2021 Repeater Pistolas

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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AYY we back on this topic? Because I’m back on this topic. I saw the other post getting necro’d and mid-essay I started to think maybe it’s time for a new thread. My new favorite Feetguns have pretty much filled the niche I’ve always wanted for Rep pistol and then some, to a huge degree. The shotgun value of Gryphon feet is delicious, just absolutely decadent. Clears hordes as well as fireball staff while not being OP versus armor and bosses with Bounty Hunter or Zealot passives, love it!

But now I can’t help but feel the community’s desire to improve just the shotgun part of the rep pistol is outdated (hence the new thread).

At no point since the Repeater Pistol’s big change in 1.6 has this weapon ever found its identity or felt satisfying to use. People wanted a powerful burst weapon and got one that, with max investment, found a niche killing Chaos Warriors, but that aspect was removed and became way more trouble than it was worth after patch 2.0 (and rightfully so IMO). The player base continued to want this weapon’s shotgun use to find worth and the mod-inspired second balance beta gave the burst the Linesman cleave modifier, which was really interesting (could kill more plaguemonks standing in a line than you would ever encounter in a real game). Still wasn’t enough.

So I’m going to say it, weapon just needs to be redone from the ground up. Throw away everything we thought we wanted from this gun. Give it new damage profiles, new values, new ammo pool, new rate of fire, new animation timings, new everything. We’re in a post Gryphonfeet world and I don’t want to go back.

We already know the damage is bad. Players have been posting essays about it being unacceptable for 3 years! For the ammo pool it has, it is needlessly weak.

Here’s a quick comparison I threw together, with ammo count on the side. Repeater Pistol gets two ammo counts because the alt-fire is a completely different attack at the cost of 8 bullets.

Values
Values1126×594 183 KB

Shotty Values
Shotty Values1102×456 136 KB

The primary fire is half the power of its counterparts for 10 more ammo. But it’s shotgun is just barely better than other shotguns for just 5 shots (but can’t break shields). Can’t put it more plainly. We’ve tried to make the shotgun part work, but it won’t. It’s either too powerful because of Bounty Hunter passives or completely useless. The current identity of Rep pistol as a gun that can switch between a single fire projectile or a shotgun does not work with the current game.

So dump it. Dump the shotgun theme completely. Junk it. Let the two players who liked it deal with it, the motif was nerfed pretty early in this game’s life and will never be made right.

Up the damage of projectiles to near Swift Bow charged shot standards, and make the bullet spray 8 actual bullets being shot like the Repeater Handgun does it instead of the current extremely ammo intensive version that is a single attack that costs 8 bullets. Obviously not a carbon copy of repeater handgun, it needs that flare to make it different and fun, but not like 1.0 Repeater Pistol either, because I get we shouldn’t have super synergy with Bounty Hunter that allows for 8 simultaneous critical shots that can all pen super armor and delete Chaos Warriors with ease while refunding 60 bullets with Scrounger. I know it’s obvious, but it has to be stated because I don’t want to be confused for someone wanting massive amounts of power creep to the point of having a Chaos Warrior deleter again, that is a terrible role to try and put on a weapon with a high rate of fire and a high ammo capacity. But 8 bullets fired in rapid succession needs 8 chances to crit with the appropriate damage feedback. That way if used on Bounty Hunter he has 1 guaranteed critical shot and a big ol’ 9-round burst shot if used with Prized-Bounty, but also because this is the only way it’ll ever be competitive with Brace of Pistols on WHC or Zealot. You can even ditch Linesman on Repeater Pistol this way, too, because it won’t need to cleave an entire horde if it can actually do things.

Will these changes make Repeater Pistol too good against patrols and bosses? I don’t know, maybe? With a strength potion, you’re probably able to chunk a bunch of stormvermin in 5-6 bursts, but probably not absolutely delete them like BoP used to. Against a chaos patrol, yes, a strength potion should let a single burst of 8 bullets kill a single chaos warrior, that’s fair, you only get 5-6 chances to do that. I don’t think bringing this weapon up to any degree of standards with other weapons will introduce power creep that’ll make the game less fun.

tl;dr: gun bad, make good, but not Bounty Hunter 1-hit kill CW good.

