Recent Nerfs

[Captator]

Having good first shot accuracy allows it to take over the role of the latron too much, which is what the nerf intended to fix. The spread should be reduced as firerate increases, otherwise we're back where we're started. 

 

Latron can consistently land shots accurately at range with much faster firing rate than gorgon, given you have to wait almost a second inbetween accurate shots to maintain the same accuracy with the gorgon, no? Also, latron being a poor weapon should not be compensated by dropping the skill ceiling on gorgon (now it is basically a spray and pray PoS, generic shoot-em-up machine gun, yay for diversity).

 

Also, one thing that doesn't seem to have been introduced in this game that adds further differentiation is to have disparities between moving and stationary accuracy; just give the gorgon a greater disparity so you are either an accurate turret or mobile suppressing fire. v0v I addressed this and the Hek in another one of these threads... It is a fairly trivial fix as far as I see it.

[HarukaTsukiko]

I would like to applogize for my last post, as I got alittle too heated into my personal option, and also stated some bad facts. This is meant to be a topic for cool heads, and logical reasoning for the forming of ideas to make things better for warframe, not my personal place to take out my annoyance at the recent changes.

 

Rather I would like to play with some hard numbers between a braton and Hek, just for a show of how different the guns are over all.

 

The Current Braton, does 17 damage pur shot, now with a setup based on pure damage and multishot like most currently are. this would uickly grow based on those mods. which are, Serration, hellfire, cryo rounds, storm bringer, piercing hit and splitchamber.

But we are going to use the max lvl mods of Serration, cryo, hellfire, pirecing hit, and splitchamber, which total out at 58 mod slots used.

 

and have the following effects:

Serraction 165% damage

Cyro 90% ice

hellfire 90% fire

pirecing hit 60% armor pen

Split chamber 90% multishot.

 

17 x 1.65 = 28.05 damage+

17 + 28.05 = 45.05 normal damage

45.05 x .9 = 40.545 fire and ice damage

45.05 x 6 = 27.03 armor pen damage

45.05 + (40.545 x 2) + 27.03 = 153.17 total damage

 

The braton now does 153.17 damage a shot.

And finally the multishot when it does proc pushes the Braton to do 306.34 a shot.

 

The braton has a clip size of 45 rounds.

at min the gun will do 153.17 x 45 = 6892.65 damage for a full clip

And max due to multi shot 306.34 x 45 = 13785.3 damage for a full clip.

 

So a heavily modded Braton will do between those two damages, not counting armor.

 

Now for the Hek, which does 140 damage per shot, I would clec the per pellet damage to work this out even better, but I do not know the pellet count myself. And we will be using the normal pure damage setup, with Point Blank, Incediary coat, chilling grasp, charged shell, Flechette, and Hell's Chamber. With a mix of lvls of Point blank, hell's chamber, flechette, incediary coat all maxed out, and with chilling grasp and charged shot both at rank three for a total of 60 slots used.

 

Mod stats are as follows:

Point Blank 90% damage+

Chilling 60% ice

incediary 90% fire

Flechette 90% armor pen

charged shot 60% elec

Hell's chamber 120% multishot

 

140 x .9 = 126 damage+

140 + 126 = 266 normal damage

266 x .9 = 239.4 fire and armor pen damage (each)

266 x .6 = 159.6 elec and ice damage (each)

266 + (239.4 x 2) + (159.6 x 2) = 1064 total normal damage (non multishot)

 

1064 x 1.2 = 1276.8 multishot damage

1064 + 1276.8 = 2340.8 full damage per shot.

 

now For the final part, due to the fact we have no clip mods the hek is stuck at 4 rounds, not to clec the total clip damage

2340.8 x 4 = 9363.2 full clip damage

 

Total damage from a single clip ont he Hek is no 9363.2 damage not counting armor.

 

Now there is a massive different between the Braton, and the Hek. Even the old Hek with its sniper range. It was completely outpreformed by the barton in terms of DPS and damage pre clip.

 

Braton 6892.65 - 13785.3 per clip vs Hek 9363.2 damage per clip.

And all of this isn't counting the 50% bonus damage from crits as well.

[Kattefjaes]

Well, devs say that they read forums and have mods to help them... Although I'm still a bit fuzzy on why no one of them ever tries to enter discussion.

 

To be fair, even if you're not a fussy Magic Unicorn Princess type like me who winces at every "alot", "per say" or "big of a deal", it is a pretty soul destroying thing to engage with the great unwashed (which is what we are, essentially).

