Arty still terrible?

(CCP115) #1

They did nothing this recent update. He still sucks, and if not more, because Kira has just been added. This is the third mercenary with some sort of rain down hell ability. Is she just a female Skyhammer, cos that’s what it seems like.
Now a Dreiss AR nerf as well. It sucked, and now it sucks more. You have to be really good to use that gun well, and they decided to nerf it.

This is all from my experience with him, and maybe I am the worst Arty that has ever played DB, but I still don’t see how Arty at all compares to other Mercs.

(Parmenion) #2

Lol, Arty is by far my best merc.
The Dreiss AR is good at any range, it’s the most versatile weapon.

(Thai-San) #3

[quote=“Parmenion;21419”]Lol, Arty is by far my best merc.
The Dreiss AR is good at any range, it’s the most versatile weapon.[/quote]

That is just not true. If you use him right, yeah. He can be pretty annoying for the attacking team on chapel. But he still needs three strikes to disable the ev. That about 60-75 seconds of cool down (was it 20s or 25s per strike?). Skyhammer can one hit the ev without even aiming which a cool down of 1:30-1:45 (again, not sure). And If we go into math: His line of destruction has way more explosions that arty could do in the time of his cool down.
On top of that you can deny arts ability easily by shooting him. The hit punch cancels the strike 90% of the time. AND his ability is not that useful, up to useless, on maps like underground, last stage of terminal or last stage of bridge. Skyhammer on the other hand at least has a weak grenade with low cool down for those maps.

And the last point is that his burst-fire rifles are only good at mid range. Close rage is terrible since Shotguns and full-autos will rip you apart, because they are made for this range. Far range is also out of limits since the recoil is so high that even if the first bullet hits the head, the rest will hit the air above the target (I’m assuming that you can only see he enemies head, maybe even the chest because it’s most likely that he’s in cover then engaging such a firefight). But one bullet is weak. Equal to normal ARs or even lower. Not lets do some quick math:

You have around 8 bursts. you to one headshot which every burst.
(15*2)8=240
So you deal 240 dmg with a whole mag and perfect aim.
But since you’re under fire and your (at least my) aim isn’t perfect and you miss 3 shots and one is just a hit in the shoulder.
(152)*4+15=135
Not enough to kill a Fragger or a Rhino, but for every other. I don’t know how the dog falloff works but it could get close to not killing a Skyhammer. And I took the BR-16 for this example. With the Stark would would have one burst less.

M41A on the other hand:
Perfect aim:
(14*2)35=980
10 shots missed and 5 in the shoulder:
(142)20+(145)=630
You could kill 3 Rhinos with that…

And don’t forget:
-Don’t take my math for hard facts.
-If you are way better then me and hit the head with every bullet of every burst with one hand and smoking some boba kush blunt with the other while writing “easy win, ged gud noobs” with your d*ck: Good for you. But I’m not that good and the majority of the players aren’t either. With enough skill even pistols can be OP

Edit:
And don’t get me started on the Dreiss-AR. There are already enough topics about that weapon out there.

(Reddeadcap) #4

I just really think he needs more airstrikes, give him a total of five to make up for their lack of power, and somehow have the aiming for them not be so inconsistent.

As for the Dreiss its getting smacked with the nerf stick hard, similar to the K-121, punishing one into being completely immobile and forced to aim Dow sights to shoot at even the closest of ranged, having to fight the horrible recoil and HK sights.

(Daergar) #5

prances off across the meadow with Kira

Yeah, never really enjoyed Arty for all the reasons listed, yet on paper I really like his concept and his gameplay.

(animatedFrog) #6

Skyhammer’s airstrike marker works like a grenade indoors. Arty’s and Kira’s don’t.

IMO just give Arty airstrike markers instead of the pointy thing, and have Kira’s laser go through ceilings, so they aren’t 100% worthless on maps like underground.

Also has anyone noticed that the lasers collide on ceilings that shouldn’t be there? Like, for example, above the carriage in trainyard, or like 10feet in front of the chapel on Chapel.

(CCP115) #7

So after a couple of hours of playing Arty, I can say that he isn’t terrible, but he is still the worst merc in the game.
Stark AR is alright.
Dreiss AR is very situational, and still pretty crap overall. Nerf didn’t do anything really.
Ability is limited in usefulness.

