Unfortunately, Spearguns are still bad.

[Flannoit]

As it stands, Spearguns might actually be one of the worst primary types in the game. The recent alt-fire changes that came with the Tenet Ferrox is a nice bandaid, but still just a bandaid that doesn't fix the overarching problem that all the Spearguns are either mediocre or outright bad. They are almost universally outclassed in every possible way. There is a reason why every single Speargun has a high disposition except for Afentis and Tenet Ferrox - and those two are only low disposition because all new weapons default to 0.5!

Right now, there are only a few odd Spearguns: Scourge/Prime, Javlok, Ferrox, Tenet Ferrox, and Afentis. A measly 6. Almost none of them are particularly good, for a handful of reasons.

I'll provide some TLDRs at the end of each section for those who don't wanna read too much.

Primary Fire:

The first major issue that affects every single Speargun with the sole exception of the Tenet Ferrox: The primary fire is outright atrocious universally!

In terms of primary fire, Spearguns are better classified as "bows but bad", as they mechanically share similarities with bows in terms of firing mechanics without any of the actual benefits of it. Tenet Ferrox, as the sole exception, is the only one exempt from this issue as the primary fire is actually good in how it acts, ignoring its other critical problems. This needs to be the standard fire method of Spearguns, because compared to bows...

Bows and Spearguns both require charging to some degree with possible minor exception to Scourge, because I'm not fully remembering how exactly its firing works. (Scourge sucks for many other reasons)

However, here's the kicker: Bows can be fired early, usually at the cost of range and/or damage. The bows that can't be fired early make up for it by baseline having superior damage all around despite the mandatory charge. Spearguns cannot be fired early at all, as "early fire" on a speargun means no projectile - so no damage. "So what?" you might ask, which is a fair thing to ask to be perfectly honest, "there's a handful of other weapons that require a charge and can't early fire!" Fair thing to point out! We'll get to that a little more later.

While Spearguns and Bows both have a charge mechanic, Spearguns are also worse by a large margin at the other end of the spectrum: fully charging a speargun offers it zero benefits. Bows usually get more damage and/or range when fully charged, or with the Nataruk a special attack when "perfect" charged. Spearguns, on the other hand, get nothing. Charging is mandatory for all their damage, with no special benefit for charging it other than being able to actually do damage in the first place. This puts it severely behind bows in terms of just straight-up firing mechanics.

So how do you go about making Spearguns' primary fires feel more worth it while keeping their primary fire identity unique? Simple, really! They've already figured it out! Tenet Ferrox's primary fire has a short charge, but is capable of autofire if you hold down the fire key. This actually solves a big problem with the general feel of most Spearguns, because you aren't babysitting your weapon in order to get your damage out. From there, your fire rate actually starts to feel like it actually does something, whereas with the current fire mechanic of spearguns (such as Javlok) fire rate doesn't really feel like it accomplishes much.

Javlok's primary fire sits at 0.30 charge and 3.33 fire rate. That's abysmally slow. With Speed Trigger and Shred equipped, it's now 0.16 and 6.33 which is a bit more manageable on paper until you remember you have to re-press the fire key every single shot, and shots don't queue up like they do with the Tenet Ferrox. With every single positive fire rate mod sans a riven (Speed Trigger, Primed Shred, Vigilante Ferver, Vile Acceleration, and Spring-Loaded Chamber) the Javlok sits at 0.07 charge and 14.17 fire rate, which sounds pretty incredible on paper until the same issue comes back up - shots don't queue up, and you have to re-press the fire key every single time. This makes the lowered charge rate much slower than it actually is because it then boils down to how quickly you can re-press the key vs how soon the weapon can truly be fire again even with charge time in account.

Issues with fire rate for semi-auto weaponry have already been noticed by DE. You guys have already attempted to adjust those, regardless of how that has turned out so far. Spearguns are severely worse by a large margin. By taking a page out of Tenet Ferrox's book in this case, Spearguns can be made to actually have a chance to compete with other weapons and make their Charge & Fire rates actually accurate to the numbers being listed. That isn't to say every single one needs to be changed to have Tenet Ferrox's primary fire mechanic, but it very much should be treated as the baseline rather than the exception.

Spearguns that should have Tenet Ferrox's fire mechanic, in my opinion:

• Tenet Ferrox
• Javlok
• Afentis

Spearguns that should have a "premature fire" and "charged fire" mechanic (similar to bows like Dread), in my opinion:

• Ferrox

Spearguns that should be an auto-fire when fired similar to guns like Acceltra:

• Scourge
• Scourge Prime
  • The reason these two are here is because I don't remember how their fire mechanic works - I'm assuming it's closer to how guns like Acceltra's fire where they fire so long as they're held. Which if so, that's fine.

This will put the 6 current Spearguns into good categories that allow them to compete with other weapons easier in terms of firing mechanic. Because as it stands right now, Spearguns are disgustingly far behind before you even take damage, etc. into account.

