Quo vadis profession weapons?

[Xootch]

Well, what I'm interested in is your view on profession specific weapons. It used to be that:

- special, more powerful, profession locked weapons were for professions that used such weapons as a main ability, eg. chiopteras, panthers, etc from coh, all the perennium weapons, catawaul etc.

- the profession lock was to exclude professions not intended to use such weapons as main ability and force them to use weaker weapons and rely on their main abilities (heals, bots, pets).

This was the way it used to be, and it made total sense to me that a doctor, a crat, an engineer, an mp had to use weaker/lower ql weapons with their weaker template and thus did less damage with their weapons than soldiers, fixers, agents, traders. Now some time ago this changed. Now there are:

- specialised weapons for the upper mentioned "support" professions, more powerful than usual weapons, made to make up for their weaker template and skill

- profession locks to exclude professions initially intended to use these kinds of weapons

- a huge gaps for these profession's weapons throughout the levels.

So in my humble oppinion there shouldn't be no more powerful arms for professions naturally weaker in terms of firepower to make them en par with everybody else. but you think this is the right way - there should be a wider array of weapons for these professions. there is no reason why you have to wait till tl7 and your xan stick if you're supposed have it that way.

So, what's your point of view?

a) Put "artillery" prof's firepower and weapon arsenal back on top.

b) Give "support" profs more weapons over the levels to make up for their weaker templates.

c) Don't care. Gief cookies.

[vios]

It is curious what you call "support" and what you call, artillery?

I don't like weapon limits. If someone manages to get the skill he should be able to use it. The difference does not come with the weapon but with the weapon template.

A profession with a bad weapon template in some skill might be able to equip a weapon but his perfomance will be highly limited, much less damage and much less crits. An example would be an MP with the best ranged AS weapon and an agent with a SPS. The agent can get much more damage with this old weapon.

And for the "support" categorization I believe you are wrong. I would divide professions between specialized and all-rounders. The first should work much better in team and the seconds should be able to solo better. The degree of specialization might be variable and who is member of a category or the other might be different to the portrait I paint:

Specialized: Doctors (healing), enforcers (tank), crats (control), shade, engineer, soldier, nanotechnician (damage and some tank for soldier and control for NT, told you it was not a perfect division).

All-rounded (have more or less healing, control, damage and tanking ability): Agents, MP, advy, keeper, fixer, trader and martial artist.

[Xootch]

well, i put those terms in quotes for a reason. and i specified the professions that i'm talking about, i think that makes it fairly obvious. i see no reason for you to call me wrong on that - especially since i don't see any relation of your categories to the amount of firepower each of those categories should have, need or actually have right now - and therefore to the point of all this. but at least it is an oppinion.

[erozc]

Well, thing is... With the exception of shades, perks don't really play a decisive role in damage dealing these days. Regular hits, crits, and very importantly specials do. With the current trend of capped recycle times on specials, personal damage is about being able to use a high number of specials in an effective manner (MAs probably being the exception here).

Now, consider "support" professions - here meaning those that can do damage by nanos, pets, or both in addition to weaponry - in many cases can use fling, burst and full auto too. The effectiviness of these attacks, as well as regulars, is smaller than proper "artillery" professions that only use weapons. All can certainly use fling and burst.

Then you add in 2-3 pets, instacast nukes or dots, or some combination of those. It's relatively easy to predict that the weapon damage of "artillery" professions has to be considerably larger if one wants to compete with the worst case. Hai, DD setup crats and Bigburger engies (other pistols work too).

The question then is more about how much damage should people expect to do, what the profession's extreme should be, what the "usual" case should be. Profession locked weapons might be needed to accomplish this goal - but you'd have to create lots of them. The difference still is, as a crat or engineer (or even MP I guess) you can go out of your way to incorporate full auto into your toolset and push more damage. But as a, say, soldier or adventurer, you can't decide to have 2 (non-leet) attack pets. From a reverse point of view, it seems silly that some professions have received profession locked weapons (e.g. aMEP) that seem to be designed to overcome the disadvantageous AR modifier of engineers, and seem more of a band aid to badly pathing pets. Maybe overpowered "support" profession weapons should be rather done away with, as they are part of what enables big personal damage in addition to other damage toolsets.

