Whew! Strun Wraith Fixed!

[Omnimorph]

Works really well now.  I take it all back. I said some bad things about DE because of it - it turns out it was just the bugginess that was colouring my opinion about the new loading system.  It actually works really well to keep you loaded so long as you're hitting reload and running and gunning.  It's a genuine upgrade from having the 6-8 shots and having to wait for a 2 sec reload, as the full 4.1 seconds is "invisible" in practice, because in practice you've always got a shot or two ready to go.

 

My favourite shottie has re-become my favourite shottie!

Edited August 4, 2015 by Omnimorph

[Khranitel]

Works really well now.  I take it all back. I said some bad things about DE because of it - it turns out it was just the bugginess that was colouring my opinion about the new loading system.  It actually works really well to keep you loaded so long as you're hitting reload and running and gunning.  It's a genuine upgrade from having the 6-8 shots and having to wait for a 2 sec reload, as the full 4.1 seconds is "invisible" in practice, because in practice you've always got a shot or two ready to go.

 

My favourite shottie has re-become my favourite shottie!

So, you're ok with it having less damage and longer reload time than vanilla Strun.

Fine.

And I'm not. DE, plz.

[Omnimorph]

So, you're ok with it having less damage and longer reload time than vanilla Strun.

Fine.

And I'm not. DE, plz.

 

As I said, the longer reload is for a full reload, but as soon as you hit Reload, you start reloading shell by shell, which means that you have something to fire in 0.5 seconds rather than the previous 2.something seconds.  Big, big difference in instant usability. 

 

And for the full 4.1, you're reloading as you go, so by the time you've run from one combat spot to another, if you haven't encountered anything on the way that's necessitated you firing off a round, you're fully loaded without noticing it.

 

IOW, the 2.something second gap was a gap that was sometimes deadly and micro-frustrating (as most long-ish reloads are).  There's no such gap now, you've always got something loaded ready to fire.  The ultra long time for the full reload doesn't amount to an ultra-long gap in firing.

Edited August 4, 2015 by Omnimorph

[-N7-Leonhart]

So, you're ok with it having less damage and longer reload time than vanilla Strun.

Fine.

And I'm not. DE, plz.

 

Have you actually noticed that the damage got buffed in the U17 shotgun rework? Then why complain that a weapon in the same class now deals like 15% more damage? The Wraith variant is better in every other aspect, on top of having the highest status chance among all shotguns. Since not all the ppl have the Wraith, they made the vanilla Strun viable, in the same way they made the Sobek OP.

[Khranitel]

Apparently since many people don't like to read carefully, I'll repeat myself:

 

than vanilla Strun.

 

Those were keywords.

 

So, you're telling me that event-exclusive weapon having lower damage per shot (and since this is shotgun and not some spray'n'pray SMG, this is more important stat than damage per second) than the entry-level weapon it is based upon (goddammit, you don't even need to craft vanilla Strun, just fork 25K creds and its yours!) is totally fine?

 

Wow. Just... wow.

 

And yeah, thanks for bringing in Sobek, this boomstick is totally outclasses StrunW as of now. Again, event-exclusive weapon is outclassed by market weapon. Cool beans.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm still keeping in my inventory that particular vanilla Strun which carried me all the way to Pluto two and a half years ago. Man, I loved this gun! But seeing that its Wraith successor fares no better than the gun I keep purely out of nostalgia is just plain wrong.  

[CaveCricket48]

Strun Wraith does have 40% status, compared to Strun regular's 20%.

 

When enemies are highly armored, those corrosive procs are gonna let Strun Wraith hit harder. Even if they're unarmored, they're debuffed to hell.

[Sloan441]

The Strun Wraith is a more powerful weapon than the Strun. This persistant...misapprehension...that it does less damage is WRONG.

 

It may do less damage per pellet, but it does substantially more damage by any other metric you'd care to name.

 

Moreover, this isn't even getting into status chance and guarantee of headshot damage bonuses from the much, much higher crit bonuses.

 

So, no, it does not do less damage.

[Harkin]

*Whistle* Getting of topic here everyone... broken wonky reload remember.

 

 

As I said, the longer reload is for a full reload, but as soon as you hit Reload, you start reloading shell by shell, which means that you have something to fire in 0.5 seconds rather than the previous 2.something seconds.  Big, big difference in instant usability. 

 

And for the full 4.1, you're reloading as you go, so by the time you've run from one combat spot to another, if you haven't encountered anything on the way that's necessitated you firing off a round, you're fully loaded without noticing it.