TLDR: Spearguns need to have their primary fire mechanics almost universally overhauled to better fit with how almost all other primaries function so that they aren't falling behind due to bad mechanics.

Alternate Fire:

DE, you're already aware that there was issues with the alternate fire. That's why you went and changed it when Tenet Ferrox came out universally, and even went as far as giving them a fancy new animation and sound effects to boot. It's a great start, but that's just it. It's a start. Unfortunately, the job isn't really done yet.

At best, you can call the alt. fires of most spearguns "support". Scourge/Prime and Afentis are defacto support, with Scourge granting Bullet Attraction and Afentis granting a reload, fire rate, recoil, and ammo buff. Tenet Ferrox and Ferrox's is a crowd control, creating a status fields that pulls enemies into its center when in range while dealing a bit of damage at the same time. Javlok, on the other hand, explodes at its point of impact.

This gives spearguns a unique niche when people actually bother to bring them into combat, and for the most part the benefits are nice but not enough to actually warrant actually bringing the weapon. But that's the problem - the benefits aren't enough to actually warrant people bringing them into combat.

Scourge/Prime and Afentis are more or less fine as they are with their alternate fire, since having support-dedicated alternate fire is far from an issue. They have their purpose, they can do them well when they're used, and people will generally get a lot of use out of it when it's there.

Tenet Ferrox and Ferrox need a buff, because while the effect is nice, the actual effect ticks are extremely slow, unreliable, and don't really do a whole lot of damage. The main thing here is that they need better range and to trigger faster with a little more punch to the damage. Bare minimum a 25% base increase in range but ideally at least 50%, with the damage and effect ticks needing to be at least twice as fast as they are now even if the overall duration is lowered. 2 ticks/second over 5 seconds is drastically better than 1 tick/second over 10 seconds. With better range and tick speed, this allows the alt fire of the Tenet Ferrox and Ferrox to actually feel useful.

Javlok... Javlok's alt fire is literally useless garbage. In its current form, it's a slightly-better-range AoE that explodes on impact. The problem is that the range is mediocre, the damage is mediocre, and the effect actually drastically lowers your overall damage output because you have to sit through two lengthy animations to get your speargun back from using a less-than-mediocre attack so you can fire it again. This makes Javlok probably the absolute worst Speargun universally since it suffers from Speargun primary fire issues and has an outright useless alt. fire that wasn't even good prior to the recent Speargun alt fire changes. To stay in line with both spearguns as a whole and keep Javlok's identity, I think the alt fire should be changed to be more in line with Tenet Ferrox and Ferrox but with a crucial difference: on throw, leave behind a trail of magma/fire/whatever that deals damage over time and strips armor each tick of damage, and let the elements still be moddable. This gives it a unique niche compare to the Ferroxes, but allows it to be useful in its own right when compared to the effects of the other spearguns. Naturally, the range also needs to be better than it currently is.

So to summarize these suggestions:

Scourge & Afentis:

• More or less fine how it is, maybe a buff to range and duration.

Tenet Ferrox & Ferrox:

• Increase range, minimum by 25% but ideally by at least 50%.
• Increase speed of ticks-per-second, even at the cost of overall duration.
  • For example, 2 ticks per second over 5 seconds is drastically better than 1 tick per second over 10 seconds, because even though the actual output is virtually identical, the faster speed means more reliable results and a more effective method to utilize the pull-in effect of their alternate fires.

Javlok:

• Completely rework the alternate fire.
• Rather than an explode-at-impact alternate fire, make it leave behind a trail of something (ie. magma, fire, etc) that deals damage over time and guarantees stripping a portion of enemies' armor.
  • It is a grineer-design Speargun, after all! Not to mention it keeps in line with it being a fire-based speargun, with Heat inherently including partial armor strip with the current element system.
  • By making the armor strip guaranteed, even if the actual status-per-tick chance is low, it allows the Javlok to compete with other weapons without overshadowing them too much when compared to an actual Heat or Corrosive status.
    • By "guaranteed armor strip", I mean some sort of smallish number so that it isn't overshadowing the others drastically. Even a 0.5-2% armor strip per tick allows it to carve out its own niche without making it overshadow other weapons. This would also let it have actual party play value since armor strip is universally coveted when fighting Sentient, Corpus, and Corrupted-type enemies, even in very small doses.
    • You can't even say that guaranteed armor strip would make it too OP, because we already have tons of sources of armor strip that are both permanent and temporary such as:
      • Permanent warframe ability strips like Sonic Fracture augment (Banshee), Fusion Strike (Caliban), Fire Blast (Subsumable), Avalanche (Frost), Thermal Sunder (Guass), Pulverize (Grendel), Regurgitate (Grendel), Pillage (Subsumable), Fracturing Crush augment (Mag), Polarize (Mag), Reckoning (Oberon), Tharros Strike (Subsumable), and Bastille (Vauban)
      • Temporary warframe ability strips like Seeking Shuriken augment (Subsumable), Corroding Barrage augment (Subsumable), Terrify (Subsumable), Psychic Bolts (Nyx), Abating Link augment (Trinity), and The Lost (Xaku)
      • Heat status's limited strip (max 50%)
      • Corrosive's limited strip (max 80%)
      • Mods like Corrosive Projection (18-72% depending how many bring it), Shattering Impact (6 base per Impact damage hit), Sharpened Claws (120% armor strip from Kavat attacks), and Amalgam Argonak Metal Augur (Same effect as Shattering Impact but exclusive to any Dagger worn with Argonak equipped)
      • Operator's Caustic Strike (Unairu)
        • That's 13 permanent Warframe ability strips, 6 temporary Warframe ability strips, 6 subsumable Warframe ability strips, 2 different Status effect strips, 1 Operator strip, and 4 Mod strips.
  • With the status chance not being guaranteed like the armor strip is, this gives purpose to increase Status Chance still, while also allowing enemies the opportunity to avoid impact stagger from status effects like Heat every damage tick.
  • This unifies the "support" aspect all other Spearguns bring but gives Javlok its own identity and niche when compared to the others, which is only shared with its appropriate counterpart. (Scourge and Prime share their effect, Afentis is a support in the same league as Scourge but with its own effect, Tenet Ferrox and Ferrox have a very similar effect)

