Catabolyst - A bad mechanism on another.

[BiancaRoughfin]

Swazdo-Lah fellow Tennos! <3

So yesterday i bought the Deimos Arcana pack containing all the weaponsm started ranking and forming them to see them to their maximum potential and so far the Catabolyst has been getting me facepalming often.

The idea of throwing the weapon's magazine as a Grenade is cool, something that Borderlands 2 already had something like it, throwing the weapon its self that exploded soon after instead of replacing the magazine. As for the Catabolyst, the player throws the Magazine when the reload bar reaches half way which is where the problems start:

1 - Different from other Magazine weapons, the Catabolyst doesnt Auto-Reload as soon as the magazine empties, forcing you to press the fire button again to start to reload and throw the magazine.
2 - The Grenade causes Self Staggering, which means if you are not used to the idea of turning your aim away or have someone/thing in the way when reloading, it is very likely you will get your self knocked back or staggered substantially, causing the Reload process to interrupt and forcing you to reload again.

Self Staggering on its own is already a bad enough mechanism in the game which gets everyone cringing when it happens and when a weapon negates its own performance so badly with the two mentioned problems above happen, you know it needs a change.

As it currently sits, the Grenade's damage scales based on the amount of the Clip emptied before the reload so its very unlikely someone will make a mod build focused on shooting once and reloading.

So heres a change proposition to the Weapon:

- Successfully reloading the Catabolyst after fully emptied Magazine will add a Grenade to its reserve pool, indicated by a small dot under the Crosshair similar to how the Battacor keeps track of kills/charge, up to a maximum of 3.
        - Pressing the Alt-Fire button will throw a single Grenade.
        - Holding the Alt-Fire will quickly charge and throw all the Grenades in a spread pattern.
        - Grenade's base damage scales on Magazine capacity (More Bullets, More Damage).

What are other Tenno's opinions on this?

[NinjaZeku]

15 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

1 - Different from other Magazine weapons, the Catabolyst doesnt Auto-Reload as soon as the magazine empties, forcing you to press the fire button again to start to reload and throw the magazine.

Admittedly, I've yet to use that weapon myself (Research is underway), but having control over the AoE part of the weapon like that
seems preferable to having it go off automatically, especially since you need to fully empty the magazine to get the best effect out of it.

It's different, yes, but having a unique mechanical difference on one weapon seems fine by me, on principle.

21 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

2 - The Grenade causes Self Staggering

Well, another hurray for more control, then :P

And maybe I'm just hardened from having used the old (usually-lethal) self-damage Launchers a whole bunch in the past,
but stagger is just not a huge drawback for the most part I find (certain cases like Sonicor / Amps were pretty bad, of course).

Besides the option to simply negate the entire mechanic via Status immunity / Primed Sure Footed,
you can git gud at guesstimating how far away you need to be to not get affected, and even if you do get hit, well,
it's unlikely to cause your death, so ... whatever, accept your mistake in handling the weapon and get back into the fight, Tenno.

31 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

- Successfully reloading the Catabolyst after fully emptied Magazine will add a Grenade to its reserve pool, indicated by a small dot under the Crosshair similar to how the Battacor keeps track of kills/charge, up to a maximum of 3.
        - Pressing the Alt-Fire button will throw a single Grenade.
        - Holding the Alt-Fire will quickly charge and throw all the Grenades in a spread pattern.

Sounds interesting, though then would that mean losing the partial reload blasts?

[Wyrmius_Prime]

Seems like a perfect weapon for a pacifist run of warframe, because your allies will be just killing stealing everything when you are stuck stagger locked.

[Spectre-8]

1 hour ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

2 - The Grenade causes Self Staggering

My favorite type of weapon , i level these up and never use them again . Thanks for the heads up though , haven't built mine yet .

[rainy]

On 2020-11-21 at 4:15 PM, BiancaRoughfin said:

2 - The Grenade causes Self Staggering, which means if you are not used to the idea of turning your aim away or have someone/thing in the way when reloading, it is very likely you will get your self knocked back or staggered substantially, causing the Reload process to interrupt and forcing you to reload again.

The reload can interrupt it's own reload? That is terrifying. I think Self-Staggering has gone too far.

[MulticolourkomodoDragon]

I like the idea that reloading on empty makes the grenade do more damage, personally. 

 

Though, that's.. kinda how I thought it would function. You take off the "Bladder" and store it to use as a grenade later. But you just throw it the moment you reload? That's lame

That's a good idea, though. Changing it so you can hold up to (X) amount of "Bladders" that you can throw with altfire would be a nice change.

