Camo Cactus is now useless
The camo cactus was my favorite character in GW1. I got more than 45,000 player kills with him but in GW2 he is useless.
- His scope is so lethargic. Usually you aim just in front of the enemy whi...
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Future Cactus is a decent contender as she has great RoF, and great charge damage, and has the benefit of low hip fire/bloom. I would say she is still great in this game
She'd not stronger here than in GW1, since she requires dedicated playtime to achieve the same level of power in GW1. She was niche in GW1 since she could OHSK a half health zombie, and since region was at half health, she should do some serious damage. In addition driftwood shores, mainstreet, and cactus canyon offered long sightlines suiting her niche, as well as the garlic drone elevator to help her get into great spots.
Now in GW2, sightline are often interrupted with cover so that combat can be close and fast paced, in addition people region to full now, so the deadbeard/footsoldier you shot 1 minute ago can have full hp again, also imp health base health is 75 now, so she can't even OHSK any zombie anymore. She also has the disadvantage of being terribly weak against mech due to no crits, and over reliance on crits to do any damage period compared to zen and future who do respectable body shot damage.
To recap, sniping got a nerf, she got indirectly nerfed several times, and she isn't even a high damage cactus as compared to either future or zen.
She's a niche character without a niche. How could you think that she's stronger now in GW2 when she was slightly UP in GW1? Don't tell me the piercing upgrade sold you on it.
With the damage upgrade how does she fare against mechs? Can she OHSK imps now? What about Bodyshot dmg, does it improve significantly?
Oh wait, no, she's sitll weak, but with 33 body and 66 HS, she now gives off the illusion of being useable. In addition you're neglecting the fact it takes something like 24-28 levels to get her damage upgrade, so for the early parts she requires 60% HS accuracy to kill everyone but an imp.
Future Cactus doesn't need that, and neither do zen, fire, default, or jade. Oh look the variants that don't require tremendous effort accuracy wise to be as effective are all better. If she was a skill cannon where she could melt 5 PC zombies with 5 headshots, I could understand why she might not need a buff, but when Zen and Future have better damage, more utility, and aren't as reliant on HS, you really can't tell me that she's "OK right now, no balance adjustment needed."
I'm serious if I'm saying that she's better than in GW1. The Super Commando is so much weaker in this game and no Deadbeard is a decent replacement. The "Quickscoping" still works reliably and can save you in close quarter engagements. In this game, appart from the first stage of Moon Base Z, there aren't to many spots that she can't reach with the help of the Iron Maiden. Especially on Zomburbia, where ypu can reach some nice lines of sight. The full regeneration is a double-edged sword. You now don't need a Sunflower to regenerate, but so do your enemies. However, you can kill a full health Scientist/Deadbeard/Footsoldier/Engineer in 0.96seconds if you can hit both shots, which I still find easy to do. If you want to know when hitting two shots to kill somebody can be hard, go into Quake 3/Live and try hitting somebody twice. Good luck trying that.
@xxSe4l-MLG420xx wrote:I'm serious if I'm saying that she's better than in GW1. The Super Commando is so much weaker in this game and no Deadbeard is a decent replacement. The "Quickscoping" still works reliably and can save you in close quarter engagements. In this game, appart from the first stage of Moon Base Z, there aren't to many spots that she can't reach with the help of the Iron Maiden. Especially on Zomburbia, where ypu can reach some nice lines of sight. The full regeneration is a double-edged sword. You now don't need a Sunflower to regenerate, but so do your enemies. However, you can kill a full health Scientist/Deadbeard/Footsoldier/Engineer in 0.96seconds if you can hit both shots, which I still find easy to do. If you want to know when hitting two shots to kill somebody can be hard, go into Quake 3/Live and try hitting somebody twice. Good luck trying that.
All the spots you can reach with camo, you can reach with an actually effective cactus like zen or future who bring much more hurt than camo, since body shots don't negate half their damage, and they both have splash damage shots.
Sharkbite is definitely a contender for the top sniper in this game thanks to his damage, zoom, and RoF, and can 1v1 any cacti fairly well
Also all of the new zombies have DR reduction abilities that nerf the crit classes, since a barrel deadbeard and mech can't be crit.
Let's now assume that you are indeed correct and she is better in GW2 now, than 88-44 pre patch GW1.
Why isn't she meta?
I see future cacti, zen cacti, fire cacti, and default cacti all more than I see her. 3 of those variants were in GW1.
This likely means that your reasons for why she is better in GW2, than in GW1 apply not solely to her, but instead to the cacti class as a whole.
This means future is still a better variant because of splash damage, useful zoom, and unreliance on headshots for damage. Would you look at that? Reasons for why a meta cactus is in the meta?Wait, those same reasons for future cactus being in the meta also apply to zen cactus. Wow, 2 cacti 1 meta.
She's weak compared to those variants, and she really only shines in her defined niche as a pure long range sniper, when those 2 cacti are much more reliable in the ranges most engagements happen, and another key thing about these variants is that the damage upgrade is an upgrade instead of a necessity. Without damage upgrade, which is not a negligible amount of time considering it does't exist for her until lvl 25-28, she is extremely weak requiring at least 60% Headshot accuracy for a kill where most people who aren't special pro elite quake veterans have a regular accuracy around <40% expect around 20%.
For the "casul skrubs" she's weak and nearly useless except on an unsuspecting enemy, but then any class is great against an unsuspecting enemy.
For the people who can hit with her she's alright and useable, but not as effective as the meta cacti, and really they're probably just using her for the sake of using her.
She doesn't offer much that some other cacti already have. The first shot is an alpha strike, and not factored for TTK, future cacti charge time can be neglected since that would technically be part of prep period, since it can be charged whilst in complete cover; this means the TTK for future in ideal scenarios is much lower than camo, since double tapping future is a lot quicker than double tapping camo. This is in addition to the fact, assuming the first shot is a crit headshot for both camo and future, the second shot from future doesn't need to be a HS to kill 5 of the 7 zombie classes if they survive the first shot.
What does camo bring that a just as well positioned future doesn't again?
- @Gauss42
Thanks for alredy answering your question. The Camo Cactus won't be meta in the near future (unless his damage gets buffed to 70) because he requires a semi-decent player with a certain degree of adaptation to the zoom and cluncky sight. Most people I see could be a decent Camo Cactus if they practiced a bit, but they prefer the Zen and Future Cacti because they are easier to use, eventough they are far less reliable.
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