Arty - Needs ease of use improvements.

(planetaryArtery) #1

So I’ve seen a few posts that are no longer getting attention about Arty, and after playing him straight for two days I completely agree, so what’s wrong with him:

-Broken, pain in the arse targeting system, which is hinders the tiny area of effect even more.
-Damage seems random in most scenarios - Probably because it’s area of effect is linked to the targeting system before it fired.
-Is not versatile at all, he is a complete wildcard and only worth picking on a few maps.

In more detail:

The targeting system is a complete cock up really, extremely hard to use in any scenario even if you’re on flat land and trying to hit some other flat land, something will get in the way and mess it up, it seems to be focused around where the little lazor hits directly, not the massive ground target as it should be. Any wall, be it tiny cover or the side of a house; even a vehicle of any sort, and it won’t go where you want it to; for example, you point it at an RV, directly on the side, suddenly you notice that the start of the RV is where the ground circle finishes, a clean miss. You point it under a bridge with people on it and it will tell you it can’t be used, you point it at the side of the bridge and when it lands, it skims of the side of the bridge and does jack shit damage to anyone who was on it, the same goes to any form of cover. On the indoor pipe based map for example (forget the name) whilst on the first objective building you have to aim the lazer at the side of the roof gap, the bombs will explode on the roof without even going through the hole.
Then at the corner after that objective, when the roof looks like glass segments, it is completely unusable. Regardless where you aim it, Yet both Kira and Skyhammer can use theirs.

If that isn’t enough the damage seems connected to where it was pointed directly, not the ground below it, so if you point the lazor half way up a wall, leaving half the circle outside the wall where those pesky enemies are shooting from, the bombardment will strike the wall and deal no damage at all to anyone below it…
So, why can’t we just have a ground targeted circle and that is it, one that moves statically and isn’t effected by vertical objects, and if your crosshair is at the side of elevated cover, that will be where the area STARTS, enabling you to bomb behind it, this entire ability is meant to be quickly activated and fast to bombard, it’s what separates him from the other mercs of his kind, only it’s not, so it doesn’t.

The other issue is with the radius of the actual explosion, say you manage to get two perfect bombardments after 6 seconds and fiddly aiming, and strike an RV like so “(0)”. The brackets being the targeting circle and the RV being the 0… You will rain down hell on said RV, but deal absolutely no damage to anyone face hugging it at the time, you won’t even get a hit marker, or text telling you you have damaged someone. Just like with the bridge, or the little cover.

All of this needs to be looked into and fixed, and whilst you’re at it you could give us 20% extra radius, that might help with some of the issues, whilst not pushing it into artillery superiority.

As for his versatility, we could us something similar to what Skyhammer has, anything.
Here’s an idea

Let his targeting beacon use all remaining artillery charges to unleash a ranged EMP blast if used inside, dealing 50% of the damage in a 35% smaller radius for one charge, and 100% damage and 70% radius if both charges are used, destroying all user placed objects in range. No cool down reduction would be given if used this way.

Something that will give him versatility across all maps and map segments.

(Frogteam) #2

I don’t think I have ever seen the Salvos hit a wall when I target a ground area off a wall. When you target a wall with the designator it calls in the Artillery Salvo offset from the surface you targeted so it hits the ground not the wall.

Because of this, Arty can target many areas and key points without being able to see them. As you learn the maps and experiment with different targeting positions the effectiveness of the ability increases greatly.

If you want to learn these aiming positions, I advise using: switchlevel obj_mapname in the console (~) where mapname is whitechapel, trainyard, victoria, canarywharf, or bridge. Just wander around the maps and look for high traffic areas, or places people tend to set up turrets or healing stations, then see if there are any targetable objects above or nearby. This is also useful for learning trick jumps.

(CCP115) #3

Arty is not nearly as bad as he was.

Targeting is annoying, but actually very useful after practice. You soon learn that there ware walls everywhere to target next to.

Damage is random, because… I don’t really know. Combined with it’s relatively small size, it makes the ability really iffy.

