Is there any purpose or effective way to use these grenades?
They are good for blocking off narrow corridors. Either to protect an objective or just run away. They do need a buff though.
They’re the new needle rifle in campaign like how the Auto Sentry is the new Hologram.
They take more skill to use (placement, timing) while at the same time they are just a combination of existing elements (Power drain + needle rifle effect on AI).
Pulse grenades detonate immediately once they’ve made contact with any surface. You can use them to block off passages to hold the enemy back. If we ever get Invasion mode, these grenades would be a defender’s godsend.
Well they seem like I can run straight through almost unscathed completely.
They dont work in matchmaking
When it expands the field detonates after a few seconds and whatever is caught inside is toast usually.
I have to ask the same question.
They don’t seem effective against anything - Spartans, Covenant, Forerunner.
Unless you stand in the centre of the field for the entire time that the grenade is up, there’s barely any effect on the shields.
Better odds getting a kill with a cone.
The idea of the Pulse Grenade is cool. The way they work is pretty useless in 90% of the War Games playlists.
When it first opens up it lets out a wave of damage. Then, while it is open, it does very light damage over time. Then it closes violently and explodes for a decent amount of damage.
This is supposed to be good for area denial, unfortunately the ‘denied area’ is large, orange and easy to avoid. its detonation rarely actually coats a whole doorway or path and the damage over time stage of the grenade is light enough that if you just sprint on through you wont take significant enough damage to need to worry.
I think the open and close damage should be lowered and the damage over time stage needs a drastic buff to be equal to the total damage the grenade would have dealt.
If you need a made up numbers example to catch my drift, think of it this way.
Say the Pulse grenade does a TOTAL damage of 100 points in its duration of 5 seconds.
25 on the opening phase. 25 over time and then 50 when it closes. At any time during its bleed period any player will charge right on through without a care because the damage is negligible. They only have to avoid the open and close.
I think the grenade should do ALL its damage in a heavy bleed. The open and close are no longer detonations and it just bleeds the area within itself for damage while its open. This means the grenades ‘bleed’ is 20 damage a second for the five seconds its open. Much heavier bleed damage to actually discourage running through it.
Now that isn’t how the numbers actually are and I’m not even 100% that is even a perfect explanation of how the grenades operate. But that is how it definitely seems to behave and the change I believe needs to be made to fix it if that is the case.