I’ve seen lots of complaints about the pulse carbine, but having played a lot of bot matches, and seen how even the braindead recruit level bots in there can handle that thing, I’ve realized what the problem is.
The damage is fine, the projectile speed/tracking is fine. As long as the reticle is on top of the target, every shot coming from the gun WHILE the reticle is on target will track and land on the target if they aren’t grappling, thrustering, or speedsliding perpendicular to you… Everything about how the gun performs in a properly used scenario is balanced great.
The problem is a combination of 2 things:
In order for a complete burst to hit, the reticle needs to be on the target for the entire duration of the burst, which is significantly longer of a time than a burst from, lets say, the Battle Rifle. Now that alone isn’t a big issue, but then…
The projectile art itself is limiting your view of the target making it harder to keep the reticle square on it.
I think the solution is to make the projectile smaller, or make it transparent to the user for the brief split second that it comes out of the “barrel” so that the person firing it can still see the target and keep their reticle on them.
Now, I get that there should still be some readability on the weapon’s projectiles and where they are coming from, as that’s part of its design, so maybe don’t make the projectiles too small, but I’m pretty certain that something needs to change about the projectile art so that it doesn’t obstruct the view of the person firing it.
I just don’t like using it personally, I’d prefer a different weapon in my slot in most scenario’s. I’ve seen people use it against me somewhat effectively but I always think like eh I don’t want to use that gun right now.
I’ve found it fun to use in casual scenarios where the target is moving either away from or towards me, as there isn’t much aim compensation needed to get a kill with it, but in almost every ACTUAL scenario its easy to lose lock on the target and miss most of the burst because you can’t see what you’re aiming at.
Having had to use for a challenge grind, it really seems like tracking outright stops once their shield is cracked. The thing is an incredibly fast shield--Yoink!-, and then quite suddenly I can’t buy a kill shot. Purely anecdotal, but that has been my experience in every firefight against a competent enemy.
Travel time on plasma weapons has always been a thing in Halo, but marrying one with a tracking function seems to put the weapon in an even more limited niche.
if theres actually something not psychological to that, it should probably be looked at as well, but from what I’ve found messing around with it a lot recently is that when it does lock and track like intended, it is balanced just fine with the rest of the sandbox.
It’s definitely something ill pick up over the pistol
I watched a video recently that explained a lot of the issues I was having when I first picked up the Carbine. It’s definitely not a weapon meant for close-range, in fact I think it performs absolutely terribly up close. The projectile homing works better when you have some proper distance between yourself and the target. That said, I agree that the projectile size tends to visually obscure the reticle. Shrinking the projectile size down a bit would probably be a noticeable improvement.
Historically, everyone has a problem with slower projectile weapons.
You don’t need to keep the reticule on the target. You can literally fire the burst, then start shooting at something else, and 5 secs later the burst finish off the kill. - the projectiles are extremely slow.
The weapon is effective, but you just need to lead your target in the direction they are moving, and aim at the head on the 3rd burst fire.
To be honest, people would enjoy it more if the projectiles were faster, though the tracking may make it too easy then.
In general, I’m a little bit disappointed to see the return of “soft” projectiles. Old-style plasma weapons have been minimized in the last few games, but this game returns to soft, fuzzy light balls. It’s always way more satisfying to shoot something punchier like a real projectile.