Let's Talk About Ballistica And Its Awkward Firing Mechanism, Shall We?

[yles9056]

Ballistica is a cool looking crossbow featuring unique firing mechanism. While the basic concept is interesting, I find it kind of awkward to use in practice.

 

Let's start with its charge firing mode:

Fully charged, Ballistica fires one bolt that is not affected by gravity. It deals 100 damage, which is something you would expect to see on a mastery rank 2 weapon. *cough *Boltor Prime *cough *mastery rank 0*  But any stats buff is welcome.

 

The main issue is, you cannot charge immediately after firing a charged shot. There is a short delay before you can charge again. It really breaks the flow of gunplay and makes Ballistica clumsy to use. I'm not sure if it is intended or a bug, but I really hope it can be changed.

 

Now, for burst firing mode. It is too inefficient. Each burst consume 4 ammo. And after firing 4 times, you need to reload for 2 seconds. That's even worse than Pyrana and Sicarus, which have 5 shot and 2 seconds reload time. Burst firing mode also has weird horizontal recoil. You would miss several shot because of the strange recoil. If you use it as a shotgun, it does not offer enough damage and you only have 4 shot. I really see no reason to use Ballistica's burst firing mode.

 

I would suggest the following change:

Idea A: Apply Drakgoon's mechanism to Ballistica. Uncharge and fully-charged shot both consume 1 ammo per shot and fire 4 bolts at the same time. Charging makes the bolts more concentrate. This would make uncharge shot more efficient.

 

Idea B: Apply Angstrum's mechanism to Ballistica. Uncharge shot fires 1 bolt with 100 damage and is not affected by gravity. Fully-charged shot fires multiple bolts(one-fourth of its maximum magazine affected by mods). All bolts deal 100 damage and have no vertical spread. This allows you to hit multiple enemy at the same plane.

 

 

In the end, I just hope both of Ballistica's 2 firing modes be as useful. Feel free to discuss. :)

[(NSW)LilVanu]

I just feel the gun needs a buff. Plain and simple. It isn't at

all viable. I love the thing but goddamnit is it absolutely horrendous to use against anything.

 

It's one weapon I have a vast amount of trouble lovin' and I love the Torid and Miter for crying out loud.

[RCOAS]

Ballistica becomes semi auto dread. Fully charged releases multiple bolts with no recoil. B sounds really good.

[DrBorris]

Besides the charge delay, I am fine with the firing mechanics. I actually like the horizontal recoil because it allow Ballistica to fulfill two roles in a way. It is a precision sniper, but with some crowd clearing capabilities. Other than that... 

 

For those that have been viewing the Rakta Ballistica threads, this will look similar. I have been a long time Ballistica fan, so both of the Ballisticas being so bad is really bugging me. I shall continue to post the following because it is the most logical solution.

 

It would not be that hard to fix, just tweak its damage stats.

 

When Ballstica first came out, its stats were identical to Paris'. However, Ballistica was not buffed when the Bows were. Thus, would it not be logical to simply buff it to the point that the Bows were buffed to?

 

Also, I do not understand the switch from puncture to impact damage. When taking out high priority targets, I would think that puncturing them would be more useful than punching them. It seems that DE wants to change the damage type though, so slash would make more sense. Red Veil wants to purge and Slash damage will make the victims suffer.

 

I think it would be really cool if all of the Syndicate weapons were equivalently powered and all end game tier weapons.

 

Basically, I think Ballistica should be equivalent to Paris and Rakta Ballistica should be equivalent to Paris Prime (or Dread).

I also think that burst fire should be a viable alternative to charged fire (unlike bows). It should not be as powerful, but at least decent.

 

Thus the stats would be...

 

Ballistica

40 (burst) damage (per arrow)

150 (charge) damage

20% crit chance (burst)

50% crit chance (charged)

2x crit multiplier

(everything else the same)

1 second charge time 

 

Rakta Ballistica

50 (burst) damage (per arrow)

200 (charge) damage

20% crit chance (burst)

60% crit chance (charged)

2x crit multiplier

1 second charge time 

 

As for the 50% and 60% crit chances, 50% is the minimum (pretty number) crit chance for secondarys to obtain 100% crit chance due to secondarys crit chance mod being weaker (120% versus rifles 150%). I gave the Rakta 60% so that it would be able to occasionally hit some red crits. And for those who say "the better pistol mods would make it OP", go look at the secondary crit damage mod... it is only 60%.

[Eric1738]

it should be buffed when bows were buffed, but unfortunately DE forgot about it. maybe 2 years later DE will buff it eventually.

[AzyWng]

As a Ballistica user, I've haven't noticed any problems with the charge fire rate (Aside from it doing almost the exact same damage as the burst!), but the horizontal recoil makes me cringe every time I miss.

 

It sucks!