In the spirit of constructive criticism for Mauga, does anyone know any minigun characters from other shooter games that they liked?
Personally, I only know the TF2 Heavy. He has a minigun that has to be spun up before it can fire, but is lethal at point-blank and medium range, a sandwich he can eat to restore his own health when he’s not in combat (Or he can throw it to teammates for a quick heal), and a melee attack for emergencies. He’s the slowest class in the game, and he gets countered pretty hard by Snipers and Spies, but he’s a tough frontline character and he’s pretty lethal if he forces you into a head-to-head fight.
Personally think he can be pretty fun to play; I think what he gets right that Mauga gets wrong is that his longer effective range gives him more options when thinking about how to position himself, while his low speed and relatively low health means the main challenge of playing him is getting into those positions safely.
Gargomon has two massive Gatling guns for hands, but Digimon is a turn-based JRPG, so you don’t… Well, control Gargomon, you basically tell him to beat the crap out of your opponent’s rabbit.
There are actually a lot of Digimon with guns for body parts, but again, turn based JRPG.
There’s the Vertibird Miniguns in Fallout 4… While they’re not a character in their own right, they’re equippable onto The Sole Survivor (when wearing Power Armour… I think) and don’t have wind down mechanics or overheating. As far as I’m aware, haven’t played Fallout 4 in JESUS HOW LONG!?
Horizon Zero Dawn has a Minigun you can have Aloy pick up. Of course, the gun is friggin busted. But it’s balanced by being unable to craft new ammo for it, as well as it taking up all the space in her hands, making her move slower… I will say, there’s weight to each individual shot. I like the HZD miniguns.
Gunner - Deep Rock Galactic
Tbf, he does have other guns besides just the minigun, but the minigun is by far my favorite. I love the ‘leadstorm’ overclock for it, which essentially turns him into OW1 Bastion where you can’t move while firing, but you do considerably higher damage. I also really like the ‘burning hell’ overclock in combination with his revolver’s ‘volatile bullets’ overclock, which is pretty similar to Mauga actually; set enemies on fire with your primary weapon and deal increased damage to burning enemies with your secondary weapon.
Raum - Paladins
I didn’t actually play Paladins all that much (only 70hrs on record), but Raum was by far my favorite champ to play. His charge is pretty similar to Mauga’s, tho it doesn’t feel as good to use imo.
Heavy - Team Fortress 2
Him and medic are my mains. Heavy basically set me on my path to using miniguns in every game that had one. There’s just something about continuously firing an endless barrage of bullets at people with a big gun that I find really enjoyable.
Bastion - Overwatch
Figured I’d mention him, even though I don’t play him anymore, but he was my favorite hero in OW1, and to this day remains my most played hero. I loved how you actually had to get pretty creative with your positioning as Bastion as people got better at countering him, so you needed to find odd angles that people weren’t expecting a Bastion to be sitting in. The trade off for having really high sustain damage at the cost of not being able to move was really fun imo, but they took that away with the rework and also replaced his really fun tank ultimate with a lame artillery strike that wasn’t even fun with the infinite barrage bug.
Self heal on Mauga isn’t broken. Neither are his miniguns. You need the broader picture of how he and his kit works. Without selfheal, he basically has a kit that you can never use properly. Like cage match. Not having heal for that hambones you and honestly, even with it, you’re still dead. That is how Mauga tanks. You know, the entire point of tanks. The easy way to beat it is to not let him do damage. You can block it, deflect it or negate it altogether. The devs obviously saw the same thing when making him. I still don’t think he needs nerfs cause in the time i’ve been playing him, i’ve found practically all his crippling weaknesses. It’s simply down to “I can’t gun him down straightforwardly when he uses his cooldowns and that makes me mad” and that’s all there is too it
Yes, that’s exactly what Mauga is: A tank that needs to all-in every fight in order to contribute. A tank that needs to continually deal damage at all times, and if he stops for even 2 seconds, he’ll explode.
The result is a character that fluctuates between OP and trash-tier from patch to patch. He’s one-dimensional, predictable. The enemy team knows what he’s trying to do and they’re ready for it, so it just comes down to whether or not he has the raw stats to kill them before they kill him.
It’s a deeply flawed design; I doubt he’s ever going to end up in a satisfactory state without a rework.
Grandmaster players would disagree.
It comes down to “The enemy tank cannot do their job so long as Mauga is alive”.
TF2’s heavy hasn’t got recoil or overheating. He also doesn’t reload his minigun, and will only run out of ammo if he’s not pushing, working with his engineers or interacting with the objective (rarely happens).
Mauga’s issue is the issue all of OW has. Damage is so poor compared to healing and damage resistance that you end up in scenarios where Mauga is just sitting point blank gattling into the enemy’s faces for extended periods of time.
Why doesn’t this happen in tf2? Because every class dies after half a second of close ranged minigun damage regardless of healing, and because the heavy can get spammed down, sniped or stabbed and die in half a second regardless of how much he heals.