Uh. Huh. Well, I'll give it a go. Just hope I'm not overstepping my bounds here :P

The Entire Handgun Arsenal

Summary: Fails to match up to the other two forms of specialization in any definitive way.

Before we go too far, I'd like to know the Dev's point of view on the role of the handgun. Since at the moment I'm not sure of the goal, for now I'll stick with my own observations.

As Ranged DPS: As a damage weapon, almost all guns have less comparable firepower to either swords or bombs. Guns have very little effective AoE and their damage is low compared to swords. A un-augmented character with a gun may be lucky to kill a single creature in a given room before the swordsmen mop up the rest. Since the Increased Atk Spd grants about a 20% speed increase at maximum, I would guess that even that would be incapable of decreasing the gap between the two Specs. The only gun witnessed to be a match damage-wise is the Autogun line, but this must be dealt close range, with the inherent disadvantages of several handguns (immobilization, low combo, long animation, reload time, and few shield-cancel opportunities) and almost completely defeats the purpose of using a gun.

As Ranged Utility: The handgun usefulness as a Utility-Survival weapon is, unfortunately, diminished for several reasons. While strafing is quite effective, most handguns have a low clip size, resulting in elongated strafe times that reduce speed, and, again, few shield-cancel opportunities. In fact, a bomber has so much more mobility and crowd control, that wielding a gun is more of an after-thought. Worse, specializing in guns gives no real benefit to the player in this role, as a un-augmented character utilizes the guns survival capabilities nearly as efficiently. Finally, floor effects and other methods of mobility reduction hinder the gunslinger far more than any other.

Almost any specialization or combination of specializations is better off using gear from the Sword or Bomb specs, making the pure gunslinger the only character to gain full benefit from this gear. Even then, he sacrifices crowd control in the form of the knockback/lockdown that keeps large numbers of enemies at bay, and the lack of resists on his armor. Since few guns have the range to truly keep enemies at a safe distance, the prevalence of projectiles and 'leaping' enemies puts a gunner in almost as much danger of being hit as a bomber or swordsman, making that lack of resists especially deadly.

I would like to stress that this is not intended to bash gunners, as I believe guns should be a viable specialization. I have nothing but respect for those that take this route, as there is much love for the style, and the advantages it already has makes it very appealing. I simply feel that the mechanics as well as weapons/gear do not support the gunner in his tasks in an appreciably balanced way.

@shoebox & ohgodmyhead,
You guys are both right about guns not being useful enough. If someone shows up on my team with sword based armor and 5* swords i think, 'oh good he'll be helpful'. If someone shows up with bomb armor and is dropping 5* bombs i think, 'oh good, he'll be helpful'.
...
If someone shows up wearing gun armor and holding a 5* gun i think, 'i hope that's costume armor and he has some swords and bombs under that cloak'.
:(

An idea for guns would be that you have to press fire again to reload, if your just spam clicking then it wouldnt effect you in away, but if you charge attack it allows you to shield, get safe, reload.

I thought of that, but I don't think they can check how many bullets are in a gun.
I think it might just work based on how many clicks, like a sword combo, which is why stopping shooting before the last attack resets it without reloading.

But if something like that was possible, I would definitely prefer it to what we have now.

@gell Yes it's a little lower risk, but as I stated, not necessarily by much, and bombers have similar low risk capabilities. Lower damage and no knockback also means you need room and freedom to move, which isn't always an option, especially in FSC. Keep in mind that faster killing means safety too, and the longer you spend dancing around, the higher chance you'll make a mistake.

Not only that, as a Bomber/Utility gunner, when swordsmen charge into the fight, the knockback often makes bombing pointless, which leaves me in the back, picking away with my gun, while the others are up front doing all the work. Makes me feel like a jerk.

I'd like to reiterate though, my main argument isn't that guns are 'necessarily' bad. It's that there's no reason to specialize, because they fall short of both proposed roles, and their gear fails to compensate for that.

