I originally thought that dread venom striker was a little to strong with shadow but after trying it more in depth this feels like a good state for it.

Gran Faust charge feels viable now without the high chance of receiving curse for the user.

Orbit/Mixer should be left as they were originally were before the preview server and if they are going to be changed it would probably be better to do after you roll out what we all know is coming in the monster spike world, for a better comparison with other weapons. The real issue is orbit/mixer have been a thing for so long, the games biggest investors have put an immense amount into should be taken into account. Regardless of this change or not the price is dropping or will drop for these with the mandolins namely what I mention earlier that I'm dodging around. If we're not taking these big investors into your game into consideration logically the choice should be to make them like the mandolin with the bonus boomerang shot damage. Not matter what I say or anyone says in here the majority of people will seek this option because the majority of players don't own these weapons so the ballot is skewed.

Again I'll mention if they're left alone no one is effected, if you change em you're stepping on the toes of the people who have invested the most into this game. Yes it this has a p2w vibe but for a niche pve game, the p2w is phasing out with mandolin either way.

Summary:
Dread Venom Striker good
Gran Faust good
Orbit/Mixer bad
-Leave it or
-Give it boomerang bonus or
-Kick the can down the road after spikes are more thoroughly integrated

Random Stuff
-I saw "Mechanism" aka Cronus talking, being very social and talking back and forth with players. To which I literally said thats the community manager we need before I knew it was Cronus(hear me out). It would be nice to have more of that here or more publicly available? Live chat is always going to have benefits over typing up a forum post but it'd be really nice to feel that interaction more in forums. The silence during spike update was deafening, in general the increase game master presence in forums is reassuring to see but has dropped off lately.

Thanks for bringing the preview back for this final pass
Exelius~

I really like that the mandolin does more damage when disc shot returns, its a cool unique feature no gun has atm. I was wondering whether this mechanic is intended to stay exclusive to mandolin, or if it will be added to the other non-normal discguns like mixmaster/orbitgun.

It made sense that normal would do more damage since it didn't have a chance for applying a status, similar to how supernova does more neutral damage than its counterparts. After adding stun to mandolin, I was surprised that the other discguns didn't get the same mechanic.

Also, I'm not a huge fan of mixmaster/orbitguns no longer avoiding wolver/mechaknight reactions. I'd personally like to see that "avoiding" mechanic come back as an intended feature, or perhaps have the return-shot damage extended to non-normal discgun lines so they keep something "unique". It goes without saying, it'd be available to craftable and non-craftable discguns (mixmaster/orbitgun, shock/fire discgun etc) so sure unique, but not unobtainable.

Again, after testing, mixmaster's charge attack is still seemingly bugged, does the same damage as regular shots.

Overall I like how mixmaster and orbitgun bullets now behave, where previously I could only break one block with one shot (only 1 disc registered hit), now i can correctly break two blocks with one shot (2 discs registered as hit).

I'd just like to see some of the same uniqueness of the mandolin carried over to the other discguns

i believe DA could use a damage buff for the 2nd hit of its string, like 5% more of its current number. in order to compete with brandish’s and troika’s damage. also reduce the recovery time after the 2nd sword swing, right now its the exact same as troika swords.

WHB is miles better than both BTB and grand flourish right now, like damage wise, especially with the beast dmg bonus high stat, but even without it, at tier 3 with equal amounts of dmg bonuses, against fiends, it still does 30 dmg more per hit in its string compared to flourishes. and there’s 5 hits in WHB’s string. so 90 more dmg already with the first 3 hits, plus however many more with the 4th and 5 hits. with the +3 dmg bonuses, it’s more than 100 dmg difference per hit. i suggest lowering the damage bonus against beast to low to even the playing fields a little bit.

as for the ranges, it seems somewhat inconsistent for WHB. its first hit has the same range as a BTB, but from the 2nd to the last hit of the string, its effective range seems way shorter. like the slash effects would be touching the target, but it does not count as a hit. it only counts as a hit if your character ends up less than 1 tile away from the target before you swing, so basically point blank range. hopefully we can get that fixed in the next version.

My 2 cents:

Mixmaster, Celestial Orbitgun: Happy with the changes - not a fan of unique gameplay mechanics (interaction vs shielded enemies) hidden behind a 'paywall' (theoretically f2p but c'mon). Unique advantage of elemental damage is significant and still provides big value for spenders.