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To add, one of the themes of the Rep Pistol is quickswapping. It’s why it has such a fast switch from melee to it and then a fast left click (fastest kill time in the game vs infantry specials at close range, but only on BH for a single special).

The problem with the quickswapping is that it’s often awkward under pressure because of a sliding bug that happens when dodging with a melee weapon and switching to the Rep Pistol during the dodge, and because despite being only half of the Rep Handgun’s size and a pistol, it doesn’t get any extra dodges or dodge range. It doesn’t help that winding up the alt-fire takes time.

To be fair, a part of the alt-fire still being weak is because it only has 8 shots (Blunderbuss has 12 pellets iirc) and a low spread. They tried to give it more shots in that mod but some of us (myself included iirc) gave them bad feedback for it.

The animations are fine, just the alt-fire wind up is slow. In what ways should its rate of fire change?

I’m fine with it not being a shotgun, but what should the alt-fire’s role be otherwise? It’s almost always going to be complete overkill on most single targets, can’t reliably hit 3 elites, doesn’t break or cleave shields and doesn’t cleave armour.

Does anyone know what its ammo sustain would be on WHC with 25% crit chance? Animosity would boost it but that’s time limited and fine. I’m wondering about the outside of Animosity spam-ability.

With a str pot it could be built to kill 8 SV, but only if it managed to hit that many. Likely wouldn’t be any better vs pats than a Volley Crossbow with a str pot. Since the shots don’t cleave armour and are still stopped by shields, it would only kill several elites if they lined up just right, whereas Volley gets 15 arrows to use at different angles. Could probably just adjust the damage values anyway.

Vs bosses, that’s potentially about 600 damage per shot with a str pot. Again this could be adjusted as necessary anyway.

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From last year you suggested

Can say I would like to see these, very much.

Well, I was thinking about how you can fire this weapon faster spam clicking than you can just holding down LMB. Makes sense, but also puts physical strain on players. Someone else made a post a long time ago about repetitive strain injury that made a lot of sense (my hands do be sore after playing this game some nights). And lastly, the alt-fire’s 1 second rate of fire that takes whole years to do. This weapon just doesn’t deliver enough power to justify how long it takes for the alt-fire to shoot.

I’m willing to accept that part of my frustration with the alt-fire might come from the bad habits this gun inspires with Bounty Hunter and Prized Bounty. You really want that big D damage while under pressure, but the gun punishes you for it.

I was about to say bursty overkill, but I’ll be honest, during the making of this post I never considered Volley Bow, just checked it and saw that it’s damage is roughly 24 (inf) and 12.5 (armor). That’s got me scratchin’ my chin cuz if both weapons had the same damage, Volley would have better ammo sustain on BH (and meme Zealots) while both doing mostly the same thing. I wouldn’t mind, but that’s probably not how things would work. :thinking:

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we messed with giving it BoP level damage on the left click at one point iirc, kinda knowing it’d be way too much lol

Once we started looking into how to make the left click both good but also not just a copy of repeater handgun we ran into some trouble. We didn’t give up on the idea but the mod also wasn’t finished by the time the BBB came around so anything we were working on still just got kinda shelved (RIP Pickaxe)

Also goes without saying the repeater’s shotgun concept is kinda dead in the water now that Saltz has the Griffonfoot pistols

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What kind of trouble did you run into?

I’ve convinced myself that rep pistol’s super fast rate of fire would make rep handgun tier damage too strong with those break points. Maybe if it had the Masterwork Pistol theme of steep damage drop off and huge spread on alt-fire, making it the superior ranged weapon for mixed hordes on Saltzpyre at the cost of reliable sniping and fast ammo consumption?

