Though I personally prefer QLCs (Quad Laser Cannons), BLCs (Burst Laser Cannons) seem to be on almost every ship capable of using them. Fully upgraded for the 100% armor penetration they can be nasty, but they also fire relatively slowly and have a very short range. Players are often using them with OBs (Overcharged Blasters) to increase the rate of fire and the weapon recharge rate (and range or damage). But lately I've been seeing players with these weapons obliterating ships in 2-3 seconds of sustained fire. I'm guessing they are also using FC (Frequency Capacitor) to increase the firing rate even more, and assuming I'm right, the TTK (Time To Kill) seems too fast - faster than a fully upgraded SRG (Slug Rail Gun) with 100% armor pen and +10% damage.

Does that seem a bit OP to anyone?

While Gunships are certainly dangerous, they're heavy firepower at long range is offset by their lack of speed and maneuverability. The Scouts and Strikes with these super BLCs don't suffer that disadvantage, and it's usually easy for them to LoS a Gunship to get in range. Maybe I'm missing something here, but BLCs don't seem to be very balanced in the meta-game.

You know what's even more op?

Rapid's + Freq Cap + BO = insane laughter as the universe cowers before your laser party

I really don't think that's OP at all, in fact I think it kinda sucks.

They both have a 6 second duration and a 1 minute cooldown. That means that at best they provide a benefit 10% of the time. That's at BEST, you'll very rarely be casting them on cooldown due to time in between targets. It makes for some pretty silly momentary stuff for sure but over the course of a match it loses out pretty hard to TT/Wingman/Range or TT/Wingman/Damage as their uptime is sooooo much better.

RFL/BO/FC is hilarious too but again it really only works as long as you're hitting things. Which honestly doesn't really happen most of the time because of how much time you spend flying in between targets. Not to mention it doesn't have armor pen so it can't be used for defense or offense reliably.

Against non-evasive high-health targets (fortress shield gunships and charged plating bombers, I'm looking at you).

If your target stacks evasion and uses distortion field, you're going to miss. A lot. Against that, you're better off with telemetry + wingman.

I agree largely with Tommm. Blaster Overcharge can make for some silly things, but I think Targeting Telemetry really, really outshines it. The extra 25% damage on crit also makes for some pretty silly hits/attacks, and Telemetry also boosts your secondary weapon, so you can occasionally get stupid crits off of Cluster Missiles or, far more often, Rocket Pods, and if you're extremely lucky with the RNG and get a crit off of both Pods and BLCs at effectively the same time, you can do 2.5-3k damage in an instant, which is quite close to a 1-shot on a lot of ships. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

I think it's also a mistake to use Freq Cap over Range with BLCs. I could see an argument for Damage Cap, but the major power of those lasers is the way the damage scales as you get closer, so getting people into those upper tiers of damage will generally do more damage than a flat 10% boost.

Also, keep in mind that in a way, the slow rate of fire is actually helpful if you take advantage of it. It allows you to take "snap shots", so you can maximize your aiming, and shoot at the most opportune times. It takes some getting used to, but it's often a mistake to just hold LMB down with BLCs outside of jousting.

I do think the BLC component is a little overpowered on its own, but I haven't really ever liked Blaster Overcharge because of the windows Tommm mentioned. Wingman gives you 20% increase to acc for 20s every minute, so it's up roughly 1/3 of the time. TT, once you get to tier 3, is up for 15 of every 45s, so again, roughly 1/3 of the time. Obviously, you can't have them both up at the same time every time, but the duration is long enough to often allow overlap, and even if you use them directly on CD, you will still have them re-sync every 3 minutes.

If this game were more of a 1v1, with only ever having narrow windows of opportunity, then the combination of BLC+BO+CF (Concentrated Fire) starts to look extremely attractive, but most times, it's correct to move from target to target to target (even if you don't finish the kill), and so the uptime of Wingman and TT starts to really outperform most other builds in terms of raw offensive output.

I do think the BLC component is a little overpowered on its own, but I haven't really ever liked Blaster Overcharge because of the windows Tommm mentioned. Wingman gives you 20% increase to acc for 20s every minute, so it's up roughly 1/3 of the time. TT, once you get to tier 3, is up for 15 of every 45s, so again, roughly 1/3 of the time. Obviously, you can't have them both up at the same time every time, but the duration is long enough to often allow overlap, and even if you use them directly on CD, you will still have them re-sync every 3 minutes.

When you get to tier three the potential uptime of TT is 50%.

It's 1/3 at tier 1, which is the cooldown reduction from 45 to 30 s.

So after tier 1, you can have TT up for 50-75% of every wingman, or if you prefer to look from the other direction, wingman up for all of every other TT. After the first TT upgrade TT's on cooldown use timer syncs with Wingman's on cooldown use timer every minute. Makes stacking them very easy.

TT, once you get to tier 3, is up for 15 of every 45s, so again, roughly 1/3 of the time.

This is incorrect, Once targeting telemetry is at tier 3, it's up for 15 seconds of every 30 seconds, so it's up roughly 50% of the time. (The first upgrade of targeting telemetry lowers it's cooldown by 15 seconds)

Blaster Overcharge once you hit tier 3, is up for 12 seconds of every 40 seconds, so it's up roughly 30% of the time.

Ack! Why was I thinking the CD time was 1 min to start?

Oh well, the point still stands, and is actually a little more in favor of TT than I was thinking it was. Good catch, though.

Ack! Why was I thinking the CD time was 1 min to start?

 

Oh well, the point still stands, and is actually a little more in favor of TT than I was thinking it was. Good catch, though.

Pretty sure that TT started at a 1 min CD and they changed it a while back.

