Shotgun Buffs (U17 Megathread Topic)

[TuxedoMask00]

Basically the moral of the story for this thread is: Hek, Tigris, Dragkoon, and Sobek (Good Job DE) Boar Prime (fix it, you ruined it) Strun Wraith (revert the reload back to normal) Phage and Kohm (dont touch)

[aerosoul1337]

Seriously you still don't want to do something about Boar P, Strun and Kohm?

What is the point of this "official" thread of shotgun "Buff"?

[Djego27]

Fall off is the dumbest thing you can do to a weapon. This has been proven by the fact that it was changed with the buff update.

Your idea will only cause shotguns, and the tigris to be unplayable. You are not asking for balance here.

 

He is actually spot on, because Hek/Tigris are currently the best sniper rifles in the game(because they don't kill one target and the one behind it but everything around it as well). Even with just 50% of the damage they will be point and click, no matter of distance, on the hole starmap and it takes L70+, to really make a difference in shot count at range vs point blank currently(no this is practical experience I took my levelling Tigris into 40 waves solo Uranus defence and it just started to fail in the last 3 waves to one hit kill smaller units at range, with a slash shotgun vs armor).

 

Since everybody likes sniper shotguns(I with the Tigris and a guy with the Hek, both in unranked frames had a lot of fun today on Heleen killing waves in 20s and having a necros with 1% damage after a 25 waves speed run, trust me he tried to shoot something), even if they are currently OP compared to rifles(even soma/bolter prime) lets say we keep it at this(not that I think it is balanced or good).

 

If we assume Hek\Tigris are where shotguns should be, then the Sobek needs a quicker reload and a bit more fire rate(If you want to make it a non status boar prime with less spread, give it the means to unload quick and high burst dps) , strun just a quicker reload(with this it would be a very balanced new player shotgun). Boar Prime/Strun Wraith need to return to pre U17, you don't need range, you don't need laughable small damage buffs and you don't need status, rof or reload nerfs. Both where useful and good in her niche before U17 compared to other weapons already, so why nerf them into the ground while buffing Tigris\Hek into the heavens at the same time?

 

In the end status shotguns where more shotgun then Hek\Tigris will ever be, because pre U17, they did mean point blank, high kill speed at high levels and where fairly balanced compared to other weapons. Then again I don't think DE will fix status for shotguns any time soon, even with the working examples how shotguns without insane damage numbers that can be used for sniping actually did come out quite good and as high level kill speed kings even with fairly low on paper dps pre U17.

Edited August 18, 2015 by Djego27

[HolidayPi3]

Tried out the alt fire on the Tigris (1 shot as opposed to 2 at once), and there's a really long delay before you can fire off the second round with the alt fire. A fix would be nice.

[JuanDeages]

Tried out the alt fire on the Tigris (1 shot as opposed to 2 at once), and there's a really long delay before you can fire off the second round with the alt fire. A fix would be nice.

I kind of wish the single shot firing mode was the primary fire, and the duplex-auto was secondary as well. A single shell does do 30k-40k damage as it stands... two is overkill until late into the game.

Edited August 19, 2015 by JuanDeages

[srlhama]

Well.

First of all, I'm not really in favor of the changes to fall off. If anything, shotguns need more punishing falloff, not less. Why? Because shotguns should be absolutely decisive at short range. That is the definition of a shotgun and the tactical role it fills. You bring a shotgun because you want to easily win every short range engagement while sacrificing long range potential. Shotguns should absolutely demolish assault rifles at short range, while being in turn totally out classed at long range. With the changes to make falloff less punishing, that isn't really the case. Now the high-damage shotguns do tens of thousands of damage out to a surprisingly good distance, intruding into the role of assault rifles that are far less ammo efficient and bursty. You need to see silly-high enemy levels before the new high-damage shotguns stop being useful mid to long range weapons, and that's just not right.

Specifics...

* Drakgoon is fair. The rated damage is for fully charged shots, and if you're doing fully charged shots then it's a slow shotgun to use.

* Hek is fair. Less damage than the Drakgoon, but also no charge time or need to lead targets. Plus it has an insane augment that increases its damage a whole bunch.

