Weapon Balance

[Acoma]

This is just my suggestion, and additions/opinions on it is greatly welcomed. Currently I feel there is barely any balance between the weapons and would like to see that changed for the better.


Recruit

Pistol

• Pistols should cause an accuracy debuff on a biological Monster
• The ammo amount for this weapon should be increased to 25 for physical, and 15 for everything else.

Rifle

• The bleeding dot they have on physical damage should be applied to all rifles.
• The critical chance on the rifle is fine, I wouldn't change that.

Shotgun

• Shotguns should have their damage increased, but restricted to 3-5 mobs in their sprayshot at one time. Those enemies who are the closest target being the first to be hit.
• With this change, I have no problem with the weapon doing knockback.

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Soldier

Chaingun

• Chainguns should get a bonus to armor piercing per pump after 3.
• The ammo amount is fine on a chaingun, I wouldn't change that.

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Commando

Rocket Launcher

• Rocket launchers should do the best damage verse mechnical mobs and medicore damage verse biological mobs.
• Reduce or remove the splash from the weapon vs bio/mech and remove the overheat beeping.

RPG Launcher

• Normalize the splash damage with the single target damage so that one shot does equal damage to all, regardless of how many mobs there are.
• Slightly increase the reload/shot time to adjust for the equalised damage. Remove the stun.

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Ranger

Netgun

• Netguns should disable all weapons from a mob for a brief period of time
• A resisted net should still apply a speed reduction to the target.

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Guardian

Staff

• Staffs should get a small daze proc that locks a target's ability to perform logos/bane logos.
• Staffs should use energy cells for ammo.

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Grenadier

Propellant

• Slightly increase the range this weapon shoots.
• Remove the knockback from the sonic gun and increase(add) the substained terrain based dot to all forms of the weapon.

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Spy

Blade

• The blade should do the best damage verse biological mobs, but medicore damage to mechnical.
• The blade should take energy cells for ammo.

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Sniper

Torqueshell

• The torqueshell should do High damage to BOTH biological and mechnical mobs
• The torqueshell should have it's damage decrease via range proxmity rechecked, and possibly made a greater gap between the damage dropoff.

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Specialist

Leech Gun

• The leech gun should sap the armor of the target, and continue onto health of the target making a seemless switch to the amount added to the group.
• Leech guns should provide a all-actions slow to the current target of the gun.

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Sapper

Polarity Gun

• Polarity gun should slow any armor regeneration(in-combat) of the target.
• The ammo intake of the polarity gun should be slowed, using less ammo to fire.

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Medic

Injector Gun

• The injector gun dot should be increased.
• The injector gun should slow any health regeneration(in-combat) of the target.

That's it for now, later I'll add a weapons chart.

[teskon]

nice suggestions, but "removing" splash from the rocketlauncher is a bad one ...whenever it hits the dmg should be 75% of the initial hitdmg to all targets around it in 5m ... beeing reduced to 25% in about 15m distance ... no matter how many targets are hit


edit to post below: yes, but rocketlauncher = massive dmg with splash, you have to wait like 2 days until you can fire it so you should get something for it, a rocket does splashdmg in a huge amount, no matter where it hits,

[Acoma]

Well, Im moving all the splash to the rpg launcher, as that is an underused and pretty much useless weapon right now. Rocket launchers were intended for the big mechs(striders/stalkers) but are currently pisspoor verse them and great verse normal bane.

[Gangrel]

Recruit
Pistol is interesting, although at firearms 5, the debuff is interesting, considering how fast the pistol fires/reloads at the higher levels the clip size is almost negligable.

Rifle: I thought that the physical DOT was only on the test server. Having it applied to other weapons as well would make it interesting (think sonic rifle with Knockback + DOT on a crit )

Shotguns: Not so sure on this, especially considering that increasing the damage would make it almost too powerful (especially when taken with rage). With a level 32 Fire Shotgun, i can almost 2shot a group (4 mobs) of level 35 Thrax when rage is running (Firearms 5 as well). Increasing the damage would just make it easier.