Troika, Kamarin, Grintovec, Khorovod, Sudaruska, Jalovec, and Triglav: Speed increase is fine. I think it slightly loses the appeal of 'big-sword feels heavy' that it used to have. I'd rather the damage be increased across these weapons and potentially the range of the attacks also, instead of a speed increase. Currently even with the attack speed increases it does not come close to 'meta' weapons, which sort of defeat the purpose of these balance changes in my opinion.

Gran Faust: I don't think these changes address the main issue of this weapon (and Divine Avenger) - the normal attacks need a buff as they are just a worse version of Brandish currently (particularly Gran Faust with the Acheron). Increasing the base damage of the weapon or increasing the radius of its attacks would be a meaningful change.
Curse on the charge attack feels better not lasting 50s, but as others have said it is still too consistent for anyone to actually use the charge. Would need a significant reduction in frequency (5% change or so as others have suggested).

Cutter, Striker, Hunting Blade, Wild Hunting Blade, Vile Striker, Dread Venom Striker: Changes are awesome, sword feels significantly better and likely will have some meta use-cases. The attack-range could use a buff though, especially on the charge as most of the charge attack will just not connect on grouped enemies and can only be used on isolated enemies (which it's basically never worth to spend time charging for a single enemy). The secondary swings/shadow swings are also quite inconsistent due to the range issue, particularly when knocking enemies back. If this was increased these weapons would be incredible and will fit well into the meta.

TLDR; happy with the gun changes and cutter-line changes. Heavy sword changes do not feel impactful enough and seem to move away from the feeling of a heavy sword, would prefer damage and range increases on these.

Until now, I've been testing the Troikas (mainly Triglav) solo, and it has performed decently well. However, recently I played with 3 others across a few missions (King of Ashes, Dreams and Nightmares) on elite difficulty and have changed my mind on the current state of the weapon line.

The main issue with the swords, I think, is the knockback. In solo play this is no big deal because enemies get one-shot by the charge attack. However, in group play the enemies scatter after the charge attack blast which feels counterintuitive. It's not like the blast bombs where you have some control over where enemies get knocked into. The Troika charge attacks have a delay before the strike where enemies can move around as you attempt to land your blow, leading to enemies getting scattered to undesirable positions. An attempted solution was to time the strike around the Electron Vortex bombs, but the knockback was too strong even for the pull/shock application of those bombs.

Therefore, my suggestion is to reduce the knockback of the Troika charge attacks. I don't think the charge attack damage needs to be touched (though the basic swings could use some extra damage but I digress). This will help the Troikas complement other weapons by not knocking enemies far away from allies.

A lot of the time when changes to the old discguns are mentioned, it seems people resort to arguing their extreme player-market prices should play a role in how they are balanced. I really don't think that's a good idea.
The thought of paying 800+ USD for an item in a videogame is something that should be opposed at every turn. It is madness. I feel bad for those who have paid such a price as I think it demonstrates an unhealthy fixation on the game, and irresponsible use of money.

Fixing the bugs associated with old discguns won't actually make them substantially worse from a gameplay standpoint, so I need to say I don't actually think this alone will tank their market prices all that much. However, if it does? That's good for the health of the player market.
More importantly, though, I feel the modernization of discguns is a potential step to further availability. I can't claim such a thing as a fact, of course, but I think there are reasons to suspect these guns' limited availability is partially due to the powerful bugs that have been plaguing them for years.
The discguns as we know them are probably going to remain rare, but new reskins using the stats of the old discguns (and other damage types & statuses) seem much more likely to be released now that they are working as intended.

The point being, players will probably be spared from butchering their wallet for eachother on the market in order to get meta discguns. This is good.

You really went out of your way to calculate damage per USD spent. Remember weapons have no value outside of SK. If you decide to throw a thousand dollars to buy a gatekept item, that's your problem honestly.

These weapons have only been rare because there were no alternatives and their drop rate was low. Their gimmicks played a role in their prices too, but they were not intended, standardizing the way diskgun pellets work makes a lot of sense.

I think they should be a mandolin reskin just like Caladbolg is a combuster reskin with the same behavior. Problem with giving them unique perks is that you still lock mechanics behind a paywall.