Weapon Issues/balance

[DecoyCode]

Smatterings of a lot of things, I feel like balance is getting to reach that rickety rope bridge and near snapping.

 

Also, don't give me S#&$ like "Its a beta", or ,"Its PvE". I'm giving feedback because its a beta, and PvE needs some balance. It certainly doesn't have to be perfect, but it comes in extremes right now. Somethings are completely up the wall and others at the bottom of the barrel. Additionally, they're thoughtless arguments.

 

 

1. Balance between weapons is far too radical. Things like Acrid compared to the Vasto, even taking into account mastery, is completely miserable.

   1a. This is partially caused by decent amounts of weapon bloat(Lex/Vasto, Furis/Viper, Long swords/Long swords)

 

2. Weapon types aren't nearly as well defined as they should be, resulting in things like daggers never being more viable than heavies, even against "armored" targets. Long swords will stay useless in their current state.

   2a. See 1a.

 

3. Melee is bad in general. The 15 point Zorens' swing at twice a second compared to the 20 point Braton at 10~ times a second is glaringly bad, ammo or not. Charge damage is primarily favorable due to armor ignore.

 

4. Cool "what-if" weapons are cool. They're even cooler when you take the time to make them functional. Bows became viable with the addition of Thunderbolt, only to be trumped by the Ogris in almost every way, and return to bottom tier. Acrid and Flux Rifle are good examples of when it went right, even if they still need some tweaking.

 

5. Armor. Everybody probably knows this already but I'm just sticking it here to be complete.

 

6. Crit is terrible for guns when Multishot functions the same way, save for its effective "multiplier" being a static 200%.

 

7. Mods are imbalanced, primarily pistol mods.

 

 

And now for the part where I try to make some recommendations for these things issues I'm seeing, even though it'll undoubtedly be wasted effort with this community.

 

1. I'm hopeful that the supposed damage re-balance will fix a lot of this, see live-stream, as it really is the biggest offender. If not, damage is the big one.

   1a. Quit adding redundant weapons. Its fine that higher Mastery ranked weapons are stronger, but they don't need             to be too much stronger, players are becoming walking Armageddon Machines. See Ogris/Acrid.

 

2. Y'know, define them. There's a lot of suggestions for this, like making Long swords crit heavy, daggers getting huge stealth bonuses, etc.

   2a. Quit adding redundant weapons, seriously. Not saying don't make new weapons, make them more unique from             both a visual and game-play standpoint. Miter was a good step, Dual Gremlins was not.

 

3. Give us more reason to hit things with our melee weapons. Right now its not worth the effort. You need to hit Grineer in their weak-spots or you'll do diddly poop. Its really not recommended you try and melee infested with their "weak" claw attacks. Corpus will fall over dead from a stiff breeze. Give us windows in enemy animations to do bonus damage, or guaranteed staggers.

 

4. I can't tell DE how to do this, but they're clearly capable of doing it. Miter came close, the problem stemming from its lack of useful output. Acrid was a cool concept with stacking poison, Flux Rifle being the death laser everyone wanted. Acrid needs tweaking obviously, but Flux really should be the "Standard" for a proper weapon.

 

5. Its wet, its wild, its out of control. Fix that scaling. It was also sort of addressed in the live-stream.

 

6. Crit is kind of redundant when Multishot comes up. Move Crit damage to weak-spot damage for guns. Change crit Chance for guns to something else. Make the crit on Melee more desirable to make up for its unreliable ability to hit weak-spots.

 

7. This is just number tweaking, but its created a rift of balance between Primaries and Secondaries, and a bit of one between melee and ranged.

 

 

Alright community, grill me.

[legionprobatio]

agree

[Kakswap]

you say a weapon is unique like the miter but the miter is crap

[Kakswap]

why use a weapon that isnt good

[Kakswap]

and acrid is fine as it is

its mastery rank 7 it cost a lot of resources

and it takes a lot of time to get

[ALL.CAPS.GUY]

you say a weapon is unique like the miter but the miter is crap

miter is crap, but miter is unique

(point OP was making, unique weps)

[NotBot]

For crits, I think both critical hits from chance and weakspot aiming should be a thing.

