using the MOU as it is now, i feel SO slow when trying to kill anything with the delay. i feel legitimately slower now than i did before the nerf happened. the balance to the MOU was the accuracy malus when wielding it so, at the very least, if you were good enough to machine fire it, your accuracy would go down the drain. but now you have BOTH the accuracy malus AND the reduced fire rate.
were the supposed “macro cheaters” really that rampant and that imposing that the devs in their AMAZING wisdom decided to go
”huh, well - might as well fuck over players that actually got good with the weapon because of macro abusers”
honestly, just remove the gun at this point. unironically.
real talk, a gun that is designed around its damage being proportional to the user’s input rate without any sort of hard cap is bound to be a terrible idea in this sort of community and yes, it was that bad a problem if maintainers needed to step in because it was very very easy to abuse, the gun has the best burst capability in the game and doing that extremely quickly makes it insane
I’ve used the crap out of the MOU since late August when I see they changed the breach cooldown and didn’t even notice it was changed. My performance with the MOU has stayed consistent and effective as a non-macro manual loader. With that said I’d say whatever they did do to it was successful in hard capping macro users while not punishing manual loaders.
MOU is still a very deadly burst damage weapon, and retains good accuracy if you aren’t spamming the trigger outside PB range.
The gun is not designed exclusively around input rate = dmg. That’s generalizing the weapon, design of the weapon, and playstyle it promotes entirely. It’s a very unique weapon because ss13 combat is weird.
Flech was an alternative to buckshot. It was powerful in pressuring groups of opponents (especially in cramped spaces) or unstunnable opponents, while buckshot is powerful in securing kills on opponents quickly through burst dmg and stun. Flech is heavily limited in its ability to secure kills outside of being used as an opener - even with quickreloading, as simple spacing/running away (because you must spriteclick with MOU to hit all pellets due to low accuracy), using diagonals, etc allows an opponent to get away easily without a supreme positional advtg. Since it’s nearly CQC too, and you largely will want to operate in and around xeno ability range, you are very limited in when and where you can output dmg against groups of enemies. As it doesn’t function in PB range, if an enemy closes the range they are completely immune to your MOU flech. And as Flerpin said, if you wield a gun (especially with a lot of wield delay) and dont wait around half a second to a second or so? your first shot will always be really innacurate. This is very significant to mou in particular.
That is a genuine tradeoff for using stock or vgrip. Stock/vgrip increases your low accuracy period after wield. And if you have high recoil without those things, followup shots become impossible or extremely difficult (since its very difficult to spriteclick perfectly with nearly random recoil). Altho u can do skillful tricks like moving into the recoil to scroll your screen faster and make it easier to hit as recoil I feel moves your screen away from where you shoot more often then not.
The nerf is like a 30-40% nerf to good reloaders who can do it under a second which is huge when your entire gun’s design is based on dmg pressure and zoning because now you lose a lot of kill pressure too against enemies. It doesn’t hurt bad playstyles (like people who just hang back and wait to instakill enemies with teammates), but does hurt people who want to max their dps (because maxing your dps to its fullest is often an unoptimal and risky but fun/flashy play that is made possible with quickreloading). Using percent is not a really good metric its like a drop of like 50-60 dps to like 180 dps or something which isnt nearly as useful. alongside being much more predictable because the time to reload is so long.
Mou flech is mainly useful on frontline since its just better against t3s and slow t2s and in cramped positions. Backline is easiest with flamer. M37 is more generalist being useful both on front and backline (and helps in many situations to defend teammates from evil creatures like lurkers, warriors, rounys, and sometimes spitters/senti). Mou slugs is unfightable in many positions both backline and frontline by t1/t2 and is limited mainly by how good the person is at clicking a fast thing at range (which is hard in open spaces But very possible but still requires a good followup and decent position to win insta).
Flamer and Mou flech are dps supports, do big dmg so enemy cant do much, but also ff a lot so may be forced into solo play or playing around people who wont run from you as if you were a beno. Flamer does similar burst dmg to MOU in good situations but does it instantly instead of spread over the course of 3 shots and has other utility alongside it. M37 and Mou slug is stun support so enemy cant do much. Flamer also limits battlefield options for enemy and is easy to use. All secondaries have situational usecases that are powerful when understood and utilized especially when swapping a lot with mk2, m39, m4ra, or other weapons which also takes a lot of experience and understanding and can be fought with experience and understanding too. Mou is not as impressive as you might think which is why the people who use it to its fullest are often just experienced mou users who have put a lot of practice in. The gun rewards game sense a lot with soft, temporary pressure, not that it isn’t useful.
