The point of Cam being able to do 40k dps without curves or cards is that it shows how many players are doing the most basic mechanic of the class improperly. Simply pulling the trigger with the right timing. If you have scoundrels doing 10k dps then they are shooting the gun all wrong. That would be like a mage complaining that the class is broken because they keep drawing their spells wrong, popping them, and therefore getting bad dps numbers.
40k on a single try. While doing 33k on the other single try. While having a legendary bleed + iceheart (+4 or +5?) gun where bleed could have played even an bigger role then its average on the 40k try.
Then lets substract and see the real multitude of reasons for that low number vs high number of Cam. Instead of just skill:
- Remove 1.25x for cheating healer tilesets. (not viable for max dps group)
- Remove 5% bard buff
- Remove 5% ranger buff
- Remove 10.223% mage buff (2 weaknesses) (this one will be more often not available then available because no mages keep the buff up 100% unless they are already gods in their class)
- Remove having a lower lvl gun for not being able to get it for one reason or another. Lets go with +1 gun. Which will be 20% lower dps.
- Remove the fact that they donāt have correct rolled stats on their gear. Give it the benefit of the doubt only 3% dps loss (~10% would be max for worse gear, crit does more increased damage then projectile on high crit rates. But Cam had not all perfect gear either I think. And if he does then would be more like 5% dps loss)
- Remove some dps from missing because trying to curve. Lets say 10% for missing half curves (curves will be low ranks because they donāt know how to do high. Which will be a 20% boost temporarily instead of 70% constant uptime. + most scoundrels select the stupid talent of only 45% boost anyway because they canāt get high rank curves. So will be a loss of way more then 10% if they didnāt have the curve boost as return from it).
- Remove shooting later because of card rotation add another 10% loss if not in perfect sync while playing.
- Remove around 2% (canāt remember exact number, is only on crits) from not having the Empowered crit ring and the other crit ring.
- Remove 10% loss for not shooting in time. Which seems to be you say the only reason their dps is low.
- Remove ~5% from bleed (again can be much more for that one example test giving him 40k only once)
- Remove ~5% from iceheart
- Remove the pots that Cam used. Beginner players that donāt go high lvl donāt drink pots ever. That is plain 8% removal for no strength pot. And another 16% crit chance increase. Which would be with a crit of 1.5x dmg be a bit less then 8%. With such high crit chance already as scoundrel, that would be reduced to about ~4% dps loss. This is an estimated guess really depending on the amount of crit damage and how high the crit chance is of that person.
- Ooh and here is the banger which lowers scoundrels dps drastically: If you donāt start critting your crit chance stays low, which in turn makes you not start critting. This gives many fights the disadvantage where I myself lose about 15% dps (if fight about ~2mins). And way more % in anything dying faster. Lets not add this problem because RNG decides to reduce your dps or not. But keep it in mind for seeing scoundrels with low numbers that this can also be a big frustrating factor.
- Then another factor we ignore is when a scoundrel has to switch targets their first bullet will be rankless no matter what. Which will be minor on a single monster long fight. But how more monsters involved how harder the dps is dropping. I notice it very strongly on multiple mob fights.
40/1.25/1.05/1.05/1.1023/1.2/1.03/1.1/1.1/1.02/1.1/1.05/1.05/1.08/1.04 = ~12.7k dps.
Would like to add to it that I am pretty sure the 10k named dps is an overreaction of around ~14k which I see happen more often with beginner scoundrels.
Conclusion, Cams example shows only how near max optimization of buffs and gear in an environment with only 1 focus could get high numbers. Which is then compared with the opposite of players missing all those boosts and buffs. Some reachable, others impractical.
4 Likes
Just give scoundrels a more usable (less random or at least random+better desirable card-retaining) card system, a manual reloading mechanic, and/or special damaging bullets like musketeers. Thereās almost nothing interesting, that I can think of, that can be done about their DPS given how ammo slowly regenerates the way it does now and the way the cards work.
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Empty your gun: Shake out the bullets from your gun, including unused bullets. While grip with gun is held, shake your gun to your opposite hand to open the cylinder. Shake your gun to the side of the hand the gun is equipped to shut it. Shake your gun downwards with the cylinder out to empty the cylinder. Release grip.
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Bullet Pouch(es): Grab & reload your ammo manually from here.
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Throw bomb (grab a regenerating item off your body & throw it, explodes when fuse ends, rolls on the floor with reasonable physics, - shoot it early to explode it, special bullets change/enhance the explosion effect. Can have fast/lower damage that regenerate more often, or big bombs)
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Pistol Whip: Smack enemies with your gun for some moderate damage (not to be introduced in a way that shooting your gun/whipping simultaneously is an actual thing.) More for memes but 10/10 would enjoy.
