Tridents Are The New Tulus: Update 4.5 Highlights

Fellow Pilots,
Long, long ago (probably before some of you rugrats were even born), Tulumbas and Pins were VERY unforgiving weapons.  Along with their short range cousins the Pinãtas, they discharged full salvos every time the pilot touched the "fire" button.  If you missed, you had nothing until they reloaded.  In the case of Tulumbas, this took eighteen long seconds.

Pilots who utilized the Russian Death Button setup (Tulus and Pins on a Griffin) were patient people. They stalked you, and they popped up about three times a minute to get as much of you as they could; if you were facing them you used your own jump as a countermeasure or equipped an Ancile on your Lancelot.

Everything changed with an update in the summer of 2017, when the aforementioned weapons became continuous reloaders with a variable discharge.  You could fire none, some, or all ... and RDB pilots were EVERYWHERE.  The build was so dominant that Tulus got nerfed a bit almost immediately after.  Tulumbas got lost again when Shocktrains and Dash robots were introduced, but have obviously enjoyed quite a resurgence in the Spectre dominated period we are currently experiencing.

You know where I'm going - Trident, the heavy 600m rocket launcher, was finally updated this week to fire variable amounts and reload continuously.  The rate of fire has changed from roughly 3 rockets every 13 seconds to 6 rockets in ten seconds and another every three after that.  Effectively, this results in more than double the previous damage.  A Trident Fury with level 12 rockets could deal about 70K damage every thirteen seconds IF it nailed the target with the full salvo.  With the new firing mechanics and MK2 (don't forget boosters), it will be 150K in the first ten seconds.  If you should miss with the first rockets, you can now release the button and readjust before sending the rest of the payload.

Bulwark?  No problem.  Once the energy shield is down, Tridents will damage the bot immediately, disregarding the physical shield.  Stealth?  Whatever!  Just wait for your target to get locked down by the forty-eight Menders and Pursuers on the field.  Trident is almost sure to be the new Tulu, the "it" weapon among pilots who had a few collecting dust in the hangar.

Our theory - Pixonic is working hard to get "old economy" weapons and robots either gone or fully upgraded through the MK2 cycle.  No one is going to run their Destrier once they get a Stalker, and no one is going to run their Stalker once they've obtained a Pursuer.  Just as the Shocktrain nerf created room for gold and silver expenditures on Tulumbas, the recent rebalance created space for the new "Pantheon" robots by seriously weakening Spectre.  Dragoons almost instantly replaced Tridents, but now the Tridents have their moment in the upgrade spotlight.

We are upgrading our Tridents, as should you.  Keep your Game of Thrones in mind: like winter, a nerf is always coming.  That's how this works - first they give, then they take away.

Pantheon Robots 

When you swim in whale-infested waters, the new OP content shows up immediately.  Update 4.5 introduces the "Pantheon" of Ares, Hades, and Nemesis.  If you haven’t done so already, we recommend trying them in the Skirmish game mode, as they are currently available to test for another 2 days.  Here is some basic info for those that have questions or haven't seen the Skirmish yet. 

Don’t shoot the newcomers when their ability is active.  They are temporarily INVINCIBLE, and storing your energy for a massive attack on YOU.  The more damage you do to them during the ability, the more damage they do in return.  You can tell they are using their ability because a purple sphere will materialize in game; a purple bar appears below their health bar.  Wait for the ability to conclude before resuming your attack. 

The ability durations are eight seconds for the Ares, six seconds for Hades, and four seconds for Nemesis.  It takes each bot double the time of their ability to cooldown (so 16 secs for Ares, 12 seconds for Hades, and 8 seconds for Nemesis).  Within the active period, they will use some time to absorb damage and then return fire with the built-in weapons.  

The current favo(u)rite bot appears to be Ares, which is the fastest and most fragile of the bunch. It has two medium and two light hardpoints, so the normal firepower is the same as a Griffin.  However,  its ability lasts the longest.  It can, for instance, take four seconds to absorb as much damage as possible before unleashing it back on you for another full 4 seconds.  Bear in mind that this bot’s built-in weapons are energy based, so physical shielded bots like Lancelot and Bulgasari have some resilience against this damage.  We wouldn’t advise you to take advantage of this unless you have no choice.  

University pilots faced a full squad (1%) yesterday and FIVE of them already had this bot.  Get ready to see more of them, especially in beacon rush. 

You can actually damage them while they are invincible if you are at point blank range. Like the Ancile shield, if you get up close and personal with them you can shotgun them in the face. Happy news for all you Mercury and Pursuer pilots - bring your Murder Machine!

Finally, don’t panic if you see one - if you know what you’re doing, they can be pretty simple to take down.  Stay close to cover, don’t shoot during the ability, make sure you’re behind cover when those built in weapons come out towards the end of the ability.  Annihilate them directly after. 

Like Falcon and the Descend robots, the "Pantheon" group robots have alternating periods of strength and vulnerability.  There is a steep learning curve on these robots, and we haven't seen them in really skilled hands just yet.  Make them pay while they’re still practicing!

Happy Friday,

Professors Yat and Dark Vagabond

PS: The built in rocket launcher on Nemesis:

 
Nope.  Wait.

Wait ...

Fire!

Faculty Notes

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