Looking for feedback on Perk Overhaul I am working on.

[Zaayl]

Mostly this focuses on nerfing the crap out of the damage boosting perks, you max those out and grab the highest end weapon of that class, and there is no challenge left in the game anymore. Heavy Gunner rank 5 + Gatling Laser means you can pretty much breeze through the game on a small handful of fusion cores. But as a tradeoff I want to slightly buff secondary effects of these perks, to make them a little more about utility.

 

So far my changes are as follows:

 

Heavy Gunner:

 

-Damage buff is halved, each rank giving 10% more damage instead of 20%

 

-Explosives damage buff is completely removed, maxing out Heavy Gunner and Demo Expert broke the game spectacularly. Legendary albino deathclaw? One shot from a missile launcher will take care of that. And god forbid you find a explosive minigun. Heavy gunner will still effect the missile launcher and fat man, but only the damage caused by the projectile hitting a enemy, not the explosion.

 

-Hip Fire accuracy is doubled, each rank giving 20% and 40% more accuracy respectively instead of 10% and 20%

 

Did not touch stagger chance, I feel fiddling with that is asking for trouble as you could simply stunlock enemies.

 

Rifleman:

 

-Damage Buff is halved

 

-Armor penetration is increase to 20%, 25%, 30%, 40% a total 10% improvement, doubling it seemed a bad idea, as you would ignore more than half of a targets armor and armor penetration is far more beneficial than other effects like hip fire accuracy.

 

Commando:

 

Its identical to heavy gunner (sans the explosive damage buff) so I just mirrored my changes to heavy gunner.

 

V.A.N.S.

 

This perk is useless, I wanted to add a 10% buff to movement speed (like the legendary leg armor) but could not find a way to do so easily, so instead it now reduces the AP drain of sprinting by 20% in addition to the Clairvoyance effect from Skyrim that nobody used.

 

 

Plans:

 

GUNSLINGER: Gunslinger will also be halved damage wise, even without perks pistols like deliverer are strong as hell. I'm unsure what to do with the secondary effects though, buffing disarm could easily result is something even more OP as you render enemies defenseless with each volley of shots, and buffing range further doesn't sound particularly useful. But I haven't run a pure pistol build and am unsure on how big of a deal range is for it. I considered a AP reduction as that's the real utility of pistols, but having seen how many shots some people can manage already, probably not a good idea.

 

BASH/MELEE/UNARMED PERKS: I don't really want to nerf weapon bash much, as it seems to cap out at making it actually useful, but as I haven't run a melee build either I fear that if I nerf melee/unarmed damage some overlooked weapon with a good bayonet mod will dominate and become the clearly more powerful melee weapon, weapon bash after all should always be WEAKER than proper melee weapons. I also don't even know if melee is overpowered with double damage, as using melee/unarmed without perks around mid-late game is useless and barely does anything. I have heard melee builds are quite overpowered, I don't know if that's purely because of raw damage, so feedback would be appreciated! (I do plan to run a melee build when Nuka World comes out and we gain the ability to lead raider gangs! Typically though I run a BoS themed build, power armor, big guns, and usually single-shot rifles. One of my favorite things about FO4 is how every build seems to be viable and fun.)

 

STRONG BACK: Going to do something to rank 4 of Strong Back. In survival it prevents you from taking damage while over encumbered, but as that mechanic is completely bugged (using a power armor workbench makes the game think you are carrying that suit of armor, causing you to take damage while using it.) and it makes no sense as a mechanic (Diseased effects you need to find a cure, over encumbered you...drop something? Too easy for the player to fix immediately for it to be a actual problem.) I personally modded it out. Probably just another +25 carry weight. (I wont remove the original effects though, this will be on top of those!)

 

NUCLEAR PHYSICIST: I wont touch nuclear physicists rad damage buff, as radiation damage is so extremely limited. "But wait!" you may say. "The Gamma gun rinses enemies who are supposed to be immune to radiation!" Yes. It does, as long as you have the electrical signal carrier. Nuclear physicist will give you roundabouts 14 more "pure" rad damage that ignores immunity, rad poison damage (where the big 3 digit numbers come from) doesn't effect immune enemies at all. The electrical signal carrier despite its description, gives a BASE energy damage of 45 (not affected by nuclear physicist) and a charged energy damage of 90. So that's why your "radiation" weapon is wrecking robots and mutants, its doing energy damage. It will hurt humans twice as much. HOWEVER I plan on releasing two versions! The second version will outright remove the FC ejection ability granted by nuclear physicist. I think its useless as a attack (It flops out backwards, you need to face away from the enemy to even aim it) and not worth the cost (if you don't have a crate full of bombs at your home base...good work having self control I do not have and selling your unneeded bombs) and most importantly, when I am out of grenades but do not realize it, and hold Q to throw one, I wind up ejecting my core every. damn. time.

 

DEMOLITIONS EXPERT: Demo expert will have its damage halved, and I will likely buff the explosion radius a decent amount, grenades are for AoE after all. *Shooting grenades in VATS still does double damage, as its way harder to do to enemy grenades than it was in FO3, and lets be real, doing it to your own grenades is some badass showoff s#*! :P

 

Any other perks I should take a look at? Are my changes fair? Unfair? Let me know!

Edited July 22, 2016 by Zaayl

[Zaayl]

I actually "finished" it yesterday (and updated it today!) here but I am still looking for feedback on what needs to be focused on further!