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« on: February 29, 2016, 02:00:02 PM »
Spears are a great addition to FOnline games. A unique type of weapon that really fit the Post Apo ambience with epic animations, and its fun to play (or at least for me).
I will classify them on two categories, Combat and Support.
Combat ones are those that can be used as a primary weapon (serrated, barbed, may be piston) Support are those that are situational (plasma, dynamite)
Atm playing a Combat thrower is viable but with very limited tools. Serrated seems the best option, and barbed as a less effective replacement. Support spears are not worth it, as grenades are much better.
I know throwing its as a support skill, so throwing weapons are mainly oriented to be support weapons, but devs state that they want to make every character class be effective in combat, and Combat Spears make possible to play a pure thrower.
So here a bunch of suggestion to improve Combat and Support spears
Suggestion 1: Default Spear traits
One by One: weapon drop effect only make one spear to be dropped (and not all your stack), but you need to draw a new one so you lost 10AP (15? whatever balanced amount)
Street samurai: spears can be toggled between one handed weapons with no delay. So can be used as backup ranged weapons for melee chars, or as support for other classes
Those traits added to all spears will increase the uniqueness of this weapon class.
Suggestion 2: The impaler Perk
The perk effect it's very situational and you need luck more than anything to take a benefit.
So instead make it a weapon trait for some spear(s): i suggest piston (that also knock back adjacent enemies) for unique linear damage knockback
For perk effect, ill go with:
Option 1) when a cripple its caused, add an additional cripple level to that limb, better winded chance (imagine a spear piercing your arm or stomach)
Option 2) Add piercing strike perk to every spear
Option 3) Add bonus damage and bonus range
Suggestion 3: Spears Rework
-Serrated: Probably best spear atm. good damage and perks
-Barbed: May be lack some base damage. Good bleed potential
-Piston: Decent damage but not as good as serrated. Add impaler trait
-Snake: Worst spear atm
Rework it to cause winded on every hit (can be resisted), low damage.
Will be good as support weapon for melee players to catch enemies
-Festering: poisoned, add 10% hard damage trait (Hard damage will reduce max ammount of HP for a decent amount of time) So it will be a good weapon to slowly weaken your enemies
at the initial combat stages.
-Dynamite: bad atm
Option 1: add AoE and some secondary effects (limb shredder?, confusion?, knockback?)
Option 2: stick to target (dealing normal damage) and explode after a time causing explosion damage in AoE
-Energy and plasma spears
Those spears have the issue that dont stack so are tedious for using as Combat spears, and there its better to use grenades as support weapons
So one option can be that they dont need to be charged, but they use sec directly from your inventory. So as long you have secs they work as charged spears, and otherwise they work as uncharged spears.
Suggestion 4: New spears!
Lightning Spear: Uses SECs. Will have Chain trait: so it will deal AoE in a different way than grenades.
(May be not a new spear, but a reworked energy spear with Chain trait)
Diamond spear: Good penetration, some bleed. Spear designed to finish off bleeding targets
Eviscerate weapon Trait: any hit with this weapon will cause that 25%-40% bleed of the target will automatically converts into damage. Decreased DR trait. Perks: more criticals, finisher, slaughter shoot, better bleed, bonus damage. Situational against bleeding targets. (Extra suggestion: rename serrated as diamond to be the most effective penetrating spear, and name this one serrated spear)
Grappling Hook Spear (Tier 3 spear): will work like scorpion kunai, or dota butcher meat hook.
Weapon trait: “Get over here!” drags target unit in your direction (don't works against SPA)
Drag to your position will certainly be not fun to play against, so can be a few hexes. But here is the fun thing: you can also drag dead bodies! So you can use it to bring a dead fellow to a safer position to be revived. Or to claim an enemy body to your side, so it cannot be resurrected.
Perks: hemorrhage, 2 more criticals, BRoF, HtG
For implementation I have two options in mind
1) it won't be lost on throw, so it will be like a melee weapon with range. Will have high AP cost to use and pump action trait (you need to ungrapple/unjamm after each use)
2) it will be lost after each use, but will have lower AP cost and when you find it it will come in batches of 3-5. So you willl have limited amount of those, and need to carefully chose when use it.
Suggestion 5: Legendary Spears?
Spears cannot be made legendary (It have sense) but that means that spears will be less useful to use as main weapons as the game progress
So a suggestion for that: New weapon/item Power glove
The power glove at first won't do anything. But it will gain legendary status as you use spears. Perks of the power glove will be applied to every spear you use
Implementation may be the problem...
option 1) make it a weapon and spears will work like ammunition (spears should also have to be usable without the weapon, just like now)
option 2) power glove have to be in the utility slot and affect spears on both hands (fair trade off for get bonus to spear?)
option 3) make a hidden slot. when drag it to a hand slot it becomes translucent and you can equip spears on top of the glove. To unequip first unequip the spear and them the glove
Suggestion 6: Crafting spears...
Crafting spears can be tedious (pole->spear->serrated only for 1 serrated). Also most of them dont require rare components and the ones requirem them aren't worth the resource for only one piece.
So make them able to be crafted on batches
Combat spears will be crafted on batches of 20. Support on batches of 5
So as an example
Serrated spears will require 20 poles, 10 flints, 12 metal, 10 alloys and 1 ceramic for a batch of 20
Lighting spear will require 1 energy transformer, 5 poles, 10 metal, 10 alloys for a batch of 5
With this change i wouldn't mind if speas break 100% of the time
Suggestion 7 (and final): Loot
Make spears spawning on the core and enemies to be in batches (similar amount of crafting)
Not free spears like we got before, but make that if you find spears the amount is at least enough for a fight.
