Been a while, but I thought up of some more changes:
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Change Gunrunner's prerequisite of Juggler to Finesse 2Gunrunner being allowed Whizkid in the betas has proven to be a big help and it can now be decent with a very high potential ceiling, though it still has the major flaw of requiring so many ancillary traits before it can really get going; for Gunrunner's shooting while running effect to be actually useful, you practically need to get Shottyman, requiring three more levels beyond the six you already need to get Gunrunner. But you also really want Whizkid, but because of the prerequisites and direly needing Shottyman, you can't get WK1 until level 11 at earliest and WK2 not until level 12! By making Fin2 a prerequisite instead of Juggler, it would allow Gunrunner to spec into WK a level earlier, giving it a slight buff to make that heavy investment it requires a bit less painful. I also think firing faster instead of juggling your weapons is a more thematically fitting prerequisite for Gunrunner too.
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Give Fireangel some sort of additional offensive perk, one possible idea being whenever they use a weapon that shoots rockets, give them a +2 dice bonus to such weapons.The big weakness of Fireangel that holds it back is its terrible offense without it investing in sidearming melee, and while the explosion immunity from indirect hits is a nice defensive bonus, it's not so strong as to be worth having no offensive boon at all. A simple and thematically fitting idea is to simply have them hit harder with rocket launchers, which wouldn't be that significant of a buff but would be something that could help and would farther establish Fireangel as the "rocket launcher build". This would also help the ammo efficiency problem that holds using rocket launchers back as weapons (actually trying to make heavy offensive use of rocket launchers with Fireangel
will run into ammo problems without making a Nanomachic Rocket Launcher), and even farther no-damage rocket jumps from these stronger rockets would be a nice bonus too. The bug I noted in the beta thread of direct hit explosions doing less or no damage would need to be fixed though, or else this change could backfire. You could instead give it some offensive bonus to shotguns if you want to emphasize it being a shotgun mastery and make it an actually viable pick for Angel Of Shotgunnery, but I don't know what you could do for it (Shottyhead already has the faster shotguns down and Army Of The Dead has the harder-hitting shotguns down).
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Change Gun Kata to have an instant pistol attack after a successful dodge instead of it being 90% faster, and give it the defensive perk to apply Dodgemaster to all attacks between moves.I don't ever really recall seeing Gun Kata brought up often among the bad masteries, but I always been very underwhelmed by it, and after farther playing around with it, I'm firmly of the stance now that it's a crappy mastery. One big problem similar to Gunrunner is that it requires so many ancillary traits; it technically only requires SoG2, but in all practicality
you need SoG3 or else you're just going to be too slow and too weak when late Phobos and Deimos comes, so it may as well as be a mastery that requires 8 levels. However, unless you're lucky enough to find one of the Unique pistols early, you also really need Whizkid to buff your weakass pistols, which requires two levels of Finesse that you don't really care much for as a Pistol build and then those two levels of Whizkid, at which point that's already 12 levels. But there's still SoG 4 and SoG5 after that! And you would also really like a level of Eagle Eye or two because pistols miss a lot at far range (especially if the proposed Magnum gets added)! And if you want Intuition, you wouldn't even be able to fit all that in on any difficulty below Nightmare outside of A100! You get an early game that is slightly less hard than the other Pistol masteries, but compared to other builds, you're just going to always be behind them at every stage of the game, while Sharpshooter at least offers a very strong midgame and still strong lategame.
But for the actual bonuses Gun Kata grants? Not very good either. The "near instant" attack dodging bonus may as well be worthless; one, you often won't be able to utilize this bonus when against hordes, rapid-firing enemies, and the VMR, and two, pistols will eventually come close to or hit the minimum firing speed, at which point this bonus is completely worthless. The other perk is you automatically reload your pistols when you kill an enemy, which can be very handy when fighting hordes, but still has problems that makes it not all that great compared to what other masteries offer; aside from often ending up in situations where you can't pick off an enemy to get that reload in (I find myself much preferring to have the reliability of one pistol + ammo box instead for this reason), if you get a bulk-modded Combat Pistol, Blaster, and/or Nanomachic Pistols, this bonus ends up pointless. You could very well argue you're better off going masterless for a Scout Pistol build, or using Pistols as Cateye instead!