 

If you have ever read any forum for an online game where a rep from the company starts off trying to engage with the userbase, it soon degenerates into people screaming, cursing, whining and wheedling- it's the nature of the beast. They soon evolve into entities who post terse, prepared and carefully-worded statements when it's absolutely necessary. Otherwise, it's mostly a case of letting people rage and wibble, and trying to pick out some signal from the noise.

 

It happens more or less every time, however good the initial intentions of the devs are. The natives, you see, are revolting.

[GTG3000]

To be fair, even if you're not a fussy Magic Unicorn Princess type like me who winces at every "alot", "per say" or "big of a deal", it is a pretty soul destroying thing to engage with the great unwashed (which is what we are, essentially).

 

If you have ever read any forum for an online game where a rep from the company starts off trying to engage with the userbase, it soon degenerates into people screaming, cursing, whining and wheedling- it's the nature of the beast. They soon evolve into entities who post terse, prepared and carefully-worded statements when it's absolutely necessary. Otherwise, it's mostly a case of letting people rage and wibble, and trying to pick out some signal from the noise.

 

It happens more or less every time, however good the initial intentions of the devs are. The natives, you see, are revolting.

 

Ah, I see.

I heard carped banning works well with the screamy crowd. (I'm joking).

Still, nothing stops them from acknowledging the community state publically, I guess.

 

[edit]

Also, by far the easiest way to nerf longrange sniping would be to make the gap between weakpoint and non-weakpoint damage greater for non-infested enemies. So you could still hit someone across a canyone with your sniper shotgun, but good luck dealing big damage since most of the buck will hit the armour.

Edited April 30, 2013 by GTG3000

[Loswaith]

Your multishot calculations on the braton are incorrect your calculations are presuming double damage on multishot, however with a 90% split chamber its only 1.9, leaving the average multishot damage at 291.02 per bullet (13096).

 

An alternative look is take the damage of the Hek in a single shot: 2340.8 .

The braton on average is 291.02 per bullet so needs to fire ~8.04 bullets to achieve the same damage.

 

Without taking into account fire rare and reload speed its hard to get an accurate DPS comparison.

[HarukaTsukiko]

Your multishot calculations on the braton are incorrect your calculations are presuming double damage on multishot, however with a 90% split chamber its only 1.9, leaving the average multishot damage at 291.02 per bullet (13096).

 

An alternative look is take the damage of the Hek in a single shot: 2340.8 .

The braton on average is 291.02 per bullet so needs to fire ~8.04 bullets to achieve the same damage.

 

Without taking into account fire rare and reload speed its hard to get an accurate DPS comparison.

 

And thats the exact point I was trying to make over all, and thank you for the revised multishot, I thought it did full damage. Still over all the difference in full clip damage between the two guns is massive. It's the pure alpha ine hit damage that makes the Hek so good. It is outright outclassed by full-auto weapons though over all. And I could honestly do a calculation on the next common rifle which is the Boltor so we can see a larger gadge of power between the more common main weapons in the game.

 

But yes, if the rest of the calculations were done, to include firing rates, and reloads, I still believe the Braton would come out ontop of the Hek overall.

Edited April 30, 2013 by HarukaTsukiko

[GTG3000]

Yeah, let's ignore the guy with numbers in his nick, he's not using fancy words to describe his ideas.

[Dasmir]

The answer is easy just remove the damage reduction and increase the spread...

[HarukaTsukiko]

Ah, I see.

I heard carped banning works well with the screamy crowd. (I'm joking).

Still, nothing stops them from acknowledging the community state publically, I guess.

 

[edit]

Also, by far the easiest way to nerf longrange sniping would be to make the gap between weakpoint and non-weakpoint damage greater for non-infested enemies. So you could still hit someone across a canyone with your sniper shotgun, but good luck dealing big damage since most of the buck will hit the armour.

 

GTG the over all idea of doing that would be cause more issues then it would solve, as crit zones are based on char models and not the guns. It would make crits harder to get, and reward body shot and pure damage setups more.

 

In complete honestly the best means to balence the Hek would be to lower its rate of fire to down from 2.2 to 1.8 or so so there is a longer pause between firings. Secondly up the reload time from 2.8s to something around the lines of 4s and make it unmodable. These two changes alone would curb the Hek's over all DPS greatly.

[Nedwin]

+1

[Argoms]

What about having the hek have to load one shell at a time, instead of inserting an invisible magazine under its 4 barrels to reload?

