn't need to be changed, then you make it so that the skill "Charges" it up instead of invoking, so silence and damage don't stop it easily and make it useless.

Could still even keep the text associated to it charging up too.

How's this sound?

[FaeLenx]

As long as the text stays, it means it wouldn't be ezpz to break and would no longer deal an egregious amount of damage.

As long as the text stays.

[Miller]

After a bit of discussion, you could end up changing Railgun itself to be a skill instead of a spell with a 1 round cooldown, this way Overclock doesn't need to be changed, then you make it so that the skill "Charges" it up instead of invoking, so silence and damage don't stop it easily and make it useless.

Could still even keep the text associated to it charging up too.

How's this sound?

I actually have no problems with this change should it happen. Seems like the most elegant way to not destroy the practical use of the bot while keeping its charge up weakness intact. It should also immobilize itself probably should it happen to be changed to a skill.

[Neus]

I've changed it to scale from WIL instead of STR, altered its WIL to be higher and STR to be lower, and changed Overclock to only give 2M. Honestly, the 3M from Overclock was a bit of a relic from before 7M was the norm, so that should be a fairly harmless change in the long run.

[Snake]

Not as harmless when (Kick innate skill) can break the invocation.

Now it has way too many counters for something that's only used on an interval of 2 by 2 rounds. I've ran some tests without Overclock and it's absolutely impossible to use this on PvE.

The Invocation shouldn't be broken this easy, IMO. Or unable to be broken at all. Or interact with the Good Materials skill to gain a significant on-damage interruption resistance, as Silence alone is already the biggest shaft on this poor bot.

[FaeLenx]

Whelp, just as soon as it came it's gonna die. The more I've used this, the more I've come around on its usage and current balance. The last fight I was in, went pretty much as follows.

1 round windup for me and a ghost

On round 2, they rush in and deal 300 damage through my 49% physical defense and 22 defense. They get hit with the railgun for 200 damage due to ghost after overclock and MAP.

They complain about balance when I win the fight with 100 HP left. Their argument being that ghost is a meta class.

Engineer doesn't have a lot of tools that deal any damage at all. As scary as this one is, other classes have ways to mitigate it and deal more damage yet.

[Senna]

Honest, it not being about to fire on the same turn is a blessing because it did hellish amount of damage, even against TANKS. It being easily broken by a kick isn't bad either because that's 6 momentum just to get next to it to kick it. That means they just need to position it right away from the main battle as well as having another bot protecting it but facing the enemy and have the map to move it around on standby to move it closer in case they try to run. Like it isn't brain dead anymore, just need some tactics and setup.