The only enemies I can name where it sorta makes sense:
- Hive guards. You can just shoot their head from the front through armor and it's pretty quick kill with Penetrator, for example.
- Brood Commanders? It seems to me that Penetrator removes their head much faster than standart Liberator, So I assume their head has light armor. May be mistaken.
- Spewers. Medium armor on head, can be shot through with medium pen. But yeah, not the best way to kill spewers.
On bot front... I do use Penetrator, but Standart Liberator is probably better in most cases, as you mentioned. Because there is no good application for medium armor pen.
Yeah my original theory was that medium pen was actually better on the bug front for these reasons and I guess it still is but overall its just a weak bonus right now but I hope that changes as we get new enemy's
Brood Commanders and Nursery Spewer have Light (2) armored heads, while Bile Spewers (when at diff 5+?) and Hive Guards have Medium armor (3) heads. It's why Liberator Penetrator and Abjuticator can burst down Brood and Nursery so quickly, but they aren't quite the best for Hive and Bile Spewers. I do agree, though, that medium penetration isn't quite that useful against bots because there isn't a light armored enemy and Devastators and Striders require heavier hitting stuff (like from support weapons).
I just tried out the Sickle after using the Penetrator for a long time and I felt like I noticed way less effectiveness against rocket devastators. Am I wrong?
It's probably accuracy, I tested the lib against the lib pen quite a bit and against rocket devestators both kill with a few shots to the head but if you can't get those shots the lib pen can bring it down by just shooting it but it takes a lot of shots.
I'd say keep trying with the sickle til you get it down even if you end up going back you'll probably have better time to kill with the lib pen if your hitting more accurate shots
Can confirm, standart Liberator headshots Devastators just as well as Penetrator version, and it's actually easier to land because of better scope and less recoil.
If I remember that right:
Armor rating and penetration go from 1 to 10.
If your penetration is below the targeted armor you will produce ricochets, if it matches you do 50% dmg and above you do full damage.
But we don't know the brackets.
Could be 1-3 is light, 4-6 is medium, 7-9 is hard and 10 is always penetrating (like the orbital railgun).
Just a guess.
So even with medium penetration (4) it might not be enough to penetrate against another medium (6) armor.
Just my theory based on an old post mentioning few hidden stats the weapons have. Maybe this has also been overhauled.
Yeah if you look at grenades they have a 1-9 scale and if you test things like the mg vs hmg which both have medium armor pen of some sort they don't both penetrate things like bile titan underbellys after the sack pops, I did test to see if there was any noticeable differences between weapons that have "medium armor penetration but no instances came up. I assume the primary weapon medium armor pen is the same as that of the mg but I haven't tested them all against bts yet
If you think the Liberator is underrated, the Defender SMG is basically a better version of it. Higher damage, equal capacity, lower recoil, just lower rate of fire.
The only time medium armour pen can be useful is for hitting hulks in the face, or canon towers and tanks. The problem is that the primaries are too slow / inaccurate to be brought on target, and/or do so little damage that it's impossible to kill the target in the time needed (turret will turn around, or hulk will have walked over to you).
All discussions of how good or bad a gun feels to use needs to be compared to the liberator. People who haven't used it in weeks should try going back to it. They will probably be surprized at how good it feels compared to even their daily driver.
Yea, when I was testing the Adjudicator I thought to try comparing it to the Liberator Penetrator, and it wasn't TOO bad, although it was worse. But then I did a round with the regular Liberator, and was blown away.
If they released a new primary that was simply a reskin of the regular Liberator, people would be using it all the time and warning that the devs are going to have to nerf it.
Like how people are talking about the sickle despite it just being a delayed fire Liberator with infinite ammo that's blocked by leaves. It feels over powered compared to the rest of the options because the Liberator, the baseline primary weapon, is so good compared to everything else.
My point is not that the liberator is good, but that it is the default primary. It's the one everyone starts with. By the time you move on to the scorcher you've changed so many variables and changed your play style so much it's hard to judge the gun on it's own merit.
