What is going on with the Reducto Ray?

[OnionBubs]

I have to ask because I want to understand what exact plans the devs intended with this thing.

I can completely understand (and supported) the initial nerfs to the gun's instakill threshold from the first beta; that was absolutely justified. A 5-block-weight support weapon being able to effortlessly kill up to 14 larges by skipping damage to their health and killing by incap is more than excessive (especially given it's paid DLC). Toning back the instakill while still allowing players to use the incap to deal double damage to Zeds shrunk for a time, though, that's understandable; it still has its niche in some team comps and helps against bosses.

But as of the latest beta branch, the RR's incap now fades in half a second instead of the original 10 seconds, giving the wielder absolutely no time to even take advantage of the incap unless there are teammates actively shooting things at the exact same time the wielder is, meaning you might as well kill the Zed by incap unless you have most of a team already primed to shoot it in the first place...which, while it does need teamwork to use, makes the weapon situational to the point of near uselessness. You can't even reliably hose down a Zed to death by holding Mouse1 anymore; from what I can tell you have to tap-fire like a flamethrower and basically never mistime it.

So what's going on with this thing? It takes a full magazine to kill a single HVT, the incap now only helps your teammates if you are constantly hosing a Zed down and your teammates are doing likewise...
I know this thing wasn't exactly well thought out to begin with and was always out of place in the game, but what exactly are the devs aiming for with this nerf/"rework"?

 

[Bender the Offender]

Getting back on this topic to ask, is the "rework" as bad we thought? Is this gun now just completely useless unless you have teammates ready to shoot at it? Can this thing even affect large zeds and bosses any in way effective if the player is fighting them by themselves? So far it seems only capable at shrinking/killing things that can already be 1 shot killed in the head by a AR-15.

Is it as useless to actual incap anything like the Survivalist's other gun the freezethrower where enemies also break free in like half a second?

 

[OnionBubs]

Yeah, it's still not good.

The Freezethrower is way better than it is though lol; freeze is an amazing incap.

 

[Bender the Offender]

Yeah, it's still not good.

The Freezethrower is way better than it is though lol; freeze is an amazing incap.

Well I finally got a working graphics card and was able to try out the new reducto ray and my initial thoughts were "oh hey, this isn't as bad as I thought" because I successful shrank numerous large zeds and they stayed smalled and my team was able to kill them. Then it dawned on me I have the game on Epic which is the equivalent of having the game on console since the Support class still only has 5% resistance for the Fortitude skill. I'm still blessed with the older model reducto ray which keeps enemies shrunken for 10 seconds.

So I can't speak from first hand experience yet since I haven't been cursed with the current dog$hit version of the weapon.

Freezethower sucks! You legit need your teammates shooting at the enemies as you hold down the trigger button and constantly spraying like a flamethrower or the enemies are breaking through the ice. I know because this flat out happened in my game when my teammates were too dumb to shoot at the frozen large zed I was freezing. A single freeze grenade is better than a entire magazine of that useless weapon.

 

[OnionBubs]

Freezethower sucks! You legit need your teammates shooting at the enemies as you hold down the trigger button and constantly spraying like a flamethrower or the enemies are breaking through the ice. I know because this flat out happened in my game when my teammates were too dumb to shoot at the frozen large zed I was freezing.

I'm not really sure what to say if you're having trouble with the Freezethrower, it's not a very difficult weapon to use to full effectiveness.

Freezes Scrakes and FPs alike in about 6-9 ammo units out of 500 total and you have enough time to just alt-fire them to death with the Freezethrower itself, which is not at all completely ridiculous on a weapon that literally renders Zeds unable to fight back for roughly 3 seconds, especially given most actual takedowns don't even take that long when stuff can fight back.
The only time stuff won't get frozen instantly is due to 1) raged Fleshpounds being basically immune to most incaps, or 2) Zeds having a very slight cooldown after being hit with some incaps so you can't chain them back-to-back all the time.

Or if you don't like the alt-fire method you can just combo it with other weapons for yuks; here's a quick how-to on that from before the thing was buffed so you can get the general idea on that.

 

[Bender the Offender]

I'm not really sure what to say if you're having trouble with the Freezethrower, it's not a very difficult weapon to use to full effectiveness.

Freezes Scrakes and FPs alike in about 6-9 ammo units out of 500 total and you have enough time to just alt-fire them to death with the Freezethrower itself, which is not at all completely ridiculous on a weapon that literally renders Zeds unable to fight back for roughly 3 seconds, especially given most actual takedowns don't even take that long when stuff can fight back.
The only time stuff won't get frozen instantly is due to 1) raged Fleshpounds being basically immune to most incaps, or 2) Zeds having a very slight cooldown after being hit with some incaps so you can't chain them back-to-back all the time.

Or if you don't like the alt-fire method you can just combo it with other weapons for yuks; here's a quick how-to on that from before the thing was buffed so you can get the general idea on that.

Try ACTUALLY USING THE GUN IN A REAL GAME! Not some single player tutorial mode where you're punching in cheat codes up the wazoo and controlling every aspect of the game! Like holy crap. For a community (this specifically applies to the vocal idiots on message boards and not the casual players) where I constantly see idiots claiming "Oh I'm a master player who constantly beats 6 player Hell on Earth games!" when the amount of times I actually see these idiots playing something besides solo (let alone a real game) I can count on one hand and have fingers left over. And in the rare times I actually see these idiots play a 6 player game (no idea on the difficulty), it's usually some heavily modded game where they're using Halo and Doom weapons among many other community weapons.

Actually I take back my previous comments. The Freezethrower is even MORE of a piece of sh!t than I last remember. I just played a 6 player suicidal game last night and take a guess when the large zeds actually gets frozen? When they're dead! Literally I must've fought at least 6 large zeds (several back to back) in that one game and the only time they got frozen was after they were already killed. No idea if the gun becomes more useless the higher the difficulty or if Tripwire made it crap again, but holy crap is the freezethrower truly a piece of sh!t now. I might as well buy a demo weapon as a Survivalist than the freeze thrower because it will have the exact same effect.