Is the blunderbuss that bad or are all other weapons too good ?
Not being able to one-shot a stormvermin with one shot to the face in Legend is just sad when compared to the overall ranged arsenal of the game.
Not being able to kill any special in one shot to the face in point-blank range is absolutely terrible.
It’s already too strong in my opinion. I think it’s more than enough that it shreds through infantry and berserkers. Any kind of armor should be largely impervious to the pellets.
The head of a stormvermin or of a hookrat isn’t armoured though…
And it shreds through infantry, sure, but I don’t find it overwhelming.
I don’t encounter many situations, if any, where the group is lacking infantry damage…
It’s not garbage but could be better… it should be able, with enough power vs and hitting with every pellet, to one-bodyshot packmasters… or, at most, it could enjoy a little bit more reload speed.
I have been having a lot of fun with the grudge-raker on ranger veteran. The blunderbuss seems like a significant downgrade. It’s slow, it fires only once, the high damage is largely wasted on groups that are too sparse to fully take advantage of it, it can’t headshot, it has very little ammo, etc.
If the tradeoff is you can one shot a single berserker or possibly more if they’re stacked up, I’m not really sold. Lots of other ranged weapons can delete berserkers more safely and at longer ranges, and there are tons of melee options (with temp hp gen) for unarmored hordes.
I have no problem with the grudge-raker, mainly because it has at least one centered pellet so you can hope to snipe distant specials, and it does have two shots.
I would mention Griffon-foot pistols since they do a good job, but I think they’re on the other end of the spectrum. One-shotting a pack of monks is a tad too much - though I have been playing them on Zealot and that gives yet another empowering bias.
I expect from a shotgun to have great flesh damage, so I’m ok with it one-shotting a mauler, a packmaster, a berzerker or a globadier and dealing practically no armour damage. I do expect some stagger on them though (except CW), unlike the javelin which should just deal damage but is capable of staggering a CW better than a hammer…
I’ll say no, but I get the sentiment.
Blunderbuss isn’t for shooting armor or hookrats, despite how much your inherited knowledge in your being, which was cultivated by centuries of your ancestors blasting high health enemies at close range with shotguns, is screaming at you to instinctually shoot the big dudes with the bigger gun.
BB stays in the bag until unarmoured elites/specials get too close, a horde lines up just right, or there’s a group of wooden shields you ain’t got the time to deal with in front of you.
I get that, but my point is that even at that it absolutely sucks… Can’t kill a packmaster in the animation of grabbing you with one blast to the face.
Packmasters don’t count as unarmored
They have monster DR, I know, but it still is unintuitive to not be able to kill it with a freaking shotgun blast to the face.
Also, how do you deal with any other special with that gun ? Even if you manage to get close to a ratling or a flamerat, you ain’t gonna do anything to them. Liches and assassins are easily manageable, but blightstormers ?
Well the easiest way to deal with gunners and flamerats is to give up and blightstormers are someone else’s problem
That kind of is my point. In a world of jack-of-all-trades and power-crept weapons, the blunderbuss fills a niche that also happens to be the absolute least useful niche to fill, and it does a meh job at that (compare it to a flamethrower for instance : same weaknesses, but it’s better at its one strength than the blunderbuss).
myeah but then you got Huntsman, sitting there with his terrible headshot only talent tree somehow making BB stronger the higher difficulty you go, dictating shotgun balance all by his lonesome.
One of the big leg-ups the other shotguns (and flamethrower) have is actual damage sustain. Their dowtime can be budgeted. Griffonfoot pistols take ages to reload fully but can be fired mid reload and there are like, what, 8 consecutive shots? Grudge has two which just seems to work (if you miss its not game over). Flamethrower front loads the downtime some but it can be as short as you need it to be for a little flame poot.
I absolute DO NOT GET bluntsman. Maybe legend isn’t high enough difficulty, but it’s the highest base difficulty which I think is worth at least a nod, and I just feel like huge burden to the team with blunderbuss.
I mean if you search blunderbuss or bluntsman you will find a myriad of conversations about the strengths of Bluntsman. It’s not my favourite playstyle, but like any build that scales extremely well with density, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s mediocre from playing on Legend.
I’ll tag the biggest Bluntsman fan I know round these parts @Sleezy as I’m sure he could explain its strengths far better than myself.
If he was that strong or valuable, you would have seen a Bluntsman in the recent ons tourney. When you want a shotgun for your team, Ranger is getting picked up 10 out of 10 times for various reasons.
Blunder is absolutely Huntsmans best bet, but still falls behind his competition. And before someone starts thinking: “Yeah, but Huntsman prohibits use of Merc, or GK”, Panzerfaust IB wants to have a word with that someone.
(If we just talk about whats playable we can stop talking about balancing at all. Iam sure Velsix, Core, Havoc and the rest of the bunch can run Cata naked, armed with a Broomhandle, and a tincan on their head.)
I’m not gonna argue the rest of your post, I mostly agree with those parts, but I feel like this part is a bit of a straw man. Blumtsman is extremely playable by anyone at Cata level who is competent enough to be there at all. You absolutely don’t have to be Core or @Velsix to get good value out of Bluntsman on Cata. It’s highly disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
I shall try it. I’m neither a huntsman player nor a blunderbuss player but I’ll try it out.
If I’m playing Kruber I mostly play Merc / FK and getting a random blunderbuss in the chaos wastes just gets me frustrated because I feel like I’m effectively left without a ranged option.
Oh to be clear it’s awful on a melee character. Would never use it outside of HS. It is good on HS though. I’d recommend the cooldown reduction Ult talent for more spam.
Do I need to be forgiven for thinking it’s mediocre on legend if it actually is mediocre on legend, though? I’ve got 450 hours in this game and still struggle appropriately on legend, I hope the prevailing sentiment is not “you must get good and buy winds of magic for the blunderbuss to not be mediocre”
Pardon my tone, I’m frequently frustrated by the cataclysm defense of game balance. Like… it should be balanced on core difficulties too.
Obviously this seems like a situation where you almost can’t make it viable on lower difficulties without beefing it too much on cataclysm. But it sounds like that’s at least where it is right now. Viable on cata+.