Survivalist is defenitely OP but not really because of the ammo it grants the vet, but rather because you can fill your teammates powerful ranged weaponry and of course it also makes the other 2 auras useless
Proposed changes:
Survivalist now becomes a vet passive instead of an aura
Survivalist now only applies to the vet themselves, and not to their team
Survivalist cooldown reduced from 5s to 3s
Add new Aura, that increases weakspot damage dealt (25% or 30%)
Just simplify the aura and make it apply to Specialists only. Even without enemy spam, that we have now, it would restore a nice amount of ammo for everyone.
Or:
Rework the aura to make the Vet drop a special ammo case for one person to pick up. It would be like a medium ammo pack (since there’s only small and big ones in the game) but only one person would be able to use it.
I’ve been thinking more about hybrid Ogryn. You don’t really need to worry about ammo if you’re running something like the Rumbler, GG, or other low-ammo pool weapons. You mainly pull out your ranged for sniping or the occasional mag-dumping to suppress enemies or trim boss HP with the Ripper guns. As long as your Veteran is alive, you’re covered on ammo. Honestly, it’s great synergy in my opinion, It wouldn’t be the end of hybrid ogryns or anything if it was removed, but it’s definitely reassuring knowledge when putting together build comps.
I feel maybe this (your survivalist rework proposal) would indirectly buff scum ammo aura thingy that people say it’s op but nobody ever picks it forgotthenamesorry. Scum will become ammo printer person and teams that don’t relly too hard on shout might prefer scum ammo printer over a vet.
Gunlugger 60% return is still not enough by itself, I feel like either PBB or BLO need a “all your weapons have double the ammo pool” type node or just globally buff ogryn ammo pools in the weapons. Not necessarily literally written like that. This on top of ammo recovery, then we might have something.
Survivalist existing makes it hard to appropriately balance other classes ammo econ, it’s not great design. The one in VT2 made you pick who gets the ammo and only the ranged dwarf could bring it (meaning he will need much of it himself) setting that factor off and allowing all other ranged classes to have their own ammo econ mechanics without having to worry about exponential snowball from one such aura
Classes like gunlugger can’t be appropriately ranged without survivalist because if they could be then survivalist would just let them poop on the game firing 24/7 like old pickpocket HS did
They need to lower the impact it has on other classes ammo econ so that Vet isnt make or break for it anymore. Whole subclasses should not be balanced around 1 of another classes auras
Spitball but one working solution would be removing that aura and making it a talent or built in passive instead. Replace the aura with something fun for shooting instead. Then only allow that talent to fill up the veterans ammo, not other classes (or maybe only allowing it to fill other classes ammo if the vet himself is full)
This would achieve that Veteran alone doesn’t give the whole team multiple ammo boxes worth of ammo per mission anymore, but would still have an ammo sustain mechanic himself. It follows that then other classes ammo sustain can be balanced to no longer need a vet to function. Ogryns PBB change puts him pretty close but it’s not enough ammo sustain without a vet still, and it creates a dynamic where 1. ranged Ogryns have to pick the ult or they can’t be ranged ogryns properly and 2. those same ranged Ogryns are encouraged to not use their ranged weapons outside of the ult cooldown
Agree with the general idea but would prefer the replacement aura is something ranged weapon focused. Maybe a small fire rate + reload speed buff? Spread/recoil reduction? I dunno exactly but I’m sure we can be more interesting than weakspot damage.
i bring twin stubber gunlugger into havoc 40 and have more than enough ammo to pump the damage numbers to insane levels in premades and party finder lobbies, even when im not taking the most ammo and when theres no survivalist, and its due to the ammo refund. functionally, if you spend most your shooting during PBB, you are effectively doubling your ammo count because the 50% ammo that is refunded can also be for another refund (1/0.5 = 2). this means that effectively any ammo you get from any means is also functionally near doubled due to the overall efficiency. you still have to have some semblance of restraint, but what its at right now lets you shoot WAY more than you probably expect
I don’t actually think Survivalist is that overpowered right now, it seems well-balanced. The other two auras Vet has just suck. I still find myself needing to restock on ammo with Survivalist tagged, it just makes it last a bit longer.
