I Never Thought I'd Say This... But Strun Wraith Needs A Buff.

[-Upgreid-]

After Update 12's buff of the Tigris and Hek, along with the power of new shotguns, the Strun Wraith has officially become obsolete.

The Hek in U11 was close enough to the Strun Wraith already- 10 less damage, 5% less crit chance, 15% less proc chance, half the clip size, .3 less in RoF, and .2 seconds more reload time in exchange for higher accuracy and Puncture damage, which, let's face it, is basically superior to Impact. This seems to add up to a significant difference stat-wise. In reality, when used in gameplay, it doesn't.

Now take into consideration the Boar Prime, a publically available weapon with near-identical stats AND automatic fire to top it all off.

The Tigris had a damage of 180, and although the Duplex-Auto fire is a drawback, the Slash damage still made it an excellent weapon. Again, better than Impact.

On the other hand, the Drakgoon, with its unique firing mechanic, had an advantage from the get-go: 160 UNCHARGED damage, already 10 more than the Strun Wraith. With half the crit chance, and twice the status chance of the Strun Wraith, the oldest Wraith weapon in the game was already becoming antiquated.

Then came U12. The Strun Wraith was kept the same, while Hek was buffed to 174 damage, 15 higher than the Strun Wraith, along with Tigris being buffed to 200 damage.

As a footnote, even the Brakk is superior to the Strun Wraith in almost every aspect. An (albeit event) secondary with base stats as strong as a PRIMARY EVENT WEAPON? That should NEVER happen.

Add into consideration the scaling problems vs. other weapons that shotguns have, and we have a major problem.

Under Damage 2.0, and the new scaling of shotguns, I think that the Strun Wraith should be de-nerfed back to 190 damage, with the damage added to the Puncture and Slash categories. On top of that, buff the s**t out of the thing. Give it higher crit chance, better crit damage, higher fire rate, everything you've got, because as it stands, the former King of Shotguns just doesn't hold up.

EDIT: The nerf to pellet-based weapon proc has made all of these weapons, Strun Wraith included, and made all of these weapons even less effective. One of the few advantages to using close-range shotguns is that the proc chance is per pellet. After the 'fix' to this mechanic, one of the already dwindling advantages to the use of the Strun Wraith has diminished significantly. My new call: Buff Strun Wraith so that it still ranks among one of the best primary weapons, but give shotguns overall (excluding the weapons recently buffed in U12) a buff, and undo the change to the proc mechanic.

TL;DR? The Strun Wraith sucks now, especially after U12's buff of the Tigris and Hek. Even the Brakk is better!

Edited February 11, 2014 by UpgradeInProgress

[Skepsis]

Strun Wraith has more pellets, tighter spread, more crit, more status chance. Awesome damage, awesome scaling with mods. Brakk needs a nerf. Tigris and Hek wish it was as good as the Strun Wraith. this post was sadly not worth the read... my opinion though, I use the Wraith, and I find no issues with it Other than the status proc seems to be a little bugged at the moment.

Edited February 10, 2014 by Skepsis

[SHADOWSTORM-NZ]

my strun wraith is one of my most prized possessions (and most played weapon). I too would agree with what your saying.

Being a one off event weapon AND a wraith version, you would tend to think it should run as king of shotguns or equal to any prime/vandal shotguns, but superior to any standards on offer.

[Zagrax]

Strun Wraith is more useful as an "all comers" weapon, imo, whereas the hek is almost purely puncture damage, and the strun wraith still has superior capacity and reload to the hek. 1.5 seconds base and then the ability to 1-shot 8 more dudes is great.

[BadAimbot]

Strun Wraith buffs? Ah, power creep, such a harsh mistress.

[shut]

- Drakgoon isn't hitscan and has absolutely horrendous accuracy. Its mechanics don't really make it comparable to the Straith in the first place, either.

- Brakk needs nerfing. Badly. And no, I don't mean putting arbitrary hard caps on its effective range again; I mean lowering its base damage to something a bit less stupid so its point-blank DPS doesn't send shivers down the spines of gods.

 

That being said, I do think that the Straith needs a bit of love. The devs have been slowly making it weaker and weaker with each update, as though hoping that we wouldn't notice it or something. It was justified during the first fix and the next couple of nerfs, but honestly, I think that the Straith should be at least on par with the Hek. The last few hits were unnecessary.

