About buffing some mediocre weapons

[HeatAndRun]

I wanna adress about some underwhelming weapons.

First, about the Groak Weapons. The main problem of these weapons is that their skill is kinda underpowered, and doesn't work well with the weapons' passive ability.

It drags the enemies towards you, and that's it. The skill itself is not that great compared to other skills in Rotwood, but the main problem is the skill doesn't work well with The Groak weapons' passive ability (about making the hitstreak longer). 

Using the skill makes the enemies closer to you, and the enemies will attack you right after, ultimately causing you hit by them and stops your hitstreaks. Consequently, the skill itself does not offer anything about not losing your histreaks.

There could be various alternatives to solve the problem. Such as :

• You don't lose your hitstreaks even when you got hit.
• The Grody Groak Gulp skill applies some damage and hitstuns to the enemies affected.

This way the skill could acquire some strategic value, more than just a placeholder for the weapon skill. I really enjoy the new Big Yammo Slammo skill these days, so I hope this underpowered vacuuming skill could see its better days in the future.

Also, about the "HItstreaks decay slower between Hits" ability of groak weapons, they are worse than it sounds on paper. The weapon itself doesn't have any useful effect. There's no meaning to last your hitstreaks longer if you don't have those fancy hitstreak-related powers you can find in a run. So I suggest to give more direct buff to these groak weapons, for example :

• You don't lose your hitstreaks even when you got hit.
• If you have more than 20 hitstreaks, you deal +30% more damage.

 

Ok, that's it for the groak weapons. The next weapon I wanna adress about is :

The Keening.

Honestly, from the playtest duration my main weapon have been cannons, so I was super excited when I first saw this weapon at the very first day of the early access. But the excitement soon changed into disappointment.. After noticing that only the first shot of this weapon is focused hit. And I used this again after the fortification update dropped, but the weapon was still not so good to use.

Because only the first shot of the Keening is focused, it doesn't work well with all the other focus-attack related equipments or abilities. This weapon is worse than every other cannons on that purpose. The piercing ability of focused shots are not good enough to compensate the less overall amount of focused shots. And it seems quite obvious to find the right way to buff this weapon -

• Make the second shot as focused attack, too.

For now the only way to fully utilize the focused attack as the keening is just spam "shift and attack" over and over, which does not seems to be that efficient. Make the second shot focused will give more choices to use this weapon!

 

Lastly, about the Bam Bamboozler.

I want to adress specifically about the convenience of the "Hazard Idol" skill.

So, I used the skill a few times in public servers, mainly focused on buffing allie's damage. In reality, it was more inconvenient than I expected in a run. 

First problem is the idol doesn't show up right at the moment you slap your face.

 As you can see in the video, the hazard idol skill is so easily canceled by player's action such as dodging or attacking. The casting time of this skill should be faster than currently it is. It just can't be used while you're dodging and slapping all around.

 

Next, the main problem of this skill is that the idol has actual hitpoints. This makes everything around more complex, stiff and inconvenient. Let me explain :

As the idol has fixed 1000 hitpoints, It's easier for the idol to be destroyed if you have more powers boosts your damage, you and your friend have higher fortification level weapons. Or in higher frenzy levels, the enemies also will hit harder. Ironically the hitpoint of the idol makes it harder to use.

And the position of the idol when you deploy it also makes using it harder. It deploys exactly "in front of" you. With a few more swings to your enemies, the idol just disappears. 

The radius feels smaller than it seems, too. Because you need to "avoid" hitting the idol to make it last longer, you can't easily approach the middle area of the effect radius. You should hit the enemies while not hitting the idol itself, sounds quite complex to me.

Real footage of the "Hazard Idol"'s in-game adaption :

 

The simplest way to fix the problems might be easy : Make the idol invincible, and give it an effect duration. 

But if the hitpoints of idol should be remained, there could be more alternatives :

• Bigger effect radius.
• More hitpoints of the idol.
• The idol deploys right behind you, instead of in front of you.
• The effect area will remains for a few seconds even after it destroyed.

I surely hope the idol gets a buff some day. I'm also the one who loves the concept of the idol. Even the existence of its hitpoints. Buffing the idol won't break the game anyway. You still need to follow the steps of "Deploying the idol - Hit the enemies without destroying the idol" process, while others just hit their enemies easily by spamming the mouse click. Most of all, the idol still gives the damage buff to the enemies, too. It still be a double-edged sword to the players, even after the buff since the idol buffs the enemies too.

Aight, that's it for now! Thank you for reading my long opinions.

[cybers2001]

+1 on the groak weapons. The ability to pull can be useful, especially for melee characters in the 4th zone when there's acid everywhere, but has no synergy with the hit streak passive, and is outright silly for ranged fighters like the striker.

[HeatAndRun]

3 hours ago, cybers2001 said:

+1 on the groak weapons. The ability to pull can be useful, especially for melee characters in the 4th zone when there's acid everywhere, but has no synergy with the hit streak passive, and is outright silly for ranged fighters like the striker.

Good thing is there will be some hitstreak related armors in the upcoming beta, so let's wait and see what we'll get.

[SapoLover]

On 6/18/2024 at 12:49 AM, HeatAndRun said:

The Keening.

Haven't played Rotwood in a while, but I can remember using this weapon, and I thought it was okay, at least at the point when I was getting through the howtilizer zone for the first times.

It made the focus hits really easy to manage as the ability recharges one bullet is faster than the space bar timing. Although, I think it would be nice if they made so the first three bullets were focused.

[MrMyther]

Personally, id like the Keening Cannon to have a rework on its effect.
Instead of focus hits piercing targets - All hits have could have piercing, and any successful piercing hits gain focus.

Would make the shotgun far more appealing to use with it equipped, as its very slow compared to all the other cannons.