kluczmen: using rail in QC is a bit of a gamble,
Is that because of relatively low stacks compared to ql.
With even a light stack in ql (lets say 100/100) a player would shrug off 80dmg rail at range as they need to take another two hits without picking any health before death. A sinlge 25h would make this three hits.
200-80 | 120-80 | 60-120 | dead
The initial rail does not put them in a dangerous situation.
This extends to a more heavily stacked player in ql – who can basically ignore rails when at 200/200. If they have control the smaller armors a rail after 200/200 will put them at ~173/146 – which will be stacked to ~173/~200 on their next YA pickup.
When one compares this to the lighter stack heros in qc the problem becomes more apparent. You can take two rails and a small amount of extra health before death.
Perhaps it would be interesting to look at how qc with ligher champions plays compared to t4 in ql as stack is potentially much lower there in an even game.
This “steps of damage to death” is an interesting aspect and has been roughly the same in all the previous quake games. It is not just the amount of effective health (400hp@full stack) but the damage weapons in relation to this and the number of hits it takes to kill a player.
Looking at the amount of damage a weapon deals is not the whole story, which is why switching around the rail damage a little bit (60 or 70 or 90 or whatever) is only a small part of the story. Does this matter? Not overly because you still only need to take one rail before you are one rail + a touch of lg away from death.
What the fuck does this have to do with what I quoted? The lighter characters cannot play a run an poke game because as soon as they trade rails they are heavily on the back foot compared to ql where they are still two rails away from this point.
This means in order to play run and poke they are gambling their rail % vs their opponents vs their opponents situational awareness on them. If their opponent hits they are heavily on the back foot.
This aspect is very much like ut. In ut a fully armored player has around 350 effective hp BUT this can be burst down in two shots and the out of control unstacked player has maybe 150 which can be one shot. This is a very simplistic overview so please no pedantics.
UT duel could potentially be an indicator of what qc duel ends up looking like.
FPS