It is awkward. Tying it to emptying your ranged weapon’s magazine would be a lot more natural, but would be overly effective on the Crossbow and subpar on Volley. Not sure how to improve it.
Perhaps:
“Emptying your magazine or firing 5 shots, whichever is highest, increases power and attack speed by 15% for 15 seconds.”
Crossbow would have to fire 5 shots, while Saltz’ other ranged weapons have to empty their magazine. High synergy with Repeater Pistol due to alt fire. Doesn’t solve it for Volley, but it would still be usable and Volley already has Weight of Fire.
This would help untie BH from Hunter and Scrounger. We’d need to give BH one more ammo sustain option to compensate.
So BH would have for sustain:
Prized Bounty (not using ammo+turning effect into a crit for weapon trait purposes)
Salvaged Ammunition
We have three options for a third ammo sustain method - A passive, changing one of the talents on the level 10 row, or changing one of the ultimate talents
I’d personally prefer a passive to increase build flexibility. Something like:
“Tagging a target and killing it restores 10% of your ammunition. Can only trigger once every 10 seconds.”
Tagging is WHC’s thing, but I think this is fitting for a Bounty Hunter and that it’s a shame WHC hogs tagging interactions.
What I am saying is magazine size /=/ total current ammo pool. So 60% damage for repeater on full ammo, and 59% after 1 shot fired, then 58. 57… And so on.
The talent has to compete with open wounds, which is 20% debuff, which applies to melee and allies as well. So this talent should overall be much more powerful, since it only benefits ranged and BH himself.
EDIT:
You guys need to keep in mind that by removing crits from blessed shots, you have essentially removed all of BH’s ranged weapons apart from the crossbow. They would require extensive rework, which I doubt is of interest.
Sounds insane on paper, but from looking at the breakpoint calc it’s not overpowered except with Double-shotted vs bosses. This would make the talent work for all of Saltz’ weapons. Crossbow gets the least value from it, but has high base damage so it doesn’t need as much to reach breakpoints, and the other ones get more from it but have lower base damage, balancing it out. Do you think it should just increase damage or damage and range cleave?
I think it would be fine if Blessed Shots still penetrated armour and did damage equivalent to the crit damage it does now, but was not inherently counted as a crit by the game. So same dmg/armour pen but not linked to Hunter/Scrounger/RS. Ammo passive added to compensate lack of inherent interaction. Prized Bounty could make the game read it as a crit.
Some quick thoughts on weapon balance:
Crossbow could have 18 shots at base instead of 20 to put it between the Handgun and the Longbow, be less accurate while moving and not zoomed in, and have the 10% crit chance removed. Reload speed should be changed to 1.5s from 1.0s.
Repeater Pistol needs the slide that happens when dodging with melee and then switching to it fixed (could remove or make into a feature by making the slide extend the range of the dodge). I’d prefer its armour dmg on alt-fire to be higher instead of being a shotgun. 1.1 dodge distance instead of 1.0 and 4 dodges instead of 3 would match up with it’s quickswapping identity without stepping on BoP’s mobility.
I have no idea on cleave values to be honest, but I think simply having damage would be fine. Also, the higher ammo pool weapons spend way more ammunition, so they potentially lose their damage bonus much quicker, which also kind of balances it out if you ask me.
Didn’t think about the double-shotted interaction. I just assumed it was applied to his ranged weapon only? Obviously 60% damage for double-shotted is wicked strong. Then again, it already has 20% damage now, and applies WHC debuff to bosses, which is also completely insane.
Fair enough. What happens then if you crit with a blessed shot? double of double damage?
I just wanted to point out that blessed shots could give the exact same damage profile as a crit, just not count as a crit for procs. While I agree the ensuing rework is too much work this late in the game, I do think BH being disentangled from crits would be a much healthier basis to build upon, allow ammo regen and other unique benefits to be incorporated into his talents/kit, whereas his current interaction with scrounger ensures he’ll never get this, leading to his current feast or famine ammo extremes based solely on whether or not you take scrounger.
