I’ll be brief. I’ve been playing this game for almost 100 hours now, and have around 700 hours in VT2 (which is relevant since some of the same issues pop up in that game).
I’m only going to list out quick and easy suggestions for guns to be a lot more viable than they currently at in Heresy to Damnation. The goal is to actually create some weapon diversity with small(ish) numerical changes, and make some weapons enticing to actually use and maybe people will be less on your back over the missing weapons. (Where’s my god damn sniper rifle fartshark?)
Currently the only viable guns on these difficulties are:
(For the love of god do not interpret this as “Oh these guns are strong? Better nerf 'em lmao. Now the rest of the guns are on par”)
-Kantrael MG XII due to a medium high damage per shot with an excellent headshot multiplier and good fire rate and excellent ammo management. Balanced out by the fact it can’t deal with armor, and is mediocre vs hordes on Damnation since it cant reach the breakpoint against poxwalkers to one shot to the body.
-Boltor due to very reliable damage model against essentially anything in the game, but balanced out by horrible recoil, reload speeds, and bad clip size.
-Plasma Gun B I G D A M A G E (: Heat ): Reload speed ):
Flamethrower is also great on Zealot.
List of quick fixes to push the guns to viable:
-Accatran Series/Braced autogun (though mainly only the VIIb the rest might also need a damage boost). Low DPS in comparison to the gold standard of the MG XII, but I understand they are also a semi horde solution with the collateral. Personally I think this is why they aren’t good guns since they have to be balanced out by their collateral stat, and melee is the solution to hordes not ranged other than the exception of the super specialized weapons such as the flame staff, and flamethrower.
Main issue: Major detriment to the ammo economy for the team.
Solution: 25% boost to ammo pool, and a 15% nerf to collateral. If you’re feeling generous a 10% damage boost would also help.
-Headhunter auto gun. Low DPS. Bad ammo. Horrible recoil.
Main issue: The gun is bad, and you should feel bad ):<
Solution: 33% damage increase, 33% recoil reduction.
Seriously its that bad. Just boost it that much, and see what happens. Its ammo economy is terrible so you could also just boost that but it wont make anyone use it.
-Stub Revolver. Weirdly accurate pistol, but generally speaking: awful.
Main issue: Horrible horrible horrible reload, damage is awful, headshot multiplier is awful.
Solution: Leave the horrible reload since you’d have to animate a chamber swap for it to not be terrible, but make it a headshot king weapon. Something people can use for fun even if it’s not viable unless they become incredibly consistent with it. 4x headshot multiplier.
-Columnus Mk V Infantry Autogun. Crazy damage with small clip. Just needs one change.
Main issue: Crazy recoil.
Solution: Tone down the recoil by 50-60%. It still will chew through a teams ammo economy, but it can at least have the niche of being a very good special killer since it has very high DPS if not for the insane recoil.
-Helbore series. Extremely close to being viable.
Main issue: A readying animation which I assume is turning off the safety means you can’t swap to the weapon immediately and then charge it. You have to wait for that animation THEN charge it which also takes time. The iron sight is also ass, but mainly the animation stops it from being viable.
Solution: Remove the dumbass animation (sorry animator its cool I promise but practically speaking its the only thing truly killing the weapon), and add a holo sight.
Additional notes: Charge time could be a tad faster across the board.
-Lawbringer Combat Shotgun. Another almost there gun.
Main issue: Damage. I’m glad the shotgun has range, but for a shotgun it should be doing way more damage with how punishing the reload is and even though the range is good for a video game shotgun it’s still a short range weapon, and it should be a lot more dominant in it’s effective range.
Solution: 40% damage boost within a 12 meter range of the shotgun, and a base damage boost of 10% . A ramp up damage model similar to TF2. A game that absolutely nailed shotguns and still has players after 15 years despite developer neglect.
-Auto Pistol. Ew.
Main issue: Not sure where to start. Just generally horrible. Bad at hordes, bad at specials, bad vs armor. Bad. Bad. Bad.
Solution: Create a niche. No movement speed reduction while firing, and a minor boost across the board for reload speed, clip size, ammo, and damage of 12-15%. Still not a good weapon, but it’ll be fun.
-Heavy Laspistol. Another almost there weapon.
Main issue: Has no real niche, or purpose. It’s extremely stable, but is outclassed by the Kantrael series (even the non MG XII).
Solution: Either tweak its numbers to make it do more than the non MG XII Kantrael series objectively which is a boring solution, or give it inactive reload (reload while holstered maybe 20%-25% clip size per second) to make a fast paced melee users best friend.
The heavy pistol has me stumped though it’s in a weird spot.
If there’s literally any take away from it’s the Helbore feedback. Seriously. It’s so god damn close to being good.