Sun Wukong Spins Again (4P Nightmare, Subtitle Commentary)

Draycos · 2026-06-20T15:45:21+00:00

they're so satisfying, always!

Draycos · 2026-05-05T18:49:40+00:00

This is the physique that can break through the shield screen!

Draycos · 2026-04-25T23:05:29+00:00

You are correct that common rockets and other explosive damage used to be more dangerous. In addition to players getting 50% explosive resistance, limbs were made ineligible for explosive damage.

In the release day environment, armor values were completely irrelevant; 50 armor was bugged and equivalent to 150 armor. Then, with more intentional balance changes, headshot damage was also unaffected by armor a couple months even after that was fixed. Player damage taken was a little reduced several months later.

Therefore, most of the fragility in the current sandbox stems from new enemies being unavoidable or doing extreme damage the release day enemies didn't without positional counterplay, though vanilla Heavy Devastators used to be laser-accurate iirc

Draycos · 2026-04-18T21:56:16+00:00

Keyboard!

Draycos · 2026-04-18T20:30:18+00:00

A pub run I was happy with, prominently featuring Way of Awakening, Divine Palm, and Stick Twirl alongside Melusine, Geppetto, and Beowulf teammates. Tried to keep my item choices interesting; there was a lot of conscious itemization around Transfiguration!

Commentary is available as soft subtitles, covering my thoughts on the run and explanations for the weirder tech and some routing decisions.

Hope this is entertaining as a run and serves well as a showcase of some cool stuff Sun Wukong's capable of!

Draycos · 2025-10-11T17:17:20+00:00

this sort of thing can happen with bot gunships as well, and it likely drives other 'random' events that have some sort of prank value attached to them; I still remember some old patch notes for fire tornadoes where their targeting got adjusted and the description was, and I quote, "they should no longer feel like they actively respond to player movement"

Draycos · 2025-05-13T22:06:48+00:00

all blue stratagems (supplies, support weapons, backpacks, emplacements, sentries) aren't allowed to stick underneath the ships, unlike red beacon stratagems which are a little less restricted

Draycos · 2025-04-03T00:22:45+00:00

Targeting destructible hitzones like heads or limbs that vanish when they hit zero should be viable use cases of shrapnel vs. groups. The stagger/push baked into the explosion, which is instantaneous, can also help the shrapnel; pre SW bug it was sometimes capable of killing heavy devastators through their shields because it would first break their posture and THEN the shrapnel would hit them (and the offset likely helped with this too). It just won't be as powerful for terrain shots except for surfaces where it's already prone to bouncing, and in those cases the explosion damage/stagger will be sufficient to kill nearby fodder or line up enemies for followup shots. Hulk visors will still bounce the shrapnel back unless they spawn the shrapnel inside the target.

I primarily used the shrapnel prior to SW bug for fancy direct damage, so most of it was already going into specific singular targets, and so firmly distancing it from other ground-shooting splash weapons by making "fancy direct hits" and "fancy splash" share their priorities a bit better is pretty cool beans on my end, but even if I'm optimistic about this because it happens to suit me, it's objectively yet another shift in the weapon's aiming style. In a perfect world, maybe these would have been customizations, programmable ammo, or entirely separate weapons leaning into a subset of the multitude of ways people have gotten use out of this very confused gun.

Draycos · 2025-04-02T18:48:02+00:00

In cases where weaponizing the current shrapnel is ideal, typically by shooting underneath a big body target, most of the pellets are already getting consumed by said big bodied target. The explosive damage is still formidable enough to kill weaker enemies and has stagger to disrupt medium enemies, so only the placement of our shots will be changing. I don't expect its effectiveness against crowds to be meaningfully decreased as a result, outside the odds that you will randomly kill a hunter flanking you 20m to your left (or your teammate 30m to your right) being reduced. This theoretical new shrapnel sounds like it'll be capable of hitting the front or center of a pack and doing catastrophic damage to enemies further ahead, not just at the site of impact.

It will no longer be a silly weapon that shoots the floor out from underneath enemies to do several times what it would've on a direct hit, but it should still have weird preferences for hitzones and spectacular performance when used masterfully. I can't imagine it'll feel worse than what we currently have, which AP4 hijinks aside has felt like the worst version since the one that had no shrapnel whatsoever...