@Shinko *sigh* sad but true. Once the wolvers gain their evade-teleport, they pretty much become un-gunnable, as they teleport en masse to your location, hindering your mobility, as well as vision. In fact, since they can even teleport while attacking, sometimes we can't even dodge. On the other hand, I found the teleport/evade/shield effects to be interesting and flavorful, but when added to the already long list of gunner disadvantages, it makes the gunner increasingly unviable.

My experience is mostly limited to an Argent Peacemaker and Magma Driver, so I figured I'd ask you gunslingers before making a formalized post about it.

What do you think about the range on handguns in general, right now? I personally think the range is too short across the board (I can understand certain gun types, like autoguns, having comparitively shorter range...but you have to wonder why the DA's charge attack out-distances some guns.)

The best gun I've come across for range so far is the Blackhawk. The range of the weapon is nearly that of an enemy turret. This has allowed me to snipe out turrets one by one in relative safety. Most if not all of the other guns either do not have the range or do not have the strafe capability to dispatch them carefully. In addition the range reaches to the edges of the screen left to right, letting me kite Spookats and grievers with less risk. While spookats are generally manageable in closer range, grievers are not. This gives the blackhawk a level of utility not inherent in any other gun I've used, hence my statement about most other guns not having the range to keep enemies at a safe distance.

While I don't feel all guns should be capable of doing this, every block of distance makes a difference, since the closer you are, the more likely you'll be jumped by Gremlins, grievers and wolves, and the closer you'll be to the turret bullets where they're less spread out.

Heh, actually what happens is the bomber is the tank (low damage except in large mobs, Nitronome chaining or Shivermist Lock), Swordsmen are the DPS, and gunners are the utility...but are not. Heck, I'd say the Shivermist alone does more than any gun could hope to do, I've beaten Vanaduke's first form alone while in a four person party, and Vanaduke barely got a swing. My main point has been that, whatever the weaknesses the gun has ALREADY, his gear fails to support him in his chosen roles to the point that he could honestly declare himself the best for the job. It's a good secondary choice, if only for the versatility, but it's not a good specialization.

My problems with guns can be summarized pretty quickly:

1) As others have mentioned, any gun that makes you have to hold still to fire is just terrible and counter-productive to the point of using a gun.

Solution: Make gunshots slow you, but never make you hold still.

2) Almost every gun's charge attack is suicide in any situation where you might want to use it. The exception to this is the Alchemer series, which does one giant blast and then you're done, but the Autogun line just compounds its regular attack weakness, and the Antigua lines both suffer from a long, drawn out, TOO ACCURATE attack stream. What do I mean by too accurate? Simply that because it is a straight line that cannot be altered once the attack begins, you very rarely will hit the right enemy with all the shots unless they're very slow and big.

Solution: Same as 1, + allow people to pivot while shooting. The charge attacks would be much more useful if you could at least track a moving enemy or strafe while using them. For the Antigua line, consider removing the stream of bullets and just buffing the Owl/Eagle at the end to encompass the entire damage of the charge.

3) Gun unfriendly enemies. Devilites, Wolves and Gremlin all dodge like crazy if you try and shoot them, which makes the already low DPS of a gun laughable compared to just running up and hitting them with a sword. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't also become invincible in the brief second of the dodge: I've been able to track the movement and keep hitting them, but it's frustrating as hell to do it and see no damage done.

Solution: Remove the "invincibility" aspect of the dodge, and put a 5-second cooldown on dodges or teleports.

All guns (to emphazie what everyone else has said):

They don't fill a role thats needed when you have swords or bombs.

As a gunner I really feel that guns in general need a boost in power, not a gigantic boost, but one that will make them to be worth using. I have a gun that outranks my sword and no matter which tier I'm in and despite the fact I am wearing gunslinging gear I often break down and start slashing things just because guns serve no real purpose other than if your in a really bad position. Even then it's generally better to have a bomb not a gun.
_________________

Counter point @ LastElixir: I agree the prisma tech line needs a boost but I don't think lowering the power would be a good idea, atleast as guns stand now. It would be great to have it split into two everytime, but I feel like the drop in power would hurt it more than help. On the other hand if all guns do get a boost (which they need) I can see it doing slightly less damage for the sake of crowd control as you reccomended. However, even then I would personally like it to do the same amount of damage as it's alchemer brothers, due to the lack of a status effect.