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Pressing the āaā button, such as how a mage casts spells, will move the cylinder chamber over one bullet (so you can skip a bullet situationally).
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Chamber Visibility (some kind of visual effect that will let you know what bullet is in the chamber. You could leave it to memory alone and load-order - this is a skill, but imo not a super fun one). Possibly a way to represent every chamber in the gun & in what circular order.
Different bullets do different base damage for their special effect. For now Iāll just say:
low/medium/high damage.
Youād equip these into slots and they appear like a class ability. Maybe equip like 2 special pouches, maybe 3. Could be on your waist by default and bombs on the chest. I could see people moving the belts near their gun through (which would be ugly). No different than rangers Iād imagine though.
Bullet Pouches (some random ideas)
Always have equipped: Regular Bullet (high damage)
- Piercing (Medium-High damage, bullets pierce targets & armor, armor debuff)
- Shredder (Medium damage, high damage vs less armored targets, chance to bleed DoT)
- Ignition (Medium Damage, builds ignition, at 3 ignition, applies a fire DoT) - do you load 4 in case you miss one? Or are you a sure shot? etc.
- Poison (low damage, slow / low/dmg poison(because it could be perpetually kept up)
- Arc (low damage, hit multiple enemies with these, and if they are near they will electrocute each other for repeated low-medium damage - requires you to load ammo appropriately)
- Spell Eater (low damage, mini stun/interrupt, massive damage dealt upon interruption)
- Random (get a random bullet)
Bomb Effects:
- Piercing (armor debuff)
- Shredder (bleed)
- Ignition (larger aoe blast, chance to apply fire DoT)
- Poison (AoE slow/ low dmg poison)
- Arc (high chance to apply the Arc debuff)
- Spell Eater (aoe interupt - like push back 2 - massive damage to interrupted targets )
- Regular (none, bomb just explodes)
Optional: Different Gun Types
- 6-shooter (6 shots, duh) - big damage, slow
- different fire rates, damage, accuracy, curve sensitivity, special ammo damage modifier, max ammo, etc.
Ultimate: Firing your gun does not consume ammo for 3 seconds, you shoot regular bullets during this time, your fire rate is boosted (to about as fast as you can pull the trigger), and you do boosted damage (scales with your gun damage/fire rate so all guns get about the same benefit from the ult). Or, instead of a basically infinite fire rate, make a duplicate gun appear in their-off hand (this also visually helps people understand they are ulting). This might make people want dual-wielding all the time though lol.
Honestly not a ton of thought put into the above, just some unvetted ideas. There might be some āobviously betterā combos aside from intentionally niche bullets (like AoE). I just see something like this that would make Scoundrel an enjoyable class with DPS potential. The only thing scoundrel has going for it, for me, is that it is a handgun that can shoot relatively quickly. Cards are very meh, bullet-curving is okay (but for tiny bonuses). I see bullet curving as the almost-equivalent to a rune mage being able to cast pushback 2 (which is basically for show), except bullet curving actually is useful all the time.
I thought it was slightly funny watching you lot argue but it gets slightly annoying you lot derailing the post.
- this post was about scoundrel needing a buff not what the potential dps you can maybe get if you used every buff in the game.
- this post is not asking for a re work just a buff to make the class useful as something other than a week debuffer.
- I put the numbers in the post, READ THE POST. it did not say dps. that is the normal damage per hit when doing shards without pots
Not sure about others but I read your post. I think an equalizing flat increase to scoundrels just isnāt a good idea. Damage per shot is directly related to DPS here. The problem of scoundrel DPS is more deeply tied to the class mechanics itself. If you just make them hit super hard for what the class currently is, itād be incredibly powerful for pointing and shooting. Perhaps a small increase (for PvE) but the majority damage increase needs to come via mechanics, imo. I 100% agree the curve debuff is super lackluster, but I elaborated as to why I think the 90% of the class is. A PvE damage buff for me means a rework.
this was a shaman that can do 30K per hit not DPS per hit without using a bunch of mechanics, so when a mechanics heavy class can not hit that without buffing befor to do it, that means its damage is too low not that the machinic is āsuper lacklustreā that the damage is unusable. the mechanics are fine the class needs a damage buff to be useful again.
Shamans donāt have the same mobility nor shoot the same rate as a scoundrel (aside from maybe an average over time from lightning orbs vs non-moving/close by enemies). Not being a level 30 shaman myself, pretty sure one of them told me they were critting repeatedly for like 70-80kish with lightning on almost no cooldown in near-melee range? Which is literally pressing and releasing the grab button because of the dubbed āiron manā mechanics. Not referencing any hard numbers/facts here. Shamans are also incredibly borked and need changes. Itās fine if you feel the mechanics are in a good place and just need number adjustments, I personally donāt think so.