As I said, I assume it’d be too much work at this point to rebuild him this way, but can’t help but speculate a little here.
The main reason I personally would like to see ranged cleave added to Weight of Fire is that in combination with inspired shot you could regain the marauder/gor cleave breakpoint for volley bow at the reasonable cost of open wounds. This would allow volley bow to exist as a real horde clear option again though ideally Weight of Fire + enhanced power would be enough to reach that cleave breakpoint, but Weight of Fire would need to give volley around 20% more cleave for that to happen so I dunno if that’s likely to happen. If 12% cleave + enhanced power is enough to hit some interesting cleave break points for BoP (haven’t tested this) then that would also lend to interesting BoP builds with a niche unique and a little different to how WHC can use the weapon.
The only reason I wouldn’t advocate for Weight of Fire giving a flat 20% additional ranged cleave on top of its current effect is what that might do to crossbow’s cleave, though giving up Open Wounds for only 1% more power would probably be enough of a drawback that crossbow would still never run it. So actually maybe it would be fine to just add 20% ranged cleave to its effect? Might even have an interesting synergy with Rep Pistol’s alt fire if you wanted to spec it into more of an infantry clearing shotgun build (obviously not optimal but might be a fun choice and good enough).
After playing around with Steel Crescendo more, it’s not actually half bad.
Obviously it could be better but if BH had a safer, more reliable way to recover ammunition while empty then I could actually see builds and play-styles revolving around dipping in and out of zero ammunition.
It really isn’t though, since hovering around 0 ammunition is horrible, since you never know when a special might show up.
Depending on the build (different combinations of salvaged ammunition/prized bounty etc), you lose out on hunter/damage reduction. You also trade away open wounds by default, which is an absurdly strong tier 2 talent.
Without even accounting for the opportunity cost of losing said talents/hunter, it’s still barely worth using, since the risk of walking around with 0 ammo as a ranged career is too crippling.
The talent needs buffs, because it’s pointless and bad at the moment. Pretty much trading away being a ranged career, to be a slightly better (but still bad) melee career.
Using either scrounger or salvaged ammo with crossbow and steel crescendo feels almost like a useable build to me. With good management you can generally avoid running completely dry whole keeping SC up a good amount of the time. It’s worth noting that 15% power seems to be straight power in this instance, so does indeed affect cleave, stagger, and ranged damage (which applies to your final shot itself I’m fairly sure), so it does more for you than just make you kill things faster in melee
To me the major issue is always when I’m on my last shot and there’s a special that needs sniping. Less of an issue using scrounger, but then you are literally running around on 1 ammo most of the time with is 1 slip up off running dry. To me the main issue is still SA not proccing on special kills, and SC’s duration just being a bit too short to get reliably good uptime on it. In short, it’s still not quite worth it for the amount of micro required + opportunity cost as you pointed out. I don’t think it’s that far off being useable though.
Of course this is heavily compounded by his poor THP options, which just makes melee generally not too desirable for him
Edit: I should also have pointed out that @Velsix idea of making both SA and SC proc at 10% or less ammo would already make both talents FAR more forgiving to use effectively. I’d personally go a step further though, and have SC stay active as long as you are at or below 10% ammo, then deactivate 10-15 seconds after going above the 10% ammo threshold.
I wasn’t using Salvaged Ammunition or Prize Bounty. Scrounger + Melee reset and just micromanaging my ammo/last shot bonus. It seemed to work very well with Crossbow, Volley and Repeater Pistol
Not to mention, Open Wounds and Hunter are both damage bonuses, not stagger or cleave bonuses.
That setup gave 15% power, 15% attack speed and 15% melee/ranged damage bonus.
Simply saying, if Bounty Hunter had safer ammunition recovery while out of ammo then the talent would become far more viable and safer to run.
