AMR begone

General Discussion
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Do y’all think the AMR is good for the game? Or should it be voided

Submitted this PR feedback a while ago and never got any answer, so just gonna throw it out here to gauge people’s opinions

## PR:

Heavy Sniper Part 2 - The Heavying #6163

## What do you feel could be better:

Not sure if it’s because of this specific PR, but the AMR overall is very overtuned at the moment; I’ve heard that from marine and xeno players alike.

The combination of damage, stun, screenshake etc. it can put out at the rate it does makes the game unenjoyable for pretty much any xeno caste. Or almost unplayable, since there is literally no counter to it. One marine can nuke xenos from 3 screens away and the only “counter” I’ve seen is sitting behind cover (basically don’t play the game). Which isn’t really a counter. It prevents any caste from taking 3 steps out from behind a wall, or lingering outside of cover long enough to do any fighting. You can push into combat, and they can scope you at any point without warning. If you don’t retreat the second you’re scoped in on, there’s a good chance you will die. It severely punishes xenos even when they don’t overextend; in other words its presence impedes the flow of a round for the worst. Marines that have played it said it was boring because xenos just wouldn’t push, rightfully. Overall it seems to grind the game to stagnation, and doesn’t really add much.

Teammates can’t block shots. Doors can’t block shots, or even some colony walls.

Mortars and CAS have similar effects in terms of hampering frontline xenos, but those also have counters to balance the damage they dish out - firerate, caves, melting flares; even if marines are lazing open ground, coordinating a strike takes more time and is relatively more difficult. The time it takes AMR to do the amount of damage it does is menial by comparison.

With all due respect, reading this PR felt like watching a powertrip. I was waiting for it to get untestmerged, I’m amazed it actually made it through.

If you wish to dismiss this as cope, I would just ask if you think a xeno equivalent to the AMR in terms of impact on enemy players would be acceptable?

## How would you make it better:

Short of removing it, either:
-Providing more options to counter, such as forcing them to at least be in a screen range, similar to boilers (although they wouldn’t be much of a sniper at that point). Or maybe giving xenos a long-range option to counter it? Such as significantly increasing boiler vision; unlike xenos, at least marines could still counter that with fire supports. Increase boiler vision to 2 screens, reduce AMR scope to 2 screens for example. Not good fix suggestions, just spitballing.

-Drastically scaling back the impact they can have, either decreasing some combination of firerate, damage, interrupt/shake, etc.

I don’t know where exactly the problem lies, I don’t know too much about balance or specific values. All I know is it doesn’t feel good in the game, either for me or the people I’ve talked to in game, from both sides; as it stands it seems to take away more than it brings.

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Here is my feedback (admittedly, kinda toxic) I submitted a while ago, it did get an answer (that it was relayed to author).

PR:

Heavy Sniper Part 2 - The Heavying #6163

What do you feel could be better:

This is extremely broken. AMR can do up to 450 DMG with one shot, but for some reason Kaga thought that was not enough, and now it also gives stun and slowdown. Why? There is no reason, and cast time (that you can reduce with a spotter anyway) doesn’t redeem this at all. AMR already was insanely strong (I played as and against it). One of the rounds I just kept shooting the queen, so she could never even go for a screech, as she was instantly losing 450 hp any time she tried to attack. This is extremely lame.

How would you make it better:

Just put this off TM, there is no reason to buff AMR, if anything it should be nerfed.

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amr is literally just sniper but worse designed

it has no dynamic ammo usage, meaning less expression on the users end, just aim and pray. it requires two walls to block and you cant block it with a sister xeno, meaning less expression on the receivers end.

not sure why this pr was ever made, ever tm’d, or ever merged. its just sniper but more damage and less design.

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The AMR is S-tier due to the fact it can break hive doors and walls. I do not see enough AMR specs abuse both the aimed shot and regular left clicking. If you do both, you put an insane amount of pressure on xenos due to its ministun/damage. It’s enough to tilt a queen trying to do its usual solo cap nurospam.

Ammo is a nonissue due to you being the safe spec. The other specs are usually bald and die at first contact so all the req points are your priority.

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me when im sweating as warrior but one lmb from amr breaks lunge and im ded

(also instant)
(Also works through doors)
(Also unblockable by teammates)

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it’s like boiler, but it can only really hit one enemy at a time, requires two people to really be useful, and the structures it damages can be infinitely repaired and replaced for free.

skill issue tbh

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It’s like boiler if boiler could glob from 3 screens away; but instead of glob being an AOE gas attack it just immediately gibs one marine that it hits. Also you don’t see it flying at you, it just instantly hits you without warning and immediately takes you out of the game permanently without any counter.