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I think the weapon needs to be less reliant on the finesse value for any actual damage and have it do better base damage. It’s headshot damage is pretty good for a weapon with moderate accuracy and no sniping ability so it’s kind of wasted on anyone that isn’t BH. The alt fire (that you suggested) could have higher crit chance to allow for higher potential ammo sustain but with it’s high, slightly uncontrollable fire rate, it would be harder to land every shot.

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eh maybe? I can’t imagine a rapid falloff being something people would care to deal with

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I’m just gonna link what I posted in the necro’d RP thread.

I don’t think it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Just lean harder on the low sustain, burst damage identity it already has.

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Now that PS4 has had some time to play with Griffon Foot I feel comfortable making a comment. The shotgun of RP is completely pointless. Massive ammo loss where 5 shots would have accomplished the same thing, with only a slightly slower time to aim and shoot.

Repeater Pistol works on BH on Legend. Amazing rate of fire and control allows it to shoot elites and specials with abandon. Hits good breakpoints and also can be tuned to one shot a Chaos Warrior.

But guess what, crossbow can be tuned to one shot every special with less investment, has better range, and can still one shot a chaos warrior on legend.

That burst should have better Chaos Warrior damage because it’s the only thing going for the weapon. In a post trollhammer world the burst should just be 8 shots of FULL powered ammunition for immediate burst. On demand with crit, no investment required, let it rip, kill a CW. The poor ammunition sustain alone would balance the weapon. And it would give it a place between the monster shredding VolleyCrossbow (which also can theoretically 1shs a CW on legend), the trollhammer with its anti armor/boss/monster role, and the crossbow which is generally good at everything.

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EDIT: Bollocks, didn’t notice necro. I’ll leave it stand since I did math.

It’s 40 base ammo, so ~80 shots. With Always Prepared it passes the magical 50 ammo breakpoint where Scrounger procs jump up to 3 ammo per crit and the expected sustain shoots up to around 200 shots.

I think that would be a fine approach if it was a BH specific weapon, but it seems difficult to justify a weapon like that on WHC, let alone zealot, when crossbow exists. To say nothing of Saltz’s 4th career.

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I like the various QoL changes listed. I think the pistol only needs some polishing up and a slight buff before it will be in a good place.

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It needs a damage buff at a minimum.

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I’m not sure this is a change I wanna advocate for, but wanna point this out because it’s very relevant to repeater Pistol in particular.

The latest iteration of the onslaught tourney balance mod took melee reset off blessed shots and made it a passive. Being able to run Prized Bounty for ammo sustain, while running hunter on rep pistol, and actually being able to shoot more than once every 10 seconds as long as you’re getting melee kills… well it makes the weapon a competitive choice interestingly without tweaking the actual weapon whatsoever. It’s now a burst weapon which is quite effective against all targets, with the trade offs of nasty ranged drop off and being very impotent without crits, thus being more reliant on your melee kill resets than any other weapon in his arsenal.

It doesn’t actually change a whole heap for other weapons other than making Blessed Combat less of a no brainer option.

Again not sure it’s a change I want to advocate for, it’s definitely a sizeable buff for Bounty Hunter, but in practice I’ve found it’s done much more to bring rep pistol up to par than boost his already strong setups. Admittedly it makes it easier to run Hunter on crossbow, but it already hit every relevant 1 shot breakpoint so I’m not sure it actually does much for it other than having a stronger melee presence.

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Not a fan of it being only viable on BH or heavily focused on the alternate fire. It’s called repeater pistol, not spray pistol.

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If only the alt-fire was good enough to be actually usable.

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I’m not either but I’m struggling to see how you could ever make it good across all his careers. It’s never going to compete with crossbow or BoP for a melee build and I just don’t see how you’d fix that without making it busted on BH. I think it’s highly unrealistic to have every ranged weapon be competitive on melee classes. And frankly that’s completely fine, there are enough weapons to still offer good variety on every class.