Now I'm not sure how to buff Gun Kata. Changing the Dodgemaster prerequisite to HR2 + SoG3 would help, though no Dodgemaster wouldn't be thematically fitting. The main idea I have is to try making Gun Kata itself better, and we can focus on making that dodging perk not so worthless. The first change would be to make the attack after a dodge actually instant, like how Blademaster gets instant attacks on kills. This still wouldn't that much of a boon, but would be something so that it doesn't become pointless once you get your pistols' firing speed at or near 0.1 seconds, while you would also get assurance that no enemy will get an attack in immediately after you fire (I recently actually got killed by the Shambler in Hell's Armory with Gun Kata during an AoMr run because I went for a shot after a dodge thinking I would be safe, yet the timing ended up with the Shambler still getting its turn right after I shot), and it would let Gun Kata uniquely get a little more mileage out of action-based powerups, as instant actions don't count towards the action counter (and pistols as is benefit from powerups far less than other weapons because of how many more cumulative actions they use to kill things). The second change would be to give Gun Kata a unique boon of having its Dodgemaster being able to apply to all enemy attacks between moves, instead of just the first attack, as aside from getting a unique defensive boon, Gun Kata would now actually be able to more reliably try utilizing the dodging instant attack perk in scenarios beyond one-on-one encounters with single-projectile shooting enemies. I don't think this idea would be remotely broken either; you still need to be able to move in a way to execute a dodge against all incoming attacks from large hordes, you still have to be mindful of walls and obstacles to avoid getting hit by explosions, and it would still be worthless against the VMR. With these changes I think Gun Kata would still only be better than current Bullet Dance and Entrenchment, but it would be something to try making Gun Kata not so underwhelming.
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Give Bullet Dance the additional perk of being able to reload pistols faster.Bullet Dance no longer having Eagle Eye blocked and the new Marine inherent resistances in the 0.9.9.8 beta has been a much appreciated buff for Bullet Dance, but the mastery is still really bad and I don't think it's viable at all in Angel Of Marksmanship, as much of the problems with it still remain; has the same "requires way too much investment" problem described prior with Gun Kata, still has to pick up a completely dead level in Triggerhappy that exacerbates its problems in late Phobos and early Deimos, and most crippling, that rapid-firing drains the small clips of pistols so fast, while Bullet Dance can do nothing to mitigate that problem without being lucky enough to build Nanomachic Pistols or finding a Combat Pistol and giving it multiple Bulk mods. The buffed Reloader can really help with this, but fitting in Reloader with all the other ancillary traits you desperately need is too much, while the other two Pistol masteries that don't deplete pistols as fast have something to mitigate reloading issues without needing to invest in Reloader (Gun Kata already been explained, and Sharpshooter can easily utilize ammo boxes). As such, Bullet Dance should get an additional perk to reload pistols at half the time or even faster. If reloading wasn't such a major problem for Bullet Dance, it could be halfway functional without the desperate need for Nanomachic Pistols and bulk-modded Combat Pistols.
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To buff Entrenchment, have it give +20% all resistances just from equipping a chain fire weapon in the primary slot, and give +50% all resistances when chain firing. Additionally, give it a second perk to reduce ammo consumption when chain firing.We all know the fundamental problems with Entrenchment and some ideas have been floated, but nothing definitive has been formally proposed. Applying both my idea of +20% resistances just when equipping a chain firing weapon and Icy's idea of +50% resistances when chain firing would be a start. Another idea I thought of however, after seeing how Entrenchment works in Jupiter Hell, is to also reduce ammo consumption when chain firing (such as by having all subsequent chain firing bursts take 2/3rd of the ammo while still having the increased shots). A big problem with actually trying to utilize extensive chain firing is that unless you got a Nanomachic weapon or a Minigun, your clip will simply run out of ammo after only a few bursts, at which point you're left very vulnerable as you have to reload and then build up your chain firing all over again. Then extensive chain firing is also very wasteful with ammo too, as many of those extra shots will be overkill, and several shots get wasted when you pan from enemy to enemy, so you'll easily find yourself running out of ammo if you actually try to take advantage of Entrenchment without one of the aforementioned rare weapons. Reduced ammo consumption would help a lot here, letting you utilize Entrenchment's chain firing bonus longer before needing to reload, and making you waste a lot less ammo when doing so. Alternatively, if that cribs too much on Ammochain, Entrenchment could instead instantly reload when your clip runs out of ammo, if it can be programmed in a way to not disrupt your chain firing (though that wouldn't help the ammo wasting problem).
Or Entrenchment could just be thrown out completely for something new; even if it was buffed to be usable, the idea of it is still arguably the least exciting mastery in the game.
