so is the new meme ORKS OP now? man that gotta suck know the buggiest faction in the game is somehow the most overpowered...must be that pinata magick lootas do...ehehehehhehe
I think you're doing a good job overall. Your posts have the most specifics and seem to explain both the meta and your own preference. I posted it as a joke but was also meant what I said.
You're not going to like this, but this is where the idea of a rebalancing around Shuriken's dealing headshot damage comes from. Recap: Headshot damage is unjustifiably too high for most ranged weapons in a game that should have a blend of both melee and ranged at the Tactical Class level. (For those unaware of the balance of melee, reference the melee thread). Specifically tactical weapons. This includes the TLSC and Shoota, even the Bolter. Recap for readers; We sharply disagree on this proposal - on one end it "lowers skill cap" on the other, "it raises it by forcing players to be proficient at both." With a lot of talk of Relic's SM, where we again, sharply disagreed on stats and such. All that said, specifically I think that Headshots should universally be lowered reserving this judgment on Shuriken weapons specifically. But wait! That would make these weapons retardedly OP you wail. I wasn't finished. The idea is for these weapons to get as close as possible to ONLY dealing damage via Headshots. I am obviously reluctant to go completely that route, so I'm using the ASC as a guide. Yes. The ASC is powerful, but it's the FARTHEST weapon in the Eldar arsenal to being OP. It does this by dealing an absolute penance of damage (and currently it may be set a tinge too high) to the body, and its headshot damage is on Par with other weapons of its type. I can't look at the chart atm, but out of personal experience, I would say that the ASC still is reliably outkilled by weapons that share the same class even with even skill and both players keeping to their playstyle. This is in even numbers, under 50m, because the optimal range for an ASC before it's DPS drops off is a mere 15 meters. Why? Because while the playstyle of hit and run is what the Avenger does, it does it's DPS in a long stream, of damage coming in at .08sec intervals compared to a bolter coming in at .18 second intervals, the difference of 1/10th of a second, not that much of a difference till we compare damages. Now, look deeper. At 15 meters, the ASC Immediately starts to lose damage. It tops off at 36 headshot damage every .08 seconds, 17 damage, or 44 headshot damage and 20 bodyshot damage at a much lower interval with paid upgrades to both pen and damage. The chart is wrong, best I can tell why atm is that it doesn't account for T and penetration on specifically the Avenger Shuriken Catapult, which is clearly abysmal - or better yet, totally non-existent without an upgrade- and then it's still severely limited. The stats against high T targets are utterly awful, you'd have to see it to believe it, they get body shot damage for headshots, and against Orks, that's even further reduced. Beyond their 15m both ASC damage stats fall rapidly, and the bolter remains consistent all the way up to 60ms. The Bolter is at full power, with 72 minimum headshot damage 33-36 body shot damage, 83 headshot damage with CQC headshot with 41 for body shots at .18 second intervals, from under 60m. My average T is 120 on my Eldar load outs. My average armor, is around 130, including all my Eldar (DR's and FD's included). I predominantly play DA, which has about 120 armor, 120 T depending on what build I play. Considering the distances, I have about .54 secs to deliver some damage before my interval ends and I endanger myself by taking hp damage because that's what realistic ranged combat is; not utterly spending yourself if you don't have to, you spend your armor and protect your hp. So, the advantage here is less than 15m -AKA Sprint Attack Distance with some sprint in it. If I'm lucky, I have 3 shots inc in .54 secs. They may all miss, they may all hit, ect. For argument's sake, since I'm firing back the opponent, they all hit, and mine all hit. in .54 seconds I'm getting 6.75 hits. I either deal 17x6.75 damage = 114, not enough to break a tactical's shield even on a good day for me, or I deal 36x6.75 damage = 243 freaking damage and I basically maim a 340 combined hp LSM - if he has any T higher than stock, I'm going to deal even less damage. Back at me, the Bolter is going to deal a bare minimum of 99 damage, topping out at 216 damage with a normal bolter, who has 275 combined hp on an armor stacking build. If I get hit, I lose my armor. If I get nailed, I'm now one shot away from death. Against a CQC barrel, I'm taking bare minimum 123 damage for body shots (armor broken on all but armor stacking builds), and a massive 249 damage within my own optimized zone. I am literally one shot away from death in my own turf. So statistically at least with the ASC I'm going to lose on my own ground. But that's ok, what about guerilla warfare and bursting players down? Well above is a pretty great example that in the span of .54 secs within an optimal range, you absolutely must get all headshots, and then not get hit in return for it to be worth it, and that's at 15ms, and I would argue, strongly, that the Bolter is actually better at the ASC's archetype than the ASC is. It's a burst DPS weapon, it shines the most when there's some sort of mitigating factor, like their armor, cover, suppression, or ADAD juking. If you can successfully land headshots with it, you will win, even against