Small balance change

Ranged weapon traits:
Regain 2 ammo on crit–> regain 1 ammo on crit
Regain 1 ammo on headshot --> regain 2 ammo on headshot

I think almost everyone runs the extra ammo on crit trait on ranged weapons. I even run it with more success on the huntsman class which is about getting headshots.

I would like to reward people for scoring headshots more and tone down the limitless ammo regain on some classes.

6 Likes

Great suggestion I think this would be an improvement.

1 Like

TL; DR: It would shift the focus from good builds to good skills, sure, but it would only worsen the underlying problem.

While this change would reward skilled playing more and luck less, it would still be worse, in my opinion. High-crit characters like Bounty Hunter would certainly be somewhat inconvenienced, but it’s not like he needs extra ammo generation when played well. This would mostly force the Talent pick on level 15 to not spending ammo, and it’s already pretty much the most useful. The careers with lesser crit chance, i. e. practically all of them, would just lose Scrounger altogether, as it now would barely help sustain their ammo. Headshots, on the other hand, can be scored consistently with most ranged weapons, and they already give Huntsman a good capability for redeeming ammo, and actually collecting extra. Giving two ammo on each headshot to everyone would give everyone the capability to generate more ammo on every shot, thus making ammo drops even more trivial than they are now. Only a few weapons would not be affected. As a specific example, all of Kerillian’s bows are very accurate, and she should already be scoring headshots constantly. Gaining extra ammo from them would render Waystalker’s ammo regen Talents and Shade’s Bloodfletcher nearly worthless, and give Handmaiden effectively infinite ammo too.

As a side effect, it would likely slow down the pace of the game too, as people would stop to aim for headshots to redeem ammo, instead of shooting on the run or meleeing more.

4 Likes

You could be right, and of course the change should be tested.

I think I won’t really mind characters having infinite ammo as long as they headshot. You still have to hit those shots and you can’t do this very well during a horde.

As for bounty hunters skills, I think the lvl 15 not spending ammo is kind of useless now since you can generate so much ammo with the repeater crossbow the only thing it does for you is give you 3 extra shots before you reload.
I think the 2 temp health on crit is much better. 2 temp health is 2% of bounty hunter’s total health pool. So this means when you shoot into a horde of enemies with his passive he will gain (almost) full ammo AND temp health.
Also note that his 2 temp health on crit works in melee as well.

It allows you to never reload ans spam those crossbow shots into hordes consistently and indefinitely as long as you kill someone in melee. Medium risk, super high reward combo.

It is also useful for repeater pistol for the same reasons, except that it’s even better, if you like to go into melee.

All these arguments work for health for kills equally well.

I always run conservative so im fine with this change.

Except that on several weapons, namely any one that penetrates more than one target, you can already very easily hit several headshots on one bullet/arrow into a horde. While aiming for a specific target’s head is hard during intense combat, hitting any head is bloody easy.

The target for balancing these things at the moment should be the few careers that can abuse their extremely high crit rates (i. e. BH, Pyro, possibly Huntsman), not the proc-on-crit Traits themselves, as they are quite balanced and even somewhat underwhelming on others.

1 Like

Then you could get +3 ammo with a headshot on HS.

The usual lot would be in here crying OP in about 5 seconds.

I agree. A huge issue with range strength at the minute is ammo replenishment. Being able to shoot into hordes with guaranteed crits or 100% crit chance is ridiculous for gaining back ammunation.

Well I can get full ammo on every horde with huntsman (if at least a few line up right)

Score 1 headshot --> 25% crit chance
Crit (+headshot) through horde = 8 - 20 arrows.

Huntsmans crit chance on headshot basically functions like a standard 25% crit chance during hordes. Changing traits to give 2 ammo on headshots and 1 on crit would still give me less arrows.

Well I suggested that during beta, seems logical back then…
Right now I don’t really know… About logic, yeah, skill should be more rewarding than luck.
But yeah, usually people get what, 15%-20% crit chance ? That’s one shot out of five. And you don’t have to be THIS skilled to put one headshot out of five.
So even if it seems logical to reward skill more than luck, I think the skill/luck ratio here isn’t fair enough ^^