Suggestion thread - How to make pistol / Melee viable


Ok so now it's been "officially" confirmed that the pistol / melee combo is being removed (because it was never meant to be allowed, not because it is buggy) we can get to work on discussing how it can be viably implemented. The purpose for this thread is to discuss how this weapon combo can exist within an ARPG game / setting and yet be an effective and viable combo. Please refrain from reminding us what's in the lore and how important it is to follow lore.

An outline of the problem, because simply "allowing" the combo doesn't make it viable in terms of game play. The issue is in game at the moment that we have DPS checks (healing enemies) that serve as a difficulty barrier to the game and tell us when our gear or character are too weak for a set mission. When faced with these enemies you have to use abilities 1-4 in quick succession in order to kill them or "burst" them down. Otherwise you have to leave and rethink your life choices or opt for lower difficulties.

The problem is one pistol lacks this burst feature or sustained damage due to low ammo pool and slow rate of fire from the mouse button abilities. So in order to maximise our damage with this combo we will have to go into melee, fire shots and swipe sword for every large daemon that we see. But the issue remains that none of the abilities include any meaningful "burst" essentially you have 4 abilities that are all for clearing trash and = auto attacks. 

It's also to be considered that you now have to rely on melee for any more challenging opponent and yet lack the defensive stats and mitigation that a shield would have given you. Essentially becoming a vulnerable melee class who has some weak ranged attacks, making it less versatile than it appears on paper and incapable of killing creatures of a moderate difficulty, where other weapon sets will be perfectly balanced.

Options I think could help
1 - Single pistol +20% damage to shots to account for greater accuracy
2 - Single pistol - Option of having either set of abilities from the pistol to allow for burst combo/damage

3 - Bonus to other stat like crit / fire rate / reload speed etc to allow for damage to be gained from other areas.
4 - Adding a bonus mitigation to the offhand (dodge instead of deflect) to account for the character being more maneuverable - this would offset the increased damage taken in melee through lack of mitigation. although the argument could be made that if damage is = to a 2h weapon then extra mitigation isn't needed? (correct me if im wrong but 2h come with some +deflect?

Open to any other ideas that would help this weapon set overcome these "dps checks" as I think they are the largest obstacle toward this function and it's implementation. Let's get to work people.  


This post was edited 3 years 349 days ago by Airsick Hydra
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Suggestion thread - How to make pistol / Melee viable
3 years 349 days ago

As I said before in my own post, changing the Skills of Pistols when used alongside Melee class weapons is what I believe to be the foundation to making it viable. If the current Skills (solo or paired) were left as-is, they really won't mesh as well gameplay-wise and one will stymie the other (Pistols ask you to stay still or in cover to attack, Melee not so much)

If a Pistol's two skills were made to be used in synergy with a Melee weapon, it would also support using every skill at you disposal to deal burst damage to a target.

For example, if the first of these new skills would be a Full-Auto attack that also moves you toward you opponent, you are already beginning your attack in preparation for melee, instead of just simply running towards a target (Jump Pack notwithstanding).

3 years 349 days ago

I still agree in partial with you in that the pistol would have to change but here are some thoughts.

Problem 1 - every pistol having different abilities if used in 1 hand compared with dual wield is very ... clunky and hard to explain in game. For eg when you mouse over a weapon you see it's abilities, now ever pistol would have two sets of abilities simultaneously. I think its viable as you say but don't think its entirely workable in terms of players comprehending the weapons. While it's less exciting I would lean toward a tooltip that says "all single wield pistols gain a +?" - food for thought. 

Problem 2 - even if walking toward a target for the sake of convenience and gap closing, you still have the issue of lacking burst damage to kill regen based elites. I guess though if the combination of attacks together from both weapons is = to the current dual wield capabilities (in terms of dps) then it "could" work but invariably you still have the problem of essentially being a weak melee class who is going to take a bucket load of damage and be very slow at clearing trash from range (which in some situations you have to do). 

