Should Patriot Ignore Boss Damage Caps?

[AbeClancy]

I picked up the Patriot today on a run, and was actually... rather disappointed in the gun's ability to take out bosses, which is what it seems designed to do.

The gun itself (wiki[enterthegungeon.gamepedia.com]) does 7 damage per shot, and fires only about three times a second. But after holding down the fire button for about 10 seconds, the gun is able to fire bullets at a much faster rate, nearly 20 per second! The thing is, >50% of this damage is lost due to the damage caps on bosses.

The wiki[enterthegungeon.gamepedia.com] says that the Dragun has a damage cap of 65. However, certain few weapons can ignore the damage cap, such as the Makeshift Cannon and Yari Launcher. These weapons are designed for incredible damage output in short bursts. At around 20 bullets per second, the Patriot outputs 140 dps, half of which is negated by the damage cap. And if you have any sort of damage upgrades (Meatbun, Cog of Battle, Spice, Broccoli), then an even greater portion of your potential damage output is negated by the damage cap.

I noticed this earlier today when my damage output against the boss actually seemed to decrease as the gun sped up its fire rate. It felt as though I was partially wasting ammo, and partially that the fight was being drawn out unnecessarily. I became somewhat focused on dps numbers and thoughts of stopping my gunfire to maximize ammo-vs-dps, instead of on shooting. This was especially prevalent during the heart phase of the Dragun, when it initially seemed as though the dps was enough to kill the heart in one pass, but it became resistant to damage and took two passes to kill.

The Patriot especially is disappointing in this regard, because there is a certain skill or risk in using the weapon: You must hold the trigger down without dodge rolling for about 10 seconds for it to start firing at full speed. I can't help but feel as though the damage cap mechanic is holding this weapon back.

So, I feel as though either the Patriot should be able to ignore the damage cap, or that damage caps could be reworked (though in what form I am unsure of). (On a wider note, are damage caps particularly necessary for certain balancing reasons? It seems as though there are rare few weapons that could truely stomp on a boss, and it could be fun to do so more regularly.)

(Final note: Maybe make an active Meatbun double the damage cap, if it's not already doing so? Any damage upgrade (eg Broccoli, Cog of Battle, Spice, etc) would increase the damage cap proportionally?)

[TakingDOOMP]

Originally posted by Abe Clancy:

It seems as though there are rare few weapons that could truely stomp on a boss

That's true until you add items to the mix. Some item combos make even seemingly crappier guns into death machines.