Hello gentlemen,
When I read, back in the day, that Darktide would feature the Lucius n°98 Lasgun and shovels as Melee weapons, my Krieg-loving heart skipped a beat in joy.
Alas, as it is currently implemented, the Lucius is underwhelming. All of its variants are outshone by the regular Lasguns because of the following reasons:
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Poor sight picture. The Ironsights on the Lucius are very poor. They offer a low-visibility, unclear sight picture that makes accurate, fast target acquisition very hard. The MKIIIs sights are slightly better, but not by much. The first change should therefore be to improve the sights. I dont suggest bolting a Reflex sight on it, as that would ruin the WWI-inspired aesthetic, but it need to be better if it is to perform as a accurate, hard hitting Battle Rifle/DMR/Sniper.
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Charged shots: The idea with the charged shots might sound good on paper, it fails in practice though, as the need to waste precious time on charging a shot renders the weapon incapable of delivering hard-hitting fire without setup. This means that many a times, a window of opportunity is wasted because not only do you need to line up the terrible sights with the target, you also need to charge the shot up. I propose getting rid of the ability to charge shots entirely. Instead, the weapon should charge itself up, allowing fire only at full charge.
This would serve several purposes. First, it would fit the theme of a “bolt-action Lasgun” by limiting the rate of fire. Second, it would make the Lucius hit like a truck, as it is supposed to. Third, it would make handling the gun much less of a headache -enabling snap-shots without having to charge up manually- and give it a unique playstyle.
I am aware that this would have the Lusius to resemble the Plasma Gun, hence I also suggest the following changes: Keep the performance against flak-armoured enemies as is, or improve it slightly, making it excel against these enemies. At the same time, reduce the effectiveness against Carapace-armoured enemies. Additionally, to offset the reduced rate of fire and give the gun some limited anti-horde capabilities, have the shots pierce one or two unarmored targets. Lastly, adjust ammo consuption to reflect the fact the gun only fires the equivalent of charged shots now (i.e. toning it down a bit).
In conjunction, these changes should create slow-firing, hard-hitting weapons excelling at dealing with Flak-armoured enemies, with significantly limited potential against hordes and a poor-mediocre performance against Carapace-armoured foes, where the Plasma Gun could still rule supreme. -
Weapon ready time: While the animation to ready the Lucius is not terribly long, it is still longer than for the normal Lasguns. This, too, limits its use as it slows reaction times. I suggest bringing the time in line with the Kantraels, or, alternatively, buffing the performance of the Bayonet to prevent you having to switch to melee often.
Currently, the meta still seems to revolve around the MG XII Lasgun, which seems to be the go-to weapon for just about every purpose. These changes could initiate a chage, as it would give the Lucius a clear role. This could be followed up by changes for the Kantrael, which probably deserves to be toned down a notch.
I would be delighted to have your feedback and further suggestions.