Gunslinger's Set Mods

[TenchuTheWolf]

Hello!

So I posted a mockup I made on reddit last Friday for a set of Mods that I had labeled Gunslinger. I would like to state here I have decided against making another reddit post because I would like to avoid being accused of Karma-farming.

Here is the updated version...

I got a lot of great feedback about what people did and did not like about the set. A lot of people seemed to enjoy the idea of the set ability, and were actually more critical of the stats on the mods themselves. I made the following changes and will explain why with each one. 

Gunslinger Set Ability:

>   Kills increase Reload Speed by 5% for next reload, stacks. Max 120%. Unchanged.

(Clarification 1) The Maximum Reload speed does not stack per mod. If you were using all 6 mods you would still only be able to receive 120% maximum reload speed for your next reload.

(Clarification 2) This affects both Primaries and Secondaries, but you would lose the buff if you swapped weapons from your secondary to your primary and tried to reload.

(Clarification 3) With all six mods equipped you would gain 30% Reload Speed per kill.

I believe that more people liked the idea of the set bonus than didn't and I felt like numbers wise it sat in a good place with concern to how set mods are typically used. In that no one uses a full set of a set mod and I designed the effect to still be useful even with a couple of the mods.

Gunslinger Gambit:

>   +60% Multishot changed to +90% Status Chance

This mod received the most criticism as there are already two multishot mods available for pistols and people were greatly and validly concerned with the current space for mods on pistols that are damage focused. Bronze mods are typically the most accessible to new players and should be useful, but do not necessarily have to have the power to remain as a staple mod towards the end of the game. Status chance is available on the (mostly) easily obtainable dual damage/status chance mods so I attempted to pick a middle ground value here that would not trump your choices over those. I have looked into basing the stats of these mods largely on existing mods and their stats. I am aware that Sure Shot exists, but because it is patently ^{total garbage} I have decided to avoid basing my numbers on this cycle of mods.

Gunslinger Trick:

>   Gunslinger Pace changed to Gunslinger Trick

>   +60% Fire Rate changed to +1.2 Punch Through

This mod actually did not receive a ton of criticism, but there were a few comments about how Punch Through would make a solid addition to the set and I figured that fire rate actually wasn't as necessary of a stat for early secondaries that would be available to starting players. I will say that I am not sure I agree with the amount of mod points that most punch through mods cost, but I have tried to follow convention for cost and rarity given its stats. I changed the name because I don't believe pace made sense when granting Punch Through.

Gunslinger Spurs:

>   Changed slot type to Primary from Secondary

>   +60% Critical Damage changed to +90% Critical Damage

There were a number of concerns raised about there being too many pistol mods and when someone had asked for a clarification about if it affects only secondaries or primaries also I had to make a decision. It would make more sense thematically if it only affected secondaries, but it would be more fun if it affected both primaries and secondaries. I chose fun and I decided to break of the spacing of the mods by placing some of the potential weight on primary weapon slots. I feel that the loss in Critical Damage vs mods like Vital Sense in favor of the utility offers it a unique place amongst the critical damage mods currently available to primaries.

Gunslinger Stride:

>   +24% Sprint Speed changed to +120% Faster Knockdown Recovery

This one probably comes out of left field, but there was some criticism of there already being too many sprint speed related mods in the game and someone had offered that there is space for more Knockdown Recovery. Currently the only sources (Excluding Valkyr's passive) are Handspring (160%) and Constitution (40%). I am a HUGE fan of how good Handspring feels during gameplay as an answer to more threatening crowd control from enemies so I thought this was a great idea. Assuming that the utility of this mod is strong, between the faster knockdown recovery and the set bonus, I feel that it is fair as it would not be a candidate for an Exilus mod slot.