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Make Cacodemons and Nightmare Cacodemons attack more frequently.I always found it weird how Cacodemons and Hell Knights are offensively equivalent, other than the Hell Knight having a slightly higher accuracy bonus. One idea to help differentiate them more is to have the Cacodemon attack substantially more often, perhaps increasing its attack chance to as high as 60%. Not only would this give Cacodemons a bit more distinct offensive behavior as a more aggressive enemy, it would also be more inline with how they actually function in Doom, where
Cacodemons are more aggressive than the Hell Nobles. It would also make Cacodemons over damaging fluids even more of a hassle, when they'll be spending more time shooting at you instead of moving in to make them easier to hit. If this change is implemented, it should naturally be given to Nightmare Cacodemons as well (perhaps increasing their attack frequency all the way to 75%, tying it with the formers and Cyberdemon for most aggressive enemy), especially as Nightmare Cacodemons lost a lot of their uniqueness with all the other nightmare enemies being given fluid immunity. Nightmare Cacodemons could perhaps be made to hit a bit harder too to help better define their role as the single strong projectile enemy of the nightmare ensemble (either increasing their projectile damage to 2d8 or 3d5), as is they hit only slightly harder than regular Cacodemons, Hell Knights, and Nightmare Imps (with their projectile doing only 1 more damage on average and up to 2 more damage max).
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Add Nightmare Demons to Unholy Cathedral on UV and Nightmare difficulties.Unholy Cathedral is gonna be really easy for melee builds no matter what unless you make it absurd, but it's also really easy for non-melee builds once you learn how to time hits between the Angel Of Death's moves with a fast enough build. So perhaps add a bit more to it by adding the strongest regular melee enemy in the game, that you also won't be able to cheese by luring them into the lava thanks to their newly added fluid immunity (and it's also weird that not even Nightmare has them, when it adds nightmare enemies to many other levels). Now there could be concern that this makes the Cathedral too difficult for builds with no Brute investment, but if you can move and attack fast enough to outspeed the AoD, then you can outspeed Nightmare Demons, so that trick will still work, you just have to be more mindful with your movements with handling a horde of them and avoid getting yourself cornered. Additionally, with Cathedral and Vaults having been swapped, the buffed Ironman giving you inherent melee resistance, and the Ballistic Armor assembly being buffed, you have a much better chance of getting the defenses to reduce all melee hits down to 1 damage before the Cathedral than you did before. Plus, having a horde of Nightmare Demons will dissuade anyone from wasting their time with trying to cheese the AOD on UV and Nightmare with a throwing knife :p
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Allow Firestorm and Sniper mods to be used on melee weapons, with the former changing the weapon's damage type to fire, and the latter giving the weapon autohit. Additionally buff Agility mods to give +2 accuracy to melee weapons.Currently, Firestorm and Sniper mods can not be used on melee weapons, making getting these rare mods as a melee build particularly frustrating. The two proposed armor assemblies utilizing these mods would help partially alleviate this problem, but you could also make these mods usable on melee weapons. For a Firestorm mod, you can have using it on a melee weapon turn its damage type to fire, which would make it less effective against a few enemies (most notably Revenants and Lost Souls), but in turn would make the weapon much more effective at gibbing, that could make it a particularly attractive option on Nightmare difficulty or in Angel Of Darkness (or otherwise just for dealing with Archviles). Not to mention that this could help give the Double Chainsaw some sort of niche that it currently lacks, as a fire Double Chainsaw would be the most effective melee weapon for gibbing if you can't get Azrael's Scythe (which is especially hard to get on Nightmare difficulty/Angel Of Darkness, where you need the gibbing ability most). For a Sniper mod, simply have it give a melee weapon the autohit property; a melee weapon getting autohit from a single Sniper mod doesn't have the overpowered implications that ranged weapons getting it would, while someone paranoid about the always 2% chance to miss even with maxed out accuracy could appreciate the option to guarantee their hits, and otherwise any build that wants to utilize a melee weapon without investing several levels into Brute nor Eagle Eye have an option to make the weapon fully usable at the expense of making the weapon stronger or faster (especially with the Double Chainsaw and Ripper, which require 3 and 4 cumulative levels of Brute/Eagle Eye respectively just to have an over 50% hitrate). On the topic of accuracy, Agility mods should be buffed to give +2 accuracy to melee weapons; since melee weapons can only have 1 mod of each type and three mods total, a measly +1 accuracy from the lone Agility mod you can apply is pretty worthless, as it will be a complete waste if you are investing in Brute/Eagle Eye and still won't make a melee weapon very usable if you aren't investing in Brute/Eagle Eye (as it only bumps the Chainsaw's hitrate from 50% to 62%), nevermind the opportunity cost when Agility mods are much more coveted on armor, boots, and assemblies. At +2, throwing an Agility mod on a Chainsaw instead of just making it hit faster or harder becomes a more attractive proposition for builds with no Brute/Eagle Eye, when the jump from a 50% hitrate to a 74% hitrate is significant (or if you got one level in Brute/Eagle Eye and don't want to invest farther, going from a 74% hitrate to a 91% hitrate is still a substantial improvement that you could find expending an Agility mod for to be worth it).