Iām personally ok with a scoundrel buff, since I play scoundrel; however I also donāt get many queās to pop because of my play times, so my opinion isnāt worth a lot as far as balancing.
Also tiles (~30%)
Cards not being used optimally (~10%)
and if a player is sub-30 and doesnāt have the crit talent.
^Things that were mentioned in previous thread as well.
yes and a weāve told you why it doesnāt need a flat out buff, since itās already capable of doing close to the same DPS as shaman if played well enough.
Sadly, the numbers ppl are mentioning arenāt as simple (e.g. 30% tilesets, interference plays a role) like many think. Both card rotation and tilesets are not the numbers mentioned. Def not of others. And mine are a rough fair estimate. Really depends on the situation how much they buff. Also didnāt include having a bad card rotation itself in the dps loss. Just the loss of shooting your bullets on time. 
I donāt play scoundrel. I have scoundrel lvl 30 and have done a little bit of boss farming with it. Scott helped me get better from my non existent knowledge to know I kinda know some basics.
From what I understand scoundrel is a mechanical and knowledge based class as you need to understand how to optimise shooting, curving, card management and be able to aim consistently.
I would be fine with the scoundrels damage being moved again (revert i guess) to be less curve intensive and more just base damage. How much damage is moved would be the difficult part - we need that balance between face roll point and shoot easy mode and full mechanical perfection for any dps. thatās what is needed IMO.
Also to note i feel like its catch 22 with scoundrels. they need to improve to get good dps but there isnt scoundrels showing that good dps being achievable so little to no one continues trying. compared to a new mage, they see others mages getting top of the dps charts and have something to strive for. Scoundrel doesnāt currently.
Thats just my opinion please let me know how wrong i am and why that would be bad 
1 Like
Remove dps for curving and using cards? How does that make any sense? The point is anyone should be able to do 20k at least without those buffs or tile sets and not curving or using cards. Anyone that canāt do that just isnāt playing the class right.
Also Camās 2nd parse was not 33k, and there were no significant bleeds in either parse.
I think there is a really good case to be made that the scoundrel class is too hard to play and this is why so many people struggle to play it very well. It should require much less of a curve to get a rank 5 on smaller targets for example. The fix is to make the class easier to play not just buff the damage. If the latter is done then people who master the class will be over powered.
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I thought I was playing scoundrel just fine until I saw my DPS. I main scoundrel (at least 100 hours on that class) and Iām not getting the DPS to show for it. I curve my shots and can get rank 5. Iām not a fan of the random deck as it makes it hard for me to plan out card rotation. I never empower effectively as it eats up too much time for me.
With Runemage, I can understand why Iām not dealing DPS and I feel that I can fix that.
With scoundrel, I donāt know why Iām not outputting the DPS. Itās not as clear for me if itās a bad deck rotation, or any of the things that Scott mentioned.
But thatās my opinion on scoundrel, as stated, the post is about damage duffs. Not about class difficulty.
I already explained that you lose more dps then win in medium rank from missing a few curves. Which I still do often. And the losing dps from using cards does make sense if you play the class. Also I was just talking about dps loss on the normal bullets for using cards. Not dps loss with the cards damage included. Cam was not using cards so I can not substract dps from the added card damage itself.
Then lastly I must admit I canāt 100% remember the lower number was 33k. Same for the 40k one though (might have been 39k?). But I know for sure the second test was a lot lower then the 40k one.
To be honest the only reason I am arguing with you is stopping these kind of false/info lacking statements to become ātruthā for the community. Without any buff I specified and a +1 weapon? No way 20k. But you didnāt specify if anything was included and what weapon.
Letās get the info then. It should be easy to calculate. How hard do your normal shots and charged shots hit for without curve or card buffs? And what is the rotation, charged shot, normal shot, charged shot, normal shot, etc? And the time between those shots?
the cards are ok and make it some what interesting but the actual damage is just to low. the curve shot needs a damage buff and so does the base damage. to the rest of you not just did I wright down the amount of damage in the original post I went and found a test dummy and took screenshots of the damage. the pictures have regular no curve shots, charged shots, shots that have been buffed and a have a curve shot. there is pictures of the actual damage you get from a plus 4.
that says nothing about DPS tho, like has been stated many times now, it does not need a damage buff, but some fundamental changes or better clarity of how good or bad youāre playing the class.
1 Like
I was not talking about DPS read the post