Feedback: Multishot - and why it needs to change drastically or go away.

[DigitalDamage]

If multishot doesn't cost ammo, what's to differentiate it from damage%? I feel like if it doesn't have ammo, it's just damage and if it does, it's rate...

Also, I thought piercing technically counted as an element..

That's the problem with Multishot, it's either a jack-of-all-trades--which is what we have now, or a redundant mod. I wish there was an easy way to balance it, but its entire concept is hard to balance while still making it "unique".

You might be right about piercing being counted as an element, I'll have to brush up on the intricacies of the damage formula.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Personally, I like the idea of making a mod that gives more burst damage, but I don't really know how one would go about doing that.. The only thing I could possibly be would be if whenever you fire an extra bullet, that gets taken from your clip but gets added to your ammo reserve so it forces you to reload more often but not drain ammo faster. Of course, that flies out the window with the way it works on shotguns. I guess you could make it so that multishot only ever comes with -clip size, but that's kinda.. eh..

[Ced23Ric]

Elements:

• Fire
• Freeze
• Electricity
• Armour Piercing

Effects:

• Fire Rate
• Clip Size
• Max Ammo
• Damage
• Crit Chance
• Crit Damage
• Puncture
• Multishot

The problem is, Multishot currently copies all of the above 1:1 when present, and in a vacuum, Multishot is Fire Rate, Clip Size, Max Ammo and Damage all rolled into one. It is a modifier without peer, causing runaway damage numbers, which in the end prompted DE to give us boring, exhausting bullet sponges as bosses if you don't run Multishot +300%. Sadly, not everyone has these. Between now and then, there has been a long period of really weak drops and now the drops are much more leveled. Multishot is rare as all hell. That may be a good thing, but still, Multishot skews the metrics of boss TTK, and thusly, DE cranks up the health pools. It is a stroke of luck, a run-away mod.

Every Multishot installed addes it's percentage to your weapon's power. That is unheard of with other mods, to the extent that Multishot does it. Also, the percentages are insanely high (other they'd be ineffective, sure). +98% raw efficiency across all aspects of the weapon. It's mathematically insanity. Hence, it needs to be put back in line in power with the other mods, so DE can readjust healthpools on more realistic TTKs.

[Meltina]

With location based damage having a bunch of half damage pellets would hurt the shotgun. Either the extra pellets hit the same location which does not look as awesome as seeing a ton of bullet holes or you questions about pellet distrubtion which is important because of head shot and other weakpoint damage. Also only doing one element damage would be bad lets say you have fire and armor penetraion on your gun. If you head shot a corpus you do only normal damage with fire but if it picked armor piercing you deal 20x more damage. For diffreng defense you would have to have it deal each element in damage and the 1/2 elemental then runs into problems from fractional amounts don't add damamge in a shotgun. The rounding would really hurt a 3 damage hit would then become 1.5 bonus multishot damage which rounds down to 1. A 100% multishot mod would only add 33% damage instead of your projected 50%.

On some situations multishot does not mimic fire rate, max clip, and ammo. If you one shot a target it is simply a damage mod while fire rate lets you shoot faster at diffrent targets and max clip/ammo lets you shoot more diffrent targets. The scaling of crit and puncture are irrelivent as they scale with everything else too.

We may just want to make clip, ammo, and fire rate more attractive by having more swarms of weak creatures try to overwhelm the players. This may have the side effect of making puncture a bit too effective. Like adding chargers it will add effetiveness to freeze for slowing down enemies which ice damage does need a bit of a buff to be competitive.

Edited February 1, 2013 by Meltina

[Hammie]

Multishot, 4x 75% = +300% = 4 shots for 1 bullet. Entirely probable loadout. How this not OP to you? See the rest in the OP, I listed it.

nooo thanks, ill take 4x 15% crit mods over multishot any day on my gorgon xD I run around with 3 rifle ammo kits in my inventory anyway so most of the benefits of multishot are moot. Yeah sure its nice to not -have- to use those ammo kits, but its not like it takes a lot of effort to click on an ammo kit in mid-combat. Enemies would have to be a challenge in the first place for that to be a point to consider xD (which is another problem with warframes, but i degress).