TLDR: Scourge/Prime and Afentis's alt fire is fine as it is, but would be nice to get a buff to range or duration of the effect. Tenet Ferrox & Ferrox's alt fire need a boost in range and tick-per-second at the exchange of duration (2 ticks/second for 5 seconds vs 1 tick/second for 10 seconds as an example). Javlok's alt fire needs to be completely reworked because it actively hurts the weapon to use.

Stats:

Stats are a tricky topic. Mods do 90% of the work, but there is only so much mods can fix, too. So most of these will just be my suggestion to help work with the Speargun's niche. For weapons that are signature to a frame, I'll be using their frame as a reference point and might also include suggested changes to the signature effect.

As it stands right now, some Spearguns have terrible damage coverage - Scourge/Prime only has Corrosive, and Javlok only has Heat. Technically you could call that a niche, but frankly it's incredibly damaging to the potential output of these weapons.

Since I'm not an expert on balancing weapons, I'm not going to say "give X weapon 20 base Slash" or anything like that too much, but I've done a lot of work with Kitguns and Zaws which allowed me to get a feel for how fire method, fire rate, reload, and even damage disposition changes how a weapon feels and performs. And that answer to that is "a lot" - if they're universally mediocre or bad, then the weapon is not only inherently worse off, but it will also permanently fall off even when "remedied" with a Riven. (Which, fun fact, Rivens do not fix Spearguns in the slightest.)

Scourge/Prime:

^{Note: Using base Scourge numbers for the numbers part.}

Currently, Scourge does purely Corrosive on its primary fire. Which makes a bit of sense, since you are being splashed with what is essentially bile. It utilizes this very somewhat decently thanks to its relatively high status chance. However, its base damage is pitiful, starting at 70 for each projectile and 55 for the explosion. That is more than just middling, because when modded with max-stack Galvanized Chamber, Vigilante Armaments, Serration, and Heavy Calibur, it becomes a measly 301+236.5 damage per hit. Not that great.

Its alternate fire, on the other hand, does primarily impact with a bit of Slash and Puncture. At base, it does 105/22.5/22.5 Impact/Slash/Puncture. This is actually a much better spread, but its severely ruined by the fact that the alternate fire is not designed for damage at all, because the main reason to use the alt fire is for the Bullet Attraction field. This creates the problem where your primary fire is only useful for armor stripping (max 80%) and your alternate fire is only useful for making other guns easier to shoot with. With Scourge's relatively poor damage output, you can't even take advantage of the Bullet Attraction field, because almost any pea-shooter Secondary is going to outclass it thanks to both better damage disposition and more reasonable fire/reload/etc.

Now Harrow himself is a support frame. Bullet Attraction field actually greatly benefits him as a warframe, since a lot of his stuff is empowered by headshots, including some of his augments. Thurible restores 4x energy per kill with a headshot versus a body shot kill. Covenant has 4x higher critical chance bonus to headshots compared to body shots. Covenant's Lasting Covenant augment increases duration for every headshot kill. This is also part of the reason why I think the Bullet Attractor field is fine as it is.

Using Overframe's posted builds as a reference, Scourge and Scourge Prime both seem to cap out at around 80k burst assuming all stackable effects are at max. (Galvanized Aptitude, Galvanized Chamber, Primary Merciless) Making my own, Scourge seems to cap at around 88k and Scourge Prime 108k. This is compared to the 99% of weapons that can burst anywhere from 400k-2m damage.

