Zoanthrope primary weapon.

[Litany]

Right now this is more or less the most useless thing in the game by a large margin, even more useless than the knife! It does less damage than a warrior's spines by about half (and as far as I know, doesn't have the special effects either, the AoE and multiple hits) and drains energy from your actually useful attack. In addition, it is the primary attack, which means that a lot of new players run around using it, more or less hurting the team more than it helps. I can't believe how many times I've had to tell people not to use it and the reasoning why, which is a big time consumer, and sometimes they don't even listen. A melee attack to defend yourself in emergencies, without draining your energy, is much better than a useless attack that people try to use and simply hurt themselves with by taking away the ability to use the secondary.

And this isn't a big concern but it's also a violation of fluff, as Zoanthropes do not have any sort of plasma attack while they do have a warp blast and can melee.

[ChromeAngel]

Thanks for the feedback.  The intention was to try and make the Thrope more flexible than it's old, sniper role.  The new attack does as much damage as the old warp blast as the time between warp blasts (the primary attack damage will be buffed in the next patch).  The effects for this first version were based on the Plasma effect made for the veteran, it's a placeholder until a suitable custom effect can be made.  I'm not trying to say the Thrope is attacking with plasma, just some kind of (psychic) energy.

[Litany]

I can understand wanting to make it more flexible, but I think it's suited to the role of the sniper. In order for it to be anything else, I believe its health would need to be buffed. It's extremely slow, a big target, and has the same HP as a warrior - right now it's can't really engage in close range fights, it just gets creamed too fast. The current primary attack is only good at close range because it's inaccurate and the projectile moves slowly, which means it doesn't really make it more flexible so much as making using it absolute suicide.  Even if you increase the damage, that attack will still only be good for close range, and you'll still inevitably die when a marine gets near you because of the fragility of the Zoanthrope.

On the flipside, if you try to buff the Zoanthrope's health, you might make it way too good at the sniper role. This is just my opinion, of course, but I think it is just perfectly suited to being a sniper, not trying to do two opposite things (close combat and ranged combat). My personal change would me to make the warp blast the primary attack and then make the other psychic attack take no energy, so it could be used in desperation without hurting your chances of getting off what will actually save you, the warp blast, and it wouldn't mislead newer players into trying to use primarily the rapid fire psychic attack.

But it's up to you, as you are the developer after all!