It is no longer "The King of Shotguns", and I'm fine with that. But the problem is that it isn't even "One of the Better Shotguns in the Game" anymore, and there was literally no reason to demote it from that title.

 

Just boost the Straith to ~170 base damage and I'll be perfectly fine with it.

Edited February 10, 2014 by SortaRandom

[LukeAura]

After Update 12's buff of the Tigris and Hek, along with the power of new shotguns, the Strun Wraith has officially become obsolete.

 

The Hek in U11 was close enough to the Strun Wraith already- 10 less damage, 5% less crit chance, 15% less proc chance, half the clip size, .3 less in RoF, and .2 seconds more reload time in exchange for higher accuracy and Puncture damage, which, let's face it, is basically superior to Impact. This seems to add up to a significant difference stat-wise. In reality, when used in gameplay, it doesn't.

Significantly higher status, more pellets, double the clip, with .7 less seconds of reload. It is far more comfortable and forgiving, even with the lower damage. 

And what exactly are you killing in significantly less time with the extra 25 damage Hek has compared to the Straith? Hek has four shots. So it pretty much needs to be able to one shot every enemy, and hope Strun Wraith has to two shot them all in order to outdo it. It's not going to happen. 

 

Also, sustained base dps of Strun Wraith is still significantly higher which is a much more important number than straight dps, especially given the low mags of shotguns. 

Although I wouldn't mind my favourite shotgun getting a buff. I've tried both Hek and Tigris and they certainly don't compare. 

And the Brakk is a secondary, which have the best mods in general and don't fight with primaries for a weapon spot. 

The Brakk also has horrible spread and falloff. The Brakk hits absolute uselessness at around 20 metres whereas the Strun Wraith still functions.

 

[jinsaotomex4]

Shotguns are not in a good place right now due to the recent multi-pellet weapon "fix".  Your Strun Wraith would feel much better if the status chance wasn't crippled. Ignore the actual status chance shown, it is not an accurate representation of the current proc mechanics on shotguns and multi-pellet weapons in general.

[shut]

Shotguns are not in a good place right now due to the recent multi-pellet weapon "fix".  Your Strun Wraith would feel much better if the status chance wasn't crippled. Ignore the actual status chance shown, it is not an accurate representation of the current proc mechanics on shotguns and multi-pellet weapons in general.

Honestly, the whole proc system is just bad in general. Poorly planned, poorly executed, and unreliable on the best of weapons. Also doesn't promote choice or variety, since your weapon is either capable of procs or it isn't.

 

They should've given everything a 100% proc chance from the start, and given weapons and mods Status Potency instead of Status Chance. So a mostly-unmodded rifle with a small amount of Status Potency and Rank 0 Cryo Rounds will slow down an enemy by ~3% for 10 seconds on each hit (stackable; each hit refreshes duration), and a decked-out Sniper Rifle with a high Status Potency and maxed Cryo Rounds will slow down an enemy by ~60% for 10 seconds on each hit (stackable, with a cap of 100%). Slow weapons will have more Status Potency per hit than fast weapons, but fast weapons can produce more devastating Statuses over time by sustained fire.

 

Some of the current status effects are going to have to be scrapped/replaced in order to do this (namely Blast and Radiation), but it would be the first step of bringing reliability and balance among all weapons of all types.

Edited February 10, 2014 by SortaRandom

[jinsaotomex4]

That implementation of the proc system would be very interesting to play around with. I just wish they would undo that "hot fix", I want my shotguns to actually proc consistently again.

Edited February 10, 2014 by jinsaotomex4

[Noble_Cactus]

Honestly, the whole proc system is just bad in general. Poorly planned, poorly executed, and unreliable on the best of weapons. Also doesn't promote choice or variety, since your weapon is either capable of procs or it isn't.

 

They should've given everything a 100% proc chance from the start, and given weapons and mods Status Potency instead of Status Chance. So a mostly-unmodded rifle with a small amount of Status Potency and Rank 0 Cryo Rounds will slow down an enemy by ~3% for 10 seconds on each hit (stackable; each hit refreshes duration), and a decked-out Sniper Rifle with a high Status Potency and maxed Cryo Rounds will slow down an enemy by ~60% for 10 seconds on each hit (stackable, with a cap of 100%). Slow weapons will have more Status Potency per hit than fast weapons, but fast weapons can produce more devastating Statuses over time by sustained fire.

