I’m not an OP, but I can give you my opinion about Sienna’s ranged and a few traits/tallents.
First of all, just you not to get me wrong, I think BBB is a big step forward, but there are something that was done prety bad IMO.
THP tallents for “ranged” careers. I realy don’t understand what is “THP on kill” tallent doing on a ranged careers, if you are a ranged oriented career most likely you’ll try to kill elites with your ranged weapon, and you get no THP at all for doing it, but if you kill trash with “THP on kill” you get little to no THP at all. But for some wierd reason 3 (Hobo, BH and Pyro) of a 5 “ranged” careers got THP on kill, what is just stupid design IMO.
Also “THP on stagger” is too clunky/bugged, I mean it doesn’t count that rats/rotbloods you killed with attack at all, which leads you to getting very small amount of THP even on weapons with high stagger (Mace, 2h Hammer, Mace’n’Sword, etc), and “THP on cleave” is just too good and should be tuned down a little.
I understand why Heat Sink was changed, still I think it has a very bad design by it’s nature. It says that “Crits refung overcharge cost of the attack”, meanwhile Thermal Equalizer just gives -20% overcharge cost. What does it means in reality? All “overcharge users” exept Pyro can stack only 15% crit (20% with Hobo aura), in fact Heat Sink, for any career exept Pyro, is just worse version of Therma Equalizer, it gives you refunds equal to 15-20% less overcharge generated and it’s inconsistent coz it’s RNG dependent. But on Pyro it’s super good and beats Thermal Equalizer because of Critical Mass passive.
My suggestion- let’s make Heat Sink not crit-dependent, just give it straight 25% (maybe 30%, but I think 25% will be just OK) chance to refund overcharge cost. That will make trait viable choice for all Sienna careers (still a little weak for IB due to it’s -30 overheat tallent stacks additively with Thermal Equalizer), it will still be RNG dependent, and due to this it should be a little better than Thermal Equalizer to encourage people using it.
Beam Staff. I have 2 big complains about this weapon- first one is movement slowdown when holding RMB, and second one is inconsistency while spamming shotgun blast, if you try to spam it too rapidly you end up with a beam blast instead of shotgun. I also think that damage of beam blast could have been a little higher, but it’s not a big deal at all. I’m mostly happy with how Beam Staff is performing now, but that moveslow and occasionally beam blasts instead of shotgun should not be a thing IMO.
Bolt Staff. Oh boy, I lake it and hate it so much… It’s too good at clearing hordes, due to it’s super high charged bolt’s cleave, but it’s too bad at those things it should be good- sniping and dealing with armour. There are tonns of flaws with it, prety big charge time, enormous movement slowdown while charging, very high projectile travel time, no zoom at max charge, prety low damage while not getting headshots and too big damage on headshots. I don’t say “fix it all at once”, it will make Bolt insanely OP, but some isuues amplifying another. Big charge time+move slowdons feels very bad, if FS lowers one of this it could feel good enough. Also we have another group of problems- slow charged projectiles/no zoom combined with high headshot damage, it leads to an issue that you should get headshots in order to get high enough damage output but you can’t consistantly get it. If we get higher bodyshot damage and less headshot damage then not hitting headshots consistantly will be not so big deal, on the other hand if we get zoom and/or higher proj speed it can also solve the problem w/o touching damage numbers at all.
P.S. In the end I want to say a few words about overall overcharge slowdown mechanic. Most of players who played Pyro before bbb knew about very annoying bug- Heat Sink removed overcharge but not overcharge slowdown. Now it’s just the samethe only difference is it leads you to get overcharge slowdown before you reach “red level of overcharge”. Also there is another inconsistency with overcharge slowdown- sometimes while venting slightly below “red overcharge” slowdown is not removed, which is just meh. As a result we have an issue- Unchained Sienna, that was designed to be melee oriented is far superiour at range then her other, more “ranged oriented” specs. Let’s just take a look, not only UC has 150 base HP and damage reduction due to damage to overcharge transfer, but she also has Conduit tallent which makes her possible to vent a lot more, especially if you run NB, also she has “THP on cleave” tallent, that in combination with Sword/FS/Dagger gives her an opportunity to get tonns of THP, and in combination with Unstable Strength make her far better in a melee combat then other Sienna specs. That’s why IMO FS should either remove overcharge slowdown altogether, or just add it to UC too.
Ive never seen such skill till now then. Of course thou are the grandmaster of no match! Perhaps thats why your tongue are very venomous toxic. Ever tried other ranged? What kind of weapon must you to sacrifice thine virtuality to keep the phase. It is true that other ranged are a far better.
It can on unchained with the damage buff from heat. You can kill them with a single headshot from a light attack.
Edit: Well, this was already answered. I really gotta start reading through threads before I respond to things…
@Nilter
My take on all the changes to ranged play is that even “ranged” classes were never supposed to be able to use their ranged attacks all the time. The changes were meant to shift gameplay towards the intended playstyle, where ranged attacks supplement melee play rather than replace it.