 

(also, I'm not the only one seeing parallels between the hek and tf2's pepperbox, right)

[MoonicusMaximus]

The Hek is not a broken conscept however, it is a very soildly made military grade super full choke shotgun. And a super full choke shotgun is meant to lay down long range suppresive, and destrustive fire. The Hek was made around the idea of being a high powered killing mechine, that even within its discription screams it is built for mid range combat, it will never be balenced inline with rifles, and it shouldn't be. The Hek is a buckshot rifle, it suffers from long reloads, and very small clips and is only truely deadly at mid range and longer due to a tight spread which is what makes it so amazing. There may me no way to balence the Hek inline with rifles at all. Rifles I may add are acc enough to snipe targets in this game, by putting rounds down range in a tight enough spread that roughly 70% of them hit the target in full auto, or through burst fire. Simply put. it won't happen.

 

And the next quote expains perfectly why.

 

The concept of the Hek is broken in terms of the game, Warframe. You have the advantages of a shotgun via huge upfront instantaneous damage damage, you have the advantage of rifle-sized optimal ranges. There is no downside that can realistically counter these two huge components being together without making a drastic change to how the Hek performs on a fundamental level. Increasing the spread would remove the rifle ranges, but only if its done correctly; of course this would change the weapon from a long range shotgun to another short range one. Small magazine of 4 is utterly irrelevant when you kill things in a single hit at these long distances that allow for longer times to reload. The reload time for the Hek is not "long"; it's actually ridiculously short, rather, compared to what the weapon can do in the time you spend shooting it. The fire rate is incredibly fast as well, meaning that you don't need fire rate increasing mods so you have more room for others.

 

There are no downsides to a long-range instant kill shotgun unless you do something to completely gut the weapon itself, such as make it on hold a single shell, give it a longer reload time, and reduce the overall shotgun ammo pool. I don't want any of those things to happen, but the Hek as it was was broken, and there is no point from a balance standpoint in returning it back to the way it was.

 

again, I am sorry if I seemed alittle raged in this post, but let us continue with cooler heads, and hopefully build ideas that will make the game better, rather then just saying "This doesn't work its too strong", "this gun is broken nerf/buff it" and other such things. In the end the issues we are currently facing are the start of a cascading Nerf to everything in the game, cause both we the community are trying to balence things, and DE is doing their best to answer our cry to arms regarding them.

 

There has been zero indication that there will be a "cascade of nerfs" in any way, shape or form. The shotgun damage falloff was an attempt at making shotguns fit into their niche of close-range weapons, because too many people had gotten used to using them as long range weapons. That's a fault on both parts, but it's silly get get riled over DE attempting to balance the game. I don't see how the developers attempting to balance weapons to be desirable to all playstyles, rather than facilitating a single one (which the Hek did), can be considered a bad thing. DE even buffed an arguably underpowered weapon (the Grakata) in the same patch that nerfed the Hek.

 

This. If what you said is right, then the devs seem not to even have some idea of a baseline. Or they blindly listen to community instead of spending time looking around the issue... Either way is very bad for the game, when maps are made for 100+meter ranges, and then all the guns are nerfed as if they didn't talk about it. I know it will sound bad, but everything you said is pretty obvious to me, to the point of a gut feeling... DE didn't develop anything MMO and constantly in development before, did they?

 

Most map tiles in Warframe rarely end up reaching 100m. And even then, it is always possible to close the gap into your weapons optimal range. And the Hek was widely regarded as being broken and overpowered; high-level players would ONLY use Heks when tackling high-level content. It's not hard to see that when a weapon, intended to be balanced with other weapons, is used almost exclusively at higher levels of play, that there is a balance issue.

 

 

Personally I would say that weapons currently require 'weapon as util' mechanic to them, with shotguns having stagger and knockback against atmour and rifles actually supressing all those mindless mobs.

 

Shotguns already have an innately higher stun rate than most rifles. Shotgun stun mods also hold a higher percentage per level, at 5% while all other weapon classes level at 2.5%. Shotguns have the ability to stagger, but people do not mod into them, because it's much easier to just mod straight into killing power and kill things in a single blast rather than stun them.

 

Yep, Hek is the most heavily XP-gated equipment in the game, by the time you've reached that mastery rank, you're probably looking for something ludicrous to kill lots of high level targets fast. It makes absolutely no sense that it be "balanced" against the entry level weapons, really. If you're tall enough to ride, your main concern is no longer going to be taking down crewmen around Venus and Mars.

 

It no longer performs as per its description, so people who levelled that far to get it, buying plat for slots along the way perhaps, and who potatoed this weapon.. well, they've a right to facepalm.

