You should look at my kill count for all the power weapons. i dont use them nearly as often as other people. And until this past month, I hadn't touched Reach since October 2011.
I never said that the coolness factor of the weapon makes it OP. If that is how it sounded then my bad. I was just saying I think people look past the grenade launcher's power because it's fun to use. Doesn't change the fact that the grenade launcher is really powerful. And I'm guessing that half of people's grenade launcher kills or more aren't listed as grenade launcher kills since you just switch to your other weapon for clean up when the grenade doesn't one shot.
I'm confused. It's very simple to me. If a weapon is easy to use, and is, as you said,
but it's not considered a big power weapon and gets thrown onto maps in addition to the plethora of other power weapons
implying that a grenade launcher is very easy to find and get a hold of, then I don't see any reason to only have twenty kills with it. Especially compared to easier-to-use power weapons like the rocket launcher, which I think we can all agree is easier to use than the grenade launcher. Heading off the argument that it's because you played less games than I did, the percentage of my kills that are from the grenade launcher – 3.7% – is higher than your .11%.
If you were saying that people look past the weapon's true effectiveness because it's cool to get kills with, I think you're looking past the simple fact that most people don't think it's overpowered.
Before we delve deeper into this, it's important to make the following distinction: Are you saying, because it's easy to use (getting kills with the grenades themselves), it's overpowered, or are you saying that only certain aspects (EMP effect) about it are overpowered? Because those are two different points to be made, and I think in this post you begin to conflate the two. If you're talking about overall ease of use, then I disagree. If you're specifically talking about its EMP effect, then I think you have a good argument, though I think your plasma pistol analogy isn't perfect. The plasma pistol has a tracking mechanism, but with the grenade launcher you have to aim it and/or otherwise bounce it off a surface.
As for assigning the proper credit to the right weapon, if you kill someone with a PP + BR combo, you're not going to assign the kill to the plasma pistol.
I can agree with the last part of what you said, but it's still possible and does happen a lot in maps with less moving room. Playing invasion is one case where map size helps to balance the grenade launcher's effectiveness since you have to deal with much more open spaces. In smaller arena sized maps, which tend to be my favorite kind, the grenade launcher is lethal.
Can the grenade launcher be overpowered in certain situations? Sure. A lot of weapons have that aspect about them. Does that mean the weapon is overpowered as a whole? I don't think so.
The grenade launcher would be overpowered if you started with one in a BTB game for the same reasons a plasma pistol would be. Is it overpowered in the situations you just described? I never said people planting the grenade was an impossibility – just that it was rare. My experience in matchmaking, it seems, has been completely different from yours. Unless my memory is full of holes. Even in the smaller, enclosed maps, hardly anyone waited around to get a kill with the weapon. Out of the many kills I have with the gun, I don't recall using that tactic to any great effect, though I do have two instances in which it worked out up on my fileshare. (
One and
two). Place the grenades in the right spot required a lot of luck in both situations.
I don't consider it overpowered. Whenever I pick it up, I usually get one or two kills for the eight grenades I'm given. I
have many videos highlighting my best streaks, but those are not representative of the norm.
Edit:
IN SUMMARY: Watch my pro-pipe videos.