Sure my lord. Bolt needs higher damage, faster charge time, bit of homing, higher armour penentration on body shot. And for conflagration a lot more damage. For the rest i think theyre fine.
True. They dont meant to shot arrows all the time. But the reason i opened this very thread was sienna’s ranged such as beam, bolt are just so bad. Yes i could slay elites by using em but things is other carriers are doing a far better. Since sienna meant to be the best ranged - at least one of the best - it doesnt makse any sense to me.
I think you’re touching the core of the problem here. It’s all about perception. Balance isn’t only about the objective strength of a weapon/career, it’s also about how they feel. A weapon can be very powerful from a numbers/mechanical perspective while at the same time feeling fairly weak. It can be the other way around too, where weapons can feel more powerful than they really are. I’d argue that a weapon’s ‘feel’ is just as important as it’s mechanical performance.
The issue is that a weapon’s ‘feel’ depends just as much on an individual player’s unique perspective as it does about the weapon’s design. Someone who’s used each of sienna’s staves for 50 hours straight is going to see things differently to someone who’s still experimenting.
So what can the devs do about this? I feel like giving us some way to let players get more familiar with each weapon outside of the mission setting would help. The first couple of hours of using a weapon is a lot of trial and error. Considering the all/nothing nature of mission rewards, I feel like some people might be reluctant to do much experimenting with a weapon in-mission due to the risk of causing a wipe, and this contributes to people getting the wrong ideas about how strong particular weapons are. Especially where they’re using weapons that other people say are weak.
Im not a deeply emotional man. Just try damaging the dummy in the keep. Sienna have worst options for elites far away. Waystalker swiftbow is such a joke for sure. Kruber handgun, repeater, Victor all ranged. I know their ammo is limited. But they can refill. Moreover the current game is ‘killing faster’ not just safty. Heat weapons are even dangerous. Overheat will knock the one down to the ground - at this point i think knock by overheat shouldnt wound the player and temporary health on rise should convert into the normal vitality.
Dude, look close what I’m talking about, I’m not saying that “ranged careers” use/should use exclusively ranged weapon, but it’s only natural that BH or Hobo will fire a lot more shots then WHC or Merc, also if career has better ranged option, less ammo issues it’s only natural they’ll try to kill elites with ranged weapon, not melee, and yes, they get no THP from this kills even using “THP on kill” tallent, so where am I talking talking about replacing melee with ranged? I just say that “THP on kill” for BH/Hobo/Pyro/BW is just very bad design decision.
What I’m saying is that what the range-heavy careers were doing before the changes, that is; using their ranged all the time and basically never using melee, was apparently not a direction that FS wanted to pursue.
Instead of players using their range to supplement their melee game, they were using ranged as a near-complete replacement for it. Maybe this wasn’t part of FS’s vision for the game or maybe they just had one too many complaints from melee enthusiasts. Whatever the reason, FS decided this wasn’t what they wanted people to be doing.
So changes were made to push people towards melee play and reduce the availability of spammable ranged attacks. Denying thp on ranged kills was one of these changes and so were the changes to ammo regen and heat dissipation.
Point is, this ‘bad design decision’ was intentional, and it seems to be mostly working pretty well.
Oh boi, are you stupid or an idiot? I never said a word about THP on ranged shoul be brought back, still there are some builds that allow you to fire your ranged weapon non-stop, say hello to my little Pyro with +50 THP on ult or xBow BH.
Look, I see what you’re trying to say, that “THP on kill” tallent should encourage people to use melee more often, but with current numbers you get little to no THP on trash kills, and you don’t realy wanna engage in melee vs multiple elites, especially if you have tonns of ammo and ranged weapon that 1-2 shots SV/Maulers/Zerkers/etc. In fact it only encourages people to not use such tallent at all on so-called “ranged careers” because any other THP tallent performs a lot better on such careers.
And yes, when there is a choice w/o choice I say it’s a bad design decigion, yet I agree that pre-bbb THP tallents where overall worse, everyone exept a few careers used THP on kill coz it was no-brain choice, and a few specs, hey wiggle-grill, I’m talking about you, where using THP on crit.
I am not toxic, just get one thing, learn to play classes like they are, and stop ask for buffs it’s ruining the game, and if it is not like you except killing everything very easy, just go to another classes, if still not at your taste, just lower the difficulty. It is not complicated.
I think that the staffs in general are fine.
The only staff that could use some changes is the bolt staff, the big bolt feels to slow and the left right left right left right left right of the light attacks drives me nuts.
And the THP is a topic on its own.
i think heat bar should be increase by 25% in general.
60% faster charge, bit of homing, and higher damage on body shot for the bolt staff - and please make the effect looks cooler, just like how pyromancer got a new effect for the flaming skull. shape depend on staff’s illusion will satisfying myself even more!
Read it again before you have an aneurism. I never said that you did. You’re literally arguing about nothing. All I said was “I think the changes were meant to do this thing” and you seem to have taken it as some personal attack on your honour as a forum poster or something.
