In the latest link in a chain of a long, long series of threads, we come once more to Saltzpyre’s Repeater Pistol.
With the latest Elf Patch, Fatshark did show some regard to altering long-held talents and abilities of Shade/SOT, and they have stated that a Big Balance Patch might be a thing for the future.
As it stands now, I think everyone can agree that the Repeater Pistol needs changing. The real question we have now is, how should it be changed?
I am not terribly familiar with specific mechanics such as the ‘finesse’ modifier the M1 shot has, but if it is similar to the one-handed sword’s ‘finesse’ modifier, that means it has further headshot damage. For an 8-shot weapon, that is very nice. Assuming one has the capacity to hit multiple headshots in a row, you can stack up a good deal of damage with it on the M1.
M2, or the Spin-Fire, was changed to have a shotgun-like effect should memory serve correctly. Personally, it really never worked all that well when alt-firing into a horde. It deals about a quarter to half of a regular shotgun blast from Kruber or Bardin when I compare it to my memories, and is the real culprit of any controversy on the weapon.
Namely, the interaction between Bounty Hunter’s Prize Bounty free-shot, the Repeater Pistol’s Altfire. With Hunter included in, if you don;t worry about ammo preservation. Its a fine balancing act to not give it enough damage to be the pick of choice, and to make it not underpowered and a poor choice of ranged weapon.
Give it too much power, and BH Saltzpyre has what is essentially a free ult every 10 seconds, doing a massive amount of damage at whim. Too little, and why pick it at all over things like the Brace of Pistols, Griffonfoot Pistols, Crossbow, Repeater Crossbow?
Unfortunately, I think its been on the opposite side of the ‘might-be-too-powerful’ scale for a long time. The Single-Shot Crossbow is the got-to for damaging individual shots, with its great accuracy, and enhanced critchance while zooming in. Repeater Crossbow, or Griffonfoot weapons absolutely mulch hordes. Brace of Pistols does everything decently.
So far its all problems, so, what can we do for solutions?
Other than adding in some things that have happened in the past through bugs, because I have very fond memories of the time-frame in which every individual shot of the alt-fire counted for ammo recovery with Scrounger, I propose instead a rather large ammo buff.
One suggestion I’ll give is that the regular ammo pool should be increased drastically. On the level of Bounty Hunter’s Saltpyre’s enhanced ammunition pool of 60 shots should be the new base amount of the weapon. Someone will probably pinpoint the number of shots Scrounger will give back at BH’s then even-further enhanced pool, which might as well be me, doing so on a calculator, it should be 90 at 150% of 60. 90 shots, and at 5% of that returned with Scrounger gets you, 4.5, so maybe a bit less/more to get it to a single number.
Personally, I won’t get into all the different damage thresholds that changing the base damage numbers would involve. Combined with the power and stagger system, it gets rather complex.
My closing bit is that I just did a quick test at max power level with the base keep dummies, broken as they may be. At what I’d consider mid-range, with no headshots, with the armored dummy set in front of the unarmored one and standing in the doorway to the smithy, the BOP was doing around 30, while the Repeater M1 was doing around 10.
I’d at least like the repeater pistol to have more than 15 shots over the generalist weapon which does 2X or more its damage.
Thoughts, hopefully some from people more familiar with the precise widgets that changing around the damage values would mess with?