Panthera Prime is a total disappointment

[Wyrmius_Prime]

Shortly described, Panthera Prime is a extremely bad downgrade of Acceltra in terms of features and performance. Still, this thing requires mastery rank of 14, which is relatively high among the guns in this game in general.

Whoever designed the stats on this weapon really missed the fact that pretty much nobody played with the original Panthera, as pointed out by the 5/5 riven disposition. The benefits of the Prime variant over the regular one include 20% more base damage purely as AoE damage and slightly more crit chance, fire rate, status chance and mag size. Ironically enough the Prime variant also suffers from a slower reload speed, which is really stupid on a weapon which is that bad to begin with.

The one thing that wasn't changed is the stupid firing pattern of the original weapon. The image below shall demonstrate how this thing and the original as well fire their sawblades:

This is a problem, because unlike Acceltra for example, Panthera prime deals most of its damage directly via the impact of the saw blade, and only a minority of the damage as AoE. It is extremely important that all those projectile hit the weakspots of the enemy! To do so currently, you need to be at a really short range from your target. And turns out that it is simply better to use melee weapons at short ranges because of how extremely weak guns currently are. Even Astilla is more effective at longer ranges and that thing is considered a shotgun, not a rifle. The base damage or the AoE damage of the weapon isn't high enough to justify either body shots or ground shots. The regular Panthera is even worse because it doesn't even have the small AoE to compensate for the missed projectiles.

So, the changes I would suggest:

• Make the sawblades shoot in a straight line regardless of the amount of modded multishot, to make headshot possible to hit at medium and long ranges. The current damage value of the direct sawblade impact is fine, as long as headshots can be hit reliably.
• Either increase the AoE damage or the critical stats slightly to let the weapon actually compete with similar weapons of its type (Acceltra, Astilla, etc. guns with small AoE)
• Change the reload time from 2.4 seconds to 2.0 seconds. There was absolutely no reason to make reload slower when compared to the regular variant.

The state of the guns in this game currently is really damn sad.

[-Kittens-]

Every prime anything since atlas except the Karyst has been garbage, thanks to the new eminently sensible mantra of "primes are now sidegrades, because having an unhappy playerbase will allow us to get rid of this property so we can start on something else."

[(PSN)LoneWolf_001]

I always liked the alt fire Dead Space style saw blade...a shame it never felt like an effective weapon (the alt fire mode specifically) because it had potential to be fun.

[Tesseract7777]

I bought the Prime Access upon release. 

I have literally been a Panthera fan since back when it was so wonky it wasn't just garbage in the stats department, it was just like... straight unuseable even on low level no matter how much you loved the concept. I begged DE to fix it and after years and many people also suggesting they make it better, eventually they at least made it borderline useable. 

I was really excited about the Prime and bought the full Prime Access on day one, as I am also a fan of the other two items as well. This is the first time I have liked all the items enough to feel worth buying all the items from a Prime Access. 

And I have to say, while it looks amazing, it definitely is disappointing. I deleted my old Panthera for it and now I kind of regret it, especially considering riven dispos. 

The reload time is punishing. And maybe I'm just modding it wrong, but I've tried a few setups and even on sortie 3 it feels lackluster compared to what I was hoping for. Maybe I just expected too much. Maybe it will never be good. Maybe I have to accept it will only be a funsies gimmick gun for missions where the outcome is pretty much predetermined and I can just mess around. Which is sad though... because I really love the concept of the gun and everything about it and the new design is sick. 

You did a good job sussing out the reasons why it doesn't feel as good as it could/should, so thank you for that. +1. 

[Duality52]

13 hours ago, -Kittens- said:

Every prime anything since atlas except the Karyst has been garbage

*sad Bolarola Prime noises*. That can't be a sidegrade now can it?

On topic, but heavens forbid why did they do the Panthera Prime injustice? It already has issues that plagued it for years. Its Alt-Fire in particular is so bad that if I recall, Megan from last week's Home Stream simply ignored it.

14 hours ago, Wyrmius_Prime said:

Make the sawblades shoot in a straight line regardless of the amount of modded multishot, to make headshot possible to hit at medium and long ranges. The current damage value of the direct sawblade impact is fine, as long as headshots can be hit reliably.

Call me crazy, but one another way to fix and give the Panthera Prime a bit of character is to have the Primary sawblades home in on enemies, which is retained even upon ricochets. 

[(PSN)NemitheNem]

On 2020-07-22 at 11:16 PM, Duality52 said:

Call me crazy, but one another way to fix and give the Panthera Prime a bit of character is to have the Primary sawblades home in on enemies, which is retained even upon ricochets. 