Now for the changes I'm proposing:

• Swap the damage dispositions for the Primary and Alternate Fires around. (move the Impact/Puncture/Slash to Primary and Corrosive to Alternate)
  • This allows the primary fire to access more damage types and also allows it to get actual use out of mods like the Galvanized series, on top of giving it a more useful base kit of damage types against enemy armor types.
  • While it does lower the Corrosive utility a little bit, this grants further bonus to the alternate fire by providing armor strip via Corrosive status on top of the Bullet Attraction field, allowing the headshots to do even more damage if the status effect lands. This synergizes it even better with Harrow's kit because it makes it easier for headshot kills to happen for his Thurible, Covenant, and Lasting Covenant effects.
• Increase the critical chance/multiplier and lower the status chance of the Primary Fire, increase the status chance for the Alternate Fire.
  • This allows Scourge to be built for critical to accentuate both Harrow's critical hit modifiers and take advantage of the Bullet Attraction field for more damage.
  • The increased status chance on the alternate fire allows the Corrosive status proc to retain a relatively decent chance to apply status even when built exclusively for Critical.
• Massively increase the Fire Rate, Reload Speed, and Ammo pool.
  • As it stands, Scourge is ridiculously slow, takes forever to reload, and doesn't have a whole lot of ammo. Higher fire rate gives you more bang for your buck, allows more competitive damage output. Higher reload speed lets you stay firing more often because it directly correlates to less downtime. A better ammo pool both in magazine and maximum allows you to fire more often between reloads and how often you'll need to hunt for ammo.
• My suggested stat changes: (Prime in parenthesis)
  • Primary Fire: Impact/Puncture/Slash damage, 7.0 (9.0) Fire Rate, 2 (1.8) second Reload Time, 60 (60) Magazine, 360 (480) Ammo Maximum, 20% (25%) Critical Hit, 2.0x (2.5x) Critical Multiplier, 10% (15%) Status Chance
    • 7.0/9.0 Fire Rate puts them more in line with most other "Auto" type guns, a bit slower than average compared to most Auto/Auto-Spool type Rifles.
    • 2/1.8 second Reload Time puts them closer to how most dual pistols reload, being more or less similar to the average dual pistol.
      • With Fast Hands, that drops to 1.5/1.4 seconds and with Primed Fast Hands, 1.3/1.2 seconds.
    • 60 base Magazine across the board is just a nice addition, and puts it similar to multiple "Auto" type rifles.
    • 360/480 Ammo Maximum follows suit of the current "5x/9x of current magazine", but with the new base magazine making it 4x/8x of the current magazine.
    • 20%/25% Critical Hit allows it to more readily upkeep damage output so it doesn't get nearly as bad of a power creep effect since 2% base critical causes the current Scourge to get power crept by virtually everything. Scourge Prime's current 10% is severely better and allows it to stay in the game theoretically slightly longer, but doesn't really do much to keep it relevant between the still relatively low critical power and the abysmal damage output it has before critical.
    • 10%/15% Status Chance is on the low side without being unbearable, and 20% crit with 10% status is more or less pretty average when compared to most of the weaponry. 25% Crit and 15% Status allows Scourge Prime to have even more lasting power without going out of the normal realm of most Prime weapon stats.
  • Alternate Fire: Corrosive, 5% (10%) Critical Chance, 35% Status Chance
    • While the Prime's critical chance is left alone, regular Scourge being brought to 5% makes it a more pleasing to look at number. Very minor, because 5% is not much better than 2%.
    • Slightly higher status chance to make the alternate fire not only more reliable, but to give a fair chance for critical-built weapons to benefit from the potential Corrosive stack for the armor strip.

Ferrox:

For something that's supposed to be a high-power rail cannon, it doesn't exactly feel like it sometimes. I'm not really sure how to approach changing this, because as it stands, Ferrox can hit over 400k burst damage. That's fairly decent, and someone on Overframe made a Ferrox build (granted, it had a Riven) that was capable of over 2m burst. That seems for the most part pretty adequate, but I'll leave the changing of its damage to the folks who want it to be more like a railgun.

The big issue I have with the ferrox is its alt-fire. Which, all things considered, isn't really that big of an issue! My only complaint is that it's too slow. Increasing the speed of the electricity field at the cost of duration will make it perform drastically better.

My suggested changes:

• Alternate Fire: 15 meter Electricity Field, 1 tick per second for 20 seconds
  • 1 tick every 2 seconds means everything has time to basically go from the center to at bare minimum the edge of the effect. Any enemy that isn't walking will be able to just run out of range right afterwards.

Tenet Ferrox:

The universal complaints with the Tenet Ferrox is that the alternate fire sucks. The primary fire is capable of achieving over 1m burst without the use of a riven, which is pretty good! However, the alternate fire is too slow and feels, well. Useless. I have more experience with the Tenet Ferrox over the Ferrox, so I can offer a little more to what I think should change compared to the Ferrox, but only a little.