 

DE has already said that weapons are meant to be balanced with one another, and that the Hek was never intended to be inherently better than every other weapon, which it was. Rank locks and requirements mean nothing. They are simple there to needlessly give goals to players that should have rewarded guns of varying niches, not better overall guns. It's a reward for progressing through Mastery Ranks by rewarding the player with more diversity, not outright better equipment.

 

And the Hek does no longer perform as per its description. DE should probably change the description, unless they still plan on "looking back at falloff ranges" as DESteve already stated.

 

Now there is a massive different between the Braton, and the Hek. Even the old Hek with its sniper range. It was completely outpreformed by the barton in terms of DPS and damage pre clip.

 

Braton 6892.65 - 13785.3 per clip vs Hek 9363.2 damage per clip.

And all of this isn't counting the 50% bonus damage from crits as well.

 

But yes, if the rest of the calculations were done, to include firing rates, and reloads, I still believe the Braton would come out ontop of the Hek overall.

 

As I stated before, the best part about the Hek's large damage is the fact that it is delivered upfront, in a single shot. A Braton, unmodded, as a fire rate of 11.3, with a magazine of 45, meaning that your "full damage potential" of a Braton requires nearly four seconds or so to achieve, as well as the damage being delivered in very small increments over time, with player accuracy taken into account with the Bratons modest spread pattern, as well as the fact that it requires 45 bullets to achieve these numbers, with the rifle ammunition pool being notoriously limited for automatic weapons due to the fact that rifle ammo pickups only give 20 bullets. A Braton will do more damage over time, but in higher levels of play, the longer a target stays alive, the less likely you are to kill it efficiently, as you expend more ammunition and enemies have more time to swarm around you and close the gap between your optimal ranges.

 

The Hek delivers its damage right then and there, with a fire rate of 2.2, meaning  close to 2 shots a second, totaling in around 4 seconds for an expended magazine. Because the Hek has no rifle-like spread pattern for continued firing, accuracy beyond the first shot is not an issue. This means that the impressive upfront damage on a Hek, firing at its pre-nerf optimal range, killed single targets faster than a Braton would, easier, and ultimately required much less ammunition spent to achieve the same goal And at high levels, killing single targets quickly and efficiently takes a much, much larger role.

 

Shotgun and Rifle ammo picksups drop with the same frequency.

 

A Braton ammo pickup gives you 20 rounds. According to your numbers (braton at 306.34 per shot), that would mean that each rifle pickup would add a potential 6126.8 damage, assuming multishot.

 

A Hek ammo pickup gives you 10 shells. According to your numbers (hek at 2340.8 per shot), that would mean that each shotgun pickup would add a potential 23,408 damage, assuming multishot.

 

That's nearly 4 times a difference in potential damage.

 

As I stated before, it is NOT just the raw damage potential of the Hek that broke the weapon; it is several factors that associated with the fact that it was a shotgun, with shotgun damage, at rifle ranges, delivered with shotgun mechanics with shotgun ammo efficiency allowing for longer prolonged use.

Edited April 30, 2013 by MoonicusMaximus

[Klaww]

+ Fix these weapons

[Klaww]

To be fair, even if you're not a fussy Magic Unicorn Princess type like me who winces at every "alot", "per say" or "big of a deal", it is a pretty soul destroying thing to engage with the great unwashed (which is what we are, essentially).

 

If you have ever read any forum for an online game where a rep from the company starts off trying to engage with the userbase, it soon degenerates into people screaming, cursing, whining and wheedling- it's the nature of the beast. They soon evolve into entities who post terse, prepared and carefully-worded statements when it's absolutely necessary. Otherwise, it's mostly a case of letting people rage and wibble, and trying to pick out some signal from the noise.

 

It happens more or less every time, however good the initial intentions of the devs are. The natives, you see, are revolting.

someones played battlefield 3 hahah

[HarukaTsukiko]

The concept of the Hek is broken in terms of the game, Warframe. You have the advantages of a shotgun via huge upfront instantaneous damage damage, you have the advantage of rifle-sized optimal ranges. There is no downside that can realistically counter these two huge components being together without making a drastic change to how the Hek performs on a fundamental level. Increasing the spread would remove the rifle ranges, but only if its done correctly; of course this would change the weapon from a long range shotgun to another short range one. Small magazine of 4 is utterly irrelevant when you kill things in a single hit at these long distances that allow for longer times to reload. The reload time for the Hek is not "long"; it's actually ridiculously short, rather, compared to what the weapon can do in the time you spend shooting it. The fire rate is incredibly fast as well, meaning that you don't need fire rate increasing mods so you have more room for others.

