I think the current preference for grenades right now usually leans towards specific gameplay elements:
1 - How much blast radius the grenade has. The more blast radius, the easier it is to cover ground, control corridors, hit common spots and so on.
2 - The amount of damage a grenade has. This one kind of speaks for itself. If you do not deal a lot of damage with a weapon, it's easier to stray away for another.
3 - How fast you can shoot. If can't use your grenades quickly, grenade usage becomes a lot less flexible. At a glance, you'd think a bad firing rate would make a weapon bad, but since equip speed is a thing, players who know how to swap bridge that gap.
4 - The time it takes for a grenade to explode after it touches a surface. Back in the day, grenades like thunder took longer to explode, which gave time to players to react, and gave variety to grenade usage.
Also there are some niche extra elements, like reload speed for example, making grenade downtime interval longer or ammo capacity.
now, why does grenade A feel so oppressive in comparison to other grenades (and even other explosives)?
Let's rate it on the scale:
1 - It can reach up to 600 blast radius. The next best grenade can reach up to 480. Needless to say, 600 blast radius is VERY strong, and can cover so much ground that in some maps it's very difficult to manuever, let alone leave your base, without taking damage. (Rumpus room is a good example, and in coordinated play, or high level play, it's a nightmare)
2 - Grenade A's power sits at 1000, which at first, doesn't sound bad. An instictual estimate would be that, that damage number would be the maximum amount of damage you could take from a grenade. However, that is not the case. The closer your are to the grenade's explosion, the more damage you take, and that EXCEEDS the power stated on the weapon. That means, that you can take up even 1600 damage, from one grenade. Now, imagine two.
3 - I explained before how the bridge is gapped with its low firing rate. The intention is to have it shoot slowly. Swapping nulifies that completely.
4 - Grenade A's explosion time is fairly quick, though I have not run comparisons with all other grenades.
Grenade A's actual drawbacks are as follows:
1 - 500 reload speed, which all grenades share. Meaning it has downtime windows that can be exploited.
2 - Ammo capacity. You can shoot up to 2 grenades (without outer manipulations such as taking ammo or having a friend shoot grenades with you). In total you can shoot from 4 to 8 grenades in total (again, without taking ammo or considering other players..).
As it stands right now, the up sides are so strong, that the downsides do not matter at all. Other grenades share the first downside, so in direct comparison it literally doesn't matter. So all that is left is ammo capacity. Which, in my opinion, is a good drawback, just not enough to make the weapon be in the same level as the others.
So... What would I offer to change? (not all changes at once, but at least some of these elements need to be looked at)
* Blast radius is the first thing I can think of. I believe that at most , no weapon should exceed 500 blast radius.
* Damage - why not make it weaker? It already covers a lot of ground, and I doubt changing the damage formula is an easier task. Making its power lower by 100 or even 200 power would stil make this grenade a strong option, but not so overwhelming.
*Explosion time - this could make or break the weapon. Very rarely have we seen, in high level play especially, old grenades that took long time to explode. The main usage for grenades is to poke, behind corners or during downtimes of weapons. Long explosion time could remove certain elements of gameplay away, but it CERTAINLY could be a direction to take with this weapon.
*Firing rate: This one can make or break a weapon as well by itself. What needs to be adjusted isn't the firing rate stat, but the hidden stat of this grenade's equip speed.
Of course you could offer other changes, such as having ammo capacity of 1 in mag. Or even making this grenades reload speed longer (making it take longer to time to reload). Please feel free to debate this. I tried to be as extensive as I could, and tried to think of all the gameplay elements possible, but I am just a man, and I am sure some people could think of more, so feel free to add to it.
