It’s starting to be about time people are getting to unlocking the Heather, so let’s discuss Mandrake 2.0
I give it a 7/10 it is very good but not perfect, and fills a little bit different kind of a role than the Mandrake even if the two are very similar all in all, and so far looks like you might get an even better performance out of the weapon by making specific builds for it rather than replacing a mandrake on a mandrake build with a heather and calling it a day
I think it’s pretty neat, it is better than the Mandrake yet at the same time isn’t, depending on how you look at things. Basically much higher accuracy, but for the shots (missiles) to actually travel to where you were aiming feels like it takes longer than on the Mandrake, but then again Mandrake scatters them all over and drops them in succession rather than accurately and all at once.
But it also suffers from all the same downsides as a regular drake, and on the drake you don’t need to predict your enemy’s movement patters as accurately as on the heather, and we all know how much in a straight line most builds want to move instead of zigzagging or dancing around. And especially in the game’s current, extremely mobile and face hugging state you can bet that after a shot or two some enemy has rushed you and it’s pretty much game over. And a few map just hard counter your weapon completely if you’re only running a heather.
If they nerf the speed of the missiles or the explosion radius of them, I’d say that then this weapon is actually worse than a drake. I kinda wish they’d buff the drake by making the small fire puddles it leaves behind last a bit longer to differentiate between the two if they ever feel like that needs to be done, I always felt like the puddles themselves were really lacking and even when running a drake build I always forgot they even existed and were a thing.
If nothing else, the pinpoint accuracy of this gun makes one appreciate the “randomness” of drake shells a bit better. Heather feels like a weapon for stationary single targets (good luck finding any) and drake for somewhat moving groups of enemies (Oh look they’re already in your face)
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You make it work, or make them stationary
This is just theorycrafting on my part, because I don’t have them and never will, but I think they would synergize well with a chameleon/bigfoot/doppler build on a Harpy or Deadman cabin. Situational awareness (Doppler), speed, and invisibility should keep you alive while you are going rounds at the edge of the map and blasting at people.
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I have cloak, a fused special detector, verifier, kapkan, epic reload module and the anti-drone module on mine
It’s good fun, but my team are worthless 70% of the time
Yeah nope, after more thought and play I do think that both Mandrake and Heather need a buff in projectile travel speed so it does not take as long for the shots to actually land somewhere after they have been fired, especially on the Heather it feels like there is an extra second of idle time in the whole firing and projectiles reaching the target for no good reason because the gun is not that good that it needs that kind of an artificial debuff to keep it from being any levels of op. Crossout has gotten more mobile and faster paced and you won’t find any realistic slow moving artillery targets until the very endgame highest ps areas, for single drake or heather gameplay.
Maybe 2 years ago this weapon would have been a lot more useful than it is now but in the modern day, at least on the pc, this kind of artillery just can’t keep up, to the point of feeling overly sluggish and unable to perform.
And I do not understand why we can’t just aim directly at ourselves as a norm rather than having to use the tilt of terrain to aim very close to ourselves or directly at ourselves to hit close targets, since 90% of all fights someone is going to be pressed right into you, and most of the time it’s the whole enemy team minus the ai bots.
And Heathers perk and the way it fires compared to a mandrake suggests it was intended to be a mobile support weapon where you don’t need to stop driving for accurate shooting, but it just takes so long for your shot to actually reach where you are pointing that it kinda feels moot. I know you’re supposed to predict your enemys movement but this is feeling more like having to be an actual future predicting esper to actually land shots during combat rather than being able to predict the enemy inside any forms of realistic possibilities.