 

There are no downsides to a long-range instant kill shotgun unless you do something to completely gut the weapon itself, such as make it on hold a single shell, give it a longer reload time, and reduce the overall shotgun ammo pool. I don't want any of those things to happen, but the Hek as it was was broken, and there is no point from a balance standpoint in returning it back to the way it was.

 

 

There has been zero indication that there will be a "cascade of nerfs" in any way, shape or form. The shotgun damage falloff was an attempt at making shotguns fit into their niche of close-range weapons, because too many people had gotten used to using them as long range weapons. That's a fault on both parts, but it's silly get get riled over DE attempting to balance the game. I don't see how the developers attempting to balance weapons to be desirable to all playstyles, rather than facilitating a single one (which the Hek did), can be considered a bad thing. DE even buffed an arguably underpowered weapon (the Grakata) in the same patch that nerfed the Hek.

 

 

Most map tiles in Warframe rarely end up reaching 100m. And even then, it is always possible to close the gap into your weapons optimal range. And the Hek was widely regarded as being broken and overpowered; high-level players would ONLY use Heks when tackling high-level content. It's not hard to see that when a weapon, intended to be balanced with other weapons, is used almost exclusively at higher levels of play, that there is a balance issue.

 

 

 

Shotguns already have an innately higher stun rate than most rifles. Shotgun stun mods also hold a higher percentage per level, at 5% while all other weapon classes level at 2.5%. Shotguns have the ability to stagger, but people do not mod into them, because it's much easier to just mod straight into killing power and kill things in a single blast rather than stun them.

 

 

DE has already said that weapons are meant to be balanced with one another, and that the Hek was never intended to be inherently better than every other weapon, which it was. Rank locks and requirements mean nothing. They are simple there to needlessly give goals to players that should have rewarded guns of varying niches, not better overall guns. It's a reward for progressing through Mastery Ranks by rewarding the player with more diversity, not outright better equipment.

 

And the Hek does no longer perform as per its description. DE should probably change the description, unless they still plan on "looking back at falloff ranges" as DESteve already stated.

 

 

As I stated before, the best part about the Hek's large damage is the fact that it is delivered upfront, in a single shot. A Braton, unmodded, as a fire rate of 11.3, with a magazine of 45, meaning that your "full damage potential" of a Braton requires nearly four seconds or so to achieve, as well as the damage being delivered in very small increments over time, with player accuracy taken into account with the Bratons modest spread pattern, as well as the fact that it requires 45 bullets to achieve these numbers, with the rifle ammunition pool being notoriously limited for automatic weapons due to the fact that rifle ammo pickups only give 20 bullets. A Braton will do more damage over time, but in higher levels of play, the longer a target stays alive, the less likely you are to kill it efficiently, as you expend more ammunition and enemies have more time to swarm around you and close the gap between your optimal ranges.

 

The Hek delivers its damage right then and there, with a fire rate of 2.2, meaning  close to 2 shots a second, totaling in around 4 seconds for an expended magazine. Because the Hek has no rifle-like spread pattern for continued firing, accuracy beyond the first shot is not an issue. This means that the impressive upfront damage on a Hek, firing at its pre-nerf optimal range, killed single targets faster than a Braton would, easier, and ultimately required much less ammunition spent to achieve the same goal And at high levels, killing single targets quickly and efficiently takes a much, much larger role.

 

Shotgun and Rifle ammo picksups drop with the same frequency.

 

A Braton ammo pickup gives you 20 rounds. According to your numbers (braton at 306.34 per shot), that would mean that each rifle pickup would add a potential 6126.8 damage, assuming multishot.

 

A Hek ammo pickup gives you 10 shells. According to your numbers (hek at 2340.8 per shot), that would mean that each shotgun pickup would add a potential 23,408 damage, assuming multishot.

 

That's nearly 4 times a difference in potential damage.

 

As I stated before, it is NOT just the raw damage potential of the Hek that broke the weapon; it is several factors that associated with the fact that it was a shotgun, with shotgun damage, at rifle ranges, delivered with shotgun mechanics with shotgun ammo efficiency allowing for longer prolonged use.

 

Again Moon the point of the Hek is to be OUTSIDE of shotgun norms, it is not a broken weapon. It is meant to be mid range not 10meters in from of you. now if it was easy to explain everything I have been trying do many times over. Shotguns shouldn't be limited to close range or no range, they should have some effects from their real life brothers, which are the fact that in the case of each different gun can very much so make them stronger and balenced in respect other weapons.

