It has been really hard to view Arty, His special ability to call down an artillary strike as a sidegrade to Skyhammers, and With Kira available it feels like there is even less so a reason to use him over the others for any particular reason outside of missions involving him.
Stoker has yet to be released but his ability’s benefits are easy to understand over the rest, He tosses an incendiary/molotov like grenade which has its benefits as an area denial indoors as much as outdoors which other Fire Support Mercs lack do to their abilities being airstrikes, orbital strikes and the likes.
I’ve mentioned it in a couple of discussions about Arty but I wanted to know peoples thoughts on this on my own thread.
Arty really lacks a place between Skyhammer and Kira, keeping aside the fact that sometimes the terrain is your worst enemy and as many players put it, is a bit of a diva about where it deams markable and unmarkable.
I’ve thought up a solution, making Arty’s ability an actual salvo, at the price of maybe increasing its cooldown by a couple of seconds or a dozen, Everytime Arty marks an area five shells are fired at said area within small intervals between each strike and maybe slightly off center, See it as a centered Skyhammer airstrike or a slower firing but uncontrolled Kira laser. For direct damage at players or say an EV you mark the area, making it more likely to hit and controlled than say a Skyhammer marker that sadly landed just under that gutter rail of that roof over there, making it act like a grenade for area denial, Arty can just mark a bottle neck he sees enemies trying to go through if they want to go they’ll either have to wait for the fifth shell to hit, and in some cases maybe push through, not knowing if it was the last one or not.
Skyhammer has an uncontrolled airstrike going from his right to his left with the chances of his marker being turned to a grenade if thrown under any form or ceiling, Kira has a controlled high dps area deny laser with no indoor benefits, Stoker while lacking in the raw damage or control would have the ability to work indoors and Arty would be right between Sky and Kira: An initial marking for a location but no control over the outcome of where the blasts are going which would be more centered than Sky’s but lacks the high DPS of Kira.