Intra-Kitgun Balance Feedback

[DrBorris]

Going to cut right to the chase, the Kitgun math sucks (most of the time). How stats scale with different loaders/grips makes the customization nothing more than superficial as DE has failed to make it an even playing field. In general this post is not about the overall balance of Kitguns, rather it is about the relative balance of Kitgun variants.

 

Being a person with too much free time I put together a calculator in Excel that would present me with a quick comparison of all Kitgun variants. Why am I bringing this up? Well, all my number feedback is a result of me being able to at-a-glance analyze Kitgun builds. In the spoiler below I am going to try to first show you the data that led me to my conclusions. Feel free to skip the spoiler section, just know that I'm not speaking out of my rear and my feedback is based on hard numbers.

Spoiler

 

This first picture is a key to the components.

1. The blue section in the upper left displays the chamber and grip along with the type of weapon.
2. The light yellow section below are base unmodded stats before Loader augments, for the most part this section is irrelevant.
3. Below in the darker yellow section are the modded base damage and fire rate. Keep in mind that this is the base damage without crits, so again this section is a bit irrelevant.
4. The large grey section displays the mod stats. The builds I will be using are not perfect meta, rather they are the general cookie-cutter builds. While there could be min/maxing done on a weapon-to-weapon basis the general cookie cutter build gives a good baseline for comparing Kitguns against each other. The values highlighted in grey are the mods applied to the rest of the calculator.
5. The largest green section in the middle is where all the stats for each loader are presented.
6. The light green section above it is the key for the names of the Loaders.
7. The small purple box is the key for what stats are listed for each Loader.
   1. Burst DPS: This is the damage per second not counting reloading. It is found by simply multiplying the average damage of a shot by the fire rate.
   2. Sustained DPS: This then counts in reload time. It is reduced by a ratio of your weapon’s uptime and downtime, that being composed of fire rate, magazine size, and reload speed.
   3. CC: Critical Chance
   4. Reload: Reload time
   5. Status C : Status Chance
   6. Status PS: Status per second: The amount of status effects that you will inflict every second (burst). This is honestly more important than raw status chance as most status effects scale with the amount of times they have been inflicted now.
8. The light orange box on the top right is for finding more info about one of the Loaders.
9. The dark orange column is a comparison of all the available grips for the Loader selected in the light orange section above.

 

Now with that out of the way, I am going to post a picture for each of the chambers. One for the primary and one for the secondary variant. For consistency I will use the lowest fire rate Grips for all these pictures, although you can see the stats for the other Grips on the right side. I will also use Splat as the selected Loader for said grips as it is a meta choice (keep in mind the Loader does not have an impact on the relations between Grips).

Secondary Kitguns

 

Primary Kitguns Post Hotfix 28.0.5

 

Primary Kitguns Pre-Hotfix 28.0.5

 

 

Now for the feedback…

Fire Rate and Burst vs Sustained DPS (Ignore Gaze for a bit)

On all Kitguns (before Hotfix 28.0.5, will get there in a second), the higher the fire rate of the Grip the lower the sustained and burst DPS. Of all the trends with Kitguns, this one confuses me the most. A lower sustained DPS makes sense and would be expected, if you empty your magazine faster you will have a lower uptime while shooting. Aside from feel, the upside of higher fire rate is higher status per second.

While many of the higher fire rate Kitguns are still decent, they are all needlessly gimped. The suggestion here is simple, the burst DPS of all Grips should be somewhat equivalent. If anything, the higher fire rate grips should have slightly higher burst DPS. This will make picking a higher fire rate Grip a viable choice for those that prefer it.

Note: In the most recent update this was addressed a bit as Shrewd and Brash got some buffs. For Catchmoon and Rattleguts the tier list of burst DPS is now Tremor>Brash>Steadyslam>Shrewd. Shrewd got the short end of the stick here and while the numbers are closer, they should be better. This issue persists with secondary kitguns and should not be ignored just because they are old content.

 

Loader Mag vs Reload Balance

Let’s have a bit of positivity. The balance of the mag and reload speed of the Loaders is perfect. The sustained DPS, the stat that matters for the mag/reload stats, is basically even across the board. If two Loaders are in the same crit/status tier, then their sustained DPS is near identical. You have true choice to pick what you want for the feel of the weapon.

 

Loader Crit vs Status Balance

Status weapons still struggle in general, but there was a key choice DE made with Loaders that only exacerbates the issue. The critical damage multiplier also scales with loader. Critical damage and critical chance stats scale multiplicatively with each other, having them both scale means that the higher crit Loaders are getting a far greater benefit.

The solution seems obvious when you look at the base status chance for the highest status variants. These values range from only 33% to 39%, that just isn’t high enough for the status of a weapon to be able to carry it. Now that we can reach over 100% status these weapons would benefit greatly from having a higher status chance. Keep the current minimum status chance the same (Killstream and Splat), increase everything else. The highest status chance Loaders should be coming in at 60%-80% base status chance.