I was about to say this! It would at least be interesting. And it would help with the projectile vs AOE damage if the projectile was more likely to hit.

Also maybe a higher gore chance? For the Nekros.

[Duality52]

6 hours ago, (PS4)NemitheNem said:

Also maybe a higher gore chance?

I find it odd, but I feel that the Corpus are too "clean" to fight. There isn't that much destruction and gore compared to the other factions for some reason. To elaborate, all Moas and certain Crewmen are nearly immune to dismemberment:

• Elite Crewmen
• (Elite) Terra Crewmen
• Juno Elite Crewmen
• Juno Sniper Crewmen
• Juno Techs
• Terra Sniper Crewmen
• (Juno) Combas/Scrambuses
• (Juno Malleus) Machinists
• Amalgam Machinist and Hequets

They can only be dismembered through Nekros's Soul Punch (on kill) and Khora's Strangledome. Off-topic, yes, but the way Panthera Prime flails around corpses upon kills makes the gun fun. However, that requires the Panthera Prime to be fixed first similar to how the Corinth Prime got some of its fixes.

[crimsonspartan1]

On 2020-07-23 at 5:16 AM, Duality52 said:

*sad Bolarola Prime noises*. That can't be a sidegrade now can it?

On topic, but heavens forbid why did they do the Panthera Prime injustice? It already has issues that plagued it for years. Its Alt-Fire in particular is so bad that if I recall, Megan from last week's Home Stream simply ignored it.

Call me crazy, but one another way to fix and give the Panthera Prime a bit of character is to have the Primary sawblades home in on enemies, which is retained even upon ricochets. 

Homing saw blades would be pretty sick. Would help out with the lowered accuracy. Kinda wish they increased the damage of the AOE from the primary fire at least since, since it’s pretty low. 

Could also make the ricocheting effect better, perhaps allowing it to bounce towards the nearest enemy when shooting nearby enemies or at surfaces (if the saw blades can reach them) instead of them just bouncing all over the place. 

The alt fire could use a big buff as well, maybe also give it an AOE like the primary fire that can hit nearby enemies as well, and increase the range of the alt fire so you can hit enemies further away. The weapon itself could also perhaps have a slightly higher crit multiplier as well for better critical damage (2.2x-2.4x maybe), and maybe even slightly more critical chance (20% for primary fire, 30% for alt fire) so it can do a better job at dealing crits. 

[ImWithDerp]

On 2020-07-23 at 12:16 PM, Duality52 said:

*sad Bolarola Prime noises*. That can't be a sidegrade now can it?

On topic, but heavens forbid why did they do the Panthera Prime injustice? It already has issues that plagued it for years. Its Alt-Fire in particular is so bad that if I recall, Megan from last week's Home Stream simply ignored it.

Call me crazy, but one another way to fix and give the Panthera Prime a bit of character is to have the Primary sawblades home in on enemies, which is retained even upon ricochets. 

That would be nice, and the Phahd scaffold already has both bouncing and homing so DE might be able to do a quick copy/paste

[Emptyblank00]

It's a shame that DE didn't have enough creativity when making prime weapons, there are so many ways that they can add but nope, just slap some gold parts and slight increase of stats of the regular ones that only served as mastery fodder.

[WarriorSoundwave]

On 2020-07-22 at 7:12 PM, Wyrmius_Prime said:

Shortly described, Panthera Prime is a extremely bad downgrade of Acceltra in terms of features and performance. Still, this thing requires mastery rank of 14, which is relatively high among the guns in this game in general.

Whoever designed the stats on this weapon really missed the fact that pretty much nobody played with the original Panthera, as pointed out by the 5/5 riven disposition. The benefits of the Prime variant over the regular one include 20% more base damage purely as AoE damage and slightly more crit chance, fire rate, status chance and mag size. Ironically enough the Prime variant also suffers from a slower reload speed, which is really stupid on a weapon which is that bad to begin with.

The one thing that wasn't changed is the stupid firing pattern of the original weapon. The image below shall demonstrate how this thing and the original as well fire their sawblades:

This is a problem, because unlike Acceltra for example, Panthera prime deals most of its damage directly via the impact of the saw blade, and only a minority of the damage as AoE. It is extremely important that all those projectile hit the weakspots of the enemy! To do so currently, you need to be at a really short range from your target. And turns out that it is simply better to use melee weapons at short ranges because of how extremely weak guns currently are. Even Astilla is more effective at longer ranges and that thing is considered a shotgun, not a rifle. The base damage or the AoE damage of the weapon isn't high enough to justify either body shots or ground shots. The regular Panthera is even worse because it doesn't even have the small AoE to compensate for the missed projectiles.