Quickreloading wasn’t busted because the playstyle it supported wasn’t really busted. It was just effective in its own niche and had situationally strong utility. In a lot of situations, the mk2 was better, in a lot of situations, the mou was better. And it’s not busted because plenty of counterplay exists and its output is heavily limited by its situationalness. And also its the most fun in the game. If you want an actually op gun, look at the mk2 which is just simply powerful in every aspect, and the mou would be nothing without it. If you don’t swap a lot you are heavily limited even with quickreloading because quickreloading itself is a situationally applicable technique which you only usually wanna use like 1-3 times in succession at most unless your fighting a big group.
And swapping itself is limited because depending on whether you reload your mou or not before you swap you can land yourself in an unideal situation pretty quickly and lose out on valuable dps especially if enemy knows how to play around you. So if you aren’t playing from a mk2 safe position there and instead were trying to push your luck and use MOU you could land yourself in a bad pit when all you have is mk2 and no m37 or m44 heavy or grenades or teammates or w/e. It gets complicated when considering multiple layers of counterplay to your situational weaknesses and often players aren’t good enough to cover their situational weaknesses well (and in general, human players usually leave their defenses open and are easy to fight).
The unique fun part of the weapon is just reloading mid-combat tbh and that unique skill-based variability is what sets it apart from other weapons design-wise and makes it feel good to use, it is a much better and more satisfyingly designed weapon then every single other gun in the game. Mou actually makes sense and has a respectable niche. so the nerf’s only point was simply to target macro abusers, but simultaneously harmed legitemate players in the process
Can you do the stuff mou does without mou? Yeah with teammates, m39, and m4a3. Is it effective? Yeah when you know how to take advantage of the advantage it provides. Is it viable? Yeah. But does it require nerfs in order to fight? Not really. Is it better then mk2? Not really. Is it better then m37? A lot of the time yes, but only on the frontline and if no easy kills exist, but many xenos ARE easy kills, so m37 is often better to take. Is it better then flamer? Debateably (although after nerf probably no). Flamer gets kills so it wins games.
But heres something you can’t beat. Teamwork. Should we nerf teamwork? No because its the core of the game and groupfights are fun. How does MOU flech interact with teamwork? At times its solo flashyness vs group, but at times its group pressuring enemies to support and push. Most often though, it’s just stopping your teammates from walking into a ravager and dying. So it is teamwork gun
It becomes pretty easy to notice the innacuracy. Upon wield, there is a small (like half a second) point where if you shoot your shot is much more inaccurate, and this is present with all wielded guns just less noticeable because other guns have significantly higher accuracy and don’t really put all their dmg in 1 burst. If using lots of attachments its slightly more tolerable but really the biggest dps boost is just spriteclick 100% of the time and that works best. But spriteclick is counterable and you can lose like a third to two thirds of your dps if your not close and keeping in track with enemy movement and positioning optimally
mou weak on diagonals, and at range against moving targets. Mou is strong vs t2/t3, and cramped positions (so basically only the frontline). Other secondaries are better in other situations and arguably flamer/m37 is better (since fighting mou is much more forgiving then fighting m37/flamer, and both have higher immediate burst dmg). Without mk2 its useless - quickreloading is more situational then mk2 swapping despite seeming op at first glance. Thats because using your mou for a long time makes it easy to see whats coming so its easier to counterplay. Counterplay is abundant already so it doesn’t need predictable reloads (and further, this sacrifices a lot of the fun of the weapon). So the main utility of maximizing your dps is vs groups of enemies, which you reasonably cannot kill, but can flashily pressure to support your allies in pushes and stuff.
It’s not op, it’s a situationally powerful weapon with lots of counterplay. It rewards game sense a lot, and fighting it is largely game sense too.
Despite quickreloading being worse then mk2 swapping, it’s still the most fun part of the weapon and enables some fun group dpsing, and it hurts legitemate players a lot if this is slowed down a lot.
tl;dr tl;dr mou is fun because there’s a rhythm to it
the rhythm of xm-88 is spriteclicking like you’re playing fucking osu
the rhythm of mou-53 is keyboardmaxxing
yes using autohotkey to do the entire reloading action in .2 sec is cheating
no i dont think having a hotkey to pull shells into your hand and then manual reloading from there is cheating (spacebar→z→x→ammo hotkey→click click click→x→spacebar→z), if you can do that in <1.1 sec it’s still skill based. that said i dont know if you CAN do that in <1.1 sec, i think i’ll try it and record a video later
if i can do that in <1.1 sec then yeah i think it’s skillbased and we should cut the cooldown to like .6 sec or something
but ill be honest i doubt i can
me personally, i enjoy MOU by having 2 of them so this doesnt pose an issue to me but even that is very hotkey intensive so i see where @birb is coming from
And that is why regular shotgun suffers, because it shares ammo with MOU.