[AriaSTG]

From what I have tested for this weapon, it seems it was made to pair with the new mods for the Glaives, Combo Fury and Combo Killer. The former being most effective since its much easier to make kills with the glaive than the gun itself. That said, this weapon is very awkward to use but adapting to it might be more into technical kind of play. 

[Larcetosus]

I agree the Catabolyst is incredibly clunky to use. It's so unnatural for weapons to not auto reload in horde/bullet sponge games. Your suggestions for improving the weapon certainly takes it in a more natural direction. However,

On 2020-11-22 at 5:15 AM, BiancaRoughfin said:

- Grenade's base damage scales on Magazine capacity (More Bullets, More Damage).

I disagree on this because this will create a play style where people would just shoot once and reload.

My proposition would be, we can keep the weapon as it is but,
-The weapon auto reloads on empty.
-The grenades have a short fuse with an indicator when it is tossed for players to react to it.
-The grenade is tossed immediately on empty to prevent animation bugs where you can cancel the reload animation and continuously toss the grenade. A suggestion for this would be the last round in the magazine is actually the grenade itself and the Catabolyst shoots it out. If players manually trigger the reload, the Catabolyst will shoot out the grenade (damage scaling according to ammo in the magazine)

Thoughts?

[Divinehero]

i think u might be misunderstanding what bianca means.. i assume they mean the higher the capacity the higher the dmg so like 30 ammo clip would say make the base grenade dmg 1000 when empty while increasing that to 50 via mods or something makes it 1600 when empty

[taiiat]

not auto Reloading considering Reloading is now a Strategic thing, which it normally isn't for Guns - sounds exactly perfect.

[BiancaRoughfin]

9 hours ago, Larcetosus said:

I disagree on this because this will create a play style where people would just shoot once and reload.

Read whats highlighted on my original Post.

On 2020-11-21 at 6:15 PM, BiancaRoughfin said:

- Successfully reloading the Catabolyst after fully emptied Magazine will add a Grenade to its reserve pool, indicated by a small dot under the Crosshair similar to how the Battacor keeps track of kills/charge, up to a maximum of 3.

I took mesures on my post to make it clear people would have to completely EMPTY the magazine to gain charges so it would be impossible for players to "Shoot Once and Reload" to gain charges

9 hours ago, Divinehero said:

i think u might be misunderstanding what bianca means.. i assume they mean the higher the capacity the higher the dmg so like 30 ammo clip would say make the base grenade dmg 1000 when empty while increasing that to 50 via mods or something makes it 1600 when empty

And yes, thats correct.

[Daken333]

well, with the catabolyst you can have a corrosive+viral cc secondary. 

soooo....that in it of itself justifies any unwieldly mechanics 

[BiancaRoughfin]

17 hours ago, Daken333 said:

well, with the catabolyst you can have a corrosive+viral cc secondary. 

soooo....that in it of itself justifies any unwieldly mechanics 

Uh, no, that doesnt justify the bad mechanics. There are many other weapons in the game with Corrosive/Viral possible builds and still the combination isnt that strong as you are considering, specially because heat straight out strips 50% of enemy armor with a single proc and Corrosive currently diminishes and requires constant reapplying.

[Daken333]

9 hours ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Uh, no, that doesnt justify the bad mechanics. There are many other weapons in the game with Corrosive/Viral possible builds and still the combination isnt that strong as you are considering, specially because heat straight out strips 50% of enemy armor with a single proc and Corrosive currently diminishes and requires constant reapplying.

that might be true with weapons that have a lower status chance or fire more slowly 

but catabolyst has a 59% status chance with a 12 firrate 

corrosive+viral is much better than a heat+viral build on a high status high firrate weapon 

[Daken333]

9 hours ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Uh, no, that doesnt justify the bad mechanics. There are many other weapons in the game with Corrosive/Viral possible builds and still the combination isnt that strong as you are considering, specially because heat straight out strips 50% of enemy armor with a single proc and Corrosive currently diminishes and requires constant reapplying.

name me one secondary besides catabolyst that has better cc and also corrosive+viral 

[CyberneticSusurrus]

Yeah, the Catabolyst is still horribly clunky and unfun to use. A lack of auto-reload is a nightmare alone.

The suggestion of a timed grenade seems like an obvious solution to allow auto-reload.
(Although I should note that currently you can endlessly throw full-power grenades for so long as you self-stagger. It would also resolve that little trick.)

[LagartoPunkarra]

You don't get it, that weapon has a bladder so it's meant to be a piece of piss.

Jokes aside, yes it's a clunky weapon, but you can kinda get used to it. However, I would add auto-reload like all the other weapons. Borderlands 2 had auto-reload on Tediore guns (the throwable guns) and made them feel so fast and snappy.

[RoyBarina]

I wish the alt fire button will toggle auto reloading at least.