Let's Review Prime Weapons Which Are Very Weak

[Thrymm]

Why is level 60 end game? why not 40? 50? ... 90? 100?

 

End game is the definition of ANYTHING past where you as a player have done all the normal things in the game like leveling and moved on to the stupid things, like multiple rotations in Endless or Trials. In an MMO it would be having done all the main quest chains, fought all the story bosses, and in Borderlands 2 it would be having done Play Through 1 and 2.

 

We have no main story line to follow, non sequential quests, very little mission Lore. There basically ZERO start point, so you can't just pick a random point in space down the line and call it "the end part of the game" anyway. 

 

Anything at all that's non Star Chart is not balanced for. NONE of it is properly balanced for once enemy levels go above 30, so you don't get to pick <insert stupid enemy level past 30 here> and decide THAT is "end game".

 

Weapons and builds just need to "function" well enough to get to the last rotations that drop Prime gear FOR THE FIRST TIME, not "to rotation X" where X is a number you happen to like the sound of.

 

The fact that the Boltor Prime scales so much higher then a Boltor is not a good thing to start with, so saying "there's weapons that scale even higher" is NOT something to cheer about.

I agree with this 100%, and that's why, in my opinion, weapons should be balanced against one another and not against some arbitrary number.

 

If a weapon generally sucks compared to other weapons, it probably needs a buff.  If it's generally superior to other weapons, it probably needs a nerf.  This could mean across all weapons, or as a "tiered" weapon system, but either way, the weaponry should support a different playstyle rather than being a constant ladder of more power.

 

I do also agree, though, that the prime weapons are all over the map.  Some of them are powerful enough that you'd expect to see them in the most challenging scenarios, and some aren't really on the radar for such activity.  It seems like this is too much disparity as prime weapons would logically seem to all fall into a similar "tier", as far as their place in the game goes.

[BluelitHalo]

I'm surprised that there's no mention of the Boar Prime here. It needs all 4 status mods to reach the 100% status that it used to achieve easily with 3. Its potential damage output is largely unchanged, if not worse than before, but it's now inferior to every shotgun that isn't in the Strun or Boar series.

[TheBrsrkr]

Fang, Reaper and Ankyros Prime need some sort of improvement. Glaive Prime maybe. Sicarus is decent. Bronco, not so much.

[(PSN)DBR87]

I'm surprised that there's no mention of the Boar Prime here. It needs all 4 status mods to reach the 100% status that it used to achieve easily with 3. Its potential damage output is largely unchanged, if not worse than before, but it's now inferior to every shotgun that isn't in the Strun or Boar series.

 

That is because Boar Prime is still a capable shotgun, just when compared to Tigris/Sancti Tigris, Hek/Vaykor Hek and maybe Sobek and Khom it falls short.

 

It's not top tier but it's still strong.

[Fate0]

Skana prime, Bronco/akbronco prime, and lato prime.

Skana prime should be close to the darka prime or stats should be closer to prisma version.

Bronc/akbronco needs a buff across board

Lato prime, don't have but stats look horrid for a Prime weapon.

Before anyone with the "those are starter weapons and not everyone has access to them" crap, by your logic there are mods in the game that not everyone has access to or are no longer available. Should those suck? Prime weapons are advertised as upgrades to the weapons in their weapon class. But I'm not surprised though, as people are wanting the up coming nikana prime to suck compared to the Dragon version and are pissed the stats are better.

[Djego27]

That is because Boar Prime is still a capable shotgun, just when compared to Tigris/Sancti Tigris, Hek/Vaykor Hek and maybe Sobek and Khom it falls short.

 

It's not top tier but it's still strong.

 

It is not strong. Blast means you do no dps at all vs groups(what massively amplifies your ammo issues, massively reduces killspeed, reduces punch through room clearing ability to zero, prevents headshots and also reduces your dps since blast is resisted by armor), without blast(and 100% status) it is just plain pointless(low dps, range, massive spread and tons of ammo issues) and it doesn't work on Ember anymore. If DE would reverse the U17 change you could say it is a situational good weapon(solo L100+ vs armor, because weapons like the sancti tigris and vaykor hek will still outperform it below that) against everything else it is just a waste of time and ammo restores, like it always was.

 

There is no good reason at all to use it currently or can you name a single one? It is a very niche weapon, it always was and it is currently not useful in it's niche and pain inferior to other working status solutions like the prisma grakata(even on frames where crit and low fire damage scaling potential actually work against it all the way, what was the reason why I did prefere the boar prime before U17 on Ember).

 

Bronko prime needs 30% status and a 1s reload time, Akbronko prime 40% status, 8 rounds and 1.7s reload time. Same, without the status should be done to the normal bronko versions. Currently the bronko prime is just plain inferior to detron\brakk, akbronko prime can hit 100% status, however if you ever used it for 20 minutes non stop at high levels, you will most likely not want to use it ever again, because 0.5s fire and 2.3s reload gets old very fast and blast means you have to shoot every single target seperatly.

 

Sicarus could use 20%  status, 360 base ammo and 30 round magazine. Then I think it would be a fairly good status pistol option(something we don't have that much in the game).

 

Reaper prime suffers the same issues like other weapons in the class, what are to slow combos, slow weapon speed(beside the anku) and nothing that makes scytes special(like multi target finishers).

 

Fang prime also got the same issues as other dual daggers.

 

Ankyros Prime needs something to hide the giant boxing gloves if you don't use them, otherwise it is fine in my opinion.

 

Glaive prime is mostly fine as a pure throwing weapon, if you want you could improve the melee dps of it, even if there is not really a point to use a throwing weapon if you want to go full melee.

Edited November 27, 2015 by Djego27

[Magneu]

Burston Prime. Better supplemental stats pleeeaase.

[SasoDuck]

Akbronco Prime... weak? Have you even used it? I run a Radiation/Viral 100% proc build on it for Grineer, a Cold/Gas build on it for Infested, and Magnetic/Poison build for Corpus. It is a f*king great weapon.