Re: CHARGE RIFLE

A lot of ppl are using longbow, a lot of ppl use G7 too. Those are my preferred long range weapons too (I generally don't shoot past 300m, since there's no points to do that).

Charged rifle is new and fun, so of course you see some more of it. And as I said, it does outperform other snipers at ultra long ranges, which are quite accessible on this map. It's a great weapon to farm a 4k damage badge (not that it helps winning the game, mind you).

Also, I don't know where you get your "meta", but charged rifle is definitely not among top 3 weapons by popularity in higher ranks (those are the same old R99, Wingman and PK).

Charged rifle being super loud and also used to shoot ppl at any distance creates the illusion of overabundance - ppl who have it just keep shooting it, all game long, and you can hear them half across the map.

From CompetitiveApex, where are you getting your numbers from - streamers? The same people who said that CR was too broken and they refused using it? Did you miss the part when they faced teams that had double CR´s?

I havent seen a single competitive player use Longbow, the fact remains - its a waist of slot, as you will get pinned down by CR. Better option is Wingman(if you refuse to play CR due to it being broken), so you´ll atleast be mobile enough to close distance or to out camp until ring.

From my own experience. My own calculations and my own observations (both my own platinum games and the games I see on streams). That's the only valuable resource to me.

And I'm very rarely wrong, so I tend to trust my evaluation.

And at this point I don't really get the argument. I agree that CR needs a nerf for ultra-long range. It's not exactly OP gamewise (since fighting at that range is generally not useful at all), but it brings griefing to entirely new level and is simply unfun. And if they implement their damage dropoff (which was mentioned in dev stream) correctly, that's exactly what will be addressed. It doesn't need any nerfs closer range and hopefully it won't get any.

@DoYaSeeMe  since CR is not fun to use, it feels cheap and broken. Most of those players want a challenge, or atleast feel some achivement I guess - you know that feeling when you hit a Longbow HS with SP in S2 on a moving Wraith (having to calculate bullet drop/projectile) - with CR its hurdurr hold my aim and rip that guy (while im half way across the map).

Atleast this is what I´ve heard some of them state.

Also, 6 CR´s would not work, since a team could flank you during a fight, so you would atleast need something to swap into for medium/close range. Same reason you never saw 6 Longbow´s in S2 in one squad.

Who said CR is not fun to use? It's VERY fun to use. That's kind of the main reason you see so many of them shot around.

One thing that's a bit of a letdown about it is that it pretty much doesn't have headshot damage. So it does feel too easy and meh. Transferring some damage to the headshot would do 2 things: reward ultra-precise aiming and 2) allow for some extra mind games between target and shooter: if shooter goes for the head, a well timed crouch can negate a lot of damage (and with fixed charge time - it's not rocket science to time that crouch, the question though - will the victim crouch or will he not?). But with no headshots, nobody shoots the head, so crouching vs CR doesn't make sense anyway. If it was up to me, I would take 15 damage from the charging trickle (3->2) and add 20-25 to the blast's headshot (56 -> 76). This would make hitting the final beam a lot more important and also allow for the victim more ways to outplay the shooter.

Most of the competitive scene did. I didnt find it fun to use, it feelt cheap and it was not fun facing, since I could get 3d partied from half across the map or just have to play hide and seek, sure it could have been fun if it wasnt as busted.  I do agree that they could make it more into rewarding aim, but I´m not a fan of having a hitscan sniper, it will either nullify all the projectile based sniper weapons (as we saw with CR) or become obsolete, having it close to a middle ground is really hard.

If you make instant hitscan 1-shot - sure that would always be used, no matter how you limit it (even if it was one-time-use drop weapon that takes both your weapon slots). But otherwise, no hitscan will make Kraber obsolete. Being able to 1-shot an opponent in a BR is an absolutely massive advantage in certain situations.

As for non-1-shot hitscan vs projectile - it's really a matter of balancing dps/shots to kill. Also, the charge mechanic itself makes balancing so much easier. There's a huge difference between delayed hitscan and instant hitscan. And they actually made something even more interesting with the charged rifle. With the trickle damage, charged rifle is like "hitscan" wraith's voice for the opponent. And yes, again, I do think that the trickle damage should be more just a warning than actual damage - it would be more fun for both user and opponent. Having half of the damage in it is not the sweet spot.