 

That way, aiming for weak spots is rewarded, while you can occasionally eek out a weakspot crit combined with a random crit.

 

Also, calm down the multipost kakswap.

[ChaoticVice777]

Smatterings of a lot of things, I feel like balance is getting to reach that rickety rope bridge and near snapping.

 

Also, don't give me S#&$ like "Its a beta", or ,"Its PvE". I'm giving feedback because its a beta, and PvE needs some balance. It certainly doesn't have to be perfect, but it comes in extremes right now. Somethings are completely up the wall and others at the bottom of the barrel. Additionally, they're thoughtless arguments.

 

 

1. Balance between weapons is far too radical. Things like Acrid compared to the Vasto, even taking into account mastery, is completely miserable.

   1a. This is partially caused by decent amounts of weapon bloat(Lex/Vasto, Furis/Viper, Long swords/Long swords)

 

2. Weapon types aren't nearly as well defined as they should be, resulting in things like daggers never being more viable than heavies, even against "armored" targets. Long swords will stay useless in their current state.

   2a. See 1a.

 

3. Melee is bad in general. The 15 point Zorens' swing at twice a second compared to the 20 point Braton at 10~ times a second is glaringly bad, ammo or not. Charge damage is primarily favorable due to armor ignore.

 

4. Cool "what-if" weapons are cool. They're even cooler when you take the time to make them functional. Bows became viable with the addition of Thunderbolt, only to be trumped by the Ogris in almost every way, and return to bottom tier. Acrid and Flux Rifle are good examples of when it went right, even if they still need some tweaking.

 

5. Armor. Everybody probably knows this already but I'm just sticking it here to be complete.

 

6. Crit is terrible for guns when Multishot functions the same way, save for its effective "multiplier" being a static 200%.

 

7. Mods are imbalanced, primarily pistol mods.

 

 

And now for the part where I try to make some recommendations for these things issues I'm seeing, even though it'll undoubtedly be wasted effort with this community.

 

1. I'm hopeful that the supposed damage re-balance will fix a lot of this, see live-stream, as it really is the biggest offender. If not, damage is the big one.

   1a. Quit adding redundant weapons. Its fine that higher Mastery ranked weapons are stronger, but they don't need             to be too much stronger, players are becoming walking Armageddon Machines. See Ogris/Acrid.

 

2. Y'know, define them. There's a lot of suggestions for this, like making Long swords crit heavy, daggers getting huge stealth bonuses, etc.

   2a. Quit adding redundant weapons, seriously. Not saying don't make new weapons, make them more unique from             both a visual and game-play standpoint. Miter was a good step, Dual Gremlins was not.

 

3. Give us more reason to hit things with our melee weapons. Right now its not worth the effort. You need to hit Grineer in their weak-spots or you'll do diddly poop. Its really not recommended you try and melee infested with their "weak" claw attacks. Corpus will fall over dead from a stiff breeze. Give us windows in enemy animations to do bonus damage, or guaranteed staggers.

 

4. I can't tell DE how to do this, but they're clearly capable of doing it. Miter came close, the problem stemming from its lack of useful output. Acrid was a cool concept with stacking poison, Flux Rifle being the death laser everyone wanted. Acrid needs tweaking obviously, but Flux really should be the "Standard" for a proper weapon.

 

5. Its wet, its wild, its out of control. Fix that scaling. It was also sort of addressed in the live-stream.

 

6. Crit is kind of redundant when Multishot comes up. Move Crit damage to weak-spot damage for guns. Change crit Chance for guns to something else. Make the crit on Melee more desirable to make up for its unreliable ability to hit weak-spots.

 

7. This is just number tweaking, but its created a rift of balance between Primaries and Secondaries, and a bit of one between melee and ranged.

 

 

Alright community, grill me.

