Destroyer Bounce is Awful. Video Demo

Co-op Missions Discussion
1

So with a bunch of people using destroyers with alarak’s P3 (and some people afraid they might be op), I wanted to demonstrate exactly how pathetic chain laser damage is.

To be clear, I’m not asking for destroyers to be changed in this thread. I just want to show how the bounces are mostly aesthetic.

I gave the nexus similar hp to a void thrasher on void thrashing (1000 shields, 3000 hp). The supply depot is a regular supply depot. The destroyers have +3 weapons.

Over the course of about 16 seconds, the supply depot takes 165 damage (a little over 10 dps with 10 destroyers. Incredible), whereas the primary target takes 4000.

That means the laser’s bounce does a whopping 4% of the damage of the primary laser (which is the same as an un-charged void ray). Even if the destroyers had a 3rd target to bounce to, that’s still only about 8%.

In the time it takes you to kill an entire void thrasher, you can kill about 1 stalker with the chain’s damage. 92.5% of any damage you see from destroyers is the main attack.

For their low cost, destroyer main beam deals respectable damage. But it’s also the ONLY thing that’s dealing damage.

Edit: fixed math

20 Likes
2

That hurt my soul.
Thanks op…

Buff beam!

1 Like
3

This has to be bugged. According to the Wiki, the Destroyer’s secondary beams should be dealing 1 damage +2 vs. Armored every half second. There’s no way that 10 Destroyers should be dealing 1 DPS to a Supply Depot. Those Destroyers should have flattened it. Factoring in the Supply Depot’s 1 armor, that should have been about 40 DPS from all of them combined.

1 Like
4

And sad truth is, bounce beams are unaffected by weapon upgrades.
Thus I made two proposals

  1. Weapon upgrade buff Bounce beam’s attribute damage.
  2. Enable Bounce damage be spell damages (unaffected by Armour/shield values).
3 Likes
5

And someone said Destroyer need to add more charge cooldown because it god a-move army

Destroyer were notoriously bad before prestige and they still bad even now

6

I don’t quite understand where the wiki is getting that number. When I look at the damage for destroyer bounce, I see 1 damage.

Regardless, watch destroyers in-game. Watch a replay of either you or your ally attacking with destroyers. Heck, watch the preview of destroyers in the campaign. Notice how the secondary targets take VERY low damage. (In the campaign preview, 2 destroyers kill a couple cannons and stalkers, all while the bounce hits 1 pylon. By the end of the preview, the pylon still has shields.)

1 Like
7

I thought it was bad and mostly an aesthetic, but it turns out its ONLY an aesthetic.

5 Likes
8

Aren’t the Mutalisk’s bounce damages upgraded by fractional values? For example, each level grants the first bounce +0.33, and the second bounce +0.11? They should throw in some mathematically-correct values for the Destroyer’s bounce damage, so it always scales with the main damage.

It doesn’t mention any specific damage value in the passive tooltip? Maybe it’s been bugged all along, and has never been performing as intended.

So, you’re saying that the bounce damage has no bonus against armored in the editor? It seems like an oversight that an anti-armor aircraft shouldn’t deal anti-armor damage with its bounce damage.

9

Yes with Mutalisks, each bounce decrease by 3rd. And these bounce are affected by weapon upgardes.

10

With my brief glance at the damage values, I saw main beam does 6 +4 vs armored, bounce does 1 with no attribute bonus. There was a 3rd damage value, which was 1 +1 vs armored, but that doesn’t seem to apply. (Maybe it is a bug.)

11

Very strange. The passive icon doesn’t mention a damage value does it? Definitely seems like it could be a bug.

12

Nope, passive icon just says it can hit up to 2 additional units. It doesn’t say anything about the damage.

13

Actually, that’s 10 dps, not 1. It’s 1 dps per destroyer.

Still, point stands, bounce is aesthetic unless you have some ally debuff giving the target negative armour.

14

Yeah my bad. Fixed now. One of my favorite compositions in LotV campaign was adepts + destroyers, using adept -5 armor to super buff the damage from destroyers.

15

I’d rather have destroyers cost 3x more, but get full bounce damage just so we wouldnt have these basic ole vanilla void rays with alarak.

16

No idea where the Wiki is getting that number, then.

If we’re going to give an anti-armor damage value to the bounce that is proportional to the damage of the main beam, it’d be 0.66 vs. Armored. The 0.66 rounds up to 1, so I think 1 +1 vs. Armored is the best value for the bounce.

Potential idea: The Mothership’s Thermal Lance temporarily reduces the armor of units in its path.

17

Except these are SO MUCH WORSE than vanilla void rays. Regular void rays can get up to +6 vs armored when fully charged (an increase of almost 50% compared to uncharged). As I said, destroyer’s bounce is only giving you +8%.

There’s a reason they aren’t game-breaking despite having half the cost of a regular void ray

1 Like
18

Destroyers should be Destroyers, not some cheap dollar store flying trash bags, that’s all I really want when it comes to Alarak p3 changes, no matter what the cost, I just want the real deal.

4 Likes
19

Can u do more test like 20/30 destroyers vs an attack wave?

20

yeah. And the moment you see yipers or ravens or even mass storms you can already scrap the idea of going full fleet.

Also, kerrigan mutas just roll over enemy encampments aswell and in even greater speed. And dehakas mutas just facetank everything while being slightly less damage. But all of those feel still stronger than a full deathfleet deleted by vipers or ravens lol

3 Likes