* Tigris damage is too high. Why does this thing do as much damage as an Opticor? And no matter how much damage you give it, it's still painful to use because you'll spend 90% of your time reloading. This should be more in the neighborhood of 600 damage, and bring the reload time down to 1.2 seconds to compensate.

* Strun Wraith. No no no no. Huge fail. You killed the Strun Wraith. It is dead.. The defining feature of the Wraith was the fact that it had a reasonable magazine size with a good reload speed. It was quick and flexible and fluid. Now it's slow, painful, and clumsy! Now it has the handling of a pump action shotgun and modern "shoot one, load one" tactical doctrine, but it doesn't have the actual damage to back up such a play style so it is totally outclassed by everything else. It still has strong status performance, but status is irrelevant when the enemy is dead, which other shotguns doing 2 to 5 times more damage with better handling will accomplish faster. No. Either restore it previous fast-reloading magazine and leave it near the bottom of the barrel for damage, or, increase its damage to the level of the Drakgoon and Hek because its practical rate of fire with current mechanics is about 1 shot per second.

* Boar Prime. Not, in fact, buffed. DPS went up by 20%, but status chance went down by 25%, and the fact that this could practically reach 100% status chance to erode armor and control crowds is what made it a viable endgame weapon. Magazine size went up, but because you'd be silly to shoot this weapon empty all the time, actual handling went down because tactical reloads on a partial magazine went up by half a second for no benefit. Not dead like the poor Strun Wraith, but not actually improved either. Put the reload time back to 2.3 seconds, put the status chance back to 40%. There is no need to punish the Boar Prime with "balance" when the Kohm utterly destroys it as an automatic shotgun and everything else destroys it on a shot per shot basis.

* Sobek. Damage now solid, but the 4 second reload time hasn't gotten any less painful. Vulkar had a 4 second reload and it got improved when people complained. Supra had a 4 second reload and it got improved when people complained. 4 seconds of reload is just too long for Warframe's pacing. Reduce to 3 seconds, and take off a little damage per shot if it makes you feel better.

* Kohm. No complaints. It didn't actually need any damage buffs because it was leading the pack by a huge margin. Still an absolutely devastating weapon balanced by its poor ammo economy.

I like you dude...

You should send your profile to DE...

I crafted Drakgoon again after the buff and already put 3 forma on it and I don't see why I would use another weapon( except for Hek or my loved Sybaris) over it death barrage of shiny pellets...

[Oishii]

I heard damage fall off is capped at 50% damage on shotguns or at least the hek. So the hek is double boltor prime damage at close range, same dps as boltor prime at long range, wha? I been reluctant to forma the hek as I remember the acrid. But I probably will get to it and I hope I don't end up the same situation back in the acrid days.

[aerosoul1337]

People want Boar P, Strun and Kohm get some buffs, or at least reverted.

And no one complained about single shot from Tigris.

They did the absolute opposite thing from this feedback.

/Riot

[Boondorl]

Tigris change seemed pretty counter productive. Now that we officially have secondary fire in the game, it'd be nice to see semi-auto moved to primary fire, and firing both barrels at once moved to secondary (and I mean clicking fires both barrels, no duplex-auto shenanigans). It could also use a massive firerate increase so both barrels can be fired off quickly in semi-auto (and to remove that long delay before the reload). Something like 11.1 shots/second will do just fine.

 

As for the Strun Wraith and Boar Prime, I'd like to see them turned into real crit shotguns. Keep the base multiplier of 2.0x, increase the crit chance to 25%, and buff the crit mods. Blunderbuss should give 25%/rank just like its rifle counterpart, and Ravage 20%/rank for the same reason. That'd definitely make the Strun Wraith and Boar Prime viable along with the other shotguns.

[(XBOX)NetworkTech4]

Edited OP! Kohm had it's falloff damage tweaked :)

So do all shotguns get a damage bonus up close?

[aerosoul1337]

Edited OP! Kohm had it's falloff damage tweaked :) 

 

tweaked?

tweaked?

 

25m to 15m...

Min falloff damage 47.5% to 52.5%...

 

Bloody N e r f e d.

[(XBOX)NetworkTech4]

DE I feel yall should have given each shotgun + 500 base damage and after 35 meters they all have 60% damage falloff. All this readjusting just made things more complicated.