3 years 349 days ago

Just to add to the lore part, the bolt/plasma pistol and chain/power sword is a common deployment for some Space Marines, especially sergeants and/or tactical marines. So it is indeed a combination that I feel is needed to have in the game.

Game play wise it is harder as you would have to compensate a lot as you stated. When combined with a sword I feel the skill set should change entirely, giving new options than just picking the two first in each pool.

The abilities should render the player able to handle most threats differently than if a boltgun were equipped. I think that your 3rd option would help a lot - especially crit rate/fire rate could help. Also giving the option for standard attacks in melee to be combined with the pistol, where once and so often the pistol would be activated and increase the damage dealt.

3 years 349 days ago

This is a duplication of my comments already posted in the earlier thread by Veloranz on the subject.

Given the game design of single weapon combos, I would be quite happy with the current system of using the first 2 skills of each weapon. Certainly those existing skills could be amended if wished and, in due course.

In respect of using a solitary single handed weapon, personally I think just a blanket increase of the damage caused by most attacks would be the easiest modification to be made. As I type this I would envisage it not being applied to certain AOE attacks, ranged in particular.

Obviously the time it will take in reality for the relevant animations for dual wield to be made, will take the more time then then altering the coding for skills.

3 years 349 days ago
Grey Knight

agreed that a flat +% to single target abilities is probably the safest option to go for. 

There might be a slight danger that you don't want it "too" powerful to the point you are doing = damage to a ranged rifle or ranged dual weild. Something like 20-30% I think would be a good starting point to test. Hopefully the low ammo count would compensate for the increased power and not make it feel too powerful.

The more I think on this matter, the more I think it would be a necessity to have the pistols burst abilities like "aimed shot" etc. These C/D based abilities combined with a melee weapon would / could be balanced enough to take out an elite target.

The problem is however if we keep a single target standard fire for both the sword and the pistol (ie the left click from both), then you only have 2 other (potential) burst abilities left, so we would need to guarantee that every pistol has one more burst based ability in order to remain viable? Leaving us with a combo of Melee swing - Melee arc - Pistol snipe (4th wouldn't be needed) - which would in theory "work" - just have to make sure every pistol has a CD ability otherwise it's a redundant/failed combo

Hope that made "some sense" 

3 years 349 days ago
Airsick Hydra

Not owning the game yet, am I right in assuming each gun/sword has a set of standard actions (All shot guns have a damage cone, all swords have a swipe, all pistols have X) Or does each indivual shot gun come with a special ability unique to THAT Gun.

If the first I may have an idea, taken from Guildwars 2.. if the second, I am uncertain.

Perhaps when wielding a pistol and melee combo, the pistol abilities change, so you get abilities you ONLY get access to, when using a sword and pistol combo. (this would make sense in cannon by parlance of, you wield a weapon differently depending on situation, a fencer for instance will choose a vastly different stance, and style when holding a main Gauche (spelling on that) in his off hand vs. nothing at all, or a cloak, all three of which were considered valid choices. (Cloak could be used to trip up or blind foes, main Gauche, was for a Perry based style, while the standard hand behind the back, Well, not sure on that one, but perhaps more maneuverability and balance.)

Point being if an Inquisitor decides to go sword and pistol, or axe and pistol or X and Pistol, how he is going to USE the pistol and/or sword is going to be vastly different than how he would use either sword and pistol in another set.

3 years 349 days ago
Alexandra Moon

I totally get the idea Alex and we had a similar suggestion down below. 

Just to clarify every weapon has set stats etc like option 1 - 

I see the issue is that GW markets the game on being a bit unique and weapons having their own sets that change with combos. I think it'll require fairly substantial rework from the devs to change the UI to represent this within an ARPG. Because like an mmo, you mouse over and click a weapon then it tells you it's skill list, instead we would need a far more complicated system...

