A more balanced Double Edge Sickle

[The Blind One]

The sickle was recently rebalanced and I think it was overbalanced towards the fire resist armor and it has no use cases outside of using that armor at the moment which I think is a shame.

So I came up with the following solution.

This is the recently introduced patched setup;

0-25% heat: AP2 55 damage - Deals 0 damage/second to players
26-50% heat: AP3 55 damage - Deals 10 damage/second to players
51-90% heat: AP3 70 damage - Deals 20 damage/second to players
+91% heat: AP4 70 damage - Deals 50 damage/second to players + fire status effect

And this is what I propose instead;

0-25% heat: AP2 55 damage - Deals 0 damage/second to players
26-50% heat: AP3 55 damage - Deals 5 damage/second to players
51-75% heat: AP3 55 damage - Deals 10 damage/second to players
76-99% heat: AP3 70 damage - Deals 15 damage/second to players
+100% heat: AP4 70 damage - Deals 20 damage/second to players + fire status effect

It basically just halves most burn damage and adds an extra bracket between 25 and 75 percent to provide more time for the heat resist armor to be useful.

Oh and for added fun;

Add a ''charged up'' firing mode that sets the clip at 25% of heat, it then allows you to shoot instantly without needing to charge up and it shoots medium penetration from the start at the price of the weapon hurting you much quicker.

With these changes the Double Edge is useful even for non fire resist armor users with the caveat that you are willing to take the damage for the extra fire power. You will be able to go to a full clip at the cost of your entire health bar. Lots of dakka for the price of a permanent addiction to permacura pharmaceuticals.

For fire armor resist users the weapon becomes a nice middle ground between the old balance and the new balance that was recently introduced. You are able to fire up to 75% of the heat clip in safety and only suffer some mild burns when you go over >75% of heat.

All this change really does is tone down the initial self harm to a manageable amount such that sweat divers and edgy players can use it at the cost of their health and returns some of the fun for the fire resist armor users that really want to specialize around this weapon for the extra dakka.

I think this is a fair balance between both worlds.

[Khloros]

I like the effort but you over thought it. Here is how to fix it easy

Keep the old damage and heat damage numbers, but remove AP2 from 0-25%
or
Keep AP3 from the get go, but increase self damage taken.

You dont even need the AP4, the AP4 means literally nothing because this is not a weapon made ot be used against AP4 targets and your gonna either burn yourself up, your stims, and or your cell which will revert it back to AP2 anyway.

[PhellAsleep]

I am seeing some claims that the Fire Armor and Vitality boost no longer protects from the self damage?

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Khloros:

Keep the old damage and heat damage numbers, but remove AP2 from 0-25%

I understand you want an ap3 laser weapon but I raise you with this instead.

Allow a 'charge up' settings mode on the las-17 that sets the weapon to start at 25% heat so you can instantly dip into the medium pen if you want AND it instantly fires without needing the charge up. The downside is ofc that unless you are wearing the fire resist armor, it instantly starts hurting you when you fire it.

[ItzPress]

Considering how the damage boost didn't even work before, the new design direction being handled now is a big improvement, and has a lot of values able to be tweaked. One of my concerns was how much more this incentivized going builds that use you as the heatsink so I'd like this actually.

It's possible it could also use some more slight damage boosts in between rather than staying at 55 most of the time and only reaching 70, so it's good enough at intermediate use to offset the weakness at low-heat use (and be as good as before if it's not) but lowering the necessity of builds that reduce damage help pave way towards making this more rewarding inherently for the heat management in the first place.

[Vicpool]

In my opinion, they could have simply adjusted the damage penetration, so during the first few seconds it's only light pen, and then at around 25% heat it turn med pen. No need to change damage nor self-damage, weapon was absolutely fine; and now it's just annoying cause none enjoys dealing with the self-damage on screen effects, character grunts, etc. which was one of the main points about using the fire resist armor: many of us weren't using the fireproof one because of the self-damage per se, but the annoyance of dealing with the damage effects; just as none enjoys the booster that drains your life to keep on sprinting, cause it is annoying as hell to deal with. But people seem to find it hard to understand

[Khloros]

Originally posted by Vicpool:

In my opinion, they could have simply adjusted the damage penetration, so during the first few seconds it's only light pen, and then at around 25% heat it turn med pen. No need to change damage nor self-damage, weapon was absolutely fine; and now it's just annoying cause none enjoys dealing with the self-damage on screen effects, character grunts, etc. which was one of the main points about using the fire resist armor: many of us weren't using because of the self-damage per se, but the annoyance of dealing with the damage effects; just as none enjoys the booster that drains your life to keep on sprinting, cause it is annoying as hell to deal with. But people seem to find it hard to understand :peacefulbee:

Pretty much this.
They should have done one or the other but not both.
They either needed to increase the self damage, or remove AP 3 from 0-25, doing both kinda gutted this weapons use.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by PhellAsleep:

I am seeing some claims that the Fire Armor and Vitality boost no longer protects from the self damage?

