Antiguas Need a Desparate Buff

I'd prefer changes that give the Antiguas a situational advantage instead of just boosting damage.

Pallaskat suggested somewhere that antigua shots could pierce through multiple enemies, which is clever. Maybe the shots could deal more damage with each subsequent enemy that it travels through.

Can get rid of the useless damage bonus, everyone has bk anyways.

ASI does benefit a small degree, faster shield cancelling.

Agree with charge shot, I remember suggesting the same thing some time ago just being the bird.

Similar to the above, maybe the charge shot could deal increased damage with every subsequent enemy traveled through, including aoe splash damage.

Or maybe each charge bullet could be a smaller crowd piercing bird instead of a basic bullet, and ends with the big bird. Still locks you in place as a tradeoff.

Agree with most points this thread brings up.
Personally, my biggest problem with Antigua gameplay has been the fact that it's PHYSICALLY painful to mash M2 six times in a row.
I've been thinking a lot about the gun's playstyle, and I think the attack pattern should be reworked where 1 press instantly unloads a volley of 3 bullets of 6. That way, the Antigua family could fulfill a sort of "lightweight Blitz Needle" playstyle, where it has less firepower, but doesn't stop the player in their tracks. Also helps stand apart from being nearly identical to Blaster gameplay.
I don't think that their innate DvM needs to be nuked tho. There's still benefit for those who don't use BK/Chaos, and I don't think it's a healthy idea to design all weapons with only TWO armour sets in mind.

I'm enjoying my time with Antiguas. I don't generally use other guns, so I might be biased. I fight primarily with swords, I use Antiguas basically when approaching a foe, when I think it's too dangerous to fight melee and for breaking blocks and minerals. It's a secondary weapon for me and I think it fills this niche perfectly. It's fast attack rate also pairs well with Maskeraith's quill skill, because I can break more quills while the pet is firing them.

I agree that Antigua-line guns are weak. I use mine only for utility (hitting switches, etc.) on speedruns.

ASI does benefit these guns, increasing clips per minute from 24 at ASI+0 to 29 as ASI+6 (outdated data, but probably still pretty close to true). If you're saying that you don't want to mash buttons that quickly, then I agree with you on that. :)

Antiguas are old guns and suffer from a lot of the old design choices. They all have a damage reduction due to the monster perk they're given similar to how the CIV is weaker than the Leviathan Blade.

However, this damage perk doesn't really line up with the old Gunslinger armors that well since they all offer Very High boosts. This means that for the Deadshot and Shadowsun sets you've got a +7 damage boost which you can only use +6 of, and for the ASI sets they suffer a similar issue thanks to the SwiftStrike Buckler doing the same with ASI.

There's also the issue of the meta having shifted after the buff to Chaos and the introduction of BK where again you lose out on the monster perk because you surpass +6 in boosts.

The volley and charge shot is fun and separates it from the Magnus, but it needs some tweaking to make it so that an enemy moving slightly doesn't cost most of the damage.

The last issue is purely mechanical... the firing mechanic is just a strain on the player and trying to max the damage output is just going to hurt your fingers.

-----------

My solution would be to reduce the monster perk to just Medium and buff the raw damage accordingly.

Change the firing mechanic to fire once on a button press and again on button release, still resulting is 6 shots but halving the number of times you have to press the button.

Lastly the charge would be able to auto-target in a small cone (10 to 15 degrees to the left and right of where you aim) in front of the player for the volley, and fire the Eagle (or Apocrean claw) in a straight line.

i've mentioned this before but my biggest complaint about antiguas is their finnicky bullet hitbox, they dont feel nearly as precise at hitting blocks as they should be. otherwise they're a nice feeling exploration-gun, mostly for quickly hitting blocks and such without slowing down much or worrying about reloading

but yeah, the damage is very mediocre and the charge attack is useless in almost all circumstances

i don't really like the idea of making it shoot multiple shots per click, since that would make it slow you down for longer, make it feel less high-precision, and make it awkward for breaking minerals - though i can respect the concern regarding hand health (though it's not nearly as bad of a hand-destroyer as meta quick-switching, which the test server showed people are desperate to preserve as-is... in fact it's a weapon that doesn't really rely on quick-switching because of the high clip size, so it's arguably safer for your hands than other guns!)

i think itd be nice to polish the hitbox/AoE and have the charge attack skip the clip emptying. but i also wonder if, leaning into the "exploration gun" niche, they could be buffed to just not slow your movement speed at all while firing (keeping the relatively mediocre damage in exchange)?