It can hit you through cades, only solid walls stop it. So it’s a skill issue on your part, you can sit behind solid walls and not play the game and never die to it

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its crazy how every single statement in this message is completely wrong hoooly shiit

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i propose we remove it from the game until its properly balanced but seeing as u want ideas aside from that uhh

remove hp % based damage bar one exception

in reference to above introduce a new mechanic where unique-action, instead of bolting the gun, loads another bullet(?). reduce mag size to lets say, 4 shots

return hp % based damage when all 4 bullets(?) are loaded into one shot, forfeiting a whole magazine for one mega shot

this’ll add a form of micromanagement of ammunition thus forcing the amr to pick and choose when to use their mega shot to not let it go to waste seeing as its a whole magazine.

bring back flat damage values and remove the stun and slow. also remove wall penetration unless its the mega-shot
base shot should be 100 damage, 2 bullets 150 and 3 bullets 200 damage. i’d imagine these all would have relatively high AP so no one is truly safe ig, i would also limit it to roughly 200 so a runner isnt insta-gibbed by something off screen. (which is always lame)

or something, i whipped this up pretty fast so it probably sounds like ass but idrc its just food for thought anyways

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I only suggested “improvements” cause I assumed devs would be more receptive to feedback that way

but no honestly it just needs to be removed alltogether imo

so help me if this gets hit with an “improve not remove” :clown_face:

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I genuinely prefer the regular sniper over the AMR - and to me, most of these posts seem like salting because x killed me rather than actual problems. The regular sniper has better and more useful dps and utility. Shooting open doors or through a xeno is a triviality that helps in rare edge cases with the AMR. It really barely matters at all.

The only thing the AMR has going for it is higher alpha-strike damage -which hasn’t been a big enough difference for me to actually care for it over the normal sniper and its higher RoF. I routinely find myself setting up more kills with the regular sniper while the most helpful thing you’re doing with the AMR are nearly pointless flicker-stuns and long-ranged door clearing.

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You can cancel a boiler’s glob (or any ability, really) if there is less than 2 xenos standing between the shot.
You can instakill a crit xeno if there is less than 2 xenos blocking the shot.
I’ve seen this happen lots of times, it is not a “triviality” or a “rare edge case” and it does matter.

The only thing the AMR doesn’t have is incendiary, if it also set xenos on fire, it would be a straight upgrade over the regular sniper.

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marinemain not dismiss broken mechanics as “ided” challenge impossible

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This is a triviality:

  1. You don’t have the ammo supply to just interrupt infinite boiler shots
  2. You can’t tell when other xenos are using their ability as 95% of them have no telegraph, it’s basically an RNG effect

Most of the time xenos go crit, it wouldn’t have mattered whether you had the AMR or regular sniper - either the xeno is dragged behind cover before a followup shot, or there was nobody blocking anyway. In the rare case that there is someone trying to block the shot, the regular sniper’s flak ammo ALSO hits the crit xeno past the blocker.

Incendiary’s benefit is mostly just interference action. I hardly find it useful - like a little tickle of annoyance for a xeno player that is dealt with inside of 10 seconds unless the player is dumb (or very confident).

 

Again most of these complaints just strike me as “new thing bad, I ded pls nerf”.

I gave the AMR a chance to impress me and it failed to live up to my expectations. It astonishes me that anyone wants it nerfed.

It’s new(ish, now), it can shoot through a wall or a xeno which is kind of cool but mostly just thematic. The sprite looks cooler, it’s more soulful aesthetically than the normal sniper - but it is a full on downgrade in actual performance.

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Just from this sentence alone I can see that you don’t play this game as a xenomorph (or have ever observed a boiler as a ghost).

Thank you for your valuable input!

When a xeno goes crit or has the sprite of “crit/nearly crit” the AMR can instakill them with one shot, you cannot compare this to flak as flak’s damage is laughable compared to how much the AMR does.

This also shows that you don’t realize how to best utilize incendiary ammo on the regular sniper the way that actually good sniper specs do.

EDIT: I went and looked at the code for flak/AMR, flak does ~22.5 damage to targets 1 or 2 tiles away, not sure what AP but that’s the best case.
AMR does 125 at minimum, more depending on what it hits and how charged it is (this is where the 450 damage value is gained that OP stated), AMR loses 20% dmg (slightly more if a bigger xeno is blocking the shot) per thing it has to go through to hit.

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If you want to have a lazy (first idea off the top of my head that wasn’t just “nerf damage”) AMR nerf just split its ammo into wallpiercing/microstun, where it retains full damage on both damage types.

If you REALLY want to nerf it you can split it into three ammo types (Full damage, Microstun, or Wallpiercing). Full damage gets current AMR damage stats while the others have nerfed damage + their special ability.

Both options would nerf the AMR but you would need to have someone sprite new ammo mags for it.

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best part about this means that in any case where a xeno tries to block AMR from shooting someone in crit, it will have an 100% chance success rate of killing unless either, the blocking xeno is large and the crit xeno is basically out of crit, the crit xeno has warding and enough HP to last 100 damage, or if there are multiple blocking xenos and the crit xeno still has enough hp, all of which either aren’t very impactful to the outcome or just not really happening most of the time.

AMR just discourages both teamwork and adapting to situations, you just press m1 or use aimed shot and win, no need to worry about what the xenos are doing or what ammo you have loaded

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19

as an avid amr player, remove this shit

the amount of rat shit i can perform is abysmal with this gun
if you want suggestions on how to balance this gun, better to fiddle with superslow without any stun, with only wall penetrating capabilities, not an instant wall destroyer

otherwise with as it is, this shit is a point and click adventure game that i need tokens in the form of requisitioning ammo to play

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Having played AMR a few times and fought against it plenty of times, its essentially just a point and click adventure for marines, and painful to fight against as xeno. The usual argument I see though is that its just a worse sniper in terms of DPS (However I don’t like sniper either).

It was meant to be a support weapon, and after being swapped to the focus mechanic its still not a support weapon.

My suggestion was that it should focus on taking down walls in a 3x3 area while applying a debuff instead of the high damage. This forces marines to follow up and makes it an actual support weapon.

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