No not joking. No, he wasn't literally "everywhere" before the nerf (the pick rates here clearly show you are well off the mark: https://apexlegendsstatus.com/game-stats/legends-pick-rates I also main Wattson and Bloodhound occasionally. Not really come across tons of Caustics and generally just avoided the gas. Not difficult most of the time.
Stupidly overpowered? Stay out of it then. Or toss some grenades in to set them off. That's the point of it, a deterrent. It's only overpowered if you overstay your welcome. Now you can heal faster than that damage it does and it's no more annoying than an early ring, probably less so. Useless. I experienced this first hand with people not seeming to be too bothered about the gas now. And thanks to an earlier nerf where it doesn't obscure their vision that edge is gone too. Seriously... 3 seconds of gas damage is 15 points. A touch more than a single hit from a P2020. Which you could empty into an opponent. Twice. In that time. Oooooo, scary. Many fights are over faster than that. As an aside, the P2020 with the hop up is a pretty amazing sidearm/finisher. I've managed a few game winning kills with that. Now that's another topic of discussion...
It's not "Easy" knocks and damage. People generally re-located pretty quick. It's actually pretty hard to kill someone with the gas unless they are already damaged or you manage to trap them in an area (but he's called toxic trapper right? So this is a problem how... most would say "good play" like Horizon's black hole/grenade spam).
I've seen a few comments along the lines of "you just drop a gas trap next to a downed person and it's an easy kill". No it's not. Obviously they haven't played Caustic much. That only works if you trap them so they can't crawl away from it. If they can move it won't kill them when knocked. Simple as that. I've had *one* squad wipe in thousands of games with the gas grenade. I dropped it where I was (i had knocked down two opponents close by and wasn't sure where the 3rd was) and then was knocked down myself. I watched this guy try to revive his team mates in the gas and it took him out. Was that because the gas was overpowered or because he was foolish enough to stand in it and try to do that? His team mates made no effort to get out of the gas and just sat there.
In my experience, on average, a person who sets off a gas trap takes 2-3 seconds damage tops. So that used to be 6+7+8 = 21. Less than a hit from a G7. And that's generally best case as many times people will take the 6 and be gone and wait it out or relocate.
Sure, the fortified buff exists for Caustic. Caustic is not particularly useful when out in the open and is an easy target and does not have the tank like abilities of Gibraltar so is a bit of a sitting duck in those scenarios. Like most legends (as it should be) there are scenarios where they excel and some where they don't. Fortified doesn't really do much for you when you are exposed in the open which (in Olympus for example) happens quite a bit.
Yes, the lack of damage makes him unusable as people don't seem to fussed by it and show little respect for it. It's more a minor annoyance than deterrent now. I've been on the receiving end of that first hand. If you don't acknowledge this then you are being disingenuous at best.
Another viewpoint, if you've sunk a couple of years playing this character and it gets nerfed this hard you'd be totally cool with it then? Everything is fine? Really? I remember the outrage over the nerf to Wraith's cool down time... just... wow.
- DR
