Castanas grossly overpowered

[Tachmag]

CONCLAVE THREAD

The Castanas were already in a bad place, being too powerful and having almost no drawbacks to their power. The thing that tried to keep their power down was their low flight speed, although this isn't a true drawback as the low flight speed made it much easier to detonate the Castanas with precision at close range.

Whoever, this situation become much more serious when Shrine of the Eidolon arrived.
In Update 22.12, Shrine of the Eidolon, the Castanas got the following changes:

Flight Speed: 30 m/s --> 60 m/s
Blast Radius: 2m --> 3m


Now, the Castanas are a long range, easy to use explosive. With their base 85 damage and an electric proc, the Castanas deal 127.5 damage per hit with their AoE only, with a huge blast radius and comfortable flight speed.

 

With this in mind, my suggested changes are the following:

Electric: 85 --> 82.8
Impact: 25 --> 15
Flight Speed: 60 --> 30
Blast Radius: 3m --> 2 m


This puts them at pre-Chains of Harrow values. This iteration of Castanas has a bigger necessity to skillfully lead shots due to both its lower flight speed and its reduced blast radius, while 3 shotting the medium frames.

[SevenLetterKWord]

4 hours ago, Tachmag said:

The Castanas were already in a bad place, being too powerful and having almost no drawbacks to their power.

"Almost no drawbacks"?
How about the low magazine capacity, the deployment limit of two, the destructibility of deployables, the low flight speed, the need to be manually triggered, the inability to use holstered reload, the low ammo total, or the risk of self-damage?

4 hours ago, Tachmag said:

Flight Speed: 60 --> 30

The Castana's flight speed buff actually nerfed the weapon by eliminating the possibility of two overlapping Castana AoEs, which used to be capable of instantly killing a frame.
It also made the weapon more viable outside of this questionable use case, increasing consistency overall.
This is one of DE's better balancing choices.

[Theroxenes]

I think you're both missing a big piece of what makes them so powerful. They have zero damage falloff, so when detonated each Castana deals some of the highest per-ammo damage in the game within a 37 cubic meter sphere. Playing around them at close range is difficult at best, and in a crowd few weapons are more effective due to the AOE and proc. This would be fine if precision of any sort was required, but the wielder has 3m of wiggle room in any direction and deals full damage with even a hit at the very edge.

Not only that, the Castanas don't even positively reward direct hits very much. 25 impact damage is peanuts when you're dropping bombs on your enemies. If anything, I would suggest giving them damage falloff if possible, otherwise shifting more of the damage to the actual projectile would both reward skilled use and reduce the ability to use them as mindless pubstomp material.

[(XBOX)XGN DrFeelGood]

There are plenty of Conclave weapons that can use buffs to catch up with everything else. Someone is willing to defend their Daikyu; yet they rage when a Ice Chroma steals the match.