Although I do have TT upgraded to tier 3, I've been playing around with tier 4 OB on my Quad Lasers, and I'm running Damage Capacitors. When I line up on someone, it's devastating.

They both do great damage, the point is more that TT is better vs better players. We like teching our ships for the hard fights instead of slaughtering the masses.

Extra crit/crit damage means they have less time to react. Extra Accuracy means easier time hitting evasion stacked opponents, which is basically every good player minus Bombers. More up time gives your opponent less of a chance to just kite your cooldown away, if you see someone use Blaster Overcharge just run for 12 seconds, it takes so much longer for it to come back you will win the fight.

....if you see someone use Blaster Overcharge just run for 12 seconds, it takes so much longer for it to come back you will win the fight.

That might work, unless they happen to be using Sabotage Probes.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I wish scouts didn't have access to BLC. BLC scouts are so annoying to me. I'm aware of the role scouts play in the meta, the need for high damage close range weapons for them, etc... but I don't care. If anything in the game is OP, in my opinion, it's BLC scouts, pretty much regardless of which buffs or copilot skills are used.

Plus, on Imp-side, the Sting just looks ridiculous with BLC equipped. Those guns are too big for the ship. It looks like laser cannons zooming around with a tiny cockpit hanging off them.

Plus, on Imp-side, the Sting just looks ridiculous with BLC equipped. Those guns are too big for the ship. It looks like laser cannons zooming around with a tiny cockpit hanging off them.

BLC actually looks really good on the Ocula, which is the Cartel bought version of the Sting.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I wish scouts didn't have access to BLC. BLC scouts are so annoying to me. I'm aware of the role scouts play in the meta, the need for high damage close range weapons for them, etc... but I don't care. If anything in the game is OP, in my opinion, it's BLC scouts, pretty much regardless of which buffs or copilot skills are used.

 

Plus, on Imp-side, the Sting just looks ridiculous with BLC equipped. Those guns are too big for the ship. It looks like laser cannons zooming around with a tiny cockpit hanging off them.

In large part, I agree with you. Not about the ridiculous look (I mean, yes, it's ridiculous, but it screams glass cannon to me, and they have definitely grown on me since the beginning), but that the T2 shouldn't have them. I don't love that Gunships have them either, but at least there, it makes more sense, considering the platform.

I really think BLCs should be on the T1 Strike, though (at a minimum. I'd give the T2 access too). I could absolutely get behind a T1 Strike with Clusters, Ions, and BLCs, especially in a world with no BLC scouts. The close range potential is just insane, and the high deflection abilities would be a good deal better than a T2 Scout with QnP or QnClusters. A build like that may end up being king dogfighter, and would remove the pairing of BLC with BO or TT, which I think is really more the culprit. BLCs move a bit beyond overtuned, and into unfair territory when paired with Systems.

I don't love the idea of that change at this point because it's so drastic, but had I been designing the game, I'd have made that change prior to launch. Quad based (and even Med Laser based) scouts would still be plenty good, but no BLC would push them further into hunter range, rather than just the CQB superiority monster it is. It would also make the laser choice on the scouts more interesting than it currently is.

Though I personally prefer QLCs (Quad Laser Cannons), BLCs (Burst Laser Cannons) seem to be on almost every ship capable of using them. Fully upgraded for the 100% armor penetration they can be nasty, but they also fire relatively slowly and have a very short range. Players are often using them with OBs (Overcharged Blasters) to increase the rate of fire and the weapon recharge rate (and range or damage). But lately I've been seeing players with these weapons obliterating ships in 2-3 seconds of sustained fire. I'm guessing they are also using FC (Frequency Capacitor) to increase the firing rate even more, and assuming I'm right, the TTK (Time To Kill) seems too fast - faster than a fully upgraded SRG (Slug Rail Gun) with 100% armor pen and +10% damage.

 

Does that seem a bit OP to anyone?

 

While Gunships are certainly dangerous, they're heavy firepower at long range is offset by their lack of speed and maneuverability. The Scouts and Strikes with these super BLCs don't suffer that disadvantage, and it's usually easy for them to LoS a Gunship to get in range. Maybe I'm missing something here, but BLCs don't seem to be very balanced in the meta-game.

Well, no one calls slug "srg", because, you know, we have the word "slug", which is one syllable and vastly more descriptive. It's blaster overcharge, not overcharged blaster.

Pedantry aside:

1)- Gunships have the lowest dps for a reason. They can strike from huge range and inflict devastating damage on enemies. The time to kill with a slug that you don't see coming can seem short, but it really isn't if you know the gunship is doing that (and you have time to evade). Comparing to slug's TTK is not useful, because EVERYTHING kills faster than a slug, even rapid fire laser, which is terrible. In practice, railguns are an entirely different beast- the fact that they kill slower than X is fine, because they also outrange X. They also have an entirely different targeting mechanic- you can end up

2)- Likewise , a scout's very low time to kill is probably a little bit on the low side, but the scout has to actually BE IN MELEE. This is not a given, or a free thing. A scout has to extend and be very vulnerable... unless you gave him that for free, in which case, well, time to run. The scout has to deal with aoe trigger weapons on top of expending the energy and time to get there. While there are some balance concerns about the TTK here, it's not because it's low compared to railguns. It's just generally low, but not wildly so.

Overall, yes, I think that TT is a bit OP, and honestly, so is BO. But... it's not by a HUGE amount. The scout does have to get close to targets, and while that is unfair to a strike fighter who shares the same restriction with no payoff, the game is definitely not balanced around strike-level power. The scout can't freely fly through mines, can't close distances constantly, can't threaten behind objects, and can't threaten at range. I also wouldn't want scouts nerfed in a vacuum, for reasons I discuss in other threads.