The Convectrix: The weapon even enemies won't use, even when they supposedly do.

[Trentiel]

Convectrix is one of those guns that has always piqued my interest, because It seemed so unique. A beam shotgun, that... did.. something. That whole opening closing mechanic seemed so novel, it had to do SOMETHING to justify itself. I had wild imaginings of what it must be like. Like an amprex that connects between enemies struck by either beam? Or a flat wide beam that extends as it narrows? SOMETHING!

Then I got my hands on it, and it was.. some kind of scissor beam? Okay, fine it's a scissor beam. I had fun manually opening and closing the laser blades.

Then the beam revival happened. And they made beam weapons require you to constantly train the beam on an enemy in order to do full damage. Well, there's the scissor beam right out.

Then, it was "fixed' by lowering the spool-up time required to do full damage. And they made the alt fire automatically strafe the beams open and closed, utterly killing the fun of the manual scissor mechanic.

At that point, I just went back to not caring. They obviously don't care about this weapon. It's a joke. It's a gun that doesn't fire straight. It's a gun that requires you to train the laser on enemy continuously in order to do damage... that doesn't hold still. It's a joke. I said it before. I'll say it again, it's a joke.

But I have hope. Because I think someone at Digital Extremes knows it's a joke. Because some of the new Orb Vallis enemies use the Convectrix. But these guns don't fire anything LIKE the Convectrix. Meaning, even the Corpus wouldn't use it as an effective weapon. Meaning, someone put this gun in the hands of the enemy and said "oh... this is terrible." DE, please. Just, rework the core mechanic of this gun to do something effective. It's the right time.

I'd suggest making it a short wide beam that extends as it narrows, by changing modes with the alt fire. This would be quite fun, and be an effective tool in the hands of our enemies too!

 

[Sormaran]

Phage is kinda in the same dumpster. This mechanic could be so much better if all of it would be shoved on alt fire, so you can use it when you want to, and normal fire would be just straight beam. Then it'd be useable. Or, after you achieve straight beam - make it so you can lock it and it stays that way even if you stop firing.

Basicaly a very simple fix, just allow us to have straight beam for these 2 weapons at the ready and put unique mechanic as a backup. This is so miniscule, i cant even call it a rework, but at the same time i cant see anything being done and both weapons gonna stay on their meme and 3k mastery shelf for who knows how long.

[Trentiel]

1 hour ago, Sormaran said:

Phage is kinda in the same dumpster. This mechanic could be so much better if all of it would be shoved on alt fire, so you can use it when you want to, and normal fire would be just straight beam. Then it'd be useable. Or, after you achieve straight beam - make it so you can lock it and it stays that way even if you stop firing.

Basicaly a very simple fix, just allow us to have straight beam for these 2 weapons at the ready and put unique mechanic as a backup. This is so miniscule, i cant even call it a rework, but at the same time i cant see anything being done and both weapons gonna stay on their meme and 3k mastery shelf for who knows how long.

Phage at least has one beam that fires forward at all times. Really, for these wacky beam weapons, the spool up mechanic really hurts them.

Phage has 3 problems.

-It starts spread out, instead of concentrated. Which I suppose could be argued to be a kind of spool up mechanic, but beams now HAVE a spool up mechanic built in.

-Because the beams don't fire straight when spread, it's sort of hard to get them to stay trained on enemies.

-To narrow the beam, you hold the aim button, while we have a perfectly functional alt-fire button. The aim button is for aiming and aim gliding. Not this baloney.

To solve Phage's 3 problems I suggest:

-Let it start concentrated by default.

-Let the wiggly tentacles stick to enemies when spread out, but only when spread out.

-Use the alt-fire to toggle modes between concentrated and spread beams.

[Andele3025]

8 hours ago, Trentiel said:

Phage at least has one beam that fires forward at all times. Really, for these wacky beam weapons, the spool up mechanic really hurts them.

Phage has 3 problems.

Phages only issue is it has both low damage and the beam weapon status application instead of shotgun one.
If it had 50 base damage or 25% crit chance (assuming Hunter Munitions) it would have mid level competitive dps. If it could proc 84 statuses a second (1 per beam per target instead of just 1 per target) it would be amazing armor strip, cc and decent gas aoe procs. Sure weird mechanics (along with bigger ammo/ammo mutation from hp like hema or maybe from energy) would be nice just as spread mods influencing min spread for positive and initial position for negative would actually make sense (or at least fixing its animation) but in the end not needed.

Tho back on topic IMO Convectrix even more so than Phage could use with the spread mods influencing its min and max positions (Vicious spread having the beams be a bit split when they should "converge" while tainted shell reduce the max spread out of the beams) and a bigger ammo pool, but more importantly either make each beam do base 24 damage OR better so, beams to proc slash when they first hit the target and when a target that had both beams on it no longer has both of them damaging it.
Also it could use a innate polarity or two, for a 4-6 forma weapon.

[MJ12]

What I think would make the Convectrix usable if not top-tier:

1. Remove its beam-weapon spool-up entirely, make it do full damage at all times.

2. Remove its alt-fire. Instead, the primary fire just sweeps the beams back and forth. This might sound like a terrible change, but wait there's more:

3. Massively increase its damage but cap how many times it can damage an enemy per second. Say, a maximum of 2 damage instances per second, but those 2 instances would deal the full, current DPS of the weapon.

Basically, now the Convectrix becomes a crowd clearer, scything through an entire formation of enemies and cutting them to ribbons via sweeping lasers.

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

Somewhat relatable, but can I get the Kuva Heavy Gunner’s Drakgoon?

Because it only fires like the Zarr’s Barrage mode and not like an actual Drakgoon. No? Oh well, let the Drakgoon collect dust because not even the Grineer would use it like it was initially made to scatter shrapnel all over corridors (or shoot a lob of shrapnel at full charge).

