The basic scrambler pistol should go to 60 damage and 375 rounds per minute. That keeps the DPS very close to current, makes it more comfortable to fire, and nerfs the insane headshot bonus.

The assault and burst variants can be scaled accordingly. Even after spending plenty of time with it after the nerf I feel useless with it against these strafers.

please tell me that thats a joke. The flay lock is the only sidearm that is worse than the ion pistol

the blast radius should be like 3m for all tiers, not 1.5. Also, the ion pistol doesn't need a 25% damage increase if you reduce heat buildup, as it will do > damage than a shotgun before overheating.

Other than that, I do like the changes, as they seem semi balanced (other than OP ion pistol)

Flaylock needs a lot more than just blast radius increase.

Problems: Damage.
With a 3 round clip, you look at a damage of 462 per clip with splash (544 with direct)
Also: Remember that every suit has shields. At least 150 in most cases. Sometimes more. You require 1 shot to get rid of shields (Direct). Heavies also have splash resistance, so splash damage doesn't work well against them.

Solution: Increase direct damage. Direct damage needs to hit HARD. Make it 200, 250, 300 for the tiers. With direct shots to armor, you could take down a heavy if you had good aim. Leave splash damage where it's at. Splash is for finishing off targets quickly. Direct is for surprise take downs or for heavily tanked targets that move slow.

Problems: Splash application.
Flaylock is useless at Basic. Barely Useable at ADV and Decent at PRO. Splash is the reason. Make 1.5m splash universal (Which you already did)

Max Skills buff it out to ~1.9m splash. Very good. The splash damage is low, so this should balance itself out a bit.


You now have a powerful anti-armor sidearm, and a decent finisher. Direct Damage is necessary to get full effect out of the gun, and shield suits will still be a problem.

NEVER TOUCH THE ROF. NEVER AGAIN.

That is all.

EDIT: Problem with the Ion Pistol. You can technically fire it indefinitely without charge. You only overheat if you hold down the trigger too long while firing (And the gun attempts to part charge each individual shot)

If you make charge shots only heat up to 80%, you could fire the shot, and then empty the clip without problems.

A less elegant solution would be to make the gun consume 8 shots to fire a charge, and then to remove overheat.

The SMG and the Scrambler Pistol are balanced with each other. The SMG is more popular because the Scrambler Pistol requires you to be a good shot to realize its potential. Pistols are meant to be Skill Shot weapons.

The MagSec SMG is balanced. It does a lot of damage and has a long range, but this is balanced by a significant amount of kick, even when fully skilled. While it is less user friendly than the SMG, it is a good choice when combined with short range weapons such as the HMG. It has its place and does its job.

The Ion Pistol and Flaylock pistol are underpowered. They should be buffed to be closer in effectiveness to the Scrambler Pistol. (Personally I think the Ion Pistol should be a pocket Shotgun.)

I have not used the Bolt Pistol. How does it compare to the Scrambler Pistol?

There is no reason to reduce the range of the bolt pistol down to the standard level on all three tiers. It should be homogenous with proto level since its the defining aspect of the weapon and the subpar dps. Range over power. With some of the range buffs proposed in the sheet, to maintain balance there should be a clear cut winner in range.

I'm really hesitant to nerf things like the ScP or SMG. In my opinion both are at the level that sidearms should be at, and the other sidearms simply need to be brought up to the same level of effectiveness. SMG probably needs a nerf. I think ScP is at the level of balance that all other sidearms should be.

Just DO NOT TOUCH THE NOVA KNIVES. They are perfect. I'd kill for a backpedal penalty, but even without one they're still a complete blast.

Having put together my own pistol proposal and spreadsheet a couple of weeks ago I'm going to drop it off here for more comments. We really do need to get rid of one of the three threads running on this topic right now though so we can consolidate the conversation.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1y11ucsP7Rz710nL8iYQxGljxHtdspHiHyVdIFFNOdDc/edit?usp=sharing

I totally agree that pistols need to have the same inverse relationship between damage and range which I put in but kept the difference rather small. I agree that this is something that could be made more dramatic.

I will extend the same invite to you that I extended to Kagehoshi. In the interest of presenting a single unified proposal to the Dev's from the community would you like to comine forces and spreadsheets? Message me in game if you are interested with your gmail account and I'll set you up with editing access on my spreadsheet. Perhaps we can combine this thread into Kagehoshi's thread too or vice versa.

Smg= fine
Scambler ;switch charge with ion. Add more heat to single shots less to charge but cost more ammo and doesnt overheat with one charge.
Flaylock; drop bonus to area and make it direct damage, normalize area to 1.75m for non breach reduce splash add direct damage .
Ion pistol ; remove charge and heat , make mag size 24. Done
Nk; fine, vehicle damage should go to 20% but not a priority
Bolt pistol ; add range and damage , lower dps with lower rof. increase headshoot to 250% -400%, somewhere in that range.
And this will probably go on deaf ears but thats how they should be balanced.

Not only a bumb but to revist the ion pistol dps was brought up to me and i went to actually look at its dps. As it stands now its less then the smg so with an added 12 damage across the board w/ minor scaling on teirs above this would be all that is needed. This even acounts 4 its semi auto fire. 62 base damage 4 standard from 50 with rof remaining the same.