So it appears that 343i has finish making DLC weapons and maps (for now). I am glad because it gives us players the time to form a meta and opinion on the weapons without a new one coming and throwing of the balance again. For me it has come to my attention to notice that 343 improved upon the balance of weapons in Halo 4 in the summer of 2013 in order to address some issues that had plauged the sandbox from launch. I believe they will do something similar in Halo 5 now that they have time to hear feedback and not run events and make new content for us. 343’s main focus was on req weapons and not so much the general sandbox like it was in the Beta.
Before for I get into what can be improved upon and diminished, I have give my thanks to 343 for actually making most of the weapons viable in this game. Even though it is not perfect, a bad weapon in this game is a country mile ahead of a bad weapon in Halo 2,3 and Reach. While Bungie had some simple yet deep ideas for maps and general gameplay, making the weapons have uses and feeling powerful was never really gotten correctly outside of a few select weapons (BR,H1 Pistol, Rockets, Sniper and maybe another strong weapon or two).
That said there is still some issues for the current state of normal weapons. There are at least 4 main problems I have noticed with the weapons sandbox.
- There is redundancy among Precision and some Automatic weapons. - BTB gameplay is very stagnant and unfriendly to vehicles due to the cross-mapping anti-vehicle capabilities of the Human Percision Weapons, with talks of doing a Magnum/Assault Rifle start. - Some glitches or design flaws with weapons that make them harder to use or too easy. - _The damage for some weapons is too high for the risk and skill required and vise versa for weapons with too low of damage._Some of these are the fault of bad maps in forge or the standard game, but not every flaw can be fixed with good map design. So to better balance the game in the core Arena gametypes I have made the following suggestions:
Battle Rifle: reduced damage slightly to be actually 4 bursts for a perfect kill (12 bullets) from 3.667 bursts (11 bullets) which will also effect bodyshots from 6 ( 2 bursts) to 7 (2.333 bursts), decrease RRR smart linked in from 76 meters to between 70-63 meters. Add a modest horizontal spread that will only really affect it from 90 meters up to discourage very long range cross mapping and infringement on vehicles. Same bodyshot damage should also apply to the Halo 2 Battle Rifle as well.
DMR: Bodyshot damage reduced from 2 shots to kill to 3. No need for spread but add a small recoil kick to affect targets more that 110 meters. Slight reduction in ROF to better define its role for medium to Long range engagements so Magnum is not just an inferior copy of the DMR.
Magnum: Increased RRR to when smart linked from 57 meters to 62-68 meters. Increase damage to vehicles to make it more viable if it becomes the starting weapon in BTB. Slight increase in ROF and kick to make it more viable in shorter ranges but leave longer ranges more manageable by BR and DMR like weapons**.**
SMG: Reduced damage from 15 to kill without headshots to 17 to kill by decreasing damage to shields and health by 7%. Bonus damage multipler of 1.5x stays the same to keep the “perfect” SMG kills to 14 bullets.
Assault Rifle: RRR when unscoped increased from 24 meters to 27 meters. Smart Linked RRR increased from 42 meters to just under 50 meters. Recoil kick when unzoomed no longer starts until AR is at max spread at 7-8 bullets fired at fully automatic. Makes the AR less risky to use in its range compared to the SMG and BR and makes it more optimized for burst fire precision and decrease reliance on Smart Scope even with in 20 meters. Possible decrease in aim assist to compansate.
Sniper Rifle: Reduced Aim Assist and Bullet Magnatism when in both normal and zoomed.
Storm Rifle: Fixed ammo counter so 2 shots equal 1% of battery life instead of fluctuating between .5% and 1.5%. Making the ammo count no less than 200 plasma bolts instead of between 75-200. Damage to armor/flesh decreased from 6 shots to kill to 7.
Plasma Pistol: Reduced fire cap on Plama Pistol to allow maximum fire rate for trigger presses and help increase the usefulness for normal kills. But charge consumed when overcharging increased from 15% to 18% to reduce overall amount of charges at 7 instead of 8.
Brute Plasma Rifle: increase the threshold for overheating the weapon 16 bolts to 24 bolts so players are less vulnerable to enemy fire when weapon overheats.
Plasma Turret: Increased accuracy, start up time and movement spread to give it a few distinct advantages over the HMG turret that currently outclasses it in all categories.
Binary Rifle: Reduce or remove newly acquired headshot bonus for the beams it shots.
Light Rifle: Remove an exploit for Light Rifle to do “zoomed in” damage when unscoping when the player immediately unscoped willingly or not after shooting in zoom mode.
All Vehicles take 10% to 25% less from small-arms especially Human Weapons provided they are not using Kinetic Bullets or Promethan Blades. Then the damage reduction and bonus damage from these attachments cancel out under my suggestions.
Wasp: Chainguns take longer to overheat but damage stays the same. takes less damage from enemies firing on engine weak points.
Warthog: RRR of Gunner increased to avoid being easily outmatched by Percision weapons. Head becomes harder to hit due to lower hitbox or face plate protection increased.
Ghost: increased durability and more shots needed to expose weak spots on the sides.
Mongoose/Gungoose: Increased speed and maneuverability to avoid losing traction so easily.
Wow thats a lot of buffs and Nerfs I have suggested for Halo 5. No doubt it will probably require a patch with a few GBs and knowing Halo 5 is crossing the 90 GB marker already. But there you have it my suggestions after 4 months of consideration and testing. It was based upon the design that the AR and Magnum are the starting weapons in Arena except for special gametypes and custom games. BTB players and map makers are gonna be happy as well. Now the weapons I didn’t list either have any no problems or didn’t fall into any of the above problems I mentioned earlier.
So so what do you guys think? Do you agree with my suggestions? Do you have anymore to add or subtract?