Pretty sure the Orb Vallis Corpus that use their own modified Convectrix can agree that the initial premise of the weapon is too trash in their eyes.

[CarrotSalad]

On 2018-12-26 at 12:52 PM, Trentiel said:

 

At that point, I just went back to not caring. They obviously don't care about this weapon. It's a joke. It's a gun that doesn't fire straight. It's a gun that requires you to train the laser on enemy continuously in order to do damage... that doesn't hold still. It's a joke. I said it before. I'll say it again, it's a joke.

I ve got 4 forma on mine and i can bring it into sorties okay. The issue i have is the damage tick rate is so low im normally eating more damage waiting for the first tick to appear on an enemy.
Glaxion is in even more of a dire need for a buff/change imho.

[Fallen_Echo]

You know when i seen this weapon i imagined it as an industrial cutter laser i mean its a scrissor gun so it made sense but its underwhelming.

How about we turn it actually capatable to be used as an industrial gear?

Heres the idea:

Instead of relying on the beams to deal the damage, now each sweep leaves behind hot cuts.

If it hits the ground or objects the beams leave behind a trail of molten cuts causing high heat damage ticks while the enemies stand on them. Each trail would linger on the ground for 2-4 seconds.

If it hits an enemy depending on their health type the following happens:

- armored/robotic enemies get a guaranteed heat proc and lose some armor as the beam just cut throught it.

- shielded enemies generate a heatwave around them due to the reflected energy. This aura deals low heat damage for as long as the player hits the target and for 2 secs after.

- Flesh based enemies get a low damagr slash and heat proc every 3 second when the player hits them.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

On 2018-12-26 at 2:22 AM, Trentiel said:

Convectrix is one of those guns that has always piqued my interest, because It seemed so unique.

I got an amazing riven for it recently and tried it out. Even with that it's a garbage gun. Utterly useless.

On 2018-12-26 at 2:22 AM, Trentiel said:

I'd suggest making it a short wide beam that extends as it narrows, by changing modes with the alt fire

I'd make a few changes:

The sweeping beams do significant extra damage (3-5x) and guaranteed impact proc in the direction the beam is moving in.

At the point when the beams touch you get a 100% crit base chance boost and a 4x crit damage multiplier, which then immediately falls off.

Get the timing right and the 'blades' will sweep enemies together and then (if you can line them up) snip them in half.

These would make the gun exceptional for crowd control, and make it genuinely feel like giant laser scissors that snip off heads.

However, as it stands this weapon is near useless.

[Viges]

Most of all I feel for people who make visual designs for these weapons, put their time and work, then people just 30 and forget. It's such a waste, really. Rivens were supposed to help it but they never did. It's bad for players and DE, it's a bad system. All weapons need to be strong and usable for the health of the game.

Edited December 28, 2018 by Viges

[Lancars]

Unlike the other beam weapons the convectrix starting damage is higher. the secondary fire does 80%. I forgot the primary. It still doesn't excuse it but i'd thought i'd chime in with some info.

[(PSN)negativ21]

On 2018-12-26 at 5:55 PM, Andele3025 said:

Not sure how to remove this.

Surprised about all the phage hate. It's an amazing weapon and absolutely destroys with a status build. Last I checked at 100% status each of the 6 beams proc each time, so it does behave more like a shotgun. With a corrosive build It melts high level grineer faster than most or all guns I have.

[Futurehero]

Yeah, I doubt they're gonna go back and visit this after the beam rework.

I have it with a +crit chance + damage riven and it's mediocre.

Tried a tained shell build as well, it doesn't help much.

This weapon is like the Stug. They're not gonna revisit it.

 

[Andele3025]

11 hours ago, (PS4)negativ21 said:

Surprised about all the phage hate. It's an amazing weapon and absolutely destroys with a status build. Last I checked at 100% status each of the 6 beams proc each time, so it does behave more like a shotgun. With a corrosive build It melts high level grineer faster than most or all guns I have.

Nope, they nerfed it hardcore in the beam rampup changes patch when it was made to flow beam status rules thus it procs 12 times/based on ticks/fire rate max per target. Be it 7 beams (base, remember it has 1 beam in the middle) or 14 (its multishot beam count cap) the status output per target is the same.

Oh and spending 30-48 ammo on a level 100 enemy is not "absolutely destroys", hell 15 for a level 50 is a lot for a 720 ammo weapon that shoots 12 rounds a second and has to have its beams converged (which btw is bugged after first reload for a bigger spread than it should have thus often some ticks wont get headshot bonus) for that TTK.

[(PSN)negativ21]

18 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

Nope, they nerfed it hardcore in the beam rampup changes patch when it was made to flow beam status rules thus it procs 12 times/based on ticks/fire rate max per target. Be it 7 beams (base, remember it has 1 beam in the middle) or 14 (its multishot beam count cap) the status output per target is the same.

Oh and spending 30-48 ammo on a level 100 enemy is not "absolutely destroys", hell 15 for a level 50 is a lot for a 720 ammo weapon that shoots 12 rounds a second and has to have its beams converged (which btw is bugged after first reload for a bigger spread than it should have thus often some ticks wont get headshot bonus) for that TTK.

Idk about all those numbers but I am talking about after the beam weapon changes and patch. I cant check it now bc I rerolled my phage status riven to a worse one because I forgot multisjot doesn't effect beam status anymore, but I'm positive it worked that way after the rework, I procced status per hit of each 7 beams, so armor quite literally was melted. 

And yeah it's never been very ammo efficient, but in my book "destroying" an enemy qualifies when it certainly didn't take most or even half of the clip. Idk what's up with yours, but oh well. It's still a beast and fun weapon. Certainly not as bad as convectrix.