@BiochemikasI agree, there is a lot of potential in the weapon - and it had some great work put into (from creative point of view) - to be honest, only thing that I´m crying about is the balance (and sad that I can't play Longbow anymore - if I face someone with CR I can't see anything when the initial laser hits me, and its alot easier for them to peek me so I´ve just droped Longbow) apart from balance, its has good design, but I´m still skeptic to the balance side - if the nerfs are too big, it will become obsolete, so I hope they test this and also invite part of the comp scene to also give feedback on balance.

Also it might have felt like a too big jump (meta) with the new map and CR ontop of it, that people just didn't recognize the game - that made a lot of people angry. It made me not want to use CR and ask for it to get nerfed to the ground, but frustration from the map was taken out on CR :P

@BiochemikasThe problem with the headshot is that the final blast comes with a delay, which makes aiming for the head kind of useless (sisibility is also reduced because of the big beam, if I remember correctly).

One fun thing to do with the Charge Rifle is crowd control. When you see a few teams fighting or trying to 3rd party in a distance, you can scare them or make them push against your team at the same time and actually have them meet and kill each other on their way. I won a match like this in unranked 2 days ago, I had only one teammate and the other 2 remaining teams seemed full. They were about to attack each other, but we fried them a bit and made them hide until the closing ring pushed them out into each other in the open, stinging them to death as they dropped. We then peppered the last survivor with grenades and spitfire rounds to celebrate the win 🙂

It only feels OP and it already has disadvantages.
I like how everyone in videos says that CR is OP, but they don't really kill anyone with CR.

At very beginning i also heard that L-STAR is OP and now nobody is using it (even after adding optics, it's still trash).

@NitromethaneAP If you want to have massive advantage with longbow vs CR (in it's current state), all you need to do is find a midnrage engagement where both sides have cover. Charge rifle has no chance to outperform longbow if opponent can just duck out from most of it's damage (you feel the first tricke - you go behind cover, while if your longbow bullet connects - it hits in full). That's one quite common BR situation where CR is simply utterly completely inferior.

Of course, if the CR guy has any sense in him, he's not going to fight you and will simply not peek ever again XD. Well unless he's a god and can prefire 0.5 seconds in advance to hit the big damage the moment you peek.

P.S. Well you did say you want to play longbow.

@DoYaSeeMe  hehe yeah, but as you said - you can take cover and work around it - if your not caught out in the open. Mm like when you kill a whole squad and you are down to one bar pushing that heal/battery and some dude from across the map hits you with the CR. Even when I did that to people, I felt so dirty. With Longbow it felt atleast somewhat more humane :P

@Biochemikas  the moment they notice that you are using Longbow they will pre-fire and cover during reload, so I wont win those fights. Also they could simply strafe left/right/duck or preload duck and fire while I wont see anything - so me hitting them will be pointless. Best option imo is simply Wingman, since you´ll be able to manuver them + faster shoting rate helps, duck fire duck (so they will get overwhelmed - but still depends on distance if that will work).

Prefiring 0.5 seconds is infinitely harder than prefiring a longbow (milliseconds, depending on distance). Also, in this case longbow just outright does more damage (55 body vs 45 body, not even shooting head, where longbow just dominates).

If you can't see how hopeless this duel is for the CR, then you really have some grand delusions about CR's greatness.

If you try to fight peek wars CR vs longbow, then you're in for a world of pain (unless you 100% know the longbow person is a potato).

@Biochemikas  Not really, I´ve done the same to people when I used CR - there´s no chance I was getting hit by a Longbow doing that. Since I have the upper hand, and for them to actually hit me - they would need to predict my movement while all I had to do was preload while I was peeking while strafing / ducking (meaning they could not even peek at me, its an losing battle for them and only drains their resources). Your best bet is Wingman, with the fire rate you can actually turn the table (but only for an amount of distance, long range is a nogo).

Well the charged rifle nerf finally arrived and they nicely didn't go overboard this time. As predicted - long range damage nerf. The damage drops off linearly from 45 (max) at 300m to 30 (min) at 500m.

P.S. I couldn't test trickle damage because for whatever reason the long range targets in practice don't register it.