[Autumn]

It seems that a few instances of flat damage stacking has slipped through the cracks and made themselves very widely known to a number of inspiring gunners, which gets out of hand right quickly cause you can start taking up to 400-500 damage per volley of a quickdraw unmitigated which is much much more than any dagger or sword is currently doing.

I don't think I need to construct an in depth argument on why stacking flat damage on guns has historically been an issue when a long time ago the very same issue was addressed through Claret Call and Elemental Augment being nerfed thus.

Those instances of flat damage stacking are:
-Airborne from Corbie providing up to +14-18 damage per shot with high enough SAN.
-Ring of Thorns Plus providing an additional +10 damage per shot
-Shaitan's Dark Claws providing up to +6 damage per shot
-Ryart Prayer Buff providing up to +5 damage per shot.

There are a few things we can do to help alleviate the issue, I'll provide 3 options which I think are all sound and solid options:

A) All of the aforementioned +Power items/passives are changed to provide equal amount of SWA instead, which applies per shot correctly as seen with something like Titan Gale and has little impact on other builds.

B) All of the above items/passives are changed to just not apply to guns, period, which is honestly the last option I would want.

C) Changing the items/passives in specific ways to allow them to exist healthily like so:

-Airborne's damage bonus only applying once per turn
-Ring of Thorns Plus staying as is, it does have a heavy burden after all
-Shaitan's Dark Claws only applying to Melee Weaponry because that makes sense.
-Ryart Prayer Buff adds +5 SWA and not +5 Power

I do believe that the core issue is quickdraw having so many rounds as a gun but that seems like the opposite of what we should be addressing, since people who like QD do it for the amount of rounds it presents.

[Snake]

Haven't we nerfed multi-hitting guns enough? But I see where that is coming. 'Eh' is my answer, and Make 'Power' become 'SWA' is my choice/the most sensible choice.

[Autumn]

It only becomes an issue because of how much more staggeringly effective flat damage stacking is on multiple rounds rather than 1, which is what I assume that these effects are balanced around to start with.

Turn power to SWA is probably the most simple and elegant solution to this, and is the one I'd like the most, and probably even makes these flat damage additions more appealing in general.

[MakeshiftWalrus]

I can only approve of this thread. It's highly unfair when these bonuses are stacked.

If the only counter-measure is to pray you're a CEL-based Kensei with Blade Barrier, or a Desperado with as many shots as the offending party, there's something wrong.

[Lonestar]

I can only approve of this thread. It's highly unfair when these bonuses are stacked.

If the only counter-measure is to pray you're a CEL-based Kensei with Blade Barrier, or a Desperado with as many shots as the offending party, there's something wrong.

Desperado won't exactly save your hide for the entire turn, instead for mostly one attack if you're using the same gun with the same number of rounds as your opponent. It happens, but considering how unpopular multishots is right now, highly unlikely.

Even though, as I cannot stress this much, gunners are living the dream right now. Their class counters (Kensei mostly) is not as popular as it was before the rework, giving place for Ghost who has no counters against gunners, simply due to falling out of the meta.

There's other counters in form of equipments (Bellplate, Armor of Nails, Fang-Faced Shield) that are simply not used due to there being better equipments for their respective slots, not being part of the current meta or being highly specific counters. So far, I've only seen people using it for hotswapping said equipments to deal with gunners, because they know they'll get demolished by them if they don't, which is a very scummy and disgusting way to not accept your class counter.

Either way, I'd go with A or C. B feels like a kick on the chin on an already badly beaten weapon type since MLM and Basic hit's changes.

[MakeshiftWalrus]

I can only approve of this thread. It's highly unfair when these bonuses are stacked.

If the only counter-measure is to pray you're a CEL-based Kensei with Blade Barrier, or a Desperado with as many shots as the offending party, there's something wrong.

Even though, as I cannot stress this much, gunners are living the dream right now. Their class counters (Kensei mostly) is not as popular as it was before the rework, giving place for Ghost who has no counters against gunners, simply due to falling out of the meta.

There's other counters in form of equipments (Bellplate, Armor of Nails, Fang-Faced Shield) that are simply not used due to there being better equipments for their respective slots, not being part of the current meta or being highly specific counters. So far, I've only seen people using it for hotswapping said equipments to deal with gunners, because they know they'll get demolished by them if they don't, which is a very scummy and disgusting way to not accept your class counter.

I didn't include these items as a counter, because the gunner can simply swap on a pair of Ghosthands, and completely ignore the effects of all three.

The meta consists of a lot of rock-paper-scissors, this is true, but when these bonuses are stacked, you obtain an atomic pair of scissors able to cleave through (most) rocks. It's not balanced if your build can destroy 98% of the opposition on your first turn, round 0, which MG/DH absolutely gets to do, on top of CC'ing the entire team. There's just no getting back from that in any real scenario.

You say it's disgusting and scummy to swap on items to deal with the gunner, but do you not find it disgusting not to get even a remote chance to compete in the fight, because you weren't literally a singular class, with a specific skill and stat investment?

[Autumn]

Its very much true, MG/DH just blitzing into the enemy team with 1m movement and just instantly popping Lead Storm against a clumped up team just demolishes teams, its a huge glaring issue with rush down strategies where it currently does the most AoE damage in the game and is just optimal to completely shredding teams.

And unless you're built to handle that you'll likely have at the very least 2 or 3 of your teammates dead on the floor before the fight's really even started.