My suggested changes:

• Primary Fire: 4.0 Fire Rate
  • While it can achieve high burst, the fire rate is a bit slow. Upping it from 2.67 to 4.0 will let it fire a bit faster, while still keeping the overall fire rate relatively low when used in conjunction with mods like Critical Delay that lower fire rate in exchange for Critical Hit.
• Alternate Fire: 15 meter Electricity Field, 1 tick per second for 20 seconds
  • 1 tick every 2 seconds means everything has time to basically go from the center to at bare minimum the edge of the effect. Any enemy that isn't walking will be able to just run out of range right afterwards.

Javlok:

I have a LOT to say about the Javlok. It's awful, pathetic, outright garbage, but it's one of my favorite weapons. "Why is it your favorite if it sucks?" because at the time my options were Scourge and Ferrox, and neither felt nearly as good as the Javlok! Now that I've gotten a taste of the Tenet Ferrox, I can solidly say there is potential for the Javlok to be good. Most of my suggested changes you'll find better thought out in the "Primary Fire" and "Alternate Fire" sections of this post, so I'm just gonna focus on a few small things here.

I'm not going to address the alternate fire much here, because as I said earlier, it severely needs to be reworked.

My suggested changes:

• Primary Fire: Tenet Ferrox's auto-fire mechanic, Impact/Puncture/Slash/Heat, 6.0 Fire Rate, 1.65 second Reload Time, 40 Magazine, 320 Ammo Maximum.
  • For more info on why I say this, refer to all I said about it earlier, it'll be easier than reposting those here.
• Alternate Fire: Completely rework it. It's bad. It's literally useless in every single aspect, and severely inhibits the weapon's DPS without offering literally anything in exchange.
  • Please refer to all I said about it earlier, because that's where I gave my idea for its new alternate fire.

Afentis:

Unfortunately, I don't own an Afentis yet. I want one, because I'm a sick freak who loves Spearguns, but I don't have one yet, so I don't really know how it feels to use or anything like that. It seems to average around 300k-600k burst according to Overframe, so there's definitely something that's probably in need of buffing. Hopefully I'll remember this thread exists once I get my hands on Afentis so I can update this with my thoughts and ideas!

Closing Notes:

At this point, I've been actively working on this post for several hours. I have been up for several hours by this point as well, so I'm honestly a bit tired and frazzled by this point. I absolutely adore the idea of spearguns and desperately wish they were better, because right now the only speargun that stands a chance in higher-end content is the Tenet Ferrox. Hopefully, DE will actually see this thread and work on making Spearguns more worth using, because honestly... They're universally pretty bad.

For just a smidge more information since I mentioned it earlier, here's the current dispositions for every single Speargun:

• Tenet Ferrox: 0.50 - Update 32.2 (November 30th, 2022)
• Afentis: 0.50 - Update 32.0 (September 7th, 2022)
• Scourge Prime: 1.10 - Update 31.0 (December 15th, 2021)
• Scourge: 1.20 - Update 21.0 (June 29th, 2017)
• Ferrox: 1.15 - Update 19.13 (March 9th, 2017)
• Javlok: 1.30 - Update 19.4 (December 16th, 2016)

Feel free to express your thoughts, ideas, etc. Just be kind, because at the end of the day I just want my favorite weapon type to be able to keep up with the remaining 99% of weapons.

[RLanzinger]

I agree, they need a change. Great job and post in between. I also post about the "BUG : forced reload" with speargun but it seem to be ignored as far as I've seen.

 

 

[SDGDen]

I don't use spearguns so i have no horse in this race, however: 

 

THANK YOU OP for the detailed and well thought out post. These are rare compared to "X sucks, fix it DE" and I am always happy to see it. 

[taiiat]

Spearguns also got hit pretty hard with the recent AoE nerf. (since Spearguns tend to have an AoE componenent to one if not both of their attack modes)

you know, that nerf that of the things it affected, only like maybe 5% of those were the actual targets. everything else just lost an absolutely enormous amount of their Damage output for no reason, since the other 95% were a mixture of Weapons that weren't doing anything special and weren't that popular, as well as Weapons that just straight up already weren't good.
_{and let's not forget non Weapon things that got nerfed, as literally anything in the game with a radial component of any sort got the same nerf, including say, Electric and Gas Status}

gotta continue loving that.

 

 

however i'll mention that technically Spearguns do get something for fully charging - the change to Variable Charge with a bonus for fully charging was changed to a fixed charge and getting that previous bonus.
however, Sparguns had actually been dealing double the listed Damage and that got 'fixed' in the change so they actually just got nerfed with that change, instead.

 

aren't we glad that a very unpopular Weapon Category catches so many nerfs? for no reason? :)

 

 

 

14 minutes ago, Flannoit said:

I have a LOT to say about the Javlok. It's awful, pathetic, outright garbage, but it's one of my favorite weapons. "Why is it your favorite if it sucks?" because at the time my options were Scourge and Ferrox, and neither felt nearly as good as the Javlok!

amen, love the Weapon, despite that it's total garbage and always has been.
been able to force it to be decent in the past (but can't really now tbh, too many unwarranted stacked nerfs) despite, but different game now.