 

The Missing Loaders

The highest crit/status Loaders are missing the highest reload/magazine Loaders. Don’t take “highest” to mean “best”. As discussed earlier, the mag/reload balance of Loaders is perfect. The template is already there to make the four additional Loaders that add to the diversity of builds. A max mag size loader isn’t “better” than a middle of the road Loader, it is a difference in playstyle. Restricting these options doesn’t add any balance, it only restricts build-craft.

 

Primary vs Secondary Balance

Some have argued that the secondary kitguns were suffocating the meta. If that was DE’s concern, they swung the pendulum too far. For someone to go through the effort of interacting with modular weapons they NEED to compete with the best in class.

Some rough comparisons

• Primary Catchmoon is 50%-60% worse than Secondary Catchmoon.
• Primary Gaze is 45%-50% worse than Secondary Gaze.
• Primary Rattleguts is 40%-50% worse than Secondary Rattleguts.
• Tombfinger is too different to directly compare.

Primary Kitguns being roughly half the power of secondary Kitguns hurts… a lot. Primary weapons have always had trouble against secondaries, but this discrepancy is even worse than normal. Primary Kitguns need all around buffs to more than just QoL status like magazine size (although Catchmoon also needs this, badly).

 

Secondary Tombfinger: The Grip problem but x10

Of all the inconsistencies with Kitguns, this one takes the cake. What went through DE’s head when they decided to make the high fire rate Tombfinger Grips absolute trash? Sure, the high fire rate grips have problems on all Chambers, but in the case of Tombfinger the burst DPS of Gibber is less than half that of Haymaker. This isn’t how you give player choice, if you make a Tombfinger that isn’t Haymaker you are shooting both your feet off.

 

Primary Tombfinger: Charge Time vs Fire Rate: Pre Hotfix 28.0.5

For some reason DE decided that it made the most sense for the charge rate of Tombfinger to be consistent across all Grips, only having the fire rate change. To clarify, charge time is how long it takes to charge a shot while fire rate is how long you must wait after you fire to charge again. The problem here is not perfectly represented in the calculator as it is the human interaction of this mechanic that makes it an issue. The issue being, due to it being semi-auto you will not ever notice the difference between grips if you are charging your shots. In the time it takes for you to lift your finger from the trigger and hit the trigger again all the Grips will be ready to fire.

There are a few ways DE could go about this. The most obvious one is to have the charge rate scale with Grips rather than fire rate.

Another option would be to make the quick fire more viable. As it stands, quick firing (with a macro) is about a 50% reduction to your DPS. Make quick fire a viable alternative by having it keep the same damage as a charged fire, albeit with a lower aera of effect. If this were done it would also be nice to increase the variance of fire rate between the Grips (they only range from 2.13 to 3.77 now).

 

Primary Tombfinger 2: Electric Boogaloo: Post Hotfix 28.0.5

I’ve seen a lot of balance changes in my day, this one takes the cake in my opinion as the one done with the least forethought. When using the charged fire, Tombfinger primary is now basically the inverse of Tombfinger secondary, the low fire rate grips are now trash compared to the high fire rate grips. I don’t know what DE expected when they slapped on massive reductions to effective fire rate without adjusting damage. At this point Tombfinger needs a balance overhaul, this chamber is plain broken in its primary form.

 

Edited June 18, 2020 by DrBorris

[Skaleek]

23 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

I’ve seen a lot of balance changes in my day, this one takes the cake in my opinion as the one done with the least forethought. When using the charged fire, Tombfinger primary is now basically the inverse of Tombfinger secondary, the low fire rate grips are now trash compared to the high fire rate grips. I don’t know what DE expected when they slapped on massive reductions to effective fire rate without adjusting damage. At this point Tombfinger needs a balance overhaul, this chamber is plain broken in its primary form.

Indeed. I would like to be able to change out my grip, at the very least, since this whole debacle is on DE's inability to crunch some very basic numbers. I really dont want to rebuild an almost identical kitgun for the investment of a catalyst, weapon exilus adapter, and 6~8 forma.

Well written post, good read, thanks for the number crunching as well. +1

Edited June 18, 2020 by Skaleek

[DemoHellsword]

Extremely interesting post with lots of details. And yes, the Tombfinger nerf to his charge time in damage grips is really, really bad. Like the damage of an Opticor Vandal with the charge time of the base variant...

[DrBorris]

23 hours ago, Skaleek said:

Indeed. I would like to be able to change out my grip, at the very least, since this whole debacle is on DE's inability to crunch some very basic numbers. I really dont want to rebuild an almost identical kitgun for the investment of a catalyst, weapon exilus adapter, and 6~8 forma.

Well written post, good read, thanks for the number crunching as well. +1

What really boggles my mind is that, despite me being rather critical in this post, it is very clear to me that there is a method to Kitgun balance. The balance guy must use formulas to determine final values and for the most part a lot of values do hit a similar target. This makes the Tombfinger all the more confusing because it is just... dumb. Kitguns were balanced with a scalpel, the 28.0.5 Tombfinger changes was basically chucking a boulder and watching where it landed.

[Skaleek]

19 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

This makes the Tombfinger all the more confusing because it is just... dumb. Kitguns were balanced with a scalpel, the 28.0.5 Tombfinger changes was basically chucking a boulder and watching where it landed.