And then you lost hunter (which I already covered in my post), which more or less offsets the entire boon of SC, except now you’ve of course lost open wounds and given yourself the risk of running out of ammo on literally every shot you make and locked you out of using ranged weapons with blessed shots on cd. Let’s not forget that open wounds works in melee and applies to allies for bigger units as well.
The talent would indeed be better, if he had a safe, quick and easy way to regen ammo, no one is denying that. We are simply saying the talent is trash in it’s current state, which is true. The tradeoffs are huge, for a minimal situational gain. The talent is simply not worth picking up ever in it’s current state, in comparison to it’s counterpart (which really is only open wounds, because weight of fire is also trash).
Yeah, I think this is a great idea, but lingering effect is not necessary I think. I needs some drawbacks, since 15 as/power is crazy good.
edit: Actually, you might be right, since you’d constantly bump over the limit if you stuck at 10%, which might be majorly annoying lel.
Yeah otherwise with the modified salvaged ammo every time you kill an elite/special you’d get the ammo and instantly lose the bonus. It’d probably actually be very hard to keep up lol. As you pointed out, you’re already losing Open Wounds and probably damage reduction/move speed to run it effectively, + being at 10% ammo or less is already pretty restrictive for a bunch of his weapons, so I think that would be downside enough.
Blessed Combat is extremely valuable and pretty much gives the player complete control over their crits and ammo sustain, assuming they’re running Scrounger.
Prize Bounty mitigates ammo loss and is a solid alternative for Hunter playstyles and is kind of a hidden DPS boost (Mitigating reload time)
Cruel Fortune is overshadowed by the other 2 talents but is still a solid choice for crossbow and volley.
BoP is bit of a trigger happy weapon, but has the same ammo return as Crossbow while having lower value per shot. Cruel Fortune could be something different for synergy with BoP.
One of Steel Cresendo’s biggest issues is that it essentially forces you to take Dual Action, which is quite a hard sell over Job Well Done. Not only do you get the 30% DR, you also won’t be worried about specials popping up, which as BH should be your main concern.
I would change Steel Cresendo to either,
A: Firing the last shot of your magazine grants 15% attack speed and power for 5 seconds. Running out of ammunition entirely grants this bonus for 15 seconds (25-30 seconds?)
Or B: On firing your last shot, gain 10% power, attack speed and damage reduction. This bonus is lost upon gaining ammunition
Dual action could also use a buff. Losing 30% DR is seriously rough, and unless you’re using repeater pistol, it’s pretty difficult to run out of ammunition
After reading through the OP again I can confidently say that if this rework was actually adopted by FS I would be extremely happy with BH, in terms of both balance and enjoyment to use. There would be a lot of build options, and they’d all work well without being oppressively strong (I’m pretty sure, can never be 100% till you see it in action).
Still not sure about indiscriminate blast, I’d personally prefer it be weaker, if anything, but on an extremely short cooldown (like at least an effective 75% CDR). Your idea sounds like a lot of fun though, so I’d be keen to see it in action for sure.
As mentioned before, I think a flat 20% ranged cleave bonus would be about perfect to add to Weight of Fire’s effect (your post currently doesn’t specify the amount of cleave).
@Brytarn Just tagging you to make sure all the thought us massive nerds have put into this is at least seen. If any of these ideas (or all? ) sound good to you, maybe we could give em a try come next beta (due before end of the year I think?). Please and thank you kindly
I’m not happy with the version of Indiscriminate I have listed either. It’s a bit limiting as it forces BH to be near enemies. Perhaps the current version with just a passive CDR instead of the cooldown regen would work?
“Modifies Victor’s pistol to fire two blasts of shield-penetrating pellets in a wider cone that send Victor backwards. Cooldown reduced by 60%.”
