Did You Wanna Just Buff Shotguns And Snipers, Or Put Everything To The Same Level?

[Innocent_Flower]

(under the assumption that DE can change the health and Armour scaling to be appropriate for such a change.)

Don't get me wrong; I long for the day where one shot from a tigris can clear a dense corridor, or when I can Boar into a crowd with ease and ammo efficiency. Or a own vectis who thinks he's an AWP. I want buffed base weapons, but I think the mods can be cleared up in a way that fixes this disparity. 

 

Shotgun mods are sensible (mostly). Rifle mods are silly. Pistol mods are kinda silly.

 

 

Seriously; Shotguns and melee weapons have +90/120% damage mods. The corrupt mods like spoiled strike and vicious spread go for 100/90% 

 

I'm not gonna say it's perfect. It isn't.  But it's  more reasonable. Ya look at rifle mods, They're far crazier;  165% damage, an extra 165% damage for minimal accuracy loss with spoiled strike. Hornet strike for pistols is even crazier (though magnum force is more restrained) . 

 

With a shotgun, One can do 90% + 90% + 60% for 240%

With melee, one can do 120% + 100% for 220%

With a rifle, One can do 165% + 165% for 330%

With a pistol: 220% + 66%  for 286%

 

With even three mods, shotguns can barely surpass melee with two just two damage mods, or pistol damage with one mod. With just the two mods, you've only got 180% extra damage, which is barely better than a single rifle mod (and far more costly) Not to mention you should seperate elemental damage from pure damage, because they bugger up what elements/status you're going for

 

As the resident madman, I would prescribe either: 

A-Corrupted mods (and nightmare mods) become alternatives to their regular version; For instance you can't use Serration and heavy call at the same time. Heavy call is a more damaging alternative with it's inaccuracy penalty. (or a cheaper version with an inaccuracy penalty) .All nine damage mods change to reflect this relationship. Serration and hornet strike are less effective per level (to about pressure point/point blank percentages at maxed) whilst Magnum force gets a big buff. It'd actualy be easier for DE to add new damage mods from this, as they wouldn't have to worry about the crazy powercrawling possibilities of someone with four base damage mods on one weapon. 

 

B-  Hornet strike and serration are nerfed to Pressure point/point blank levels. All corrupted mods are buffed/Nerfed to be at those same levels (With larger penalties) 

 

 

 

For one moment longer; I'd like to draw your attention to ellemental/physical damage mods. 2.5 and 5% status chance per level mods need to be buffed; We've been pointing it out since the beginning. As for physical mods; Pistols and melee do them reasonably. 5% per level is way too small. Follow the example of the secondary, the melee or the Event mods on that one. The event mods, the ones that give 120% of a physical damage..  Change them to something completely different. You've just grabbed mods that needed buffing desperately and made new buffed versions of them rather than fix the problem. (same with charged chamber. Delete charged chamber and replace every one of them with a primed chamber. 

Edited December 16, 2014 by Innocent_Flower

[Aggh]

Shotgun mods haven't changed since before shotguns were nerfed.  Back when shotguns were actually good, those numbers made more sense.  Shotguns are bad now because they're inaccurate and have poor damage at range.

Edited December 16, 2014 by Aggh

[(PSN)Death_Stroke060]

Try going into T4 Defense 40 waves + with a shotty and come back and reply.

Edited December 16, 2014 by (PS4)Death_Stroke060

[Prany]

Try going into T4 Defense 40 waves + and come back and reply.

Try to read! You know, the first line in OP's post.

(under the assumption that DE can change the health and ammo scalling to be appropriate for such a change. 

[AM-Bunny]

Why do I get this weird feeling that shotguns are gonna get buffed soon, and then when Primed Point Blank is released they're gonna be top tier and everyone will  be crawling all over them?

[Wurdyburd]

From the title: buffing suggests bringing said weapons up to the same level as other, better weapons. Nerfing existing content would cause an uproar that DE would never hear the end of. "What about the plat I spent", "what about the time I spent grinding for all those fusion cores".

 

Regardless how DE decides to buff in terms of number increase, I more want them to figure out and cement niches for each weapon category. Snipers are supposed to be better at long-range, single-target assassinations, yet they're not quite good enough to offset their low fire rate.

Shotguns on the other hand are trickier to fix. Since shotguns' effectiveness increases at lower ranges, it makes sense to increase their damage immensely so that at mid-range falloff they're acceptable. But all it takes is a Speed-build Volt to run around shooting everything point-blank for massive damage for DE to nerf it back down.