The alt fire is the closest thing to an identity it has and currently you’re heavily discouraged from ever using it. I guess this is just a matter of preference but if I’m primarily using the primary fire why am I using it over BoP? That rapid fire role is already well filled, the alt fire is something it does which is relatively unique in his arsenal (yes there’s Griffinfoot now but rep pistol alt fire is much tighter spread and effective anti armour with crits so they’re still fairly distinct).

All that said I’m certainly open to other suggestions if you have any.

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A left click rework maybe?
Toning down the spam in favour of slower, punchier (and more ammo efficient) shots could make it usable on WHC/Zealot. (More of a head popper revolver like weapon)

It might clash with BoP? but it could just come down to playstyle & preference instead of “x is better than y”

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Making the alt-fire less reliant on crits to deal effective damage would be helpful, as would be a minor dodge mobility boost. Making the alt-fire slightly less ammo intensive would be great as well, like by:

  • Inserting spaghetti code to make Scrounger count the alt-fire as two shots (would still be a net-loss of 2 ammo so no infinite ammo), or
  • Making the alt-fire only fire 4 shots, but each shot does the same damage as the primary fire shots, or
  • Making the alt-fire work like the Repeater Handgun’s alt-fire but way faster, so you can choose the number of shots fired, or
  • Making each shot from the alt-fire get calculated for crits individually (I can’t recall who came up with this idea, if anyone knows please tell me and I’ll credit said person here. Edit: lol that was dumb of me to not know who’s idea it was, it’s the topic poster dannylew’s idea).

Could make the primary fire have more headshot damage. That way its faster than BoP but requires more skill, but is still very different from Crossbow. It currently already does have more headshot scaling/finesse/crit magic than BoP but its not enough to make it relevant even on BH atm as they both hit the same 1 shot crit breakpoints, with Repeater losing out on headshot breakpoints because of its raw damage (again I think boosting the headshot damage further would fix that).

It’s different from BoP. Faster, worse at long range, better reload efficiency but smaller clip, less damage, less mobile, shotgun alt-fire hybrid. The left click has significantly less movement speed slowdown than BoP’s right click. It’s Saltz’ most unique ranged weapon and one of the more unique ranged weapons in the game, and its primary fire is a part of why that’s the case.

Do you see many Griffon-foot WHCs? It could be my experience only, but I haven’t seen many. I still only see Crossbow/BoP ones. Two is better variety than what Kruber’s melee careers has but it’s not good either.

Repeater is hitscan iirc, BoP is projectile. Repeater is slightly better for quickswapping because its primary fire has no delay for switching to and firing and switching back to melee, while BoP’s primary fire does. BoP’s right click has no delay, but its spread is ever so slightly broader than Repeater’s primary fire. The only thing that limits Repeater is its mobility in this aspect. Repeater’s Pistol Primary fire also has slightly more cleave.

Personally I’d just rather an even focus of both the primary and alt-fire. The gameplay in the mod is fish for melee kill - alt-fire. Fun at first but gets boring quick and is pretty comical.

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BoP is also very different mechanically, and thus feels very different to use. The notion that if you buff the repeater pistol primary attack it’s going to conflict with BoP doesn’t really make sense. Even if they were to fully converge in terms of their ideal use conditions, they would still feel different to use. In this game that’s really enough. After all, plenty of other weapons (melee and ranged) overlap in terms of their purpose while feeling distinct from each other in overall feel.

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I think they should buff the alt-fire a metric ton in damage, both with and without crits, because right now, it’s equivalent to like 5 single shots or something. For real, the alt-fire shot at point blank with only headshots deals comparable damage to a single god damn crossbow headshot. It’s ridiculous.

Leave the single shots as is if need be, to segment it’s role as a weak weapon against armor, but make it an actual cannon with the alt-fire. More spread, way, way more damage. There, now it has an identity, is fun to use and actually balanced.

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