Plasma ground weapon secondary attack confusion.

koppster

I'm confused as to how ground weapons scale, at least when it comes to secondary attacks on plasma-based weapons. The Plasma Wide Beam Rifle has a wider arc of attack than a split beam and can hit up to five targets, whereas the Split Beam Rifles have a narrower target area and can only hit up to 3 targets. Why is it that the weapon that should be more powerful, on account of a narrower focus and a limitation of 2 less targets, is doing significantly LESS exploit damage than the arguably more versatile and seemingly op of the two? Surely a Split Beam secondary attack should be hitting *harder* than the Wide Beam, even with the negligible benefit of the disruptor proc? That's already, "paid for" in the loss of one less modifier, as [Proc] can't be re-engineered, in this case costing me 20% [Crtd] on a weapon that would only be switched to upon Exposing enemies.

rattler2

The split beam can engage up to 3 targets whereas the wide beam just fires a cone that can hit up to 5 in that blast radius.

Think of it this way...
A Split Beam Rifle is like the old Super Soaker XP85.

Three barrels that can adjust to fire in three directions at the same time.


A Wide Beam is kinda like an average cone sprinkler.

Just throws up a cone of energy that can hit anything. Thus if anything is caught in the blast... it is hit. In this case up to five enemies can be hit if they just happen to be in range of the attack.

Also I believe the Wide beam is an Expose, whereas the Split Beam is an Exploit.