Make Spitters/Praetorians useful again (by removing hit chance)

[FentanylPhil]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): Because of the recent additions of a miss chance to acid spitting classes, the spitting has become seriously underpowered and borderline useless (especially with the further addition of the Boiler). Spitting should be reworked so that it become a viable tactic again.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): It would remove/rework what has become a visceral mechanic, and add a little bit more variety to xeno strategies and tactics.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc): After a recent round, I had a prolonged conversation with a group in ghost chat, and all seemed to come to the consensus that acid spitting has become useless due to the combination of the recovery time, miss chance, and the fact that spit can already be easily dodged even in relatively confined environments by any competent marine. The combination of the boiler and the carrier also makes spitters and praetorians a less viable ranged class. By removing the hit chance and possibly compensating through other means, there is less RNG sillyness involved, and more actual strategy on the part of the player. Right now, there's no point in even trying to use good positioning, terrain, choke points, etc as a spitter or praetorian because you may still miss someone standing directly beside you, so the most viable tactic is just to spam and hope for the best.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):
The best thing to do would probably to remove the miss chance completely. If that would buff the mechanic too much, then combination of tweaking damage, recovery time and projectile speed could help with keeping everything well balanced. The spitting mechanic could even be completely changed (maybe giving spitters and praetorians something similar to the boiler's acid).

[Meww]

+1 very much. I used to love sentinel/spitter/prae since i could sneak in the dark and spit at someone when they're alone, but once I tried like three times and each time missed. not to mention i had to pause to recharge. i dont ever go sentinel now even though i used to love it, just because you're kinda useless. no matter how good or strategic you are, it'll probably miss. only reason for sentinel is boiler atm

[Keyword]

I just played as spitter*, I hit 1/10 spits, most of them point blank.
It needs to be tweaked a little bit.
so +1

[Adjective]

Neutral. Spitters are a tier 2, I can see the hit chance being improved slightly, but not removed entirely for this tier. A praetorian however, should have both a reduced cooldown and a removal of the hit chance.

Praetorians were just nerfed in having to pass their Reinforced Wall melting abilities to the Boiler.

[Wickedtemp]

+1
I played a round as a sentinel, and I actually hit almost every time, so at first I didn't see what the big deal was... Then, the next round I went as a doctor. Aliens boarded, shit hit the fan, I got captured and nested and implanted...

I broke out, planning to OD on tramadol to suicide, but the sentinels missed me with their neurotoxin spit and I ran away. They chased me. Every time they spit, they missed. Every. Time. They eventually tackled me, but I somehow out-robusted them and ran away again, found a pistol and then suicided.

The sentinel had to resort to pushing me down because they were missing so much. I'm sure part of it was because I was zig-zagging around, but I'm sure I should have been hit by at least one of those.

[Steelpoint]

Prehaps tie accuracy with range, so the higher the tier is the more accurate over range you are.

[northcote4]

+1

Personally, I don't wholly agree with removing hit-chance ENTIRELY (at least, not for castes below Praetorian), but I can see where you're coming from.

Perhaps just an increase in the chance would be nice. I'd spent my share of rounds as a spitter just hocking nigh-infinite blobs of acid at marines, and though they haven't all hit, I've at least annoyed them. Actually doing some damage? Well, that would be something else entirely!


Edit: Also, I could be wrong, but I thought that spit had the highest chance to miss at point blank?

[Complete Garbage]

+1, I'd like to be able to play sentinel/spitter and be useful, instead of just waiting to go higher tier.