(mrlong2) #8

Needs a total of five strikes.

(Gi.Am) #9

Uhm no Arty (and kira since they are pretty close) isn’t terrible he has a higher overall skillcap than skyhammer that’s all.

Skyhammer:
Is a jack of all trades his weapons are ok to good on most distances and being full auto means they are ok with some missed shots. His airstrike deals a huge amount of damage in open spaces and is fire and forget. On top it deals a meager amount of damage in closed space. All in all his playstyle is very forgiving and he is the closest to every other soldier character in every other FPS making him easy to pick up. which is the reason you get him for free and not Arty.

Arty:
His weapons have a well defined effective range forcing you to keep your distance.
Or taking your chances in a close encounter. Also they relay on utilising ADS and actually scoring Headshots (Burst rifles can oneshot Proxy, Aura, Kira Dreiss two shots those and Vasilli).

His artillery does takes some skill aswell. As others have stated targeting can be quite the diva. And to be most effective with it you have to know the map. But you can hit quite alot of corners without being seen (look for walls behind your target).

And the biggest secret to being effective with the artillery is to only place one marker at a time (except on the EV).

One artillery will kill all deployables and most mercs. Everyone you didn’t get with the first wont be around for the second so setting 2 at the same location is plain wrong.
Placing 1 is just as effective and ensures that you always have one artillery up.

2 Artilleries on the same location is reserved for the EV. If they land perfectly you will take it out even if they don’t they will have so low HP that a fragger/fletcher/Nader nade or simple gunfire will take care of the rest. And in the worst case you are 20 sek. away from your next Artillery.

Guess who has to wait over a minute for his next try if he botches. And let me tell you this in a minute the EV can cover quite some ground.

Underground isn’t so bad either aside the fact that the whole merc system revolves around taking the best mercs for the job (i.e. feel free to not play arty or kira on underground).
But they can still positivly affect the map:
denying the enemy the roof over the first objective, slowing them down in the elevator section (shoot the roof first) and making planting/defusing a nightmare.

Is he perfect nope, could he use a buff sure who doesn’t, but he is way better than most people make him out to be imho.

(CCP115) #10

Wow, that’s some nice insight. As I play the game more and get better, Arty does seem more and more appealing, though I still think he needs some sort of buff. Still.

(distinquishedSandwich) #11

The fact that his ability is by FAR the weakest of the explosives in both damage and AoE makes him a meh pick compared to Kira.

His AR Dreiss cards doesn’t have any remotely decent offensive augments either… in fact he’s got Spare Magazine (Not even SKYHAMMER has such an augment) and Failsafe too…
Nor does it have any Focus augments either, and with the nerfs to it, it can benefit from Focus.

He’s not terrible by say, as you can still rock his guns for great harassment, but his ability is holding him down, they could make it a mini Airstrike so it would be deadly, and you have time to avoid it, can even see where it is, and it takes him a second to place it.

Honestly, give the man some love, currently the Japanese Kira is giving the poor Chinese Arty a run for his money by a far margin.

And another huge thing that is holding both Kira and Arty back is the “celling” thing.
The airstrike BREAKS glass on maps like Underground (Or the glass roof there is after the escalator in terminal and on the last stage), but the Artillery strikes CAN’T be placed with the glass is there, and if you move Kira’s laser to a glass area it CAN’T break the glass.

Glass OP.

(CCP115) #12

I play Risk of Rain, that’s pretty true.

And his ability is pretty bad. Also do I sense some Chinese Japanese hostile relations going on here?

And let’s be honest, Kira is also way cooler than Arty. Arty looks like some dork, and Kiras rocking that blue hair and a giant. friggin. Laser.

(watsyurdeal) #13

Honestly his ability just needs to be less constrained, I don’t get why it’s such a fight in itself to get a damn strike called in.

(Eox) #14

[quote=“Redcap;21577”]I just really think he needs more airstrikes, give him a total of five to make up for their lack of power, and somehow have the aiming for them not be so inconsistent.

As for the Dreiss its getting smacked with the nerf stick hard, similar to the K-121, punishing one into being completely immobile and forced to aim Dow sights to shoot at even the closest of ranged, having to fight the horrible recoil and HK sights.[/quote]

Wowowowow… Five strikes ? Since an artillery strike reloads every 20 seconds or so, this means that an Arty can call an artillery strike every 4 seconds.