[Flannoit]

4 minutes ago, taiiat said:

Spearguns also got hit pretty hard with the recent AoE nerf. (since Spearguns tend to have an AoE componenent to one if not both of their attack modes)

you know, that nerf that of the things it affected, only like maybe 5% of those were the actual targets. everything else just lost an absolutely enormous amount of their Damage output for no reason, since the other 95% were a mixture of Weapons that weren't doing anything special and weren't that popular, as well as Weapons that just straight up already weren't good.
_{and let's not forget non Weapon things that got nerfed, as literally anything in the game with a radial component of any sort got the same nerf, including say, Electric and Gas Status}

gotta continue loving that.

 

 

however i'll mention that technically Spearguns do get something for fully charging - the change to Variable Charge with a bonus for fully charging was changed to a fixed charge and getting that previous bonus.
however, Sparguns had actually been dealing double the listed Damage and that got 'fixed' in the change so they actually just got nerfed with that change, instead.

 

aren't we glad that a very unpopular Weapon Category catches so many nerfs? for no reason? :)

 

amen, love the Weapon, despite that it's total garbage and always has been.
been able to force it to be decent in the past (but can't really now tbh, too many unwarranted stacked nerfs) despite, but different game now.

The sad part is that most spearguns were terrible even before the AoE nerfs lol... Hopefully DE will see this thread and take it into serious consideration. 😩

5 minutes ago, SDGDen said:

I don't use spearguns so i have no horse in this race, however: 

 

THANK YOU OP for the detailed and well thought out post. These are rare compared to "X sucks, fix it DE" and I am always happy to see it. 

It's hard to fix something if you don't really know what's wrong, but I gotta admit sometimes you just... Know something's wrong but not what or have any clue how to fix it. I try my best to articulate my thoughts on stuff like this, but at times it goes a bit over my head.

Honestly, if it weren't for the fact I spent ages building my kitguns (which I adore, love my little pistol beasts) I probably would be way farther off on what I think would be good changes here.

[BiancaRoughfin]

12 minutes ago, Flannoit said:

As it stands, Spearguns might actually be one of the worst primary types in the game.

I wouldnt say that, i have been using mainly the Ferrox in my loadout for about 3+ years now, mostly for its Alt-Fire mechanic which i use a lot for stats priming enemies and strong crowd controlling. The Primary fire mode is comparable to the Opticor Vandal in damage and behavior but heres where the problem starts, you have to either build for its Primary or its Secondary fire modes as the Secondary is not affected by Crit/Stats/Multishot mods.

Fire Rate affects the rate at which the Alt-Fire pulses.

I did however get extremelly upset with the SpearGun changes, the forced reload is just awful... I rather we had the old System where the Speargun was made redundant wile its Alt-Fire was active then having to force reload every time i throw it even when the weapon has an automatic reload mechanism.

17 minutes ago, Flannoit said:

The recent alt-fire changes that came with the Tenet Ferrox is a nice bandaid, but still just a bandaid that doesn't fix the overarching problem that all the Spearguns are either mediocre or outright bad.

I didnt see any actual changes made for the Tenet Ferrox, its still the same disappointing Cr4p from when i first got it. The Alt-Fire is just useless, the AoE from the Primary fire is just bad, i preferred the PunchThrough.

9 minutes ago, taiiat said:

Spearguns also got hit pretty hard with the recent AoE nerf.

Uh, no? The Javlok maybe but not the Ferrox and Scourge. I saw absolutely no change to them.

3 minutes ago, Flannoit said:

The sad part is that most spearguns were terrible even before the AoE nerfs lol...

Not all of them, as i mentioned above the Ferrox's Primary Fire was comparable to the Opticor Vandal. The Alt-Fire on the other hand is very strong when properly built for it.

Ferrox in Steel Path

Spoiler

 

[Flannoit]

1 minute ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

I didnt see any actual changes made for the Tenet Ferrox, its still the same disappointing Cr4p from when i first got it. The Alt-Fire is just useless, the AoE from the Primary fire is just bad, i preferred the PunchThrough.

I'm referring to the universal alt-fire change that shipped alongside the Tenet Ferrox, where all alt-fires behave differently, have new animations/sounds/etc. Unfortunately they really didn't do anything to Tenet Ferrox since its release yet.

3 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Not all of them, as i mentioned above the Ferrox's Primary Fire was comparable to the Opticor Vandal. The Alt-Fire on the other hand is very strong when properly built for it.

Ferrox in Steel Path

Ferrox is the only one that was able to stay even remotely relevant, I think I mentioned somewhere (hard to remember, like I said I was working on this for hours lol) that I think for the most part Ferrox is fine aside from the alt fire being too slow and needing more range. Tenet Ferrox's alt fire is in the same boat more or less.