(also the damage bonus is cool and id sooner obliterate chaos/BK than remove/weaken it. besides, there's not even a base-damage antigua to compare to, you can just buff the damage directly without removing anything from them if you wanted...)

@Kyliia I do like the removal of movement speed debuff for antiguas, could make it viable for speedrunners.

@Thread
I mentioned to Holy-night before, but you already can fire off all 6 shots at maximum speed with only 3 fairly relaxed button presses (even at ASI max), just need to work on your timing. Shouldn't be hard unless you're 80 years old or something.

Hand health is also a user problem, not a design problem. If you have the dexterity and reflexes of a 90 year old, you can simply use slower weapons. No one is forcing you to weapon switch or fingerspam the attack button.

Use your head people. If doing something is harming your health, do something else.

We already have weapons with multiple shots per click, Mandolin, Autoguns, and you can probably throw in Cutters and the Turbillion. Plus you can still use it for precise shots and such, it just takes a bit of time getting used to the fact that you may have to hold the trigger a bit if you want to space your shots... but I'd rather encourage gameplay that maximizes the amount of bullets you're sending out.

I'd also want the pair of shots from each click to be closer together so you'd end up with an attack combo that also looks like a Cutter where the next hit is right on the heels of the last one..

@Thats-Rough-Buddy

It's just a simple mechanic change that leans into the Antigua's fast spammy playstyle... if you're letting off the gas then it just doesn't feel right...

----------

Also neither mentioned the change to the charge attack I suggested...

i would love that the charged attack spawns the energy bird inmediately, every other time i tried to use it, i got usually beaten badly even by curious mewkats! Maybe the bird needs to be buffed further so it counts the other removed shots. (an user that has 3 non-event antiguas)

yeah, mandolin is similar to your suggestion (though not exactly the same since mandolin shoots simultaneously, rather than sequentially as you suggest). my biggest concern is that antigua currently doesn't feel like them, or like any other weapon; i'm worried your suggestion would homogenize it with those weapons by making it functionally a 3-shot clip like other guns are, and make it feel largely redundant with orbitguns that also hit twice per click in a 3-shot clip and are otherwise just better, taking away antigua's appeal compared to them

if you could retain the current control you have over it, like maybe allowing you to quickly shield-cancel out of shooting the second shot, then i could be more on board with it?

also i feel like the charge attack suggestion is just kind of hard to evaluate honestly? idk how itd feel in practice so i dont have much to say

Since I have played with all 5 of the Antigua lines (Chilling Duelist is technically one) as well as the Mandolin I can easily say that these two are different enough that the slight mechanic change for the Antigua wouldn't cause them to overlap... different charges, bullet speeds, paths, and ranges would still make them stand out.

I'd honestly be more likely to say that with the change it starts to compete more with the Autogun lines as a long distance DPS option.

Shield Cancelling would be something I'd want but with good ASI even if you couldn't cancel you wouldn't have to wait long.

---

As for the Auto-target charge attack, it's more or less pulled from Overwatch's Cassidy/Mcree and their Ultimate "High Noon". Instead of an Instakill though it just targets the nearest enemy in front of you... as long as it's in range it can target and if it dies mid attack you'll focus the next enemy. This could prove very strong against groups of low HP enemies.

ATM if you want to use the charge you have to space yourself and take perfect aim and PRAY that none of your teammates pushes the enemy and that they just don't walk slightly to the side.

Having it track enemies you're still facing even if they move a bit ensures you're more likely to get damage out.

As for the final shot I think it's good to keep it going where you initially aim since you want control over the big damage part of the charge.

You know damn well everything GH touches turns to feces. Have you learned nothing? Instead of asking them to touch and f up old weapons that some players actually enjoy using, you should ask them to "pls add a new weapon like ..., but with these changes ...". Just like Carbine has been added way after other Antiguas, ask for more such variants, so if they f those up again, like all the other stuff, it won't remove okay alternatives for players who like them.

And before you start arguing, if this would be one of the extremely rare cased in which they don't f it up, it would leave obsolete weapons in the game, I hereby rimind you that this is a small price to pay for having a backup when that much is at stake and the game is already riddled with useless stuff like force buckler and all the stuff they f'ed up already, like tortoguns etc.. It's normal in SK to try stuff and find it's useless or ask around what isn't useless at the moment.