In the same way that Crossbow outclasses most ranged weapons on BH, it has to do with the fact that RV’s kit doesn’t synergize well with the weapon. He isn’t build around crits, he doesn’t get range increase, he has no passive ability to increase his ranged damage. Crossbow not only has 10% crit chance on ADS and zoom, but also very high crit damage, something BH can exploit to great effect. Crossbow also works pretty well with Zealot, as it allows him to hit pretty much all relevant break points, same with WHC with tag.
It only goes to show that Bardin has, at least on RV and Slayer, no good synergy between most of his weapons and his kit. IB has an amazing kit since last BBB and OE only needs some slight tweaks here and there.
tbh, RV doesn’t really boost his weapons much outside of Disengage.
His main strength is his ammunition sustain, otherwise he just has utility.
I would argue RV has great synergy with Crossbow, primarily Master of Improvisation + Firing Fury.
I’m just pointing out, Crossbow is an extremely versatile weapon so it’s odd to see another weapon out perform it in some areas while also being just as versatile.
Some aspect of it has gotta go, whether it be the way it cleans out elites or the way it cleans out monsters. Because right now it does too much of both.
Reducing the damage drastically but increasing fire-rate, ammunition and maybe reload speed could keep monster DPS high while eliminating a lot of this one shot potential.
Edit: Ah superarmour. What? The only person using a Handgun on CWs is Huntsmen. It’s still terribly inefficient on RV during his ult to do that.
Currently it only takes Enhanced Power or a single property to bodyshot SV. That goes up to EP + 2 properties or just 3 properties for Bestigors. If it took two more properties we’re looking at a full commitment to ranged dps for bodyshot breakpoints or using the weapon to land headshots on elites. The fact that it can bodyshot Packmasters with just EP while having Handgun/Crossbow levels of cleave and 6 shots per clip is absurd. On Engineer you can just spray it into a horde and guarantee a dead Packmaster regardless of skill (for reference, BoP’s cleave is incredibly low compared to most ranged weapons and is not even half of that of the Masterwork Pistol). How is that not too much monster damage?
Ranger Veteran has Firing Fury which works very well with all of his ranged weapons except the Throwing Axes. BH has better synergy because he’s a purely dps oriented career, while RV is support oriented which isn’t related to his weaponry. Master of Improvisation works well with all of them, and Last Resort can be used with Throwing Axes. I’m not even going to touch on the insanity of his Grudgeraker builds.
Slayer has plenty of synergy with Bardin’s melee weapons. A good example of a career that doesn’t is GK. What Slayer lacks is build flexibility and suffers from 3 mostly dead talents and 1 that is forced on anyone who wants to get creative with their builds. The Warpick is overshadowed by the Cog Hammer and I can’t foresee how they can be balanced with each other at all. Similar issue with Dual Hammers vs 1h Hammer.
GK has incredible variety on his choice of weaponry. Just because everyone focuses on the crit-x-sword build doesn’t mean the rest doesnt work as well. Greatsword is an absolute best of a weapon on him when running Virtue of the Ideal, for example.
That’s not a great synergy. It’s only 5% more power than FK gets with Have At Thee and Comrades in Arms. The Greatsword is a low base damage weapon that gets most of its damage by hitting multiple enemies. This means it has high synergy with attack speed bonuses and decent synergy with power bonus. So when comparing:
FK: 25% power, 30% attack speed.
GK: 30% power, 25% damage on the first target hit and Smiter.
Merc: 40% power, 10% attack speed, 25% cleave power, 5% crit chance and Smiter.
Of course GK has his quests but that’s a coin flip. The only special synergy he has is the Str pot duty, which the Greatsword does benefit largely from Str pots (very high increase in super armour damage). Add in the fact that GK doesn’t even have temp hp on cleave and I don’t see it being an effective option.
Yeah. And he gets 25% more alpha strike damage on first target, something that allows you to hit alot of important break points. Also, I am pretty sure FK doesn’t have access to the same stagger talents.
Try it, then. It absolutely eats hordes and mixed hordes. And patrols.
That 25% means a whole lot more for weapons that have high base damage. The return on a weapon like the Greatsword isn’t great.
What important breakpoints am I missing? Merc can already 1 shot headshot Marauders with the heavy on Cata with just 2 properties and a standard Reikland Reaper, MtM and Smiter build, while also doing a lot more damage to every other enemy in the swing’s cleave. The only important breakpoint I can find is stagger related. That is, Merc can push SV out of light/running attacks without any properties (just Reaper and MtM) while GK requires properties.
GK has 15% more damage than Merc on the first target. On all other enemies in the cleave it’s 10% less. Merc has 25% more cleave, 10% attack speed and 5% crit chance.
I tested the dps of both Merc and GK with it. The test was 20 Fanatics stacked on one spot. The dps value I got with Merc was 300-ish. With GK it was 200-ish.
I tested the effective dps by going to the start of AtG and fighting a horde with it, once on Merc and once on GK. Merc was noticeably better at handling hordes with it while having a faster clear speed, and had more safety due to Stand Clear and his attack speed.
I don’t think its monster damage is a problem personally, no more than GK, BH, and Shade’s monster killing ult is a problem. The MW pistol synergy with RV disengage ability grants him the same monster kill efficiency as the fore mentioned heros.
If the monster kill damage was a problem, Shade’s ult would of been nerfed eons ago, and we’d never have GK’s career in its current state. These things are fun to have and people enjoy them, I don’t see the game sense in nerfing them.
I think people just don’t like that the master work pistol has a lot of utility which is a new concept for a range weapon, and one I really enjoy and hope to see more of in the future, as the Warhammer universe is famous for having incredibly OP things. The Skaven succeed in blowing up Morrslieb in the lore. (An entire moon) So I’d love to see more amazing Warhammer content in the future.
It’s something of a hybrid between a handgun and blunderbuss.
To be clear, utility just means: “useful, especially through being able to perform several functions.”
So it having the ability to snipe and have high dps in close range is the utility I’m referring too.
No, I mean utility as in the piston pistol has two unique firing modes, allowing it to perform two separate functions. Versatility is a whole other thing.
Also the piston pistol is more closely related to the handgun than the crossbow.
I compare it to Crossbow because it performs extremely similar to Crossbow in every range with the exception of close range.
Similar med - long range breakpoints, similar horde clearing speed and similar ammo pool but stronger at close range, that’s why I refer to it as an amped up crossbow.
GK and Shade require their ults and potions in order to match the masterwork pistols monster dps. If the RV decides to drop their ult and pop a potion themselves then there’s just zero competing with its damage. BH is the only one that can kill a monster faster but that requires consistent ult headshots and a potion.
Also shade ult should have been nerfed ages ago; double shotted on BH could also use a nerf and tbh Grail Knight could probably use some rebalancing.