 

IOW, the 2.something second gap was a gap that was sometimes deadly and micro-frustrating (as most long-ish reloads are).  There's no such gap now, you've always got something loaded ready to fire.  The ultra long time for the full reload doesn't amount to an ultra-long gap in firing.

 

Reload for prepatch Strun Wraith was 1.5 seconds. If you took that time into unloading into a room of baddies, a really high level bombard/napalm, or into a stalker/syndicate/faction hunter you're getting all 8 shots back in 1.5 seconds. This 0.5 for each shell is really only helpful when zipping past enemies in a quick star chart mission where you can just one shot everything and on your way.

 

4.1 seconds is a hearty chunk of time lost on getting all the shots reloaded when things get heated.

Edited August 5, 2015 by Harkin

[Monolake]

The damage is pretty good.  But the sustained DPS and effectiveness vs constantly spawning hordes  is bad with the new reload, it needs a speedup.  4 sec to fully reload is absurd, shoot-reload-cancel all the time is a pain and still slow.

[shut]

So, you're ok with it having less damage and longer reload time than vanilla Strun.

Fine.

And I'm not. DE, plz.

 

Fun facts:

 

- the Strun Wraith can reach 100% Status on every single pellet. It can literally make an enemy bleed and knock it down while stripping all of its armor in a SINGLE shot, and it does so fairly consistently. No other shotgun, save for the Boar Prime, can accomplish this.

- it reloads faster than the vanilla Strun. The longer total reload time is due to the Strun Wraith's larger default clip size. Put on a magazine mod and watch that reload time change.

 

 

That said, the Strun series still feels pretty weak to fire, and the reload speed is still quite slow. It would be nice to see its reload speed (per shot) improved, and hopefully the damage per shot as well since utility alone isn't enough for endgame material.

Edited August 5, 2015 by SortaRandom

[----Fenrir----]

As I said, the longer reload is for a full reload, but as soon as you hit Reload, you start reloading shell by shell, which means that you have something to fire in 0.5 seconds rather than the previous 2.something seconds.  Big, big difference in instant usability.

 

Against low to mid level enemies it may be not so bad. You know those guys for which one shell is enough to kill them. Yet once you get to the point that you need around a full clip to kill Heavy Gunner and Eximus enemies the Strun Wraith becomes extremely painful to use because of the 4.1 seconds reload time. Because once you need a full clip or even 2 to kill things, being able to reload just one shell at a time is no longer useful at all and the reload increase cuts your effective DPS in half compared to the pre-nerf Strun Wraith.

 

And the reload was 1.8 seconds before, not 2. With mods you could get it down to 1.4 or 1.2 seconds for a full clip reload. Now reloading just 3 shells already takes longer than that. Thanks to those changes the Strun Wraith is no longer even remotely viable for high level content.

[Centias]

While being able to reload individual shells is nice, the full reload time is way too long. And the damage is too low, because it should be higher than the basic Strun.

[Hatzeputt]

While being able to reload individual shells is nice, the full reload time is way too long. And the damage is too low, because it should be higher than the basic Strun.

If only there were mods that reduce reload time, if only we were recently presented with a nice dual stats mod that reduces reload time and adds crowd control, especially awesome on a 100% status shotgun......

 

So far all complaints people have been made about the shotgun buff or nerf have been refuted by people who actually decided to adapt and seek possibly new ways to mod their toys. Not a single shotgun became worse than before, especially true due to the capped fall off and buffed base damage even if that buff was smaller for some than for others. 

Edited August 5, 2015 by Hatzeputt

[RHuckebein]

If only there were mods that reduce reload time, if only we were recently presented with a nice dual stats mod that reduces reload time and adds crowd control, especially awesome on a 100% status shotgun......

 

So far all complaints people have been made about the shotgun buff or nerf have been refuted by people who actually decided to adapt and seek possibly new ways to mod their toys. Not a single shotgun became worse than before, especially true due to the capped fall off and buffed base damage even if that buff was smaller for some than for others. 

 

The problem is that seeking fury was already good on the strun wraith.  And it's not any better with the new reload system.

[Omnimorph]

Against low to mid level enemies it may be not so bad. You know those guys for which one shell is enough to kill them. Yet once you get to the point that you need around a full clip to kill Heavy Gunner and Eximus enemies the Strun Wraith becomes extremely painful to use because of the 4.1 seconds reload time. Because once you need a full clip or even 2 to kill things, being able to reload just one shell at a time is no longer useful at all and the reload increase cuts your effective DPS in half compared to the pre-nerf Strun Wraith.

