Bolters are pathetically weak

[just.dont.do.it]

For a very iconic WH40K weapon, they ended up being entirely useless for a good half of the game: early bolters are strictly worse than early lasguns in very much all the cases.

Only way later you start finding bolters that aren't just +2-3 damage from lasguns with far worse handling; and only by level 30+ your characters will be powerful enough to disregard most of the hanlding issues.

...but by that time you can just grab Eldar/Drukhari weapons and it's all over for bolters once again.

[Batailleuse]

Originally posted by just.dont.do.it:

Originally posted by Daliena:

Crucially, however, it has a ROF of 1. Hmm, 14-20 VS 27-42.

Soldier has ROF of 1.5 on anything single-shot, as every other turn you can make 2 shots with R&G. That's not even considering Revel in Slaughter.

"But you can do the same with bolter!" you might say. Well you can, but you won't hit things with bolter's spray after R&G. Not even at a point blank range. Not until way later until you throw enough BS on your character to have actually good chances to hit even after R&G penalties and salvo penalties.

The rest of your argument is not about my point: the damage isn't the problem. It's the chance to hit. All your calculations are pretty meaningless since you'll be seeing a great deal of misses and dodges. And I don't even suggest highest difficulty, where you're unlikely to hit anything with a bolter at all.

Blessed Bolter Casing = 100% hit chance regardless of anything else if you can see it, you can single hit it.

so just spray first, run and gun, hit single shoot = 100% hit despite debuffs.

there are items in Act 4 giving all <4 burst weapon + BS/3 burst size making some 3-4 gun able to shoot some disgusting 15+ burst size (or up to ammo count). right now at 90BS on argenta it's +3 burst, +20 in battle full life, +10 after 2 kills. eventually Cassia and/or jae buffs

i can get my 4 burst weapon into a 8-9 burst on first turn.

[just.dont.do.it]

Things in act 4 are hardly representative of the game. Yes, you can make bolters work, I even said that in the OP. Would you tho? It's a lot of work for not particularly great gains.
If we take the sister as example, going arch-militant would fix immediate issues with low hit chances quite fast... but you can still use other weapons in the same manner, and e.g. sister specced arch-militant and with a plasma gun does WAY more damage on the whole.

Not to mention that on higher difficulties the game gravitates hugely towards hard-hitting weapons: rabble dies to anything anyway, and for big targets you need lots of buff/debuff stacking and a single focused attack to capitalize on that.

[Draken]

At level 8 I took a random look at Argenta during a battle, and she was rocking a 100+ ballistic skill thanks to two officers and a support psyker.

So even early you can make a bolter work very well. Bolters scale better with higher ballistic skill than laser weapons.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Yea, if you take a look at the table top RPG, bolters are one of the best human weapons that are not ultra rare.

Though the devs decided to entirely ignore the TTRPG rules.

[Leonardo Trapovich]

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Argenta is my MVP, bolter specialist and slays entire armies with overpenetration, additional shots, additional turns, various buffs and not to mention that one artifact that MAKES EVERY BOLTER SHOT GUARANTEED HIT, ALWAYS.

[Solid Steel]

Originally posted by mayrc:

Sometimes i think some people playing a different game. I cant realy explain it otherwise......

Bolters are awesome.

Nah.. TE is right.. maybe you play a different game? :-)

[Solid Steel]

Originally posted by Leonardo Trapovich:

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Argenta is my MVP, bolter specialist and slays entire armies with overpenetration, additional shots, additional turns, various buffs and not to mention that one artifact that MAKES EVERY BOLTER SHOT GUARANTEED HIT, ALWAYS.

She can´t hit a ♥♥♥♥ until she has enough Strenght to handle a Bolter. And this is around lvl 15 to 16...

[Goatmanpig]

Problem with Bolters is that there is Lasgun variants in game that are more powerful than them. The first Hotshot Lasgun you can find in game has freaking 40% armor pen and pretty decent damage.