MOU should be some sort of a specialist sidegrade to regular shotgun, not just better at almost everything, but can’t take buckshot. I would argue for nerfing/reworking MOU further, so that while you can shot three times fast, but getting the fourth, fifth and sixth is comparable to M37, maybe even being surpassed by choked M37. Like HPR doesn’t outshine regular pulse rifle in all, but one thing. It trades modularity, speed, accuracy etc for sustained fire. What MOU sacrifaces to M37? Just buckshot. Judging by the wiki on vanilla guns, then it is a bit more recoil, less accuracy, almost zero muzzle attachements and no buckshot for better range, pretty much no scatter and massive rate of fire buff.
Anything M37 can do with anything other than buckshot, MOU does that better. So in comparsion to regular shotgun, MOU is OP in all situations, but buckshot.
Yeah, jack of all trades gun with the biggest ammount of attachement customisation combos is decent at everything, who would guess, lets say its OP.
MOU doesn’t have a nieche. M37 has a nieche of being able to use buckshot.
As I mentioned previously, maybe instead of just being nerfed, MOU should be reworked to have that burst damage ability, but being outclassed in sustained fire by choked M37.
This stuff is so weirdly constructed, like shooting flechette out of MOU is somehow “better at teamwork” because it is supposedly good against groups of enemies, or to pressure. Like you can’t just spray and pray your Mk2, or HPR, or M39 at group of enemies and achieve the same. No, it has to be magical MOU that does that. Slug MOU? Yeah sure, that is real support and untility. But flechette with its tight grouping that at best could hit three xenos standing next to eachother at the edge of the screen, like it matters.
I don’t understand it. How just pure DPS makes this gun a “teamwork gun” while slower firing choked M37 isn’t, or AP loaded pulse rifle?
I think there should generally be skill ceilings. Someone should NOT be able to basically instakill a T3 just because he’s that fast at reloading/uses cheats/etc. Skill expression is good and all, but there should be a cap.
Although, the ceiling needs to be designed well enough, and ideally not hurt regular gameplay. I’ve never used MOU, but from what I’ve seen, the nerf has affected regular players as well. I’ve also seen complaints about it being clanky to use, like accidentally opening the tube and getting punished with the CD.
but slugs are fine in m37 because m37 is more accurate at range and has more accuracy attachments. Mou slug is just strange tho, and obviously way better but probably won’t get nerfed anytime soon. But it still has weaknesses compared to m37’s reliability.
i dont think thats necessary. M39 ap already outclasses mou flech in sustained fire, m37 choke is either just not developed enough skill-wise or needs a like 10-20% dmg buff (because it shares a lot of the same weaknesses as mou since its a pellet gun alongside being lower range). I assume at a high level m37 choke with buckshot is a weaker, lower range version of MOU but carries more dmg in a single shot (which might create a viable or fun playstyle).
yeah its a good gun at that
what matters with zoning is scaring xenos away with dmg. if your threat is real (doing a lot of hp in a few shots) they will be forced to go away faster, thus you are safer. And since you can’t reliably follow up the dps with just mou, thats a moment mk2 swapping is best.
Pre-nerf ttks:
Crushers take 2 full reloads (which should be around 4.5-6 seconds minimum ttk not counting shield)
Ravagers take like 1 or 2 full reloads depending on how far they are but can be 1 with a mk2 swap (which should be around 3.5-5 seconds minimum ttk not counting shield or dash or berserker just killing you instead because to kill it requires like 2 and a half reloads since it can just get in pb range and then mou is useless)
Praes take same time as rav (3.5-5 seconds minimum ttk but can run away easily and usually uses cover and range more often then not to avoid your zoning)
Boilers aren’t supposed to be shot at (They usually stay at range or on weeds so its hard to leverage mou against them)
It’s very variable depending on the skill of the player, but even if you are a goat at reloading you aren’t gonna instakill alone most of the time. The most viable target for quickreloading against is charger crusher, but 9 times out of 10 all you do is zone them out of your group for a second and they run away (because marines dont follow up) and it requires 2 quickreloads in a row to work which is a long ass ttk. And even then, charger, rav, crusher, prae all have opportunities to wait for you and frac you if you make a single mistake - once they close the gap, since PB is bad on mou, you cannot realistically hit all your shots, and once your fracced you are basically forced to have minimal impact (because it’s harder to fight your guns weaknesses at that point without playing super duper defensive) or forced into surgery. If your allies are too lazy to help you (because the FF scare of flech is massive) then there is no infinite skill ceiling. You need support to do well, and give support for new players to do well too (by zoning enemies enemies like ravs). Quickreloading is a situational technique that while flashy is predictable (now especially so) and easily fightable with stuns, teamwork/caste synergy, etc.
