Kornel mentioned on his last stream how he found masteries too restrictive to build variety and suggested to me the idea of relaxing their prerequisites. I've seen several other high level DRL players express the opinion that going masterless was best in 0.9.9.7 because they preferred the freedom, so this certainly isn't a minority take. Previously, it seems the prereqs of masteries was baked into their balancing, but thinking of it, I think you could make all masteries require six levels without seriously buffing them, and it would address the weird inequality where only a few masteries before required less than seven levels. Making them all require five levels like the current generalist masteries would be too much though, it works for the generalist masteries as they don't grant such a large immediate power boost, but being able to get game-changing masteries like Vampyre, Ammochain, Shottyhead, and Sharpshooter by level 5 would give a significant advantage over masterless builds and other masteries that don't provide such a large immediate power boost. As for making all masteries have only two blocks, I think it could almost work, most masteries would not be made broken with less blocks, but there are a couple where three blocks are pretty necessary like Vampyre. That concern could be solved however by just being willing to have an uneven level of blocks between each mastery (which considering the actual amount of traits blocked by each is already uneven because of basic trait blocks also blocking advanced traits that require them, it wouldn't be necessarily inconsistent). That said, I think this is how the prereqs of each mastery can be adjusted:
*Vampyre - Keep prereqs as is; all blocks are crucial to keeping it from being overpowered, but if all masteries are to only have two direct blocks, then Ironman would be the least powerful trait for Vampyre to unblock.
*Blademaster - Change the requirement of Brute 3 to Brute 2; Son of a Gun is the only block I think you can remove, BM wouldn't care about having SoG but being allowed TaN or SoB would be potentially too strong.
*Malicious Blades - Change the requirement of Dodgemaster to Hellrunner 2; you could unblock Tough as Nails to lessen the amount of masteries blocking it and so at least one melee mastery allows it, but it could be potentially too strong if TaN isn't toned down to 5% resistances per level, so you could unblock Eagle Eye instead with no risk of making MB overpowered.
*Bullet Dance - You could either change the requirement of Dualgunner to Son of a Gun 2, or change the requirement of Triggerhappy to Son of a Bitch 2, the latter would solve the glaring flaw of BD requiring a dead level but you would have to adjust Bullet Dance to not require TH to shoot an extra bullet, otherwise you would still be forced to take TH at some point to get any effect out of BD; you can remove the Intuition block.
*Gun Kata - Change the requirement of Dodgemaster to Hellrunner 2; I think all three blocks for Gun Kata are pretty necessary, but if one had to be unblocked, Son of a Bitch would be the least impactful unblock.
*Sharpshooter - Change the requirement of Eagle Eye 3 to Eagle Eye 2; Sharpshooter would like SoB but that could be potentially too strong, so I think unblocking TaN would be better and so not all three Pistol masteries allow SoB.
*Army of the Dead - Keep prereqs as is; remove the block on SoB.
*Shottyhead - Remove Hellrunner from prereqs; I would
really like having SoB on Shottyhead but I'm certain that would be too strong, so Eagle Eye would be the least impactful trait to unblock, or you could justify keeping all three blocks.
*Fireangel - Change the requirement of Shottyman to Reloader 2; remove the block on SoG if Fireangel keeps its ability to turn all projectiles explosive (so it can better utilize that ability with pistols), or remove the block on EE if that ability is changed to Fireangel having larger spreads on Shotguns (to more enforce it being a Shotgun mastery).
*Ammochain - Change the requirement of Triggerhappy 2 to Triggerhappy 1; all three blocks are rather necessary for how strong Ammochain is, but you could remove the Ironman block if one had to go.
*Cateye - Keep prereqs as is; I'm thinking you could justify all three blocks here as Cateye would substantially benefit from any of these traits, but Reloader would be the most acceptable allowance if any are unblocked.
*Entrenchment - Change the Badass requirement to Tough as Nails 2; remove the SoG block, and I mentioned it before but Entrenchment should be blocked Berserker because of how strongly berserk resistances stack with the newly buffed Entrenchment, it could be either added as a third block or replace Reloader.
Then the Generalist masteries are already level 5 masteries and have only two blocks in the latest beta, so no need to suggest changes to their prereqs/blocks here.
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The following are just a few more proposals I threw around in the Discord server and am recording here so they don't get forgotten about.