Ferrox & Tenet Ferrox are the most competent spearguns, though they still fall a bit short in the end too. I referenced multiple overframe.gg builds for what people seemed to be getting on average out of their builds (tried to avoid ones with rivens or were super out of date/lacked arcanes) and Ferrox's around 400k average burst is pretty good without a riven while 2m with a riven is pretty insane. Tenet Ferrox hitting about 1m burst without rivens is a bit surprising but not too much so considering the +60% element damage + extra capacity. My opinions on the Ferrox and Tenet Ferrox is that they're mostly fine as they are, maybe just a few touch ups.

Sadly, all the other ones are junk. Scourge Prime was basically scrap on release,  with its burst seeming to cap at around 108k.

[taiiat]

25 minutes ago, Flannoit said:

The sad part is that most spearguns were terrible even before the AoE nerfs lol... Hopefully DE will see this thread and take it into serious consideration. 😩

i have zero faith since they were willing to push that Update/change in the first place. nerfing all sources of Radial Damage in the game as a 'solution' to 'address' like 5 Launcher Weapons? i'd say it's a joke, but it's clear it wasn't one.

20 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Uh, no? The Javlok maybe but not the Ferrox and Scourge. I saw absolutely no change to them.

they have AoE components, and thusly they received a significant reduction to their Damage.

[BiancaRoughfin]

3 minutes ago, taiiat said:

they have AoE components, and thusly they received a significant reduction to their Damage.

Didnt see any difference and iv been using it for over 3 years.

[Vaml77]

boring weapon.

[Pakaku]

Scourge is auto-fire, and launches some moderately large projectiles as well. Fire mode preferences are just preferences; you happen to dislike charged weapons, I don't mind them personally. Ferrox is not a bow, it's more like what was the Opticor Vandal before the Vandal was added. Javlok functions like the base Ogris. Afentis is... uncomfortable unless you stand in its alt-fire bubble.

Can't say much about the Tenet Ferrox, it's locked behind Glast's shop, one of the worst things in the game. But that's a different complaint for a different time

And speaking of the alt-fire... this is why they're in such a bad spot, because the throw is awkward and takes forever. It's a total downgrade to what it was before the change. I've given up on throwing them and focusing on just using them like regular guns, and for the most part, they don't fail at being guns.

 

 

[Tiltskillet]

Main thing I want to say, I preferred spearguns before the rework.  I was mostly using throws, and enjoyed using them basically like cooldown support for my sidearm and melee.   I think DE looked at these mechanics and figured the weapons would be more popular without those hassles.  Which I get, it's fine, weapons change.  But I question how much this particular rework increased their usage over the long term, versus turning off the few people who were using them.

Anyway, I've been bitter about that, and haven't spent a lot of time with the weapons other than trying out the new mechanics. But this week I started using Javlok throw again.  With a riven and Internal Bleeding, it still kills stuff.  But its ceiling is so much lower now.  The obvious thing is its damage getting cut in half.  But maybe worse still, it's far slower than it was.  I used to be able to ignore APS, and now it feels awful without it.   (Since Firestorm is less valuable, APS is going in that slot now.)

And of course,  on top of all that,  it's now somewhat ammo sensitive, not benefiting from AoE headshot damage, and I've got less range since I'm no longer using Firestorm.

But other than that, it's great.   Nice audio and visual.

[Vaml77]

spear guns sux so much even in movies -.-

[(XBOX)Graysmog]

I think it's fair to be pretty disappointed with Spearguns and the fact they're extremely lacking in the DPS department, Throwing Daggers and Staves are some other examples that have been outright ignored for ages even though they've always been really bad for various reasons.

I love using the Javlok for instance, it's one of my favorite Grineer weapons next to the Buzlok and seeing it getting NERFED like three times after it already wasn't a great option just hurts my soul. I want to use your unique guns DE, but I guess since it isn't a beam or shotgun it just has to suck inherently.

[Flannoit]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Graysmog said:

I think it's fair to be pretty disappointed with Spearguns and the fact they're extremely lacking in the DPS department, Throwing Daggers and Staves are some other examples that have been outright ignored for ages even though they've always been really bad for various reasons.

I love using the Javlok for instance, it's one of my favorite Grineer weapons next to the Buzlok and seeing it getting NERFED like three times after it already wasn't a great option just hurts my soul. I want to use your unique guns DE, but I guess since it isn't a beam or shotgun it just has to suck inherently.

It's really disappointing, honestly. I adore the Javlok and I try again and again and again to make it even remotely viable and there's just... No way to realistically do that lmfao. Best you'll hit is a few hundred grand meanwhile 99% of the other weapons will hit minimum half a mil max a couple mil. It's disheartening that an entire class of weapon is almost universally straight up bad. 2/6 is not good odds, and even those 2 are barely used.

