I noticed a lot more players doing well with Ghalt recently. I remember going back to him (btw master of Ghalt and a Ghalt main ) after they swapped his slugs for shields, and he was barely competitive without the range. He did little damage, had no tanking capacity, was slow as heck, and his kit was predictable and easily avoided/countered.
Now, I find myself facing many Ghalts, all of which deal incredible damage and can do what Ghalt does best:
Countering every single character in the game, no exceptions.
Yeah, I think they changed how the pellets work. He used to do about 80 or so damage at close range (with pellets, at >level 3), and getting the slugs bumped his damage up to 180 because every single point of damage he could do was being dealt every single shot.
I did a couple of private matches and noticed he can actually hit things now, instead of missing point black a la Borderlands 2 Bandit shotguns.
I’m actually thankful. I never used his ult because it was actually a dps DECREASE half the time, but now it seems to actually do enough damage to kill high-health battleborn
I honestly go with the CC immunity. It means you can dive in and kill CC characters that you’re having trouble pulling with The Hook.
If the enemy team is really CC light, I’ll go with Run n’ Gun. The incendiary shells really don’t do a lot of bonus damage to justify taking them over added survivability and mobility.
Yeah turns out he never needed slugs to be good. They just made him insane.
His range actually is not that bad naturally.
Also the only way a Ghalt is easily countered is if he misses his own hook. Not you dodging it. That’s why I started playing him because this character is easily one of the most OP hero’s to even pick. He also gets banned a crap ton in compet because of it. Pub crusher #1
I always hated having to choose between pellets or slugs. I found both of them to be on separate ends of the spectrum when it came to accuracy. That pellet helix actually made it more difficult to hit targets with your full DPS potential. The slugs made it very difficult to hit anything outside medium range (unless your target was stunned).
This made Ghalt have a high learning curve when you include how accurate you have to be to land hooks. Now if you choose the barrier helix, you not only get more survivability, but you can keep the best shotgun variant he has. It’s perfect because it has great accuracy and spread at all ranges.
They also fixed the both barrels blazing helix. Combine it with the increased tactical round damage helix, and you’ll be hitting over 300 damage per shot.
You’re not running into a buff, rather just a bunch of players who are using him properly.
But if you’re surprised that Pellets is actually helping now, don’t be. It’s just doing what it was originally intended, but server problems prevented it.
