Vultures

Discussion
1

Time to ponder this sucky weapon and how it might be made better, because even after they received a buff way way in the past, they still absolutely suck at being proper weapons

The first comparison is with the Yaoguai, and it is just way better to the point that Vultures as they are now should be an epic weapon, and Yaoguais the legendary one.

Other than that it’s a very flawed weapon, at area denial and control it can not do it because you can’t scatter enough of them and they don’t stay active long enough to do that job properly. At dealing damage, the explosion might get a lucky hit on a module maybe once every 100 years, but the whole drilling part is absolutely worthless. It won’t drill through any armor, or really target anything good either as like all drones it targets the cabin.

I see how the devs thought it’d work, you farm them around, they stay invisible a player drives past or under them, they give chase and as they fly after the enemy while targeting the cab they might get in a lucky hit on a module, ammo box, generator etc close to the cabin, the drilling action helping in getting past some armor, but in practice none of this works as intended.

You can’t really spread them around, they fail to give chase or lock on to any players even if they drive right under them, and the range of detection feels like half of a Yaoguais, they keep shooting at you even though you’re miles away from them, while you can drive by a Vulture without anything really happening, or already being out of the drones range once the red laser pops up for a split second. The drilling part barely tickles any parts and feels like something that just gets in the way of the main explosion, which also lacks any kind of real impact, that many smaller explosive weapons like the Thresher and Impulse suffer from.

These weapons need a change, either in staying active for a longer time while waiting for an enemy to drive by them, or by being able to shoot two drones per a Vulture gun, like a Jubokko. Or for the damage of the drone being worthy of being so clunky to use. Or boost the explosion radius, and change the worthless drilling aspect of the drone into something else, like jamming the weapons like a hammerfall when the drone attaches to a build, or draining power or weapon rotation or acceleration or whatever. Even heating the part it is attached to rather than doing any drilling would be instantly lots better than the “bloat” damage before the main boom that serves no other purpose than delaying the explosion.

Or just boost the drilling into being actually able to drill into a build

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2

Thanks for the information.

3

The simplest fix for these things would be to give them a bit more time to be active after they have been deployed, even if just a few seconds, and for them to not be destroyed if the player who deployed them dies, just like king mines

Because these things are not drones, they are glorified floating mines, and king and jubokko both do a much better job at being mines, while yaoguai does a way, way more better job at being a drone

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4

The advantage over Yaoguai is that MG hovers tend to shoot down the Yaoguai drone very quickly, and there’s still a lot of people playing DPS hovers.
I think that’s why combining Vultures with a Yaoguai worked well for me: they focus on the Yaoguai, giving enough time for the Vultures to get them.
Important to get the Vultures behind the enemy, as they usually do a lot more damage if they attach to the rear of enemies.

5

I think they need to persist longer. Like as long as a kapkan.
On top of that, they need to be able to place at least two per vulture at one time. (like Kapkan’s poof).

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I think that Vultures biggest problem is the ammo count. Vultures don’t accept ammo packs, and how are you going to have a catapult with only 16 shots? That’s like 2 minutes of play. Incinerators have 40 something shots with an expanded ammo pack. In addition, Incinerators hit way harder, hit more enemies at once, the fire puddle is indestructible and they are far cheaper. If a Vulture and an Incinerator were to play on the teeter totter of effectiveness, the Vulture would be launched into space.

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Wait, doesn’t genesis give you more Vulture drones?
I just assumed they do, but haven’t actually checked.

8

Agreed, Sure, like 3-4 more drones. One expanded ammo pack gives you about 2.5 times the ammo.

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One direct buff the Vulture and the Phoenix could greatly profit from, is that if it is attached to a build, the build itself can’t shoot it off but a teammate can. The enemy player can shoot it as it is flying towards him, but once it attaches onto anything, guns included, the player can’t shoot it off and needs a teammate to shoot it off. Excludes fire puddles, Heather/Mandrake, kami perk etc.

Shotgun builds don’t even need to actively attempt to shoot them off and still manage to shoot them off no matter where they are attached to

10

Reviving this topic once again because I still can’t wrap my head around how big of a failure this weapon is

The concept is solid, it’s a drone that drills into a build and then delivers an explosion, on paper that sounds great, but in practice it just sucks. The drilling does absolutely no actual drilling due to low “drilling” damage and duration, I have never seen this thing drill into anything. At most it weakens the part it attaches to, and with good luck the explosion blasts the weakened part off, but at that point why not just forget the drilling all together and give it a better explosion?

And the trajectory of it is also a failure for the whole drilling bit, usually this ends up attaching to a cabin or gun rather than any part it can actually drill through. Not to mention even the versiosn where they are supposedly fused for drone chase speed, that came from the battle pass ages ago, they still fly very slowly, making it so that most light and fast builds an just outrun them completely. Even Fuzes feel better at chasing after builds than these things.

Then there is the whole invisibility thing, for one it takes ages for the drone to get invisible after it’s been launched, leading to it being destroyed by players. But at the same time, the drone does not have enough of a living time to be used as a sneaky invisible trap, because you have to farm them close enough to enemies that they see them being launched and can shoot them down right away, and if you farm the farther away most of the times they just float around and then just sd because they just do not have enough “floating time”

And then there is the whole detecting range of this thing, Yaoguais can shoot an enemy insanely far away and even when you speed away from their range it usually feels like you just barely make it, but the Vulture has such a limited area of activating that you would imagine you could farm two of these per gun like a jubokko, but nope. And an enemy needs to stand directly under one for a few seconds before it decides to do something

This thing needs a complete rework rather than any buffs. And take in mind that these were buffed from their initial release state, and they are still absolute trash. Even when running two of them and other guns, it feels like absolutely every other gun is more useful than these.

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Vultures suck really bad I admit but did manage to make one good build with it after I loaded up on dirt cheap vultures from the last mini bp. They work surprisingly well with porcupines and the reason is simple you can engage enemies out of the line of sight and they are both area denial/trapping weapons. They probably would work decent with the incinerator for the same reason but vultures by themselves are terrible. I stocked up on 8 of them waiting for the prices to go up but planning on keeping 2 for my porc build.

12

it is still amazing that basically a tracking, flying, stealth using, able to be used as a drone or mine, meelee damage drone that explodes after delivering some damage does so very little, while the epic counterpart of the weapon is like a relic compared to the vulture

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Even when you manage to get all 4 vultures (yes, I’m playing around with a build like that) to attach to an enemy, they barely do anything, almost like the explosion of the vulture drone is faulty and bugged. Most of the times it feels like the explosion of the drone only deals explosion damage to the original part it attached to and “drilled” (did 40 damage once or twice), rather than all parts around said part like one would expect an explosion to work. It’s like the explosion of the drone itself is about 1/3rd of a phoenix explosion, in radius and damage.

And the other thing is the horrible lock-on these things have, you already have to basically drive directly under them to get them to react, but even if the laser points at an enemy unless it stands still or drives under 60km/h they can just drive away and before the drone will start to pursue the enemy, the enemy has already moved away from the piss-poor range of the drone and it does nothing.

Now compare this to the Yaoguai, once the laser of the drone points at you it will shoot, even if you speed away with boosters it’ll get a few hits in, at distances way outside it’s enemy detection range. That does not seem fair at all

And the price speaks for the gun itself, on PC these things are going for 1050 coins in average, in the few hours apparently someone sold them for 968 coins.

968 coins for a legendary weapon. That is how poorly this gun does and how much it is in the need of some buffs or just a complete rework. The only time this thing was somewhat desirable on the market was when it was a part for a crafting recipe during some mini pass of the past

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