Gunslinger Poise:

>   Gunslinger Swagger changed to Gunslinger Poise

>   +15% Ability Efficiency changed to 25% Ability Efficiency

There were a number of comments saying that adding more ability efficiency would make some classes overpowered and a number of counter responses by other people actually explaining how ability efficiency works, which was a good day for learning. I had assumed that Ability Efficiency capped at 75%, but the truth of it as it was explained and as I had researched is that it is more accurate to say that an Ability's Cost cannot be reduced below 25%, even where channeling costs are concerned. I had been worried about the number before, but after I learned that I felt more comfortable bumping the amount up a bit. I changed the name from Swagger to Poise because there were a number of people that scoffed at the name being Swagger, putting the nail in the coffin of my idea that swagger could be associated with an early mafia bravado aesthetic.  _{(I really want that odd power of 5 efficiency. I'm not biased I promise.)}

Gunslinger Focus:

>   Unchanged.

This mod received some amount of mixed attention but overall the least of all six mods. I kind of like where it sits functionally, because I breaking the game by having a higher energy cap is unlikely. This mod offers the utility of the set mod while giving the player the option of having more energy, but not such a high amount as Flow or Primed Flow. To me the reality of Primed Flow is that it is actually just A LOT of energy. Unless you are reliant on a higher energy pool to channel for long periods of time without resetting it is not an attractive choice to stack energy max mods. In most cases I have found that I don't really need that much more energy cap to keep up with the casting of my abilities. I feel that the space of having additional energy cap might also create interesting room where reduced efficiency mods typically cause bulkier abilities to be too costly to chain cast.

Other Clarifications:

I made this mod set for fun, showing the type of thing I would really like to see in the game and using a bit of UI skill to toss together an idea because most people like visuals, I am not under the impression that DE would put this into the game. Working as an indie dev can be maddening and it is better to just step outside of your own realm for fun to try and experience and theorycraft in someone else's world. I appreciate any feedback as to the function of the mods or the set, but I do realize with definite certainty that you cannot please everyone. I'm sure by changing some of these mods I have already upset someone else.

I love to type and will probably respond to anything, though pure praise or pure disgust rarely are worded in a way that they open the grounds for discussion. I would to discuss the why and why nots with people. Thanks~

Edited January 11, 2018 by TenchuTheWolf
Formatting/Spelling, Additional Clarifications

[Skaleek]

Well done. It's clear you put a lot of work and effort into this.

[Kalvorax]

hmm interesting concept for sure.

regarding the Pistol mods..would that be Pistol ONLY or all secondary weapons? Being able to have more status chance on thrown weapons or launcher type ones would be nice. Cant really speak for PT as i dont use it. I do like the idea of the warframe mods though.

Regarding the set effect, what would it be with all 6 equipped? sounds like it would be 30% (5% per mod), which wouldnt be OP due to the max of 120%; Also, would that set effect be for the active weapon or specifically secondaries or specifically primaries?

[TenchuTheWolf]

21 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Well done. It's clear you put a lot of work and effort into this.

Thanks. <3

21 minutes ago, Kalvorax said:

hmm interesting concept for sure.

regarding the Pistol mods..would that be Pistol ONLY or all secondary weapons? Being able to have more status chance on thrown weapons or launcher type ones would be nice. Cant really speak for PT as i dont use it. I do like the idea of the warframe mods though.

Regarding the set effect, what would it be with all 6 equipped? sounds like it would be 30% (5% per mod), which wouldnt be OP due to the max of 120%; Also, would that set effect be for the active weapon or specifically secondaries or specifically primaries?

I'm sorry that probably deserves clarification. I do mean secondary, but I used the word pistol because while the slot in the loadout selection says secondary,  I believe most pistol mods that can be used with all secondaries to my knowledge. Like the Euphona is very clearly a slug/buckshot shotgun, but uses the pistol mods. Throwing knives use the pistol mods. I'm not sure if there are any exceptions to this.

edit: I had this in the main post I believe answers your question?

(Clarification 2) This affects both Primaries and Secondaries, but you would lose the buff if you swapped weapons from your secondary to your primary and tried to reload

I will add a clarification for the total percentages.

