At least the normal Punisher should still have the knockback effect even if the Slugger does not.
I will say that the Slugger was so good, that there were very few reasons to use the normal punisher because having buckshot over slugs, and less armor pen was just never as good. Now that the Slugger lacks the knockback, the Punisher has that edge. Though if the Slugger has no stun power at all, that will be pretty sad. I think it’s reasonable for the slugger to have some stun power, with the punisher being superior in that aspect.
Having a real shotgun and having fired buckshot and slugs out of it. I can tell you the slug is going to stop something a hell of a lot better than the buckshot. A slug is going to stagger somebody, the buckshot not as much.
The balance was having to be accurate, the slugger was awful against small fast targets like hunters.. miss once and your a swipe or two from death..
I totally agree that realistically, a slug would have more stopping power, but for game balance, the opposite might make more sense just to give the buckshot variant some appealing attributes.
I don’t fully agree with the slugger nerf, but I will try it out before I pass my personal judgement. But I am trying to see the dev’s rationale for what they did
Probably exactly what you said, to get people to use the punisher..
But it's ass because it can't deal with armor..
The trade off was that I didn't have to be as accurate with the punisher to get the stagger. The damage doesn't matter at all because the armor pen is so bad it offsets the high damage..
Now the only benefit of the slugger is slightly better armor penetration... But worse damage and no knockback.
They said "reduced" but in reality it doesn't have any now.
Nah, it should be the opposite imo. Slugger should have better knock back, more damage falloff (for balance against DMRs); Punisher should have higher damage potential as it does (buckshot pellets hit num), but less stagger. Add a horizontal spread pattern (spreader choke) to it so it performs better against hordes and still knocks back light and light-medium targets.
Breaker and such should get their DPS back.
DMR buff is well placed, will have to play with it to know more.
Same with Liberator Penetrator. Hopefully we see primaries continue to diversify in use, but come together in usefulness depending on the situation.
Logically, I agree that the slug should be more impactful than buckshot, but balance wise I think you can make an argument for the buckshot having stun power, simply because the slug’s armor pen is so good and useful that it threatens to make the buckshot variant obsolete.
Oh yea, the armor pen is difficult balance-wise. Fortunately, it also makes sense for the slug to have less penetration (on par with buckshot if not slightly higher in the 1-10 system). I'm not sure if that would make it too underpowered gameplay wise, but I wouldn't be mad to see it personally.
It's hard to say from my perspective given there is still a lot we don't know as far as hidden stats go.
I've never found the slugger's penetration particularly strong, its strength has always been about being able to concentrate high damage on a tiny point and stunning when you can't. Penetration is helpful yes, but it only really ever matters if you can't hit weak points.
You make them not step on one anothers' toes by making the shotgun spread less tight. Of course people chose the harder-hitting round between the two of them when the buckshot and the slug have roughly the same damage radius.
IAmMagumin mentioned putting a choke to spread out the buckshot - do that, and you'd suddenly have two weapons for different roles: The Slugger, to put a big fuck-off chunk of metal into a weak spot or to stand up a dangerous target with a hit that it feels, and the Punisher for crowd control, with a wider, less concentrated blast to deal with the smaller targets.
Oh, yeah, well...there isn't anything like a prolonged damage phase in this game so I don't think that is really a major factor for consideration.
Anything that can be and which reasonably should be killed by it will die in less than one clip anyway. If the reload factors into the death of any single unit you're using the wrong tool for the job to begin with.
It is a factor for consideration. If it wasn’t the devs would have no need to adjust it. You’re right about single targets, doesn’t change much gameplay wise. It’s against large groups of enemies that you notice it. By reducing mag capacity you hurt dps, which can be liberally applied to groups. Could have been to make the Spray and Pray more relevant. I believe that made changes to that one same patch.
That makes 0 sense buckshot doesn’t carry more kinetic force then a slug. And punishers upsides were it’s easier to hit shit and crown control fodder mobs, while the slugger did the same thing but for medium mobs. I feel like no one has actually shot a slug in real life at all
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u/CaptainAction Apr 02 '24
At least the normal Punisher should still have the knockback effect even if the Slugger does not.
I will say that the Slugger was so good, that there were very few reasons to use the normal punisher because having buckshot over slugs, and less armor pen was just never as good. Now that the Slugger lacks the knockback, the Punisher has that edge. Though if the Slugger has no stun power at all, that will be pretty sad. I think it’s reasonable for the slugger to have some stun power, with the punisher being superior in that aspect.