How to fix Walter's slingshot

[ShadowDuelist]

Problem: Walter is not bad, but half of his perks which are based on his slingshot, are not really useful beyond the very early game, essentially leaving you with a very frail character that has only Woby to compensate for it.
The magic rounds and crowd control rounds are usually not worth crafting either:

• Poop pellet doesn't work against herd mentality, which is what most enemies you'd use against has
• Freezing pellet is more expensive and over all not better over an ice staff, despite having a stronger freezing effect. It's usually preferable for Walter to use an ice staff like any Wilson can.
• Slow pellet is too expensive and does not have many situations worth using at.

Proposed Change #1: His slingshot speed should be increased to allow each pellet type to deal a DPS similar to that of a melee weapon with the same base damage. That would allow gold rounds to deal as much DPS as a Wilson on foot with a spear, and marble pellets to deal as much DPS as Wilson on foot with a tentacle spike.

This change alone, would make Walter far more enjoyable and much more versatile throughout the game, while being balanced since you still won't be able to match with ranged damage what a dark sword or an ornery beefalo with war saddle can give you.

But I wouldn't stop there.

Proposed Change #2: Walter's slingshot should get a RMB attack option which I'll call "well timed shot" (but it can be named anything)
This special type of shot when lands a successful hit on an enemy or entity, should deal a small splash damage around said entity (the area shouldn't be huge, I was thinking something like the flingo splash effect) and have something like 3 to 5 seconds cooldown between shots.

What would this accomplish?
Although you can probably deal some damage to a group of enemies, the cooldown will prevent you from using it to kill groups of mobs directly, instead the main use of this would be the crowd control pellets. Rounding up a small group of enemies then landing a well timed shot with poop to scatter them away, or freezing them, or just making them slow, would work as a tool even in the very late game, extending the over all use of the slingshot and Walter as a whole.

 

[Keller Max]

Agree! With all Walter downsides, small hp pool, sanity on damage taken, Bee allergies... He must be shifted to be an all in ranged specialist. Faster Slingshot, more range, more pellets per craft, more types of pellets. Imagine have different tiers of slingshots with different ranges.

Or even better! Instead of regular auto aim spamming pallets, his slingshot can be a chargable skillshot only (he can move during charging), with an average dps of a regular melee (depends on pellets. And different pellets with different effects. (Piercing, Explosive, etc...)

To compensate, he should have -50% damage on melee at all times.

[BonesJrOfficial]

I also agree sling shot should fire quicker. 

However I disagree with the Well Timed Shot abilities functionality. Having an AoE would be huge, I think the damage of the round fired should be decreased to some degree, for more CC and strategy than outright power. It can function like the Strident Trident in a way (being a weapon but also having a spell) which is what you suggest... However i think it could be more simple hold the attack for 3-5 seconds it automatically changes from a normal shot to a Timed shot converting your round from single target to a splash effect. Wouldn't need to add a cooldown as the wind-up can function as one and it would require a bit more strategy than spamming on cooldown or getting mixed up by it.

All around great stuff and I'd love to see walter get a little bit of love. He deserves it :)

[ShadowDuelist]

10 hours ago, Keller Max said:

Agree! With all Walter downsides, small hp pool, sanity on damage taken, Bee allergies... He must be shifted to be an all in ranged specialist. Faster Slingshot, more range, more pellets per craft, more types of pellets. Imagine have different tiers of slingshots with different ranges.

Or even better! Instead of regular auto aim spamming pallets, his slingshot can be a chargable skillshot only (he can move during charging), with an average dps of a regular melee (depends on pellets. And different pellets with different effects. (Piercing, Explosive, etc...)

To compensate, he should have -50% damage on melee at all times.

I like the idea of more pellets and ranges, turning walter into a true "ranger", the only thing I do not agree with is adding a -50% melee damage, Walter already has a hard enough time while fighting melee directly, specially against bee queen. Most of the time you won't be fighting melee anyway, since a single hit will instantly spawn terrorbeaks to complicate your existence, and unlike Wanda, there isn't much reward for him to do so. 
Currently it's either beefalo-melee or ranged for him (and his ranged in the current state as we all agree, is pretty bad)

6 hours ago, BonesJrOfficial said:

I also agree sling shot should fire quicker. 

