Pistoleer Archive
Thread: Disarm Shot future plans
We all know that Disarm Shot 1 (DS1) andDisarm Shot 2 (DS2) need fixing. DS1 currently does nothing, and DS2 is slated to have its only useful effect removed. The only feedback from a dev we have received is that they should be damaging the target's weapons.
Most of us agree that damaging a target's weapons is unacceptable. Here are five reasons I've posted before as to why DS2 should not just damage a weapon:
- That would be a PvP only move. Seems more fitting for BHs than a solid PvE profession like Pistoleer
- It has no offensive or defensive value until the moment it actually destroys the weapon
- It causes "grief" by damaging other players property
- Pistoleers would have to listen to people crying about losing the duel AND losing half their weapon's condition
- It's a master level ability and should therefore be powerful. Maybe it should ding their armor too, and dent their fenders when vehicles come out.
So it would help if we could agree on a new, balanced, effect for DS1/2. I see a lot of suggestions on the boards that suffer from a few flaws.
Basically any DS that will be fun and useful as well as being accepted and remaining in an unnerfed state for any length of time must meet these criteria:
A) Balanced such that the first person to hit with it doesn't automatically win the battle.
B) Be unspammable so that targets can actually use their weapons for parts of the battle.
C) Work in PvP and PvE. Otherwise the ability is too specialized to benefit enough players to warrant being a Master level ability.
D) Have a scalable effect since we have 2 of them.
E) Have a useful, but not unbalanced effect.
Common proposals and their flaws:
1) Make DS unequip the targets weapon. This is insufficient because any good player will have a hotkey for his weapon and as soon as it ungreys, he will click it again. Also computer AI in PvE can immediately reequip their weapon. This violates ruleE because the effect is not useful.
2) Unequip the weapon and add a delay to reequip it. The delay would have to be a delay to equipping any weapon, otherwise people would just buy 2 of the same/similar gun and toggle between them. The delay would have to be very short. A BH that can't shoot for 5s is a dead BH. That seems unbalanced in the favor of Pistoleers. So if the delay is say 1s it might work, but then we need a timer otherwise it can be spammed. Spamming it over and over could prevent someone from ever using their weapon. It would have to be 1s of no weapon use every 30s or something (subject to balancing). This could be scalable (per rule D) by making the duration of no weapon use longer. This could work. It could be implemented as a state that prevents equipping any weapon for the duration.
3) Prevent them from attacking with anything other than hand to hand (h2h) for x seconds. Same as #2 except that the target doesn't need to remember to reequip their weapon. Would need a very short duration and a timer on its reuse. Could be implemented as a state that allows only h2h combat.
4) Add a state that slows their rate of fire (rof). States are nice because they cannot be stacked. The state would lower their rof while present. The DS2 state would lower the rofmore than the DS1 state. Doctors should be able to remove the state just like any other state. The problem is that the slowdown would have to be very limited or the duration of the state would have to be very short. Otherwise it becomes too powerful. We can't havetargets firing at half speed for 30s, obviously.
Some neat ideas to stack on the ones above:
- Probability of a successful disarm scales proportionately between the shooters accuracy and the targetsaccuracy with their currently equipped weapon.So a master pistoleer disarminga novice pistoleer would be easier thanvice versa (and if it succeeded it would last longer because the master would have used DS2).
- Have any weapon reequip delay apply only to reequipping any weapon of the same type (i.e. if I disarm your pistol you cannot reequip any pistol for x seconds but you can equip a carbine). This gives BHs (or any diverse player) an edge due to theirmultiple weapon proficiency. This is exactly the kind of edge BH's ought to have. They need boosts BECAUSE of their diversity, not IN ADDITION to it.
Thoughts orcomments?
A state called "disarmed" where the character reverted to hand to hand might make sense.
I don't think a doctor should be able to fix it though. what's he gonna do, hand your weapon back to you?
I think it would be cool if it unequiped the opponents gun and they had to manually equip it again to keep fighting
like shooting the gun out of their hand 
ViceCorpMav wrote:
I think it would be cool if it unequiped the opponents gun and they had to manually equip it again to keep fighting
The problem with this, is that with hotkeys set up to reequip your gun you can do it almost instantaneously. There would be no negative effect unless they changed it so that changing/equipping guns was slower.
Although I guess if it was easy to correct (just hit your weapon hotkey) then they could leave it spammable and it would have great effect on distracted people, but no effect onan expert PvPer. Might work.
I think it would be great to get some state changes. Whether or notit makes sense with the name "Disarm" we could use a shot that blinded or caused dizzyness or intimidation.
Having some state changes would at least make our moves more interesting. I think this sort of thing is more likely to be added than something that delays opponent action for a short period, the devs must be wary of that sort of attack by now.
My thoughts on disarm has always been to switch it over to a status attack. I have to agree that destroying a weapon is purely a griefing menuver and of little use in PvE. My thought is to have it be a stun menuver, that causes the player to lose out a few turns of action, this would simulate the player fumbling with the weapon. At masters level the it could cause dizziness as the player is spent the time searching for the weapon.
I have to disagree with the blinding shot, I think that should stick soley with the BH to give class distinction, I don't want to rip off what they have, I just want to build in a unique and useful move for pistoleers.
Well to "disarm" is to make your opponent "unarmed" or unable to use a weapon back at you.
If disarmed shot did ranged intimidate then that would havea very similar effect.
Intimidate is already in game and can be healed by a doctor.
Thats my vote.
Dashai
Very nice post Smugglerflux
I like the previous poster's idea about clearing combat queue and adding stun/intimidate or some other status effect that would delay the enemies' attacks giving the pistoleer using disarm a temporary advantage.
After seeing that they took away our ranged knockdown, which I was looking forward to... give me weapon damage. Let the grieving begin.
Cheese
Disarming Shot 1 Should Delay Enemy's next attack for 7 seconds
DS2 for 15 seconds.