Baal Omniscient
L.O.T.I.S.
648
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Posted - 2013.09.26 20:55:00 -
[1] - Quote
Damage mods in general are an issue in this game and my reasoning is below. I am using the Duvolle AR as an example here, but the same issues hold true through any weapon category you choose to look at with the exception of weapons that can already ohk without damage mods. Just to be clear, this thread is in no way anti-AR, this thread is only to show that the damage mods need to be rethought as they are making it far too easy to kill even the best of suits in less than a couple seconds.
Or, to put it another way, the weapons aren't severely unbalanced in Dust. The weapons are mildly unbalanced, damage mods make them severely unbalanced. The higher damage you can do per shot with a weapon, the more damage is added with a damage mod. Also, the more rapidly a weapon fires, the more effect the damage mod has on a firefight. This may not appear bad on paper, but in practice it is completely unbalancing the game.
3 complex damage mods on a Duvolle AR with proficiency 5 gives you almost 54 damage per bullet. With a bonus to shields and a slight penalty to armor. With 60 bullets in a clip. Forget the 4, let's call it 50 so those bad at math can do the math easily this easily. 60 bullets times fifty damage per bullet is 3000 damage per clip.
The best heavy suits in the game average around 1300 HP. If you were to get no head shots at all, land all body shots on this heavy, it would take you only 26 rounds to kill the strongest suit in the game. At 750RPM, that's 12.5 bullets per second. Which means, with no head shots whatsoever, that heavy is dead in 2.08 seconds.
How about those scouts? They have a hard enough time as it is. Scouts vary in health greatly since they are always built for various things. You will almost never see two scout suits built the same way in the same match. But let's just say you are running a moderate amount of health because you want to keep your speed up. Let's say a proto shield tanked gallente scout eh?
We'll toss on a basic reactive plate for good measure. Health-wise, with armor and shield upgrades at 5, you are looking at one complex shield extender and one reactive plate, which takes the total health up to 365 total HP. 6 bullets from this weapon and you are crawling away, 7 and you are a stain on the floor. 7 bullets from a gun that fires 12.5 bullets per second.
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My proposed rebalance would have an effect on every infantry class that runs damage mods, and that goes for everything from HMGs to Forge Guns, Swarms to Lasers, SMG's to Nova Knives. Just keep that in mind.
Damage mods need the % that they adjust the damage output changed. For a basic damage mod, the damage output needs to be dropped to 2%, the enhanced to 4%, and the proto to 6% and the stacking penalties need to stay in place. Why?
A) This will hurt the damage mod stackers of the higher damage output weapons the hardest (snipers, AVers{I am AV, no bias against them}, mass drivers, forge guns, shotguns, scrambler rifles, etc), thus helping bring those weapons back in line with the rest of the weapons we have.
B) This will hurt the damage mod stackers of full auto weapons the second hardest (ARs, lasers, AScRs, SMG's, etc.).
C) This will slow the rate at which most gunfights are over, thus adding a little more tracking back into the gameplay. That drew a lot of people to Dust back in closed beta, myself included.
I've hated to see the gradual loss of a tracking shooter over the course of Uprising as hit detection and aiming got better, I hope it doesn't disappear completely. |
Baal Omniscient
L.O.T.I.S.
651
|
Posted - 2013.09.27 12:48:00 -
[2] - Quote
Zeylon Rho wrote:I think "Handheld Weapon Upgrades" provides very narrow options myself (just damage mods apparently).
We could probably have mods with actual drawbacks and some flavor without too much work, e.g.:
Heat Sink (Low Slot):
STD: 5% less heat production
ADV: 10% less heat production
PRO: 15% less heat production
Precision Servo Package (Low Slot):
STD: 4% faster reload
ADV: 8% faster reload
PRO: 12% faster reload
Clip Extender (Low Slot):
STD: +5% Magazine / +1 clip (whichever is greater)
PRO: +12% Magazine / +2 clip (whichever is greater)
Stabilizer set (High Slot):
STD: Recoil reduction +5%, accuracy recovery speed +5%
ADV: " " 10%, " " 10%
PRO: " " 15%, " " 15%
Barrel Modification (High Slot):
STD: 4% Damage Increase, 10% decrease to rate of fire, 15% more heat produced
ADV: 8% Damage Increase, 10% decrease to rate of fire, 20% more heat produced
PRO: 12% Damage Increase, 10% decrease to rate of fire, 20% more heat produced
...or you know, whatever. Weapon Mods could potentially be a lot more interesting than they are currently.
I would actually prefer these types of modules over blatant damage per bullet increases any day, but as it stands damage mods are still an issue that would be easy to fix and needs to be fixed soon.
Meeko Fent wrote:I have zero damage mods on any of my suits besides my kamikaze suits, and they still kill things at an extreme rate.
Base damage is much to high, not the stacking of damage mods.
They only exacerbate the issue.
Rollback the 10% damage buff. TTK will fall into line.
But, I can't disapprove of nerfing the power to two shot Fully Fit mil ISK dropshits and HAVn'ts.
I made it very clear in the beginning of the OP that damage mods were not the only issue, and obviously there are plenty of people who do not run damage mods, however damage mods are exacerbating the already troublesome issue of every weapon having too much damage output (with perhaps 1 or 2 exceptions). Not everyone makes use of damage mods, but anyone that does is using a module that gives a far more viable effect than any other high slot module in the game. They need to be toned down.
As for all weapons doing too much damage, we are supposed to see changes in 1.6. We'll see how that goes. |