My 2 Cents on the Ranged Weapon Issue

[Raso719]

It's been nice seeing everyone post their own thoughts on this matter. I thought I'd share mine.

I feel that scaling is the biggest issue right now with Firearms. My idea is two fold: Buff IPS damage for firearms and add additional effects to both elemental and IPS status proc from firearms.

IPS

Physical damage should be a big part of gunplay. Not just slash, either, but the whole spectrum. Make bullets less about space ninja magic and more about the shooty aspect of combat.  These effects should be consistent and not tied in anyway to status chance. IPS damage from firearms is intended to increase a weapon's effectiveness and add scaling. 

Impact - Impact damage deals blunt trauma to organs, bones and armor. Parts of the body struc by Impact damage from a firearm should eventually have their "armor break" granting increased damage to that body part. This could be a flat damage bonus, an increased critical chance or reduced damage absorption or armor. 

Piercing - Piercing damage from firearms will always bypass 80% of a target's MAX armor. Reducing a target's armor by 20% will allow piercing damage to bypass all remaining armor.

Slash - Slashing Damage should have a chance to get into and through the cracks of armor and shields. Slash damage from firearms should deal increased critical damage and have an increased critical chance to all targets (by an appreciable factor). 

Elemental Damage

Fire - Fire damage from firearms should always apply their armor melting effect to a target. However, it shouldn't stack past a few instances without an actual status proc.... so maybe unless the target is also taking fire DoT it can't have it's armor reduction proc stack more than 5 times? 

Cold - Cold damage from firearms should cauce icy buildup which eventually shatters into an icy AoE. 

Electric - Electric damage should always arc between nearby enemies. If no enemies are nearby the arc should be redirected to the origin and deal extra damage. Critical hits should arc multiple bolts.

Toxic - I'm going to copout and suggest Toxic always applies it's DoT, though not as strong of a DoT as if it had proc'd a status.

The elemental combos are too much for me to consider, right now, but the theme should be that these added effects either add damage or allow damage to be dealt faster or allow defenses to be bypassed.... 

[BiancaRoughfin]

Personally i dont see the issue some are seeing with Firearms in the game, they still can deal massive damage at distance and are able to strike many more enemies at a single time than Melee can. With the right frame and the right abilities to synergies with them, they can deal just as much damage as melee but at a distance.

1 hour ago, Raso719 said:

Slash - Slashing Damage should have a chance to get into and through the cracks of armor and shields. Slash damage from firearms should deal increased critical damage and have an increased critical chance to all targets (by an appreciable factor). 

Slash is still in a very powerful spot even after the mediocre nerf it received a wile back, you want it going through armor and shields too wile also adding to crit? No thanks...
If you want to propose changes to IPS, do something that brings Impact and Puncture up to part with Slash.

[DE] should have made Slash procs scale with ONLY the Slash damage the weapon has as they had proposed years ago before the Slash addict part of the community started crying over the forums.

1 hour ago, Raso719 said:

Cold - Cold damage from firearms should cauce icy buildup which eventually shatters into an icy AoE. 

This makes absolutely no sense, have you even seen Ice explode IRL? Only time i have seen ice Explode was then exposed to Thermite which could explain why Blast is achieved with Heat + Cold in-Game.

Instead having Cold procs stacking should cause the enemy to completely freeze and taking increase damage.

[Leqesai]

41 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Personally i dont see the issue some are seeing with Firearms in the game, they still can deal massive damage at distance and are able to strike many more enemies at a single time than Melee can. With the right frame and the right abilities to synergies with them, they can deal just as much damage as melee but at a distance.

I completely agree. Been playing for years and I've never, not even once, thought "Boy my primary/secondary weapons are sure in need of serious buffs"

The flavor of the month complaining about primary/secondary weapons is just silly IMO. 

[Raso719]

29 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Personally i dont see the issue some are seeing with Firearms in the game, they still can deal massive damage at distance and are able to strike many more enemies at a single time than Melee can. With the right frame and the right abilities to synergies with them, they can deal just as much damage as melee but at a distance.

Slash is still in a very powerful spot even after the mediocre nerf it received a wile back, you want it going through armor and shields too wile also adding to crit? No thanks...
If you want to propose changes to IPS, do something that brings Impact and Puncture up to part with Slash.

[DE] should have made Slash procs scale with ONLY the Slash damage the weapon has as they had proposed years ago before the Slash addict part of the community started crying over the forums.

