Arca Titron's nerf was deserved but too much considering various factors.

[StyreRai]

Yes it was busted before and was expected to be more so with the slam changes thus being deserving of a nerf. I had a feeling it will have when the slam changes came. Although as a traditional base type weapon with terrible stats compared to today's contenders, main damage type of impact, slowest attack speed melee, and abysmal follow-through, the gimmick of charges was the only thing going for it.

Even then it required high effort through normal attacks with very low damage (even more so with SP armor values with normal heavy attacks needed to get charges) needing outside buffs/armor stripping/priming and low time to get, hold on to, and use the charges alongside the risk of losing the charges through normal attacks for the result of high reward.

Furthermore, with today's arcane of Melee Influence, the bug of the guaranteed electric proc being gone makes its ability to get charges even worse now as that was the only somewhat effective method other than brute forcing it through normal and heavy attacks.

Post nerf, playing it today and its been reduced to high effort for low reward. Other melees with no mechanic needed to get a stronger slam deal significantly more damage than this now. Such as slam oriented Incarnons such as Ruvox, Praedos, Magistar Incarnon, could just spam heavy slam attacks through the 4 hit Tennokai mod or initial combo and they are still stronger than the setup needed for a single 10 charge Arca Titron slam.

Arca Titron charged slams aren't spam-able to just constantly nuke rooms but these slam oriented Incarnons keep their buffs from evolutions to slams all throughout gameplay. It isn't made for high kill requiring missions but mainly around getting stacks from a few kills then using it for a small group or a single target such as disruption or void cascade while others can just spam a heavy focused initial combo build with stronger weapons like the Incarnons. Yes one could use it still for survival missions or exterminate, but its slower and requires more effort as the main source of damage only comes in bursts. More so, using it as a normal melee weapon instead of slams is practically pointless as any generic meta or decent melee weapon outshines it stat and dps wise.

I am referring to the Incarnons a lot don't I LMAO, well considering three of them are practically slam oriented. Its just, there's something so satisfying with the gimmick to power up your melee and do a strong attack, and with it not paying off is kind of a bummer now.

Hope DE treats old traditional weapons to be able to at least have a niche that is viable or even contends in this era of Incarnons. What's the point in investing in non Incarnon weapons for their gimmick when Incarnons are going to be stronger in the end while normal weapons with a crutch with no stronger variants get nerfed to the ground. Practically shooting oneself in the leg when you aren't going to be using either Ruvox, Magistar Incarnon, and/or Praedos for STRONGER slam attacks with LESSER effort now or even any other melee weapon for general use.

Another topic proposed a buff to 150% additional damage instead of only 100% per charge results in 10 post nerf charges to have about the same damage of 4 pre nerf charges. A significant drop in damage so that it isn't as busted as before but can still have at least a viable niche. I know I don't speak much with how little people actively use the Arca Titron and its low usage rate, but its just disappointingly sad that the answer to a broken mechanic of a terrible weapon stat wise is to nerf it to the ground into unviability in comparison to today's choices.

Edited April 5 by StyreRai

[owendawgx]

Thanks for bringing more attention to this! I want to make sure DE doesn't miss it because often it feels like if something goes unchanged in the first couple months after a change, it won't be touched for years. See: the Arca Titron slam attacks inside of combos using Slam Capacitor but not gaining any bonus damage, a bug which existed since it was released until this week, over 6 years.

[StyreRai]

  

10 hours ago, owendawgx said:

Thanks for bringing more attention to this! I want to make sure DE doesn't miss it because often it feels like if something goes unchanged in the first couple months after a change, it won't be touched for years. See: the Arca Titron slam attacks inside of combos using Slam Capacitor but not gaining any bonus damage, a bug which existed since it was released until this week, over 6 years.

Agreed, we need to bring more attention. The Titron is currently in the same boat as when the Tenet Plinx or the Catabolyst Augment got released. Those two dealt damage cap easily due to unintended math in their mechanics but were nerfed down to a strong and still useable state. Using the Titron, pre nerf and post nerf, the only way to get charges in SP is through killing the weak enemies such as low health crewmen, entrati dog mechs, small ball crawling infested, butchers, and/or other similar weak point enemies. It requires drastically more hits or even multiple heavy attacks with it not having any dots just to kill anything higher. Even then, when getting the charges, it now feels (SP): I killed low health enemies just to kill normal health enemies and barely tickling eximi rather than I killed low health enemies for a 1 time use charge to kill strong enemies. I really hope it at least gets a buff mechanic wise or stat wise cause its a beautiful fashion piece for corpus themed fashion and I don't want to have the thought of hard limiting myself intentionally when using this weapon with the amount of investment needed now not worth it to make it good has become minimally viable.

Edited April 6 by StyreRai

[kadlis12]

This might be just a correlation, but are those nerfs not usually associated with Tenet variation on the horizon? Frankly, why else would devs touch this exact weapon in the game?

[StyreRai]

6 hours ago, kadlis12 said:

This might be just a correlation, but are those nerfs not usually associated with Tenet variation on the horizon? Frankly, why else would devs touch this exact weapon in the game?

No clue. DE last added new lich variant weapons 2 years ago in 2022 during the Lua's Prey update and only 2 new weapon tenet variants were added. The most addition of lich variant weapons was the introduction of Sisters in 2021 with the introduction of Tenet weapons and additional Kuva weapons. Last we heard was infested liches were in progress. Although, coincidentally, Tenet Plinx had a similar situation where due to its mechanic having unintended math it was easily dealing damage cap, DE nerfed it to still be strong and viable.

The nerf to this weapon was deserved as it was able to reach damage cap due to unintended math in its mechanic but quite frankly, as a whole as a weapon, it is very terrible with the gimmick the only thing going for it. Thus with the nerf, it is quite hard to justify the amount of investment needed for weaker performance compared to other weapons. Quite frankly, it needs at least a buff to justify it.

Edited April 6 by StyreRai

[MrDugan]

My problem with this is the wording.  It worked against high level enemies before the initial slam changes.  It does not now.  They accidentally buffed it way up.  In my book, if they had tuned it back down to where it was, that would not be a nerf, but an actual fix.  It was this effective before, we made it more effective by mistake, we tuned it down to be as effective as before.  That's a fix.  What they did was nerf it, because it's useless now, and a NERF was not deserved.  A fix was what we needed.  This wasn't warranted at all.  It's just that they're either too lazy to fix it properly, or they can't do math.