Finally: The "Post 1k AR modifier" used to be one of the things that was a big whine in the forums some years back. With +dmg playing a larger role these days, it's not that important anymore, though AR has increased as well.

My point of view: a) Some professions have lower personal damage because they have other ways to more than make up. The introduced weapons are band aids in the same sense as the AS pistols.

[vios]

As I said, each profession has its source of damage and DD professions should be in the top of the possible damage output.

Engineers, NTs and soldiers should be able to make huge amounts of damage. The difference comes from the damage source. Ignoring perk damage for simplicity, Engineers have pets but that is only like regular hits, so weapons and burst and fling make up for that damage. Soldiers only have weapon damage but they have huge added damage that makes the performance of their weapons superb (theory), NTs only have nanos on the other hand but should make more or less the same ammount of damage.

jacks of all trades professions should have less damage output, depending of they survivability alone. That means that an aventurer and a metaphysicist, should have similar damage, healing and control. It is obvious that having the AS weapon in game and pets an MP has not near the survivability, healing ability, tanking ability or damage output that an advy has.

[Genie]

For your question I would go for option a.

There should not be specialised weapons for professions, but there should be profession "limits" to weapons to keep the professions with already strong alternatives to become to powerful.

Using ranged weapons as an example; soldiers would be at the top having access to all weapons, and thus the most powerful ones. Agent should have access to the most powerful rifles, and so should soldiers, but not others. Adventurers should have access to the most powerful pistols, and so should soldiers, but not others. And so on and so forth, creating a laddering of weapon access with soldiers at top.

Similiar ranking for weapons and weapon types should also be made for melee weapons.

Further more; there should not be a "one weapon to rule them all" for each type, because what you get then is EVERYONE running around with the same weapon. Now I highlighted "everyone" because so far it seems that Funcom strangly believes that if they introduce a weapon superior to all others, only a few will get it.

NO! This removes variation and creates cookie cutter setups. Instead there should be MANY weapons of EQUAL strength, but with variations in specials, damage type, etc, etc. This should apply to all the weapon types out there (assault firles, rifles, pistols, smgs, etc). What we get then is a choice of various weapons that wont gimp you because of lower damage output, but because of subtle variations some might be better for specific purposes.

Before, every single armor in AO had a weak spot, i.e. not so good AC in one or more damage types. Now if this was to be the case again, armors reworked to have weaknesses, you could choose a weapon suited to take into account the weak spots of a certain type of armor.

However since ACs are close to pointless these days, that would require a rework of the entire damage system and damage vs AC system for it to make any difference what so ever.

But still; variations of equal weapons of each type would be a blessing, because it would create more variations in builds, and several options to choose from.

[MassDebater]

Artillery Professions:

Soldier:
Support Buffs:
Massive Damage Buffs
Reflects
Weapon skill buffs
AR buffs
Special skill buffs
Init buffs



Fixers:
Support Buffs:
RS buffs
NCU Buffs
Grid nanos
Fgrid nanos
HoTs


Agent:
Support Buffs:
Rifle/AS Buffs
Conceal buffs
Every FP buff


Traders:
Support Buffs:
Umbral

Remove Support's weapons when you remove Artillery's Support.

[Camar]

Artillery Professions:

Soldier:
Support Buffs:
Massive Damage Buffs
Reflects
Weapon skill buffs
AR buffs
Special skill buffs
Init buffs



Fixers:
Support Buffs:
RS buffs
NCU Buffs
Grid nanos
Fgrid nanos
HoTs


Agent:
Support Buffs:
Rifle/AS Buffs
Conceal buffs
Every FP buff


Traders:
Support Buffs:
Umbral

Remove Support's weapons when you remove Artillery's Support.

qft. The so called artillery profs bring more to the team than some "support" profs in addition to doing more damage...

[Xootch]

...and hence should do less damage?

[MassDebater]

Yes, using a toolset/buffs vs damage equation.
Soldiers toolset is so ridiculously powerful that they need a serious nerfing of personal damage.

[Saetos]

Traders:
Support Buffs:
Umbral

So Sacrifice and Outfit aren't support buffs? What about Major Armor Distributor? Sure the mods are suspect but it's still more handy to most than 224 Concealment.