 

The best over all ways have been stated many more times to once, but to revise my prior ideas would be as follows.

Boar, should remain at the current max of 10 meters for full damage and should have a fall off from max damage to low damage over another 5 meters, giving it a range of 15 meters with falloff.

 

The Strun shoudl have a full damage range of 15 meters, and a falloff of 5 meters where to goes from full damage to half damage and then very sharply dips to nearly nothing by within 1 meter after falloff, giving it a total range of 21 meters including falloff, or something to that idea.

 

And finally the Hek, the rifle of a shotgun, it should carry a range of 20 meters where it slowly tapers off on damage from 100% to 90% and then from that standpoint down from 90% to next to nothing over a 10 meters falloff. Giving the Hek a sizable range of 30 meters and giving it a head up over the other shotguns based on its unique features

Edited April 30, 2013 by HarukaTsukiko

[Argoms]

If the hek can deal shotgun damage at rifle range, then what do rifles do?

[HarukaTsukiko]

If the hek can deal shotgun damage at rifle range, then what do rifles do?

 

The bratons, boltor, gorgon, and other such "rifles" are not outright rifles. They are assault rifles, guns will a high rates of fire that work best between close-mid and long range. Where their high firerate can easily dispatch mobs at close range, and use controlled fire for longer ranges.

[MoonicusMaximus]

Again Moon the point of the Hek is to be OUTSIDE of shotgun norms, it is not a broken weapon. It is meant to be mid range not 10meters in from of you. now if it was easy to explain everything I have been trying do many times over. Shotguns shouldn't be limited to close range or no range, they should have some effects from their real life brothers, which are the fact that in the case of each different gun can very much so make them stronger and balenced in respect other weapons.

 

Being outside of the shotgun norm in this fashion DOES break the weapon. If shotguns had the range in comparison to their real-life brethren in this game, what reason would we have to ever use anything else. Again, the map tiles do not facilitate ranges that would make a real-life rifle inherently better in distance than a real-life shotgun. Warframe has to reduce these real-life ranges in order to maintain the balance. If the Hek was effective at 30m, well within the ranges that nearly 80% of this game is played at, it would go right back to where it was. I won't even bother stating what that is, I've done so far too many times. If the Hek was effective at 30m, why would I ever want to use any rifle? Their range, while supposed to be greater, is meaningless because I do not NEED any more range than 30m. There would be literally no real reason to use any weapon other than the Hek, unless you deliberately want to underpower yourself on purpose. That is not balance.

 

 

The best over all ways have been stated many more times to once, but to revise my prior ideas would be as follows.

Boar, should remain at the current max of 10 meters for full damage and should have a fall off from max damage to low damage over another 5 meters, giving it a range of 15 meters with falloff.

 

The Strun shoudl have a full damage range of 15 meters, and a falloff of 5 meters where to goes from full damage to half damage and then very sharply dips to nearly nothing by within 1 meter after falloff, giving it a total range of 21 meters including falloff, or something to that idea.

 

And finally the Hek, the rifle of a shotgun, it should carry a range of 20 meters where it slowly tapers off on damage from 100% to 90% and then from that standpoint down from 90% to next to nothing over a 10 meters off all. Giving the Hek a sizable range of 30 meters and giving it a head up over the other shotguns based on its unique features.

 

Giving the Hek a sizable range of 30 meters and giving it a head up over other shotguns and every other weapon as well based on its unique features.

 

If you want a shotgun that can be used at rifle ranges, it needs rifle damage. I've said this before, I will say it every time. You want unique? How about the Hek is a shotgun that can be fired at long range but only delivered damage comparable to rifles of the same optimal range. You gain the upfront damage delivery system of a shotgun, you gain the rifle level ranges, but you lose the shotgun level damage values that are meant for close range. THAT'S unique and balanced, and that sort of gun I would be fine with.

 

 

If the hek can deal shotgun damage at rifle range, then what do rifles do?

 

Waste your time. Pre-Nerf Hek was the go-to gun if you actually wanted to be serious.

 

 

The bratons, boltor, gorgon, and other such "rifles" are not outright rifles. They are assault rifles, guns will a high rates of fire that work best between close-mid and long range. Where their high firerate can easily dispatch mobs at close range, and use controlled fire for longer ranges.

 

They are classed as rifles, and are supposed to have the advantage of rifle range afforded to them by their accuracy. The disadvantage of the rifle class in comparison to the shotgun class is that shotgun damage is delivered instantly, killing targets faster. This is balanced because shotguns need to be closer.

