A Conceptual Rework of Rifle!

[oscuro.9720]

Hey everyone! This is a conceptual rework of rifle, something that, IMO, is sorely needed to give warrior a good ranged option. Please enjoy and lmk what you think!

 

Concept: (skip this if you don’t care about an explanation of the concept) 

Conceptually, it is based on the warrior firing a howitzer instead of a rifle. Who doesn’t want to run around, holding a giant kittening cannon, launching giant slugs of metal at your foes? That’s right, no one. And what class does this fit better that warrior? That’s right, no other class. 
It pairs perfectly with  applying the Hip Fire animation that was recently removed from engi to warrior’s skills. We don’t need to aim, we want to blast people apart. Aiming is for rookies, and we are masters of weapons!

In addition with the animation change, giving the Warrior rifle projectile a larger model to make it look more like a heavy artillery shell would finish off the conceptual shift in Warrior Rifle. 
 

The Skills:
 

Auto attack: Artillery Shell:

Fire a large explosive shell that deals damage and explodes on impact 

Secondary damage: 50% initial damage, initial damage is the same as current rifle AA.

explosion radius: 150

Explosion applies vulnerability

 

Volley:

The same shells as the auto attack, which explode on impact with target. Explosions apply vulnerability. If this skills strikes a vulnerable foe, gain might.

Remains an ammo skill

Explosion damage: 50% of strike damage, strike damage remains the same per bullet.

Now fires 3 shots instead of 5, cast time reduced from 2 1/2 seconds to 1 second.

 

Explosive shell becomes Precision Strike:

Fire a high speed artillery shell that deals very high single target damage.

Damage: same as a 1 bar kill shot

Slows movement speed by 50%

Cast time: 3/4s

Applies Cripple

Remains an ammo skill

 

Brutal Shot becomes Controlled Recoil:

Fire a shell into the ground in front of you, causing an explosion that immobilizes foes and launches you backwards.

Range: 300 cone AoE.

Targets: 5

Evade happens on key press.

Evade range: 450 range

 

Rifle Butt becomes Point Blank:

Detonate a shell immediately in front of you, knocking back foes in range. Knocking back a foe grants quickness (2s)

Range: 300 range cone AoE

Targets: 5

Cast time: 1/2s

 

Burst skill: Danger Close

Fire a barrage of artillery shells into the air that descend in a quick, high damage area bombardment. (They land all at once rather than being staggered like ele’s meteor storm) 

Strikes grant might and apply vulnerability to foes. 

Number of shells fired per bar of adrenaline: 5

Radius: 240

Range: 1200 range Ground Target AoE

 

Overall, the idea is to give rifle more area impact, more fluidity and impact on its 4 and 5 skills by expanding their range and giving them a more aoe style impact. Putting basically a 1 adrenaline bar kill shot as the 3 skill and unrooting it gives more ranged pressure without the need for as much build up during a fight while reducing the high end. Replacing that with a strong, area ground target aoe gives the rifle more usage in a variety of contexts, such as on-point pressure, zerging, cleaving downs, etc. Making it a non-projectile ground target AoE helps continue to provide some degree of utility through high reflect uptime, and dividing the damage to 5 strikes per bar of adrenaline helps get through things like aegis, which counter war quite hard. Additionally, there is solid might gen. 
 

So that’s my idea for a conceptual rework of rifle to be a more brute-force, cannon-like gameplay that I feel makes rifle more viable and gives a more warrior-feel to the weapon set.

[Kodama.6453]

Thematically, it seems interesting. But the presented kit is, in my opinion, too powerful.

Extremely high ranged damage, since you are introducing a killshot tier 1 as a base skills (so no adrenaline requirement) which also has ammunition. Then also speeding up volley. The power coefficient might go down from 3,75 to 2,25, but this is still pretty high damage for a ranged skill with just 1 second cast time. And it keeps it's charges as well, so the damage potential from range of this kit is extreme.

Then you also make the kit basically untouchable by melees. Does it really need ALL of these tools to keep enemies at range?

• cripple (2 ammunition)
• immobilize
• knockback
• disengage mobility

It also feels like you want to punish enemies for closing the gap, which should actually be the counterplay of a ranged weapon with such high damage potential you designed here... If I dare to close the gap, I will get CCed, the gap opened again, and I gave my enemy quickness to burst me even faster with their already fast and high damage skills?

[Jzaku.9765]

22 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Thematically, it seems interesting. But the presented kit is, in my opinion, too powerful.

Extremely high ranged damage, since you are introducing a killshot tier 1 as a base skills (so no adrenaline requirement) which also has ammunition. Then also speeding up volley. The power coefficient might go down from 3,75 to 2,25, but this is still pretty high damage for a ranged skill with just 1 second cast time. And it keeps it's charges as well, so the damage potential from range of this kit is extreme.

Then you also make the kit basically untouchable by melees. Does it really need ALL of these tools to keep enemies at range?