Soldier
Chaingun: Not so sure how this would work out adding +armour piercing to it. Especially if it hits on EVERY shot.

Commando
Rocket Launcher: Cant really comment on this one, as i havnt used it.

RPG Launcher: I can see this getting interesting, especially if its powerful enough to 2 or 3 shot groups fast.

Ranger
Netgun: Could be a bit too powerful in PvP although just right for PvE. The weapon disabling would be nice, but even better would be removing the bug where shooting an already netted mob removes the net effect

Guardian
Staff: Am always dubious over the ammo requirement. Although the staff does make a class cheap to run, and a potential money earner, maybe they should reduce the repair costs for the weapons then (in return ) ATM, i think that the repair costs for Staffs and Blades should be increased anyway (where a firearm costs me 20Credits to repair, it could cost me over 700Credits for the Blade)

Considering that Staffs already get a knockback bonus with H2H in melee, i would remove that if you were going to add the daze effect.


Grenadier
Propellant: A slight range increase i can see, although removing the knockback for sonic would be interesting, especially seeing as it would be the only Sonic weapon that didnt knock back. Althogh i have to admit i dont really understand "increase(add) the substained terrain based dot to all forms of the weapon."

Spy
Blade: Interesting to say, but i will use the same argument for blades using ammo as i did for the Staffs.

Sniper
Torqueshell: Not so sure on this one. If the damage from within say 50m, that is already quite a large problem in zones where you might only be able to see mobs up to 60m range.

Specialist
Leech Gun: Interesting i have to say, would definately need some testing i would imagine (especially if you were pumping up your armour and then your health (in that order) due to how the armour/health gets affected)

Sapper
Polarity Gun: Interesting, especially considering that you have the 'pop' effect as well currently. So ist hat getting removed

MedicInjector Gun: Agreed, although it could be a PvP killer there with an increase in DOT, although i have to admit i do like the decrease of in combat regeneration

Of course, those are just my thoughts on it all.

[teskon]

Grenadier
Propellant: A slight range increase i can see, although removing the knockback for sonic would be interesting, especially seeing as it would be the only Sonic weapon that didnt knock back. Althogh i have to admit i dont really understand "increase(add) the substained terrain based dot to all forms of the weapon."

if you use the sonic one you have something on the ground that applies something like a dot to everything in it ... pretty neat if we had this in all propellants,

[Acoma]

Thanks for the feedback! I can further refine these suggestions once I compile a list of damage types for each weapon.

[Gangrel]

Just a bonus, but i noticed that on the test server, my Physical pistol had a DOT on it for crit hits as well. So i would assume that it applies to ALL physical damage dealt

[Acoma]

Yes, when my rocket launcher (phys) crits, it does around a 1500 dot per tick.

[Drexus]

I wont comment on all of the points raised but here's a few I'd like to put across my thoughts on:

Shotgun

• Shotguns should have their damage increased, but restricted to 3-5 mobs in their sprayshot at one time. Those enemies who are the closest target being the first to be hit.
• With this change, I have no problem with the weapon doing knockback.

Shotguns already do plenty of damage especially considering every class in the game can use them if they decide to, combine that with the knockback chance (which I swear at the max pump still seems to happen way more than 25% of the time) and the weapon is fine.
Reduce the knockback distance to make this work better with other close range damage classes in group situations and that would be better, there are some that think shotguns are already overpowered and undermine what some classes are supposed to excel at so they really don't need any buffs right now.

Chaingun

• Chainguns should get a bonus to armor piercing per pump after 3.
• The ammo amount is fine on a chaingun, I wouldn't change that.

If they receive any kind of armour piercing it would have to be very slight due to their rapid-fire nature or a low percentage chance of happening, otherwise they would be way over the top.

Rocket Launcher

• Rocket launchers should do the best damage verse mechnical mobs and medicore damage verse biological mobs.
• Reduce or remove the splash from the weapon vs bio/mech and remove the overheat beeping.