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Fix the Assault RifleThe Assault Rifle is a weird and rather worthless assembly, where for the hefty cost of three Agility mods on a rapid fire weapon, you get a weapon with less damaging bursts and overall worse DPS (especially once SoB is factored as you're firing half the shots), while you don't even save on ammo from the stronger individual shots, as the ammo consumption remains the same due to each shot consuming 2 ammo. The +3 accuracy boost is irrelevant too as the requisite Agility mods already gave that (and to think it was even worse prior to 0.9.9.8 with a +2 accuracy boost, making the weapon outright inferior). The only useful thing this assembly actually does is cut the weapon's reload time in half, but this just does not matter at all for Ammochain when it has both Reloader and the ability to fire so many shots before needing to reload, while other builds would rather a weapon that can more effectively kill things before needing to reload, or for extended fights, equip an ammo box to speed up their reloads. The Assault Rifle's current sorry state was the result of a hefty nerf when it was supposedly too strong in much older versions of DRL, so I looked up its pre-nerf stats on the
wiki, and it was:
Damage: 2d5 x 2 shots (no extra ammunition cost)
Accuracy: +6 (+4 over the base Chaingun)
Fire time: 0.8 seconds
Reload time: 1.0 seconds
How to make: Chaingun + AAA
...Which doesn't seem overpowered at all? This weapon in fact has barely more DPS than the vanilla Chaingun before any levels of SoB (15 vs. 14, and it just increasingly falls behind with each level of SoB), so it was just saving you some marginal ammo, far from worth the hefty mod cost. Maybe it was stronger in an even older version of DRL than the wiki documents, but that would mean it got hit with a big nerf stick... and then nerfed again. As for what to do with this assembly, first I would make it only compatible with a 10mm chainfire weapon (so the Chaingun and Minigun); the Plasma Rifle already has the Hyperblaster, while the Laser Rifle and Nuclear Plasma Rifle certainly don't need this assembly, so something more unique to the 10mm Chainfire weapons would be better (as well as remove the headache of trying to balance this assembly for both the bullet and plasma weapons). Then for the stats, I would go:
Damage: +1 die, -1 sides (so both the Chaingun and Minigun would become 2d5), with half the shots (but without the double ammo cost).
Accuracy: +4 on the base weapon (so Chaingun becomes +6 and Minigun becomes +5).
Fire time: Original * 0.5 (so Chaingun becomes 0.5 seconds and Minigun becomes 0.6 seconds).
Reload time: Original * 0.5 (so Chaingun becomes 1.3 seconds and Minigun becomes 1.8 seconds).
This is almost the same as the original (it will now actually help you conserve ammo and I feel it needs to grant an extra point of accuracy over the requisite Agility mods, especially to better set it apart from the stronger Hyperblaster), but with much faster firing time; with 0.5 second firing speed, the Assault Rifle would have a DPS advantage over the vanilla Chaingun and Minigun (even with maxed out SoB), as well as grant more safety when firing while exposed. As huge an improvement as this is, I still see myself rarely making it; the Gatling Gun assembly offers an even bigger combat improvement on the Chaingun for a more economical mod investment, and just normal modding on the Chaingun and Minigun can outstrip the DPS potential of this proposed Assault Rifle (while I also ultimately would rather use those Agility mods on boots and armors, or a Plasma Rifle). But at least this assembly would have real use if you come across a surplus of Agility mods while playing a build with no Eagle Eye, or can at least be used to make the Minigun a lot less unwieldy without a bunch of EE and technical mods.
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Have less restrictions on Dual Angel combinationsSomething I noticed when looking at valid Dual Angel combinations is how needlessly restrictive they are. Some combinations are obviously incompatible, like the weapon-locked challenges with each other, or any of AoCn, AoOC, and A100 together. But then I look at other restrictions and I just wonder
why; why can't you do AoMC with the weapon-locked challenges nor AoH, why can't you do AoP and AoI together, why can't you do AoLT nor AoRA with A100, why can't you mix AoMs with over half the other challenges? Most of these combinations certainly wouldn't make things easier, and if that was otherwise a concern, the proposal of disallowing challenge-specific badges from Dual Angel runs can be implemented.
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Allow Firestorm mods to be applied to Shotguns, with the effect of increasing their spread by +1Currently, finding a Firestorm mod as a Shotgun build is mostly a dud, all you can do with it is just slap it on the BFG, and if you're playing AoSh, you don't even have that option, making getting one in Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab particularly annoying. The proposed Blastproof Armor would give them another option if it's added, but when thinking of it, they should just be compatible with Shotguns themselves, and a fitting idea that came to mind is having it increase a Shotgun's spread size by +1 without any loss in dropoff damage, making the Shotgun even more effective against crowds. Also more ways to meaningfully mod Shotguns aside from loading them up with Power and Technical mods would be appreciated too.
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Nerf the amount of bullets that Former Captains carry from 100 to 40.The amount of bullets that Captains carry always been rather absurd, as they would be very lucky to deplete the clip on their Chaingun a single time before they (or you) die, much less actually burn through 140 bullets. The main reason I'm proposing this though is with the SoG change, Pistols have become even more ammo efficient, so much so that when playing Pistols on the latest betas, I find myself just firing away at out of vision enemies without care for the extra ammo burned, as ammo is such little concern when bullets are as plentiful as they are and you need so relatively little to kill enemies. A single Captain can provide enough bullets to clear out a floor while still allowing me to exit the floor with all my bullet stacks filled out, and with multiple Captains on a floor, I may as well have infinite Pistol shots. The suggested 40 bullets ensures that should a Captain actually deplete their Chaingun's clip, they would be able to reload one more full clip before running out of ammo (as well as still retain being a nice ammo source in general).