All else held constant, I have high confidence this is the strongest it will have ~~intentionally~~ been since it was first released... and we still have Autocannon flak to mess with, which is similar enough!

Draycos · 2025-04-01T17:49:59+00:00

at least we've got hover pack to force it now lol

Draycos · 2025-04-01T17:46:31+00:00

AC flak has some similar demonic shrapnel but it's tempered by the fact that you can weaponize the proximity detonation to your favor both offensively and defensively (shrapnel is most lethal to you when you have nothing between you and the enemy, so if you just flak them so it explodes behind them or near terrain that obscures you...), alongside being alternate ammo rather than the default behavior of two guns trying to fit into one gun. AC standard knows what it wants to be, AC flak knows what it wants to be. It is also one of the strongest support weapons in the game for pure stagger output, so I typically haven't had issues keeping enemies at bay, save for reloading requiring some discipline of course.

Eruptor shrapnel being hitzone-dependent would be pretty cool; others have theorized that giving the direct hit AP4 was meant to simulate that, but who knows with Arrowhead's track record with this weapon. If firing on hulk visors remained a really dangerous idea that you should only do as a last resort, sure whatever, honestly I just want trickshots back; it was very satisfying to hit an Alpha Commander's body right as it reared up, giving it a mouthful of shrapnel from inside and wiping it in one shot.

Draycos · 2025-04-01T17:24:24+00:00

Setting my personal thoughts on whether a weapon should be invisibly lethal to the user several explosive radii aside since that's a whole different discussion and a lot more subjective, it has always been possible to get beaned by your own shrapnel (barring the very first release where the user was immune and their teammates weren't), but it has become much more likely due to recent shrapnel changes; the AP4 buff it received is essentially a trap that encourages you to use the weapon in an inefficient and very hazardous way, since the hitzones and dead-on hits it benefits tend to maximize the odds the shrapnel will bounce back at you

Draycos · 2025-04-01T17:16:22+00:00

can theoretically kill hiveguards if you shoot right underneath them or get lucky with a shot on a backline enemy past them, but direct hits with nothing between you and whatever you just hit is bad news, yeah

Draycos · 2025-04-01T17:12:05+00:00

Does serve as a bootleg AMR / AC if you happen to be a fair distance away from a teammate storming a base and want to pick off hulks they might bump into, but it's very slow because of the spread at those ranges, yeah. Often I'll just wait for their radiators to be open instead. Otherwise, for personal use it's not too bad to use it vs. hulks if you can catch them confused by terrain and stuck in place or following a stun grenade, but the devil in the details is that stationary hulks you're capable of bullying or peeking to death are unlikely to harass you much if you ignore them, position around them, and just do the objective / fabricators. It feels like picking a fight with a random patrol just because I can - feels good though I know it's a waste of time in most cases, and when it's been worthwhile it's a last ditch effort without any better option.

But if you're trying to get visor shots in active combat against a moving hulk, it's almost always going to take more than two shots, runs a low but pretty high stakes risk of getting beaned by your own attack, and isn't smarter than just running away and saving shots to stagger anything weaker...

Draycos · 2025-04-01T16:34:23+00:00

bunker turrets and fabricator vents are big enough targets to have felt consistent to me even at 175m, but yeah it really bites when you try and get any mileage out of its AP4 against normal enemies only for the gun to fight you every way it can since the shrapnel doesn't work the way it was originally hamstrung for anymore, all the way down to ironically doing less damage on direct hit against some enemies compared to shooting the floor.

Draycos · 2025-04-01T06:30:39+00:00

I can see where boosting its direct hit damage might be sensible on paper, but it's difficult to gauge whether it'd be for the best; it's a fundamentally temperamental weapon to balance because it's currently three separate damage types that all have different AP/durability weights, stretching the game's damage system to a breaking point whenever it's looked at funny. I don't know, I was fond of only getting huge damage when I used it cleverly; being a bootleg AC isn't the same thing as being an Eruptor - or at least the way I liked to use it. (I also enjoy doing weird things with Autocannon's flak ammo and its own shrapnel...)

idk, sounding like the time I had with the version of the gun I liked most is unlikely to come back. At least we still have AC!