So, the changes I would suggest:

• Make the sawblades shoot in a straight line regardless of the amount of modded multishot, to make headshot possible to hit at medium and long ranges. The current damage value of the direct sawblade impact is fine, as long as headshots can be hit reliably.
• Either increase the AoE damage or the critical stats slightly to let the weapon actually compete with similar weapons of its type (Acceltra, Astilla, etc. guns with small AoE)
• Change the reload time from 2.4 seconds to 2.0 seconds. There was absolutely no reason to make reload slower when compared to the regular variant.

The state of the guns in this game currently is really damn sad.

100% this. Another thing that kinda bothered me was that the secondary mode's saw has a small delay before it starts doing damage. It makes it feel weaker than it actually is. Some other people also suggested that the gun also have increased gore and dismemberment as well as it also having homing projectiles or at least some more riccohet. 

But at this point it's clear DE doesn't care about weapon feedback especially on Prime weapons. Zhuge Prime and it's explosion delay feedback was ignored for example.

[(XBOX)CaligulaTwily]

Please fix the alt fire to toggle, it's PAINFUL using it currently on console,and nearly unusable because the aim stick is also the shoot stick. I'd actually use it, the altfire is actually powerful imo but, difficult and uncomfortable to use. 

[emerdude]

I feel that they should buff the riven dispo and buff the fire rate of the prime up to at least 4.5 to make the weapon seem less clunky. Fire rate mods feel like a must to me because it feels painful to use the weapon with that low of a fire rate. As it is right now the alt-fire is too slow. It would be fine if the saw blade came out faster as it's damage is decent and hits faster with fire rate. Maybe add a gimmick, like extra damage to sleeping, rag dolled, or stunned enemies? That way it could synergize with frames like Vauban. As for the multishot blade angles, I'm not sure why they did that. The only assumption I have is that it's for crowd control, which is why the primed variant has an AoE. It's pretty good at wiping out crowds, however there are other weapons that are just better at this as you mentioned the Acceltra. 

I think DE's mentality currently is that if the weapon can wipe out crowds of enemies, it's good. Since CC is just everything being dead in the games current state, there's no place for single target weapons in this game atm. unfortunately. I love most of the single target weapons like the Daikyu because it feels powerful to use, but on paper it's just not great in your everyday mission. I guess there's just certain mission types that require the optimal weapon for crowd clearing. 

[IceColdHawk]

On 2020-07-23 at 5:21 AM, Tesseract7777 said:

he reload time is punishing

Imagine making a reload time worse on a PRIME weapon for one of the most underused weapons. Like what's the point? Don't even get me started on the accuracy.

[kgabor]

On 2020-07-23 at 4:39 AM, -Kittens- said:

Every prime anything since atlas except the Karyst has been garbage, thanks to the new eminently sensible mantra of "primes are now sidegrades, because having an unhappy playerbase will allow us to get rid of this property so we can start on something else."

Idk., Baza Prime and Pangolin Prime are pretty good upgrades imo..

But that's just me, i consider the falloff reduction on the Baza P a really good upgrade for one of the more unique weapons in the game and Pangolin P might be the best single sword currently. (i didn't check the stats of all single swords to make sure though, but it's a good one either ways)

But these two are exceptions, most are pretty meh in comparison.

[-Kittens-]

3 hours ago, kgabor said:

Pangolin Prime

is not even close to the best ss, and we haven't even covered rivens.

3 hours ago, kgabor said:

Baza Prime

Literal definition of sidegrade, nevermind that making a submachine gun turn into a machine gun doesn't even fits the gun's point on the roster in the first place. I mean why don't we add the sniper combo to the synapse while we're at it. Why not. Anything to avoid direct damage and utility increases that were the entire point of primes and prime access in the first place.

 

But hey instead let's do some mediocre as hell changes to things already in the midlle of the pack by design and charge a hundred and fifty dollars for it, and then scratch our heads as to why the player base is shrinking. Yes, indeed what a mystery. The one bonafide upgrade program in the game that didn't have player problems or any issues at all, let's nerf that all to #*!% AND throw separate riven designations on top while we're at it.

Nobody asked for this.

DE solved a balance problem that didn't #*!%ing exist and have unmitigated temerity to charge the price of two and a third full price games for three in game vehicles, and two of those vehicles are literally worthless. There is zero reason to use Inaros Prime over Inaros and the Panthera prime is actually worse than the original, and the Karyst prime while hitting far harder than any other dagger is still a dagger.