You aid the front and it aids you, and at its best mou’s impact is making pushing generally easier and less of a headache. To accomplish this to a good degree you need better spacing, counterplay, teamwork, and/or awareness then your enemy. You must constantly risk your life to do this so mistakes in positioning or pushing your luck too much will easily get you -1d - the more you risk, the less you ignore the situational risks of using your gun, but the higher impact you get.
MOU –> Mk2 swapping next to a teaammate is far more likely to instakill anything then simply quickreloading, since then your dps is both immediate and completely accurate. Mou has a lot of weaknesses that make it easy to avoid shots if you know how and don’t position in 1*1s or w/e for more then a second or so, keep teamwork stuns up, keep escape routes up, etc. At a high level it really is just avoiding its dmg - which is its entire aggressive zoning playstyle, it must get close to your position in a risky way to zone (be in risk), but to approach it you have to be prepared too. It’s entirely a group fight gun so if it’s solo it’s easy to kill mou user and if your solo (especially without stuns, speed, or escape) in a cramped space you probably won’t die despite your terrible positioning, but you won’t be able to approach from that angle. Xenos have so many ways to avoid dmg and kill/disable a target easily that it really is a non issue - it has impact (and this impact encourages pushing and enjoyable fighting) but it’s not so significant as to be unbreakable or unfightable. It’s nice as marine to have weapons that genuinely pressure and zone enemies no matter how skilled they are because it equalizes the playing field. It’s nice to have weapons that don’t rely on stun to do a lot.
Mou can mainly leverage this pressure within very limited areas (cramped spaces, around teammates) so you can just control these cramped spaces and be fine, and realistically you see it coming from so far that you will never be instakilled by it unless you fuck up massively. It’s like dying to a m39 with ap except honestly its much more likely for that to happen then to die to mou flech as m39 ap is significantly easier to use and less forgiving to fight, so at most theres usually gonna be 1-2 mou flech players at most in a given round, and further m39 ap is much more accurate and better for sustained dps and no wield slowdown helps in cqc.
So yeah MOU impacts based on striking fear in ur enemies, and that’s why it’s so cool. But its a very fragile thing and xenos do have tools to deal with it if they understand the matchup. It has a respectable niche as a secondary weapon that while strong and effective, is unique and easy to fight once you get used to it because it doesn’t stun (although to thrive? that’s more difficult). This is a big part of why I say it’s the best designed gun in the game.
If my memory serves right, flechette was introduced before MOU and wasn’t changed much since. If it existed only for MOU, then it wouldn’t be in PFC vendors.
You are aware that vanilla MOU has wielded scatter 1, while vanilla M37 has wielded scatter 5 (going by wiki)? And yeah, M37 has access to EB and RC, but nothing else. Just slap underbarrel flashlight grip and you have 0 wielded scatter on MOU, which means slugs shoot out of MOU have 100% chance to go where you clicked. M37 even fully kitted will always have scatter, so always this RNG chance to shoot at the tile you did not click. This is where M37’s “reliability” goes out of the window. Even with worse accuracy, MOU user can always shoot second, or thrid slug and then reload. So even if both guns would be perfectly accurate, MOU slugger can make mistakes and still achieve what M37 user can’t.
At the range that accuracy matters (where slug still stuns and slows down) there isn’t much difference between MOU and M37, but again, even if there were, you can just almost immediately follow up with another shot, while M37 can’t.
Because you look at the perspective of every single marine weapon, I look at the perspective of regular marine shotgun. MOU outclasses it in every single case, but in one, which is buckshot.
M39 ap is well… restricted AP bullet. You compare PFC vendor near-infinite flechette to req/points restricted M39 AP.
Like any other, I would argue worse than just spraying with MK2.
