Weapon concept: Tri-Rocket Launcher (Legendary) (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, April 27, 2015, 20:43 (3296 days ago)

I've been thinking for a while about what I'd like to see in a new Rocket launcher. Something that is both unique and powerful (without being too powerful).

One of the reasons I love Black Hammer so much is that it is a great situational alternative to Ice Breaker. Perhaps not quite as amazing all-around, but a great fallback for those times when you want to equip an exotic in a different slot, and in some specific situations, its even more devastatingly powerful.

I'd like to see a Legendary rocket launcher that functions as an alternative to Gjallarhorn in a similar fashion. I think this is what Bungie was aiming for with Hunger of Crota, but they fell short. Don't get me wrong, HoC is one of the best Legendary Rocket Launchers in the game, but it still falls drastically short of Gjallarhorn's power and usefulness.

In coming up with a new Rocket Launcher (specifically as an alternative to Gjallarhorn), the first thing I did was put some thought into why exactly Gjallarhorn is so useful. The obvious answer is raw power; it does insane amounts of damage against a single target. But it's also great when fired into a crowd of low-level enemies, thanks to the tracking ability of the wolfpack rounds.

So I started thinking about what could be done to make a new rocket launcher useful against single targets as well as small crowds, without being the same as Gjallarhorn. What I came up with is this:

The Tri-Rocket launcher.

This rocket launcher will simultaneously fire 3 small mini-rockets. Individually, each projectile does significantly less damage than a standard rocket (in PvP terms, imagine a rocket that can't quite kill a guardian with full health). But together they do more cumulative damage than any single rocket launcher (I'm thinking roughly 1.5 times the damage of the average legendary missile). The rockets will swirl around each other in an awesome looking spiral of destruction as they eject the launcher (think Titanfall ;p).

The first unique perk is a multi-homing ability. When zoomed in, you can paint up to 3 targets simultaneously. Once fired, the 3 rockets will then disperse and track their own individual targets. This gives you flexibility in terms of how the tri-rocket launcher can be used. Fire slightly weaker rounds at multiple grunt-level targets, or lock on to a single high-level target to deliver extra damage.

The 2nd unique perk is where I might have gone a little crazy: Adaptive elemental damage. Each rocket will automatically detect the elemental shield of its target (if any) and will automatically switch to the corresponding elemental damage. So if 2 rockets are tracking Fallen knights, they will switch to Arch damage, while the 3rd rocket delivers solar damage to the Hive Wizard it has locked on to.

I know this sounds overpowered at first, but keep in mind the weaker-than-normal damage level of each individual missile. I feel this combination of perks plays into the idea of a rocket launcher than can be very useful at damaging multiple targets, or doing stronger-than-average damage against a single larger target, without being insanely overpowered.

What do you all think? Sound cool? or have I gone completely off the deep end? ;)