Multishot is a nice mod as mentioned, for those who dont have a supercharged weapon. However as nice as 1-2 multishot mods in a gorgon are, you wouldnt notice a huge difference between a multishot gorgon and a crit-chance gorgon as far as performance and killspeed goes. (Hell, lately ive been using crit chance mods + puncture on my gorgon, scary stuff).

On the other hand! If multishot mods add a chance to shoot an additional projectile per pellet from a shotgun, then i can definitely see how this could be imbalanced. Edit - I wouldn't know since i've never used a shotgun xD

Edited February 1, 2013 by Hammie

[Volt_Cruelerz]

nooo thanks, ill take 4x 15% crit mods over multishot any day on my gorgon xD

Umm.. Gorgon does what, 195% damage on a crit which happens by default 1% of the time or something like that? So you're saying that 1.5% of doing about 200% is better than just doing 300% ALL THE TIME?

[Meltina]

nooo thanks, ill take 4x 15% crit mods over multishot any day on my gorgon xD I run around with 3 rifle ammo kits in my inventory anyway so most of the benefits of multishot are moot. Yeah sure its nice to not -have- to use those ammo kits, but its not like it takes a lot of effort to click on an ammo kit in mid-combat. Enemies would have to be a challenge in the first place for that to be a point to consider xD (which is another problem with warframes, but i degress).

Multishot is a nice mod as mentioned, for those who dont have a supercharged weapon, however, as nice as 1-2 multishot mods in a gorgon are, you wouldnt notice a huge difference between a multishot gorgon and a crit-chance gorgon as far as performance and killspeed goes. (Hell, lately ive been using crit chance mods + puncture on my gorgon, scary stuff).

On the other hand! If multishot mods add a chance to shoot an additional projectile per pellet from a shotgun, then i can definitely see how this could be imbalanced. Edit - I wouldn't know since i've never used a shotgun xD

Critting for 44 60% of the time is an average of 34.4 damage it is no match for hitting 3 times for 20 damage for an average of 60. The benefits are huge. Remember we are talking high end crit mod vs mid range multishot. 4 mods is 392% multishot so its almost 80 damage per bullet. Multishot outputs 2.3 times more damage for the same amount of mod space. I don't know how killing 2x faster is not a huge difrrence on performance and kill speed. This is before damage nodes because I would rather math 20 damage instead of 32 damage a hit. Lets for fun add an armor piercing mod in the last slot. 4 crit + armor piercing crits for 352 and the average damage is 275 to a corpus crewman head. Now for multishot 633 damage per bullet. I normalized the base crit because it is the same with multishot and not. Still multishot is near double your crits per bullet you fire on average.

[TwilightAsh]

I prefer someone else's suggestion somewhere to have the mod slots overhauled and have one "major" slot for "big mods", mods that have high % stats (for the usual mod), multishot and whatever else. That means you only get to use 1 multishot mod on a weapon and can't stack the crap out of it,

[Hammie]

Critting for 44 60% of the time is an average of 34.4 damage it is no match for hitting 3 times for 20 damage for an average of 60. The benefits are huge. Remember we are talking high end crit mod vs mid range multishot. 4 mods is 392% multishot so its almost 80 damage per bullet. Multishot outputs 2.3 times more damage for the same amount of mod space. I don't know how killing 2x faster is not a huge difrrence on performance and kill speed. This is before damage nodes because I would rather math 20 damage instead of 32 damage a hit. Lets for fun add an armor piercing mod in the last slot. 4 crit + armor piercing crits for 352 and the average damage is 275 to a corpus crewman head. Now for multishot 633 damage per bullet. I normalized the base crit because it is the same with multishot and not. Still multishot is near double your crits per bullet you fire on average.

