I know, this is the gazillionth post with the topic pistols, but i have a rather simple solution to the whole drama. I have not read about it (although i did not read all the articles about it, just some, and by this i may be the voice of the unheard and over passed, hence the clickbaity title).
It’s easy to implement (because the change exists, hint hint), no huge damage number (or numbers in general, for that matter) or animation changes.
It would not make the pistols the next ‘op pls nerf’ weapons. Although that’s rather rare after a patch, one might say (yeah, i know about the dd).
And it would even make sense lore-wise and ingame-wise and you could ask why this had not already been done.
So, here it comes: give them the same characteristic as the handgun.
The range damage fall-off, the kinda low amount of ammunition, and the not-fantastic aim would still keep them in check.
But this change would make them instantly viable, because of the high rate of fire (bursting a chaos patrol, but using almost or even all of your ammo would be quite the neat thing to do).
And to the ingame/lore-wise point: the Handgun is a flintlock black-powder weapon. The brace of psitols is a flintlock black-powder weapon. No other weapon is (no, blunderbuss doesn’t count, it shoots scrap). The Repeater variants do more likely count as a revolver (which is quite andvanced for Fantasy).
Ok, im done babbling, thell me what you think! This is just a proposal, so positive criticsm is very welcome.
Edit: here an example just to show how miniscule the range of the brace of pistols is, before range dmg fall off begins:
At present they’re only a nich weapon, and too nich to really be of use unless you’re in one of those parties that has difficulties with Elites.
You can actually use them to fast fire headshot CWs at close range but its risky… and they will drop an entire swarm of Berserkers coming at you very quickly.
But that’s about it which in itself may happen only once or twice in any given map, and only on Legend… and even then, Repeater and Volley do similar things on their charged shots and have more ammo.
Other than than that…
Both Volley and normal X-bow have more penetration and hit 4-5 targets in a line, turning their ammo into 4-5 times the ammo in the weapon. Both do a LOT more Boss Damage, and can kill specials at ranges much better than the BoP.
Meanwhile the BoP has one of the lowest ammo capacities of ALL of the weapons… and no penetration into a Horde to make up for it.
If they at least had the penetration characteristics, or better damage to Armored and Monsters, to at least be on par with the others they wouldn’t be so Nich… but as it stands… they are.
So they either need a LOT more ammo… or similar penetration, or better Armor damage, or Boss damage than the other ranged weapons have.
Or even something Unique to them like the ability to Penetrate CWs without Headshots.
Well, the handgun has a longer barrel, meaning a higher velocity of the bullet is achieved. And the handgun most likely shoots a bigger projectile, that means it should definitely do more damage than pistols, especially against armor.
IMHO, all BoP needs is acceptable damage against resistant, aka monsters and packmaster, and some more ammo. I like their current playstyle, they are alot of fun. Until a PM or boss appears. Then its the least fun weapon to use.
biggest problem with brace of pistols is the extremely low dmg per shot coupled with low accuracy and low ammo and damage falloff.
the plus points are no reload and speed of shooting and hitscan. but without power per shot or longevity, even trying to burst a stormvermin down takes like 10% of your ammo. it doesn’t even do much to bosses too. very sad
So, you concur? That is exactly what i mean. In comparison to the handgun, the aim, the range and the damage is lower. But giving it the same characteristics as the handgun would solve that problem, as the dmg isn’t quartered (or even lower) anymore going from unarmoured to armoured.
You should still not be able to oneshot a packmaster, even with an headshot (although you could argue for the blunderbuss, which should get an heavy buff, too). Packmaster has 75 health, and only crits, some high dmg weapons with an headshot and the handgun can kill it with one shot. And even 60 hp specials, Poison WInd Globadier, Leech and Sorcerer should maybe not be killed as easily as with one shot. Worthy to discuss over.
But, the rest, 36hp Gutter Runner, Warpfire Thrower and Rattling Gunner, should fall under the one shot category.
Here some links, for the numbers, an easy one and the calculator for breakpoints.
And a big thank you to the community for creating those!
the Pistols are there to deal quick with Specials of any sort besides CWs, within 15 or 20m you kill everything with 2 Bullets or less and thats already the Point, They are not meant to clear Waves.
I play only Saltzspyre and only WHC, the strongest of all 3 if known how to play with.
Im using the Pistols actively since 4 Weeks, i used the Crossbow before to its high Dmg and great Ranged but if you don’t hit the Head you need 2 Shots anyways, like the Pistols, everything else thats only needs 1 from the Crossbow needs as well only 1 Shot from the Pistols.
To be honest, the Pistols are in the perfect place to be cause they are a high efficient Special killing Weapon, no reload and fast to aim, Only anti Special Weapon.
A great way to advance the Range from the Pistols is to use “Hunter” or “Barrage”, i personally tend more to “Hunter” longer Duration and you Crit more then often.
Volley-Crossbow has 5 Shots more, not a real advantage, it has more Penetration what its Nature is, a Bolt vs a Bullet, but deals less overall Dmg and has a high Reload.
What? Base damage nearly enough to one-shot a marauder to the body is low? I have them set up to 2-shot a mauler to the body. Without crits. The accuracy isnt pin-point, but it is still good enough and far from “low”. Really it only gets problematic past lets say 50 metres, and thats not in their comfort zone so its fine with me. Accuracy talent on BH helps but isnt needed. Ammo i agree. Rather steep damage fall-off makes alot of sense, since bullets in Warhammer are not aerodynamic but round to the best of my knowledge, so they would lose quite alot of velocity the further they go.