 

And the reload was 1.8 seconds before, not 2. With mods you could get it down to 1.4 or 1.2 seconds for a full clip reload. Now reloading just 3 shells already takes longer than that. Thanks to those changes the Strun Wraith is no longer even remotely viable for high level content.

 

You might be right, but was it even viable for high level content after the last nerf a while back?  I don't know, I've always stuck to my Bratons and Amprexes and the like for high level content, and the Strun Wraith's "glory days" were before I got mine.  For me the Strun Wraith has always been a "fun gun" to take on high-end Alerts, or middle-level Void (or T4 up to 40, etc).

 

There is a thing with the Strun Wraith where, because of the fast fire rate, you can unload several rounds really quickly, bam-bam-bam-bam, which is a lot of fun, and obviously you can still do that if you have those rounds in the gun.  But is the 0.5 seconds while reloading single shells at a time all that much worse (in the worst-case scenario) than a 1.5 second reload for the full magazine?  You can basically be firing constantly without any appreciable gaps with the way it is now (in the worst-case scenario - i.e. being caught on the hop without a full mag).  I think it was worse if you were caught on the hop with 1.5 seconds for the full magazine, as sometimes used to happen (and of course as sometimes happens with any gun with a reasonable reload time).

 

I dunno, I think you could get used to it, even for high end content if you were inclined to take the Strun Wraith into it.  You would just need a tad more situational awareness, which is itself part of gameplay for many other weapons.

 

But mainly I just wanted to acknowledge that minus the glitch, I can happily live with the way it works now, for the content I use it for.

Edited August 5, 2015 by Omnimorph

[painterman]

If only there were mods that reduce reload time, if only we were recently presented with a nice dual stats mod that reduces reload time and adds crowd control, especially awesome on a 100% status shotgun......

 

 

Well, before we got 2 awesome status shotgun, now we got one and another that need a "exclusive mod" to be wat it was.

 

Still, the reload time its only bareable on 30+ enemys with the 2 reload mods: tactical pump and seeking fury, with brings it down to 2,6 sec full reload, with its a litle more than 0,32 per shell. I think the ideal reload would be 2-2.5 sec or 0,25-0,3 per shell, that would make it a much better shot and reload and close the gap bettwen the 1,5 sec reload that we had before, one of the reasons i used it.

 

Well, you can always adapt, as said, and being able to run and reload is really helpfull, but i still want the reload speed buff, and the return of the confetti gun(khom and upgrade khomak)

 

Sorry for bad english :P

[Centias]

If only there were mods that reduce reload time, if only we were recently presented with a nice dual stats mod that reduces reload time and adds crowd control, especially awesome on a 100% status shotgun......

 

So far all complaints people have been made about the shotgun buff or nerf have been refuted by people who actually decided to adapt and seek possibly new ways to mod their toys. Not a single shotgun became worse than before, especially true due to the capped fall off and buffed base damage even if that buff was smaller for some than for others. 

 

Seeking Fury would be good for just about any shotgun regardless, though Kohm seems to be unaffected by the punch through it adds.

 

Now, as for the reality of the reload changes on the Strun Wraith:

- It used to take 1.5 seconds to reload all shells, regardless of how many you fire.

- It now takes 4.1 seconds to reload all 8 shells, or 0.5125 seconds for a single shell.

- If you consistently fire 3 shells or less before reloading, the new system is an improvement.

- If you consistently fire 4 or more shells before reloading, the old system is clearly superior because it takes drastically longer to reload all shells.

- Adding more shells in the new system makes a full reload from empty take longer because each shell adds more time, meaning increasing magazine size offers no net gain, whereas it would always be a positive for any other weapon in the game (except Vectis).

- The only positive benefit of the current reload system is being able to choose to reload one or two shells and promptly fire again to finish off a target, or more quickly reload a few shells while in cover. Any time you have to reload more than 3 shells (which is often, especially if you're fighting higher level enemies) will result in a DPS loss compared to the old system because you are spending drastically more time reloading.

- Reload mods seem more attractive because they offer a greater reduction on weapons with longer reload times, though this would mean changing out a damage mod, which results in lower burst damage, which is what shotguns tend to be all about.

 

The idea is good, that we can reload shells individually, but the reload time is now just simply too long. Even a 3.0 second reload would only break even at 4 shells, which is at least more fair, but still not preferable.

[-N7-Leonhart]

Vectis reloads 1 bullet every 0.9 sec and everyone seems to like it so much that they would rage on the forums to bring that back for Vectis P.

The Strun series reload every 0.5 sec on top of having the possibility to store up to 8 shells when you have to time to do so. I don't see the problem.

