Issue with Handgun that’s it’s just meh. Both characters have much more better weapons for the slot. And when it comes down to sniping you might as well just straight up drop the idea of sniping and let better careers and weapons deal with that.
In the case of Moonfire/Longbow/Hagbane at least there’s some choice. Longbow can be used if you’re playing content where you need to get spammy, when Moonfire is not enough. Hagbane is inevitably better than Moonfire on Waystalker due to spammability. And feeling like “that’s the Handguns time” is such a rarity.
On Kruber? Maybe. Overall? By far not.
Honestly that’s just semantics.
If we’re getting on this path: Cata+ is still a vanilla stuff. Cata 2 and 3 in weaves, Cata + Deeds, Cata + Twitch. While it’s not a separate difficulty choice, this is difficulty above Legend and Cata, while still being vanilla.
And to be fair I don’t see a way to balance weapons this way so all of them are relevant on Cata and not overpowered on Legend. And I’m totally fine with weapons being overpowered on Legend.
Maybe Griffon-foot needs a nerf too, not to damage but ranged uptime.
The damage potential is lower than Blunderbuss. Griffon-foot is safer and easier to use due to the increased clip size, fire rate, snappy reload & increased pellet count stagger locking hordes.
Maybe reduce the 8 shot clip to a 6 shot clip & some other tweaks.
That’s not necessarily true. Handgun is “balanced” for legend and it’s still quite viable on cata, for example. A lot of weapons are balanced for legend but still good on cata. Admittedly, that’s not true for every weapon, but there’s no need to assume it couldn’t be done.
Name one weapon which is better at instant special killing at any range. I’m curious.
Tecnically, no. Vanilla refers to the base game. Cata is WoM, as are cata+, which I so often forget about, because weaves.
EDIT: to be clear, I’m not saying handgun is the best ranged option for any class, I’m just saying it’s an excellent ranged option, even on cata, as it excels at what it does, and that’s instant special sniping at any distance. Some weapons have other characteristics, if you need to spam attacks than handgun is not the choice for you.
It´s only good for cata if you are skilled enough with headshots if i am not mistaken? But if so then the bases of comparison start falling apart. On side comparing “is this good while bodyshotting” vs “is this good while headshotting”.
I literally watched a BH gun down 7+ maulers (stacked rotblood horde waves) in a matter of seconds plus a whole wave of accompanying mobs. He then proceeded to just anti the following stormfiend in a matter of moments right after on his own.
My point here being that sure, some weapons are not all that on their own, but some careers push those weapons well and truly beyond what they´d be able to do otherwise. Hagbane in waystalker hands is one of the oldest examples of this that i can think off.
Then we have moonbow, a weapon that while immensely powerful on its own, lacks any synergy that archives that effect. So much so that it even lags behind the likes of hagbane over the couse of a run unless things are well and truly ideal for it much more than not. So if we are not going to ceaselessly bash up those weapons that have that then why bother with moonbow?
MWP is also in dire need of a good nerfing, so bringing that up is not helping your argument any. Neither is comparing moonfire bow to hagstalker of all things.
Your analysis is flawed. A weapon that needs a specific talent to become OP is quantitatively less OP than a weapon that is OP out of the box with no talent investment.
Well that’s because Shotguns excel as anti horde, anti infantry, anti unarmored weapons.
Blunderbuss & grudge can also do that. Double Shotted probably deleted the stormfiend.
It’s just apparent with Griffon-foot because of the ranged uptime and stagger locking.
MWP also needs a monster nerf and some other tweaks.
It’s funny because even Handgun itself doesn’t fall into this category.
I mean, maybe at Legend it is? You know best in this case (no offense intended).
Though, Bolt Staff, for example, is a much more reliable sniping weapon, and with proper talents it cleaves multiple specials through horde like butter, doesn’t need much breakpoints too, while also casting it is not that hard (also no ammo needed). It’s not an instant projectile, sure, but I’ll take it over Handgun on any difficulty at any time simply because it’s way more reliable.
That’s just semantics, not really constructive. By that logic why argue about Cata at all. I was talking about vanilla game as opposed to modded server content. Why would I be talking about vanilla that has Legend as it’s highest difficulty when I’m agitating for the idea that balancing should be done around Cata? Makes no sense then.