[MassDebater]

Sorry for not making a conclusive list, i did it in 2 mins max, also add grid nanos.

[Josephina]

The profession locked weapons for traders, doctors, MPs, ... were/are "necessary" bandaids to compensate for the effects of damage reduction over 1k and for all the support in perks and items that are also not equal for all professions.

A simplified example with some simple example numbers to show what the effects of the damage reduction system:

• Before 1k damage reduction was implemented:
  
  • A melee and pet profession are using the same weapon.
  • 750 = AR_pet_profession = 0.75*AR_melee_profession = 3.5
  • 2.875 = Damage_pet_profession = 0.82*Damage_melee_profession = 3.5
  • This makes perfect sense since the pet profession has alternate sources of damage to compensate for doing less direct weapon damage.
• After 1k damage reduction and with "low" attack ratings:
  
  • A melee and pet profession are using the same weapon.
  • 1200 = AR_pet_profession = 0.75*AR_melee_profession = 0.75*1600
    
    • Damage reduction over 1k is 100% for pet profession;
    • Damage reduction over 1k is 67% for melee profession.
  • 3.5 = Damage_pet_profession = 0.875*Damage_melee_profession = 4
    
    • Compared to pre damage reduction the melee profession is now underperforming;
    • How does FC "solve" this? A bandaid: implementing superior melee weapons not useable by pet professions.
• After 1k damage reduction and with "high" attack ratings:
  
  • A melee and pet profession are using the same weapon.
  • 2750 = AR_pet_profession = AR_melee_profession = 2750
    
    • Damage reduction over 1k is 100% for pet profession;
    • Damage reduction over 1k is 67% for melee profession.
  • 3.5 = Damage_pet_profession = 0.71*Damage_melee_profession = 4.96
    
    • Compared to pre damage reduction the melee profession is now overperforming;
    • How does FC "solve" this? A bandaid: implementing superior weapons only useable by pet professions.

The damage reduction system and perk disparity are both part of the major screw-up in game design that was the SL expansion. Nearly all profession locked weapons are from after the SL expansion released.

Of course FC could have also rethought their system instead of implementing bandaids, but then it wouldn't have been FC.

[Xootch]

1k skill problem was long before the profession lock weapons we're talking about. saything they're a fix for that is speculative at best.

[Josephina]

The consequences of the 1k skill problem changes with changing attack ratings, clearly explained in my above examples. That is why the problem right after SL release is not the same problem as it is now for endgame players. The resulting bandaids are different as well then. It's no coincidence that FC felt the need to implement profession locked weapons for the traders, MPs, doctors,... after LE release. Just as it is no coincidence that FC was adding in superior profession locked weapons for soldier, fixers, adventurers, ... in the follow up patches after SL release.

I'm also not saying that FC was/is aware of the underlying cause of why they (and the players of those professions) felt those weapons were needed, I'm just pointing out that you cannot take them away only because it is "not right" in your personal opinion. These weapons exist for a reason, whether you like it or not.

[Genie]

These weapons exist for a reason, whether you like it or not.

Agreed. But the reason they exist is what is wrong with the whole picture. And that is something the rebalancing needs to fix.

[Meira]

This is true. Artillery professions are much more useful than support professions.

Lets just start doing PvP without doctors and bureaucrats, then. Engineers, too.

When did support professions do as much damage as "fighting", or "artillery" professions in PvP with their weapons, again? Would doctors with Dshark cap full auto on players?

[lainbr]

Someone said MPs are OP?

Okies, on topic now.
Just check wtf support profs need to do to do more damage in pvm, what they lose only to be good and desireable in team (fixers that need cm and wrangle to cast SWS, mps that got all offensive nanos resisted...).
Now look what a dd prof need to do top dd (I'll say you, almost nothing).

I aggred something is badly wrong, but stop saying "Support Profs are OP" (well advs are) cause you got oded by pets in a solja. Period.

[Xootch]

this is not about op or team buffs, this is about weapon damage.

i for one find it wrong that eg. agent run around with bows or shotguns for better damage but maybe that's just me.

ps. player of a profession ALWAYS feel like their profession needs more lub. that's not an argument, that's just proof of people's short sighted egocentric views.

[MassDebater]

I don't.