Major balance issue: 2h ranged weapons are useless

[LNQ]

It's problematic that 2h ranged weapons have the same DPS as pistols. It makes no sense to use a two-handed ranged weapon when you can use a pistol + shield for better protection and same damage.

The smalle range of pistols is not an issue since you can extend the range with about 8 points of long range mastery to reach as far as you'll ever need to be.

I don't know if two-handed melee weapons are suffering from the same issue, but ranged weapons at least are totally imbalanced.

[keenlam]

Have you tried to roll with a good shotgonne and invest in shotgonne mastery? That might just change your opinion? Cannons are apparently not suitable for outlanders since there is no skill supporting it. More fitting for NGs.

[LNQ]

Yep I have a shotgonne build and a pistol + shield build. Shotgonnes aren't any better; they have a super short range and the cone attack doesn't help at all with tougher enemies. If shotgonnes would actually deal more damage to single targets as well, it might be a different story. You're totally screwed against anything that doesn't get interrupted, which again usually includes the tougher enemies.

Same for bows and crossbows, these need to deal more damage than pistols.

[Masky]

what lvl r u guys?
ive been investing in mastery for range and dmg of pistols/bows etc
but i actually use a shootgonne because it deals so much damage! the pistol does less damage and i have to pick the enemies up one by one, with the shootgonne i just get in there and everything flies!

Im playing a lvl14 in elite HC

[Empyrean]

OP is clueless.

Shotguns have somewhat higher DPS than pistols, but it works differently in that it comes in bigger chunks. Armor works as a linear reduction in damage, so a 200 damage per shot shotgun will do considerably more damage than a 100 damage per shot pistol that fires twice as fast after armor is taken into account, even though their DPS is the same. Long Range Mastery adds to the damage of both, but shotguns also get their own mastery that really cranks up the stun/blind/knockback that makes shotguns viable for crowd control. This effect gets applied when you're using Rapid Shot as well, which means a quick spray across a crowd will leave most of them blind and stunned.

Finally, there are a couple of skills that scale their damage off of your weapon's damage per shot, not their DPS. Rapid Fire is far more effective in terms of damage with a shotgun than with pistols, and the knockback and other debilitating effects from shotgun mastery do apply. One quick burst of Rapid Fire at higher levels and you've blasted an enemy to the edge of your range. This can be annoying or lifesaving, depending on how outnumbered you are. Large enemies aren't blown away the same way, but they are basically stopped in their tracks once you open up on them, and the damage is a lot higher than you'll ever get with pistols.

[LNQ]

Good point on the armor, didn't think of that. That's definitely a plus, but that's more of a slow attack speed vs a high attack speed issue. Also, DoT (which ignores armor) and proccing is also really important, and those scale exponentially with faster attack speeds. You can deal way more damage by DoT with a fast gun than by direct damage. Some shotgonnes have a fast attack speed as well, but those have lower damage so that removes the advantage of bypassing armor better.

I'm talking mainly about sacrificing the off-hand when using two handed weapons. Granted, the shotgonne mastery is decent, but that requires skill investment, which could be put elsewhere. Besides, does stunning work on strong endgame enemies? I'm not that far yet so I don't know how useful the stun is. Crowd control isn't really an issue, since the toughest enemies seem to be single guys that hit hard, not the minions (I've not yet had any problems with the amount of enemies, just the tough ones).

What are the skills that scale by weapon's damage per shot? I didn't know that. At least rapid fire says X% of weapon dps unless I'm mistaken.

But really, my point was that 2H weapons sacrifice the possibility of wearing a shield, which is a HUGE, HUGE tradeoff in terms of survivability. You didn't address bows or crossbows at all. Do you agree they suck? Shouldn't 2h weapons be improved a little bit?

PS. Did you really have to add the "OP is clueless" jab in there? Really?

[GhostlightX]

What makes people think 2-handed ranged weapons are the same DPS as pistols? The highest DPS Pistol I have seen so far is 200-odd, but I saw a XBox that was 300+.

[MightyBoognish]

They aren't useless. Equip, with no points in master, a shotgun/bow/xbow with 100dmg and two pistols with 100dmg as alternate weapon sets. Look at the dmg on the char screen.

It's all dependent on what skills you use and your play style. Here's the basic breakdown:

Pistols:

+
high fire rate
two sets of weapon affixes
can execute
-
low range
lowest dmg (making armor hard to bypass)
uses skill points to boost execute and dmg rates
only hits single targets
no knockback, stun, etc by default

Shotgun
+
high dmg, (does more, bypassing armor more easily)
cone dmg (works well on mobs or multiple targets, especially with mastery and skills based on wpn dmg)
knockback
stun
-
slowest fire rate
uses skill points to add stun and increase knockback
shortest range

bow
+
2nd best range
decent fire rate
knockback
decent dmg
frees up skill points
-
no way to boost rate
only hits single targets

crossbow
+
fastest 2h fire rate, ~equal to dual-pistol without Akimbo
best range
decent dmg
frees up skill points
-
no knockback, stun, etc, by default
no way to boost rate
hits only single targets

[LNQ]

What makes people think 2-handed ranged weapons are the same DPS as pistols? The highest DPS Pistol I have seen so far is 200-odd, but I saw a XBox that was 300+.

I find 300+ pistols and 300+ shotgonnes at lvl50; the dps seems to go up at the same rate for both of them. Rate of fire is different, so max damage is different tho. But DPS seems ot remain about the same.

