Boltguns are disfunctional

[Aspect]

I'm discussing high level operations balance here, not PvP or campaign.

Boltgun should be the default good vs everything not the best at anything option. Meanwhile they are bad at pretty much everything. Basically the only viable option for a tactical marine is the meltagun. It is infinitely superior.
Bolt pistols are fine, but for some reason the primary weapon boltguns suck ass, relic Stalker Bolt Rifle takes 5 consecutive headshots to put a tyranid warrior into executable state? What even is this. Majoris enemies completely ignore bolter hits and often eat up entire mags to be defeated. Minoris enemies are hard to hit and still can take multiple body hits which makes them stagger and twitch disrupting the remaining shots.

Meanwhile with a meltagun you just delete swarms of gaunts or tzaangors, can stunlock entire groups of warriors or rubric marines and you deal with them faster than when trying to kill a single one with a boltgun.

Nerf the meltas so that they have a niche (in my opinion they should be strong vs single targets, not with this massive cone of destruction) and buff the boltgun so that its different variants have a reason to be used on higher level operations.

A stalker boltgun headshot should do more than half life of a warrior. A boltgun salvo should stop majoris enemies in their tracks (kinda like rubric inferno boltguns do to you if you don't dodge them).
The current state is contrary to the lore and the tabletop original and it's anti-fun. The only viable option for the tactical and the vanguard being the melta.

[Chaoslord 87]

Maybe you should take a look at this.
Seems like they tried to "balance" the Boltguns by taking their RoF into consideration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twr2o3ENAo4

[Mister Cebion]

Another problem i see with high rof weapons is the lack of ammo they give us... Its simply more efficient to pick low ammo high dmg weapons cause less bullets you shoot the less ammo you need. One of the reasons why melter is good.... 1 shot 10 kills

[AonGreyFox]

If you nerf melta, people will scream since other option is very lackluster. (If going to nerf, lower the reserved ammo and keep pick up high should be good.)

Even in campaign, I don't feel like to use any bolter at all. I use Laz, sniper or granade launcher instead since it pack more punch, I feel like I shoot something, not throwing a rock.

When put rof in to balance, the problem is ammo efficiency and number of enemy. Make all bolter balance base on rof is just lazy lame and this is result... it's feel useless and dead weight.

[runegui [C.I] [FR]]

They made game designer choices, not lore accurate choices. Normally, the damage output of these guns don't come from the gun itself but from the ammunition rounds (self propelled rounds exploding on contact). Bolters are not machine guns, but they are used as such in the game. Variants should allow better rate of fire and/or precision, but the damage, armor piercing and ammo capacity should come from accessories, like round ammo clips, alternative ammo (like kraken or dragoon).

seeing boltrifles doing light damage is completely stupid. A bolt is a bolt, it explodes and turns you to mush, regardless of the weapon that fired it.

[Magni]

Originally posted by Aspect:

Basically the only viable option for a tactical marine is the meltagun. It is infinitely superior.

LMAO, he doesn't even know about the Bolt Rifle/UGL, aka the most brokenly good gun in the game.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3352077490

That Vanguard was using the Melta btw.

Minoris enemies are hard to hit

Learn to click heads. Also how to sweep a full-auto bolter across a horde at head height.

[Exidus]

Why call for weapon nerfs, to make others feel better? That's what Helldivers 2 did, and we all saw how crappy that went. How about they instead, buff the under performing stuff, and fix all the freaking bugs. (crashes, server connections, etc) I don't get how someone can balance something, when soo much other stuff is broken or lack luster.

[ganjou241]

Originally posted by Mister Cebion:

Another problem i see with high rof weapons is the lack of ammo they give us... Its simply more efficient to pick low ammo high dmg weapons cause less bullets you shoot the less ammo you need. One of the reasons why melter is good.... 1 shot 10 kills

Try using the auto-bolt/heavy-bolt rifle with ammo on 30% HP then use perks that give bonus to contested health gained, then also having the perk that gives ammo on majoris+ kills for more sustain or the auto reload on executes. If you have a bulwark in the team his passive contested HP duration will help you proc the ammo gain. I used this trick on Lethal Diff with my HB Heavy. It will allow you to trade with ranged enemies and even melee ones despite having armor gone...trade armor for ammo for hp, but there has to be something to shoot.

[[p][u][n] ☕]

Originally posted by Chaoslord 87:

Maybe you should take a look at this.
Seems like they tried to "balance" the Boltguns by taking their RoF into consideration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twr2o3ENAo4

Informative video.

The reasoning behind balancing around weapon rof is sound except they have some kind of devils pact on making only very specific weapon/class combos actually have ammo.

[Teran]

Thanks for posting the same thread 27 other people have already posted.

[Foxplay]

Problem around balancing weapons strictly around rate of fire to ammunition capacity is the game is not played like versus a target dummy trying to get the highest Damage over a set amount of time.

There is windows, Majoris enemies have dodges, There is the inherit value in stagger, There is cry-baby Majoris enemies that further prioritize damage or stagger value over a short duration window.

There is also ammo pickup's at and ammo boxes at set interval's (yes even with the limited supply, you still have PLENTY of ammo unless your using your ammo poorly, missing all the time, or getting tons of extra waves by not interrupting cry-baby majoris. Thus all the low ammo high damage weapons are just flat out better. Because they take more advantage out of ammo pickups, ammo resupply checkpoints, and deal with bursting down Majoris and other problematic enemies faster.

Yes bolt weapons have more ammo.... to do what? Unload a half a magazine into a majoris HEAD and still not interrupt the call? to kill minoris? Oh boy who cares you can kill a infinite amount of minors with a melee weapon and parries if you know what your doing, chaff clearing while helpful is not where you are going to loose the game. Quickly killing Neuro / Zoanthropes or Terminus enemies, or interuptting/out-right killing cry-baby majoris is far more valuable

Also Bolter w/Nade Launcher on tactical is not a "Bolt" weapon its a full blown grenade launcher. Tactical has one of the best perk's in the game that makes that weapon viable like it is. And while I do think it should remain in its current state. I think other class perk's need to be as good as that perk in order to elevate other weapons other classes have to a similar level. Otherwise its way to much of a stand-out without other perks getting redesigned/buffed. Not to mention Tactical just in general seems to be the best designed class when it comes to perks given almost all of his perk's are either amazing or synergy well with his weapons / aux scan

[zmanbuilder]

I delete swarms just fine with my bolt guns on lethal and ruthless.

My only assumption is that you do not know that you have to aim.