However I disagree with the Well Timed Shot abilities functionality. Having an AoE would be huge, I think the damage of the round fired should be decreased to some degree, for more CC and strategy than outright power. It can function like the Strident Trident in a way (being a weapon but also having a spell) which is what you suggest... However i think it could be more simple hold the attack for 3-5 seconds it automatically changes from a normal shot to a Timed shot converting your round from single target to a splash effect. Wouldn't need to add a cooldown as the wind-up can function as one and it would require a bit more strategy than spamming on cooldown or getting mixed up by it.

All around great stuff and I'd love to see walter get a little bit of love. He deserves it :)

Great Ideas over all.
Also I would like to point out that a special attack type in the event that it turns out to be too OP or make no sense for the character, could be compensated by making him shoot more than one pellet, basically making sense to an "aoe" since he's shooting a spreadshot (a bunch of pellets in a single-special attack) something that you can actually do with a slingshot.

[Guille6785]

I really don't get why the slingshot needed half the dps of its melee equivalents to begin with, having to spend resources on your ammo alone already balances the ranged nature

[Gashzer]

As a Walter main, I think the only changes walter's slingshot needs is to fix poop rounds triggering herd mentality, maybe one or 2 more new special round types, thats it!

If you increase the slingshots fire rate, making each round equal in dps to its melee counterpart, or even close to it, will cause all combat to become trivial to walter. Making even Wanda's alarming clock look like a noobie weapon.

Majority of mobs focus on melee combat, add a fast firing, tentacle spike damage ranged weapon with really cheap ammo atleast compared to the darts  and combat with most mobs breakdown. Slingshot is balanced atm.

What I definitely DON'T want to see, is his melee damage get reduced for increased slingshot damage.... alot of walters fun gameplay is the versatility of switching between range an melee combat at will, by reducing his melee damage for increased slingshot damage, you are forcing ranged combat at all times.... Boring...

What would make Walter better are buffs to Woby, maybe make wobys inventory capacity increase when she turns big (extra 6 slots would be perfect). Qol things like being able to inspect suspicious dirt piles while mounted on woby. Give both winter insulation as well as the current summer insulation to his pine hat, buff both insulations to tier 2. This would make the hat a good unique all round craft for walter an non-walters alike.

Walter is massively underrated tho.... I do not understand the hate, hes by far one of the best characters to play as if you are experienced at the game. 

 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

i always thought that it should let you hold the atack buttom to choose the strength of the shot so you have to time well to hit very hard (or increase the crowd control effect) or spam atack buttom to atack quickly

or they can make it like the dart special atack from the forge. Balancing damage with the need of aim which also opens the opportunity of being able to hit mobs that moves by predicting their position

you know, something more skilled and fun than just holding F to do underwhelming damage from a safe distance

[NoodlemanNed]

I personally dont think the slingshot needs to be a powerful dps weapon, it doesnt really add anything interesting to the game and instead would just make most bosses trivial with the help of woby.

Now, the slingshot doesnt deserve to be as weak as it is so i think a more interesting option would be to add more special effect ammo (and buff his existing ones) to change how walter can approach fights. So if a player wants to play it safe, they can still stay at a distance doing pitiful damage, or they could combine melee weapons with useful special rounds, this change would diversify combat rather than simply it.

Also his bee allergy is dumb, why is walter arbitrarily weaker against 1 specific boss

[goatt]

I have an idea.

Allow non-magic ammo to bounce off once in random direction, which might or might not hit a secondary target.

Not sure if it would be a good idea tho.

[Hornete]

31 minutes ago, goatt said:

Not sure if it would be a good idea tho.

I feel it might be annoying since it'd be completely based off of RNG.

I'd just take an aoe ammo, I think that'd do the job.