 

Removing the range limitation just makes shotguns outright better than rifles in ANY potential situation.

[Argoms]

The bratons, boltor, gorgon, and other such "rifles" are not outright rifles. They are assault rifles, guns will a high rates of fire that work best between close-mid and long range. Where their high firerate can easily dispatch mobs at close range, and use controlled fire for longer ranges.

Being pedantic isn't going to help. Giving the hek the range at which current (assault) rifles are most effective at while retaining most of its shotgun-level damage would defeat the point of the regular (assault) rifles.

[HarukaTsukiko]

Being outside of the shotgun norm in this fashion DOES break the weapon. If shotguns had the range in comparison to their real-life brethren in this game, what reason would we have to ever use anything else. Again, the map tiles do not facilitate ranges that would make a real-life rifle inherently better in distance than a real-life shotgun. Warframe has to reduce these real-life ranges in order to maintain the balance. If the Hek was effective at 30m, well within the ranges that nearly 80% of this game is played at, it would go right back to where it was. I won't even bother stating what that is, I've done so far too many times. If the Hek was effective at 30m, why would I ever want to use any rifle? Their range, while supposed to be greater, is meaningless because I do not NEED any more range than 30m. There would be literally no real reason to use any weapon other than the Hek, unless you deliberately want to underpower yourself on purpose. That is not balance.

 

 

 

Giving the Hek a sizable range of 30 meters and giving it a head up over other shotguns and every other weapon as well based on its unique features.

 

If you want a shotgun that can be used at rifle ranges, it needs rifle damage. I've said this before, I will say it every time. You want unique? How about the Hek is a shotgun that can be fired at long range but only delivered damage comparable to rifles of the same optimal range. You gain the upfront damage delivery system of a shotgun, you gain the rifle level ranges, but you lose the shotgun level damage values that are meant for close range. THAT'S unique and balanced, and that sort of gun I would be fine with.

 

 

 

Waste your time. Pre-Nerf Hek was the go-to gun if you actually wanted to be serious.

 

 

 

They are classed as rifles, and are supposed to have the advantage of rifle range afforded to them by their accuracy. The disadvantage of the rifle class in comparison to the shotgun class is that shotgun damage is delivered instantly, killing targets faster. This is balanced because shotguns need to be closer.

 

Removing the range limitation just makes shotguns outright better than rifles in ANY potential situation.

 

Again the numbers I gave were meant to be something to build damage off of, and yes Your idea to have the shot damage ramp upwards to max and then back down is a good one. But would make the Hek more of a gyro jet cannon then a shotgun again. But something good could be easily worked out while maintaining its damage at close range, and still have use at longer range. It is true the Hek should do most of its damage upto mid range which would be roughly 15 meters, but if the falloff from there was another 15 meters were it tapers down from 100% damage down to nearly nothing it would balence the gun fairly well, while keeping it inline with other guns and shotguns. While giving it the unique feature to have damage at range. Not full damage, just damage.

[MrSnipyCat]

The shotguns got really lame now, but i like the gorgon the way it is.

Edited April 30, 2013 by Snipazz

[GTG3000]

GTG the over all idea of doing that would be cause more issues then it would solve, as crit zones are based on char models and not the guns. It would make crits harder to get, and reward body shot and pure damage setups more.

 

In complete honestly the best means to balence the Hek would be to lower its rate of fire to down from 2.2 to 1.8 or so so there is a longer pause between firings. Secondly up the reload time from 2.8s to something around the lines of 4s and make it unmodable. These two changes alone would curb the Hek's over all DPS greatly.

 

Well, it would be a complex solustion alright, but it's better than fixing one thing at a time and expecting that whole game becomes balanced. Making the gap higher would make players rely on accuracy more. But some rifles aren't accurate, so... The more complex solution includes rebalancing of the mods for shotguns and, maybe, a drop off for the shotgun mod damage (safe for the upfront one). This way, we could keep the 'normal damage' of any weapon low if you aren't skilled enough to shoot them in the face, with the elemental damage taking over the ball. *sigh* it all requires live testing, but basically it would mean that, with dropoff only applying to elemental damage, you would either have to aim well with your rapidly spreading buck, or get closer not to care about it. I doubt it would be much of a problem on lower levels anyway, but it would make players rely more on the mods they bring in, and less on some specific gun. 

 

Moonicus, the game provides more than enough big tiles to 'snipe' in, and, by now, not enough weapons accurate enough to do anything. Further, Shotgun stunning is a step in right direction, and I know it exists. It does't make them into real utils yet, though. 

