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.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XLKQOSker6X38Flzxd8EzLcNIPKdi9E2xOO0xO8DM2c/edit?usp=sharing

Sidearms are a pretty unbalanced aspect in Dust 514. Some sidearms are or were so powerful that they took the place of Light weapons, while others are so useless that you are better off running without a sidearm.

Another imbalanced aspect of sidearms is pistols versus submachine guns. In my opinion a pistol should have a higher DPS than a submachine gun but be more specific in usage, while a submachine gun should be a bit more of a generalist weapon.

Also range v DPS should also apply to side arms, meaning that the DPS scale should go Gallente (at highest) - Minmatar - Amarr - Caldari (at lowest) while the range scale would be the inverse.

Spreadsheet v.1 suggested changes:

>Equalized the range of the Bolt Pistol (45), Magsec SMG (40), and the Ion Pistol (24)
>Bolt pistol received a 5% Damage increase
>Magsec SMG received a 5% Damage reduction (recoil should be slightly decreased to compensate)
>Ion Pistol received a 25% Damage increase
>Ion Pistol received a +3 clip increase
>Ion Pistol should overheat at around 80% or enough so 3-4 shots will overheat it after the charged shot.
>Submachine gun received a 5% Damage increase (no changes to variants yet)
>Equalized the blast radius of the flaylock pistol tiers to 1.50 meters

Items required for spreadsheet v.2 are: feedback on v.1, optimal ranges for the Scrambler pistol and its variants, optimal ranges for the Submachine gun and its variants, and any ideas you have (that can be done server side) to help fix sidearms.

>Equalized the blast radius of the flaylock pistol tiers to 1.50 meters

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.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XLKQOSker6X38Flzxd8EzLcNIPKdi9E2xOO0xO8DM2c/edit?usp=sharing

Sidearms are a pretty unbalanced aspect in Dust 514. Some sidearms are or were so powerful that they took the place of Light weapons, while others are so useless that you are better off running without a sidearm. Going by my spreadsheet pistols have higher DPS than SMGs but SMGs have a higher damage per clip.

Another imbalanced aspect of sidearms is pistols versus submachine guns. In my opinion a pistol should have a higher DPS than a submachine gun but be more specific in usage, while a submachine gun should be a bit more of a generalist weapon.

Also range v DPS should also apply to side arms, meaning that the DPS scale should go Gallente (at highest) - Minmatar - Amarr - Caldari (at lowest) while the range scale would be the inverse.

Spreadsheet v.1 suggested changes:

>Equalized the range of the Bolt Pistol (45M), Magsec SMG (40M), and the Ion Pistol (24M)
>Bolt pistol received a 5% Damage increase
>Magsec SMG received a 5% Damage reduction (recoil should be slightly decreased to compensate)
>Ion Pistol received a 25% Damage increase
>Ion Pistol received a +4 clip increase
>Ion Pistol should overheat at around 80% or enough so 3-4 shots will overheat it after the charged shot.
>Submachine gun received a 5% Damage increase (no changes to variants yet)
>Equalized the blast radius of the flaylock pistol tiers to 1.50 meters

Spreadsheet v.2 suggested changes:

>Increased direct damage of the Flaylock pistol by ~40% (272, 285, 300) ~32% (245, 257, 270)
>Some changes to the Assault Scrambler pistol (not final need range values) ROF set to 350 but damage lowered.
>Increased Magsec SMG so its DPS is only 2% lower not 5% lower.

Spreadsheet v.3 suggested changes:
>Removed the SMG damage buff of 5% because the SMG is pretty awesome as it is
>Gave the Scrambler pistols equal range values
>Buffed the Breach scrambler pistol by around 20% and gave it a range of 40 so its more of a long range pistol not short range
>Gave the Assault scrambler pistol a range of 28M and a small DPS reduction (5%), but the ROF is increased to 350.
>Increased ROF of the Scrambler pistol to 300, damage reduced accordingly NO DPS CHANGE.
>Increased ROF of the Breach SMG to 720 range set at 32M.
>Increased and equalized Range of SMG to 28M
>Reduced and equalized Range of Assault SMG to 24M.
>Increased clip of the Bolt pistol by +2.
>Reduced the clip of the Breach SMG to 54.

Feedback greatly appreciated along with range values for M209 Assault submachine gun, Boundless Breach SMG, Ishukone Assault SMG, TT-3 Assault Scrambler, TY-5 Breach Scrambler, and the Carthum Assault Scrambler.

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?

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.

The bolt pistol is pretty bad specially since it is a charged weapon you really have to aim very well between those charges or it will miss all the time. I increased the damage in the spreadsheet so it's dps doesn't suck but the above still remains true.

As for the magsec I did reduce the damage slightly so it's easier to balance it in the short range- long range aspect but I did add that it's recoil should be slightly reduced to counteract this.

As for the smg and scrambler I made no changes except a rof increase to the scrambler and some changes to the terrible variants but I do like how they perform now vanilla.

Do appreciate the feedback

No more ScP nerfs plz.
My soul can't take it.

For the love of all that is Holy, just buff it back to its prenerf stats...

for gods sake listen to the man and what the heck is up with the rof issue sometimes i can quickdraw magraw pewpewpewpewpewpew other times it sputters pewpew...pew..pew...pewpewpew

yes pewpews is the best way to explain it

That is called oversampling. The RoF nerf is the cause.

It happens when you pull the trigger before the weapon can fire again. It causes you to waste time on pulling the trigger, and effectively slows down the RoF.

That is called oversampling. The RoF nerf is the cause.

It happens when you pull the trigger before the weapon can fire again. It causes you to waste time on pulling the trigger, and effectively slows down the RoF.

I'm going to be completely honest, Assault ScP's were secretly OP and we all knew it. That thing had no disadvantage.

The RoF nerf honestly didn't do too much. I do get far less kills with my KLO-1 but that's because I'm not pray & sprayin' like we used to do. I think that we need to undo the nerf by 50%. Something that doesn't put it back to where it was because I think trigger spam was a little too prevalent thus people are oversampling it nowadays because they're still thinking like old ScPs, but at the same time something that makes the KLO-1 tie the TY-5.

Primarily my ScP kills come from the TY-5 which was untouched.

Perhaps a little RoF buff and a little precision buff hmm?

Part of the reason the AScPs were so good was because their RoF increase as the theirs went up as well.

I think they should have just standardized the RoF across the tiers.

400 for Standard and Tactical
425 for Assault
??? for Breach (can't remember what it was)
??? for Burst (can't remember what it was)