I don’t consider teammate auras that relevant, anyways. It’s more of a passive encouragement to stick together rather than a ride-or-die strategy thing.
You also have a 1.25x total ammo increase from Ammo Stash. From memory ammo you pick up is based on your reserve ammo max so this also means 1.25x ammo pickups.
Then you have BLO, which at 15% chance not to consume ammo is an effective ~1.18 ammo multiplier.
Then of course the already mentioned 2x multiplier from PBB.
I won’t break down my full attempt at modelling how all these interact (it was a reducing series infinite sum, for those curious) but I’m pretty sure these all functionally act as separate multipliers to your total ammo.
2 X 1.25 X 1.18 = 2.95x effective ammo. Basically on average, if only firing during PBB, you have about triple the effective ammo compared to that gun being used without right tree.
Now obviously only firing during PBB is unrealistic, but I do think it’s worth noting just how all these different ammo conservation effects combine into an extremely hefty effective ammo increase. They all also affect any ammo you pick up, which means ammo pickups also go up to 3x further than without right tree.
And that’s also not factoring in how the increased ranged damage from right tree also functions as ammo conservation by requiring less shots to kill per target.
TL;DR yeah the PBB change, combined with the ammo conservation/increases already present in right tree, combines into a pretty enormous increase in effective ammo. I don’t think we’re in an era anymore where Ogryn NEEDS a survivalist Vet in the party to play a ranged build.
Edit: It’s mentioned down below that you get the PBB refund even on BLO procs that didn’t actually spend ammo. IF this is true the math changes a bit and after remodeling with a new series I get a total effective ammo increase of 3.6x.
I don’t mind social ammo, its a pretty useful gain if you utilize it but also no benefit otherwise and constantly on cooldown. I just think they messed up with the other 2 giving them such low value. Fire Team should definitely be Power scaling and not Damage. If you need any more explanation than that, read the Rampage modifiers again. Move speed I really hesitate with giving more, but that one should definitely be buffing mobility on the whole…like if you had +1 effective dodges and +20% sprint economy.
And on the subject of BLO and PBB, I’m pretty sure your ammo refund is based on how many times you shot, not how many bullets got used. I get like 50+ ammo back regularly from dumping 4 Rippergun magazines. Its pretty great.
I agree but I think it’s still kinda scuffed on Havocs and from what little i played with it so far I still wouldn’t wanna bring it without a vet.
Of course that’s H40 and H40 has different ammo econ but it still feels a little bad to be reliant on a friend picking a certain class before I can play I want. “Don’t balance around havoc” and everything but I feel like there’s a sweet spot where it works out on both fronts, it feels more like a fundamental design problem conceptually because other ranged classes are just fine not needing survivalist even on havocs. It’s a fine line for sure though as can be seen with pickpocket.
But also I think it would be way better if Ogryns ammo sustain was not tied to his ult, tie it to something else to allow for more fun freeform setups. Playing taunt ogryn with an otherwise full ranged single stubber build is actually really fun for example, but this implementation disallows you from having ammo econ with that. Purely build variety wise tying it to PBB is quite bad (for starters PBB sucks ass for half the ranged weapons), and Ogryn (still) needs build variety more than anything.
its definitely how it works, I just bothered to test it out and count. I had 2 BLO procs during a single magazine firing with 21 in the mag. at the end of the ult I got 13 rounds back.
A funny interaction I noticed is you can use the talent Back Off with a rumbler/kickback and can now generate ammo as ogryn, its really not efficient but its funny to think about.
get 9 stacks of Back Off and use PBB, either 2 separate times or just get lucky and shoot 2(or more) free shots due to BLO, you now get half of what you shot refunded back into reserve, but because you shot ‘free ammo’ you just get a little added to reserve without actually shooting any ammo