[Emptyblank00]

17 hours ago, -Kittens- said:

But hey instead let's do some mediocre as hell changes to things already in the midlle of the pack by design and charge a hundred and fifty dollars for it, and then scratch our heads as to why the player base is shrinking. Yes, indeed what a mystery. The one bonafide upgrade program in the game that didn't have player problems or any issues at all, let's nerf that all to #*!% AND throw separate riven designations on top while we're at it.

I completely agree and especially the Prime Access were a total let down. Why buy those with cash if you can just find a better non-Tenno weapons that is surpassed and more powerful than Orokin's they've made

Let's try compare with the Borderlands' legendary weapons, most of it were unique to each other, they have cool abilities but balance and visually awesome, worth grinding for, and lastly, they're the most rare that reflects all that I mention. Why DE didn't take notes from that I don't know, but I hope alot of people would notice this and DE should remade them and make a better prime weapons in the next future.

I mean come on, isn't it having a Orokin-era means you have the artifact of gods, right?

[kgabor]

32 minutes ago, Emptyblank00 said:

I completely agree and especially the Prime Access were a total let down. Why buy those with cash if you can just find a better non-Tenno weapons that is surpassed and more powerful than Orokin's they've made

Let's try compare with the Borderlands' legendary weapons, most of it were unique to each other, they have cool abilities but balance and visually awesome, worth grinding for, and lastly, they're the most rare that reflects all that I mention. Why DE didn't take notes from that I don't know, but I hope alot of people would notice this and DE should remade them and make a better prime weapons in the next future.

I mean come on, isn't it having a Orokin-era means you have the artifact of gods, right?

What about a story quest similar to the Railjack one?

You find a Weaponsmith from the Orokin-era, or maybe find blueprints that Hok could use to make primed modular parts and weapons?

Except unlike current modular weapons, all parts could be potentially useful.

Advanced zaws and kitguns/primaries without annoying extra steps spent mining and fishing, the blueprints could drop from Steel Path.

It could possibly open up for other possibilities, like modifying our current weapons, i would like a scoped Kuva Chakhurr, Lex and Velocitus, or Daikyu, a single Somati Prime, maybe even scoped and fitted with a 200+bullets mag, or a sword with something like 'enchantments', adding a special ability-like gimmick that could favor and enhance a certain playstyle, like a mini-Silence passive, or mini-Wisp shocks on heavy attacks.

[(XBOX)xSeeMyEvilx]

TBH i really like the faning out show with muiltishot. what im not a fan of is pounch tho not working on it main fire anymore no matter what you put on it it bounce off enemys but yet gos thour walls an S#&$. i like when it work an had default punch though on enemys an would bounce back so much more effective. that way it auto fire was good now with out it you are westeing fired shots on a body that wont drop. to get the line of enemys comeing ur way. the bounceing buzzsaw are freaken awseom if thay just bring that back otherwsie the Aoe is weak an a waste. not effective an useing it. i miss haveing a huge fanning shot of buzzsaws clearing a path with punch through. but with out that one factor my god rolls are trash. evin with it high dispo. T-T

[Emptyblank00]

On 2020-08-02 at 2:26 AM, kgabor said:

What about a story quest similar to the Railjack one?

You find a Weaponsmith from the Orokin-era, or maybe find blueprints that Hok could use to make primed modular parts and weapons?

Except unlike current modular weapons, all parts could be potentially useful.

Advanced zaws and kitguns/primaries without annoying extra steps spent mining and fishing, the blueprints could drop from Steel Path.

It could possibly open up for other possibilities, like modifying our current weapons, i would like a scoped Kuva Chakhurr, Lex and Velocitus, or Daikyu, a single Somati Prime, maybe even scoped and fitted with a 200+bullets mag, or a sword with something like 'enchantments', adding a special ability-like gimmick that could favor and enhance a certain playstyle, like a mini-Silence passive, or mini-Wisp shocks on heavy attacks.

probably we will have Orokin weaponsmith in the next update

[Methanoid]

On 2020-07-31 at 8:18 PM, IceColdHawk said:

Imagine making a reload time worse on a PRIME weapon for one of the most underused weapons. Like what's the point? Don't even get me started on the accuracy.

[RenzorTheRed]

It would be a lot better if multishot worked properly. If the blades went where I aimed? That'd be nice.

And maybe, if they're intentionally designed to fan out horizontally, at least one shot could hit center? Let the other shots spread out, but one should be in the center taking advantage of that nice accuracy score.