Let me explain that. Let’s call strikes S1, S2, S3, S4 and S5 (and by the way CD means cooldown) :

  • 0 sec, S1 called. S1 CD : 20 sec. 4 calls remaining.
  • 4 sec, S2 called. S1 CD : 16 sec. S2 CD : 20 sec. 3 calls remaining.
  • 8 sec, S3 called. S1 CD : 12 sec. S2 CD : 16 sec. S3 CD : 20 sec. 2 calls remaining.
  • 12 sec, S4 called. S1 CD : 8sec. S2 CD : 12 sec. S3 CD : 16 sec. S4 CD : 20 sec. 1 call remaining.
  • 16 sec, S5 called. S1 CD : 4sec. S2 CD : 8 sec. S3 CD : 12 sec. S4 CD : 16 sec. S5 CD : 20 sec.
  • 20 sec : S1 is available and called again ! S2 at 4 sec CD, S3 at 8 sec CD…

Four seconds later you can call S2 again, then S3, then S4, then S5, then S1 again… You can LITTERALY call a strike every 4 seconds ! Now imagine this with like 3 Arties in a single team : this is insane guys.

If you guys really want to buff the Artillery Strike, it’s much better to buff the Aera of Effect. And this is if Arty really needs a buff, because as it is he can call an artillery strike every 10 seconds (while Skyhammer will have to wait 40 seconds between each airstrikes or so), and the Dreiss AR, while a bit hard to use, is at the moment the best DPS in the game with the PDP sniper. And his two other primaries are not bad either, with something like 135 DPS (and a single burst in the head do as much damage as a single PDP sniper headshot : 90).

(flameChicken) #15

In a sense… Arty is a Chinese knockoff of Skyhammer.

(mf-) #16

DREISS is a pretty meh gun. It is devestating at close range if your first shot hits the head.

BR-16 is amazing. Such a strong gun

AUG is medium tier. It’s strong and has the best ADS in the game but feels like you burn through the clip so fast.

Compared to Kira/Skyhammer… I find arty artillery is the only artillery I can land against good players. It’s quite difficult to land a skyhammer/kira arty on good players as its so visible and gives so much time to get out of the way. Arty really allows you to clear out aura healing stations and 2-3 grouped up peaking corners. Quick strike, nearly no time to react and is quite invisible in the heat of battle.

(Reddeadcap) #17

@Eox Yeah, maybe increase their reload time, but have him have many, for either continous salvos on a single target or to always have one or two available due to the almost improbability of them hitting someone along with making the terrain more Arty friendly, this could land him somewhere between Kira and Skyhammer, multiple explosions, but not a sometimes inexcapable bombing run area denial but without a controlled beam for you to know where its coming from.

(honorableNemesis) #18

Arty’s supposed to be area denial, but he has very short airstrikes that land a second after he launches them. Kira’s laser lasts longer from a full charge and is highly visible, a good deterrant to people trying to cross that spot.

If his artillery lasted longer then it would be good area denial, but right now it’s more or less a pathetic, flaky ability that’s overall just really bad.

(CCP115) #19

good points guys, it is great to see all this discussion, and that I’m not the only one who wants to see the Chinese man soar.

Does anyone know what gun the Dreiss AR is based off from real life?

And I have been wondering, would it be OP if his call ins were instant, so he only had to point? Trying to find time to stand frickin still and call in a strike is almost impossible. And if they aren’t gonna make it instantaneous, because that would be OP, at least make it so that there is a ~1.5 sec delay before the strike comes in, but you can move while pointing.

So you stand behind a corner, start charging. When there’s 0.2 seconds left, you just pop out and then wherever you happen to be looking at, the arty strike falls there. Right now, it’s like you’re a sitting duck. Oh wait, you are, a sitting Chinese Peking duck. Now I’m hungry.

(Gi.Am) #20

The Dreiss AR is based on the HK G3.

Making Artys Artillery instant would be on one hand OP (think about how much complains there are about primed Fragnades allready) and hard to target (think about how often you have to correct your aim before you have the right position).

BTW. Arty got buffed in this way allready. In the stresstest weekends he had longer cooldowns and it took twice the amount of time to channel one strike (which made it easier to activate one 1 strike tho).
Maybe thats why I think he is fine he is alot stronger than he used to be allready.