That isn't a very good example of how multishot is overpowered. Firstly you're taking advantage of a scenario in which massive numbers are possible, namely, the way armor piercing mods interact with crewmen headshots in order to inflate your damage output. Half of that damage isnt even needed in order to kill that crewman in the first place, and secondly, Armor piercing mods do not interact in that fashion with other enemies, just crewman headshots (As far as i know anyway) in all other cases an armor piercing mod adds small bonus damage numbers rather than 1%AP = 10 bonus damage as in the case of hitting a crewman in the head.

As far as the numbers i usually see fighting other enemies these are the usual numbers i come across with a crit and damage modded gorgon.

Grineer Headshots: 110-178

Most Infested: 200-300, Ancients: 110-178

Corpus Moas: 200-300, Crewmen: 80-90

In most of these cases, its enough damage to kill an enemy with 1-2 shots. Ancients and high hp Grineer excluded. Another aspect behind Multishot that should be considered is all those extra shots do not follow the same trajectory as the base projectile. Sure you can aim at the body of an enemy and most of them will hit, however if you intend on precision shooting, aiming at weak spots on enemies, then some of those shots -are- going to miss or hit an armored area, skewing your damage output. Alternatively, a crit-based gorgon does its full damage (assuming the shot lands in the correct area), or a small portion of its damage if it hits an armored area. I can see how a multishot-based gorgon would have a high base consistant damage output (Assuming you aimed at the body). But as far as the -highest- damage output in comparison to a crit gorgon? Till a dps parser comes out (thirdparty or otherwise) i'll remain skeptical :)

Edited February 2, 2013 by Hammie

[Ced23Ric]

I prefer someone else's suggestion somewhere to have the mod slots overhauled and have one "major" slot for "big mods", mods that have high % stats (for the usual mod), multishot and whatever else. That means you only get to use 1 multishot mod on a weapon and can't stack the crap out of it,

That doesn't fix the source, it just contains it, while "punishing" all the other mods that work withing a level plane.

[MJ12]

Multishot, as of right now, is completely and absolutely necessary to kill any of the bosses in anything resembling a timely fashion.

I will refuse to support anything even vaguely resembling a Multishot nerf until the bosses get their HP/shields reduced to a reasonable number.

Also, you already run out of ammo pretty quick in this game. I tend to just automatically sell every +Fire Rate mod I see because of that. Turning multishot into the equivalent of another +fire rate mod would make it... well, completely useless. Especially since your suggestion would actually eliminate the elemental damage on multishot fired bullets, which would make it objectively worse than a +Fire Rate mod. Stripping multishot submunitions of their elemental damage and halving the multiplier would be a far more reasonable change that would put Multishot in line with other high-end (blue) modifications.

Edited February 2, 2013 by MJ12

[TwilightAsh]

That doesn't fix the source, it just contains it, while "punishing" all the other mods that work withing a level plane.

And how does that punish all other mods? You get to pick usual mods with huge amount of boost in the major slot or choose Multishot (capped at a lower % perhaps). Seems reasonable to me.

[KGeddon]

And how does that punish all other mods? You get to pick usual mods with huge amount of boost in the major slot or choose Multishot (capped at a lower % perhaps). Seems reasonable to me.

Mostly because it doesn't change the nature of multishot, simply limits the use of the mod. It still skews the requirements of boss stats to provide a meaningful challenge.

Just limiting it to one changes little except the magnitude of the bullet sponge. If you can get an 50-100% EVERYTHING multiplier(it's actually a bit more due to ammo pickups being a fixed amount making clip/max ammo/rate mods less effective vs multishot) would you use it? Ced doesn't, and I feel he's right. It's pretty broken.

I like it on shotguns more, due to the random distribution making the extra pellets not 100% effective(depending on range). It could easily be replaced by a choke mod that simply makes the spread tighter without increasing short range damage though.

[Ced23Ric]

Multishot, as of right now, is completely and absolutely necessary to kill any of the bosses in anything resembling a timely fashion. I will refuse to support anything even vaguely resembling a Multishot nerf until the bosses get their HP/shields reduced to a reasonable number.