Edited August 20, 2015 by (XB1)Emperor x Tenzo

[Mac2492]

Please stop suggesting damage falloff. It's a lazy and unclear balancing mechanic. A more intuitive balancing mechanic is spread, as it is in real life. Shotguns using buckshot indeed have a low effective range (~40m), but lethal range is easily double and travel range is higher still (see here) on the off-chance that pellets to hit. Using a slug or rifled slug increases their effective range to well over 100m.

 

There is no logical reason for damage to arbitrarily fall off after X meters. It's confusing to the player when 1-2 pellets hit at close range and do 100 damage, then hit at long range and do 50 damage unlike every other weapon type. There are no details on damage falloff in-game. Until I came here I had no idea exactly how much my damage was being decreased by and at what range. Hek, I still don't know if shotgun damage falloff is linear, exponential, or instantaneous. For my own sanity I note that it exists but don't bother to gauge range.

 

Increase Spread, Remove Damage Falloff

Tainted Shell will then be useful to give shotgun shells more slug-like properties.

 

tl;dr: Shotgun damage should be based on how many pellets hit rather than an arbitrary damage falloff with distance. No matter how you tweak falloff, it will never be completely intuitive. Pellets hitting or missing because of spread? Absolutely intuitive.

[[DE]Momaw]

Increase Spread, Remove Damage Falloff

 

The disadvantage of doing that is that then you have RNG based hits.  If you want to increase Hek's pellet spread to the point that it's ineffective at long range i.e. not competing with actual long range weapons then it's basically random whether you hit the target with anything at all.  Would you be more confused by seeing hits that show reduced damage over range, or by shooting your gun at a target and seeing no damage whatsoever because RNG decided not to put any pellets there?

[Mac2492]

The disadvantage of doing that is that then you have RNG based hits.  If you want to increase Hek's pellet spread to the point that it's ineffective at long range i.e. not competing with actual long range weapons then it's basically random whether you hit the target with anything at all.  Would you be more confused by seeing hits that show reduced damage over range, or by shooting your gun at a target and seeing no damage whatsoever because RNG decided not to put any pellets there?

That's exactly how a shotgun works though. Within an effective range you should expect most pellets to hit their mark. Beyond this range the weapon loses effectiveness because it's less likely for pellets to land on the target. At long range, most pellets should randomly miss.

 

In this case "RNG based hits" would be an accurate way to model real life. If you're hunting small game from a distance of 100m it doesn't make much sense to use buckshot because there's a fair chance that real life RNG will screw you over. That's when you switch to a more effective ammunition (slugs) or get closer.

 

Landing every pellet from 100m away with a shotgun in-game should be like winning a mini lottery because the likelihood is so low. Instead it deals half damage. This is a cheap way of modeling how shotguns tend to act in real life. Increasing spread directly models it.

[ArbitUHM]

The disadvantage of doing that is that then you have RNG based hits.  If you want to increase Hek's pellet spread to the point that it's ineffective at long range i.e. not competing with actual long range weapons then it's basically random whether you hit the target with anything at all.  Would you be more confused by seeing hits that show reduced damage over range, or by shooting your gun at a target and seeing no damage whatsoever because RNG decided not to put any pellets there?

Shotguns should fire more pellets so you can effectively blanket the area within the shotgun's firing cone. That way if an enemy's profile fills about 30% of the cone, they take ~30% damage. I can see why they did a hard falloff limit though - it's much easier to balance and wouldn't require fiddling with all the damage-per-pellet numbers and spread patterns for nine weapons (or however many shotguns there are). 

 

It works OK... at this point, I'd much rather have them revisit how status is applied with shotguns.

[bonez358]

DE scumbag nerf bat incoming :/

Edited August 22, 2015 by bonez358

[Azamagon]

DE scumbag nerf bat incoming :/

Not surprised though, as the Hek, Tigris and Drakgoon are so strong they're almost boring to use.