Gunslinger Armor

Summary: UV's are too costly to craft....no 2* entry method.

Almost all weapon-related armors (vog/skolver for swords and demo gear for bombs) have 2* armors as entry points. This allows them to somewhat cost effectively craft for UV's to increase their value and effectivness. It is well-chronicled through the above posts, that gunslingers are already at a strength and effectiveness disadvantage until and unless they get some new buffs, a heavy handed rebalance vs other weapons. But if thats not enough, their specific armor lines is basically the only one that starts at a 3* entry point, making "UV Fishing" virtually impossible. Its just yet another unfairness in the gunslinging world.

Solution: make there a 2* entry point that upgrades into gunslinger gear. I'm sure everyone would gladly pay the extra crafting cost of 2* that has to be upgraded for the tradeoff of being able to access UVs on par with all the other lines of weapons.

P.S. If the gunslingers on here feel this is important, please voice your support/concern on the topic.

Walletman: My idea for the Nova Driver line would make it a (somewhat) poor single combat gun, but make it a fearsome crowd-control weapon. Imagine what you could do if you always had knowledge of how your bullets would ricochet? You could quite easy begin darting in and out of groups, and it would give you a bigger benefit if you were taking the risk of getting surrounded. I think that if something like my suggestion were implemented that a damage nerf would almost be necessary given the greatly increased potential it'll have against mobs. Though really, anything to make one of the cooler looking drivers usable would be fantastic!

Well, as they are, the alchemer/driver weapons fire a shot the will ricochet in a random direction. (Once for MKII, twice for the first driver, etc) and while it is very handy, not being able to aim the ricochet at all makes it a bit sketchy, although it is definitely super nice when things cluster together, or it randomly bounces in a favorable manner. I am not sure if my suggestion is the best fix for the lesser gun of the line, but the point is that an improvement definitely needs to be made!

Handgun Name: alchemer series

Summary: not enough dps to be substantially useful

Guns just don't damage enough. I think their damage should b increased, but in return, if u fire when moving accuracy should decrease.

Shadowtech Alchemer series

Summary: Can't hit gremlins

The Shadowtech series should be able to target all enemies weak to shadow damage because it is a specialized gun. It's full potential can never be fully realized if gremlins can easily dodge the bullets. The dodging mechanic on gremlins should only discourage using guns that don't target it's weakness. Currently, the guns are only good against slimes and bad against both fiends and undead. As a result, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.

Just kinda thinking, it's a gun, shouldn't one of it's strengths be that you CAN'T dodge it? That would go a long ways to giving the gun more utility.
This would work nicely with the idea of using a gun to 'pin down' an enemy so it can't dodge other peoples attacks while you were firing at the mob.
It would make a sword user attacking a wolf/gremlin happy to have a gun user behind him.

Summary: Guns are all inefficient.

Swords have the highest damage, bombs have a good AoE to make up for the lower damage compared to swords, but guns only have a reloading. Either increasing the bullets, that can be shot without reloading eventually depending on the stars of the gun or unlimiting them, might solve this issue, then guns would have the fastest attack rate. The charge attacks might be even more useless then, id suggest to remove the charge attacks, just like bombs do not have regular attacks.

I've been a gunner since I started pretty much, so I thought I'd throw my thoughts in the mix :)

First I want to say that it is incredibly hard as a gunner before you get 5 star everything. You might as well get a freeze gun and help people out with stunning the monsters for the rest of the group. The damage you do is nill. Lean on any status effects you can cause to help in battle.

I go with Shadowsun gear and a Swiftstrike shield.

