[Suggestion] Double-barrel as 2 separate rolls & small tweaks
Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 7:26 am
Sawed-Off is a pretty cool weapon, and I tried to use it a lot in my playthrough. While it's pretty useful sometimes I've come to conclusion that it becomes underwhelming fairly quickly and getting the advanced version at coil tier doesn't fix it. It has to do with current both-barrel mechanics and existence of Rapid Fire.
I found it pretty odd that double-barrel salvo actually calculates like a single shot. It's the only weapon in the game with this controversy since you use 2 ammo and it's not a special ammo-consumming ability to justify only a single roll.
The difference is actually pretty big. Having only 1 roll means that we have linear damage distribution, damage boosting items/abilities apply only once and there could be only one crit with crit damage similar to single-shot. That's ~11% to do min damage on shots with ballistic version while it would be ~1% if you shoot twice with single-barrel. It's often not worth to point-blank M2 enemies with 12-13 HP (who I think should be the main targets for a sawed-off) when you've got the chance, too risky because of damage distribution and later on when you can have a mag shorty it's often weaker or just not better than rapid fire since you don't roll for a crit twice. I suggest making it similar to Cyclic Fire calculations, but for 2 shots.
Sawed-off seems like a somewhat useful part of a crit-focused ranger at first glance, but it's not the case. Conventional variant should have at least +3 crit damage like a regular ballistic shotgun so it would be 6 on double-barrel shots if you score two crits. It lacks synergy with early-game Close & Personal and it's a relatively weak choice for a class who shoots at mid/long range most of the time, Walk Fire is just a strong option overall for any build at LCPL. You would also miss Locked On if you want an extra shot for this thing and it's also a wery strong perk for Light 'Em Up > Rapid Fire 3-shot combo.
Coil tier sawed-off I think should have an AP effect like all other coil weapons. Yeah, it called "mag shorty" but it requires advanced coilguns and have similar design so you would totally expect an AP effect, we've got it on the pistol after all.
There's already a lot of restrictions for this weapon so I don't think that following changes would make it imbalanced in any way. I'd say it still would be underwhelming but to a somewhat lesser extent and that's someting to begin with.
I found it pretty odd that double-barrel salvo actually calculates like a single shot. It's the only weapon in the game with this controversy since you use 2 ammo and it's not a special ammo-consumming ability to justify only a single roll.
The difference is actually pretty big. Having only 1 roll means that we have linear damage distribution, damage boosting items/abilities apply only once and there could be only one crit with crit damage similar to single-shot. That's ~11% to do min damage on shots with ballistic version while it would be ~1% if you shoot twice with single-barrel. It's often not worth to point-blank M2 enemies with 12-13 HP (who I think should be the main targets for a sawed-off) when you've got the chance, too risky because of damage distribution and later on when you can have a mag shorty it's often weaker or just not better than rapid fire since you don't roll for a crit twice. I suggest making it similar to Cyclic Fire calculations, but for 2 shots.
Sawed-off seems like a somewhat useful part of a crit-focused ranger at first glance, but it's not the case. Conventional variant should have at least +3 crit damage like a regular ballistic shotgun so it would be 6 on double-barrel shots if you score two crits. It lacks synergy with early-game Close & Personal and it's a relatively weak choice for a class who shoots at mid/long range most of the time, Walk Fire is just a strong option overall for any build at LCPL. You would also miss Locked On if you want an extra shot for this thing and it's also a wery strong perk for Light 'Em Up > Rapid Fire 3-shot combo.
Coil tier sawed-off I think should have an AP effect like all other coil weapons. Yeah, it called "mag shorty" but it requires advanced coilguns and have similar design so you would totally expect an AP effect, we've got it on the pistol after all.
There's already a lot of restrictions for this weapon so I don't think that following changes would make it imbalanced in any way. I'd say it still would be underwhelming but to a somewhat lesser extent and that's someting to begin with.