In case someone haven’t checked other social media platform, I have successfully completed the epic minelayer trial with King mines exclusively (in epic minelayer category, at least).
Which, I’m basically using a mine dragger in order to attempt securing a sure detonation by dragging my enemy into the mines, either laying instantly or beforehand. I ditched the cloak and use epic wheels instead, but the general principle is the same.
And after 800 assists/kills, I have come to an unfortunate conclusion: King mine is garbage. This sounds like a silly take, but I can assure there’s a solid arguement for this (not just because of the mentally handicapped matchmaking system forcing me to fight enemies that almost double my 8.9k PS and fundamentally having even more weight than I do, making dragging strategy obsolete).
See, each King mines can only deploy 2 active mines at a time, which makes it impossible to properly perform its duty as an area denial weapon. Even if you’re to use 4 of them for 24e, you’re stuck in a catch-22:
- Either you map 2 units in a group and ditch 2 mines over 4 possible chokepoints (be it passageway or bases), ending up merely scratching the enemies, or
- you drop all 4 mines in a spot, thus creating 2 strong points of area denial, but then most of the point(s) of interest (PoI) can be reached by 3+ passageways, resulting in a loss of area denial effectiveness.
And the worst of all? Every stationary mines other than Kapkan is a joke, because you can counter them by, drumroll please, driving away from it! (or sneeze at them with any weapon, that works too.)
By some weird coincidence, some desperate players decided to use 4 king miens with a tusk cabin, because if you can only hold 2 chokepoints out of 3+ for a PoI, the only logical solution is to become the last chokepoint yourself! Which, ended poorly for the gimmick “reusable lance” cabin with multiple nerfs. Even to this date, the gimmick cabin has barely recovered from all the backtrack of nerfs. (honestly should’ve just make Tusk cabin take extra blast damage from its own explosive projectiles, like Avalanche currently do.)
So, what can be done to make King mine actually become relevant other than “Hadron’s custom reload booster” (i don’t disprove the idea, please don’t change it)?
Buff its damage? That doesn’t actually work, we already know how the general mass feels about being heavily punished by risking themselves to push through the chokepoint (given how much complain we have about players “seal-club” with Squalls at ~5k PS. I personally don’t have this skill issue, but no one likes to be heavily punished over a single mistake in general).
Buff its raw stat? Also no, because even if you make it sturdier and/or lighter, the only build type that benefits from it is a dragger, which, also doesn’t work because Skinner is mega-nerfed. (Seriously tho, Skinner DOES NOT deserve that nerf.)
That leaves us the only reasonable change: Increase the active mine count from 2 to 3 (maybe 4).
See, while some maps has only 3 passages towards the PoI, many more has over that amount, which means that even increase to 4 active mines per unit, the enemy isn’t heavily punished by being denied with your King mines holding the chokepoints. Besides, every drone and bots currently prioritize attacking enemy mines and drones over hostile vehicles, so chance are, you’ll have to re-visit the same chokepoint after someone sneezed at them anyway.
King mines are also different from thermal pools: It lasts much longer, but it’s a single use item. Once an enemy spent their time to counter it (either by shooting it or have a brick to push through it), you’ll have to risk yourself to reinforce the chokepoint again, or fall back to the main group and protect them from a lone knight (be it melee or lance, idgaf).
By increasing the active mine counts of King, it makes the weapon more forgiving to use (not easier, because it still relies on your enemy being a dumbass, lol), less dependent on the performance of your teammate (because almost none of them knows to kite the enemy towards your mines), and be freed from a mere “Hadron custom reload booster”.
I will eventually bring this up to other more popular platforms to discuss, but right now, I want to iron out the details, therefore I want to gather more data and/or opinions.
