Flux Rifle

[rhoenix]

This is a small thing, considering the massive damage changes done, but I hope this goes on the list at some point for rebalancing.

The Flux Rifle requires quite a bit of clan research to get, and a Mastery Rank of 7 to craft. Before Damage 2.0, it was an excellent weapon, and one well worth the time and effort to make.

Now, it deals primarily Slashing damage, which is good now against Flesh only.

A few friends of mine, who came back to the game after a few months away, were not happy about this. A one friend put it, "If I had the same choice of weapon slots and resources now as I did then, I probably wouldn't have made the Flux Rifle, let alone put Forma into it."

This was actually behind my Clan Research thread a day or so ago - that clan research stuff should be powerful, respectable, and useful, especially considering the time and effort required to make those items, or gain access to them. I realize DE developers are still rebalancing things after Damage 2.0 shenanigans, but I feel that clan weaponry should be right below or even equal in terms of power and utility as Prime-level weapons, due to the difficulty and patience required for both.

I also want the Torid to be good again, but someone covered that in another thread.

In conclusion, here are my two balance suggestions for the Flux Rifle, keeping in mind that it is a frickin' laser:

1. Change the damage type to be equal across the three physical damage types (Slashing, Impact, Puncture). This would restore it to being a jack-of-all-trades as before, while not making it overpowered. It would be great primarily when you knew you were going to be facing different enemy types at once, such as in the Void.

2. Change the damage type to be pure Radiation or Blast damage, adjustable by mods. I like this one less as an option, but both Radiation and Blast do fit the Laser damage type.

[taiiat]

the Flux Rifle is powerful. it obliterates anything that is Flesh related.

 

the Flux Rifle being equal across all 3 damage types would be ridiculous. that would make it far too powerful.

you may notice that almost every weapon has a main purpose. that is a trend that should be followed.

 

i'm willing to leave weapons like Seer as is though, as it is a slow shooting weapon, and almost never Crits, etc, etc.

 

Radiation and Blast would also make Flux universal for everything.

 

the point of the changes is for weapons to not be universal. any weapons that are universal must be universally mediocre.

[MirageKnight]

I don't know about you guys, but a Flux Rifle with Infected Clip, Stormbringer, Shred, Hellfire and Serration slices through Grineer nicely. Swap out Hellfire for Cryo Rounds and you have a weapon that's pretty brutal vs Corpus.

[rhoenix]

While both of you are right, it does take more time and effort to bring the Flux Rifle to be useful in the ways you both describe.

the Flux Rifle is powerful. it obliterates anything that is Flesh related.

 

the Flux Rifle being equal across all 3 damage types would be ridiculous. that would make it far too powerful.

you may notice that almost every weapon has a main purpose. that is a trend that should be followed.

 

i'm willing to leave weapons like Seer as is though, as it is a slow shooting weapon, and almost never Crits, etc, etc.

 

Radiation and Blast would also make Flux universal for everything.

 

the point of the changes is for weapons to not be universal. any weapons that are universal must be universally mediocre.

Ok, I can see that being a good argument against it doing equal damage across the three physical types, but if I knew in advance that the Flux Rifle would be good mostly against Flesh without quite a bit of tweaking, I wouldn't have bothered to make it.

I would argue that making the damage type Radiation or Blast wouldn't make it universally useful as both types of damage have their weak points (not to mention that if this were the case, it wouldn't be doing any Puncture/Impact/Slashing damage anymore), as it would still require some tweaking to get to the point where it's properly useful.

I don't know about you guys, but a Flux Rifle with Infected Clip, Stormbringer, Shred, Hellfire and Serration slices through Grineer nicely. Swap out Hellfire for Cryo Rounds and you have a weapon that's pretty brutal vs Corpus.

This argument is valid, but I'll still counter with what I mentioned above - that I wouldn't have bothered to make it if I knew ahead of time that it dealt mostly Slashing damage. I would've stuck with the Synapse as a short-range beam weapon if that were the case.

The issue isn't being able to work around the changes for me, because enough Forma can sadly make any weapon useful. It's ending up with a weapon very different than the one I focused on getting.

Besides - the Dera & Supra both deal primarily Puncture damage. For the Flux Rifle to deal primarily Slashing damage doesn't make sense to me, mechanic-wise, or setting-wise.