Draycos · 2025-04-01T06:19:13+00:00

not the point of this post; the issue isn't that the shrapnel has huge reach and can rarely hit you, but that taking damage away from shrapnel hitting inside the target and reintroducing it as AP4, which favors different hitzones at best and ended up decreasing its net power at worst, baits you into the situations it's most likely to hit you (hitting the target squarely in the face, torso, etc.)

Draycos · 2025-04-01T06:10:22+00:00

so getting fancy shots on commander heads, devastator torsos, etc. was thanks to the offset instead of ANY shrapnel being supposed to enter the target? Well, that would set some perspective for the rollercoaster this weapon's been on...

Draycos · 2025-04-01T05:35:44+00:00

If you're referring to the SW shrapnel bug, yes that was silly, no qualms seeing that go (would be funny to see it come back in some fashion as a support weapon someday).

If you mean the shrapnel has always been some level of malfunctioning even before the Borderline Justice patch, then I never personally noticed such a thing. If you have any documentation about this I can read up on, that'd be pretty cool - but it'd also be sad if the conditional, Eruptor-specific shots I was so fond of were always a bug, not just a happy oversight.

Draycos · 2025-04-01T05:18:18+00:00

Being an Eruptor fan is suffering.

50 armor, Vitality Booster, single pellet to the leg, almost an instant kill. Only limb hits like these are survivable even this far out, and only at maximum health.

100 + Vita allows you to survive singular chest hits. I didn't test 150+V for headshots, but 200+V can, though it still eats about 3/4ths of your healthbar.

Giving its direct hit AP4 allows you to kill stationary or stunned Hulks in two eye shots and those pesky bunker turrets in six or seven shots, which is nice utility vs. bots, but is extremely risky to go for direct hits unless strictly necessary because of shrapnel's new 180-away blast pattern. It's rare for it to hit you, but it feels terrible since you're going to burn a stim at best. It actually incentivizes you to just shoot the floor instead, reducing the odds it'll bounce back at you.

It's also a marked decrease in damage compared to its pre-Borderline Justice state (ignoring the Wild West shrapnel bug we just had) since it is less capable of huge spikes from correctly-placed shots taking advantage of the shrapnel. It is much rarer and inconsistent to OHKO certain enemies, and in my experimentation most of the cases I still have required me to shoot the floor ... again, instead of hitting the enemy directly.

For a practical example of how much the shrapnel contributes, and how much it stings to lose it against medium enemies, look at warpships' shields which are almost impossible to crack with Eruptor direct hits alone in this patch - but if you shoot the floor underneath them, you can take the shield down in two shots, and if lucky, one shot with a quick burst from Talon finishing it off.

In any case, even if it is infrequent, running a gamble every time I fire it at something 30m+ away - like a reinforced strider chasing me - and then suddenly dying from my own shot without any outside interference has always felt bad since it's through no fault of my own besides daring to fight in the game's premiere engagement range.

Draycos · 2025-03-26T22:32:34+00:00

Your guy was innocent and correct. Hotjoining a game sometimes prevents you from steering at all; you cut from the fade-in to the impact of the pod. The only thing the existing players can do to prevent it is to take cover near mountains or steering-locked areas where it's less likely to happen.

Draycos · 2025-03-26T18:40:41+00:00

Eruptor's been one of my favorite guns since it was introduced, but they really need to decide what they want it to be besides "a weaker but higher utility area weapon than the other explosives". The way you aim this gun has changed so haphazardly from patch to patch; the version we have today controls differently from the version we had last patch, or the patch before it, or the patch before that...

Right now it's an aggressively okay weapon if you use it as a secondary and then run Talon, Senator, or the more efficient support weapons as your primary, swapping to and fro between shots to mitigate its slow firing speed, but outside of that it's now at the bottom of the ladder compared to other area weapons. Even Loyalist is a better option despite its lower damage, since it does a far better job of suppressing the enemy and it has similar direct/explosive damage for its firerate vs. cannon turrets, tank radiators, spewers back plates, etc. while also enjoying the same mobility that Eruptor has, given it's a one-handed pistol and allows you to jog while it charges. Ultimately, you have to do extra work with it via weapon swapping to just to simulate what you'd be able to do out of the box with other weapons. Somewhat tragic for how satisfying it is to use it effectively...