Here's my gun list:

Valiance
Cryo Driver
Mega Magnus
Blackhawk

(I carry 3 guns at a time, swapping the Blackhawk\Magnus\Cryo depending on the mission pack. Valiance is always good for damage)

All guns
Balance - Never charge. Ever. Especially in tier 3. You gota move and kite enemies away from the swordsmen so they can get some backstabs in. That's your job. Then revive them when they get too aggressive :).
Charging before you hit a party button will usually help you lose half your health in tier 3. If you're with bombers, make sure you're all moving clockwise or counter in arenas. It helps a lot.

Valiance
Balance - It gets frustrating when you're fighting a room full of wolves and 1 out of every 10 shots hits... perhaps lessen the invulnerability of the enemy when it dodges gunfire? If I corral the enemy into a corner and keep shooting it, it shouldn't be able to dodge if it can't move.

Cryo Drive
Balance - The two shots per reload is... pretty lame and should be increased to 3 I think, even if the damage goes down. I see enemies freeze, unfreeze, and freeze again. Perhaps just one freeze is enough?:)

Mega Magnus
Balance - Not being able to move while reloading is a bit much. When I use this gun, I only shoot one bullet at a time to avoid reloading. If I don't do this, I take hits. It makes for a tedious battle. Perhaps a damage boost on this type of gun to counter the huge lag time. Especially on the charge. I can't recall a time I would ever use it besides getting a laugh from falling down.
I really like this gun, since the enemies that normally dodge everything else seem to get hit by this more often. That would be another great perk - if they could never dodge this gun!

Blackhawk -
Balance - I just got this gun... so I'll post more later :)

General Gunplay
Balance? - As it stands now, you just have to focus on being versatile (carry at least 3 guns) and being a support character (yes it can be done!) Stay out of the fray as long as possible, and guide enemies away from your major damage dealers. I see a lot of comments against gunners as a whole, but it can be done. Just find an experienced one.

My biggest gripe is against the reloading, but I do think it should stay. Upping all the guns bullet count by 1 would be awesome! Or maybe the charge attack could be changed to reduce reload time for a while? Artifacts/trinkets that reduce reload time or up bullet count?

Anyway, that's what I think

-Blueflood

@ohgodmyhead
I think their idea was to have it so gun's are simply support, since 4 swordsmen on one enemy would be having them compete with eachother with knockback would be a mess, the gunslinger can just sit from behind them to add some damage on top of their's. The problem is that those situations rarely happen, with everyone splitting off to their own enemy group and making the role of the gunslinger limited.

Handgun Name:
Needle Shot

Summary:

Attack speed uv's

Followed by a detailed description. Try to be as specific as possible.

I have two Needle Shot one with very high attack speed and another with damage against fiend medium. With my justifier hat I receive attack speed increase medium on guns. I equipped the hat to try to see the difference in the attack speed with one of my needle shot's being maximum and the other having medium attack speed increase I noticed very little difference.

Any word on what's happening with all this information, yet?

Seems like a waste to make three threads about weapon balance and not give any feedback or information about it.

Also: I talked about the invincibilty frames during dodging a while back and I was told that monsters don't have any.
So I guess it's teleport/damage number lag or something, because I have been able to (albeit inconsistently) hit monsters who were dodging using the Pepperbox and Antigua before.

All Guns

Summary: CUTTING GRASS needs to be easier, DEAD MONSTERS shouldn't be obstacles, and shots don't seem to hit MOVING TARGETS

After running through 2 terminal runs in CW with just guns I remembered a couple things that were obnoxiously annoying about being a pure gunslinger. One was that cutting grass requires way more effort than it should. Right now in order to cut grass with a gun the projectile must terminate (whether it's terminating on a wall, enemy, or because the range ended) within a small radius of the grass that needs to be cut. This means that any grass that's not next to a permanent barrier that can block shots on at least one side requires the knight to backup and try several times to get their shots to terminate right above the grass that needs to be cut.

