Weapon master unbalanced

Mystic wrote:

, Wm's in my view are neither over powerd or under powerd

correct at least as far as my WM low-mid level knows..

The vamp yes it is powerful, but if you are the last person alive and on a wave higher than 9 while being lvl 250 or higher you are minus well dead unless if you have a piercing or poison of some sort. Your vamp heals but a fraction of what its suppose to and you start to depend more on the regen for your heals, and the vamp soon becomes worthless. So I still side by my word that the WM's being slightly underpowered.

The engineer have their base to hide in and if they are alone and the last ones alive they can make a lightning sent that penetrates the DR of the monsters
The medics can heal themselves with healing blasts while running away or make a titan to do instant kills for them if they are the last ones alive
The junkies can use the rod to pierce through the DR of the monsters
But what can the WM do, not much but run, this is the main reason why i think they are underpowered.

Okay picture this 4 players playing each lvl 300 all of them different classes. The junkie, medic, and engineer will support eachother with the base of course the medic healing and his titan killing, the junkie zapping the monsters if they get to close and the engineer linking his lightning and def sent in order to get kills and xp. Okay that covers those 3 but what about the WM he's just gonna be standing there looking pretty or go outside and risk getting killed with 2 scratches from a skaarj or one from a titan due to the lvls.
See my point...

I dont know if this is true or not, but the AM greatest weapon is the Bolt, rod beam, whatever (cant remember which is which), I think. So one shot from them, even when maxed out myself (talking DM or TDM here), I'm a gonner. Where is my best weapon? Didnt get it. No painter, or deemer... Nothing that powerful with that range and just about AutoAim every time. I guess that just agitated me during our 'friendly' DMs. They got all their goodies that they purchased with their level, but we dont get all of ours.

Other than that, I agree, we are the tank of the group. We will protect the little guys when we can, but we kinda go out on our own and kill kill kill. No base, no group huddle... just meet the enemy head on. It's the only way we can get points. We have no sentinels, or pets to help us along. Brute force is our bread and butter.
Now, I feel bad helping out another class cuz they may feel I "stole" a kill. So, should I let an AM or ENG. die first? It's a gray area. I know, that's off topic, but it's always bugged me....

Well i just had a wonderful idea for the WM instead of having the advanced damage bonus increased from 1 to 1.5 (although this a good idea) I think we should give the WM a special artifact. Although this idea needs a little tweaking i think it could work out.

As most of my ideas i get them from warcraft III and old game, if anyone knows the skill "Metamorphosis" then you would know where I am trying to go with this...

What metamorphosis (the artifact or skill if you will) did is it made the character shoot around 50% faster its not beserk but half of it. It also increased the health of the character by 500hp which in my thought is too much on this server perhaps a 50-100 would be better... Also the characters damage was chaotic which would be related on this server as piercing damage from any weapon the WM chooses. Now I know by reading this you automatically assume it would make the WM WAY overpowered but read on... there damage reduction was unchanged but their damage bonus increased by double

Okay so let me just put it in simpler terms with the restrictions that came with it also (still a thought):

Effects of the Artifact
1.shoot 50% faster
2.Damage is doubled
3.Damage does piercing damage
4.And health bonus increased
5.And if possible make the character look bigger or some type of alteration to his physique

When artifact is active
1.you cannot use any other combo like beserk etc..
2.you cannot use other artifacts with it like globe,rod etc...
3.it had a 60 sec timer which could be altered to fit this server's playing style
4.it cannot be turned off
5.uses 150 mana or adrenaline but could be subject to change as seen fit
6.only lasts for 30 sec or as seen fit

This is still an idea so please consider it or at least make revisions so something like this might be acceptable on server, and though this skill might seem to make the WM quite powerful there are still the restrictions to account for "when the artifact is active"

PS- this would fulfill the WM role as a tank as most have stated

I like the thought of a WM specific artifact.
However, I have a feeling that this may be a touch too powerful. +50% speed +double damage + piercing + extra health.
For comparison, the TD just triples damage and would cost 300 adrenaline for 30 secs. And the triple is historically believed as being too powerful, and the root cause of most of the balancing problems. This effectively triples damage (assuming resupply), but also gives piercing and health, for half the cost.
Most high level WMs would be running this 50% of the time, as 150 adrenaline wouldn't take long to get with that killing power. So I think it will be a bit too powerful.

As Elite himself says there are options for revisions to get it balanced. However, I think to get it balanced will require so much nerfing that it wont get used.

However, my other consideration is that makes WMs even more independent, and even more likely to be out on their own.

Minor points:

In the later waves the server struggles with network bandwidth. Increasing the fire rate will increase this loading, so my preference is for greater damage rather than more projectiles. The infinite medic/eng weapons and excessive use of berserk don't help.

Giving health has always been reserved for the medics, with the exception of the original regen and vampire, and booster. I don't think Druid would approve of an artifact that gave health.

Doing extra damage from artifacts is quite difficult. The normal weapon damage routines check the weapon, then the abilities of both the attacker and the victim. But not the artifacts. Setting the Udamage flag is the way most artifacts achieve this

Again converting the damage to piercing would be quite difficult. It would need code in each weapon class that would have to check on every single shot if the artifact is running, and then apply the original damage instead of the modified damage. This would mean that even the plain normal weapons would have to be replaced with a dummy RPG magic weapon type

It would need a change to the combo code to stop combos being activated while this was running

So I think a version of this idea that may run better would be:

use the existing double damage flag to increase damage. This automatically prevents it being used with the double and triple

Do not increase the speed. Something has to be nerfed, so why not this

Rather than giving health, it may be better if we upped the vampire ability. At the moment I believe if you are running a DD/TD the vampire just works on the single damage. Perhaps this ought to be fixed as a separate issue, and would help WMs in its own right. However, again it is difficult for artifacts to trap weapon damage, so we will need the original vampire ability to be aware of the artifact running and do the work for us - if we do need more than the DD/vamp fix

Still not sure how to do the piercing. or even if we should. Druid was against being able to automatically convert a weapon to piercing
So we may be down to effectively having a DD artifact, with the DD/vamp bug fixed?

Elite wrote:

.... it made the character shoot around 50% faster its not beserk but half of it.....

I may be wrong, but I think the following:

On DC berserk only shoots 50% faster not 100%

Other bits of information:

The amount of health Vampire gives you back is not limited by the victim's health. So firing a rocket at a pupae with 1 health will give you the same vampire health back as firing a rocket at a titan with 900 health

In invasion, the amount you vampire back is not affected by the triple damage and double damage, as they get applied after the abilities are processed. See this thread for a continuation of this discussion

As a suprise even to me, I think that in invasion, the Triple damage does the same damage as the double damage.
Perhaps I need to fix some of these

oh great, will that mean a stronger lr combo? lol

Mystic wrote:

oh great, will that mean a stronger lr combo? lol

No, because actually having it as a triple would cause so many more problems. I might just change the name to DD

(perhaps we need to discuss this in this separate thread as it is a bit off-topic)