 

Also, stop feeding the troll, people.

[Lord.Finster]

I've been testing Gorgon and Hek for quite some time now, before and after nerf. This is my assessment:

 

General gun balance:

The Devs should find out what they really want with this game. Do they want all guns to be balanced against one another or not.

Guns are separated into different levels which are unlocked by the mastery rank. This indicates to me the following:

High tier guns should be trickier to use than low tier guns but their damage potential, once mastered, should be higher than lower tier guns.

This may mean that lower tier guns have no place in the actual "endgame" but they might still be chosen over the high tier guns because of their better handling or other reasons of convenience (price, easily accessible production material, low mastery rank, aesthetics).

As a sidenote, I expect some realism in a sci-fi game.

 

Gorgon:

The gun was fine before. Both in accuracy and spin mechanics. It behaved like an actual machinegun with a perfect first shot precision and exponentially increasing recoil and loss of accuracy. Base precision should be even higher than any assault rifle because of the longer barrel. In the army I learned to fire controlled three round bursts to a range of 200 meters and more, allowing only a deviation of 5 inches from the bulls eye.

To be fair, we lay on the ground before, but we didn't have highly developed exoskeletons either. Anyway, the gun was appealing to me because it tied in with my personal experience, giving me an authentic feel. That is now ruined.

Also, Grineer minigunners are now laughably inprecise and hardly a threat.

 

My suggestion for Gorgon is:

1) Increase base accuracy to a high level (above 20) and double the exponential accuracy loss by autofire.

2) Increase "spindown" duration so players have to wait longer for controlled bursts after extended autofire.

3) Decrease base damage if you have to. (It uses rifle ammo after all.)

 

Assessment of HEK coming soon.

[GTG3000]

I've been testing Gorgon and Hek for quite some time now, before and after nerf. This is my assessment:

 

General gun balance:

The Devs should find out what they really want with this game. Do they want all guns to be balanced against one another or not.

Guns are separated into different levels which are unlocked by the mastery rank. This indicates to me the following:

High tier guns should be trickier to use than low tier guns but their damage potential, once mastered, should be higher than lower tier guns.

This may mean that lower tier guns have no place in the actual "endgame" but they might still be chosen over the high tier guns because of their better handling or other reasons of convenience (price, easily accessible production material, low mastery rank, aesthetics).

As a sidenote, I expect some realism in a sci-fi game.

 

Gorgon:

The gun was fine before. Both in accuracy and spin mechanics. It behaved like an actual machinegun with a perfect first shot precision and exponentially increasing recoil and loss of accuracy. Base precision should be even higher than any assault rifle because of the longer barrel. In the army I learned to fire controlled three round bursts to a range of 200 meters and more, allowing only a deviation of 5 inches from the bulls eye.

To be fair, we lay on the ground before, but we didn't have highly developed exoskeletons either. Anyway, the gun was appealing to me because it tied in with my personal experience, giving me an authentic feel. That is now ruined.

Also, Grineer minigunners are now laughably inprecise and hardly a threat.

 

My suggestion for Gorgon is:

1) Increase base accuracy to a high level (above 20) and double the exponential accuracy loss by autofire.

2) Increase "spindown" duration so players have to wait longer for controlled bursts after extended autofire.

3) Decrease base damage if you have to. (It uses rifle ammo after all.)

 

Assessment of HEK coming soon.

 

Whoah. Great to hear from someone with actual experience. We all feel that way about gorgon, I assure you. Earlier in the thread I suggested adding a 'second' spindown timer after the period while you can still regain firing speed is over, wouldn't that fix it by removing ability to make single shots semi-automatically? (bearing in mind that it's said to have more than one actual barrel).

 

[edit]

Aww, I is being downvoted. 

Edited April 30, 2013 by GTG3000

[dEEkAy2k9]

they should not have nerfed all shotguns that hard, they should either look into all those other guns out there and give em some love.

 

one thing about the hek i never understood. it's design is based upon 4 barels. that's probably where the 4 rounds clipsize came from. why not make that gun shoot 4 shots at once. one mousebutton click and it's a big BAM with 4 shots. true, lots of damage BUT you would think about using your hek for every trash mob since you would be overkilling it a lot thus wasting ammo.

 

another thing i really miss here are PUMPACTION SHOTGUNS. come on, the classic pumpaction is still missing here.

 

other then what i just stated, i agree on almost everything you said, just not about the crit or max clipsize changes since those would render some mods useless and need some rethinking of the mod system.

+1