Devs,
Musket is currently in a really bad place because it is horrendously outdamaged by half-level melee weapons. The melee weapon also attacks faster to boot.
Overall, the damage a musket does under the following conditions:
- Headshot
- Sniper perk and all passives related to targeting full heath target & headshot damage
- DEX and INT points spread to output max musket damage as shown in the tool on the right hand side when assigning attribute points
- Using Power Shot fully upgraded
- Waiting the 3 seconds delay to add 5% damage passive
- Using Onyx 30% damage to full health target
- access to passives of 250 dex and 100 int
… will do roughly just 10% more damage than a single poke of a LIGHT ATTACK by a SPEAR that is HALF LEVEL compared to the musket…used by the same player using the exact same gear.
What the F ?
Range nor hitscan are an excuse for such abysmal gap in performance. Especially in a game where you are FORCED to use musket at close range since the mob will just retreat…aka we can’t even use the musket’s alleged ‘thing’.
In expeditions its even worse. Musket does so little damage you may as well just use bow and arrow since it refires faster AND does more damage per shot than musket.
In PVP its just as bad with Musket damage being horribly low against anyone wearing anything but light armor…and those that do insta-heal the musket’s max possible headshot damage with a single potion before you can even reload.
That being said, this is NOT a request for musket to get its damage %'s increased. That is not the problem. The problem is that there seems to be an ARMOR mitigation issue removing the bulk of musket’s damage.
Which is ironic given firearms were the reason armor ceased to be used.
Furthermore, Musket currently has no real reason to use anything but iron cartridges in PVE or PVP since the modifiers of other cartridges make no difference in the final performance… your best damage shot can’t even compete with a single light attack damage from a melee weapon as it can be spammed faster than you reload and thus outdamage you.
The solution would then be to change the bullets of the musket to provide ARMOR PENETRATION capability.
- Iron Cartridge : Ignores 30% of target’s armor rating
- Steel Cartridge: Ignores 50% of target’s armor rating
- Starmetal Cartridge: Ignores 70% of target’s armor rating
- Orichalcum Cartridge: Ignores 90% of target’s armor rating
- Azoth Cartridge: Ignores 100% of target’s armor rating
These are not damage modifiers. Armor penetration would have the bullet’s damage base become the calculated damage after armor pen happens and THEN any damage reduction from perks, etc would apply.
Of course, some balancing of the musket skill %damage modifiers would need to be done so it does not become OP weapon… but we do need a way to make musket be functional in a group or in pvp when compared to any other weapon.