The problem isnt their base damage. Its the abysmal multiplier against resistant and bad multiplier against armor. Still serviceable to kill SV with it, tho. No weapon should exceed at doing every job well, so I dont mind them being shite against CW. Thats where a flail or axe would come into play.
And lastly, its the only weapon that doesnt synergize at all with BH crit and ammo recovery passives.
My kill numbers go through the Roof with Volley vs Brace of Pistols.
Always Prepared Talent on WHC means its 33 ammo for Brace… 39 ammo for Volley.
As to where the BoP will be doing about 38.00 damage on a body shot… the Volley when special killing will be a charged shot of 3 for 22.00 damage each and much faster on the same target with no additions… so doubling the damage in one shot.
And will have more penetration + better Boss Damage to boot.
There is nothing on the BoP that comes out on top of Volley. Literally nothing.
X-Bow has both penetration 4-5 targets and higher damage on head shots plus more accuracy, better damage vs Armored and Bosses… and maintains its damage at range… unike BoP.
The only thing the Normal X-Bow can’t do that the BoP can is gun down as swarm of Berserkers…
Volley also maintains its damage at Range unlike the BoP… which drops off to miniscule damage very quickly.
The only thing the BoP is good for is short range special killing and gunning down swarming Berserkers… but that’s about it.
That is far too Nich to be of value over the other ranged weapons.
BoP wouldn’t be bad if scrounger actually worked with them as well as the volley/crossbow. Then again, this is “supposed” to be a melee focused game. So you could argue that BoP are the most balanced.
The BoP is just underperforming on every front and is absolutely outperformed by any of Salty’s other ranged options. The repeater pistol can do anything the BoP does and more while having good sustain at least on BH. The base damage on the BoP is actually quite high in theory, in practive however only against infantry and berserkers at very close range. I can’t really understand the reasoning behind giving a weapon a detriment on ANY front other than attack speed. It has very low ammo. It has ridicilous damage fall-off. It is not pin point accurate and while hitscan, the reticule is large enough that “sniping” with it will always result in wasted shots. It has almost no ammo sustain when compared to other ranged weapons, as it does not provide good synergy with either ammo-retaining traits nor BH with no ammo use on blessed shots. It deals hevily reduced damage against armour and does not penetrate super armour. You almost always need more than one shot to kill specials, making it unreliable against those. And it gets a hefty penalty against monster armour class, I think something along the lines of dealing only 1/4 of the damage (iiirc, I dealt 8 damage pers shot against a boss during testing in the modded realm).
You could increase it’s ammo to 50 and it would still stink, as it is just super unreliable. It does need more ammo, no question, but the damage reduction against monsters needs to go and the damage fall-of distance should be tripled at least. If it should penetrate super armour, I don’t know, but atm, Salty does not have a single ranged weapon that can reliably do that. Whether or not he should have one, I don’t know, but the pistols are, realistically, never a valid choice if you have other ranged weapons with good rolls.
wow, i did not feel that it could do that when i was trying to optimise it. i’ll take another look. 1 shot a berserker and 2 shotting a mauler noncrit sounds pretty efficient.
I feel like not every character should have such a ranged weapon at his disposal. Kerillian also needs to pray for crits and even with crits, needs around 3-4 headshots with longbow to take a CW out by herself. I believe to remember Fatshark invented super armor to further emphasize on melee combat. Which would be a good thing, if there were no crits penetrating super armor.
I still dont 100% agree with manbow penetrating super armor without crits while crossbows dont. Should be other way round realistically, but im glad crossbows dont do it. Would cheese the hell out of CW even more.
He did. To go from bottom to top: fanatics (zombies) raiders (standard infantry), bulwark (the shielded ones), savages (the dual axe berserker types), maulers (2h axe only head-armoured), chaos warriors.
Use this link to see how confusion can come up because the name and the code for spawning are different. The raider has the code chaos_marauder while the mauler has the code chaos_raider, thus calling the raider marauder to stop that confusion makes kinda sense.
Only Muskets and Huntsman Bow can penetrate super Armor without Crit, Mage Staffs as well but the Dmg is very low, around 5-7.
In some way glad yes ,that only 2 Ranged Weapon can do that but still only 1 or even less Dmg on Headshot from every other Ranged Weapon is just ridiculous.
It was said so many times, every Class/Weapon has there strengths and weaknesses, how it supposed to be, a Weapon that can do everything is just plain boring. A bit off Topic but i have the feeling some have lost sight of this.
The Crossbow for example needs on Legend 2 Shots, if you dont Headshot, for Stormvermin/Sorcerer/Gunner/Flammer/Gas Rats and the BoP need as well 2 Shots the Diffrenz between them is the Range and that the BoP would be faster in a Close Quarter Situation cause of no need to reload for the second Shot and your not going to Aim with the BoP for Heads anyways.
The Weapons are pretty much the same just Diffrent Playstyles.
Ignoring the fact that stacking the crossbow to kill stormvermin and/or specials with a single body shot is rather easy, how does that outweigh the plethora of disadvantages they have, like immense damage fall-of, sub-par accuracy, low ammo pool, poor ammo sustain and inexplicable 3/4 damage reduction against bosses? How many of those does the crossbow get? What’s preventing me from using the crossbow in close quarters as well?