I understand this. My whole point is that the only advantage Handgun has over other sniping weapons is projectile speed. It’s complete mediocrity of a weapon and it’s advantages don’t make it more reliable or convenient than othen sniping weapons.
Though, I must clarify that I’m inevitably projecting my Cata and Cata+ opinion and experience because in all honestly I never cared enough about breakpoints on Legend. Everything just worked as it is when I played Legend.
You are mistaken, in fact. With investment you’re able to one-bodyshot any special at any distance on cata.
I’d agree with you otherwise. In fact, one of the reasons i couldn’t make it work on Hunstman, is because of his need to headshot stuff for ammo sustain.
I play it on RV and I body shot specials and SVs. The reload is still the drawback af the weapon, but that’s the defining characteristic of it. Insta-sniping with long reload.
OP’s argument about the Moonfire Bow, if I understood it correctly, is that its disadvantages aren’t quite noticeable. Maybe if it needed headshots or 2 bodyshots for armored or far away specials it would make it fall in line.
The way to make it fall in line is toning the damage over time down so far that a bodyshot kills a special too late in emergency situations. You either have to double down, aka take another shot, or hit head from the start.
Another thing that needs to be looked at is the stagger. Right now an Eshin, Stormer, or Leech cant do anything anymore after getting hit. They stagger, the dot ticks while they are still stuck in that animation, and they die before they cant act again.
The third thing is the Breakpoints. Its either four properties, or two and EP. Just being able to run what you want and Assassin/Smiter effortlessly puts the crown ontop of everything.
At the end you would still have something that is able to manhandle specials, just not free of charge.
(Or we just give it weird zoom levels, a crosshair that’s all over the place after pressing aim, and a charge state that grants negative movement like the manbow.)
But have you seen anyone complain about hagbane or MWP in recent time as moonbow? I´ve seen sparse mentions of MVP but nothing else…and if they havent then why bother? It´s just double standards at that point.
Either go all the way and list em all up or dont shoot any.
Wait really? I thought i read somewhere that it couldnt bodyshot all the specials and there was a fuss about that…or so i thought anyway.
If you make it too headshot reliant it´s just a worse longbow with an explosive shot gimmick that only works on hyperdense targets which i do not think is a good idea. A little bit of tweaking to make it need headshots would be fine like on gasrats, firerats, gunners and make killing raiders take 2 shots but that´s it.
It does seem to need some downtuning, but I really don’t want to see it turned into a hot pile of garbage. My first suggestion would be to try tuning down the DoT on the lights and giving it a 10% slower recharge rate.
It’s a matter of preference. I find the hitscan of the handgun, coupled with the speed of it (no need to reach full charge) to be more reliable. I can see you don’t.
You keep saying it’s semantic, but my point is not. I’m just saying that legend should be kept in mind as much as cata for balance, as it’s the highest difficulty of the base game, much as cata is with WoM. I don’t take cata+ much into account, as it really is something you’re deliberatly doing to make the game harder. As such there’s not much point into balancing things around those imo.
The other reason why I think legend should be kept in mind is that in a way cata itself too falls into the definition of “just for fun, just for the harder challenge”.
Yeah it wasn’t an actual suggestion, just something to start the discussion.
I remember that too, it think it was balanced after that. I know I can. (I no longer can in CW, with starting HP, and that’s a bit rubbish. But that’s something to expect when you mess with math).
I agree, FS balancing has often been heavy-handed. But it would be nice for it to fall in line with the others and be “this is good on my X with Y” rather than “this is better than any other choice unless I wanna gimp myself”
I see a lot of people saying the game should be balanced around cataclysm and legend but I just want to point out a lot of us struggle on champion and legend because
Not everyone, in fact maybe not even most people are going to get good enough to do the hardest difficulties.
It takes tons of hours to reach high equipment power.
I don’t know if any of you know what the distribution is of players across the difficulties but it took me a while to work my friends up to veteran and longer to champion.
I don’t think it’s impossible to balance a game for multiple difficulties. We’re talking about a professional game company here.