 

For feedback/complaints:

 

1,2, 3, 5, and 7 are all armor scaling issues, which are creating balancing issues. Even with such issues, weapons do have their own niches, like movement vs. stun vs. power in melee. 4 is a terrible example, as the bows are viable sniping weapons and Thunderbolt is a terrible mod. 6, well, you should look at the sniping weapons.

 

For recommendations:

 

1,2, 3, 5, and 7 point out again the armor scaling issues, which are creating the same balancing issues. 4 is something that I can't give any meaningful input towards, so I'll leave it to others. Once again, at 6, look at the sniping weapons.

Edited August 19, 2013 by ChaoticVice777

[PeripheralVisionary]

I think Acrid is a bit too OP, with pistol mods scaling better than rifles.

Edited August 19, 2013 by PeripheralVisionary

[LazyKnight]

and acrid is fine as it is

its mastery rank 7 it cost a lot of resources

and it takes a lot of time to get

There is nothing hard about getting an acrid other that the time to assemble the masses, but even that isn't hard just go do something else check back in few days. There is nothing about making an acrid that allows for it to so completely dominate the DPS category of weapon that primaries can't even beat it.

[SwordAxeMace]

6. Crit is kind of redundant when Multishot comes up. Move Crit damage to weak-spot damage for guns. Change crit Chance for guns to something else. Make the crit on Melee more desirable to make up for its unreliable ability to hit weak-spots.

 

Not sure how you come up with crit being redundant with multishot, it just takes the right weapon for crit to be viable (given most weapon's low crit chances.) Take a look at the Lanka, good crit chance and when given multishot, higher chance to at least crit once per shot.

[DecoyCode]

For feedback/complaints:

 

1,2, 3, 5, and 7 are all armor scaling issues, which are creating balancing issues. Even with such issues, weapons do have their own niches, like movement vs. stun vs. power in melee. 4 is a terrible example, as the bows are viable sniping weapons and Thunderbolt is a terrible mod. 6, well, you should look at the sniping weapons.

 

For recommendations:

 

1,2, 3, 5, and 7 point out again the armor scaling issues, which are creating the same balancing issues. 4 is something that I can't give any meaningful input towards, so I'll leave it to others. Once again, at 6, look at the sniping weapons.

1 Is a problem with armor, I will admit it. But the damage types are also a big issue. Despair, Acrid, and Flux all have some damage type trick, be it AP, Poison, or Serrated Blade. On top of those damage types, they already do fairly good damage. Daggers Suck, even with their Armor Piercing because bad base damage, among other things.

 

2 Is more about making the previously mentioned damage types more niche. While the original intention was to be just that, niche, it ended up universally good against everything, and downright overkill against specific things, or the other way around.

 

3 Melee is a mess of armor and general usability. It just isn't worth getting that close to things after a certain level threshold, unless you're packing some very specific frames.

 

4 Bows aren't a viable weapon, Snipedals function better without the charging, and don't suffer from using projectiles. The ability to hit long distance is skillful, yeah, but it doesn't mean its a good sniping weapon. Going with that, Ogris is a good sniping weapon. If you can't hit the head consistently over a long distance, bows won't out preform. Also, see 6.

 

5 is Armor, yay.

 

6 Is an issue because RNG with slow firing weapons suck. See the case of 90% Multishot on Snipedal. When you Multishot, you one hit kill. When you don't, you have to spend another shot of your already small bullet count to kill. Same applies to crit, as neither is guaranteed, yet they both do the same thing with different multipliers. Making crit bonus damage to weak-points rewards skill as opposed to RNG. Crit wouldn't disappear, just be more consistent.

 

7 Isn't an issue with armor, I'm talking about the radically different mod point cost to % power ratio for mods. Comparing Pistol mods to Rifle mods, Pistols are almost universally better. Shotguns have a few that are just gawk worthy, like the Nightmare mods.

[Depar]

wait for the armor overhaul

 

i hope that will change some stuff

[ChaoticVice777]

1 Is a problem with armor, I will admit it. But the damage types are also a big issue. Despair, Acrid, and Flux all have some damage type trick, be it AP, Poison, or Serrated Blade. On top of those damage types, they already do fairly good damage. Daggers Suck, even with their Armor Piercing because bad base damage, among other things.

