As someone who leveled up using a musket and blunderbuss, I have at 60 been FORCED to switch to a melee weapon just for the sake of higher damage. The fact that all melee weapons cleave is a major aspect of this. I do not see the issue with letting the musket and blunderbuss pierce a few targets with their shots.
Their “aoe” options are the equivalent of a heavy attack for most melee weapons on a 12 second cooldown. It’s embarrassing game design, and needs to be addressed. Having people instantly turn me away from group finder even though my gear score is the highest applicant just because I’m using musket should not be happening.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if my suggestion to give pierce to these weapons is bad or good. I want changes that facilitate my ability to use my damn dps weapon just like everyone else in pve. I don’t even care if its a bit less, but the gap right now is too large. Even considering single target damage the musket cannot keep up due to the ridiculous animations they put into the enemies in this game.
Yes, I am not the best shot but this isnt even close to fair for me when my entire weapon is set up for headshots and I am being told to shoot a snake flopping all over the place (tempest) in the head consecutively and still be lower damage than the melee with 300 str just facerolling with light attack spam.
Oh yes, invasions, the peak of PVE that everyone cares about. I wish they made melees useless on dungeons and only useful in invasions. What would melees say?
Dex are useful in dungeons. We just ran with one last night, maximum single target dps. Very good for bosses and sub bosses. Ga is good at clumping and aoe… we have roles…
My point in mentioning invasions is archers can beat melee in dps even in a situation where melee is doing aoe… it seems pretty balanced to me.
explain the role a musket has in a dungeon outside of being an ornament used for very lame and lazy “ranged only” target mechanics. They are not brought for damage, you’re delusional if you think that’s actually the case. The sole exception being bows because they can deal near triple the damage a musket can, have more mobility, and their damage scaling is not completely tied to headshots. Headshots being something very freakin difficult to land against many mobs and bosses due to their insane array of animations.
Not to mention, the ramp-up damage a musket can get from headshots needs to be consistent and you NEED to stay in your aim otherwise it falls off instantly. You know what that means, right? a much smaller field of view causing you to have a harder time dodging dangerous mechanics.
Finally, I can Guarantee you that your “maximum single target dps” is still no where close to as good as say the spear or greatsword.
This was a bow user… I agree I never see muskets in dungeons.
She got Aggro on mobs she was shooting… so doing more damage than our spear user and me(ga/wh). And I have thwarting, corrupted, refreshing move ga and normally steal agree from tank on a few of the mobs in clumps… so I know she was doing hella dps. On bosses, she was always second on aggro table except after a heart gem explosion.
I agree that all weapons should be Viable in any content. But also belive that no Ranged Weapon in ANY circumstance should do the same damage that a Melee. You are a 25m of the enemy dodging less mechanics, a melee is literaly hoping that he is in the healer healthpoll to no die.
But yes, Most ranged should be in a situation where they have space in groups. But if you buff the balance too much, it will weigh too much for the rangeds that naturally have more advantages so by being ranged and will be substantially worse than now. I literaly will not play this game in a Pve Dps ranged meta.
Melee always need to do the most damage because 1) it’s a lot riskier 2) the pve content in the game would be trivial if ranged weapons did a lot of damage.
I’ve done some gold m10 Bb runs with a medium FS/IG in the group and I’ve golded m10 ennead with 2 bows/spears in the group. So you can sort of use range in end game pve content.
I agree with both you and @Kippp. My whole goal is to reduce the gap not remove it. Ranged dps should never be able to out damage melee. Its just that right now i feel that gap is too severe. More so in the aoe clearing department than anything as thats what people want you to be good at in most dungeon runs for faster clears.
There are a few ways I can think of to help fix this problem, its just that some are more impactful changes than others. Like adding a talent to musket that lets their critical strikes explode for 50% of the damage dealt in a radius around the primary target. or changing the mortar ability that blunderbuss has into a stance swap instead of a limited charge cooldown.
I want to hope that the people behind the wheel of weapon design and balancing are not idiots and can actually address this problem as I see it.