If you make the moonfire bow require power investments, hardly anything would change except everyone would be forced to run that 1 build that lets them 1shot bodyshot everything.
Or the investment is too steep (e.g. requiring 4 properties, enhanced power, etc.) and it ruins the melee part of the build or it is negligible and nothing changes more or less.
If you reduce the damage of the bow, it becomes useless.
Due to only having a limited number of shots before it’s “empty,” it really needs to put the hurt on targets before it runs out of ammo.
Pretend it took 2 shots to kill a special, you’d only be able to kill 2 specials with the medium charge shots since it only has 5 medium charge shots.
That would make the weapon pointless for any difficulty that has mulitple specials/other targets.
You cannot make it headshot dependent since it has no zoom and the headshot impact damage is comparatively low - most of its damage comes from the DoT as this is the defining trait of the weapon.
More importantly, another headshot focused bow would step on longbow’s toes too much.
The way I see it - if you wanted to nerf the moonfire bow - is to do the following:
Decrease the damage per shot to half its current value (impact damage as well as the DoT)
Double the charge limit of the moonfire bow before it is “empty” (so you can shoot twice as many arrows compared to now: 4 fully charged shots => 8 fully charged shots, 5 medium charged shots => 10 medium charged shots etc.)
(You could also only increase the charge limit by 50% or 75% or whatever value - the point is to make each arrow deal less damage but give you more arrows to work with).
=> Result:
Moonfire bow retains its peak damage potential BUT it:
a) spreads out the damage over a longer time frame so it is less burst damage (no more “1 shot fire-and-forget”)
b) requires the player to spend more time shooting to get the same damage which is a lot riskier under pressure (since you need to spend twice as long aiming and shooting compared to now)
c) it would fit very nicely with the theme of mixing hagbane and longbow where you need more shots than longbow but fewer than hagbane while relying on the DoT to kill targets.
Honorable mentions of questionable ranged weapon balance:
MWP still untouched and OP, bluntman and doomranger still exist, new Bh pistols are crazy good, coruscation staff is seriously slept on (the shotgun left click will wreck targets like all the other shotguns do ), famished flames beam staff, volcanic force bolt staff, Zealot volley crossbow with Smite and probably more - there are enough weapons and combos that could/should be looked at.
Sidenote regarding balance:
If a weapon works well on cata, it is bound to 100% work well on any lower difficulty.
If a weapon works well on cata and that balance somehow leads to that weapon being too strong on a lower difficulty, the solution is to move up a difficulty until the weapon is no longer so OP that it trivializes that difficulty.
If a weapon is OP on cata, you cannot reasonably move up a difficulty - modded is a different ballgame and cannot be the standard if cata is not balanced (hence the difference between “Official” and modded in the first place).
If a weapon is too weak on cata, you cannot drop down a difficulty level because people usually play cata based on their player skill - not based on the weapon power.
Balance should be primarily around cata since top down balance also benefits lower difficulties.
Also, cata really should be free, not locked behind the most expensive dlc with the lowest ratings.
Sorry to say but most long timers have completely given up on any hope that such a thing will be realized. I myself gave up on legend and bought cataclysm because they kept powercreeping the difficulty to the point where any challenge was lost.
Of course some really out of the world cases did get nerfed out like huntsman oneshotting lords but those were it.
One amusing and somewhat unexpected exception to this is actually hagbane, it does worse in lower difficulties because hordes are too squishy and die to melee/other shooters before the ticks&barrage can really kick in.
Pretty much the only way to “balance legend” is to power cap it like rest of the lower difficulties. 650 hero power is simply too much for the current state of the game.
I think this is a decent idea, but it seems like it would kind of destroy the weapon’s identity. I have an alternate suggestion (different from what I suggested above);
Reduce DoT on lights, and make the charged attack just take a little longer to wind up. This would cement its place as the “heavy hitter” but also require more skill to use under pressure.
Seems like we have a different understanding of the identity of that weapon
I view it as hybrid between longbow and hagbane, a more spammy longbow with a DoT.
Anyway, fully charging the heavy does not change its single target dmg at all at the moment, it just increase the aoe.
Do you mean to change that too in your suggestion and what would the role of the medium charge be in that case?
