With the recent introduction of Heartbreaker and this poll reaching my eyeballs, I cannot help but unironically ask for Striker's damage to skyrocket for it to remain competitive with Heartbreaker. This is not even about with me not wanting to play Heartbreaker because the pulse on headshot and stacks on pulsed enemies are actually good twists to the Striker formula that was complacent being no different with bodyshots and headshots - you simply hit the enemy anywhere and it stacked; my issue is that the Heartbreaker meta (which for the sake of comprehension is the combination of the technician laser and the Heartbreaker set) is literally Striker with more damage and bonus armor. To make matters even worse for Striker, Heartbreaker's chest is a combination and improvement of Striker's chest and backpack occupying half the amount of slots. I firmly believe I am not exaggerating when I say the Heartbreaker meta (tech+set for those who missed) is an objectively better version of Striker in all forms possible.
Q: Who cares that Heartbreaker is better? It's a PvE game, nobody is competing.
A: Then surely we shouldn't shy away from a pulse scanner variant that is literally pulse scanner but setting enemies on fire as well. I mean, it'd make pulse scanner relatively useless, but I guess that's the kind of thing we're going for now. Actually, let's make a foam variant too, so we get options for damage and CC.
Q: Who cares that Heartbreaker is better? People already could complete content just fine with Striker and it remains unchanged, so just keep using Striker.
A: If someone just came to me and told me there is a faster motorcycle than mine and I could get it within a few minutes of work, *and* I could change that faster motorcycle to look and sound exactly like mine, there would be no difference except one being faster and thus objectively superior for the purpose that both were made for: going fast.
Q: Aren't you forgetting that Striker has weapon handling and fire rate as its bonuses, making it a set fit for most weapon categories?
A: No, it's just that 15% handling and 15% fire rate cannot compete with Heartbreaker's massive exponential damage bonus. Heartbreaker deals more damage outside of ARs and LMGs as well, which begs the question of "isn't it unbalanced for a set with weapon-specific bonuses to be better outside of its weapon bonuses than the set that fits bonuses for all weapons?"
Q: Aren't you forgetting that to use the technician laser you have to limit yourself to the technician spec?
A: Yes, gunner has a whole 5% fire rate on kill and 10% armor on kill, firewall has the striker shield, demolitionist gives out-of-cover buffs to allied damage and whatever else, but none of it still matches Heartbreaker's damage.
Q: Why do you fixate so much on Heartbreaker's damage?
A: Because the one set that mirrors it and was made entirely for damage now has less damage and apparently many people are fine with it, so I'm speaking out against the nonsense. I know there are people out there who are not fine with the nonsense, and to those I say "wow, thank you for being reasonable about game balance." I don't actually know the percentage of people who agree with Heartbreaker and surely a poll doesn't represent the entirety of a playerbase that also spans several Discord servers, YouTube channels, in-game clans and friend groups whose majority might not even be voicing their opinion; for all I don't know, the actual majority of the playerbase might dislike the state of Heartbreaker - "I say as I see".
Q: What makes you think you hold the right side of this discussion?
A: Because it just makes sense to me; nothing besides that. I'd be a fool to present an opinion I don't trust in.
To be clear, however, I'm more on the side of nerfing Heartbreaker while capitalizing on its genuinely interesting pulse-related mechanics than I am on the side of powercreeping Striker, because I come from Warframe and there is a reason I left it almost 2400 hours in. No, I wasn't maining a Striker build prior to the update, why would you ask that completely unrelated question?
