Samsara - No longer under active development.

[TerminusEst13]

Well, that's new. Zandronum has a function ZDoom doesn't support. I'm used to it being vice-versa!

Very sorry about that, I'll have to puzzle that one out. Please assign the button to Strife Weapons/Ammo/Stats instead.

[dljosef]

I know it takes practice, but the super large zorcher can be used to hit enemies from around corners or push certain ones off ledges. (In Hexen, where enemies die from fall damage, the latter is potentially invaluable.)

[Matt]

Is it otherwise not horribly nerfed though? It seems most of the time not to be worth the effort compared to the normally large zorcher. (Maybe if it bounced off its targets as well?)

[TerminusEst13]

The Super Large Zorcher shoots four 7-56 projectiles, which deal a damage of 28-224 (average 126) on impact, in an attack that lasts 75 tics (79 if fire isn't held).
Compare this to the Large Zorcher, which does seven hitscans of 5-15 damage, for a total of 35-105 (average 70) damage in a 32-tic attack (37 if fire isn't held).
The Large Zorcher has higher DPS and hitscan, but the SL Zorcher has a lot more burst damage, accuracy, brutal kickback, and the ability to shoot around corners. I think there's some definite pros and cons to each.

That being said, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on how the SL Zorcher feels and/or seems for people. I've learned that numbers are one thing, and how it plays is usually a different beast entirely.

[Matt]

I've learned that numbers are one thing, and how it plays is usually a different beast entirely.

The way the LZs stack against each other it definitely feels like they were balanced based on the numbers rather than behaviours.

The corner thing for me usually either means I'm missing half the shot because I don't know exactly where the target is, or I have LOS in which case I'm better served with the hitscan.

Meanwhile the big projectile shot also obscures incoming projectiles, and allows the monster time to take a shot at you after you have fired yourself, both of which increase your overall risk even if the total time you are spent exposed to the enemy is reduced because your shots took them down sooner. (Which is not the case where the SLZ does not kill in the first shot.) And the accuracy bonus is completely negated by the fact that at short ranges the LZ's spread is negligible while at longer ranges the target would have long since moved somewhere else by the time the SLZ projectile got there.

And gaining burst damage at the cost of DPS is only useful if there's a reasonable likelihood of a one-shot kill - which with the SLZ there isn't for anything bigger than a demon. And knocking a target back in my view just means they're even more of a moving target than they otherwise would be.

tl;dr I kept playing thinking how much better balanced against each other they would be if the SLZ shot a much faster projectile if not a hitscan or had a more helpful bonus effect than just the bouncy thing. Aesthetically I really wanted to like the SLZ, it looks and sounds just like a souped-up LZ should, but it just doesn't perform the way the look and feel suggest.

(this experience is mostly from the PE ambush and the baron/knight room in Evilution Map02 EDIT: which I just noticed are, respectively, encounters where you are flanked with runners and flyers with supporting distant fire in an open space with no cover, and where the enemy's biggest weakness is their inability to jump off their platforms and chase you down - both of which either feed on the SLZ's weaknesses or negate its strengths or both.)

[cq75]

I like your SLZ sprites and sounds, though it looks a bit too much like a gun for me to say it belongs in Chex Quest, with that said non-violent content isn't really your goal, so that's not really a problem. Nice work.

[Ricochet]

Has creating a StrifeGuy class ever been considered?

[Gez]

Has creating a StrifeGuy class ever been considered?

Okay, yeah, the electric bolts suck, but the poison bolts are instant death on biological targets, the assault gun is arguably better than Doom's Chaingun, and the phosphorous grenades, Mauler torpedo, and full-power Sigil are all BFG-tier room clearers.
also HE HAS A FLAMETHROWER HOW IS THAT NOT AWESOME

Pretty much this.

Unless I have a sudden burst of inspiration of how to appropriately balance/order his weapons while still keeping him much like Strife, how to handle all the alternate ammo, and on top of this figure out his upgrade system and how drastically it'd affect him, he's way too powerful for traditional Doom II gameplay. I'd have to nerf him to the point where he'd not really play at all like Strife.
Sorry, Strife fans.

