Let's talk about "Resourceful Combatant/Sharpshooter" in the light of the crank gun

Engineer has only two ways to get his ability bar back: Potions and cranking. He trades the ability to get ability back by hitting enemies or getting damaged for the reliability of his cranking and the fact that full crank stacks give him faster cooldown.

But wait! There’s a third way: Resourceful combatant and Resourceful Sharpshooter traits.

It’s actually not too bad on paper, because when using Innovative Ammo Hoppers, each crit gives you 5 seconds of cooldown.
Each crit? Well, no. We all know about the restriction “can only trigger every 4 seconds”.

It has been discussed ad nauseum that this restriction makes this trait a very questionable choice. Not only do you lose access to the all-mighty swift slaying, it only comes into play when your ability is on cooldown. Once the bar is full, the trait stops existing. That’s what balancing has to take into consideration.

Now, I think the restriction of “only one per attack” is fair enough. The “only every 4 seconds” makes the ability questionable. But there’s another restriction that hardly gets talked about: The game considers RSS and RC to be the same ability, meaning when you trigger the one, the other cannot trigger for the next 4 seconds, also.

For engineer, RSS and RC are his only options to get access to additional CDR. The charm property does nothing, and since OE has access to drakefire weapons, RSS would have to compete against damage properties like Hunter or Barrage, or simply against Therma Equalizer, something you can never go wrong with.
Hammer and shield with its easy access to the uppercut, which has increased crit chance, is actually okay-ish for consistently getting crits, as well as pistols or cannon. But both traits not being independent from each other and the 4 second restriction means that you cannot use them in a way that would give them actual utility: In situations where you can’t crank and/or situations where you absolutely need your ability bar to fill up faster. Both traits could be OE’s replacement for cooldown-by-damage. Each hit giving him 5% is actually not too bad, but after running a build with both RC and RSS, the effect is just hardly noticable.

Which is sad, because with “Superior Gaskets”, you don’t really need SS on hammer and shield, and the guaranteed crits via “Leadin Shots” provides you with reliability. You always have to consider that OE is not a “high-crit-carreer”, so crits are already alot less reliable.

I think this is the perfect opportunity to finally give this trait the overhaul it needs to be competetive.
The days of wiggle-mancer are long gone. The days of S&D Shade spamming guaranteed crits into hordes to insta-refill her ability bar are long gone. These could be the days of carreers like Pyromander and OE getting another tool and playstyle going for them: more ability use, at the cost of less damage from their main weaponry.

I highly recommend trying out a H&S + drakefirepistols build on OE to see that this would have immense potential to give OE a completely different spin (pun intended) towards his playstyle centered around the crank gun. But it just falls short. You definitely get the feeling of “Yeah, this could be something fun!”, but it falls short before it becomes a thing.

Discuss!

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The only thing I’m worried about is it’s effect on his ULT. The every 4 shots crit happens on his ULT as well, and it shoots so fast that with that trait not being on a 4 second CD, you’d have nearly unlimited ULT. It wouldn’t really be able to run out…

That would not happen, would it? I mean, the crank gun doesn’t have a trait.

Ults are effected by the last weapon you were holding. It’s why you could get ammo back on WS ult crits when you had scrounger on your ranged weapon. Or ammo on headshots when ulting with WS. It’s why you’ll see WS players randomly ult a horde for no reason.

Pretty sure this is still in game… or has it been patched?

Don’t think it ever worked this way. It only works if you fire your ult, then take out your ranged weapon. I have just tried it out, the crank gun cannot trigger RSS.

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I’ve tried it and its CDR works only with his secondary, not with Crank Gun. So, be not afraid, one can ult freely and never get CDR from minigun shots.

It for sure did, or maybe it was a WS only bug? But I use to basically only sustain my ammo on WS using her ULT to proc ammo back on headshots or crit.

It still works for WS, but don’t think it was ever true of all careers.

It works, but because the arrows are not hitscan. It also works with Pyromancer. When you fire your ult and take your melee out, you won’t get the headshot arrows.

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Trueflight Volley would still be active (Hitting targets, typically trash fodder) for a second after switching back to a ranged weapon, that’s why it would proc Conservative Shooter or Scrounger.

It can even happen with Piercing Shot, if you have enough distance between you and the target to switch to ranged before the hit registers.

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Then I guess I have nothing to worry about. It’d be interesting to try the trait on Engineer as he described…

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