Reworking the entire Weapons Shop to encourage more playstyles and gun diversity

[nathanieljbrill]

I will be putting suggested item reworks here. I will be working under a set of principles to make gun items more interesting.
1. Gun items should be based upon promoting different shooting playstyles (especially higher tier items). All gun items will be made more exclusive for the way they want to be used. Going along with this, items that can be added to your build that don't make you shoot your gun differently or alter your playstyle are uninteresting by comparison and can be reworked to be better. A main criminal of this is Hollow Point Ward which gives you bullet shred just for shooting the enemy and you do not have to think about the fact that it is in your build at all. Weakening headshot by comparison needs a condition that can have thought put into it to proc.
2. Negative stats for alternate playstyles is an effective way to make an item direct towards one playstyle.
3. More items should affect both Weapon damage and firerate if their playstyle doesn't necessarily pick a favorite. This allows for build diversity branching off of those items an allows both stats to be in total lower. Build diversity is the goal.

This rework is assuming that the shop buffs will be changed to give both firerate and weapon damage (which lower total values) as I have recently suggested in multiple places.

I haven't thought how to make every item more engaging but I've made progress and will post here repeatedly. Here are a few that I am definitely happy with so far.

Giant Shells is a new item that supports gun damage maxing for gun builds. Firerate is made to build less effectively and Weapon damage is made more effective by scaling with both bullet damage and the bonus damage.


Glass Cannon's function is improved. Previously the increased damage could result in increased healing and cancel out the lower maximum health. Additionally lower maximum health can make you die sooner but doesn't interact with enemy attacks that might be healing off of you. This makes you vulnerable in a way that the enemy will appreciate more an prevents your vulnerability from being a pseudo-vulnerability. Glass in a way that affects gameplay more as befitting of the cannon.

Hollow Point Ward is turned into a counter item. If they've build bullet resist to counter you then you can increase your damage against them in a specific way. It also joins the High Velocity Rounds tree which (As with Armor Piercing Rounds) is anti-bullet resist in unique ways. They can build more bullet resist to reduce this effect it does not ignore resistance. That is of course a greater investment you are making them take though.

This item really had its identity has a tier 3 item and should return to that. This emulates how Mcguiness gun needs to charge up. The bonus grows over a larger duration making you really love shooting for a long time. Since you don't need to hit an enemy for this to work it isn't too much of a penalty you can go into a fight pre-firing. It makes you think about your gameplan much more than the current version though an is impactful to justify it.
was Beserker and Frenzy just make sense together and were both in their best states when that was the case with Beserker as a tier 2. This allows you to build as a high survivability high-damage-when-low character much better. The minimum damage is to prevent this from being a laning rush since it could be an effective 50% weapon damage average there. This could be a very interesting item combined with the tier 3 resistances and even Cheat Death.
Frenzy should probably lose its base stats to compensate.
The Missing HP function is so that this item doesn't naturally reward self-healing. That's good enough without it.

 

[nathanieljbrill]

I didn't do enough math on Giant Shells. The numbers should be changed to -30% firerate (still multiplicative with all firerate) and 60% light melee damage. This makes your overall damage 100% efficient not counting the +20% weapon damage and fact that it's burst damage.

 

[nathanieljbrill]

The Current Spiritual Overflow is an item that you buy and it doesn't change your playstyle. It just increases your damage numbers. This version is an item that should be in the game. That is shooting to build up to then use your abilities in an empowered way.

The problem with long range and sharpshooter is that the characters who shoot at long range don't really need thier range item to be high damage. They want more firerate. Making these items a balance that is then weaker at short rang is going to be better for everyone the shooter and the diver.

 

[nathanieljbrill]

Burst fire unfortunately has a passive effect but it has functionally almost always been used as a straight DPS item. In this iteration it perfects Multishot's role in the game (as an aiming crutch). For people who need to establish buildup effects this helps them hit their marks quickly. My version of Multishot would have _20% firerate when the active is pressed rather than the weapon damage since I don't think anyone wants to use the item in a way where the damage is relevant.

The fixed version of Giant Shells that is balanced better. This will allow you to hard build weapon damage for your gun.

 

[nathanieljbrill]

To make Opening Rounds have it's place I kept thinking of ways to change it or have it upgrade into something in the cast. Then I thought of this. It makes you want to take advantage of the weapon damage to weaken them and get the proc and will add to gameplay in an interesting way. I love it.


For Close Quarters and Point Blank the intention is just to make them lean more into their niche. 15m is kind of far. This should be more something that will affect gameplay in you trying to get as close to your enemy as you can.

 

[nathanieljbrill]

After lots of hypothesizing about what I would do with Slowing Hex. I think it should build into Inhibitor. This would probably make both items more relevant.