DRL > Requests For Features
Balance suggestions
bwross:
--- Quote from: SageAcrin on April 08, 2013, 15:00 ---This is true, but with it blocking Dualgunner, Berserker and Triggerhappy, the only weapon specific skill it doesn't block is...Shottyman.
Which isn't incredibly important to the playstyle as those other three skills are anyways, so you can just skip it if you wanted anyways.
--- End quote ---
The only one that matters with Scavenger is Triggerhappy. Building towards melee or pistols doesn't make as much sense when your master trait is pretty much designed to give you a source of S and F mods, so Scavenger should be treated as a rapid-fire build. You do get offense as part of building it: the two levels of EE make rapid-fire weapons much nastier (pretty much required if you care about actually getting any efficient use of ammo and time with RF weapons), especially when you add an S mod. You also need the first level of Int, taking the second and making it an SS weapon makes things even better... it's a poor man's MCe, you don't get the damage per bullet, but you do hit with almost every bullet and at further than normal sight range... plus, you get fancy toys because you have WK2. Losing Triggerhappy isn't too bad... one F mod can replace it on a weapon for you, allowing you to spend those two levels on something else without losing too much.
Oh, and another thing. MSc is quick to get and I find that a Juggler start can work quite well (even though it puts off things for two levels). Juggler helps with the toys you'll have later, and helps provide early offense with a stack of weapons (especially shotguns). Weapons which you can also store mods on for later, giving you a boost to inventory size. It's not amazing, but storage potential is a perk of MSc that's overlooked.
This is essentially what you can reasonably plan for and pull off in the standard game. Getting an N mod is sweet, but you can't count on it, so you shouldn't take MSc expecting that. It's not an incredible package, but it is what it is, and you can make it work if you don't ask for more than it's likely to give you... meaning scavenge ruthlessly (ie upgrade your rocket launcher so you can scrap missile launchers) and make your plans around getting S and F mods. N and O mods are bonus and are easy to work with if they do show up. Part of the fun of the lesser master traits like MSc is figuring out how to make them work and then executing it.
As for improving MSc... improve mods/assemblies and MSc just naturally improves (as does things for other characters). But I wouldn't go so far as to mess too much with how scavenging currently works. I'd rather see scavengers get the ability to mod things better... something like the ability to add more than one mod to some assemblies (or add one mod to more uniques), or perhaps the ability to add a mod to an assembly made before getting WK2.
Klear:
--- Quote from: bwross on April 09, 2013, 05:50 ---or perhaps the ability to add a mod to an assembly made before getting WK2.
--- End quote ---
I believe unability to mod assemblies made prior to getting WK2 is there because of technical difficulties with implementing it. If it could be done, everybody would be able to do it.
In any case, I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment.
SageAcrin:
--- Quote ---I'll grant you that playing melee without BER (or MMB to compensate) is going to be a pain in the ass, but a pistol build without DG is no problem whatsoever,
--- End quote ---
In this case, the problem is no DG and you're passing up Sharpshooter, though.
There's no way to reconcile the damage drop compared to Sharpshooter, for a lot of levels. It'd be one thing if it was a sidegrade build, but this is the class that gets a really good single gun build as well.
The only skill that Sharpshooter notably blocks(besides Dualgunner, of course, but it's obvious why it blocks that.), that can't be replaced with another skill, is SoB, and SoB takes until the final levels unlock at 12+ to exceed it. (And the exceed then is debatable...I know if you had, say, an Energy Combat Pistol, that's going to do basically as much damage with L5 SoB as Sharpshooter, same with a Cleric in single shot mode.)
So, again, it's still essentially only worth considering as competition incredibly high levels(Where you can get L5 SoB/L5 SoG and come out ahead-which is of course ten levels worth of skills alone, and only achievable at L14.). While I haven't really ran ridiculously high difficulty at ridiculously high levels yet(My N! run cleared rather low level), I have the sinking suspicion that you're basically not in that much trouble at extremely high levels, and that Scavenger is rarely getting you a notable advantage early on.
Basically, just because it works doesn't mean the skill's any good. Besides, the skill is neat and gets people some of the grindier badges faster, meaning that people would take it if it was totally useless anyways.
--- Quote ---The only one that matters with Scavenger is Triggerhappy. Building towards melee or pistols doesn't make as much sense when your master trait is pretty much designed to give you a source of S and F mods, so Scavenger should be treated as a rapid-fire build. You do get offense as part of building it: the two levels of EE make rapid-fire weapons much nastier (pretty much required if you care about actually getting any efficient use of ammo and time with RF weapons), especially when you add an S mod. You also need the first level of Int, taking the second and making it an SS weapon makes things even better... it's a poor man's MCe, you don't get the damage per bullet, but you do hit with almost every bullet and at further than normal sight range... plus, you get fancy toys because you have WK2. Losing Triggerhappy isn't too bad... one F mod can replace it on a weapon for you, allowing you to spend those two levels on something else without losing too much.