[LNQ]

They aren't useless. Equip, with no points in master, a shotgun/bow/xbow with 100dmg and two pistols with 100dmg as alternate weapon sets. Look at the dmg on the char screen.

Yes we already concluded that generally shotgonnes have higher max damage but slower rate of fire. DPS remains the same tho. My point is that with pistols you get one extra equipment slot (shield). This equipment slot totally trumps any advantages you get from the 2h weapons (shotgonne seems to be the only one that actually has any advantage; bow and xbow just suck as there is no skills to boost their effectiveness).

You can't compensate for the lost equipment slot with the skills, because with pistols you can spend those skillpoints elsewhere. You can't possibly say that all the bonuses you get from wearing a shield are not better than the small advantage you get from using a shotgonne, for instance.

[Ekitai]

At least according to torchlight2armory bows have the highest dps of all ranged outlander weapons.

Best Bow: 1915
X-Bow: 1011
Shotgonne:1553
Wands: 738
Pistols: 879

That is of course only their dps and not looking at things like other stats, slots etc. Strangely enough, most of the time the highest dps weapon of one weapon type has a good chunk more dps than the second most dps weapon of one weapon type e.g. sometimes about twice as much.
/edit: What I'm trying to say is that the dps difference between the best dps bow (1915) and the second best dps bow (732) is quite big, meaning that the difference in dps for items that are not bis isn't that huge. Unless those values change depending on the stat roll of the item when you find it like it is in diablo 3.

[Empyrean]

You can't compensate for the lost equipment slot with the skills, because with pistols you can spend those skillpoints elsewhere.

You misunderstand opportunity cost. Even with Shotgonne Mastery, you have enough points to get all the passives worth getting and a few active attacks like Rapid Fire and Venomous Hail. Picking up another active skill isn't going to help you since you're using a different one already anyway. Shotgonne Mastery is awesome because it triggers on those other active attacks, meaning you're getting the benefits the entire time.

You can't possibly say that all the bonuses you get from wearing a shield are not better than the small advantage you get from using a shotgonne, for instance.

I don't think you meant to use a double negative there. What you wrote means that shields are worse than the shotgun advantages, when you've been arguing the opposite previously. Anyway, if I found a shield that gave 60% chance of 2 second stun, +45 knockback, and 90% chance of 67% blindness for 3 seconds on hit, I'd be all over that even if it did nothing defensively. That's what Shotgonne Mastery gives you at max ranks. It's fantastic. Not only that, but it triggers off of Rapid Fire and Venomous Hail, giving you a fairly spammable 5.5m radius knockback/stun/blind that does good damage. Even at lower ranks, with the number of shots those skills trigger, it's going to proc constantly.

[keenlam]

Shotgonne mastery adds blind effect, don't underestimate this. This helps a ton with crowd control, I usually get in , do a preemptive blast --> enemies wander around have no clue what they're doing... now the fun begins, i now can just kill them at my own pace. I think it works on bosses as well.

[generalfluff]

Pretty sure you can't stun bosses. Not sure if this goes for Blind as well though.

[Cryswar]

Pretty sure you can't stun bosses. Not sure if this goes for Blind as well though.

You can, they're just extremely resistant to it, and from what I can tell the indicator just gets hidden inside their hulking forums.

Easier to test with engineer and Shield Bash spam.

[LNQ]

With a shield, you can also get an additional +30% chance to reflect missiles (not counting embers), which is another survivability bonus that is hard to beat.

[xylonez]

I don't think you meant to use a double negative there. What you wrote means that shields are worse than the shotgun advantages, when you've been arguing the opposite previously. Anyway, if I found a shield that gave 60% chance of 2 second stun, +45 knockback, and 90% chance of 67% blindness for 3 seconds on hit, I'd be all over that even if it did nothing defensively. That's what Shotgonne Mastery gives you at max ranks. It's fantastic. Not only that, but it triggers off of Rapid Fire and Venomous Hail, giving you a fairly spammable 5.5m radius knockback/stun/blind that does good damage. Even at lower ranks, with the number of shots those skills trigger, it's going to proc constantly.

This. Combined with skills that uses %weapon damage(because this is where shotgun really shines), there's literally nothing that can beat a shotgun. This is probably the main reason why I keep shotgun instead of other weapons in my second set, just in case I ever feel the need to use veno hail.

Anyway, I want to point this out. You can't compare shield and 2-h weapons. 2-h weapons are used for offensive, and shield is used for defensive. So, gems aside, you can't compare these two.

[mesafalcon]

I'm kinda a noob so, reading this is a bit overwhelming but...

would it be a waste to kinda hybrid it? like the bowazon/javazon?

I like using both pistols and Shotgonnes... I haven't invested major points in either. just a thought.

[Masky]

You can, but I guess you won't excel in any of the styles. Maybe you can come up with a way to do it. I know I would love to play such a char.
I like the shotgonne build, but I play elite hardcore, and I find it difficult since you have to get too close to the enemies... once they are all nice and packed up its a piece of cake, but if they are scattered around the screen you have a problem...
The Focuslander with a shield is just playing so nicely right now, I barely get into any trouble at all, but I do have to kite more, and I also appreciate much more having a group.

[LNQ]

xylonez, that's true, 2h vs shield are two different playstyles. I'm just big on survivability, and I felt like the cost benefit of the increased damage wasn't big enough.