Quote:
Originally Posted by AfterShock
Why don't soldiers use it like that? Is it because they are used to having nail grenades, or because of some other reason?
Perhaps the problem is that it's useful for killing people, but takes 4 seconds to prime, and by that time they're usually either dead or gone, or you've used most of your rockets already. Maybe it's useful for the start of combat, not the end, and that means you need to guess when the enemy is going to arrive.
Or maybe the problem is that the soldier generally stands in the choke point which ideally would be the best place for the laser itself, and the area in front of him is usually a wide space (e.g. defending monkey T), so he doesnt want to kill himself with his own laser, and using it in a wide space is fairly pointless. Thus the most useful thing to do is to use it in the choke point you are covering, when you aren't there (either resupplying, or falling back), or using it in the choke point in front of the wide space (e.g. front door), which is too far away from your position to be defended with rockets at the same time. In both situations, this leads to the soldier being far away from the laser nade, and thus being fairly useless since the soldier isnt there to shoot the predictably moving enemy.
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Well, all of those really.
I personally never play Soldier and I don't really like the class. But it's very popular with others, and many soldiers sort of use the laser grenade like it was previewed in the 2.42 Trailer, but that trailer also shows an attacking enemy who isn't very smart, or isn't playing very smart to try and sell the effectiveness of the Laser Grenade for the trailer.
Whenever a laser grenade gets in my way in that type of situation, I just conc over it and the soldier himself. But usually the laser grenade isn't used that way, it's thrown in more open spaces, and it's not hard to out outmaneuver.
And a lot of it probably goes to the need to predict when an enemy is approaching, same with what HW does with slow grenades, he needs to predict when someone is coming to catch them in the slow grenade, but in the majority of maps, if you only react when you can see the scout coming, it's too late to prime a grenade and use it well, usually it's more effective to turn around and throw it behind you in the prediction that the scout may conc or get past you another way.
I can imagine if the laser grenade did explode at the end, with no warning, in a plasma-like explosion, people wouldn't think it was so weak or useless, because the fear would be the same as the nail grenade, if you attempt to get past it, you might just get blown up.
But keeping the nature of the grenade the same, it needs improved damage or design to be considered good enough for a Soldier.