 

It's not enough for DE to take shotgun damage and increase it by 30% or whatever. DE needs to make a top-down map representing the damage and falloff range for every shotgun, and then categorize them by early-, mid, and late-game tier. Out of two shotguns in mid-game tier, one could have much higher damage, but a much higher spread, whereas a endgame shotgun could have high damage with low spread.

 

As far as snipers go, the increase in damage some time ago was appreciated, but didn't fix the problem that sniper rifles have no niche to fill. I can easily shoot an enemy on the other side of a corpus ice map with my Boltor Prime, without the need for scope, and certainly at a much higher fire rate. Rather than just generically buffing the base damage, snipers need the same piercing ability as bows, and maybe to be able to see enemies through walls. Otherwise, they'll be outclassed by bows at every turn, in both damage, fire rate, enemies hit, close-quarters capability, etc.

[Innocent_Flower]

Why do I get this weird feeling that shotguns are gonna get buffed soon, and then when Primed Point Blank is released they're gonna be top tier and everyone will  be crawling all over them?

Don't worry about it....

 

We'll probably get primed 15/20 rank serration,Pressure point and hornet strike at a similar time. 

[N7_Phantom]

Don't worry about it....

 

We'll probably get primed 15/20 rank serration,Pressure point and hornet strike at a similar time. 

Jesus, if this happens RIP my cores

Edited December 16, 2014 by N7_Phantom

[Innocent_Flower]

From the title: buffing suggests bringing said weapons up to the same level as other, better weapons. Nerfing existing content would cause an uproar that DE would never hear the end of. "What about the plat I spent", "what about the time I spent grinding for all those fusion cores".

 

You could Lower the power of something without making it entirely useless. It'd be hardly more of an upset than me being annoyed over Nova prime's anouncement when I potatoed her only a few months back because I thought it more likely Trinity/Volt or even ash/banshe to be primed first. I thought I'd have more time, man! 

 

How I'd balance the base stats? 

Snipers; Increase reload speed and damage by a huge amount. 

Single shot- Punch through

Semi-auto- Ragdoll. 

 

Shotguns

Tigris: A curving spray. Think wide at very short ranges but not much wider at very long ranges. . Innate punchthrough. 

Boar/Sobek: Rapid fire, Knockback, Narrow spread

Strun/Hek: Wide damaging spread, knockback. 

Drakgoon; Don't know. Didn't like it much. 

[Wurdyburd]

You could Lower the power of something without making it entirely useless. It'd be hardly more of an upset than me being annoyed over Nova prime's anouncement when I potatoed her only a few months back because I thought it more likely Trinity/Volt or even ash/banshe to be primed first. I thought I'd have more time, man! 

 

Orokin Reactors are relatively easy to come by if you pay attention to alerts and play a stupid amount of time, though. And if it's a 50/50 split between their appearances, there's still much less to use a Reactor on than a Catalyst. I myself have 9 Reactors saved up, even though I've installed them on every single Warframe. However, cores take much more effort to accumulate to the point of levelling up a Serration or Hornet Strike to max level. Using plat, it costs much less to buy a potato than it does to buy a high quantity of cores.

 

There's also people on trade chat who buy and sell max level mods like that; people buying them expect to have high damage. For DE to change the amount of effectiveness of something they bought would have people demanding a refund, as ridiculous as that would be.

[Auraria]

People are crying for nerfs because their prefered weapon isn't on the same level or have never gone end game.

 

 

Hek is extremely powerful one or two shotting 70+ enemies at decent range.\

 

 

Is the sustained or burst dps match the syanoid gammacor/bopltor p? No, and it shouldn't due to how easy it is to acquire the hek.

 

 

The shotguns do need a buf,  but not to the old levels it use to be where hek was literally the greatest weapon used.

 

TLDR: Stop crying for nerfs, buff weaker weapons, hek is still very strong end game, adapt to the changes in the game

[LordMelvin]

One big change that would make shotguns more viable would be altering the way fall-off works, either by removing it or adding it to all other weapons.

 

Adding it to all other weapons would create dedicated range brackets where certain weapons are more effective than others. Shotguns would remain powerful at closer ranges, rifles would be reined in significantly (including the infamous Boltor Prime and Soma). Snipers would gain a role as long distance, high precision weapons. 

