Fighter weaponry efficiency changes

[BobMacaroni]

We're making changes. For one, we're addressing issues in how efficiency affects different matchups (anti-cap performance, for one) by offsetting it with 'armor penetration', which I'm sure I can get into more in the future. I will say however that the intent with the efficiency changes was to:

• Increase fighter groupfight TTK.
  
• Make underperforming options (Let's say Lavablades compared to Vengeance) more appealing.
  

As efficiency is already rather unimpactful in fighter duels compared to groupfights, increasing the efficiency of the worse-performing options was obviously not going to change much. It took superhuman effort to run out of power while running an 8.33 750 loadout pre-patch. So, the logical play is to take the most popular, cookie-cutter options down a notch, which we did.

I don't really see a good reason to roll this back. We did a good bit of groupfight chase testing and everything from Fury 4 to Magnums was in a pretty narrow band of performance with the new values. If the values are decently good in that environment, where efficiency is king, it is pretty safe to conclude low efficiency loadouts are going to be absolutely fine in duels too.

Contrary to this line of reasoning, the most impacted environment was duels, not groupfights. The (largest) problem people had was with low efficiencies running out ridiculously quickly in duels with the lower efficiency weapons, and not being able to get more than a few hits off their shield before running completely out of energy. From what I've observed, the hardest hit were newer to average players trying to use laser weapons, but without the aim to be able to hit every shot to actually do something before running square out of energy. Lower refire rates are also much harder for less experienced players to use, which is counterintuitive to the "make snubs easier to learn" mindset, as well. You don't need to "box for 15 seconds with a QUASAR barricuda" to run out of energy. While no one is arguing powercore management shouldn't be a part of the game, we are arguing that you shouldn't need to have excellent powercore management to be able to use a simple, non codename weapon adequately.

"Underperforming" weapons will always be a thing, no matter what you do. And thats actually a good thing. I've seen plenty of people using what you considered to be "underperforming" weapons before 5.2, and use them very effectively. I myself actually had quite a fondness for Dublin Dusters and Trefoils. Lower speed didn't equal a worse weapon, just a different playstyle, and could be used very effectively. I've seen them used very effectively.

A better solution I believe would be to buff the weapons individually or in groups, say give them a slight damage increase and a slight decrease in higher weapon efficiency, instead of changing around every single fighter weapon in the game, and creating a massive disparity.

Even slightly increasing the efficiency of higher damage weapons would provide a much more tolerable and bearable solution. But at the current rate, it isn't gratifying to even use anything with a higher speed than 650 m/s, and it feels more like being a slave to constant powercore management (and still running out of energy) than feeling in any way equal or engaged using higher speed weapons, and being able to have fun using them.