Also I noticed that dead monsters act like obstacles to shots, players, and enemies. There's some upsides, downsides, and logical sides to this. Logic says that if the enemy hasn't disappeared from the screen yet that it should still have a physical existence. The upside to having the enemies stay solid after death is that they also block the enemy. The down side is that it blocks you. This is a problem for gunners because shots can't hit more than one monster. The dead enemy basically becomes a temporary impassable barrier on the field until it decides to go poof. In the case where you kill a tree in a long narrow path it can effectively stall the fight several seconds. With a sword and a smaller enemy (like a devilite) the sword user might be able to still reach the other monsters over the dead body, but not so for gun users. You can't shoot over the dead, you have to walk around them to fire. I think gameplay would be smoother and less annoying if monsters became intangible right when their HP runs out and not when their death animation finishes.

I also took note that a lot of my shots with any gun I was using weren't hitting anything that was in motion. This was most notable with my blackhawk on wolvers and kats. The shots seemed to terminate on the enemy, but no damage numbers would appear. When this happened with my firotech alchemer the shots would never catch the enemy on fire either (might be probability though). I'm not sure if this is lag or if there's legitimately a problem here. It'd probably take more data to know this one for sure.

[mid-post rant]
It really feels like gunslingers aren't getting much love from this game. The new content hasn't done anything to help us either. First was a patch fixing swords and giving swordsmen a new weapon; then there's a new boss which gives both swordsmen and bombers a new weapon. Where's the new gun? If guns were meant to be only side arms to be used in combination with a sword or a bomb then why is there gunslinger armor?
[/mid-post rant]

Needle Shot

summary: Why does the CHARGE SHOT have LESS RANGE than the normal shots?

With the guns I've used the charge shot either gives about the same range or extends the range of the projectile so why is it that only the needle shot gets a shortened charge shot?

Antigua Line

Summary: Does not scale well

The antigua line is my favorite weapon line in the entire game, so I've used them enough to know all the inherent problems with them (I have capped Argent/Sentenza). The problem with the line is that it is for solo play and scales very badly for party play. In a solo, 5* antigua can take out most enemies in a clip + 1-2 shots. In a full party, you're looking at 3-4 clips just to finish off a single mob, unless of course you're supporting a sword user (though they can do the same thing in half the time with any sword). And while all swords and bombs have actual aoe, antigua only has pseudo-aoe, as in, you can hit at least 2 mobs with the end of a shot if they are close enough together. The line does not need status effects, it would be too powerful. It also doesn't need aoe (though ricocheting bullets like the alchemer line would certainly help, and look really cool). It just needs a bit of a damage boost or better scaling for party play to compete with the other guns.

I can think of a couple of ways to make the weapon more scalable. One way would be to change the entire line to pure damage. Mega Magnus is already a pure piercing line, so Silversix/Argent could be elemental , and cap out around halfway or so. Same thing for Blackhawk/Sentenza, except it would be pure shadow. Yes the guns would be rather quick dps, but balanced out by the fact that they are still relatively single-target weapons. Another way would perhaps be a chance for richochet bullets. Not like 5* alchemers, just a single ricochet, maybe two, at 5* antigua would improve damage just enough without having to raise base damage.

Other Suggestions
1) Guns are the only weapon type that lack a poison inflicter. This can easily be remedied by adding a new alchemer similar to the others (for simplicity), or for fun, a new appropriate weapon (maybe a poison dart crossbow or something? could be an additional piercing damage gun too, with a similar firing speed to magnus, but without the stun effect).

2) The "hold-still" mechanism of certain guns (magnus, autogun...etc) is no good, it defeats the purpose of using guns for mobility. There are already several issues with these kinds of guns in that clip size is tiny, and if you miss (and you WILL MISS a lot when swords/bombs are hitting the same target), then you contribute very little in the long run. I love my capped callahan as much as the next guy, but I don't use it because I find the gun mechanics to be bad.

3) As far as dodging mechanics go, the only monster I think needs toning down are devilite overtimers (spaz super dodge). Other monsters are fine. We don't want to take away ALL the challenge do we?