 

I don't think Spoiled Strike is as much of an issue as other mods (like Heavy Caliber) since you have to close range in order to make use of it. Swing speed is a fairly important stat since that determines if you can kill your target before it kills you.

 

 

Shotguns on the other hand are trickier to fix. Since shotguns' effectiveness increases at lower ranges, it makes sense to increase their damage immensely so that at mid-range falloff they're acceptable. But all it takes is a Speed-build Volt to run around shooting everything point-blank for massive damage for DE to nerf it back down.

Nerfing a weapon based on a single frame's power is silly. That's like saying bows should be nerfed because Banshee's Sonar lets them do a bajillion damage. 

 

And anyway, blasting stuff at point-blank range is exactly what shotguns are supposed to do. They even have a mod named that. There's a difference between stuffing a shotgun barrel up someone's nose and mowing down waves with a Boltor Prime.

[akira_him]

Melee are fine for pressure point as they don't need any ammo and they have a combo multiplier

Buff the base damage of the shotguns and remove that stupid fall-off instead

(I actually prefer buff the point blank mod, but seems they are going to release prime point blank, this will never happen)

[Wurdyburd]

Nerfing a weapon based on a single frame's power is silly. That's like saying bows should be nerfed because Banshee's Sonar lets them do a bajillion damage. 

 

And anyway, blasting stuff at point-blank range is exactly what shotguns are supposed to do. They even have a mod named that. There's a difference between stuffing a shotgun barrel up someone's nose and mowing down waves with a Boltor Prime.

 

While true that it's silly to nerf something based on something else, DE has done sillier things. Nerfing frames as an obvious reaction to Viver being one of the most recent.

 

My point about point-blank damage doing perhaps TOO MUCH damage is that it's a fine line to balance, not "2 op plz nerf". DE could potentially ramp up pont-blank damage to kill just about everything in the game, which would offset the fact that you'd have to close that distance, but it's far more likely that they're going to lowball it and point-blank won't do ENOUGH damage.

This is why I declared a top-down map should be plotted for every shotgun, to figure out exactly what each of them can do at precise ranges. Just languidly saying "oh, I think the Sobek should have.. hmmmm... let's say +20% to it's damage" doesn't factor in the range mechanic of shotguns. This is the same practise they did to the sniper rifle buff; buffing the base stats without fixing what gave snipers their niche in the first place.

[Innocent_Flower]

What a lot of guys don't get is that the further the extremes are pushed, the more difficult it is to ballence it all out. 

 

 

Also: it is really rather saddening to accidentaly, or not bother to, nerf/buff yourself appropriately for each mission. Finding out that you can't get past a lancer's armour is saddening, and finding a grineer can't take a single millisecond of your beam weapon, or do any damage to you, is also saddening. The difficulty is not hill like, but cliff like. 

 

 

Everyone really needs to stop looking at things as "nerf" and "buff". 

[zoboso]

I would like the following to have their own niche relative to each other:

Assault Rifles

Shotguns

Marksmen's rifles (like latron or Vulcar)

Bows

melee

 

I feel that without giving weapon categories niches they will continue to be in flux forever.

[Jokubas]

What a lot of guys don't get is that the further the extremes are pushed, the more difficult it is to ballence it all out. 

 

 

Also: it is really rather saddening to accidentaly, or not bother to, nerf/buff yourself appropriately for each mission. Finding out that you can't get past a lancer's armour is saddening, and finding a grineer can't take a single millisecond of your beam weapon, or do any damage to you, is also saddening. The difficulty is not hill like, but cliff like. 

 

 

Everyone really needs to stop looking at things as "nerf" and "buff". 

This is a good point.

 

As someone who doesn't have any of the ten rank mods maxed out, I feel like a huge problem with the game comes largely from the massive percentages you have on things like Rifles. The game feels relatively balanced where I am right now, but I know there's this huge curve ahead of me still. The problem with such large numbers, isn't just that it creates a large divide, it's that the large divide leads to an arms race between new content and difficulty. It's unsustainable.

 

But it's not so simple as one buff or nerf. If you buff the shotguns, you still have every problem with the endgame we already have. If you nerf everything else, now you have to rebalance all of the really high-end stuff to no longer expect insane stats. DE needs to pick the most sustainable future, and commit to it, even if that requires changes indirect to the shotguns themselves.

Edited December 17, 2014 by Jokubas