Wistful Thinking About Syndicate Weaopns

[Tostov]

Or the alternate titles:
"Cool ways of making syndicate weapons unique that are probably too resource intensive to be worth it"
"Making syndicate weapons better than the original counterparts without just making them straight stat buffs."

Anyway, syndicate weapons are all pretty cool. But, practically all of 'em are pretty much just "primed" counterparts (I'm aware rakata ballistica is pretty much worse) to the normal weapons, with a fancy effect every 2000 (5000? I'm not quite sure how much) affinity. Anyway, complaining about synoid Gammacor and Vaykor Marelok got me thinking about different ways of handling the weapons, while trying to keep them unique and make it feel worth that reputation grind. And so, I came up with a few ideas, some of which are sort of based on mechanics used in game, and some not so much. Not gonna lie, struggled with a few of them, and those ones will probably be pretty obvious.

Quick note: Some of these work under the assumption that -
One, the Self Rez, like many that came before it, isn't 100% intended, and may be removed
Two, some of the weapons receive nerfs that bring them a bit closer to the average sidearm strength

Vaykor Marelok
The first weapon of the bunch, and the one with the most powerful base weapon. This really didn't help trying to figure out a special feature for it. Considering its the best long range option of the sidearms, I figured it should have a ability that helps accentuate that feature. Pretty much out of two options (ignore the names if you want)

Unyielding Justice: Critical hits scored by the weapon heal the user by 10 HP and extend bleedout timer by one second, Critical hits on weakpoints heal the user by 20 HP and extend the bleedout timer by two seconds. The maximum bleedout time is thirty seconds.

Precision Justice: Scoring a weakpoint hit on a target increases the critical chance of the weapon by +5% and the critical multiplier by +0.2, for ten seconds. Can be stacked up to five times for a critical bonus of +25% and damage multiplier of +1

Telos Akbolto
The akbolto, being a automatic weapon in disguise, is pretty weird already. Despite it being an obvious move, the idea behind this one is to change it from a spraying sort of weapon, into a more precise, balanced weapon.

Pointed Truth: Tone down the base fire rate to 6.0, while keeping the overall burst DPS the same (i.e. up the damage on each shot). Drop the magazine size to 22, and lower the reload to 2.2 seconds (down from 2.6). Up the default bolt speed by about 30-40%.
I want to do something else here, but I can't quite think of something that won't step on the toes of one below (make them burst fire maybe?)

Synoid Gammacor
The current reigning champion weapon of the 5-25 meter range, with superiour ammo efficency, for the following effect, I'm sort of expecting it to have been toned down to about 19-22k sustaned dps and around 25-35k burst dps. That and that continuous weapons will be functioning properly by this point too.

Entropy Extension: So, normally shooting the weapon, it'll function the exact same, 25m range, good sustained damage with good ammo efficiency. However, zooming in does something a little different. When you zoom in, the beam extends up to 50 m away, but, the rate of fire reduces by 20-40% (after mod effects). This helps alleviate one of the key issues of the weapon, while still maintaining the range limitation effect present in the original.

Secura Dual Cestra
Being a variant of the dual cestra, the Secura sort of had the sad fate of looking great on paper but being terrible in practice, and it wasn't helped by having one of the (arguably) worst Syndicate auras (whoo, 50 more shields). I'd quickly note that if regenerating ammo was present, they're probably be a lot better, but right now, they're ammo inefficient as all hell.
And while I'd love the idea give them the Telos Akbolto sort of change, there was something else that came to mind first, that doesn't solve the problem, but is pretty cool regardless.

Instantaneous Sequence: So, for those not in the know, the Dual Cestras of both types are wind up weapons, meaning they have to fire a number of rounds before they actually reach their advertised fire rate. The idea behind this effect is to remove that limiter, while still keeping it in there in a different sense.
Pretty much, the Secura Cestras, unlike the original, would start off at maximum fire rate. However, after about 60 to 80 rounds, the weapon's fire rate would begin to wind down, eventually settling at 1/2 to a 1/4 of the fire rate at 100 rounds fired. Like most wind up weapons, reloading would reset the wind speed, so they would once again fire at max rate after a reload, or could be kept at max rate by burst firing and waiting between bursts. Ideally this would be coupled with a innate recoil reduction (or just recoil reduction on all Cestras) to make it not impossible to fire on targets further than point blank and hit.

Rakta Ballistica
Undoubtyly the worst Syndicate weapon at the time of typing this, the Rakta definitely needs some love. This change does involve a bit of guessing to numbers, and deviates from the base weapon quite a bit, but yeah... anyway.

Vicious Blight: Like the original ballistica, the Rakta has two different projectiles it fires. The first is a high speed light bolt (I haven't used Ballistica, so I don't know whether the burst fire bolts are hitscan), and a larger more arrow like (in terms of warframe characteristics, so noticeable projectile, a bit of arc) bolt.
The light bolt should deal around the damage of a (normal) bolto bolt, with about 15%-25% status. Consumes one shot each.
The heavy bolt should be dealing around something in the range of an attica or paris shot, and have decent critical chance. Consumes 2-4 shots each.
Total mag size of 20-28 or so rounds.
Each is fired by a different mechanism, but I wasn't quite sure which one should do it, although both can fire the heavy bolt without charge up. Anyway, potential controls as follows:
Normal alt fire weapon - Left click shoots the light bolts rapidly, right click shoots the heavy bolts at their rate of fire.
Zoom alt fire weapon - Think the Buzlok sort of thing, without silly scope (or perhaps with silly scope). Unzoomed you get the rapid fire of bolts, zoomed in, you get the semi-auto heavy bolts.
Charge type - Independent of scope status, tapping left click fires the heavy bolts like a semi-auto trigger weapon. If you hold the button, nothing happens for about a second, but then the weapon makes a clicking noise, and starts spewing out light bolts.

In all three cases, the mechanism that fires the light bolts is auto trigger. For the first two options, the rate of fire would be somewhere in the range of 7.0-10.0 base fire rate. For the third option, given the 'charge' time on the auto fire, the rate of fire would be around the 10.0-13.0 range.
In all cases, the heavy bolts would be semi-auto trigger, and would fire at a rate around 2.0-4.0

Yes, its the longest description, but it was the hardest to explain

Sancti Castanatas
Having not use the castanatas before, and being such a unique weapon already, I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out an effect for these. At one point, I was thinking vauban like tesla webs, but then remembered pistol multishot was insane. Just upping the number of possible traps set also seemed pretty lackluster.

Expansive Purity: Sancti Castanatas' explosions will always proc if it is attached directly to an enemy. If both an enemy and ally are inside the explosion when detonated, a small percentage of the damage of the castanata will heal the player inside the explosion. This damage cannot revive players who have been downed.



And, that's it. Comments, queries ? Feedback? Your own ideas? On a quick note, I'm aware something like this probably won't be done, hence 'wistful thinking', but, y'know, ain't bad to hope for this sort of stuff regardless.

TL;DR Adjusting syndicate weapons by trying to add unique mechanics or alter weapon handling, rather than straight, large, buffs over the original weapons.

Edited December 7, 2014 by Tostov

[Sebastianx]

The Rakta Ballistica should be an all out decked crit dealing machine, amp its crit rate to 50%, and crit damage to x2.5. It's been a while since we had a crit secondary...if ever.

Edited December 7, 2014 by Sebastianx

[HAYABU5A]

theres no reason for synoid gammacor to be adjusted at all