The Necessary Buff: Why the Avalanche is Being Humiliated by the Machine Gun (MG) Meta
The central issue is that the AM-5 Avalanche, a weapon with an extremely high cost (24 Energy) and high risk (slow reload), is not delivering the expected reward, especially against the current dominance of Machine Guns (MGs).
The Avalanche’s Disadvantages Against the Current Meta
MGs exploit the Avalanche’s weaknesses in a brutal way:
- Disarming in Seconds: The damage from MGs is constant and highly accurate (hitscan or with buffed ballistics). The Avalanche player has a chance for only one shot. If they miss or fail to cause decisive damage, they are vulnerable during the reload. In that short period, rival MGs have already stripped the cannon from the vehicle, wasting 24 points of energy.
- Impossible to Hit Fast Targets: Many in the meta use hovers or dog builds (fast approach). The Avalanche suffers from slow aiming speed and a slow projectile. An enemy approaching at 100 km/h will circle and disarm you before the second shot can even be loaded.
Summary of the Dilemma: The rule for the Avalanche should be: High Energy Cost = High Risk, but HIGH Reward. In the MG meta, it has become: High Cost, Extreme Risk, and Mediocre Reward.
The Solution: Necessary Buffs to Damage and Survivability
To reverse this situation, the Avalanche needs adjustments that make it a feared threat, capable of punishing those who dare to engage it.
1. Increase Firepower (Reward)
If the cannon has so many deficiencies in usability (slow reload, slow projectile), its damage must be fatal to justify the risk:
- Increase Base Damage: Simply buff the total damage value (whether projectile or explosion damage). The Avalanche’s shot must be a ‘life or death’ moment in combat, capable of dismantling medium and heavy vehicles.
- Increase Blast Radius: A larger explosion radius is crucial. If the projectile is slow and difficult to hit precisely, a larger Blast Radius rewards decent aim, ensuring the shot still causes significant damage to internal parts and modules, even if it’s not a perfect direct hit.
2. Improve Survivability and Usability
The Avalanche needs a chance to fire more than one shot before being destroyed:
- Withstand the ‘Pummeling’: Increase the weapon’s durability or give it a small resistance to ballistic damage (e.g., 5% against bullet damage). This would provide the necessary time to fire at least two shots before being stripped by MGs.
- Ease of Aiming: The projectile is too slow. A small increase in projectile speed (e.g., 15%) or turret rotation speed would help hit fast targets, honoring the weapon’s role on heavier vehicles.
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Maybe just let it switch to alternate ammunition, like flechette-loaded shotshells, with a wider spread. That would be a boon for close-in fighting.
What are you using it with?
Just reverse the penetration fumble, Avalanche should not be doing 20 damage and penetrating through an enemy and then exploding way behind it and not dealing any damage
Or make the penetration work instead of point blank center of mass shot blowing off maybe 1-2 structural parts and not even scratching the explody bits on the inside
Or better yet, fix explosive damage/effect already it’s been broken ever since you guys fumbled with damage absorption and resistance mechanics and removed on-hit damage from rockets
Yha the aiming is slow af and even with the flywheel reloading is still slow and i have noticed some times ill shoot at a flaming cab but it clips a structual part or wheel and they enemy survives…bs moment…I usally have a aveter or omori using a master cab to heal also but some times it does feel like it falls off in a few second some times.
Didn’t they originally try to make this thing less of a facehug weapon and more of a cannon way back when they first started buffing and changing and whatever?
I find that kinda “funny” because in modern day, still any success or use I see anyone doing with this is just a straight up facehug W build. At one point I did even see hovers using this gun, what happened to that? I have not seen a single Avalanche hover in what feels like over a year, and I can’t build one because it’s too heavy, even if I could swear I used to be able to do that ages ago.
That’s one of the things I use to do with mine, link the master cab to omori and the ava together so I could heal the omori and the avalanche at the same time. I normally only had issues with laser weapons with it falling off fast with that set up. I retired the build after some changes made it too heavy.
I think my favorite ones that I messed around with were Hadron/king based ones as far as fixing the reload issue goes. I did try with an echo too but that’s fairly dependent on having multiple enemies around you, which can easily backfire. The deadman cab ones were interesting too but far lighter then what I’d normally like, I think these were the ones most people remember as the quick little face huggers.
I think people just figured the facehugging was easier then learning to aim it on a chancy distance shot. For a 300m shot your pretty much lining it up with the target, raising the elevation of it and then taking a blind shot as you can’t tell if the target moved. The trajectory drop is just that bad on them. I did find having it mounted high on a leg build does help with that a little but mostly for close to midrange shots.
I don’t think the Devs really specified their intent to make it one way or the other. I’m fairly sure when they did the preview they showed it off as a more ranged weapon. I’d have to rewatch it to be certain though.
Personally I don’t really have an issue on it’s dmg. Every cannon can end up having a round pass through a target provided the target is previously hollowed out a bit. I get unlucky like that often with multiple cannon types.
To me I think the bigger issues is the reload time and the amount of temporary dmg protection increase not being high enough between rounds. Right now it’s 30% but that amount of increase is by far less than a portion of the amount of damage that can be delt between reloads.
First person to ever suggest an avalanche buff. The price indicates it should be nerfed if anything.
I sold mine then it got buffs soooo.
But ima say NO, Unless cyclones are added to the buff list.
Heck and a dozen other things 
Yha when they first come out many people face hugged but you do that now you take more damage.While using legs you need to stop completely or jump to shoot due to the aiming reticle to zero in. I noticed in high ps maches it does hit hard some times but it does only seem to knock a few parts off.
The problem is how the avalanche works. Are there any hovercraft that use it? Yes, but it’s so heavy and makes it so fragile that you hardly see any hovercraft using it because it’s too risky. Now, for heavy vehicles over 16k PS using the avalanche as a “war tank” makes you seem like just another slow and ridiculous target that will be exploded by thousands of snipers and hovercraft at 120 speed with machine guns spinning you until you fall.
You fired one shot, missed.
You died.
Yha the reload hurts it the most compaired the damage you deal smgs can do what 5k or more on good builds that your 1k and a half per shot XD
ive had this happen to many times. id hit a cannon or a gun or something, knock the gun off and it would just keep flying.
i run mine with a hadron, king mine layer and a cyclops and that thing is disgusting at how fast it reloads.
i think it was meant to be used with things like legs or omni directional movement parts.
its more risky using it as a face hugging build now as your build takes double damage from the explosion.
you take double the damage back from the explosion.
to me, reload weapons suffer alot based on how the function. you have a mg or minigun or shotgun they can just fire endlessly if you have enough rads and coolers on them. cannons and reload weapons in general have the cyclops and reload boosters on them but it doesnt really seem to be enough sometimes. i think some weapons take to long to reload sometimes especially without the hadron.
heck they ruined my build i had with the fatman, thing loaded so quickly that i could just pummel enemies with it so long as i hit my shots, now i cant do that cause of the change they made to the reload… 
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I remember seeing and getting attackaced by demas build back then XD i think i still have a vid of him using the exploit XD
that was with the lucifer. i didnt use that exploit, i used my fatman with a hadron and a king. it made my fire rate extremely high.