[Ricochet]

Thanks for showing me that, it's sad that he won't end up in the game

[TerminusEst13]

I like your SLZ sprites and sounds, though it looks a bit too much like a gun for me to say it belongs in Chex Quest, with that said non-violent content isn't really your goal, so that's not really a problem. Nice work.

Er, thank you.
Chexter's just as much a focus as every other hero in Samsara, so if it doesn't really seem to work with him then it is kind of a problem. Some people like it, others think it could use work, but I'm always open to hear more people say their thoughts as to why.

[DoomRater]

to me it definitely seems to be geared as a PvP weapon. I have a map (that I should update because it doesn't have all the weapon spawns or a fair load of monsters) where I can test a character's crowd control and DPS powers. When I fired the SLZ it didn't really affect demons like I expected. Then again he has the phasing zorcher which is better for crowd control anyway since it can be fired point blank range.

some other fun stuff I found was that Parias wasn't as effective at crowd control with the sapphire wand as I'd expect. He can kill a lot of lower monsters in a row with it, but even more surprising was how ineffective he was at killing cybers. Rapeverge made the demons easy to get through assuming there were lots of kraters of might lying around but suddenly when faced with a cyber he was rather helpless. This was without the flechette though I don't think it helps much anyway. The rest of the stuff I think is already noted in the first post, but it never hurts to check with actual gameplay.

[Ethril]

but suddenly when faced with a cyber he was rather helpless.

Use the Hammer for bosses. Or Timon's Axe if you're brave enough. Firestorm would be ideal except they're immune to radius damage so they don't take the huge damage from the fire circle, just the direct hit. (In Samsara, the Hammer's projectile forces radius damage, which makes it ideal for bosses.)
The Wraithverge is a room-clearer, not a bosskiller. In fact, it's programmed so that any monster that's classified as a [wiki=Actor_flags#BOSS]boss[/wiki] "wears out" the wraiths much faster, and takes much less damage anyway. Not worth using against them.

[DoomRater]

Okay, if I ever have an icon saved up Parias is the Axeinator. That oughta help a lot of singleplayer with him.

[TerminusEst13]

And v0.22 is out. For a primarily-DM-focused mod, it was kind of embarrassing that I'd been neglecting attention on the DM front...and it showed. There were some pretty blatant imbalances and problems that generally made DM play kind of a big ol' hassle!
But, well, that's mostly on the Zandronum side. There's still some nice QoL fixes for all you wonderful ZDoom players, including a much-requested damage buff for Corvus.

General feedback I've gotten from the Super Large Zorcher has been mixed, which is worrying. Most of it has been towards the design, and once I started seriously studying Chex Quest weapons I can see why--there's a lot of design discrepancies that I'll be hoping to address in 0.23.
That being said, I've also tried to do a few steps towards addressing its gameplay criticisms--more damage (even more burst damage!), better range (travels twice as fast!), less obscuring shots (plain circles with more transparency over jagged stars!), a more useful secondary function (...need to think about this. Forces pain? Minor explosion?). I'm hoping to turn it into a sort of long range railgun-zorcher to help soften up targets/pick off weaker targets at long distance before taking the other weapons at closer range. Please let me know if this makes it better or if I need to tweak it even further, the last thing I want is a dead weight weapon!

Thank you all for playing. I look over the drdteam file management, and with every update there's more and more downloads--when I first started there were barely 34 downloads, but with the last release it was almost 275. Wow. Thank you all very, very much for this--I'm just copying and pasting half the ZDoom wiki in a single mod, but seeing people genuinely enjoy this is just...an amazing treat and a half.
I appreciate everyone's feedback, suggestions, and criticisms, and I'm very happy to try and make this better with every update. If there's no other major problems with this release, then I'll be able to put the final hero in 0.23.

[HexaDoken]

The one major problem with the design is that it's obviously a D3 plasmagun with a plasma bolt pistol strapped over it. Also, it is clearly a rifle. Chexter doesn't use rifles. He uses various strange gizmos with large buttons.

Force pain will be only marginally useful - in fact, it will be only really useful against archviles, and only if there is one. Explosion will be only marginally useful as well, as there is the RL - which has absolutely no downsides at all. And I mean it. I don't have really much to tell, as I was never a fan of Chex as a class - to me, he is absolute doomguy clone, except weaker.