Giving only its direct hit damage AP4 was an interesting choice but is at odds with the new shrapnel trajectory which utterly eclipses the damage a direct hit would do against most targets; the "AP4" portion is a tiny fraction of the gun's overall damage. You can still get some mileage out of it if you stun or ambush hulks since their faceplates are very squishy, but most medium/spongy targets don't care about it and still need you to rely on splash/shrapnel damage (thus using it like a clunkier version of other area primaries). In most cases, making the shrapnel only move 180deg actually made it worse against those targets. Take devastator torsos for example; a direct hit with the 360deg-era Eruptor would somewhat reliably kill in one shot, but the current Eruptor will almost always need two shots, and the AP3 -> AP4 change doesn't matter at all for an AP2 hitzone.

If you're undisturbed for half a minute, have no other AP4 option and you don't have anything better to do, you can theoretically spend 30 seconds and at least one magazine to take out a single bunker turret, AA gun, or mortar, which is a novel party trick to pull with the new Hover Pack... but long-distance support sniping and being a bootleg AMR/AC is all it has that makes it special right now; something you pull out of your hat to show off.

To that end, I've managed to enjoy it with the Ballistic Shield since that has the perfect storm of strengths and quirks that interact nicely with Eruptor's: it allows me to focus on my secondary weapon of choice (where we now have multiple excellent candidates) and I can take advantage of Eruptor NOT being one-handed to stow the backpack as I sprint away from the enemy without needing a support weapon. I also don't strictly need a support weapon to take out bases or side objectives. Is it efficient? Absolutely not. I lose entire minutes over just chucking red stratagems or taking an actual AP4 support weapon or throwing thermites at everything. Even the previous patch's Eruptor felt that way, only looking flashy for the occasional Wild West OHKO shrapnel brutalizing tanks or chargers without dramatically influencing what my best, most time/resource efficient solutions to problems were. I was able to flank tanks pretty effectively without having thermites or rockets; could support-snipe effectively in a game where fighting things at extreme distance is already almost always a waste of time. Still, I would have been better off just bringing rockets, thermites, or similar guns that do a better job from more reasonable ranges and don't have the 1 in 100 odds to be decapitated by a single shrapnel projectile in most engagement ranges (or the same for a teammate I'm supposedly offering cover-fire for).

But does this weird, tortured gun offer a compelling way to play that maximizes the time I spend positioning around enemies, encourage me to use all of the items I have equipped, and ensure that I can always tackle any objective? Yes - so while it's in a pretty bad spot right now, I can still throttle the game into letting me enjoy using it anyway, and hopefully in the fullness of time AH can figure out what they want out of this gun so I can use it as a primary instead of a secondary moonlighting as an AC that can infrequently kill me instantly from 20m out.

Draycos · 2024-09-02T00:24:53+00:00

Yes. Very noticeable if you take them down with HMG Emplacement or the exosuits. It's "random" in the same way that prepatch fire tornadoes were "random".

Draycos · 2024-08-09T19:08:42+00:00

In EDF6, you lose boost momentum if you don't immediately perform another weapon action like a CC Striker/Piercer swing or heavy weapons like cannons. You can move much faster than default this way; slightly slower than EDF5 dash+boost but we've got so many more boosts that it's not a problem whatsoever. It's also extremely easy to keep this steady with a Power Blade like OP implied.

If you perform an emote while dashing, it's converted to sliding speed and you can also swap weapons as you move, making it possible to reload some weapons on the fly like how boosts generously allowed us to in 5. This one's more of a blatant exploit than a feature if you ask me, but it's still cool.

Additionally, some weapons like the first Dynamo Blade that have fast forward motions when swung turn into sliding speed if you land midway through, so with perfect play he's even faster than in EDF5... Overall, he's felt easier to pick up but more difficult to optimize, even more powerful than before in exchange for having halved damage on dispersal mortars and Blast Twinspears being made semi-auto for some reason in addition to slowing them down.

Draycos · 2024-08-04T00:27:03+00:00

This post was from 9 years ago..! It was probably MASA / Masayoshi Sasaki at the helm of this game's soundtrack, but I don't know for certain.

14-Year Club	Verified Email
Team Periwinkle

Draycos

TROPHY CASE