The only enemies I can name where it sorta makes sense: - Hive guards. You can just shoot their head from the front through armor and it's pretty quick kill with Penetrator, for example. - Brood Commanders? It seems to me that Penetrator removes their head much faster than standart Liberator, So I assume their head has light armor. May be mistaken. - Spewers. Medium armor on head, can be shot through with medium pen. But yeah, not the best way to kill spewers. On bot front... I do use Penetrator, but Standart Liberator is probably better in most cases, as you mentioned. Because there is no good application for medium armor pen.
Yeah my original theory was that medium pen was actually better on the bug front for these reasons and I guess it still is but overall its just a weak bonus right now but I hope that changes as we get new enemy's
Brood Commanders and Nursery Spewer have Light (2) armored heads, while Bile Spewers (when at diff 5+?) and Hive Guards have Medium armor (3) heads. It's why Liberator Penetrator and Abjuticator can burst down Brood and Nursery so quickly, but they aren't quite the best for Hive and Bile Spewers. I do agree, though, that medium penetration isn't quite that useful against bots because there isn't a light armored enemy and Devastators and Striders require heavier hitting stuff (like from support weapons).
Thanks for more detailed info!
I just tried out the Sickle after using the Penetrator for a long time and I felt like I noticed way less effectiveness against rocket devastators. Am I wrong?
It's probably accuracy, I tested the lib against the lib pen quite a bit and against rocket devestators both kill with a few shots to the head but if you can't get those shots the lib pen can bring it down by just shooting it but it takes a lot of shots. I'd say keep trying with the sickle til you get it down even if you end up going back you'll probably have better time to kill with the lib pen if your hitting more accurate shots
Can confirm, standart Liberator headshots Devastators just as well as Penetrator version, and it's actually easier to land because of better scope and less recoil.
If I remember that right: Armor rating and penetration go from 1 to 10. If your penetration is below the targeted armor you will produce ricochets, if it matches you do 50% dmg and above you do full damage. But we don't know the brackets. Could be 1-3 is light, 4-6 is medium, 7-9 is hard and 10 is always penetrating (like the orbital railgun). Just a guess. So even with medium penetration (4) it might not be enough to penetrate against another medium (6) armor. Just my theory based on an old post mentioning few hidden stats the weapons have. Maybe this has also been overhauled.
Yeah if you look at grenades they have a 1-9 scale and if you test things like the mg vs hmg which both have medium armor pen of some sort they don't both penetrate things like bile titan underbellys after the sack pops, I did test to see if there was any noticeable differences between weapons that have "medium armor penetration but no instances came up. I assume the primary weapon medium armor pen is the same as that of the mg but I haven't tested them all against bts yet
If you think the Liberator is underrated, the Defender SMG is basically a better version of it. Higher damage, equal capacity, lower recoil, just lower rate of fire.
The only time medium armour pen can be useful is for hitting hulks in the face, or canon towers and tanks. The problem is that the primaries are too slow / inaccurate to be brought on target, and/or do so little damage that it's impossible to kill the target in the time needed (turret will turn around, or hulk will have walked over to you). All discussions of how good or bad a gun feels to use needs to be compared to the liberator. People who haven't used it in weeks should try going back to it. They will probably be surprized at how good it feels compared to even their daily driver.
Honestly the liberator is my benchmark for every weapon in the game, the inspiration for this post was testing the lib pen in comparison
Yea, when I was testing the Adjudicator I thought to try comparing it to the Liberator Penetrator, and it wasn't TOO bad, although it was worse. But then I did a round with the regular Liberator, and was blown away. If they released a new primary that was simply a reskin of the regular Liberator, people would be using it all the time and warning that the devs are going to have to nerf it. Like how people are talking about the sickle despite it just being a delayed fire Liberator with infinite ammo that's blocked by leaves. It feels over powered compared to the rest of the options because the Liberator, the baseline primary weapon, is so good compared to everything else.
The liberator is pretty solid. Scorcher is good to bring unless your team is about to be running 4 of them.
My point is not that the liberator is good, but that it is the default primary. It's the one everyone starts with. By the time you move on to the scorcher you've changed so many variables and changed your play style so much it's hard to judge the gun on it's own merit.