I’m worried about giving it higher CDR because it’s horde dps with a conc pot would make this meta even on DWONC3, and at 75% + CDR on trinket it’s at 10.5 seconds which would make Handmaiden and FK both jealous of how much BH could spam it, even if it didn’t get the other benefits in the rework.
At 60% it’s 28 seconds, + trinket CDR it becomes 21 which is fairly reasonable.
At its current power I agree it’d be too much, which is why I’d personally make it a bit weaker generally (whether through lower damage or less pellets), then give it a really low cooldown, so it’s like a pocket blunder you can pull out a few times per horde. Idea stolen shamelessly from @anon75893681 a while back.
Your suggestion is good, I’d just prefer see it have its own playstyle completely (weakish but kinda spammy).
Blessed Combat works best with Repeater/Crossbow, so it makes sense for one of the talents to have some BoP synergy as it doesn’t quickswap as quickly as the other two for Blessed Strikes purposes.
I had difficulty thinking of good BoP synergies due to the overlap with all of Saltz’ range weaps (Crossbow/BoP both have reload speed, Repeater/BoP both have fire rate, BoP/Volley both have high clip counts).
How about:
“Dodging with your range weapon reduces the cooldown of Blessed Shots by 2 seconds, up to an 8 seconds reduction.”
BoP has 99 dodges and 1.25 dodge range so it’s the best at it.
“Hitting the same target twice with a range attack reduces the cooldown of Blessed Shots by 2 seconds.”
This would work for a range heavy/range spam build.
“Every second shot reloaded reduces the cooldown of Blessed Shots by 2 seconds.”
This would only count individual reloads, so it would be bad for the Repeater Pistol and Volley.
“Hitting an enemy with a blessed shot halves the cooldown of Blessed Shots.”
The idea here is using the crit as soon as you get it to get maximum value. So if you use it at 10s, it reduces it to 5s which is a 5s reduction, but at 7s it would only reduce it by 3.5s
The simplest solution could be reducing Cruel Fortune to 5 seconds.
At it’s current power it does more infantry damage on both non-crit and crits than the blundebuss. On non-crits it does the same armour damage, but on critical hits it does less armour damage. It’s got a weird damage profile.
I think it would be too effective at cc, particularly on bosses. Huntsmen and RV do shotgun spam well, so I personally think it would be more fitting for Indiscriminate to have higher impact. I’d be fine with your suggestion as well though, would be better than the live version and it would still be a unique playstyle for BH.
The problem with this is it’s too effective with the Crossbow (this weapon is the source of over half of BH’s balancing issues). However, with a modification your idea can work well without being overly synergistic with the Xbow.
“Emptying your magazine or firing 6 shots, whichever is highest, increases power and attack speed by 15% for 15 seconds.”
So the Crossbow has to fire 6 shots, while the others have to empty their magazines because they have magazines larger than 6 shots.
This is how Necessary Means worked but with different values. While I prefer this to the live talent, it would still run into the same issues.
I was worried about this myself. With the reload effect removed, the live version would definitely be lacking. I have this listed in the main post’s explanations/detailed section but forgot to update the point in the Condensed List until recently:
“While at 10% or less ammunition, dealing the most damage to an elite or special by the time it dies restores 20% of max ammunition.”
This is more reliable/forgiving than the live version, since you get a few more chances at 10% ammo, it doesn’t rely on you dealing the killing blow and it works on specials.
These are all fair points which I hadn’t considered. You could either commit hard to the low cooldown option and remove its boss stagger, or go the route you suggest and make it higher impact. Both could certainly be effective and a viable choice, I’d just be happy to have a reason to pick it at all honestly.
I’d just add to this that such a change would also make it a decently reliable ammo generation option on its own, letting all his weapons run Hunter much more comfortably without running dry which is pretty damn impactful to my mind and anything that helps BH ween himself off his crippling scrounger addiction is a very good change in my books.
) sound good to you, maybe we could give em a try come next beta (due before end of the year I think?). Please and thank you kindly 