• cripple (2 ammunition)
• immobilize
• knockback
• disengage mobility

It also feels like you want to punish enemies for closing the gap, which should actually be the counterplay of a ranged weapon with such high damage potential you designed here... If I dare to close the gap, I will get CCed, the gap opened again, and I gave my enemy quickness to burst me even faster with their already fast and high damage skills?

The funny thing about your response is that the tools in your bullet point list are exactly the same as Rifle currently has right now in it's kit. Warrior Rifle just happens to be so clunky that it's hard to utilize all of it. If you look closely, OP's skill 1-5 are actually just altered versions of Rifle's current kit.

 

My main criticism OP is that your Burst Skill idea scales way too much with Adrenaline tier - effectively doubling then tripling it's damage - meaning it's terrible for Spellbreaker. If you remember, shortly before POF released they did a pass on all the T1 Bursts to make sure they weren't too awful. I guess since you didn't list coeffs maybe you imagined it scaling down in damage the more shots are fired.

Also, this iteration of Rifle doesn't have any means to synergize with most of Warrior's Adrenaline gain features - being (ostensibly) a pretty slow firing, powerful weapon. Considering how thematically tied to it's burst skill Rifle has been all this time, I think it's important to have some feature of Warrior Rifle continue to feed into this identity. (For Berserker's sake, too)

Other than that I still think making Rifle an AoE weapon is pretty misguided since that's Longbow's identity, but that's pretty minor.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Jzaku.9765

[Kodama.6453]

2 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

The funny thing about your response is that the tools in your bullet point list are exactly the same as Rifle currently has right now in it's kit. Warrior Rifle just happens to be so clunky that it's hard to utilize all of it. If you look closely, OP's skill 1-5 are actually just altered versions of Rifle's current kit.

I was misreading.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Kodama.6453

[Jzaku.9765]

49 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Yeah, no, that is quite an exaggeration.

1. Engi rifle has a single target knockback, OP is suggesting a multi target knockback.
2. Engi rifle has a single target immob, OP is suggesting a multi target immob.
3. Engi rifle has 2 hard hitting skills, both requiring melee range (blunderbuss and jump shot). Meanwhile OP is suggesting to have 3 hard hitting skills on rifle which are all ranged (volley, precision strike, danger close). And these ranged abilities are described here as having similar damage potential like the engi rifle melee damage.
4. If you want to use jump shot as a gap opener (disengaging by jumping away), you are doing so by trading away the hardest hitting skill in your kit. Disengaging comes at the expanse of damage, it is a trade off. Meanwhile OP is suggesting the gap opener on a pure utility skill, there is no damage given up to open the gap. No trade off attached.
5. Engi rifle does't have a cripple in the kit, so your statement "engi rifle has all the bullet points I made" is wrong in the first place.

Bro, you're on the Warrior subforum.

[Kodama.6453]

22 minutes ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

Bro, you're on the Warrior subforum.

Sorry, I misread.I thought you brought up engi rifle.

They might be the same tools, but he is bringing the power of the weapon up a ton. Reducing the cast time of volley, giving a killshot tier 1 without adrenaline, etc.

The weapon would deal too much damage for all the disengage it has.
Kontext matters and if the weapon gets reworked to deal so significantly higher damage, even in AoE, then it should lose some of it's disengage potential, no?

Edited July 23, 2022 by Kodama.6453

[oscuro.9720]

5 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Sorry, I misread.I thought you brought up engi rifle.

They might be the same tools, but he is bringing the power of the weapon up a ton. Reducing the cast time of volley, giving a killshot tier 1 without adrenaline, etc.

The weapon would deal too much damage for all the disengage it has.
Kontext matters and if the weapon gets reworked to deal so significantly higher damage, even in AoE, then it should lose some of it's disengage potential, no?

Fair. Volley would probably work better by reducing the bullet damage to auto attack values, then having the 3 shots fired in 1s, which would be a 1.8 multiplier. Kill shot damage tier 1 being put on skill 3 would be a 1.4 multiplier, making it a weaker version of true shot (1.91 multiplier), so I’m not certain it would be too strong for the set. It also removes arguably the most problematic part of the kit, which is high-adrenaline kill shot. As for the disengage, as jzaku pointed out, the disengage is the same as is currently on the kit, though ideally made less clunky. I can agree to some point the damage may be too high, it wouldn’t be surprising given the numbers were more of rough estimates than precise figures, but I do not agree with you that the disengage would be too much. 
 

It’s fair to think that it might be overkill, the numbers suggested weren’t meant to be precise by any stretch. More concept with a general idea of strength level. Ty for feedback :) 

 

7 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

The funny thing about your response is that the tools in your bullet point list are exactly the same as Rifle currently has right now in it's kit. Warrior Rifle just happens to be so clunky that it's hard to utilize all of it. If you look closely, OP's skill 1-5 are actually just altered versions of Rifle's current kit.

 

My main criticism OP is that your Burst Skill idea scales way too much with Adrenaline tier - effectively doubling then tripling it's damage - meaning it's terrible for Spellbreaker. If you remember, shortly before POF released they did a pass on all the T1 Bursts to make sure they weren't too awful. I guess since you didn't list coeffs maybe you imagined it scaling down in damage the more shots are fired.

