Weapon Balancing

Hail 2 Da Chimp · 13-09-2016 11:23am #1

I thought I'd start a separate thread for weapon balancing discussion - so we can keep all the salt / discussion confined to one place.

The recent Destiny patch 2.4.0 included changes the weapon balancing in preparation for Rise of Iron, you can read the patch notes here:
https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/45154/7_Destiny-Weapon-Tuning---Rise-of-Iron

Hail 2 Da Chimp · 13-09-2016 11:24am

One of the topics getting a lot of focus (again) is how legendary Hand Cannons are being treated by Bungie.

Discussion started with this video from Triplewreck:

Pwadigy gave a further explanation and breakdown on his Reddit post here (well worth the read):
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/52cmwt/massive_breakdown_on_bloom_and_handcannons/

To summarise:

"Ghost bullets" are real.
What people are calling ghost bullets / Bloom is a design mechanic taken from the Range and Accuracy stat of a weapon.
Actual engagement ranges aren't working the way Bungie thinks they are working because of handcannons bloom, and flaws with pulses and scouts.

Today Bungie have replied to the Ghost Bullets / Bloom debate:
https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/212825953

dudeeile · 13-09-2016 11:27am

Salt goes here you say.

BUNGIE STOLE MY BOUNTIES.

I'm getting that on a t-shirt.

Generic Dreadhead · 13-09-2016 11:36am

I took some random weapons for a spin last night.

High Impact Pulse rifles are unusable. Their time to kill is atrocious.

Auto Rifles still don't feel "good" and are very punishing for missing consistent headshots (will usually get you killed), Suros Regime is ok if you use Spinning up and start pre-firing before your engagements from the Hip and then ADS for the latter half of the mag as you engage

I tried using Doctrine of Passing, it didn't feel great, may have been a range issue, felt like I was always dying when my opponent was at 1/5th health

Grenades and Horseshoes nerf is very noticeable, maybe missing 1/3 kills I previously would have gotten.

Fabian Strategy is a face melter up close, especially if you land consistent critical hits

Truth feels like it takes FOREVER to lock on, I dunno wtf is happening there, never beeps.

Thinking Hight Rate of Fire Machine Guns could be worth a spin in PvP/PvE, some of them are very fun.

Boolean Gemini gives 2 Exotic shards if you feel like using some motes on it before dismantling.

Mitch Connor · 13-09-2016 11:42am

I think the overall issue with the handcannons and ghost bullets is the expectation for guns to be 100% accurate in normally ideal scenarios.

I'm not sure where i stand on it to be honest - I can see a reason for guns to put bullets within a percentage range of exactly where the gun was aimed, rather than exactly where it was aimed.

Is it the same for all weapons? TripleWreck showed it on an AutoRifle too. I've seen people say similar for Shotguns. If all guns experience this variation on aim/accuracy then it is 'fair'.

PetKing · 13-09-2016 12:43pm

Don't know was it in my head, but I took it for a spin the other day and had all good games with it. Fast rate of fire, no twitching while ADS, dancing left to right and popping headshots. Won the majority of engagements. Useable.

Hail 2 Da Chimp · 13-09-2016 1:13pm

PetKing wrote: »

Don't know was it in my head, but I took it for a spin the other day and had all good games with it. Fast rate of fire, no twitching while ADS, dancing left to right and popping headshots. Won the majority of engagements. Useable.

Which gun? Boolean Gemini?

I took Thorn out for a go last night to see how it felt.

It went terribly... I couldn't consistently land hits, let alone crits. I found in close / medium range I was even missing bodyshots. I'd shoot body shot with a sliver of health, then turn to shoot the next target - only to find the shots didn't land. I was constantly getting melted by Grasp, Suros, etc.

All in all - pretty disappointing really, I was getting hyped for the return of Thorn.

Kimbot · 13-09-2016 1:15pm

Hail 2 Da Chimp wrote: »

Which gun? Boolean Gemini?

I took Thorn out for a go last night to see how it felt.

It went terribly... I couldn't consistently land hits, let alone crits. I found in close / medium range I was even missing bodyshots. I'd shoot body shot with a sliver of health, then turn to shoot the next target - only to find the shots didn't land. I was constantly getting melted by Grasp, Suros, etc.

All in all - pretty disappointing really, I was getting hyped for the return of Thorn.

New thorn with Higher LL should be good in fiarness

PetKing · 13-09-2016 1:22pm

Hail 2 Da Chimp wrote:

Which gun? Boolean Gemini?

Yes

Hail 2 Da Chimp wrote:

All in all - pretty disappointing really, I was getting hyped for the return of Thorn.

Setting yourself up for a fall there you were. Same as the Gally, it would never be what it was.

Hail 2 Da Chimp · 13-09-2016 1:23pm

Mitch Connor wrote: »

I think the overall issue with the handcannons and ghost bullets is the expectation for guns to be 100% accurate in normally ideal scenarios.

I'm not sure where i stand on it to be honest - I can see a reason for guns to put bullets within a percentage range of exactly where the gun was aimed, rather than exactly where it was aimed.