weapons designed primarily for that role because if you miss and still hit the target, it's far more forgiving. So while I'm not gung-ho about asymmetrically nerfing headshot damage specifically to allow Shuriken's their playstyle that's the primary reason behind my thinking. If they can't be buffed (and they shouldn't, they feel great until matched with Bolters and Shootas that's ok too. But right now the TLSC is over performing, and weapons like the Bolter do the Skirmishing role far better than the ASC - clearly a misrepresentation of what they're supposed to do. And while we're on uncomfortable and unpopular topics, let's talk about the Bolter in relation to the Heavy Bolter. Heavy Bolter gets 66 Headshot Damage, and 36 to body. .1 sec intervals. Overheats at 60. I want to know how many kills each can get before having to stop in any capacity. First with a regular mag, (30x33/72, 30x41/83) = 990, 2160, 1230, 2490 then box (40x33/72, 40x41/83) 1320, 2880, 1640, 3,320 then drum (60x33/72, 60x41/83 = 1,980, 4320, 2460, 4980. vs Heavy Bolter= 2160, 3960 total damage. Average LSM Tactical Combined EHP is somewhere around 360. So: 30 Mag - 2.75 - 6 kills, CQC: 3.4-6.9 kills 40 Mag - 3.66-8 kills, CQC: 4.55-9.22 kills 60 Mag - 5.5-12 kills, CQC: 6.833-13.83 kills. Heavy Bolter: 6-11 kills before overheating - which is a longer penalty than reloading. This doesn't even come close to talking about the effects this has on melee, but just look at that. Without even needing to reload, a drum mag definitively is a strict upgrade to a Heavy Bolter with only the RoF and suppression being what positively separates these two. However, the Bolter has a scope, is accurate and deadly upwards of 200m+, can actively avoid being headshot while being shot back at, can use cover more effectively, needs no set up time, comes on a melee capable platform, has a fucking sidearm, carries twice the ammo, can carry a servo skull, carries twice the grenades, can currently become immune to suppression via the scope toggle and can capture the points. How on earth then does it have more lethality than a Devastator weapon? Second, I want to compare the Stalker Bolter with the nigh endless salt pit that is the Autocannon. TLR Stalker Bolter - generally fine, only except it does exactly what @ProteusVM says the Lascannon shouldn't have been able to do in Relic's SM, it can fire from while scoped and moving with near perfect accuracy and still deliver 125 damage - which isn't even a headshot - a headshot deals 238 damage against a a MEQ - and reliably get headshots while hipfiring upwards of 20 Ms, which throws off the DA game entirely (again), because the Stalker just has to point in their general direction and deliver a maiming - if not lethal shot without hardly even aiming. Higher T targets it deals 186. With an interval of .6 seconds this again isn't really that big of a deal, it's the fact that there's hardly any issues with moving with it. And third, the Ork arsenal, from the absolute shit weapons like the six Shoota that I haven't seen in use since Alpha, to the Kannon and to some extent - the Shoota - which wait till I get to it! The Ork balance seems all over the board, yet still does not provide the wall of Dakka. It instead relies on accurate firepower and pretends to be everyone else (and in some cases actually does it better lol), which is totally Unorky, cus Green Iz Best! We'll start with the Shoota vs Loota Comparison. Shoota at 32 ms hits its optimal DPS. Further back it loses accuracy and damage, its max is about 80ms. It goes from about 24-26 damage to 19 for body shots and gets 53's fairly consistently for headshots. It has a minimum mag that carries 60 rounds, and a maximum mag that carries 100, and feels loud, full of punch, and proper Orky. 60 Round: 1440-3180 : Marine Kills: 4-8.8 80 Round: 1920-4240 : Marine Kills: 5.33-11.777 100 Round: 2400-5300 : Marine Kills: 6.66-14.72 Loota - 31 and 63 headshots. 90 till overheat. 2790-5670 : 7.75-15.75 Marine Kills. So again, the big drum encroaches upon the Loota's territory in terms of just spitting out kills at ranged without any real need of reloading. So this obviously affects the balance of melee vs ranged as well since a single shoota can totally crush 6-10 players on his own without the need to even stop firing. ASC: 55 Rounds, no modifiers. No Modifiers: 17 and 36 Dmg& Pen Mods: 20 and 44 935, 2.5 MEQ's. (almost certainly dead beforehand) 1980, 5.5 MEQ's 1100, 3 MEQs (almost certainly dead beforehand) 2420: 6.7 MEQ's I think the general rule of thumb here is that statistically good players will capitalize on about a third of the max damage in combat, the average will take a sixth of the average of the range, and bad days will likely be a third of whatever the least damage is possible. So on great days, Ork and SM will probably get max 5 kills with a CQC drum mag before needing to reload. Average days, maybe around 3.33, and bad days will be 2. Stock Bolter, is probably around: 3 kills with nigh perfect aim, 1.5 average, 1 low: This is imo around the best anyone can hope for in terms of flow, this is almost exactly what R. SM felt like and I think that's a great standard to use for all of these weapons, even if they function differently from one another for more reasons than I can probably put into words, but specifically because Tactical's should be capable in melee, and if they can wipe out half a team on their own without even reloading, there is literally no point in trying to balance melee and ranged, you're never going to get there.
