I’m not a big user of dog ears, but it seems to me that when they attack ground builds (and even some hovers) that their ears hit first, making the game think the victim wedged the attacker. This sucks the power from the victim, and makes it easier to pin someone.
It would be extremely helpful if a firedog player (Flash, Spark Firebug or Draco) downloaded the test server and did nothing but play firedogs for an hour. I would watch that. I am especially interested in the new Flash. There seems to be a new nerf to the weapon.
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I’m not a big user of spark/flash, but it sounds to me like both will be more useful as a weapon after the changes, but less useful for slowing enemies down. But I skimmed that section, so I might be misreading the details.
As far as dog ears go, it will make no difference for people who weren’t using the anti-wedge mechanic as an exploit. I’m not even certain if it applied to hovers the same way it did to wheeled builds, but it felt like it did.
While I like playing flamethrowers, mine have been collecting dust for a while, as they felt a little too easy. I think these changes are a good way of indirectly nerfing those builds, as the devs seem to be focusing more on making it harder to pin and immobilize victims, rather than just reducing damage. To me, that seems like a good compromise.
It remains to be seen whether the blight changes will be too much or not enough.
Here’s what gets me after thinking about it:
Flash:
- Damage frequency reduced by 25%.
- Damage increased by 46%.
- The negative effect of the perk reduced from 5% to 2.5%.
- The negative effect now stacks up to 24 times (instead of 12).
If the damage frequency or fire rate is reduced by 25 percent doesn’t that mean that there isn’t a huge increase in DPS? Damage frequency sounds like it is equal to reload rate for weapons that don’t reload. Does that mean that the buff to overall DPS is only 21 percent? That doesn’t sound like very much. It takes Flash from about 715 on the damage meter to about 865 on the damage meter. That still isn’t a great amount of damage.
Also, if the damage frequency is reduced by 25 percent, does that also mean that the perk increase is reduced by 25 percent?
I need to see this thing in action before I go too much further but the description of changes is ominous.
@DarthStall Indeed, +46% of 75% isn’t that much of an increase. You’re looking at 116-117% damage after the update, or something like that.
edit: maybe less, actually. More like, 109,5%. I’m too lazy to pull out a calc, sorry 
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You’re right. 46 percent of 75 percent is only about a 10 percent increase. I was mulltiplying this wrong.
It is 715 (Base Flash damage on damage meter) X .75=546 X 1.46 new damage multiplier. That is 782. This is really bad.
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Yep, I’m a bit stoned for that, but it’s indeed 110% 
Or about 9.4 percent. Either way, this is terrible for Flash players.
Flash had a run as the best weapon in the game. During the summer of 2022, the perk was stealth nerfed to not stack with Spark, then nerfed from 75 percent power drain to 60 percent.
Now, it is being cut in half so I’m not sure what it is supposed to do. If it is as bad as I think it will be, I might as well just run my Draco with my Firebugs.
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I find pure flamethrower builds more fun to play anyway.
I mostly just used my spark with harvesters, and then they changed harvesters so they don’t need it anymore.
With the new numbers, how much damage could a quad flash build do on the damage meter?
Of course what really matters is how they perform in battle. Am I right in assuming that the changes won’t stop them from being good against mines and Porcs? Or will that be an issue?
Flashes already trash Porcs, and that won’t change with a 10 percent increase in damage. But, My Nothung hover, my Helicon hover, my various AC builds, and my big Helios spider all trash Porcs anyway, and these weapons do a lot of other useful stuff as well.
You generally only see Porcs in Leviathan wars, and my team seems to have zero problems with 1 set of Porcs, even with a wheel levi Helios hover, Retcher Hover and Helios spider (me) comp. Two sets of Porcs on the right map require a Flash build of some kind.
The point is, that Flash needs to do more than shut down Porcs to be much of a relic.
I wouldn’t be too worried if I were you. Spark/Flash have always been the top utility pick in the game, and it’s unlikely to change. Hard counters Porcs, Fortunes and Kapkans, all very viable items. Also hard counters mines, missiles, Yongwang, most turrets and drones. Prevents opponents from escaping. Prevents reloading opponents from fighting back. I must stress how bullshit the combo “can’t escape/can’t fight” is. it’s everything wrong with XO’s successive metas summed in one single perk.
Flash is going to be fine.
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Its the only long range weapon that can deal with scorps and athenas without being one. Kaiju is unusable dogwater even in 8v8. Thyrsus is totally useless in cw. Its easy to counter up close too, we have to be accurate predicting your movement half a second in advance or we miss. I rush down enemy astras in cc with my omni joule knowing this and beat them 80%of the time.
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My concern was more about the damage rate nerf possibly not destroying mines and porc barrels fast enough anymore. Hard to tell just from the numbers.
Will probably be fine, but definitely something to test on the server.
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They really ought to nerf the ability for porcs to be hard countered like a wet noodle by spark/flash. Only the Argus should be able to cause porcs to self-immolate. Then porcs can finally be nerfed to not be OP sealclub weapons with the exception of spark/flash.
I bet that these changes are somehow going to make the usual miniguns rapid fire machineguns shotguns autocannons even more OP than before
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Here it is from the test server. It is only about a 10 percent damage buff. Cut the engine power drain perk in half or more than half as the Flash shoots slower, and buff DPS 10 percent. It should be noted that the Flash reload/overheat drain perk is still fully intact.
This all begs the question: What does Spark even do after this nerf? as it only does about 515 on the damage meter, it has no reload/overheat drain perk, and it is only used for the power drain perk.
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Popped on to check the ammo and weight situation on the miller. So one upgraded expanded ammo box puts the ammo up to 842 which seems fairly reasonable if your not spamming it. The added weight will probably give a few people more of an issue but it didn’t seem to really pull off much durability to correct for it at least on my build.
The high low movement part was kind of interesting. It seems like they removed that funky turn hovers off if mixed movement parts are added off which is kind of nice. They mentioned the special features shouldn’t be working on movement parts when not touching the ground but it seem like I could still get atoms to charge when using them with legs.
Cerb change is nice, BP hadron picks up +3km/hr from the upgrade changes which is kind of nice.
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Question: do the low movement parts when mounted on a spider cause any power drain? There are some low parts, Grinder, Sleipnir and Goliath that are useful without moving.
Devs said nothing about that. I supposed they do, since they’ve been specific about all the things they wouldn’t do when off the ground. No tonnage, no perk… I suppose if it was no powerdrain too, they would have mentionned it.
I didn’t really notice it but I was also running the Pegasus engine. So I had 8 atoms and 4 legs going and I think it was saying 24 for the Pegasus indicator. If I can get back on tomorrow I’ll try pulling some atoms and seeing if the indicator changes. I’m think it does though. Would just have to check against that indicator number to probably tell.
The switchover when the atoms hit surfaces was really fast too. The weirdest portion of it was as my tonnage on the build was really shot to hell when they’d contact the ground I’d suddenly accelerate really quick was odd to deal with.
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