You are speaking in favour of nerfing it, then, actually. The power of Multishot made the bulletsponge bosses happen. Based on TTK metrics, boss healthpools have been increased, global damage reduction was applied, and so on. Multishot is the source of the problems we are having right now. It needs to be put back in line or removed.

And, yes, of course boss health needs to go down.

[MJ12]

You are speaking in favour of nerfing it, then, actually. The power of Multishot made the bulletsponge bosses happen. Based on TTK metrics, boss healthpools have been increased, global damage reduction was applied, and so on. Multishot is the source of the problems we are having right now. It needs to be put back in line or removed.

And, yes, of course boss health needs to go down.

Well, I wouldn't mind bringing it back in line with other mods, but any change like that has to come simultaneously with significant reductions in boss HP.

Lieutenant Lech Kril takes basically all 785 bullets from my Gorgon to kill, and it's level 30 with 2 70+% multishots, a 25% AP mod, and a 50% multishot, for 6.4 times the damage.

[CY13ERPUNK]

1000% agree with this thread

+1 OP

[Volt_Cruelerz]

So let's go over the effects of the various mods:

Damage: general combat efficacy

Rate: DPS

Clip: sustainability in a given fight

Ammo: sustainability in a given mission

Elemental: specialization against an enemy type

Honestly, I feel like something kind of like an anti-rate might be good.. That is to say as I mentioned before, make Multishot into some sort of burst damage mod. Perhaps some sort of falloff due to the percentage of the clip that is full? At full clip, a 70% multishot mod does +70%, but at 10% clip, say it only boosts by 5%? That might be a way for it to be semi balanced and if you want to remain at a relatively high clip to keep the bonuses longer, you have to invest some mods in clip size which might be sufficient to balance things out.. Honestly, the more I think about this, the more I like it...

Edited February 2, 2013 by Volt_Cruelerz

[DigitalDamage]

So let's go over the effects of the various mods:

Damage: general combat efficacy

Rate: DPS

Clip: sustainability in a given fight

Ammo: sustainability in a given mission

Elemental: specialization against an enemy type

Honestly, I feel like something kind of like an anti-rate might be good.. That is to say as I mentioned before, make Multishot into some sort of burst damage mod. Perhaps some sort of falloff due to the percentage of the clip that is full? At full clip, a 70% multishot mod does +70%, but at 10% clip, say it only boosts by 5%? That might be a way for it to be semi balanced and if you want to remain at a relatively high clip to keep the bonuses longer, you have to invest some mods in clip size which might be sufficient to balance things out.. Honestly, the more I think about this, the more I like it...

I kind of like this idea... but I'm not sure yet haha.

[Ced23Ric]

When looking at rebalancing, I would try to simplify things, not expand them in complexity. Coding a sequence for relative falloff, especially with rapidly vanishing ammo in the clip, would cause poll delays and can run over/out of bounds. Hence, the OP with the subsequent modifications - it's simple, but preserves the burst potential.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Okay then Ced, what exactly do you propose?

[KGeddon]

Okay then Ced, what exactly do you propose?

A suggestion for a new Multishot:

• Shoots more bullets, as before.
  
• That bullet deals base damage, unmodified by mods, just upgrade nodes.
  
• Deals no added elemental damage.
  
• Eats up the ammo for the additional shot.
  
• The new shot is subjective to the same spreadcone as regular shots.
  
• Multishots mods only stack additively - 75% + 50% = 125%, so 4 shots become 9 shots.
  

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Except he seems to have changed his stance on things throughout the thread hence "and subsequent changes" without updating the OP which is why I asked what his current stance is.

[Ced23Ric]

The change was - keep the free ammo (and thusly, clip size, max ammo, etc.) but reduced the damage from base to 0.5 base.

[Nasmodok]

I think simply making it use up actual ammo would be enough.

If you didn't have multi-shot, you would get the added multipliers and elemental on your normal bullets.. So it's doing the same thing just twice as fast. However you use up your ammo twice as fast too.

I think that would more than make up the difference. Make people spend money on ammo clips.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

If it uses actual ammo, then why not just rate mods? It would have exactly the same effect.