 

2 Is more about making the previously mentioned damage types more niche. While the original intention was to be just that, niche, it ended up universally good against everything, and downright overkill against specific things, or the other way around.

 

3 Melee is a mess of armor and general usability. It just isn't worth getting that close to things after a certain level threshold, unless you're packing some very specific frames.

 

4 Bows aren't a viable weapon, Snipedals function better without the charging, and don't suffer from using projectiles. The ability to hit long distance is skillful, yeah, but it doesn't mean its a good sniping weapon. Going with that, Ogris is a good sniping weapon. If you can't hit the head consistently over a long distance, bows won't out preform. Also, see 6.

 

5 is Armor, yay.

 

6 Is an issue because RNG with slow firing weapons suck. See the case of 90% Multishot on Snipedal. When you Multishot, you one hit kill. When you don't, you have to spend another shot of your already small bullet count to kill. Same applies to crit, as neither is guaranteed, yet they both do the same thing with different multipliers. Making crit bonus damage to weak-points rewards skill as opposed to RNG. Crit wouldn't disappear, just be more consistent.

 

7 Isn't an issue with armor, I'm talking about the radically different mod point cost to % power ratio for mods. Comparing Pistol mods to Rifle mods, Pistols are almost universally better. Shotguns have a few that are just gawk worthy, like the Nightmare mods.

 

I reiterate that 1 through 3 and 5 are related because you can't really develop the weapon niches too well without the proper balancing. Right now, armor ignoring is king. Point #7 is still a balancing issue. An example would be Metal Auger versus Shred. Such mod cost/benefit inconsistencies all trace their origins from to armor scaling.

 

 I can't take you seriously at point #4. I'm sorry, but bows are perfectly viable sniping weapons, even with travel time, due to armor ignore and/or high critical chance and critical damage combined with decent base charge damage. The charge time can be reduced to 0.4 seconds, and not everyone has a Snipetron Vandal. Also, the Lanka has charging mechanics akin to the bows, and it's considered the king of snipers. Just a personal note, Snipedal irks me so much; either say Vandaltron or Snidal for an abbreviation. The Ogris is terrible for sniping due to its low projectile speed.

 

Same applies at point #6; you're talking crazy. Slow firing weapons make up their slow fire rate with power per shot. With a maxed Point Strike, snipers have a 50% chance to proc a critical. Add in a maxed Vital Sense and Hammer Shot, and snipers can gain up to 560% critical damage. Finally, factor in a maxed Split Chamber (90% multishot), you approximately a 70%+ chance to proc one critical and a 5% chance of not proc'ing a critical and not firing two projectiles. Personally, I think those chances are reliable. While I understand what you mean by making criticals more consistent, we have to wait until the new damage/armor systems come out. Don't fix a system isn't broken yet.

[Cabadath5]

I still get an eye twitch every time I'm reminded that the Hind exists and how stupidly better it is compared to my precious Burston.

[LazyKnight]

I still get an eye twitch every time I'm reminded that the Hind exists and how stupidly better it is compared to my precious Burston.

Just wait, they will make a Burston prime sooner or later.

 

Burston is not worse than Hind. I am keeping my Burston because I do not see a Hind as an upgrade and is it seems to be more of a side grade.

 

Hind only has 121 shots, burston has 190. If you hit anything that dies in the first 3 hits of a hind you wasted 2 bullets. Hind is only better if your hitting something that can take ALL 5 hits without dying. Hind is almost as wasteful as a grakata and using a Burston to conserve ammo is a good idea.

Edited August 20, 2013 by LazyKnight

[basilioss]

and acrid is fine as it is

its mastery rank 7 it cost a lot of resources

and it takes a lot of time to get

Read this post and though: Not an excuse when the Acrid can kill bosses 3x as fast as a Rank 7 Research Primary - Supra.