[Myth Alric]

The game throws a lot of large waves at you, and bolter spraying is great for wave clearing. It is the largest area effect attack in the game, if you can get people some what into a line. Do you want to always just spray bullets every where all the time? Probably not, but it does it's job. Before getting the bolter casing it makes sense to give Argenta a sniper rifle to snipe people off as a secondary weapon, but bolters also have very long ranges in the game too.

People say it is weak but it has everything. Damage, range, armor pen, area attack, single target. It has to have some weakness otherwise no one would ever use anything but it, and in this case it's the handling, seems fair.

[Voodoo]

I mean a bolter does what? +25-30% over the normal lasgun of same tier, sounds about right, comparing for rpg. 1d10+5 pen 4 vs 1d10+2 pen 0, if something hotshot lasguns are too weak(they are 1d10+4 pen 7, they should be stronger than bolter in all honesty), and melta(2d10+8. pen 13)

Now does it really matter when i can bring my 7-9 dmg heavy bolter to do 100+ dmg per shot(record so far was 261 dmg)

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

Yea, if you take a look at the table top RPG, bolters are one of the best human weapons that are not ultra rare.

Though the devs decided to entirely ignore the TTRPG rules.

umm
bolter 1d10+5 pen 4, tearing, very rare
hotshot lasgun 1d10+4 pen 7, rare
autocannon 3d10+8 pen 6, very rare

i understand partially why devs had to ignore ttrpg rules to a degree so autocannon and lascannon dont become endall and lasgun and autogun would be usable at all.

[A Helpless Baby]

the real problem that I've run into with them is the lack of variants for them. Most other weapon types have a ton of variants with progressively higher stats, but it seems like it's just bolter and then 2-3 unique artifact variants. Imperial pride (found in the diseased area of footfall) is quite good with 11-17 damage.

As for the lasgun, the mars-pattern is 10-14dam, AP10, ROF4, Recoil 10, Range 10, and has a capacity of 40. Certainly seems a little odd that a non hotshot lasgun is so comparable to a bolter, but oh well.

[Tangman]

Im not sure where exactly I found this, but it is in chapter 2, and on kieva gamma you have similar, teensy bit worse.
oh wow, cant paste screenshots
Assault Lasgun 10-15dmg, 10% Armor pen, 5 ROF, 30 Dodge reduction, range 10.

Im not using rapid fire...it ruins aim to much, I just use general burst fire with the five shots and the double damage abilioty whatever its called, along with concentrated fire to not hit buddies when firing across teammates. It easily crits 30-50damage on most targets, my main char (sopldier) and argenta with Precision Bolter from the Liege of Football vendor at Profit factor 42 is MURDERING the world. If I could get 2 of those bolters though... hubba hubba

I respecced and I am trying the Heavy Bolter but so far, Im torn if its good or not... It fires a lot, has a big sway, does seem to hit fairly well but it costing 3 AP makes it useless for Cassia to give me extra turns and I cant fully juice myself each turn... Im a bit torn, ngl.

[Khryst]

I mean I know alot of people here are talking about Argenta and her bolter spray and it's true it works very very well.

Bolter spray run'n'gun then pull out the flamer I gave her (why the ♥♥♥♥ not she's a SoB) and roast survivors. with my noble officer RT and Cass buffing her up she single handed took down a certain boss from full to 90% in the first round of combat on normal difficulty.

Bolters work well, it's just her inital bolter that sucks giant donkey balls because it's got such a high recoil.

[just.dont.do.it]

Originally posted by kblaze13:

Bolter spray run'n'gun then pull out the flamer I gave her (why the ♥♥♥♥ not she's a SoB) and roast survivors. with my noble officer RT and Cass buffing her up she single handed took down a certain boss from full to 90% in the first round of combat on normal difficulty.

Normal difficulty has enemies specifically debuffed, you know. It's dead easy. Twice as easier as "normal difficulty" in Pathfinder games.
You should play at least "Daring" (enemies are not debuffed and not buffed) before making arguments. But better yet, play the highest one first.