Delta Compression Weapon Secondary fire question

architect13

I know when targeting an Exposed enemy the secondary fire mode switches to Tactical Orbital Strike. However, when attempting to use the secondary fire often it seems that the the function goes into cool down without anything happening--no wide beam fire, no Orbital strike. The animation on the secondary fire shows in cool down for 7/8 seconds. I seem to notice it the most when targeting ranged enemies. Does the secondary fire just go into cool down because the target is too far way and not exposed? Is this Working As Intended?

sentinelblue

I have noticed this as well but only on my eng and only when I have used certain other power before it. Don't recall which one since I have switched to another weapon. You might be triggering a shared CD.

rattler2

I've noticed it. Every once in a while I would hit the secondary fire (Non Exposed version so wide beam) and... it looks like my character equips the rifle. However I notice that damage is done to the enemies, and occasionally they get knocked over by seemingly nothing. And if I use the primary fire right after... it does both the primary and secondary fire animations.

BTW... this is the Phaser variant on a Fed Tac if that makes any difference. I don't know if the Disruptor is also doing the same.

warpangel

rattler2 wrote: »

I've noticed it. Every once in a while I would hit the secondary fire (Non Exposed version so wide beam) and... it looks like my character equips the rifle. However I notice that damage is done to the enemies, and occasionally they get knocked over by seemingly nothing. And if I use the primary fire right after... it does both the primary and secondary fire animations.

Sounds like its just an animation bug. It fired the wide beam on cue, did its damage, but the animation was delayed.

jbmaverick

Animation delays for ground weapons happen to me quite often if I'm clicking madly at the fire button (I don't like using auto-fire on the ground), this sounds like an extension of that caused by the weapon attempting to switch modes and encountering the internal cooldown on the orbital strike.

On that note, why is the secondary fire on this still subject to one of the worst parts of Orbital Strike, namely the long windup with a fixed target location? It barely does any more damage than a traditional sniper shot from what I can tell but it's significantly less reliable. There are so few enemies in this game that hold still long enough for the attack to hit, which is why so many Engineers prefer Orbital Chasing Beam on their own ability.

warpangel

jbmaverick wrote: »

On that note, why is the secondary fire on this still subject to one of the worst parts of Orbital Strike, namely the long windup with a fixed target location? It barely does any more damage than a traditional sniper shot from what I can tell but it's significantly less reliable. There are so few enemies in this game that hold still long enough for the attack to hit, which is why so many Engineers prefer Orbital Chasing Beam on their own ability.

Its not entirely fixed. The targeting reticle doesn't move during the charge-up, but unlike Orbital Strike, the beam actually hits the target rather than the reticle.

A bigger issue in my experience is my boffs/teammates tend to kill the target before the beam hits, but my toon doesn't re-target or abort but wastes time charging up and firing at a corpse. :rolleyes:

jbmaverick

warpangel wrote: »

Its not entirely fixed. The targeting reticle doesn't move during the charge-up, but unlike Orbital Strike, the beam actually hits the target rather than the reticle.

A bigger issue in my experience is my boffs/teammates tend to kill the target before the beam hits, but my toon doesn't re-target or abort but wastes time charging up and firing at a corpse. :rolleyes:

Hm, maybe another animation issue for me then, the last time I used it the beam appeared to strike where the reticle was. I never actually checked the combat log to see if the attack hit the target, I'll have to play around with it some more. I guess I'm just used to Engineer powers and things that work like them to be annoying about placement. :P

willamsheridan

I noticed that too. I use the secondary fire but there is no orbital strike and sometime s even the normal secondary (wide beam) doesn´t work.