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

nathanieljbrill

Well-known member
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.

Item (4).png 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.png
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 (1).png
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.
Intensifying Magazine.png
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.
Berserker.pngwas 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.
 
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.
 
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Spiritual Overflow.png
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.

Long Range.png 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.

Sharpshooter.png
 
Burst Fire (1).png
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.
Item (5).png
The fixed version of Giant Shells that is balanced better. This will allow you to hard build weapon damage for your gun.
 
Bisecting Shot.pngTo 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.

Close Quarters (1).png
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.
Point Blank (1).png
 
Ugh not slowing hex. Slowing bullets.
IF you add the slowing bullets to inhibitor this i think this works.

Other than that, the only item i have issue with is Glass Cannon. I think all of the rest are more interesting to some degree, even if its just slightly more interesting.

My issue with glass cannon is what its intended to do. Your "fix" to try to make it interesting is self reduced healing. That is not the nature of what a glass cannon is. IMO, i dont think glass cannon should even be a gun item at all. OR if it is, it shouldnt be gun damage but ALL damage.

So something along the lines of "In crease all damage dealt by 80%. Passive: reduce All resistances and Health by 15%"

This really makes you a serious damage threat, no matter the character, while also making you a lot more susceptible to burst damage. So getting hit by any form of cc and focused down and you are dead. High risk, high reward type item.

What color makes the most sense IDK. Thematically, being its called Glass Cannon, orange is fine.
 
IF you add the slowing bullets to inhibitor this i think this works.

Other than that, the only item i have issue with is Glass Cannon. I think all of the rest are more interesting to some degree, even if its just slightly more interesting.

My issue with glass cannon is what its intended to do. Your "fix" to try to make it interesting is self reduced healing. That is not the nature of what a glass cannon is. IMO, i dont think glass cannon should even be a gun item at all. OR if it is, it shouldnt be gun damage but ALL damage.

So something along the lines of "In crease all damage dealt by 80%. Passive: reduce All resistances and Health by 15%"

This really makes you a serious damage threat, no matter the character, while also making you a lot more susceptible to burst damage. So getting hit by any form of cc and focused down and you are dead. High risk, high reward type item.

What color makes the most sense IDK. Thematically, being its called Glass Cannon, orange is fine.
Thank you for finding them more interesting! The real goal isn't to make individual items more interesting, though I hope I'm doing that, but to make the shop more interesting in the aggregate. The goal is to make the weapons shop revolver around play styles more. Like Intensifying magazine is currently something you get to round out your build rather than organize your gameplay around, but it's the only item that wants you to continue shooting a long time.
Today I made a big list of all the play styles represented in current items and obvious play styles that are missing. I don't think I'll be reworking that many more items, but I have already decided that my version of Hollow Point Ward isn't needed. I will probably end up replacing it with a different tier 3 entirely to represent a different play style.

The glass Cannon healing nerf is so that as a play style it makes you want to avoid agro more, rather than just being able to run people down and your increased damage accounting for your missing HP with healing.
 
Hollow Point Ward.png
Okay this is my revised version of Hollow Point Ward. It changes very little for the original but fixes the issue of it being an item that just fits any gun build by providing the resist reduction for free. Now this is a playstyle item that encourages you to keep your enemy at midrange to do more damage and keep their resist lower.
Pristine Emblem.png This is a new item for the purpose of filling the "shooting at moderate rate as a playstyle" niche. There are niches for maxing weapon damage and for shooting super fast but previously having a mix of firerate and weapon damage for DPS purposes was the only time you'd get a mix like that. This item says "my gameplan is to have moderate total firerate" and makes users of this item distinctive from other gun users. This item is also the upgrade of high velocity mag that someone suffering from low bullet velocity can get to fix their problem without using express shot (which encourages maxing weapon damage) or a tier 4. Bullet lifesteal fits perfectly because it doesn't work well with Fury Trance or Vampiric Burst (which are too ubiquitous in gun builds).
Inhibitor.png
This is the version of Inhibitor that i am proposing to make slowing bullets alive again.
Escalating Resilience.png
This is a revise version of Escalating Resilience which I am partially proposing just to make items fit in the space provided in the shop since I'm adding 2 tier 3s and only 1 tier 2. For a weakness to nerf it it gets something I think escalating resilience should have always had which is a cooldown between stacks. As it stands it isn't very escalating it gets maxed in the first two seconds.
 
What if we could buy "different guns" and then slap mods on them, so your hero skills become completely separate itemisation/power from your "gun".
 
Heavy Munitions.png
There are a few items that increase mobility and gun damage. Kinetic dash is the only one that could be said to use movement as a currency for gun damage. This gun fills the niche of sacrificing mobility rather than increasing it for gun damage. If you want to be a slow moving tank this item lets you do it.

Empowerment.png
Currently Heroic Aura is the only gun item that is focused on buffing your allies. This adds to that niche. I did kind of want it to be a low cooldown ability so that you're repeatedly shooting your allies but I couldn't figure out how to balance it that way. I'll do some more work and post a version that does that then decide what I like more.
There are just a few more changes I'm making. There's one more item I would want to add then a couple small changes to a couple items and i think my version of the item shop will be complete.
 
Melee Charge.png
This is the last custom item I am adding. Then there's a couple more modifications and then I'll make a comment with all the items I've modified and that will be my full rework.
This item rounds out the melee archetype in a way that interacts with abilities in an interesting way. There are a lot of abilities that can work as interesting options and this is unlike any other melee item. Note that the ability damage scaling stays Spirit Scaling if that is the damage type it had as damage scaling is unaffected.
Headshot Booster (1).png
I remain a little unsure if this effect should be added to this item or to the Weakening Headshot and Crippling headshot but I think this is right. This effect encourages continual headshots even though the passive is only proccing once at the same rate. This probably means the item needs nerfed a bit because this would also be a farming boosting item but it could be fine as is because the penalty could prove tough to avoid. This will continually affect the playstyle though making people home in on heads all the time extra hard.Headhunter (1).pngHeadhunter.png
This is my proposed Express Shot change. IT no longer upgrades from High Velocity mag as that seemed unnecessary except for doorman and I shifted the upgrade to Pristine Emblem instead.
This item is one that (with Giant Shells) encourages the high damage low firerate playstyle and we should let that be by using the "not firing" period. But This can compromise between the basic cooldown an the not firing period shorter cooldown by having the cooldown go down faster when you aren't shooting.
 
Empowerment6.4.png
Okay I realized that I had too many tier 3s and it wouldn't fit in the shop. So I'm reworking Empowerment to be a tier 4. That's fine it's meant to be a major component of your gameplay as designed (always looking for an ally to shoot). The projectile shot should be large so as to hit allies easily vs the shot that normally comes out of mystic an Rejuvenating.
Blood Tribute.png
Also this change is to make room since otherwise I couldn't fit my tier 3s but I actually like the change since it makes it a fast way to get decent stats with the health loss being more impactful in that early game. Item (4).png
And this is my version of Split shot that builds into the version of Burst fire I used earlier. Even though it's less elaborate I think that's just the buff people want split shot to have.

And with that every item change has been done! I think the result is a shop that revolves around playstyles much more and gives more options. This should create item and gameplay diversity.
 
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