 

Some of the current status effects are going to have to be scrapped/replaced in order to do this (namely Blast and Radiation), but it would be the first step of bringing reliability and balance among all weapons of all types.

 

 

Amen. This is a good idea.

 

I don't know if Radiation and Blast would have to be replaced. Potency would increase the length an enemy is knocked down with Blast, and with Radiation it'd increase the accuracy reduction and increase the amount of time confused. It'd still be no Chaos, but it'd make Radiation more than just a Napalm killer.

 

Now would Potency have a cap? The one element that I can actually see being a problem would be Viral.

Edited February 10, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[GridBurn]

I think Strun wraith's nerfs over time has rendered it sub par as well. First they inreased it's damage drop off over range so drastically that you may as well be throwing rice at your target accross alomost any of the standard rooms and now everything gets buff except it? I dunno, maybe there are just too many weapons in the game now so the devs are not even looking at the older ones anymore.

[shut]

Amen. This is a good idea.

 

I don't know if Radiation and Blast would have to be replaced. Potency would increase the length an enemy is knocked down with Blast, and with Radiation it'd increase the accuracy reduction and increase the amount of time confused. It'd still be no Chaos, but it'd make Radiation more than just a Napalm killer.

 

Now would Potency have a cap? The one element that I can actually see being a problem would be Viral.

Hm, I see your point about Radiation. Maybe have it so that potency simply increases the duration of the status, which will stack on top of itself as long as you keep applying the procs.

Blast, though, is iffy. The knockdown duration increase would be good for unmodded vs. modded Snipers, which would ideally have a nice and high base Status Potency since they're slow, but what about each hit from little-hitters like the Viper? The only thing I can think of is requiring a certain number of hits from it before triggering a quick knockdown animation, with the number of required hits decreasing and animation time increasing as normal as Potency goes up.

 

As for things like Viral, maybe just make it so that they chunk off __% of the enemy's health with each hit? Low values, of course (e.g. the most decked-out of Sniper Rifles would cause a 50% health reduction in one shot), used mainly for enemies that scaled to absurdly high levels. (But then again, that scaling was never intended in the first place, so maybe these would need replacing. XD)

Edited February 10, 2014 by SortaRandom

[-Upgreid-]

So the primary issue surrounding shotgun weapons at the moment is the 'fixed proc chance'. Before the Devs shut down this thread, let's bring the topic back to the Strun Wraith, but I'll add that in an edit to the OP in a few hours. I'm sure it will be noted. Until then, let's try to get this conversation back on track!

[LukeAura]

I think Strun wraith's nerfs over time has rendered it sub par as well. First they inreased it's damage drop off over range so drastically that you may as well be throwing rice at your target accross alomost any of the standard rooms and now everything gets buff except it? I dunno, maybe there are just too many weapons in the game now so the devs are not even looking at the older ones anymore.

Can you imagine how the regular strun feels then? 

Slower, weaker, reloads so slowly with a smallish magazine. If the wraith gets a buff the regular needs one too. 

I've noticed no ones brought up the Sobek either. 

How do people feel the Straith compares to it?

[jinsaotomex4]

Can you imagine how the regular strun feels then? 

Slower, weaker, reloads so slowly with a smallish magazine. If the wraith gets a buff the regular needs one too. 

I've noticed no ones brought up the Sobek either. 

How do people feel the Straith compares to it?

 

Sobek got hit really, REALLY hard with the proc chance hotfix since it was a status chance monster.  For DPS is bottom 3, for TTK is still decent since the high status chance and low number of pellets somewhat favors the change but all shotguns save the phage range from barely okay to flat out terrible.  Tigris and Boar Prime are still viable I suppose but they lost a lot of power. 

Edited February 10, 2014 by jinsaotomex4

[Deicul]

Strun Wraith has more pellets, tighter spread, more crit, more status chance. Awesome damage, awesome scaling with mods. Brakk needs a nerf. Tigris and Hek wish it was as good as the Strun Wraith. this post was sadly not worth the read... my opinion though, I use the Wraith, and I find no issues with it Other than the status proc seems to be a little bugged at the moment.

You realize, that shotguns almost never proc anymore due to DE "changing" proc mechanics?

Edited February 10, 2014 by Deicul