Also, this iteration of Rifle doesn't have any means to synergize with most of Warrior's Adrenaline gain features - being (ostensibly) a pretty slow firing, powerful weapon. Considering how thematically tied to it's burst skill Rifle has been all this time, I think it's important to have some feature of Warrior Rifle continue to feed into this identity. (For Berserker's sake, too)

Other than that I still think making Rifle an AoE weapon is pretty misguided since that's Longbow's identity, but that's pretty minor.

I would agree, the scaling on the burst skill is probably too dramatic going back over it. 
 

I’m unsure what you mean by synergizing with warriors adrenaline gain features, if you could clarify. Altering the burst skill to be ground target, if anything, does more to synergies with traits, providing reliable procs of adrenaline traits like cleansing ire and adrenal health, at least how im thinking about it. I’m unsure what you mean. 
 

As for Rifle being aoe range damage and intruding on bow, that’s fair. I would argue Bow should just be made a full condition weapon at this point, giving two distinct ranges weapons for warrior to use. But it’s certainly a fair criticism :) 

[Jzaku.9765]

16 minutes ago, oscuro.9720 said:

I’m unsure what you mean by synergizing with warriors adrenaline gain features, if you could clarify. Altering the burst skill to be ground target, if anything, does more to synergies with traits, providing reliable procs of adrenaline traits like cleansing ire and adrenal health, at least how im thinking about it. I’m unsure what you mean.

I was trying to say that Rifle has historically been heavily reliant on it's burst skill for both it's flavour and function.

When they removed all the Adrenaline gaining features of it (from the auto and trait) it became one of the worst weapons in the game, being completely unable to reasonably feed itself Adrenaline to Kill Shot/Gunflame.

It's just a flavour thing I personally am attached to about Warrior Rifle. It's burst skill should be it's most impactful skill and it should be able to feed itself Adrenaline gain in some way to abuse it.

[Smoosh.2718]

I still believe a shotgun is more fitting for the warriors playstyle over a rifle, mid range AOE agressive style play.

Im not a fan of the way the current rifle works on warrior, you feel as if you have the same attack on skills 1, 2, 3 and 4 with slight differences on how fast they attack. (yes there are more differences but theme wise, they all feel the same, flat damage no utility.)

Shotguns could provide more utility theme wise, while also providing warrior an option for AOE ranged damage (which every class appears to do consitantly but warrior).

[Holly.8190]

Personally i would have looked at Warrior Rifle as more of a Military Assault Rifle, Imagine if instead if giving the Engi Auto a Burst it was on Warrior. Explosive Shot becomes Grenade Launcher, so it arcs like Mortar Kit attacks and is ground targeted. But as it stands Warrior Rifle atleast needs to be a proper ranged weapon cos Warrior is really lacking that. 

[oscuro.9720]

5 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

I was trying to say that Rifle has historically been heavily reliant on it's burst skill for both it's flavour and function.

When they removed all the Adrenaline gaining features of it (from the auto and trait) it became one of the worst weapons in the game, being completely unable to reasonably feed itself Adrenaline to Kill Shot/Gunflame.

It's just a flavour thing I personally am attached to about Warrior Rifle. It's burst skill should be it's most impactful skill and it should be able to feed itself Adrenaline gain in some way to abuse it.

Okay, that makes complete sense, I just completely didn’t get that from the first post because I don’t use rifle often, and have never used rifle often (I personally don’t like the kill shot style gameplay). It seems we just disagree on the concept of what rifle should be, which is to be expected since different people have different opinions 🙂 
 

It seems there’s a lot of different opinions on what warrior rifle should be, based on responses. I’m glad we could get so many peoples different ideas out there 🙂 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

23 minutes ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Okay, that makes complete sense, I just completely didn’t get that from the first post because I don’t use rifle often, and have never used rifle often (I personally don’t like the kill shot style gameplay). It seems we just disagree on the concept of what rifle should be, which is to be expected since different people have different opinions 🙂 
 

It seems there’s a lot of different opinions on what warrior rifle should be, based on responses. I’m glad we could get so many peoples different ideas out there 🙂 

When they gave it ammo, they should have left the damage numbers alone, if not also buff them, then it would have been in a good spot in all game modes, but that is not what they did. The AA needs to hit faster, and the rest of the kit needs +20% to +50% damage increases. Rifle 4 needs to evade before the fire, which should be a standard thing for any such skill..

[Lighter.5631]

how is killshot only 1500 range

vindicator elite is 2000 range

i literally just did a 7k 2000 snipe shot. it was epic.

and doesnt require me to self root there for 1+sec

 

killshot was supposed to be the top range snipe skill

 

rifle need base 1500 across skill and burst should be 2000

Edited July 24, 2022 by Lighter.5631

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

If it is supposed to be a top range snipe skill then make it 2200 and snipe the vindicator before they snipe you.