--- End quote ---
Building towards melee would be kinda weird, yes, but the option is denied anyways.
I think the above discussion shows how I feel about pistols, but it's worth noting that there's definitely some debatability to saying it's a bad build for pistols. I agree that rapid fire is still the obvious option.
The problem with it as an optimal rapid fire build is that, in the beginning, you can't rely on getting any specific mod-much like anyone can't. If you look over the numbers on the wiki(which are presumably still accurate?), there's two 1/6 chances on an exotic weapon, for Sniper/Firestorm. Now, a Unique has good odds, but there's no guaranteed Uniques, as there shouldn't be, and the fact remains that you may actually want to use a unique, instead of taking a spin on the RNG.
Those are nice on a rapid fire, but Sniper is redundant with EE to a degree-you'd really rather have SoB-and if you can reach the fixed chance Exotics, it's usually not much more of a jump to reach for the fixed chance special mods that can appear in early areas as well.
In other words, you can reproduce a maybe advantage with a certain advantage, just by going with Triggerhappy instead, and possibly reproduce that mod advantage as well. From the viewpoint of reliability, going with Triggerhappy is better, and from the viewpoint of trying to game the RNG, while Scavenger does it more reliably, it doesn't actually produce any advantages you can't get another way, or give much of any reliable advantages.
This boils out a little differently long term due to the fact that you're likely to get a lot of lesser mods, though. The biggest advantages of Scavenger seem more likely to be things like "Moderately reliable Cerberus Boots/Tactical Boots" and "Being able to mod any decent armor you come across with your basic mods/assemblies of preference", but they still take forever to get going as advantages, and you still have to accept a restricted set of abilities for it.
Essentially, it isn't actually useless, it's just not notably better than nothing(that is, no Master traits). If it's better at all.
It's also really not that bad with shotguns, incidentally. I just went with the weapons I happened to find when I used it, and they happened to be good Shotguns, so I rolled with it. The only problem was, it never gave me any realistic advantages-since it was Ao100, I ended up using Unique armors and an Onyx I found on the floor, and my main weapon was a Nano Shrapnel Double Shotgun, with the Nano also found just laying around.
Thinking on it, that flexibility is part of the problem, isn't it? Uniques are really good, the build is an all-rounder designed to mod the best weapon it finds, and it has to break down some of the best weapons it finds to get any really special mods reliably. (And, of course, it can't mod them at all.) It actually plays counter to the all-rounder style it's meant to represent. Funny.
bwross:
Well, yeah, assuming that the build is an all round flexible build is part of the problem. MSs and DG are only two of the reasons why MSc shouldn't go pistols... the clincher is the unique pistols. You're bound to see one and if you have it in your mind that you might use it then you've pretty much given up on truly scavenging from the start, because that's too many of the few unique items that you can tear up. Ideally, your plan should be to maximize the number of weapons you're willing to tear down. That means having a solid plan on what you will be using, right from the start. Don't be fooled into playing it as a General master... it will definitely suck if you do.
Another problem is playing scavenger with Ao100. I did that once, figuring it might be useful without the special level mods. It didn't work out that way, I had more mods than I knew what to do with anyway making it seem pointless. So I quit that game, and tried scavenger in standard, which proved to be more fun and felt more useful. Especially the ability to store all those mods from the special levels, which tend to be early in the game, until I was ready to build things with them and WK2. It felt like I was definitely getting advantages I could not get any other way... no other character gets real benefit from an A modded shotgun (and, yes, the Cerberus boots were easier to make, I even A modded them). Is it great? Not at all... but it works better if you play to it instead of trying to play something its not. This isn't a no-brainer master... you need to work the role, otherwise it's not going to be fun (or seem to work in any way). Everything should lead towards your planned goal, accepting that you'll be passing on things that might have made your life easier, simply because that's not the role you're playing.
SageAcrin:
If it's only good for rapid setups-which, correct me if I'm wrong, is basically what you're saying?-then doesn't it have to compete with Catseye, Ammochain and Entrenchment, the Rapid-specific skills?
Ammochain is very close to giving you a Nanomanufacture Ammo for any chain fire gun you pick, and Cateye...Cateye is basically great, as far as I can tell, granting you an entirely unreproduceable and reasonably powerful benefit that's going to be, at best, subjective to compete with.
So it has to compete with 30% resistance to all attack types while Chain firing, which is on the same class. Someone who's tried that might be able to give a better opinion of how it works out than I(I tend to forget Chain Fire exists, sadly, and haven't gotten around to that skill build yet, so it's a bit of a blank.), but Entrenchment sounds better to me, on paper. (Wide spread and strong resistance is really good, look at Malicious Blades/Berserker.)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version