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Mutalist Quanta, frustratingly interesting.


Yasha-7HS

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The Mutalist Quanta is a weapon that I've always wanted to enjoy and like. A primary that foregos dealing damage pretty much exclusively in order to make other parts of your loadout stronger in a more direct manner than providing status effects. 

This gimmick is useless in practicality. The dev team complain about simulacrum, here's real mission experience: The bubble is too small or too fleeting to use most anywhere that matters, not to mention you can't see through it because aesthetic was more important than functionality and it will stagger you when it explodes. Enemies can and will throw the bubble completely out of range so nothing it does matters, not its status effect, not Bursting Mass, not its main appeal. Some secondaries will simply not work, or push the bubble away. Melee attacks by you end up doing little other than ruining any remaining want to use the weapon, as the direction it goes is essentially random so you can't, say... Charge damage for bursting mass and then throw it into the horde because for some reason, my melee attacks and bullet jumps throw it into the floor, which the floor deflects to go behind me, and the coup de grace is that in most cases, the secondary isn't gaining that much damage unless you hit a headshot through this incredibly small, annoyingly orange tinted, moldy Fanta™ bubble because it reduces the base damage of all shots fired through it by 34%. In fact, even on something like the Velocitus archgun in the perfect situation of the Simulacrum, it's not worthwhile. On a weapon with base 60% critical chance and 3.6x critical damage, being boosting up to 150%+ critical chance and 11x+ critical damage, matching elements against the health and armor types of the enemies I'm facing, I'm losing damage. 25% critical chance, 25% critical damage and 365% electric damage is being overcome entirely by the -34% base damage. It's not until you get to maximum stacks, 500% electric damage which is simply not consistent with Bursting Mass outside of two mods and a riven, along with there being zero indication that it's at maximum stacks or only second tier not to mention the ludicrous bug of having over 3 multishot. 

There is just about no situation other where this incredibly short, annoying, practically unviable mechanic shines outside of Eidolons and even then it's just painful. 

Mutalist Quanta needs more base status. It dumps literally everything into its alt-fire and has just about nothing in its primary stats to do anything worthwhile. No base damage, no crit of its own outside of the additive it gets from its secondary. However, with base of less than average critical damage this does literally nothing for the weapon even at tier 3 except maybe choosing to add another elemental proc, but it still takes too long to do those procs to capitalize on it with a melee weapon(not even mentioning the fact that the bubble staggers you on explosion) to justify this over a weapon with an innate element, or a weapon that does status effects for a while after a single shot, or a Shedu/Basmu. It's base functionality should include reloading while holstered and increased holster speed to make use of the secondary fire. The bubble, once placed, simply should not move in the vertical plane. If you fire it up or down, yes, it should be higher or lower than where you're standing. However, having it bounce in any direction at all makes it entirely unviable to make use of it when natural gameplay happens and thus the bubble becomes more of a detriment to you than the enemy as, mentioning yet again, it staggers you but not enemies. The bubbles duration, also, should be lengthened if it's continuously used, thus encouraging commitment to a single strong position and extended use instead of the consistently flow breaking swap, alt, swap, fire, stagger, fire, swap, alt, swap, fire, stagger. 

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That old one has already been tweaked a lot. The weapon designers really tried to improve it (just look at the -nonexhaustive- patch history in the wiki!), and there have been positive changes. But unfortunately, looking at its very low usage stats and riven dispostion, they mostly failed overall.

As a hopeless optimist however, i believe there may still be means to make it more useable even in 2021 Warframe (very different from when the weapon was introduced), while retaining its unique identity and complexity.

Should most of its distinctive mechanics be kept, and to add to what OP suggested, here are some ideas mostly pertaining to the bubbles, that others and i offered over the years :

 

- remove the damage % penalty when shooting through the bubble, simplify the stats bonuses

- allow all weapons to work with the bubble, in the same way. Exceptions are both confusing and disappointing. Reward creative use!

- lock the bubble in place once it's stopped its course. New bubbles are still sucked into older ones, but have no impact on the latter's position

- no more "mutalist baseball" with melee please! It's just annoying

- give the bubbles a bit of punchthrough, (or smaller terrain collision box?) so that they don't always bounce off small obstacles

- maybe let us move the bubble(s) by pointing at them while holding the alt fire button? Shooting bubbles would be on alt release then

- allow us to hold the alt fire (charging) in order to shoot a bigger bubble. Would cost more ammo. Might be incompatible with the above idea

- or increase the base bubble radius significantly, and/or allow it to grow with stacking

- allow us to refresh bubble duration, and/or allow bubble stacking for a longer (even infinite?) duration. Keep bonuses cap though, of course

- give a small AOE, or radius bonus, to shots that go through it

- give it very high innate holstering/draw speed

 

I'm sure i forgot many, sorry! And of course not ALL of them have (or even should) be considered at once for implementation :)

 

Cosmetic:

- remove/modify/replace the infested dark things on the bubbles, they're obstructing view too much

- add visual cues/fx to the bubble (or UI) when shot through, so that teammates (especially new players) understand that it gives bonuses

- speaking of colors and visuals, give the bubble and projectiles the energy color of the weapon!

 

 

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