But the last point I truly agree with. His killing potential is absolutely lackluster, he is quite limited long and medium range, and even then he gets outgunned due to the absolute accuracy of every other gun. He has little to no use on indoor maps, or maps with a lot of indoors. As a result the devs chuck an open roof every few metres, which kinda means all the maps will be mostly outside.
Stoker and Skyhammer are still useful inside, with Kira not being very useful inside, but to be fair she has an incredibly strong ability.
Arty is much more usable now, but still very weak. My biggest gripe being his weapons, which are hard to use and outmatched by other weapons.

(planetaryArtery) #4

[quote=“Frogteam;66069”][quote=“planetaryArtery;16356”]
If that isn’t enough the damage seems connected to where it was pointed directly, not the ground below it, so if you point the lazor [sic] half way up a wall, leaving half the circle outside the wall where those pesky enemies are shooting from, the bombardment will strike the wall and deal no damage at all to anyone below it…
[/quote]

I don’t think I have ever seen the Salvos hit a wall when I target a ground area off a wall. When you target a wall with the designator it calls in the Artillery Salvo offset from the surface you targeted so it hits the ground not the wall.

Because of this, Arty can target many areas and key points without being able to see them. As you learn the maps and experiment with different targeting positions the effectiveness of the ability increases greatly.

If you want to learn these aiming positions, I advise using: switchlevel obj_mapname in the console (~) where mapname is whitechapel, trainyard, victoria, canarywharf, or bridge. Just wander around the maps and look for high traffic areas, or places people tend to set up turrets or healing stations, then see if there are any targetable objects above or nearby. This is also useful for learning trick jumps.[/quote]

This is just telling me the benefit to playing arty which I already stated, and giving nothing relative to my post nor commenting about his other major flaws.

Thanks for the map practice tip though, didn’t know how to do it. Up until now I was just joining empty servers.

(planetaryArtery) #5

So I recorded this just to prove my point- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p23GN965ezQ&feature=youtu.be

(Cappe) #6

What point do you want to prove with this? That you’re bad at aiming arty?
Of course it doesn’t work if you aim under a bridge.

Yes, targetting needs some fixing but it’s not nearly as bad as you make it seem.
On that map (video) I was able to kill a whole team protecting their C4 on the trackswitch by using arty from the defendersspawn.

(Gi.Am) #7

@planetaryArtery To explain what is happening in the video.

Everytime you target something the marker checks if that position has a clear path to the skybox (under the bridge it doesn’t).
Everytime the marker encounters a vertical plane (wall) it will move the targeting area in front of it and make the same check.
Round surfaces and planes that are neither horizontal or vertical more often than not will trip the targeting system (not sure why maybe the upward check is programmed in a weird way and looks at an angle in those cases).

With the above in mind. When you targeted the handrail bar you first hit the inside plane of it. The upward check most likely collided with the rail. You finally hit green when you targeted the outward facing side of the same bar, which correctly moved the targeting area infront of the bridge (vertical target).

I assume you want to hit ontop of the bridge. method 1 target either wall above the buildings entrance. Target the rail on the opposite side of the bridge (not sure if that works never tried it). Position yourself to a spot you can actually see the top of the bridge.

A very nice (slightly harder to hit) spot that illustrates the power of Arty (and Kira same targeting). When you step into the riverbed from the attackers spawn and look towards the objective.
There is this big white antenna thing aim at the left side of it, will take several tries but can be pulled of fairly quickly if done before. This will hit a bit of the right side and infront of the objective area, if someone is hiding there you get a kill (not too likely but happend before ^^) but very good for clearing out mines/stickies from the comfort of your spawn.

(ludicrousBlast) #8

Arty just has a high skill ceiling and learning curve. He was just buffed, and I highly doubt he will receive another buff.

(CCP115) #9

Agreed. Explodydendron is quite good on him. drilled + Br-16 is very good for aggresive players.

They probably think Arty is fine, as I play him more I understand he has an extremely high skill ceiling.

They might still fiddle with the Dreiss a bit, and probably give Arty another buff in the future if Stoker proves too strong.

To be honest, I just want a health buff.