Spiral Knights - Fix for Tortoguns!

Fix for Tortoguns!

11 replies [Last post]

Sun, 09/29/2019 - 00:40

Crazy-Horse

Tortoguns are underused. They have a lovely design and a corresponding game event, but the community doesnt use them enough right now. They even have 3 to 5 star versions, which i miss especially when i see new weapons with just a 5 star form. I'd like for us to tweak their design so that they are used as often as other weapons by the average knight.

The Issues
1. The forced front movement while firing the normal attack.
2. The immunity effect to the charge shards.

The Fix
1. Make the normal attack's dash go the same direction as player is moving and not where he is firing. If player is stationary, let there be no dash, honestly. It might spoil the theme a bit, but it would be the most player friendly design. Also themewise, we are more nimble as knights than the tortodrones, so not having the forced forward dash is fair to imagine. Also increase the range by a half a tile for both the melee and ranged portion of the attack.

2. Have the charge shards tick fewer times per second, but remove the immunity. Right now they will tick rather quickly but the immunity ruins the effect. I think adding a shock effect would be nice, like the real Tdrones. Also, make the landing area more predictable, with a bomb's circle appearing at the current landing area.

Caveats
1. Wont that dash where moving fix give the knight too much speed and be op?
a) Actually it wouldn't. Try having a race with a running knight while you run forward and fire a tgun forward. You arent as fast even if you doubleswitch shoot. With this change It will be the same thing except you can control where you move.

2. Wont that charge change make the gun too good with multiple people in party using it?
a) Maybe it would. But, an effect where the whole party collaborates to use it should be op. It still probably would not be as formidable as a vortex bomb, anyhow.

3. They will never make a design change, this game is on life support.
a) I truly have faith that the GH team will make changes if we can give a reasonable request. I think their investment into Tortodrone event is huge and these fixes are necessary to save this half baked weapon design. The event is awesome, the random bonus area theme and material collection is great, the guns and shields are cool looking and feel like a tdrone's, lets just make the guns usable. I think they can certainly take that last babystep, because they have done so much already for this product. And this game is NOT on life support.

Give your own suggestions for changes to tguns, and Please state if your opinion the changes which i specifically suggested .
Thanks!

Sun, 09/29/2019 - 12:29

Bopp

response

I rarely use my tortogun, so I don't have a very informed opinion. But this weapon has a distinctive feel and style that must be preserved. It's great that you have proposed qualitative fixes rather than the old quantitative fixes (buff damage).

Sun, 09/29/2019 - 13:46

Thats-Rough-Buddy

Removing the invincitinks

Removing the invincitinks from both this and shard bombs pretty much needs to happen to balance these weapons. I would actually prefer to keep the random charge spread. The randomness keeps the weapon interesting, as opposed to generic brandish charge spam.

Unique weapons for unique people, and generic weapons for generic people.

Tue, 10/01/2019 - 18:00

Crazy-Horse

To be fair

Bopp you owning one is probably good enough to give an opinion.
I doubt there is a single player who actively uses this gun. So your opinion is as good as anyone's.
Considering the lack of usage, I think the weapon changes are urgent and necessary to make the events more popular. Right now the event runs on the shields while the development time spent on the gun was for naught.

Crispy yes I agree about those invincitinks. As for the random charge I think we want a landing zone because the shards provide crowd control. It it was pure damage, sure, make it random. But either way I will be pleased if the normal attack's awkward dash effect was changed from firing direction to moving direction. That would be lovely.

