Panthera Primary Fire Is Worse Than Miter Uncharged Blade Spam

[superdk90]

I have been using the panthera lately comparing its primary fire to that of the miter (specifically uncharged shots).

 

Before I talk about that I just want to say that I think that the panthera's secondary fire is in a good place. That stagger on hit + the bleed procs + the damage it currently has is pretty good, its a bit of an ammo hog, but its not unreasonable.

 

Now on to the main topic. First let us compare stats.

 

Magazine:

miter - 20

panthera - 12 (listed ammo is 60 but it uses 5 per shot so that means that it really has 12 shots)

 

Fire rate:

miter - 2.5 (the listed fire rate is 0.526, but that is for the charged shot, if you just use uncharged shots it is 2.5)

panthera - 1.7

 

Damage per shot:

miter - 125 (remember this is the uncharged shot)

panthera - 100

 

Status chance:

miter - 25% (remember this is the uncharged shot)

panthera - 10%

 

Reload time:

miter - 2.0

panthera - 2.0

 

Critical chance:

N/A they both have 0% crit chance (note that it seems that the uncharged miter shots have 2.5% crit chance, but this is so little that we can ignore it)

 

Taking a look at the stats it is easy to see that the miter (again using uncharged shots) is superior to the pahthera's primary fire in every way (except reload time which is equal). Also note that the miter can aim down sights while the panthera cannot.

 

The panthera's primary fire should be better than (or at least equivalent to) the miter's uncharged shots. Why? because the miter is a component in crafting the panthera. Look at the tiberon for example; it is a clear upgrade to the latron. The tipedo is an upgrade to the bo or at the very least a sidegrade (yes i know that the kunai are used in crafting it, but you can't really compare a melee to a secondary). The panthera and miter both shoot blades, so for the panthera's primary fire to be objectively worse than the miter's (and this is not even taking into account that the miter has a charge function) means that this not an upgrade or even a sidegrade. If this weapon is supposed to be all about the secondary fire then why bother giving it a primary fire, just make it a continuous fire weapon that does damage via badass saw blade.

 

You can argue that the panthera's secondary fire (as cool as it is) makes up for the lackluster performance of the primary fire. I don't think that this is an excuse for the primary fire being as bad as it is. Look at the quanta. The primary and secondary fire are both good, they fill different roles, and work well together, but are both good on their own (if you do not like the quanta that is fine, but the point is that both fire modes are viable, just in different ways). This is not true of the panthera. The secondary fire is good, but the primary is seriously lacking, and they don't work together at all. Its like duct taping a grenade launcher to a nerf gun. The grenade launcher is good, but what is the point of the nerf gun? You could tape that grenade launcher to your arm and it would still be good (*cough* make it happen DE *cough*).

 

I do not like criticizing without giving a few ideas, so here are a few:

 

1. Make the primary fire on the panthera different than that of the miter.

     - It could be something like each trigger pull shoots out multiple blades in a spread, or it could be that when you hit an enemy with a blade it sticks in them and does damage over time.

2. Buff the damage

     - Not my favorite idea, but it would work I guess

3. Remove the primary fire

     - The last buff to the panthera seems to suggest that DE intended for the secondary fire to be the main source of   damage, so why not remove the primary fire entirely so we can aim down sights. Yes I know that if i don't like the primary fire I do not "have" to use it, but then we wind up with the grenade launcher taped to the nerf gun situation.

 

I know that these are not many ideas, so please tell me what you think. What should we do to the primary fire? Should it be buffed/changed/removed? 

 

TLDR:

The panthera's primary fire is worse than the miter uncharged blade spam in every way. It needs to be buffed/changed/removed.

 

Edit: corrected a few grammar mistakes

Edited January 28, 2015 by superdk90

[Helleborr]

Panthera was intended right off the bat to be a mastery trash weapon, because that's how much DE cares about creating a system of reference for balancing weapons, with proper relation of MR requirement / resource cost / rarity of components to properly weighed stats. Why bother when vets will just rank it up for mastery and novices may get it for the cool factor before discovering that it's just bad stat-wise and no niche of its own?

[Maou]

if only you could charge up the blade and be able to choose wther to hold it or fire it.

[superdk90]

Panthera was intended right off the bat to be a mastery trash weapon, because that's how much DE cares about creating a system of reference for balancing weapons, with proper relation of MR requirement / resource cost / rarity of components to properly weighed stats. Why bother when vets will just rank it up for mastery and novices may get it for the cool factor before discovering that it's just bad stat-wise and no niche of its own?

As it stands now, yes it is just mastery fodder, but these weapons that need other weapons should not be. At least it should feel like an upgrade, but it doesn't. This is setting a bad precedent, and we need to make it known that this trend is bad.

[Photon95]

Good points! I had an idea for the secondary fire a little while ago. Why not incorporate the secondary into the primary? Taping the trigger would release the blade as normal, and while holding it pulls up the floating blade of death. This would at least allow for aiming.

[superdk90]

if only you could charge up the blade and be able to choose wther to hold it or fire it.

Good points! I had an idea for the secondary fire a little while ago. Why not incorporate the secondary into the primary? Taping the trigger would release the blade as normal, and while holding it pulls up the floating blade of death. This would at least allow for aiming.