 

Edited January 11, 2018 by TenchuTheWolf

[MuscleBeach]

3 hours ago, TenchuTheWolf said:

>   +15% Ability Efficiency changed to 25% Ability Efficiency

There were a number of comments saying that adding more ability efficiency would make some classes overpowered and a number of counter responses by other people actually explaining how ability efficiency works, which was a good day for learning. I had assumed that Ability Efficiency capped at 75%, but the truth of it as it was explained and as I had researched is that it is more accurate to say that an Ability's Cost cannot be reduced below 25%, even where channeling costs are concerned. I had been worried about the number before, but after I learned that I felt more comfortable bumping the amount up a bit. I changed the name from Swagger to Poise because there were a number of people that scoffed at the name being Swagger, putting the nail in the coffin of my idea that swagger could be associated with an early mafia bravado aesthetic.  _{(I really want that odd power of 5 efficiency. I'm not biased I promise.)}

This is too good. Currently we can get 30% efficiency with no draw backs. To get more we take a big drawback by losing up to 60% duration for 60% efficiency. This mod essentially removes that drawback. Even 15% is pushing it in my eyes, but I'm of the opinion that abilities can be cast too often in this game already. 

 

I would suggest 20% evasion or Magazine Capacity/Ammo Max and making crit damage the rare. You can't have every mod have some amazing stat that a gunslinger would want. Look at the sets that have been released. How many of the mods are pretty lackluster and the reason you'd want to use them is mainly for the set bonus? I can't say that about any of yours. Even where you have status chance and crit damage and you have to pick a build, you still aren't really debating anything because one is for primaries and one is for secondaries anyways. 

This isn't proper balance and how mandatory mods happen and exactly what I'm sure they were trying to avoid (mandatory sets). 

 

With all that said, I would remove Crit Damage and Efficiency and use different (much less wanted) stats due to power creep reasons. 

 

Edit: I know I sounded pretty critical but all in all, good job on these :)

Edited January 11, 2018 by MuscleBeach

[TenchuTheWolf]

5 hours ago, MuscleBeach said:

This is too good. Currently we can get 30% efficiency with no draw backs. To get more we take a big drawback by losing up to 60% duration for 60% efficiency. This mod essentially removes that drawback. Even 15% is pushing it in my eyes, but I'm of the opinion that abilities can be cast too often in this game already. 

 

I would suggest 20% evasion or Magazine Capacity/Ammo Max and making crit damage the rare. You can't have every mod have some amazing stat that a gunslinger would want. Look at the sets that have been released. How many of the mods are pretty lackluster and the reason you'd want to use them is mainly for the set bonus? I can't say that about any of yours. Even where you have status chance and crit damage and you have to pick a build, you still aren't really debating anything because one is for primaries and one is for secondaries anyways. 

This isn't proper balance and how mandatory mods happen and exactly what I'm sure they were trying to avoid (mandatory sets). 

 

With all that said, I would remove Crit Damage and Efficiency and use different (much less wanted) stats due to power creep reasons. 

[I am so sorry for the _sudden text wall.]

Poise at 25% means that you can combine it in the following ways. (Effectively)

Poise + Streamline = +55% Efficiency

Poise + R4 Fleeting Expertise = +75% Efficiency -50% Duration

Poise + Streamline + R1 Fleeting Expertise = 75% Efficiency -20% Duration

Poise + Streamline + R5 Fleeting Expertise = 115% Efficiency -60% Duration

I see your concern, but to squeeze out that little bit of duration it costs you a mod slot. You are essentially trading a mod slot for 30% duration, which is the same exact thing as a baseline Continuity and slightly better than Augur Secrets. Since Ability costs cannot go below 25% I dont really think this is much of a problem numbers wise and functionally if you do that the mod slot you're paying for is only as efficient as a maxed non primed continuity.

At 15% it would only cost you 10% more duration. I could see it remaining at the previous amount I had it, but honestly, I dont see that amount of efficiency breaking anything because of how efficiency works and because of the limitation on mod slots.

"How many of the mods are pretty lackluster and the reason you'd want to use them is mainly for the set bonus? I can't say that about any of yours."

Firstly, the bronze mods are both pistol mods not strong enough to stand up against other mods when you have them at a later stage in the game, they are intended to be decent and easily accessible, but you probably wouldn't use those over another mod. The status mod is weaker than any of the four elemental damage/status mods, which means you are making a sacrifice if you choose to slot that over one of those.