This thread fixes the huge glaring issue that is the massive amount of damage a Quickdraw can even shit out on top of being first in the turn order, my other thread (https://www.neus-projects.net/viewtopic....amp;t=7200) addresses the unfair starting positions we've had for years now that allow these full sweep scenarios to even occur.

Its not new and never has been new except for when Lead Storm was introduced initially, it just has historically been a flavor of the month thing.

[Lonestar]

I didn't include these items as a counter, because the gunner can simply swap on a pair of Ghosthands, and completely ignore the effects of all three.

The meta consists of a lot of rock-paper-scissors, this is true, but when these bonuses are stacked, you obtain an atomic pair of scissors able to cleave through (most) rocks. It's not balanced if your build can destroy 98% of the opposition on your first turn, round 0, which MG/DH absolutely gets to do, on top of CC'ing the entire team. There's just no getting back from that in any real scenario.

You say it's disgusting and scummy to swap on items to deal with the gunner, but do you not find it disgusting not to get even a remote chance to compete in the fight, because you weren't literally a singular class, with a specific skill and stat investment?

Apparently ignoring the last paragraph is a thing now, so here we go.

I don't remember saying that damage stacking with Corbie/Shaitan/Ring of Thorns is balanced at all. Hell, I use it and tested it myself recently and I can agree with the OP that it's pretty broken. You can bring someone to near red HP with the right tools and hell, you can attack three times with MG/DH combo if things play on your side per turn, combined with damage stacking these current races/items has, you can probably one shot a squishy.

So I don't really know where you're coming here because I've seen your example of team fight being killed down by a single MG/DH with damage stacking Quickdraws and understand that fully, but that still actually doesn't and should not promote hotswapping, independant of how broken it is or not, because in the end this is still an roleplaying game, and if you were weak to gunners before and now eat them for breakfast by equipping two items out of nowhere, not becuase multishots are in a broken state, but because the sense of metagaming, there's something wrong with that.

So yeah, I still stick by the mind that it's still disgusting and scummy. And it actually won't change because guess what, MG is a hell of a class that counters alot of classes out there. I wouldn't even be mad if one of my gunners got countered hard by the likes of a good Kensei, hell I'd be happy they'd be following their IC.

Without derailing much this thread with things that happens in the game, I'm still sticking to option A or C.

[MakeshiftWalrus]

-Snip-

-Snip-

Apparently ignoring the last paragraph is a thing now, so here we go.

It wasn't relevant to the point of discussion I was making, so I left it out. I didn't just ignore it. I'm aware you've offered your view on what solutions should be picked, that's not what I'm prodding at in the slightest.

I don't remember saying that damage stacking with Corbie/Shaitan/Ring of Thorns is balanced at all. Hell, I use it and tested it myself recently and I can agree with the OP that it's pretty broken. You can bring someone to near red HP with the right tools and hell, you can attack three times with MG/DH combo if things play on your side per turn, combined with damage stacking these current races/items has, you can probably one shot a squishy.

And I never said you did, either. I asked you a simple question, expecting an answer, nothing more, because in my opinion, a check-list fight is one of the most dull kinds of battles in the game, and unfortunately they're all too common now. We both agree the current state of the damage stacking is an issue, I'm only trying to shed more light on that.

So I don't really know where you're coming here because I've seen your example of team fight being killed down by a single MG/DH with damage stacking Quickdraws and understand that fully, but that still actually doesn't and should not promote hotswapping, independant of how broken it is or not, because in the end this is still an roleplaying game, and if you were weak to gunners before and now eat them for breakfast by equipping two items out of nowhere, not becuase multishots are in a broken state, but because the sense of metagaming, there's something wrong with that.

You've seen one example I use, don't assume I didn't conclude my own tests in matter. Regardless, this was always an issue, especially back when Moonlight Mercy was still a thing that affected the damage. It only goes to show that we didn't weed out the abusive nature of it quite yet, which this thread is aiming to fix.

So yeah, I still stick by the mind that it's still disgusting and scummy. And it actually won't change because guess what, MG is a hell of a class that counters alot of classes out there. I wouldn't even be mad if one of my gunners got countered hard by the likes of a good Kensei, hell I'd be happy they'd be following their IC.

I agree that hot-swapping items to counter is scummy as well, don't get me wrong. But I also think it's a necessary evil to sway the scales of 'Completely impossible' to 'Decent chance of winning'. Swapping items is becoming more and more common, however, and it goes to show how much the higher end of PvP is starting to suffer from a frustrating amount of optimization. Whether people want to admit it or not, every single serious PvPer carries three versions of their primary weapon, with different enchants. People want to win, because losing isn't fun.

But, that's a discussion topic for a different thread. Which I may or may not bring up in the near future.

A or C are good options.

[FaeLenx]

Yes, the change needs to happen where MGers can't deal 600 damage in a single turn 0.

But also yes, armor of nails, fang faced shield, and bellplate need to be looked at and changed in the way they deal with multishot guns. For everyone complaining about losing a fight before it's even started due to this build, they can't be so tone deaf to not realize that this is also the reality for multishot gunners. And for everyone saying that item swapping is 'scummy,' they must not fight enough to realize that almost everyone does it and that it has not been against any rules ever. This is also a problem with the 30% resist items and any mage or caster that tries to be a singular element in casting or why spirits are a suicide option.