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Quasar is great, will probably get nerfed as it's on par with how the railgun used to be pre-nerf.
HMG, I'm really disappointed with this one. Crazy kickback, small mag, and no third person target reticule, so I'm forced to use it in first person. I'm yet to try it against bugs, but so far it's very quickly making its way to the don't bother list.
Two stratagems, one is a winner and the other is a dud.
Quasar is balanced. It's just an infinite recoilless rifle with some downsides. Same damages but it takes 3s to shoot instead of basically instant for the recoilless and something like .5 seconds for the EAT. And then you have to wait 6-10 seconds between shots vs something like 3s self reload with the recoilless or just grabbing a new EAT. If it overshadows the recoilless too much the only thing that should be changed is the cooldown time imo, but it's fine in relation to the EAT at least
Haven't tried the HMG yet personally, but all of my group that gave it a spin tonight said it's junk. Recoil is wild, mag is small for a high-RoF weapon, and it doesn't one-shot chafe. We don't see description tags for support weapons, but if we did I bet the HMG would have the "Medium Armor Penetration" label. All the med pen weapons kinda suck, and I'd put the HMG in the same category. The armor pen gives them better effect on certain targets (like the HMG can chew through the front shield of a walker) but you give up a bunch of damage on lighter armored targets. It drops the damage per round below breakpoints for a lot of targets, and the targets it does work on can be better dealt with in other ways. I'm sure you could make the HMG work in some really narrow situations, e.g. Fortified armor, fully prone, and enemies funneled into a chokepoint. But outside that really narrow scope? Yuck.
The Quasar on the other hand is S-tier IMO, especially vs. bots. It is dead easy to keep the aimpoint on a bot dropship engine while the laser spools up. We ran a bunch of Quasars in our group tonight and I've never seen so much dropship carnage. The Quasar doesn't take up a backpack slot, so you can run Personal Shield to save yourself some chip damage. If you've got multiple Quasars in the group and you're on comms, you can time two Quasar shots to a turret's weakpoint to take it out before it starts rotating toward you. It recharges while it's on your back so you can displace, shoot your primary, chuck a grenade, whatever. For my money it's better than the RR, because you don't need to rely on a team reload or root yourself for 5 seconds for a solo reload, and it's better than the EAT because the Quasar is ready to go when you need it, no need to wait for call-in. The spin-up time is a downside, but you can spool up the shot in cover and shoulder-peak just before it goes off. Heat can also be a downside, hot planets will increase the cooldown to the point where the RR or EAT might be better. But on temperate planets it's great, and on cold planets it'll be downright ridiculous.
peek* but, yeah, same. 🤘🏽
I agree with your note about medium armor penetration. It's nice to have, but across the weapons I've tried the damage has felt unimpressive enough that I'd rather just find a way to make a different weapon with light armor penetration work.
For efficiency the EAT is still my go to. But for convenience that Quasar is top tier. The cool down is a little rough but with enough people on your squad bringing it it's easily my new favorite. Plus you can snipe objectives and automaton drop ships with way better accuracy than a rocket. Still bring the EAT every now and then for the quickness. But the Quasar gives me Halo Spartan Laser vibes for all the right reasons.
Machine gun is meh. Good to have when you are getting swarmed and need a quick out, but that's a very specific need to take up an entire stratagem slot.
The Heavy machine gun goes through too much ammo too quickly to be useful. It needs an ammo backpack.
Someone said that if you use the HMG as if it were a marksman rifle you'll do better with it.
The Quasar is amazing for taking out big enemies as long as you have a good primary weapon to fend off against smaller enemies while it recharges.
Just got my ass handed to me trying out the Quasar for the first time. It seems strong, but the long charge up time is brutal on bots that are shooting back at you. Also, it sucks to die in a bunch of enemies and then have to go pick it up. I feel like the EAT is definitely more flexible for most situations.
The trick I've found with the Quasar is the range - find a target, blast them from 50m away, then sneak around and kill any pursuers before lining up a second shot if necessary.
Absolutely, I tend to do my best to skirt engagements and pick off targets before getting in close. Being able to hammer hard targets every 10 seconds or so is great; especially when backing up a group, it's great fire support.
Quasar has a permanent slot in my strategem loadout now. At least, until it gets nerfed, which I have a very strong feeling that it will.
On the bug side it one-shots Hive Guards through their armor, one-shots Chargers to the face, and two-shots Bile Titans to the face. On the bot side it pretty much one-shots everything if you hit the weak point; I've yet to see anything survive a direct shot to the vents. It even takes out Bot Drops with a single shot to the engine; if you coordinate it with your team and they're paying attention, you can easily nullify an entire bot reinforcement before they even touch the ground.
It also puts in work against structures, too; easily takes out spore towers, turret towers, fabricators, illegal broadcasts, all from insanely safe distances. I haven't tested it against Shrieker nests or bot artillery, but I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't also put in work on these, as well. It works but it's not super useful against bug holes or eggs, but both of those are easily covered by your primary/grenades, anyway.
Quasar is awesome i was sure it would have been nerfed in this patch that just dropped. Glad it wasn't but i can see it happening.