"perhaps" a compromise is that 2 abilities from each weapon are selected for these hybrid builds, so not per se always 12 or 34, but the combo that will work best for the given weapon. This might actually be a brilliant idea and just involve highlighting 2 of the abilities to indicate they are present when dual weilding with a melee? - thoughts?

3 years 349 days ago
Airsick Hydra

I love that compromise idea you posted.  If I understand it right, these ablities would always be present, or would they only show up when dual wielded as discribed?

Either way, I really like it.  Personally I am NOT a walking encyclopedia on Warhammer, either 40k or otherwise, I came into the franchise with Dawn Of War (and I still think Dark Crusade is the best RTS of ALL time) but I fell in love with it immediately and I just feel that this is something basic and core to the setting, that it somehow needs to be implemented, but I do not wish for the dev team to scrap their entire game over it.  

3 years 349 days ago

i swear i have had a completely different, and probably edge case, experience in game with melee/pistol. 

melee + pistol is my primary go to for slaughtering EVERYTHING. sad to see it go, but the loadout is NOT  weak.

plasma pistol + power axe + critical strike skill tree. fastest burst damage in the game PERIOD!

no this is not a troll thread. i am dead serious. nothing can stand up to the burst from all 4 attacks being spammed especially when the plasma pistol has critically struck for over 800 damage regularly, with my highest single crit being 1024!. the 1.5 second CD on the #2 ability of the power axe is wonderful for clearing trash, because of the cone effect. being able to pick off ranged gunners with 2 quick plasma shots (or less) while busily clearing whatever is in front of you with the axe makes trash pulls laughably easy because the plasma pistol abilities are on 1 second and 3 seconds respectively. You can take a dreadnought or decimator to pieces quite easily as well, since you can pressure any health regeneration with the axe at 80-90 damage per swing per ability while the plasma pistol cools. 

And the critical rates......oh my emperor the critical rates. power axe ability #1 ends up with something like 45% crit rate after you fill the entire critical strike tree. Plasma. Pistol. Crits. #2 plasma pistol ability with a ton of critical rate added to the ignore armor trait just burns through most targets. rush a chaos marine and by the time you get to melee range, if it crits, the marine is already at less than 1/3 health. a single inquisitor should NOT be able to jump into an entire combat squad of 5 chaos marines and wipe them all out in 10 seconds or less.

ok, fairness time: 

bolt pistol, autopistol, laspistol, and grav pistol ALL suck, even in pairs.

inferno pistol is a great alternative to plasma pistol, and inferno/plasma is what i started using as an alternative to axe/plasma (to stop watching glitched anims). this load runs into overheat problems and i'd rather just have an axe than the 2 pistols.

power sword, and power hammer both have issues. sword just doesn't do enough damage per swing against armored targets. hammer ability #2 has such a bloody long CD that its too much of a DPS loss to use over something with faster ability CD's.

chainsword is great, except that it doesn't do any damage to armor. must bring a different loadout for armor if using a chainsword.

i will miss my favorite loadout, but i will always remember it as the very best way to slaughter through this great game

3 years 349 days ago
Soldryn The Red

I agree with some of what you have put, but one weapon combo being overpowered doesn't really constitute for it being great as a whole. Also you will have to consider that currently the in-game difficulty hasn't been ramped up and so i'd suggest that unless you can do a level 2-3 tarrot mission as a starting character with these combos then they are not balanced, as I can do level 3 content with standard weapons even on a new crusader without too much headache (weapon depending). Indeed anyone who has a few green items and a couple levels can walk around a map rekking stuff with ease because the games difficulty hasn't been implemented yet. 

It's in these situations where a player struggles to out damage an opponent's healing where this is most relevant, as within game as it's implemented these points will be more and more common. Im not saying every dual weild is bad but certain the majority of combos will lack damage in some respect, at least from the combo's i've observed. 

3 years 345 days ago

Just needs a passive +% damage to make the damage equivalent to a two handed weapon. Simple. Problem solved.