On a crit secondary your mod setup will probably look like this 

Hornet Strike, Barrel Diffusion, Lethal Torrent, Primed Pistol Gambit, Primed Target Cracker, Primed Heated Charge, 2 x 90% Elemental Damage Mods.

Giving up any of those mods on a secondary is a considerable damage hit in for either 90% Status or 1.2 Punch Through.

On a status secondary your mod setup will probably look like this:

Hornet Strike, Barrel Diffusion, Lethal Torrent, Primed Heated Charge, 4 x 60% Elemental Damage/ 60% Status Chance Mods

In this situation you would be electing again to sacrifice some amount of damage for that utility that you would be gaining.

This is also assuming your secondary doesn't have any kind of weapon specific augments you want to use, as well if you're trying to fit a Riven in there. You could argue they arent as weak as other set mods per set, but you are not going without making a sacrifice to fit those mods into your weapon's build.

The Vigilante set is probably the worst set per card and per set bonus if you're trying to base it on the lowest common denominator, but I was looking at cards that existed and basing my numbers around those values and basing them around how the values were shifted to accompany fitting them into a set. The example I used for Spurs was Gladiator Might, which is 60% Crit Damage for Melee down from 90% thats granted by Organ Shatter.

There is a 30% Damage difference there and the mods cost the same. Spurs costs 9 and Vital Sense Cost 9, but my mod drops 30% of that damage. Most weapon builds already have a full roster of mods to effectively fill out the space and in most cases you would be electing to sacrifice damage for utility. I could see Spurs being shifted to a rare thats fine and a fair statement.

To answer your question directly I dont know that any of the existing mod sets have a set bonus that people use a mod just to have access to that bonus. People use Hunter Munitions because the status proc on crit weapons is bonkers. I would say that the lack of vacuum puts companions in a state of being hard to want to bring over a sentinel.

Augur Secrets gets used because it is just more Ability Strength. Gladiator Resolve gets used if your class stacks health and the set bonus is only relevant if your build utilizes melee weapons with a crit build or a build that benefits from that combo counter stacking. Augur Reach gets used if your build craves maximum range over everything else, but not because the shield energy to shield conversion is strong.

I dont know that most of the stats on most of the sets nor their set bonuses are actually that relevant. You could make a case that no one should want to use a whole set, but I literally setup my set bonus to not need a full set to be effective and fully stacking the set makes it overkill in the sense that its unnecessary to achieve the maximum effectiveness.

Your argument seems hinged on the idea that they dont want you to use a full set, which I havent heard them say and would only infer on the basis that the set mods rarely fit all builds and that a lot of them are bad. I would argue that I have already achieved that on the basis that you would only ever want as much of the set bonus as would accommodate your ability to kill with any given magazine as well as each of these mods is weaker than other mods of the same value or with more effective stats per slot cost. The only exception to this would probably be Poise because it is efficiency, the others you would be able to slot as you want by sacrificing some comparable stat or some amount of damage.

_{"With all that said, I would remove Crit Damage and Efficiency and use different (much less wanted) stats due to} power creep _reasons." 

Power Creep is a valid concern, but most games with iterative development are going to have some level of power creep, whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not. I have a number of friends I talk with about balance, a few of them say that the objective of this game is that its a power fantasy and balance is an after though, which I dont think is exactly true, but there are things like Chroma running around with his perplexingly vexing vex armor.

I would prefer to see sets shift in the manner that you only want as much of that sets bonus as you need and making sacrifices where you want to get that bonus than the set bonus being bad enough that you dont care about the set and use only the mods that fit your need for extra of that stat (Augur Reach/Augur Secrets/Hunter Munitions) or that the set bonus is negligible enough that you only get it and use it by consequence of it accidentally lining up with your build (Gladiator Might).

Though that is getting more into design philosophy.

"Edit: I know I sounded pretty critical but all in all, good job on these :)"

Danke schoen. :3

Edited January 12, 2018 by TenchuTheWolf
fixes to some wording