A charge mechanic would be cool, but it doesn't fix the fact that the primary fire is still bad.

Edited January 28, 2015 by superdk90

[Firetempest]

Lower the damage per shot. But make it actually shoot a spread of 5 blades for the shot cost. Change it to a shotgun class for lower damage multiplier mods. Don't give it diminishing returns on range.

[WhisperByte]

+1 

Panthera should be at least equal (or better) than the sum of it's parts

[superdk90]

Lower the damage per shot. But make it actually shoot a spread of 5 blades for the shot cost. Change it to a shotgun class for lower damage multiplier mods. Don't give it diminishing returns on range.

This sounds good, just as long as the damage is not reduced too much, and a small increase in fire rate could help as well.

[ShioriShi]

Why do I get the feeling Panthera should the reverse of Redeemer? Redeemer is a melee weapon that works as a gun, Panthera should be a gun that works as a melee weapon. So remove ammo drain on melee part and let it proc bleed stat like crazy.

[Issun135]

If its going to consume 5 ammo per shot, i want a five round burst of blades.

[superdk90]

If its going to consume 5 ammo per shot, i want a five round burst of blades.

Yes. Moar blades plz :)

[CrazyCatLad]

It is terrible.  It took me ~40 runs to get all the Miter parts...this should've been twice as good as the Miter (aka par).

[Stratego89]

Lower the damage per shot. But make it actually shoot a spread of 5 blades for the shot cost. Change it to a shotgun class for lower damage multiplier mods. Don't give it diminishing returns on range.

This sounds nice but it shoots vertical sawblades. A spread doesn't really make sense. I personally think it should just get innate punchthrough or much higher damage per shot.

[Firetempest]

This sounds nice but it shoots vertical sawblades. A spread doesn't really make sense. I personally think it should just get innate punchthrough or much higher damage per shot.

Not as a scatter. I was thinking of more of a tight horizontal spread as 5 vertical blades when fired together would force each other apart.

Making primary viable to soften a crowd before going to town with the secondary.

nevermind the gun. just a shot sample projection.

[superdk90]

Not as a scatter. I was thinking of more of a tight horizontal spread as 5 vertical blades when fired together would force each other apart.

Making primary viable to soften a crowd before going to town with the secondary.

nevermind the gun. just a shot sample projection.

Since the miter has a rifle/sniper feel to it, giving the panthera a more shotgun feel would help it a lot. How about taking out the rebounding and adding in a mechanic where blades will "stick" to whatever they hit, dealing additional damage over time, or acting as short term environmental hazards.

[Stratego89]

Not as a scatter. I was thinking of more of a tight horizontal spread as 5 vertical blades when fired together would force each other apart.

Making primary viable to soften a crowd before going to town with the secondary.

nevermind the gun. just a shot sample projection.

The visual helped a lot to understand, logic would dictate that the blades would push each other apart, still not sure how I'd feel about the gun design if this change was made but what can I say, whatever makes it viable.

[CrazyCatLad]

I would think just dropping the consumption down to 2 (or 3) and make it fire 2 (or 3) blades would alleviate issues. 

 

Five blades shooting at once would be annoying considering I doubt they'll be shooting as fast as the Hind.

 

 

 

EDIT: Or you know, 1 blade = 1 ammo.

Edited January 28, 2015 by Lanieu

[Firetempest]

Since the miter has a rifle/sniper feel to it, giving the panthera a more shotgun feel would help it a lot. How about taking out the rebounding and adding in a mechanic where blades will "stick" to whatever they hit, dealing additional damage over time, or acting as short term environmental hazards.

Not sure how well the engine would handle 30+ rounds punched into the ground and persist as short term caltrops. Though a interesting idea. Dots have never been that great and would further decrease its base damage to make up for potential damage. I think the bounce gives a nice chance for every blade to find a possible target not wasting damage.

Edited January 28, 2015 by Firetempest

[superdk90]

Not sure how well the engine would handle 30+ rounds punched into the ground and persist as short term caltrops. Though a interesting idea. Dots have never been that great and would further decrease its base damage to make up for potential damage. I think the bounce gives a nice chance for every blade to find a possible target not wasting damage.

I forgot to consider what the engine could handle (see mirage + hall of mirrors + kohm). Something to differentiate it from the miter (which already has bouncing blades) would help greatly I think. Maybe the blades can fragment on impact with the environment so that missed shots are less punishing.

[Othergrunty]

I'm about to have finished leveling the Panthera and everytime i use it, i feel like the primary and secondary fire had been switched around by accident.

 

The primary fire is painfully slow, has travel time (made worse by being unable to aim in) and barely does a lot of damage while consuming 5 shots of ammo.

 

Meanwhile the secondary fire feels like the slash damage answer to the beam weapons. Sure it has short range, but it does a decend amount of damage over a few seconds, while keeping enemies staggered. Also consuming only 1 shot of ammo, while you can theoretically use it endlessly.

 

With that in mind it behaves a lot like a single target variant of the Dead Space Ripper. The primary fire feels more like a secondary option for those moments where you want to shoot down a camera which is out of your range.

 

In the end, i guess it's another weapon experiment by DE. Someone had a fun idea, they designed, coded and released it and it turned out to be dissapointing in the end.

Edited January 28, 2015 by Othergrunty