Sat, 10/05/2019 - 22:11

Sir-Sappy

I don't see much wrong with

I don't see much wrong with how the weapons function, as far as I see, they all pair well with each other. The shield can give an AoE stun, knockback enemies, make them vulnerable or push them into Tortofist charges. The tortofist has very good knockback for a gun, you can knock enemies pretty hard into the charged shards.
I don't believe the way the lunges work should be changed at all, it's definitely how the weapon is meant to be used. Changing how the lunge work will definitely ruin the vision of the weapons and make it even more clunky to damage with the lunge and shot, and probably won't fit well with the model if things are going off in different directions. You're supposed to hit with the gun's end and blast a shot into the enemy.
Enemies wander around shards, they also try to spawn AROUND enemies or in front of you in any capacity, so you have to trap enemies within the charge unless they walk into them themselves as you lure, which isn't that difficult with most. I'm not sure how overpowered changing the tinks of the charge shards will be, but I do not believe it is needed, the charges can already do massive damage and block enemies, it has more functionality, with it's already good damage I don't think it should get more from the charge.
--on second thought, it's hard to decide this. I'd want to be able to keep knocking enemies into the shards, and push them to take more damage, but then against immovable enemies like gun pups, the charge would absolutely demolish them and definitely be "overpowered" if there were no tinks.

I can't figure an argument against getting rid of the randomness at the moment, but I do not believe the charges should follow a pattern, as it'd happen with other talked about changes, it'd make the gun overpowered in functionality or damage, depending on what gets changed.
I really believe the charges are fine as-is.
I've made and used- and still use all the guns thoroughly because I find them fun.

The weapon does do decent damage, it's just very sluggish and the reload is what I see as the problem, it leaves you insanely vulnerable if you do two shots with a single Tortofist into enemies and become unable to shield, all I'd want to see are improvements on that and how the reload handles.
I don't believe anything else of the Tortodrone guns should be changed, they already have a way they're meant to be used and they can handle decently if you know what you're doing.

Like other weapons, maybe the basic fire isn't the star of their functionality, Troika lines are insanely sluggish but have a beefy charge, the Magnus line has a tough to handle basic fire but their charges are massive. These weapons are the same.
sorry i edited this a lot while thinking if anyone's read past edits

Tue, 10/15/2019 - 19:25

Sacred-Rebel

I second

I second that. On that note, I believe attack speed UV would help with the sluggish reload.

Thu, 10/17/2019 - 12:18

Fishysh

I like changes

The tortogun already rewards skill expression. One change I'd like to see happen is:

Remove the reload entirely (infinite ammo): The punches suck as a dps option and are only a worse sword. Spamming the punch in a fight would only get you killed as well, so infinite ammo doesn't seem out of the question in the realm of balance.

Sat, 10/19/2019 - 21:59

Sir-Sappy

I worded poorly near the end

I worded poorly near the end of my previous post, the shots/lunges themselves aren't "sluggish", I meant to blame the reload alone for the gun being "sluggish". Gun ASI is basically required to run these guns smoothly. I do not see any problem with how the basic fire functions itself, only the reload causing so much trouble.
And along with that as I repeat, the reload is what causes them to be so harsh to use for the average user, these guns push you towards enemies and if you trigger a reload, you're up close and personal with an enemy with the inability to shield while the slow reload animation goes through, causing knights to often get damaged very easily and pushes knights away from using these weapons.

This next thing is just a worthless nit-picky problem I have with the tortodrone guns, the majority if not all other guns can cleanly start charging after shooting a charge while the tortodrone guns end up doing a shot/lunge before going into a charge.. after doing a charge and continuously holding down the fire button.. if that makes sense. This is probably because of them being similar to a sword with their lunge, but this also causes a reload to occur and making it take longer to charge up another blast. This makes it harder to shoot off consistent charges from the tortodrone guns without the use of other accepted mechanics.

I think it's a little late to start editing my old post now.

Mon, 03/09/2020 - 20:28

Shadow-Turtle

these weapons make me sad inside

I really want to love these weapons... as I've modeled my whole character theme around Turtles... and thus Tortos... I've gotten every Torto gun + shield in the game but every March of The Tortodrones event just reminds me how incredibly difficult it is to grind and get these weapons... The work just doesn't feel rewarding to me. I go into parties using these weapons, and hardly ever hit anything. And if I spend my time trying to push enemies into the shards, usually most if not all the enemies are already dead to teammates using other weapons that have more consistent and predictable damage, or I accidentally run into traps that push me closer and closer to death anyways.