Just casually flying over those numbers but most of them seem wrong sorry. And the chart does calculate in toughness and penetration
@Demetri_Dominov The majority of this I'll address when I'm more awake - running on fumes from 21 hours awake atm. It looks pretty solid though, but the stalker bolter section? nah. The reason why the lascannon was OP in Space Marine was because it was 100% accurate while hipfiring, not because you could use it while scoped. Aiming that thing required a fair amount of skill in the same vein of the stalker bolter, but the issue was not that you could snipe people across the map by aiming and keeping your position, but that you could literally just run around and spam click - with your shot going 100% center of your screen every time. Again, the stalker bolter is not a sniper rifle, nor should it be limited to stationary sniping. If you've got the skill to aim it and use it in CQC, you deserve to be allowed to do so - it requires an immense amount of skill & focus to consistently outperform 3 - 4 opponents on your own in CQC using a stalker. You can use it as such and deal with suppression teams, but it requires a fair amount of skill to use in close combat (as I use it) and win consistently considering that it gets out-dps'd by a shuriken pistol. The edge is alpha damage, but it will be beaten by anyone who can aim as well or better than you. The autocannon is significantly more effective than the stalker bolter in a good position however, it's a two shot kill in most situations and can rapid-fire, a hell of a lot more powerful than a stalker, that being said, a good stalker player (95%+ hit percentage) is a fucking nightmare for anyone to fight, because their skill allows them to outplay their opponents unless their opponents can also land the vast majority (95%) of their hits to out DPS him.
@Demetri_Dominov Did... did you test these damage values on Tyranids in the garrison? You know they have an inherent toughness value right...? The chart's damage values isn't about giving you the damage values of a Bolter against a MoN target because it gives you the tools you need to calculate that yourself (and calculate it MUCH more accurately than single digit values on a tyranid dummy) by calculating the EHP of that build and compare that to the DPS/damage per shot. Essentially, it gives you the raw stats of the weapons before modifiers like toughness mess with the damage values. The chart is not wrong, @Oan-Mkoll has put a huge amount of time into getting it up to date and the damage values haven't changed since then, there's a few things that are outdated and soon a few more (melee damage tweaks) but generally it's still the most up to date resource for damage values, DPS & various other stats for each weapon. As for headshot damage, I completely disagree. The headshot damage is so 'high' because it allows ranged classes the deadliness they need to enforce ranged power and maintain control over a situation where their enemy can simply roll and take zero damage or use the thousands of cover objects on each map, melee classes are currently given 2 - 4 I-frames as well as the potential to use cover to completely negate the effects of ranged weapons and ranged classes can do the same minus the extra rolls (max 3 stam on tac archetype). The headshot TTK across the board is generally short enough that a skilled player can gun down multiple bad players - which is the intention - to allow them to outperform the competition, as I've mentioned to you before, headshots are a way to implement skill differences between players, to allow a phenomenal player with consistent accuracy to wipe the floor with several bad players who aim for legs/body. I won't even touch the idea of making weapons only deal damage on headshots - skill-shot mechanics should never be enforced as the only way to play and they currently aren't especially when you're hitting a target that has been jinxed or you have enhance running. Rather than these sweeping changes, check out the UAT thread. Post something a little more restrained but have an overall plan in mind. The best changes are made gradually, with testing between each change. The ASC is out-killed by ranged weapons at the 50+ meter range because it isn't intended to be a competitor at those distances, Dire Avengers are built as close quarters ranged combatants, they are designed to deal damage within the ranges of 0 - 35/40m and rely heavily on warlock support to get the job done because the warlock abilities are absolutely fantastic. I've been playing Eldar a fair bit more now and I'm genuinely curious why people don't use jinx more. The warlock plays like a sniper with 100m range, debuffing key targets and watching them get nuked down in a fraction of a second by ASCs because they get a 50% damage boost! not to mention enhance, which adds 20% more damage and 20% damage resistance to all targets it buffs, absolutely brutal in good hands. I won't deny that ASC as it currently stands needs some loving though, hence the changes I proposed on the UAT thread - a proper, functional cqc barrel for damage boost, (24 * 675 / 60 = 270 dps