 

But, I hope they don't OVERNERF, but rather balance them and fix them up a bit. My proposals:

General shotguns changes:

* Falloff possibly made a bit stronger again (instead of losing 50% at range, you lose 65-75%. That's still better than the old 90%)

* Mods more equalized to be more similar Rifle mods (Blunderbuss, most notably, so it gives the same critical chance bonus as Point Strike)

 

Boar

* Reintroduced to the market

* Accuracy increased to 5.5

* Magsize increased to 25

* Reloadtime reduced to 2,6 seconds

* Critical hit chance increased to 15%

Boar Prime

* Accuracy increased to 5.5

* Magsize increased to 30

* Reloadtime reduced to 2,6 seconds

* Status chance increased back to 40%

Drakgoon

* Chargedamage reduced to 450 (uncharged reduced to 288)

* Magsize increased to 10

* Statuschance increased to 20%

Hek

* Damage reduced to 330

* Reloadtime maybe reduced a tad more, not lower than 1,75 seconds

* Innate 0,2 meter punchthrough

* Hek's augment mod, Scattered Justice is simply a bit too powerful (it alone TRIPLES the basedamage of the weapon!). I'd suggest to start by cuttting its bonuses in half, so it alone gives 25-100% multishot.

Kohm

* Not sure what to do with this. But its ammothings (reserves, pickup, economy) all need a look at, I bet. At the very least I'd change for now so its ammopickups give 20 ammo, instead of just 10.

* At minimum, most people want it to use the bouncing, no-falloff shrapnels again, which is understandable (that's how it was released after all)

Phage

* Whenever the tentaclespread is lost, it isn't lost to the max spread instantaneously, but rather progressively, just like how its spread is lessened progressively while aiming.

Sobek

* Damage reduced to 210

* Rate of fire increased to 3,5

* Reloadtime reduced to 2,4 seconds

Strun / MK-1 Strun / Strun Wraith

* Total damage of regular Strun reduced to 240, Wraith increased to 270 and MK-1 increased to 210

* More allrounded damagetype (Regular: 80 / 80 / 80 IPS --- Wraith: 90 / 90 / 90 IPS --- MK-1: 70 / 70 / 70 IPS)

* Magsize increased to 7 (remains at 6 for MK-1, remains at 8 for the Wraith)

* Reloadtime per shell reduced to 0,35 seconds for MK-1/Regular, and to 0,25 seconds for Wraith (This means, at base magsize, total reloadtime is 2,1 seconds for MK-1, 2,45 seconds for Regular and 2,0 for Wraith)

* The sequential reload is no longer interrupted by sprinting, but can be interrupted by firing with the weapon

* Accuracy increased to 6 (remains at 6,7 for Wraith)

* Critical chance increased to 15% (10% for MK-1 and 20% for Wraith)

* Critical damage multiplier increased to 2x (not for the MK-1, is already 2x for the Wraith)

Tigris

* Damage reduced to 400, split between 8 pellets instead of just 4

* Innate 1,0 meter punchthrough

* Reloadtime reduced to 1,0 seconds

* Critical chance increased to 40%

 

EDIT: Oh, and if ammo ever gets adjusted, here is my "sorting" of the ammoreserves and ammo per pickup:

Damage: 199 or less = 180 reserves, 15 ammo per pickup (Example weapons: Boar, Boar Prime)

Damage: 200 - 399 = 120 reserves, 10 ammo per pickup (Example weapons: Most shotguns)

Damage: 400 or more = 60 reserves, 5 ammo per pickup (Example weapons: Tigris)

 

This would give each weapon more clear definitions of their roles:

* Struns are the classical pumpaction shell-by-shell reloaded shotguns, flexible in build possibilities

* Tigris is the classical doublebarrel shotgun, with a niche in capability of guaranteed crits (if Blunderbuss was adjusted) and innate punchthrough

* Hek is something inbetween Tigris and Strun (medium of everything, slight punchthrough etc)

* Boar (Prime) is the huge-magazined, fullauto, pellet-puking status-shotgun

* Sobek is the "mediumground" shotgun: A bit of Boar (fullauto and also quite big mag) and Hek (accurate) and Strun (medium damage and RoF).

* Drakgoon is the "flak" shotgun, with variable spread and power

* Phage is... Phage :P

* Kohm is the confetti cannon of impending doom

Edited August 22, 2015 by Azamagon

[aerosoul1337]

DE scumbag nerf bat incoming :/

 

 

Not surprised though, as the Hek, Tigris and Drakgoon are so strong they're almost boring to use.

 

What? is this from reliable source?

Some shotgun are considered nerfed from U17...

Edited August 22, 2015 by aerosoul1337

[Azamagon]

What? is this from reliable source?

