Masterwork Pistol Nerf

I already said exactly how it affects Engineer more than Ranger. Drastically reducing the damage per bullet won’t be enough of a nerf if Ranger still gets the breakpoints via disengage, it will reduce ammo efficiency which Ranger won’t care in the slightest for, while Engineer will, and you’re literally proposing the alt-fire to be only slightly higher DPS than handgun, which to me sounds like you’re making it completely useless, since what advantages does Masterwork Pistol have over handgun that are significant enough then?

Remember when people thought I was wrong about MWP being overpowered? Ok got the petty out of my system

honestly I wouldn’t mind just straight reworking the right click into being a more accurate attack (with harsher range falloff) and you could do essentially what you do now with it to elites but you gotta crack out headshots to 1 shot. The monster damage should defo get railed down enough to cut into boss dps but without ruining packmaster headshot BPs

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Those were not my exact words, but no biggie.

Again, what are you using the MWP alt-fire for on engi that’s different from RV? You can burst fire Patrols and Bosses, which is still OP, RV just has invis and more ammo. How would your proposals allow you to still play with MWP on engi the way you do, but not on RV? If there’s a clear difference in how you use the weapon between the two classes then it’ll be easier to figure out what you want, maybe. Right now I just don’t see it.

I literally don’t understand what you’re saying. I’m not using pistol with Engineer any differently than I would do with Ranger. I never said I did. I’m saying that your changes would hurt Engineer more than it would hurt Ranger.

a’ight

It is inevitable that any nerfs to the weapon will cause it to be significantly worse on engi (and IB) than RV. That is the nature of a career that lacks steroids vs one that has them.

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Just wanna add it’s also the nature of careers with ammo regen vs those without. Being able to spam something is pretty powerful in and of itself.

I mean, needing to be in an Ult with a 2 minute cooldown definitely seems pretty different to having those breakpoints all the time no? I agree lowering the alt fire DPS to handgun levels would be too far, but a damage reduction on the alt fire seems like the simplest place to start. We seem to all agree that the primary fire is mostly fine with the drawbacks it already has. Even with IB or Engi the boss/patrol killing of alt fire is a bit silly. Don’t see how it can be nerfed in a way that won’t also hurt their use of it, what with them having no ammo sustain or way to significantly increase ranged damage.

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I was thinking about dps, but that is true as well. Good thing we don’t have any careers that gain access to infinite spam and ranged damage steroids without the associated downsides of being squishy backliners. Oh wait.

But back on topic. Imo it would not be out of line to slightly buff the MWP’s left click, to make it less annoying to use, in conjunction with nerfing the right click’s ability to delete bosses & massed armor. Something like having no fire delay on the first round of the magazine would be a nice bit of QoL.

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I dunno, I feel like the primary fire is about where it should be. A bit clunky sure, though that can be mitigated somewhat by attack speed (ironically also something RV has easier access to than IB or Engi), but high damage, good clip, quick reload, and a solid ammo pool. Seems pretty balanced to me, buffing it further seems dangerous.

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It just feels clunky and annoying to me really, and encourages spamming shots even more.

Personally, I find substantial firing delays to be really aggravating and obnoxious. And I’d rather things not be balanced around being annoying.

Sure, I completely get that. At that point it just seems like we’re completely reworking the weapon rather than tweaking it, which is probably unrealistic. Take away its high damage vs clunky trade-off and what exactly is its identity anymore?

If I were to dabble into fantasy rework territory I’d rather see alt fire replaced with revolver ocelot style pistol twirling that functions as a temporary speed and accuracy boost for the primary fire for the next, say, 3-5 seconds, or 2-3 shots after using alt fire. Alas I doubt I’ll get to see my ideal MW pistol rework :stuck_out_tongue:

You must hate Sienna’s bolt staff… or any of her staves for that matter.
Though I agree that having to hold LMB and track the aim until the shot fires is more obnoxious than holding RMB and then choosing when the shot fires with LMB.

I agree about the annoying delay on the MWP and I don’t hate sienna’s staffs because her weapons fire IMMEDIATELY when you release the button. If sienna’s staffs all worked on a countdown after you pressed LMB that’d be a different story.

Same goes for melee weapon power attacks.

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I like a lot of the ideas in this thread. The following idea isn’t as great but I think it’s the easiest one to implement: Reduce the alt-fire’s monster damage significantly but keep the armour damage reduction to the alt-fire minor (like 15%?).

Also reduce the dodge count to 6 because 100 is too much for a ranged weapon that has cleave and introduces pure ranged gameplay (or not, idk if people have a problem with that or not, just mentioning it).

The left click would still be significantly higher dps than Handgun’s because it has 6 shots, so even if the right click ends up being only slightly higher elite dps than Handgun (though I wouldn’t go that far) it would serve as a panic option. RV wouldn’t have those breakpoints out of ult which would be good. It’s possible that OE could retain breakpoints due to Spotter, Combined Arms and Full Head of Steam. It would still be much more mobile than all of Bardin’s and most other ranged weapons.

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I honestly don’t understand why any ranged or even melee weapon needs to have 100 dam dodges.

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On the topic of disbelief, I don’t get why this thing has a magazine to reload in the first place. Even if it’s loreful, making it reload one shot at a time seems like such a reasonable way to give it a bit more of a downside.

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That’s actually something I suggested in the original mwp nerf topic but it did not seem to gain much traction.
Biggest problem is probably that it would need new animations and maybe art to make it not seem totally idiotic so number changes are probably a lot easier to accomplish.

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Well, does reducing the fire rate and reload speed not accomplish exactly this? It certainly wouldn’t hurt Engineer any more than it would Ranger, it’s not like Pistol Veteran could just ignore that significant loss in DPS, and Firing Fury would be hard to proc in the traditional circumstances of boss killing or patrol clean-up.

I don’t want to destroy the pistol. I think it’s fine that it’s a good elite and monster killer, even if it’s not too thematic in that regard. It’s fine to nerf it’s damage a bit, and require some heavier investment for the bodyshot breakpoints, it would be good to nerf the monster damage by a fair bit, and it would be an easy and simple change to reduce the fire rate and increase the reload time by like 0.25s.

All these changes together would serve to put Masterwork Pistol back in lane with other weapons, without requiring any significant rework, or new animations, nor would this disproportionately affect Engineer more than Ranger.

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I think increasing the length of the prep animation is the best option. The gun seems to be spring-powered, on lmb shots the catch moves back as you fire, indicating that triggerpull itself is winding the spring before the catch releases and fires the bullet. However when you use the rmb spamfire he flips the catch back and uses up the stored tension to fire 6 shots without winding via triggerpull.

Adding a winding animation to the prep (for instance winding the wheel on top of the gun a couple times with his thumb after flipping the catch) would stop ranger from spamfiring all his clips into monster/patrol. He would need to have better postioning and space to prepare for a lengthy windup animation for each clip.

Since it isn’t part of the reload animation ranger couldn’t mitigate it with firing frenzy, and since it isnt damage related he can’t mitigate it with power from ult.