News - They Buffed The Swarm Killstreak Warzone 2. Hidden Change & More Streak Feedback
This is something that has definitely changed at some point between January 6th and today, so it could have happened at any time over the past couple months. I don't recall seeing this anywhere in any patch notes, so I believe this was just a hidden change and a hidden buff to the Swarm streak, and the reason I have no idea when this actually changed is that I don't really see swarms all that often, but within the past week or so. I did have a swarm called in against my team, and I was noticing it was getting a ton of kills, which is strange because when I made a article on January 6 breaking down the kill streaks and basically showing how they were too weak, the swarm was not in a good place.
Pre-buff swarm behavior
And just a little recap of that from that article on January 6th: What I discovered at that time is that against a swarm, all you had to do was continually move at least 4.9 m/s, which happens to be the sprint speed of the pulet 762, which is a very slow-moving lmg; it's the slowest sprint speed in the lmg category, and yet that was the only thing you needed to do to counter the highest streak in the entire game, even on an open map like Wasteland.
If you ended up stopping for a bit too long and then trying to sprint again, then you'd get killed, as you see toward the end of this clip, but as long as you didn't stop sprinting with that lmg, you would survive the Swarm because it appeared to lock on to the position you were in at the time that it started dive bombing, rather than your character model itself, and therefore it's just targeting that point on the ground, and 4.9 m/s was enough to outrun.
Post-buff swarm behavior
Now, after seeing that one streak go off in a game and also noticing that I couldn't just outrun it. I decided to go back and do the testing with this, and this time I'm using the Core 45 pistol in my hand and I'm sprinting. And this has a sprint speed of 5.9 m/s, which is significantly faster than the pulat LMG.
And yet, as you can see here, that's not nearly enough to keep me safe. I die over and over and over again to this streak, and therefore, it is obvious that this has been buffed at some point, and the swarm should be significantly stronger now than it was a couple of months ago. Now watching The Kill Cam to this, it still appears that the Swarm doesn't necessarily lock on to the character model and instead it's locking on to a point on the ground.
I believe it's just dive bombing significantly faster now, so you just can't outrun that explosion like you could before they ended up buffing this, and for me, this is excellent to see, and I think I'm actually going to start popping this swm on a little more often. I've been avoiding it for a long time simply because the power of it definitely wasn't worth the amount of effort and cost to earn it. At least before they updated this, now it is looking quite a bit better.
More streak feedback
And with that, since we are on the topic of a higher-end streak that ended up seeing a buff. I thought it'd be a good time to bring up some feedback again regarding the higher-end streak balance in this game because it was not only the Swarm that I felt was quite weak; it's also some of the higher-end streaks, like the Chopper Gunner, for instance.
This one in particular. I just find is way too easy to shoot down and so I just wanted to restate some of the feedback that I've already provided in the past but the first issue I have with streaks like the chopper Gunner and some others as well like the Vall or the OverWatch Hilo is the fact that it seems like our base bullet damage when we're not even using any ammo type or any sort of specific setup to counter streaks it seems like base bullet damage is just a little too high in the game's current state, more often than not if somebody calls in an OverWatch Hilo or a chopper Gunner against my team all it takes is like two people on that team to just look up and start shooting at that streak with whatever gun happens to be in their hand hands and that will often take that streak out very quickly, which I find to be just a little bit frustrating when you work hard to earn that streak and it just gets shot down by people that aren't even using anything special in order to take that down, so personally I would like to see a reduction to the base bullet damage that we deal with guns.
But against streaks currently, there is a 4C, spawn protection, so for 4 seconds that streak can't target you, and you're also effectively immune to the damage from those streaks within those 4 seconds. And like I said in the past, I think 4 seconds of spawn protection against streaks is totally fair.
That gives you an opportunity to come on spawn to at least try to make a break for cover and do something without just getting immediately lit up and dying the moment you hit the respawn button, so I'm actually totally fine with spawn protection existing. I think it's a good thing that it's in the game; however, the one big problem that I have and the one frustrating thing to deal with if you're using something like a chopper Gunner is that you can be lighting somebody up as they spawn in, but with how fast you're able to shoot down a streak like a chopper Gunner with a bruin Mark 9 with incendiary rounds, for instance, this actually takes less than 4 seconds for that player to shoot you down, and therefore for that 4 seconds you can be blasting away at that player as they blast away at you, and they will win that 1V one fight against your chopper.
Gunner, to me, that just doesn't feel quite right. I think if they're dealing damage to you, you should be able to deal damage to them, and as a result, I'd love to see spawn protection disabled. The moment you fire your gun, or if possible, just make it so that spawn protection is disabled, the moment they deal damage to that streak itself, that seems a lot more fair and balanced to me, so if you want to make a break for cover, you've got that spawn protection for 4 seconds.
If you want to start shooting at the streak, though, well, that streak can now shoot back at you and deal damage to you. I think that would also encourage people to actually use launchers to take down streaks, because that's something I've noticed with this game that's like one of the worst ways to shoot down most streaks in this game is using a launcher; you're far better off just shooting it with a gun, whereas if we had a system like this where that spawn protection doesn't disable till you fire your shots, well, then you have that spawn protection for long enough to lock on with your launcher and get that shot off before that streak is able to shoot you, so again, this isn't any new feedback or anything.
