Oh it would, it would change it up a lot. A slight increase to health so you need to aim for heads instead of one-shooting on the body, extra hit mass so you won’t stun out bruisers from their attack with light attacks, a slight damage increase to enemies so you can’t tank as much…
Boltgun is bad against shooters, and pretty hard to aim after the first shot. On vet around half the base weapons perform better, on Stg, it shines due to the special congo lines but braced is at least equal if not better. It’s only ammo efficient as long as you are conservative with ammo. It also has a long reload, unless you go, vet reload feats but then you don’t have your sweet bleed nades… and reload feats don’t actually double the reload speed it just increases reload by 20% and 30%. Also bolter has the longest swap time of all ranged weapons only matched by flamer afaik.
It has more than enough downsides to balance out mag dumping an elite group.
True if you don’t pause between each time you shot with it. But, let’s face it. When you use scoreboard mod you can see that a boltgun is far away above anything else.
And the Boltgun can wipe everything close to a player but, at the same time, can snipe a threat far away.
Boltgun has no weakness. The recoil is surely annoying, but nothing that is a real weakness as you can adapt. If you pause a little less than 1 second between each shot, the boltgun is really accurate.
Braced, autopistols and K12 are in same bag. They cannot damage seriously a crusher. But sure, a Vet has its PS to kill those threat fast.
Helbore and Plasma are great options for a vet for their versatility.
But Bolter is also a great choice as a vet. A plasma / Helbore cannot wipe everything in a room… the bolter does that fast. Also, as you pointed it, boltgun can benefit from feats to be able to instant reload or/and get +50% reload…
But sure, plasma is a great choice on a vet, for its precision and also for its ability to kill strongest enemies (orgryns, maulers). On this I totally agree.
Back on topic…
I encourage the OP to try a good boltgun without pinning fire. And also, a CA without brutal momentum. The fact is, people tend to listen what is described as mandatory and don’t even try the other options, or without. A CA without brutal momentum is less efficient against an horde. That’s a fact. However, it can be more efficient against single threat and remain a good horde killing weapon (sure, you have to adapt your gameplay).
A boltgun without pinning fire kill everything like with the blessing. You just need 1 ammo more for Ogryns. As Flawless pointed, there’s one blessing that impact, and more in my opinion, the damages. It is shattering impact. This one changes the output against everything armored.
Bolter and shredder with pinning fire both are definitely overperforming. People trying to justify it reminds me of ‘‘power sword takes skill because you have to step back and charge it’’ or ‘‘flamers take a lot of thought to use effectively’’ arguments. Shredder clocks in 4k+ dps vs maniac without psyker, talents and with 3T pinning fire, it has crazy mobility and deletes anything mid range due its good braced accuracy
Bolter has no weakness, its really good vs shooters with mid ult talent and literally never runs out of ammo like someone mentioned, which should be a weakness to balance it. Its even more ridiculous on HiSTG as it refills ammo so fast. While playing it i can casually unload into hordes of poxwalkers and have x2 or more combat scores of all the other teammates without trying
Again, im not hopeful for a nerf because people enjoy overpowered stuff for some reason and want it to trivialize every difficulty, which was evident by review bombing after recent nerfs. And even with those outliers it took them 4-5 months to nerf it so yeah
You know, I use the Boltgun 1 on 50 games (I avoid it cause I find it too strong). What I said is that it is worst than what is described here. Pinning fire is not what makes the boltgun overperforming… it is the weapon itself that is OP.
In another words, pinning fire is not what needs a change, this is the weapon itself than need a nerf.
The question is… “what nerf?” Cause the boltgun has to remain a boltgun.
If we use the scoreboard we can pretty much see that any competent ogryn with ripper or stubber and BB will top the scoreboard. You can sweat as much as you like with a bolter, you won’t be able to match that.
Let’s be real here, I never played with a bolter on high-int that I couldn’t top with plasma or braced. This just doesn’t happen.
Yes, I can clear rooms clean with plasma when I run full damage build on it and I’ll kill 3 ragers with one shot, and Crushers faster than Bolter can… From across the map, with a single shot, on the body. Get a good plasma. Plasma is also a quick-to-draw weapon that has a lot of upsides to it…
Bolter gets to mag dump elite group and for it it has. Mid ammo eco, being bad against shooter, mid stability with insane recoil, super long reloads, longest pullout time, and inability to keep up ult after reloading.
Enough downsides? Or are you just gonna randomly say again that it doesn’t have any? Or maybe say it doesn’t matter?
Even the horde clear mag dump isn’t anything unique or good. Apart from the obvious ammo loss it’s just mid, Braced and Autogun does it 10 times better… And if elites are also in the mix? Then just grenade dump since you don’t have to give up infinite bleed nades for the reload feats, it will clear everything in a 8m radius that isn’t a crusher as fast as a bolter can, or even faster if there are a lot of enemies.
I’m so over this whole bolter thing btw. There are 4 fing weapons that are straight-up better, and lots of alternatives. No bolter isn’t OP stop it, get some help.
You’d have to account for that some weapons lends themselves to hit the head easier with different attack patterns then others or having alot of recoil and spread. Then you’d also have to consider the intent and purpose of the enemies you’ll be facing and what’ll constitute a “slight” health increase, I would not say that this would be a meaningful way to increase the difficulty that, for example, that smaller enemies now takes two or more hits then before to eliminate.
Unsure about the reduction to stagger, mainly that the game already favours killing an enemy outright instead of knocking it down. It would make it slightly more dangerous in melee combat I guess, depending on class and what loadout they are using.