Is it the same for all weapons? TripleWreck showed it on an AutoRifle too. I've seen people say similar for Shotguns. If all guns experience this variation on aim/accuracy then it is 'fair'.

Hey Conovar,
Did you read the Pwadigy Reddit post? It's kind of hit the nail on the head for me. It's not so much that each hand cannons have an accuracy issue, the issue is you need to be standing in melee or shotgun range for a hand cannon to be a reliable, usable weapon.

Hand cannons should be a viable counter to longer range weapons if you can close the initial gap.

The fact hand cannons have been nerfed so badly, means people are less likely to close that gap and rely more on hard scoping and camping with a shotty. Here's the relevant piece:

Handcannons - the hole in the sandbox

There is effectively no bridge between the two ranges. Mid-range is farther out than Bungie thinks to be the case, and only hand-cannons can handle the outer-edges of gank-range.
Scout-rifle and pulse-rifle users are heavily discouraged from leaving hard-aim range, because mid-range is so close to where players can gank eachother.
In other words, Handcannons need to be able to comfortably handle true mid-range, and not the neater, linear distances Bungie uses. At this point this could be done by simply removing bloom. Fall-off would keep handcannons from ultra-long ranges. Likewise, Handcannons would be most ideal at the edge of gank-range, making them consistent tools to deal with gankers (whereas right now, they are inconsistent at best).
Meanwhile, scout-rifles and Pulses would need to be able to truly compete with no-bloom handcannons without being flat-foot bait to gankers. This could be accomplished by fattening the aim-ballistics (as I described in the other post), or more ideally, reducing zoom, and increasing long-range firing ballistics to make up for it.
End-result would be a 5m increase in both direction in the mid-range, making a healthy place for players using different primary weapons to all have a reason to actually use them.

Also the reason hand cannons were nerfed so badly is because of TLW and Thorn being so OP in Y1, however instead of balancing TLW and Thorn, all H.C.'s were nerfed.

Hail 2 Da Chimp · 13-09-2016 1:26pm

PetKing wrote: »

Setting yourself up for a fall there you were. Same as the Gally, it would never be what it was.

I knew better than to get my hopes up - although with Bungies response today, I want to believe they will look at fixing the Bloom issue.

jonnycivic wrote: »

New thorn with Higher LL should be good in fiarness

I don't think it's going to be usable in PvP at all...

Mickeroo · 13-09-2016 1:57pm

Hail 2 Da Chimp wrote: »

Also the reason hand cannons were nerfed so badly is because of TLW and Thorn being so OP in Y1, however instead of balancing TLW and Thorn, all H.C.'s were nerfed.

Yeah, same thing happened with autorifles early in the game's life, Suros was OP (and maybe one or two others) but instead of dealing with it specifically they made autorifles pretty much irrelevant across the board.

gimli2112 · 13-09-2016 2:21pm

Suros was awesome at the beginning. Wasn't using anything else in the Crucible.

PetKing · 13-09-2016 2:23pm

Hail 2 Da Chimp wrote:

I knew better than to get my hopes up - although with Bungies response today, I want to believe they will look at fixing the Bloom issue.

Setting yourself up for another fall there Chimp! And you're still only picking yourself up after Thorn.

Mickeroo wrote:

Yeah, same thing happened with autorifles early in the game's life, Suros was OP (and maybe one or two others) but instead of dealing with it specifically they made autorifles pretty much irrelevant across the board.

Can anyone report on the effectiveness of mid impact autos post patch?I saw Cormac saying Fabian Strategy works well up close.

PetKing · 13-09-2016 2:24pm

gimli2112 wrote:

Suros was awesome at the beginning. Wasn't using anything else in the Crucible.

The Mythoclast?

gimli2112 · 13-09-2016 2:26pm

PetKing wrote: »

The Mythoclast?

That was awesome then not so awesome then unbelieveably awesome then not so much. They didn't know what to do with that gun. By the time I got one the Suros was already nerfed into oblivion.
I did use the Mythoclass for a while in PvP and my kdr went through the roof. It really was quite unfair.

Mickeroo · 13-09-2016 2:27pm

PetKing wrote: »

The Mythoclast?

That wasn't as common of course but yeah they dominated the early months of the game in crucible.

Hail 2 Da Chimp · 14-09-2016 10:12am

Cormac... wrote: »

Auto Rifles still don't feel "good" and are very punishing for missing consistent headshots (will usually get you killed), Suros Regime is ok if you use Spinning up and start pre-firing before your engagements from the Hip and then ADS for the latter half of the mag as you engage

Gave Suros Regime a whirl again last night and I would agree with this. It's just OK. I used the slower Focused Fire (which I believe was buffed recently). I had 1 really good game with it and 1 not so good.
I think range wise maybe I wasn't close enough and was getting picked off with Hawksaw or Malok. Maybe I'm too used to sitting back with Hawksaw and need to get stuck in a bit more.

Hail 2 Da Chimp · 14-09-2016 10:15am

Anyone tried Sidearms yet?