Some shotgun are considered nerfed from U17...

Boar Prime and the Struns are mainly nerfed, but also got minor buffs

Kohm was slightly nerfed (falloff)

Phage was left untouched

But Hek, Drakgoon, Tigris and even Sobek were buffed beyond reasonable values.

[Djego27]

patch notes

 

I think that would have been far more reasonable changes for shotguns, then what we got with U17, even if I disagree on a few points.

 

- boar prime did not need changes, it was a fairly well balanced status weapon, the 15 rounds did work ok, I would however take more ammo per pick up and a bit more ammo reserve, since this was always something problematic at high levels with it

- strun wraith does not really need more damage then the normal one, it is a status shotgun, the power comes from status effects and the thing that does cripple it currently is the slow reload, since you will need the hole magazine to soften up and kill a heavy armor target(gunner/bombard) at high levels, what is fairly bad with 10 targets in front of you and a 3.6s reload with seeking fury

- I would keep the strun at 300, with a stronger damage falloff and a quicker reload I think it would be spot on as well balanced shotgun alternative to the normal braton, boltor, karak and grakata rifles

- Sobek should keep the damage, with a quicker reload and higher fire rate to become a reasonable high burst dps weapon if you mod for that, in return increase the spread so you actually have to use it at close range if you want all that damage on target

- 0.2m punch through on the Hek would be not sufficient, I would give it 1m simply because that works to penetrate all targets for group dps reasonable well, while still having the disadvantage against most solid cover in the game

- 60 ammo and 5 ammo pickup would be a harsh restriction on high levels with the Tigris, I would keep it at 120 and 10, since you actually do fire both barrels no stop at high levels(at what point the duplex trigger is actually a massive advantage since it provides a much better fire rate then with the hek), at what point you burn a lot of ammo

 

For the kohm, higher base damage and less fire rate like it was at one point would be my pick, with this it was a bit to strong at lower levels but a useful weapon if you did want to go to L100+ and you where willing to drop tons of ammo restores for that dps, even if a status shotgun can do the same thing more ammo efficient at high levels. 

Edited August 22, 2015 by Djego27

[Azamagon]

I think that would have been far more reasonable changes for shotguns, then what we got with U17, even if I disagree on a few points.

 

- boar prime did not need changes, it was a fairly well balanced status weapon, the 15 rounds did work ok, I would however take more ammo per pick up and a bit more ammo reserve, since this was always something problematic at high levels with it

- strun wraith does not really need more damage then the normal one, it is a status shotgun, the power comes from status effects and the thing that does cripple it currently is the slow reload, since you will need the hole magazine to soften up and kill a heavy armor target(gunner/bombard) at high levels, what is fairly bad with 10 targets in front of you and a 3.6s reload with seeking fury

- I would keep the strun at 300, with a stronger damage falloff and a quicker reload I think it would be spot on as well balanced shotgun alternative to the normal braton, boltor, karak and grakata rifles

- Sobek should keep the damage, with a quicker reload and higher fire rate to become a reasonable high burst dps weapon if you mod for that, in return increase the spread so you actually have to use it at close range if you want all that damage on target

- 0.2m punch through on the Hek would be not sufficient, I would give it 1m simply because that works to penetrate all targets for group dps reasonable well, while still having the disadvantage against most solid cover in the game

- 60 ammo and 5 ammo pickup would be a harsh restriction on high levels with the Tigris, I would keep it at 120 and 10, since you actually do fire both barrels no stop at high levels(at what point the duplex trigger is actually a massive advantage since it provides a much better fire rate then with the hek), at what point you burn a lot of ammo

 

For the kohm, higher base damage and less fire rate like it was at one point would be my pick, with this it was a bit to strong at lower levels but a useful weapon if you did want to go to L100+ and you where willing to drop tons of ammo restores for that dps, even if a status shotgun can do the same thing more ammo efficient at high levels. 

- Boar Prime needs help with ammo, yes.

- Strun Wraith having less damage than regular Strun makes little sense. What if you don't get a proc (say, if you don't abuse to mod it for the 100% status bug)? Then the regular Strun is superior. A small damageboost, or even the same damage, sounds reasonable to me.

- Sobek... well, that would just make it into a more ammo-efficient Boar, no? There are 2 fullauto shotguns, one could be accurate and the other could have wide spread. Makes them actually feel different from one another.