It was made when long-term armor sunder was a thing, and sunder is gone, so it only still remains because of MOU. In m37 it’s effectively useless outside of the niche usecase where you just wanna fire ap forever using m37 choke (You won’t do much dmg, but you will do much annoying). If things were to change I don’t think it’d be a mou nerf, but a m37 flech buff
The accuracy is a more major factor then the scatter. Within 4 tiles (max stun range) your bullet won’t go out of its range via scatter, but rng accuracy will always be an issue if you don’t spriteclick using MOU. I don’t know how good or bad the accuracy is with slugs because I don’t use them tho so, my perspective is flawed here.
MOU is restricted, but I agree it would make sense to make flechette a restricted ammo type too.
I’d argue this only matters for slug. But m37 isn’t bad with slug, it’s just not MOU levels. MOU can get kills off slug stun much more reliably then m37 can simply because of a higher volume of bullets and power of chainstunning with allies. But buckshot is sorta the kill weapon for m37, and that gets kills much more reliably then MOU can (because it can be combod with just 1 person or solo or w/e and protects/supports allies just the same, and generally it’s just better vs t1/t2). Also flamer is better then m37 in a lot of ways but worse in a lot of ways too. Flamer is the gun to take when backliners dont want to hang out together tbh, Or when wanting to pierce groups of enemies with big bursts, zoning, and even tile obstruction (it’s like 200 dmg gauranteed if you direct hit w/ fire, altho very limited in finishing off things you crit with it). The best solo gun in the game is more often then not flamer because it has so much utility not just in 1 vs group fights but in 1v1s too.
MOU reliably protects you with its dmg, while mk2 fails to do so without a lot of teamwork because burst dmg at range is immediately effective while sustained fire can be dodged, avoided, walked away from at any time, etc. Mk2 is a much softer zoning gun then MOU, and thats why MOU is strong in its playstyle and why it’s worth taking it. And when zoning an enemy you don’t want them to even be able to get near you before taking a ton of dmg.
Not to say mk2 isn’t effective at zoning, it’s amazing at zoning t2s and t1s especially (but expensive vs t3s), but compared to MOU its like apples and oranges in this scenario. M37 would be as good as mou in this task if it wasn’t a melee weapon, but its still useable at cqc zoning and in open/closed areas when you want to parry enemies.
Seems to be kind of impossible, or never something never did before. Certain guns can change ammo properties, but ammo can’t change gun behaviour on one gun, but not on the other, so there is no way to buff flechettes just on M37 other than making another exclusive attachement like choke is.
Yes it matters. I used slug on M37 too much to not notice how it happens quite often. And as far as I remember max slug “effect” range isn’t 4 tiles, but 6. With the exception of barrel attachements, MOU and M37 have almost exactly the same roster to choose from. Vanilla MOU compared to vanilla M37 is much better, attachements don’t help M37 in this scenario, the gap moved to one side, but is still the same.
The accuracy for slug was increased last year, but that goes for every single shotgun that uses it. Both M37 and MOU. They now pretty much reliably hit up to the slug stun distance.
Or just unique ammo for MOU only that does not touch M37. 16 gauge, or something. Then it could be freely balanced.
With both of those quotes you admit that MOU is just better at using flechette and slugs. What does it leave M37? With buckshot only. This is where “MOU has a nieche” argument goes out of the window. MOU is good at many things, M37 has a buckshot nieche. It shouldn’t be like that. Just as HPR doesn’t do better most of the things Mk2 does, neither should MOU.
But flamer is just a different beast to M37, becasue flamer is not a shotgun, neither it uses shotgun ammo. Flamer is Area Denial, Damage over Time and weed clearer with different fuels having some other utility on top. M37 doesn’t have any of those roles (unless you count incid slugs that really only exist groundside if xenos didn’t melt them). Two completly different weapons, for me it is hard to say if flamer is OP in comparsion to shotgun, apples to oranges.
So in comparsion to M37 shotgun, MOU is overpowered. That is my stance. In comparsion to MOU, M37 has a nieche where it is better and that is it. And I think it shouldn’t be the case just as HPR isn’t strictly better than Mk2.
mou takes a lot of skill for all the reasons @birb listed
i’m not going to repeat the essay Birb wrote, so instead: saying MOU is OP is like saying Warrior is OP because muh lungecap
landing the lunge and stepping over to hit the fling exposes you to a lot more risk for a cap, but usually guarantees success if you get them through the resin door. Those 2 tiles you step may not seem like much, but that second and a half and 2 tiles you use to do it is easily the difference between a grenade or shotgun rush that kills you
if you’re the marine getting lungecapped though it just feels OP, doesn’t it?
MOU is similar high risk/high reward gameplay. It requires good zoning, good control of keybinds and if you make a 1 second mistake you’re dead