To me it seems like a kneejerk reaction to popularity metrics rather than the weapon's stats itself. What they didnt see in the popularity metrics was that it wasnt necessarily that the tremor/tombfinger was overpowered, so much as the other options were incredibly lackluster.

[Tiltskillet]

38 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

To me it seems like a kneejerk reaction to popularity metrics rather than the weapon's stats itself. What they didnt see in the popularity metrics was that it wasnt necessarily that the tremor/tombfinger was overpowered, so much as the other options were incredibly lackluster.

I don't know what they're doing, but it sure looks like haphazard balancing by trial and error, popularity,  and more error.  I can only hope they're working on some sort of reimbursement for yall in the meantime.

[Thrymm]

I admit, I didn't see this one coming either.  I built my tombfinger primary as a steadyslam grip, and it....works good ok, I suppose.  I wouldn't have called it a bad gun, and frankly I wouldn't call it a bad gun now, either.  It has zero chance of being a weapon I actually use long term in its current state because it neither fills my AE needs nor my single target needs, and being as how I've got three weapons I can bring to missions the mediocre blend of the ae and single shot don't rise to earning a place.

But it's also not a good gun.  Not at all.  It doesn't even come close to meeting the expectations we'd have from the modular weapons as it doesn't touch the effectiveness of a good zaw or secondary kitgun.  While I'm a huge proponent of avoiding power creep, I'm a bit baffled as to what it's thought that we would do with new modulars that don't meet the previously created expectations.

Which makes me equally baffled as to why we'd change functionalities after they are introduced, and certainly why we'd reduce the power on them.  The disparity between the best kitgun and the current high end weaponry is rather drastic, they don't even touch it.  I actually expected the first round of patching to be universal buffs, since the current combinations simply plunked the guns squarely in a mire of mediocrity.

I hope there was logic to this, though I don't see it.  I also hope that, a single week after their inception we aren't leaning on the tired and overused "usage" strategy.  These weapons have only been out long enough to get us making them and dragging them out for testing, actual intentional usage as a go to weapon can not have taken shape yet, and our actual usage of these weapons over time is almost certainly universally significantly less to non-existent due to their poor stats and rather clunky designs.

I absolutely agree with the concept of allowing us to pull them apart and put them together with different pieces.  This idea transcends the current.....fiasco, and in actuality I think it's just a good idea overall.  Tie the expensive bits(forma, catalyst, exilus) to the piece that gives mastery on all kitguns and zaws, then let us mix and match as we see fit. 

At that point we not only have a reason to buy all the pieces, but can do so knowing that we aren't going to regrind for trivial changes, insulate ours valuable time from the negative effects of re-balancing(meaning we get to enjoy the positive effects much more), and really give us a fun little minigame.  Imagine having the above mentioned steadyslam gun parts all available, then getting to try them out with a gaze, a rattleguts, etc without doing the arduous grind of reacquiring every last part, a thing we likely won't even bother trying to do in the current system simply because we don't even know if we'll like the results(and honestly, probably won't in most cases).

Edited June 19, 2020 by Thrymm
clarification, I've got a whole lot more than the three weapon slots I originally inferred in the first paragraph:P

[z3us32610]

Thank you for the effort with this post OP. Ever since the secondaries came out I thought it was really unfortunate that there is such a huge disparity wrt damage vs fire rate, crit and crit multiplier. While I don't expect the burst damage to be exact across all the different variants, getting them much closer would really help. And your point about the status loaders applies to general status weapons in the game as well. For a full on status primary to be able to compete with a crit or hybrid primary, the base status chance needs be at least doubled. Something more like 60% base status chance at the very minimum.

I really hope DE takes a look at the usage statistics as well, because I'm sure they'll see that the tremor splat and haymaker splat combo sees soooo much more usage than anything else (outside of the new primary tombfinger, where brash splat is now the go to combo).

And the primary Catchmoon is just bad. Terrible. It needs real changes before it's even worth using.

It's an intricate system and altogether understandable that the balance between different grips is off. Hopefully DE realizes they need to make some more tweaks to provide real alternatives to the tremor splat and haymaker splat.

[Traumtulpe]

Well done, though this should not be news to anyone. We can all see the numbers after all, as could DE when they made it so.

[Kyleeon]

On Tombfinger post 28.0.5: I get the need to differentiate the grips, but imo they destroyed tremor quite a bit too hard. Damage difference seems to barely exist between the fire rate grip, charging in 0.5s and the low fire rate grip, charging at almost triple that. imo, while the nerf shouldn't be *entirely* reversed, the charge time needs to be reduced significantly. Tremor Tombfinger is currently a waste of resources, and making it bearable is a waste of a mod slot. I can't even begin to guess the reasoning behind those numbers. Very good post, hope DE uses this and not in a monkey paw way.

Edited June 19, 2020 by Kyleeon

[DrivaMain]

The Tremor nerf is 100% knee-jerk/panic reaction without a lot of thought. Look I get it, it gives the old bramma feels. But nerfing the grip to up to have 100-150% less DPS than other Grips? Now that just stupid. 
 

If anything the tremor needs bigger damage or reduced the fire rate slightly.