And that's all I can think of right now.

Hi there,

New SK player here, longtime MMO player.

I started this game with being a fulltime Gunner in mind and that still has not changed. However i feel that Handguns have been left out in many ways, some oversights, some intentional, some unintentional. Sadly as im not a Veteran i dont quite know which catagory to put these in.

The first thing i noticed was that damage was significantly less than that of other weapon types. Bombs do bulk AoE, take longer to fire. Sword users do damage through combo's and take the brunt of hits in being up close.

My initial thought which was disproved after doing some forum searches was that guns would be the typical "ranged, single target, DPS class." Sadly i cant see any other role that guns could currently fit into other than "Support" or "Status affliction".

I'm to the point where i've spent my first bundle crowns on a Blaster (heat level 5 currently), and ive decided that my Proto Sword is slightly better at heat level 10. What concerns me is that a blaster is a 2* gun and the Proto Sword should be little better than a butter knife by comparison being a 0*.

There also seems to be general disdain for handguns in general from the game itself. Snarbolax tokens can award Swords, Shields and bombs. Where's the gun? No Spine shooting handgun? its not like guns are overpowered and can afford to be missing out. The highest tier guns do pitiful damage in the depths of the Clockworks im told, theres no real incentive to BE a Gunner aside from challenging yourself. But is it challenging? or just being stubborn like i am to prove it all wrong.

Now enough of my thoughts and onto what i think could make guns even slightly better.

Clip size:
By god this would help. Single shot? Three-shooter? Six-Shooter? Full auto? Burst fire? Infinate ammo? What am i about to buy and how many shots do i have left before reloading.

Reloading:
This seems to be a common gripe from what i have seen (read?), needs to either have items to speed it up (trinkets? UV?) or buffed as a whole to be quicker. On the note of buffing it, even a larger "clip size" could make reloads less crippling.

Charge shots:
I have never, aside from just before standing on a "Party Button", used a charge shot in battle. The few times i have, i've either been interrupted due to the standstill required to fire thus requiring a re-charge. Or missed.

What should be ADDED?

Critical hits:
Shooting or gunning should be about aiming for that all important weak point that a thrown bomb misses or a swordsman cant quite reach. Gunners should have the ability to critical hit occasionally, charge shots should BE critical hits if anything due to the charge times, standstill times and execution times.

Now due to me being a noob, if anyone can explain anything im bringing up to me as i am a new player. Please do, however bear in mind this is still my first impression of gunners in this game. I do not hate this game, in fact ive already bought some CE.

Ok i think im done!

Magnus:

Summary: Stops user from moving + slow reload time.

While this weakness is OK for sword / gun users, pure gun users like myself have a very hard time coping. For example, Since we only fire 2 bullets with magnus and callahan, the faster shooting time provided by Nameless set is almost useless. Instead, faster reload time would be a critical improvement for this gun. Rather than fixing guns, fixing our line of armor would be better. The simplist solution is to have Increase Gun Firing Rate (on the Nameless Set) also speed up reload time. Increased damage (more than low) would also be a feasible solution (for the other gunslinger sets).

Why fix Gunslinger line of armor and not the guns? 1. Its way easier to do since you guys only need to make 1 change. 2. Well for most sword users, guns are fine the way they are, they are tools you use to kite when low on health but still want to help the party. I don't think many sword users would choose the Magnus line. Gunners on the other hand MUST use a heavy dmg gun (such as the magnus lune) or be pure status effect and support. 3. Fixing our armor makes sense considering they are severely underpowered compared to vog cub (we get no status resist other than curse).

OtherFixes:

1. Increase Clip Size: The only way to enjoy faster shooting times, is to actually be able to shoot. Guns with 2 clips should be increased to 3. and 3 - 4 etc.
2. Attack Speed Increase should improve reload time.
3. Low dmg increase should be changed to medium. Guns do low enough dmg as it is.
2. Since guns fire energy, and not real bullets, "reload time" flavor text should be changed to "cooldown time"