I just ran through Assault on Machine Shop 13, and literally died to having 4 rocket puppies spawn on me, each in a corner. and my silly Torto gun charge shot didn't even take out one of them. So as i'm running around trying to recharge, dodge the 4 rockets, and actually land a lucky shot on the rocket puppies... i'm just thinking to myself, "i could literally just use my slugger, or arcana, and take the rockets out much more easily, without all this hassle and hoping to Haven that the charge shots land right to actually do any damage. But, since charge shots weren't landing right. I eventually died again and had to spark. It felt really bad. Just like it always feels bad when I try to use my beloved Torto weapons but i'm just left in the dust of others that aren't using them....

The shields are the most cool and rewarding thing, since they seem to give better and larger stun AoEs, but they still do also give movespeed decrease low, so i'm always left behind my peers in parties. feels bad man.

I really don't know how to "fix" these... or if they need "fixing", but overall they just feel like meme gear at best, which actually makes me pretty sad since I put so much into getting all 8 of the gear at 5*. I've even leveled the elemental and piercing damage guns to 10, and rolled UVs on them, trying to get CTR on them at least. They still don't feel good to use. For some time I even used double attack speed trinkets for guns, and they still feel pretty bad. The reload animation is still slow, but firing off the punch + shot happens faster as far as I can tell. But I don't think that's helpful particularly for these weapons as the slow reload animation is the problem there, and the randomness of the charge shots makes you miss 90 percent of the time except against Zombies or Trojans which are pretty slow moving enemies when just walking. Against slimes and wolvers, devilites, spookats, anything super mobile... you're better off using the punch + shot combo over and over... eventually killing them all one by one... or you could just use a combuster or acheron and obliterate them in a couple charges to move on.

The parts where these weapons DO feel good: when all the charged shards for some reason stack almost on top of each other, and your target somehow gets right underneath them, and they all just POW right into the target, and decimate it to pieces. That can even happen in LD if you're lucky enough just spamming those charge shots till someone gets popped by em all.

But, the rarity of this kinda stuff, and the inconsistency is where it falls off fast and becomes really hard to want to be used. Nobody wants to get left behind because they're using weapons that simply can't perform at the same level as other weapons in the game.
People seem to just use these weapons for the LULz because they want to, not because they're effective. like I said, they're basically just a set of meme gear. I think that's all they will ever really be too.

Wed, 03/11/2020 - 01:50

Zincamania-Forum

@shadow-turtle

The tortofist charge attack is not random, the crystals travel in the sky and if their path collides with an enemy they will fall down on that enemy. If their path doesn't collide with an enemy then they will fall down at their maximum travel range. Try aiming your charge straight at the enemy and you will land them more accurately. It won't make tortofists good weapons and other weapons will still kill enemies faster though, but it's something.

I find tortofists useful for spamming some damage while kiting enemies. It's a slow way of killing enemies, but the charge animation has a built in dodge mechanic that let's you stay at a safe range and the crystals can block their movement. Perhaps it is useful to create space against T4 enemies (shadow lair).

Fri, 03/11/2022 - 16:27

#10

Saint-Olga

What's with the charge attack?

After launching a charge attack, it will fire one shot and reload when you hold the attack key down during the release animation of the charge.
It works like a sword's charge-- no other two-shot gun does this behavior.

Tue, 09/06/2022 - 08:52

#11

Parasthesia

Simple Tortogun Fixes to be great

3 bullet magazine: tortoguns have the risk/reward profile similar to Winmillion for the primary attacks. A 3 bullet magazine before reloading would not drastically increase the DPS, only the usability. The dash forward has its pros and cons unlike spamming a blaster, and similar to swords deserves higher damage for being up close.

Charge: I like it, even with invinciticks. Decrease the “fuse time” on the shards. Party and solo play taken into account, if the invinciticks remain as-is to prevent giant DPS on giant monsters, a faster fuse time for these bombs would make them more aggressive and lead to more consistent play. Bad charge? Enemies ran the wrong way? Just reshoot.

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Fix for Tortoguns!