so 20 dps more than ASC, same improvement the bolter gets from cqc - 212 dps > 232 dps w/ cqc) as well as potentially a drum magazine to give them more sustainability in a fight but generally? get a warlock to support you with jinx and your dire avenger squad will paste everything they come up across in a head-on fight. Literally, you cannot be outgunned when you have 3 dire avengers focusing fire and jinx up, play somewhat defensively and let your targets come to you and just annihilate them. I've killed @DemonKingBAAL's veteran MoN tac in roughly 0.300~ milliseconds because of jinx & close range headshots. As for thoughts on ranged combat, generally, play defensively. Even on the offense, find a key position where you can put down ranged fire and stick to it. You don't need to be action man pushing in and killing every opponent, so that 540ms time you've got isn't necessarily accurate for anything other than trading hits, you should be trying to push around and get the drop on people - I do it on my LSM - in order to minimize their damage potential. I'm going to stop you right there on heavy weapons - they aren't designed to kill everything in sight, they are designed to suppress. That is why almost all heavy weapons have the suppression trait, to allow the player to prevent the enemy from firing back. It has nothing to do with kill-potential per magazine nor any impact on the Heavy Bolter's killing efficiency. Because the heavy bolter kills 2.4x as fast as the bolter on bodyshots or headshots due to rate of fire advantage, not to mention anyone you shoot cannot fire back at you. This more than makes up for the fact that a drum magazine bolter can potentially lead to 13 kills. The scope advantage is a little bit lame but, hey, intentional according to Noah. There's a scope exploit thread up at the moment so, who knows. Using a bolter at 200m is a joke though - you can do it yeah but your opponent basically has to be AFK. But the intention is that the bolter is a solid mid-long range combat weapon that gets outclassed up close hence the stormbolter exists or the stalker bolter if your aim is 100% perfect, this is something where the Eldar need a flat DPS boost on their weapons through CQC barrel, which can then be pushed further with jinx/enhance, since Eldar rely heavily on teamwork & class synergy by design, it's how they're balanced, so taking a dire avenger 1:1 isn't really a fair comparison as a warlock can support a dire avenger far better than an apothecary can support a tactical. And don't start on the 'warlocks need to be focusing on a target, they can't help like apothecaries' meme, you apply enhance as you're running past someone because it's an area ability you can use on the move and get stuck in, or you use jinx and watch the avenger melt his enemies. Ork weapons aren't all designed to be competitive and that's absolutely fine by me, if anything, I want to see MORE hilarious weapons that may not be the best in slot, but result in hilarious deaths or carnage across the battlefield. Because that's Orky as fuck. Again, heavy weapons are not designed to kill but to suppress, they tear shit up much faster but no one ever said that they'd be able to mow down more targets, they prevent targets from shooting back and utterly annihilate anyone who assumes it's safe to advance through a heavy weapon's line of fire. I've already spoken on the Stalker bolter but, again just to summarize, the weapon requires you to have an accuracy of 95% in the current meta in order to use it at close-mid range, you can't just spam it and get kills against competent players as they will quickly out DPS you (a shuriken pistol has more dps than the stalker bolter LOL) so using the stalker bolter at close or mid range, honestly? requires more skill than using a main-line ranged weapon. It doesn't need changes in this department. As for long ranged combat? yeah, it's designed to counter setup teams. If we locked it to be unable to move and shoot, it would be non-viable. Anything that stands still in a game like EC dies and if you re-balance it so standing still is viable, you'll have made the game worse for it and lowered the skill ceiling dramatically. If you want to balance melee and ranged, the only change I can suggest outside of entire melee-system revamps would be the removal of ammo magazines. As it stands with some of your proposed changes, no one would take a tactical - as they didn't during the beta patch - simply because it's a shittier variant of both classes by nature of not being dedicated melee or dedicated ranged, it loses to either of those classes once they get into their ideal scenario and basically can't outperform them in normal circumstances. But I guess entire teams of heavy bolters, 1 tactical and a few apoths is what people want lol. In regards to ammo. IMO no one should be able to increase their maximum ammo in the magazine, the pool in reserve? sure. But not the magazine pool, this would give more power to melee units, other than that? remove this dark souls-esque mess of a melee system and give us something like Space Marine and you'll have solved 99% of the issue.