Sidearms

When evaluating player loadout data across the game, we can see that Sidearms are being underutilized. With 2.4.0 we aim to change that, pushing Sidearms to shoot further, faster, and more predictability.
Unified damage for all Sidearm types
Increased damage for existing Häkke Sidearm families by 3% for lowest rate of fire and 7% for higher rate of fire
Decreased damage for non-hitscan Sidearms by 5% for Vestian Dynasty and Queen's Choice
Minor extension of damage falloff point for Sidearms across the board (+0.5 meters)
Minor increase of stability for Sidearms across the board
Added damage bonus in PvE (20-30% dependent on combatant tier)
To accommodate two new faster firing Sidearm families releasing in Rise of Iron, all current Sidearm rate of fire bars will be slightly shorter
This is so we have more bar space to display rate of fire differentiation
Does not change the actual fire rate, just the stat bar representation

I like Havoc Pigeon but haven't used it in a while.
I've tried to use the New Monarchy Conviction II a few times in the past too but couldn't get the hang of it - might be worth giving it a shot again with the damage increase.

Generic Dreadhead · 16-09-2016 2:13pm

After a bit of PvP play, it seems like the weakest primary Archetype is the High Impact pulse. The high Impact Auto rifles are probably the 2nd worst.

Suros PDX 45 (with 89 Stability and Counterbalance) > Hawksaw (with 100 Stability, no Counterblance)

So, what I can deduce from that, is funtionally, Counterbalance could be seen to account for ~15 or more points worth of "Stability" (for anyone comparing guns), now this might only really be true for Low Impact pulses, but overall the easier to manage recoil pattern starts to become more useful than having "Max Stability" after a certain threshold (15+ points, maybe even 20 or 25).

Might prove helpful to those of us still looking at getting the "Stability" bar as high as possible for Primary PvP weapons.

Mitch Connor · 16-09-2016 4:41pm

https://youtu.be/lDAG51GYM-g

A good video on handcannon accuracy, current state and a proposed solution.

Generic Dreadhead · 16-09-2016 4:42pm

BTW: That Iron Banner HC (Finnalas Pearl) roll that Saladin was selling last time is pretty great alright. Hits to hard you can see the enemies backing out of engagements. Riffled Barrel, I will admit, makes a f**k tonne of difference

Mitch Connor · 16-09-2016 4:49pm

Cormac... wrote: »

BTW: That Iron Banner HC (Finnalas Pearl) roll that Saladin was selling last time is pretty great alright. Hits to hard you can see the enemies backing out of engagements. Riffled Barrel, I will admit, makes a f**k tonne of difference

If a handcannon doesn't have a good range perk, it's basically junk. Doesn't matter what perks you get if one isn't a solid range perk.

Generic Dreadhead · 16-09-2016 5:03pm

I realise that now. I've been trying to break out of my comfort zone, but it's just so hard -_-

AbusesToilets · 18-09-2016 5:15pm

HCs are pretty frustrating to use. I want to use the First Curse, but consistently lose 1v1 using it. Nail 2 shots and have the target on a sliver, ubt lose out due to slow ass RoF.

Mickeroo · 21-09-2016 10:10am

I notice myself getting torn apart by ARs from what I would consider pulse rifle range but I haven't been able to find a gun that feels more effective than Nirwen's yet (which seems to be back to its former glory?)

gimli2112 · 21-09-2016 10:15am

I thought the Hawksaw was more or less the go to Pulse Rifle for PvP? I started using it over the Grasp of Malok. They're both in a different archetype to the Nirwens but I thought that had fallen off a lot with recent nerfs, used to use it all the time.

Kimbot · 21-09-2016 10:16am

gimli2112 wrote: »

I thought the Hawksaw was more or less the go to Pulse Rifle for PvP? I started using it over the Grasp of Malok. They're both in a different archetype to the Nirwens but I thought that had fallen off a lot with recent nerfs, used to use it all the time.

The hawksaw has been dumped on alot but still a good gun

Mickeroo · 21-09-2016 10:16am

gimli2112 wrote: »

I thought the Hawksaw was more or less the go to Pulse Rifle for PvP? I started using it over the Grasp of Malok. They're both in a different archetype to the Nirwens but I thought that had fallen off a lot with recent nerfs, used to use it all the time.

Never liked the low impact ones myself, always found them a little short. I haven't really played since SRL mind so no idea what's been ruling the crucible since.

SolvableKnave · 21-09-2016 10:19am

The recent weapon balancing brought the Nirwens Mercy archetype back towards its former glory alright.

Hail 2 Da Chimp · 21-09-2016 2:04pm

SolvableKnave wrote: »

The recent weapon balancing brought the Nirwens Mercy archetype back towards its former glory alright.

Pulse Rifles
With high rate of fire Pulse Rifles being strong contenders in the crucible, we put our lens on the mid and low rate of fire models, nudging them slightly forward while still maintaining Pulses around the three burst kill.

Increased rate of fire for the Hakke Pulse Rifle Lyudmila-D
Minor increase (2%) to damage for middle rate of fire family Pulse Rifles (Nirwen's Mercy)

Weapon Balancing

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