Its ammo economy is good as you get so much ammo back from talent. Not to mention ammo is literally never a problem because of plentiful spawns, i can mag dump into hordes and be alright. Its one of the best guns vs shooters and snipers with talent, you need to brace cancel and it doesnt have any recoil.
I did a vent sniper damnation yesterday with 2bots and one pug ogryn who had a shield and braced it to stand around reafirming stereotypes so i had to take care of every shooter/sniper and it wasnt a problem
Reload is long, yes. But with talents you can easily keep your ult between reloads
Why do you think its bad? It oneshots all trash shooters in the body with ult and can keep it between reloads. It also goes through thin cover if im not mistaken
I mean it clears packs of shooters slower than braced in mid range or lasgun but does it matter when you have invulnerability and still do it decently fast. And yeah while being a little slower on this particular task it insanely outperforms other guns on elites and hordes.
Well thats the point, you sacrifice something to make it stronger but if you do it literally doesn’t have any weakness left aside from draw time and still a lil clunky reload. I don’t really need nades when i can magdump into a horde or kill/stagger anything else that nades would be useful against. And even then you can just take 5% nade feet which gives you unlimited nades on harder missions
I don’t think it’s about being good. It reminds me of flamer pre nerf as where anyone could just blindly unload and kill everything in a room. It trivializes hi shock too as it never runs out of ammo, you dont even need to pick ammo packs in that mode
Of course it matters. The longer you take to clear gunners, the longer your team gets lit up by them. You dont need to worry with your 75% damage reduction, but your team does.
That’s the point. Now you have to fight in melee, not just chop up everything… or you need to run specific +armor type and/or aim for the heads if you want to keep your one-shots. Most heavy weaponry is overkill even without boosts or perks, so there is room for growth. If bolter and plasma can one-shot trash it isn’t bullet sponge.
As I said before I’m pretty sure based on current breakpoints that FS already has the higher dif breakpoints, or knows well how to increase it in a way that won’t feel sponge, but requires more skill.
If you wouldn’t like it fine, you don’t have to play it, but I’m really looking forward to the inevitable addition of dif6.
By fighting, do you mean using dodge, block, special attacks and awareness to not get surrounded by enemies? It’ll still be the most effective way to combat foes in melee combat… even with the increase in health, so I still feel that it would not give anything meaningful. Trying to put more focus on specific perks and blessing to achieve the new breakpoints would just make them more mandatory to take… which would not be the worst I guess, since most of the already unused ones are complete garbage anyway.
By most heavy weaponry, do you mean ranged weapons? the damage output of guns are better then most, if not all melee weapons, the balance would be limited ammunition… but I don’t really feel like that is working that great. I feel that the game would shift even more into ranged combat, to be efficient in removing enemies.
I’m also pretty sure that they do have a new difficulty level in mind, maybe even with the increase in base stats for weapons, which I guess would push for the need of new breakpoints? I just wish that they’d do something different then just a simple increase in damage and health, or at least in conjunction with it.
Yes if you can make fewer mistakes, and you can’t stagger/kill everything brainlessly the difficulty would increase, cos now it’s pretty low.
Take Caxe for example. That thing one-shots all enemies on zealot after like 2 strikes, that isn’t right, at least make me aim for the heads. I won’t go into other weapon breakpoints to keep it short.
Yes, I also think that weapons that will be able to reach 100% in some stats will be before or with the new difficulty.
Probably it will be +hitmass +enemies etc too as usual.
There are however certain weapons that only exist to be used as crowd control tools, but I guess you can’t by yourself anymore keep a crowd controlled while still killing them if they do such a change. I’m also guessing that you mean more basic enemies takes two hits to kill.
All we can do now is wait and see what Fatshark has in mind to increase the difficulty moving forward, and I am hoping that at least most of it will come from new enemies, new weapons and/or abilities for existing enemies or just moving armour types around so that’ll we’ll see more heavily armoured foes, instead of just health and damage sliders goes up.
Just no. I don’t think you should be able to one-shot the heavy melee scab/dreg on body just by going Headtaker. I’m just hacking left and right, and while it is kinda fun I don’t really feel the challenge in that. Higher dif with higher breakpoints would instantly fix that.
Alright i overstated by saying its ‘‘one of the best’’ on shooters specifically but it doesnt change that it still is perfectly decent against them, its in no way can be described as a weakness of the weapon, not to mention all the other upsides it has. Some guy also said that while you are shooting with bolter shooters are killing your team, which makes it look like you kill shooters 10x slower than with any other gun which is simply not true. You take longer than spraying close range with braced, sure
Everytime i see or take a bolter on hiSTG i know its going to be a cakewalk and it doesnt matter what player is wielding it. It deletes every single enemy, never runs out of ammo, can dump into hordes and snipe specials in 1-2 hits. I don’t doubt your skill with a braced autogun but i don’t see players wielding it produce same results in pugs, which makes me comeback to my point that with bolter it doesnt really matter who is using it as you just magdump everything
Ammo is also never an issue even if its not special gauntlet, map simply spawns more ammo if it sees you are low so you can spray hordes all day
As it stands the gun simply doesnt have any weakness that would make it balanced which should be achieved by long reloads, ammo consumption and inaccuracy all of which can be remedied with perks or animation cancel
Take any other gun for example, with braced you are not good long range and cant kill carapace and bulwarks easily, with plasma you actually struggle vs shooters more and can be stuck in a bad situation with venting, with lasgun you cant deal vs heavy armor and can get overwhelmed if you are surrounded, meanwhile bolter doesnt have those