This makes absolutely no sense, have you even seen Ice explode IRL? Only time i have seen ice Explode was then exposed to Thermite which could explain why Blast is achieved with Heat + Cold in-Game.

Instead having Cold procs stacking should cause the enemy to completely freeze and taking increase damage.

 

The problem is that a higher levels all but maybe 4 guns become useless while melee scales seemingly indefinitely. That's mathematically a fact. The armor and health pools of enemies quickly gets to a point where firearms are out classed by event he lowest tier, Rivenless melee weapons. 

All effects are subject to change, and I highly doubt DE will see this and be like "Ah-Ha, that's it!" but the hope is it gives them ideas to juggle around. 

That said, these effects are based entirely around dealing damage or bypassing defenses. They are meant to help add additional scaling to damage. While lower level enemies might die from 1 or 2 shots, the idea is that for higher level enemies constant fire will cause these effects to build up over time and cause compound damage to the point where the target is eventually overwhelmed by damage.

Slash would not bypass armor, it would just have a boosted crit multiplier, or something. 

Freezing someone solid doesn't up damage and is already in the territory of status effects. This isn't about changing status effects, this is about adding additional effects to damage types from firearms. Like, Viral status procs don't make any sense either... but it's all space ninja magic so it's all moot. Maybe electric building up a charge and then releasing a burst of electric AOE makes more sense but I wanted to avoid derivative elemental effects. 

[Leqesai]

1 minute ago, Raso719 said:

 

The problem is that a higher levels all but maybe 4 guns become useless while melee scales seemingly indefinitely. That's mathematically a fact. The armor and health pools of enemies quickly gets to a point where firearms are out classed by event he lowest tier, Rivenless melee weapons. 

There is so much wrong with what you just said...

The only class of enemies that scales really poorly is Grineer. Corpus and Infested are easy to kill regardless of level. 

Grineer are also really easy to kill if you have armor-stripping. 

"The lowest tier, rivenless melee weapons"

lol...

If you are looking to develop a compelling argument don't just pull stuff out of your butt.

[Raso719]

2 minutes ago, Leqesai said:

There is so much wrong with what you just said...

The only class of enemies that scales really poorly is Grineer. Corpus and Infested are easy to kill regardless of level. 

Grineer are also really easy to kill if you have armor-stripping. 

"The lowest tier, rivenless melee weapons"

lol...

If you are looking to develop a compelling argument don't just pull stuff out of your butt.

You're clearly not playing the same content I am. The trouble with firearms in this game right now are well documented. Most firearms become functionally useless at higher levels regardless of how you mod them. Meanwhile nearly every melee weapon can be made viable far beyond where firearms become unusable. This is just how the game plays right now. Go on and take a Sobek into Steel Path and let me know how it stacks up against a well modded Skana. The Skana will out preform the Sobek every time. Will the Skana be god tier? No. But you Sobek will require you unload magazine after magazine into your enemies and drop many ammo pizzas.

The problem, fundamentally, is that all melee weapons are more viable at higher levels well after most firearms have ceased to be useful. Firearms need to be at least as useful as a Skana or Pupacyst.

[Leqesai]

11 minutes ago, Raso719 said:

You're clearly not playing the same content I am. The trouble with firearms in this game right now are well documented. Most firearms become functionally useless at higher levels regardless of how you mod them. Meanwhile nearly every melee weapon can be made viable far beyond where firearms become unusable. This is just how the game plays right now. Go on and take a Sobek into Steel Path and let me know how it stacks up against a well modded Skana. The Skana will out preform the Sobek every time. Will the Skana be god tier? No. But you Sobek will require you unload magazine after magazine into your enemies and drop many ammo pizzas.

The problem, fundamentally, is that all melee weapons are more viable at higher levels well after most firearms have ceased to be useful. Firearms need to be at least as useful as a Skana or Pupacyst.

You are just wrong. On many levels. 

I'm telling you, as a MR30 who has played everything the game has to offer. Your arguments regarding weapons are simply not accurate. 

The game is not, nor will it ever be, balanced around Steel Path. Steel Path also only really scales horribly when you are going against Grineer. Corpus and Infested are as easy on Steel Path as they are anywhere else. 

Grineer, with ANY armor stripping, are not difficult either. Sobek is certainly able to drop Grineer if you've stripped armor (which is very easy to do in this the age of Helminth). 

 

I think the issue is far less a "you're not playing the same content as I am" and more you don't know what you're doing.