Agreed with the general idea here, they should excel vs tough high regen targets, perhaps leave some decent splash damage in but reduce the area of effect by a fair amount to balance it out. Needs to be strong enough to overcome high regen targets.
When I pick up a big shoulder mounted rocket launcher I expect it to do serious damage to striders etc, I don't see that it should be a primary weapon for groups of bane as it is now, especially with the slow beading as it doesn't make sense and detracts from the intended purpose of RPG launchers.

RPG Launcher

• Normalize the splash damage with the single target damage so that one shot does equal damage to all, regardless of how many mobs there are.
• Slightly increase the reload/shot time to adjust for the equalised damage. Remove the stun.

Increase the AOE damage a great deal to be much closer to the main target but leave the stun component in, reduce the % chance slightly if need be to maintain balance but losing the stun would take away a very useful and unique part of this weapon.

Grenadier

Propellant

• Slightly increase the range this weapon shoots.
• Remove the knockback from the sonic gun and increase(add) the substained terrain based dot to all forms of the weapon.

Agree with the increased range, 15m would be nice and a compromise from the 20m it had in beta.
The ability to set terrain on fire so to speak to cause damage to targets that are in the area would be pretty cool, how easy it would be to implement I'm not sure.
One last big thing with propellants, remove or greatly reduce the damage reduction that the weapon has against larger groups of targets, this is the weapons main purpose, all it has is it's AOE damage so let it really excel in this area.

[Acoma]

To the shotgun change, I took account of all classes, not just soldier classes.

I didn't take into consideration of any logos enhancing buffs/debuffs, just base weapon balance. So if I reduced the target cap of the shotgun to 3-5 targets, instead of the large cap it has now, it needs a slight damage increase for the weapon to still be viable to the specialist tree.

[Drexus]

To the shotgun change, I took account of all classes, not just soldier classes.

I didn't take into consideration of any logos enhancing buffs/debuffs, just base weapon balance. So if I reduced the target cap of the shotgun to 3-5 targets, instead of the large cap it has now, it needs a slight damage increase for the weapon to still be viable to the specialist tree.

Okay so you would like to see shotguns hit fewer targets for more damage rather than more for lesser damage, what's the main reasoning behind this change?

[Acoma]

Shotguns currently reduce the need for any type of aoe, whether it's from a grenadier or demo. I would like to see our roles be increased by the reduction on shotguns

[Drexus]

I can see your point and even agree that shotguns do kinda overshadow some fo the AOE classes roles but do you really think this change would be enough or even change anything all that much?

Perhaps I'm wrong but you up the damage and reduce the number of targets hit, fair enough, those that are hit die even faster and get knocked back much of the time making way for 3-5 more targets soon after (a decent sized group of mobs here).
Yes you hit fewer mobs each time but you're doing more damage to those mobs which = a quicker kill time and the big factor here, because the blast would only hit upto 5 targets the big damage reduction that usually occurs when you hit a big group (think cp defence/attack) would no longer apply would it? So you basically in a round-the-houses way end up with things being about the same.

Is my reasoning wrong? Maybe, as I could be missing something and it's never always easy to judge without actually testing such changes but I'm not sure if this would be the right change to make, nice post all the same though, the more ideas the better.

[Acoma]

Well, Im looking to get rid of the splash damage reduction thing they have in the game currently. And Im not talking about a major damage increase, just a minor one. (:

And don't feel that you are wrong, it's your opinion on the matter and Im happy to debate it so we can refine this idea into something we can present the devs with

[Drexus]

Well with what you've just said in mind that sounds reasonable, allow the real AOE classes to do the damage they should to large groups by taking out the over the top damage reduction when hitting many targets, something I've been wanting the devs to change, where appropriate, for a while now.

Ah to go back to the days when you could flame large groups of bane with a propellant and see consistant high damage numbers, instead of the feeling that someone swapped your propellant fuel for Cillit Bang: Bang and the Bane aren't gone!