The new Strun system is better in some cases, worse in some other. I call that different, but not bad.

[RHuckebein]

Vectis reloads 1 bullet every 0.9 sec and everyone seems to like it so much that they would rage on the forums to bring that back for Vectis P.

The Strun series reload every 0.5 sec on top of having the possibility to store up to 8 shells when you have to time to do so. I don't see the problem.

The new Strun system is better in some cases, worse in some other. I call that different, but not bad.

 

Strun Wraith does less damage, can't benefit from charged/primed chamber, and has spread on top of that.

 

People complained about the vectis prime's extra clip because the recoil made it slower to load than the original vectis and the fire rate wasn't actually fast enough to compensate for that, so the original vectis fired FASTER than the V.Prime despite the one-round clip.  The Strun Wraith doesn't fire faster with sequential loading than it did without, and trying to abuse the reload to fire at reload speed (which is the only way I could think of to actually USE the terrible new reload it has to any effect) requires you to have already emptied your magazine - and if you try to mod reload speed with seeking fury and tactical pump to get a .35 second/shell reload (doing this with manual reloading/shot canceling was the first thing I tried after they fixed the unplayable version of the sequential load), you still don't get the vectis benefit where it actually lets you fire faster.  Whether that's because of an interaction with fire rate on the not-1-round-clip or because of a animation cap (like the sybaris has for fire rate), it still isn't helpful.

 

Comparing the reload/round on the vectis to the reload/round on the strun wraith is completely absurd.

[----Fenrir----]

Comparing the reload/round on the vectis to the reload/round on the strun wraith is completely absurd.

 

Agreed, here is a comparison that makes a lot more sense:

 

Strun Wraith =

Reload per shell 0.5 seconds

Base Damage per shell 250

DPS (Damage per second) = 500

--

Tigris =

Reload per shell 0.9 seconds

Base Damage per shell 1050

DPS (Damage per second) = ~1100

--

Hek =

Reload per shell 0.5 seconds

Base Damage per shell 525

DPS (Damage per second) = 1050

 

Well, everyone that says the Strun Wraith is fine take a look at those numbers. It only barely has half the sustainable DPS of the Tigris or the Hek since the nerf.

 

 

Edit:

 

pre-nerf Strun Wraith for comparison =

Reload per shell 0.225 seconds

Base Damage per shell 150

DPS (Damage per second) = 600

 

It lost 20% sustainable DPS. So not just did it not get any meaningful buffs, it's even worse now than before.

Edited August 6, 2015 by ----Fenrir----

[[DE]Momaw]

The basic problem is the New strun wraith reloads 3 shells in the same amount of time as Old strun wraith reloaded 8.  The partial reloading system all fine and good (if insanely irritating to manually press reload after every shot, same issue that plagues Vectis) so long as you're killing enemies with one shot and the spawn density is low enough that there's actual breaks in the combat.  But once the action gets serious, there is simply no disputing the fact that the older version reloading the entire magazine in one action has over twice the sustained output.

 

Also: yes, strun wraith is now the only status shotgun because it's the only one that can reach the critical 100% status chance.  But as I must continue to endlessly point out: Status is irrelevant when the target is dead.  Hek has the same sustained rate of fire and does massively higher damage. With better accuracy even. Why mess around with procs when your weapon kills everything in one shot.

Edited August 6, 2015 by Momaw

[painterman]

The basic problem is the New strun wraith reloads 3 shells in the same amount of time as Old strun wraith reloaded 8.  The partial reloading system all fine and good (if insanely irritating to manually press reload after every shot, same issue that plagues Vectis) so long as you're killing enemies with one shot and the spawn density is low enough that there's actual breaks in the combat.  But once the action gets serious, there is simply no disputing the fact that the older version reloading the entire magazine in one action has over twice the sustained output.

 

Also: yes, strun wraith is now the only status shotgun because it's the only one that can reach the critical 100% status chance.  But as I must continue to endlessly point out: Status is irrelevant when the target is dead.  Hek has the same sustained rate of fire and does massively higher damage. With better accuracy even. Why mess around with procs when your weapon kills everything in one shot.

 

You forgot the boar p, but need the 4 dual stat elemets/status chance mods, a shame for the status shotguns really.

[Fullmetal_Underpants]

So, you're ok with it having less damage and longer reload time than vanilla Strun.

Fine.

And I'm not. DE, plz.

the real question is why they didn't take the opportunity to just make a new experimental shotgun with that form of reload mechanic instead of ruining an old gun.