Made a post and video a while back in regards to the PTR musket changes and how I thought they did ok balancing it but seems like AGS has done some more tweaking to balance it out and refine their tweaks.
With that said here is the ultimate musket guide for season 1 with 10 minutes of uncut aiming displaying its close to 100% accuracy with the accuracy perk on musket.
How these are good changes and what it means to overall meta:
Accuracy is now required on musket for competitive play, this means you must drop a 3rd damage mod to perform consistently.
Attunement has been nerfed from 18% to 14% a small but welcome nerf for sure.
Accuracy penalty reduced by 20% (3/17 change) this is nice as many players even non-musket mains had spoken out that the first iteration of PTR bloom was too much.
Ballistic Advantage is gone, this means overall much less ranged damage.
Zoom is still bugged on PTR and has the same bloom as un-zoomed meaning you are less accurate while zoomed, this means it is better to not zoom(still use the perk though as it increases headshot damage)
The playstyle of musket has changed a small amount, you now have to briefly stop and shoot for close to 100% accuracy. Not for long literally less than 0.1s is enough for it to have better accuracy than moving.
When moving from my testing WITH accuracy on musket I had around 50% accuracy at long range and close to 90% in close range while moving.
I would also recommend dropping dropping elemental runeglasses for Sighted Emeralds, this gives just a flat damage increase of 5% across the board.
Since we are going into Fire Staff meta you will want to drop Flame Attunement & T5 Ruby in weapons for Arboreal Attunement & T5 Amber. This means as mentioned in the video, Arboreal Attunement, Enchanted & Accuracy is the new Best in Slot Musket.
Mortal Empowerment has been nerfed to 2 minutes with refresh on kill (3/17). This is still viable for farm wars and OPR however in competitive wars I would recommend Invigorated Punishment.
I think this covers mostly everything… in terms of “war viable”. We will have to see, if healers still run light they will take a lot more damage than live from musket. This means it might still have some value to run 2-3 muskets in war, but we will have to see when this hits live. For OPR, Arena & Open World musket still has its place.
The problem with these changes is that we’re still going to experience the same toxic behavior in OPR, where 3~5 people team up with Musket/Bow and make the experience terrible.
I’d say AGS must nerf the damage by A LOT after 50m, along with other changes:
Good job with testing stuff.
If they move 150int perk to 300int musket should be fine. With 150int i think it might be still a bit to strong. But we will see when patch comes live.
They removed ballistic advantage, which is what removed damage fall off after 50m.
Despite them saying they want muskets identity to be a sniper based weapon.
Legit, musket is the ONLY build that is only effective with 5-50 con. The whole play style of it, can’t be fighting within 10m like everyone else.
A mage can now 2 hit a musket (fireball can already chunk 4k-5k with a fireball, despite bis musket being 5 ele aversions. But they also slot full emeralds)… Melee still can obliterate a musket.
Get over it.
Btw, I’m a musket main and have always fought within 30m-50m anyways…aside from wars. Doubt anyone will slot more than 2 muskets in defense now, and zero for attacks.