On 2022-12-09 at 2:10 PM, Flannoit said:

For just a smidge more information since I mentioned it earlier, here's the current dispositions for every single Speargun:

• Tenet Ferrox: 0.50 - Update 32.2 (November 30th, 2022)
• Afentis: 0.50 - Update 32.0 (September 7th, 2022)
• Scourge Prime: 1.10 - Update 31.0 (December 15th, 2021)
• Scourge: 1.20 - Update 21.0 (June 29th, 2017)
• Ferrox: 1.15 - Update 19.13 (March 9th, 2017)
• Javlok: 1.30 - Update 19.4 (December 16th, 2016)

Ferrox and Tenet Ferrox are the "good" spearguns and Ferrox still sits at over 1.00 dispo, meaning it's fairly underused. Javlok sitting a 1.30 means it's rarely used. Tenet Ferrox is gonna go up massively whenever they finally recalc riven dispos because by then people will get bored of it and move on, but at least the Tenet Ferrox will probably still sit at 0.8-1.0. Afentis will probably jump to 1.1 and the other Spearguns will probably get +.10 if not more.

[Tiltskillet]

Masochist that I am, I just built another Javlok to use as a rifle rather than a throwing weapon.  I've got a riven that works well for either, so my experience isn't going to be representative.  But FWIW, I'd say it functions moderately well compared to some other rivened weapons of similar MR I have, like Harpak. Argonak, and Gorgon Wraith.  Some of this is probably due to it being beneficially bugged with Galvanized Aptitude, although since it's pure heat, and more than 40% of its damage is radial, its potential leverage of this isn't that high.

It definitely -feels- much better than my throwing build, although some of that might have to do with different expectations.    It's not as fun, although one thing for me it's got over throw mode is more clanky sound effects.  Its one of my favorites in sound design.

I'm -not saying it doesn't need a buff.  I think its altfire does need one in order to have a purpose and to match something like its previous (and not exactly overwhelming) performance.  And I haven't come to a conclusion on that question in rifle mode.

[Lancars]

Throwing the weapon now feels SO punishing it hurts. You take forever to throw it and even adding firerate doesn't improve it by that much. Then the silly "reload" that comes after that will reset if you switch weapons cause of mechanics like Scourge and Afentis. Now when you wanna switch back it just HAS to do the silly twirl they wanted to add for some weird reason.

I can't use spearguns anymore. They have become clunky garbage that end up getting you killed. Reload and Firerate mods don't seem to help and at that point many other guns can do a far better job then them.

[Lancars]

@Vaml77Well in a later episode of Stargate series Jack O'Neill is showing some Jaffa that their P-90's are a weapon of war and the Staff weapons are a weapon of fear.

 

Current spearguns make the enemies laugh at us cause of how clunky and cringe they have become. I'm better off using the speargun as a melee weapon as bashing things would be more effective then the primary and throwing ability. DE made them trash.

[Flannoit]

8 minutes ago, Lancars said:

Throwing the weapon now feels SO punishing it hurts. You take forever to throw it and even adding firerate doesn't improve it by that much. Then the silly "reload" that comes after that will reset if you switch weapons cause of mechanics like Scourge and Afentis. Now when you wanna switch back it just HAS to do the silly twirl they wanted to add for some weird reason.

I can't use spearguns anymore. They have become clunky garbage that end up getting you killed. Reload and Firerate mods don't seem to help and at that point many other guns can do a far better job then them.

I'm desperately trying to be able to use them, but unfortunately almost all of them fall off very quickly and the ones that don't vaporize their first kill so it harms Nekros to have, who I've been playing lately.

[Tiltskillet]

17 minutes ago, Lancars said:

Reload and Firerate mods don't seem to help

They do affect throws and make them a lot more pleasant to use.   They won't address larger issues with the weapons though, some of which were brought on by the rework.

[Lancars]

29 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

They do affect throws and make them a lot more pleasant to use.   They won't address larger issues with the weapons though, some of which were brought on by the rework.

Only a bit. I use to be able to shoot and then hurl and use my secondary. The whole hot swapping thing DE wanted you to do in the first place but they killed it for me.

[Lancars]

54 minutes ago, Flannoit said:

I'm desperately trying to be able to use them, but unfortunately almost all of them fall off very quickly and the ones that don't vaporize their first kill so it harms Nekros to have, who I've been playing lately.

I blame the hotshot changes. Spearguns need to have a buff to body shots or something that allows them to uniquely damage things.

[Flannoit]

Just now, Lancars said:

I blame the hotshot changes. Spearguns need to have a buff to body shots or something that allows them to uniquely damage things.

There's a lot that needs to be done to bring them more in-line with most other weapons

[Famecans]

"AoE damage from Spearguns should be stronger than Grade Launchers" Reason? Grenade Launchers is a mobile weapon with AoE and stackable damage; Spearguns are a stationary weapon with non-stacking AoE damage.

Ideally, spearguns would significantly increase the damage of secondary weapons, another way the DE should not turn spearguns into battlebanners as a battlebanner is not exactly a weapon.

[Flannoit]

Bumping so DE doesn't forget this