In the old balance you could fire the weapon for 14 seconds straight using the fire resist armor + vitality booster combination. The weapon didn't burn you until you were at 100%.

For comparison, the regular sickle fires for 7 seconds and doesn't hurt you. So the DE sickle effectively allowed you to shoot twice as long using the fire resist armor.

In the new balance they just introduced the fire resist armor only protects you up to 50% of the heat clip (or 7 seconds) of using the weapon. This means that you can fire the weapon safely just as long as the old sickle using the fire resist armor but will still start to take significant damage as soon as you pass the normal sickle's fire duration even with the fire resist armor and that's just not cool in my opinion because it means the fire resist armor barely benefits you picking it with this weapon.

[Botji]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Originally posted by PhellAsleep:

I am seeing some claims that the Fire Armor and Vitality boost no longer protects from the self damage?

In the old balance you could fire the weapon for 14 seconds straight using the fire resist armor + vitality booster combination. The weapon didn't burn you until you were at 100%.

For comparison, the regular sickle fires for 7 seconds and doesn't hurt you. So the DE sickle effectively allowed you to shoot twice as long using the fire resist armor.

In the new balance they just introduced the fire resist armor only protects you up to 50% of the heat clip (or 7 seconds) of using the weapon. This means that you can fire the weapon safely just as long as the old sickle using the fire resist armor but will still start to take significant damage as soon as you pass the normal sickle's fire duration even with the fire resist armor and that's just not cool in my opinion because it means the fire resist armor barely benefits you picking it with this weapon.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3425496772
Then you keep shooting and take this much damage until it sets you on fire, you can fire it without taking damage until 50% heat, then you can keep shooting to 91% while taking damage, resulting in the damage in the screenshot.

All the "You take damage now! OMG LOL! LMAO!" claims are wildly out of proportion to the actual in game effect. The damage you take is barely above being a technicality while the benefits of going above the 91% heat are huge when shooting at medium armor enemies.

[Khloros]

Originally posted by Botji:

Originally posted by The Blind One:

In the old balance you could fire the weapon for 14 seconds straight using the fire resist armor + vitality booster combination. The weapon didn't burn you until you were at 100%.

For comparison, the regular sickle fires for 7 seconds and doesn't hurt you. So the DE sickle effectively allowed you to shoot twice as long using the fire resist armor.

In the new balance they just introduced the fire resist armor only protects you up to 50% of the heat clip (or 7 seconds) of using the weapon. This means that you can fire the weapon safely just as long as the old sickle using the fire resist armor but will still start to take significant damage as soon as you pass the normal sickle's fire duration even with the fire resist armor and that's just not cool in my opinion because it means the fire resist armor barely benefits you picking it with this weapon.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3425496772
Then you keep shooting and take this much damage until it sets you on fire, you can fire it without taking damage until 50% heat, then you can keep shooting to 91% while taking damage, resulting in the damage in the screenshot.

All the "You take damage now! OMG LOL! LMAO!" claims are wildly out of proportion to the actual in game effect. The damage you take is barely above being a technicality while the benefits of going above the 91% heat are huge when shooting at medium armor enemies.

You now need specific armor, and specific booster to get a good experience between 26-50% of heat, because 0-25% heat is just a regular sickle.

The thing is kinda worthless now, takes way to many check boxes to actually benefit from. Before you could toss on fire armor and vit booster and Benefit from the bonuses this weapon had at all time, now you only get it for a small window.
In a vacume what you are saying is true, but in actual practice, the changes gut this weapon.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Botji:

OMG LOL! LMAO!" claims are wildly out of proportion to the actual in game effect.

Then do it without the fire resist armor that negates 75% of the damage. It's not so much fun when it takes out 35% of your health just for firing it to the normal 7 seconds a sickle does now is it?

The weapon should be balanced for both fire resist armor users and non armor users.

Right now it's just balanced around fire resist users to the extend that it is just a marginally better sickle but otherwise outside of that armor it is useless.

I dare you to use it without the armor.