- I wouldn't give the Hek so much innate punchthrough that you can neglect modding for it entirely. It's just to give it a BIT of help against stuff like Shield Lancers, and to kill a couple of enemies in a row. Tigris, on the other hand, truly could need a whole meter of punchthrough baseline, considering its miniscule magsize.

- Yeah, maybe the reserve/pickup ammonerf for Tigris is unnecessary. Was just an idea to keep its power in check SOMEHOW.

- Kohm, well, I haven't played around with it enough (i just don't like its heavy ammo-inefficiency and weird pellet-spool mechanic). But what you say sounds somewhat reasonable *shrugs*

[Djego27]

Well there is little reason to play the strun wraith without the 100% status mechanic, at what point it doesn't need that much damage, even at high levels. The normal strun can't utilize status like the wraith variant so doing a bit more damage per shot should be ok.

 

The problem with the sobek is that with 2.5 rounds/s other shotguns deal a lot more damage. With the normal boar back I would say take it to 3.5 rounds per second and cut the reload down to 3s. With 360 rounds ammo reserve and 5.7 rounds/s the boar would still be fairly good if you look for a true point blank shotgun that unloads fast.

 

0.2m is not sufficient for most targets, even 0.5 would struggle to archive a effect where you could drop punch through on some mission. With the damage reduction(what is fairly reasonable since it currently one hits everything at any range up to L50) a bit more utility build into it would not hurt.

 

Tigris is super powerful at low levels and at high levels with 4 CP. However armor and shields do bring it back to reasonable standards at high levels where the duplex trigger is a massive advantage instead of a drawback what it is at lower levels.

 

Kohm just needs to be maintainable on ammo restores at higher levels to a degree that it makes sense to use the highest dps shotgun in the game. Currently at high levels, even with spamming ammo restores you can hardly keep it running and it beats the prisma grakata by a mile for being ammo inefficient even while both weapons need to run ammo mutation in every single build.

[Rollerlane]

Boar Prime and the Struns are mainly nerfed, but also got minor buffs

Kohm was slightly nerfed (falloff)

Phage was left untouched

But Hek, Drakgoon, Tigris and even Sobek were buffed beyond reasonable values.

i feel as though the Phage was ninja nerfed, even with all tentacles focused at 1 point it starts off at pathetically low damage and then gains damage over time. mines starts off at 50 per tick and gains damage up to 1200. 

 

The Hek is fine as it is, it needs 3-4 forma to start going up against higher leveled enemies and has a nice reload but still only 4 shots. and its a shotgun, its supposed to have high damage.

 

The Dragkoon is bad, uncharged the spread and damage is too low to do anything to anyone thats not on Mercury. While the fully charged damage is very nice, its also a cluster of projectiles that fall to the floor very quickly and are not good against groups of enemies. but it is fine for now

 

The Tigris is fine, it has only 2 shots and a painful reload, the high slash damage is justified with no argument. it also has no polarities.

 

The Sobek is fine, Status on shotguns are quirky as all hell right now so it needs its damage to be on pair with other shotguns. its reload is meh but there is a bug with it right now where if you empty the mag then melee as soon as the reload starts the reload animation is cancelled and the mag is full again, that needs to be fixed. but other than that the Sobek is fine.

 

Boar Prime and Strun nerfs need to be reverted, they are basically the old shotguns, dead.

 

All in all: Dont you dare touch my shotguns.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Rollerlane

[Djego27]

Well the dragkoon should do the same or close to full damage with uncharged shots as with charged ones. Having no damage falloff and a very thigh group even at long range are good reasons to use the charge mechanic, but it is just lacking the required punch with out it currently.

 

Hek and Tirgris on the other hand are currently one level above rifles and other shotguns. I did level my L22 Tirgis in 40 waves of Uranus defence, the L12 Hek in solo 20 waves of T2 void defence, there is no rifle that could pull that off(even bolter prime/soma prime would have run out of ammo or stopping power at one point). They just do to well at range with the damage they have at this range, I don't see a problem with unloading a 160k damage hit with the tirgis on a blind rage Ember at point blank, but as it is the target could be far out of accelerant range and still dies in a single hit below L50 just from the normal damage.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Djego27