The buff hammer, and guns.

[Captain Phil]

I think your helping make the point that the damage buff is a bit too useful, "If all I gained was a more resilient gun then I would never let a buff on my ship in most situations." Why would you not have a buff then if you get no damage out of it? You can still get engine buffs, hull buffs, balloon buffs, and not have to worry about guns getting one-shotted. Reading that I feel that you have a belief that all guns should come with a buff to increase damage output. Just buff, get quick kills, pre-buff again and you have the same cycle. Captains telling crews they cannot go gunner because they want an engineer because they do more damage. The only thing that should determine gun damage is ammo types, just take damage away from the buff kit entirely and re-do the buff kit as a purely defensive tool.

This is my opinion on the current state of the buff tool, it should not be used as a sword, but as a shield.

[Sammy B. T.]

Actually I would probabyl keep my upstairs buff, however the buffing of guns would be a relatively useless tool. Every component you buff increases the purpose of the compontent. Balloons rise and fall faster, engines move you faster, armor lasts longer, and guns shoot harder. If the buff should be a shield, then would you advocate removing the speed changes and balloon power buffs as well?

Yes, I use buffs to get quick kills. My use of that doesn't make it overpowered, its simply my play style.

[HamsterIV]

I have not found buffing very useful. If you are buffing your own weapon you may miss the reload, if you are buffing another player's weapon you are not repairing or shooting which might be more useful in the situation. Taking a buff kit is a risk, especially with the PUG crews I fly with most of the time. I acknowledge it might be powerful at higher level play, but I don't get to play there very often.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Actually I would probabyl keep my upstairs buff, however the buffing of guns would be a relatively useless tool. Every component you buff increases the purpose of the compontent. Balloons rise and fall faster, engines move you faster, armor lasts longer, and guns shoot harder. If the buff should be a shield, then would you advocate removing the speed changes and balloon power buffs as well?

Yes, I use buffs to get quick kills. My use of that doesn't make it overpowered, its simply my play style.

Phil's idea is just that, an idea. The thread isn't "Buffing OP." I'm focused purely on buffing guns. No offence but no one would go through your buffing style if they didn't think there was a clear advantage coming out of it, and 20% gun damage is nothing to just ignore.

The biggest thing here is that you get 20% damage plus the ammo you use. If the % was lower, you still get a clear advantage, but don't completely erase an ammo type's weakness that was put there for good reason.

[Captain Phil]

I have not found buffing very useful. If you are buffing your own weapon you may miss the reload, if you are buffing another player's weapon you are not repairing or shooting which might be more useful in the situation. Taking a buff kit is a risk, especially with the PUG crews I fly with most of the time. I acknowledge it might be powerful at higher level play, but I don't get to play there very often.

Next update you will not be missing the reload anymore, will load up the ammo you started to load with.

[RearAdmiralZill]

That's a debated dev app topic that isn't final yet.

[GeoRmr]

Before we go about nerfing the buff hammer, shouldn't we first establish that in its current state it has issues. Sure you get the pro of extra damage. However you still have the cons of

Time spent buffing. During this time you are giving up other potential things you should be doing.
Short duration of buff. Requires timing and makes it difficult (though not impossible) to keep up during a fight
Use of a repair tool slot. A buff engineer has to either give up specializing his repair or rebuild or has to sacrifice a fire tool.

I think these make up for the 20% strength.

Time spent buffing, Sammy, you know most guns can be kept constantly buffed during reload cycles, and the fact that before most battles all the guns are pre-buffed to get a quick kill. Point is, it is still more worth while to run buff engi then to go gunner (sorry for bringing up class vs class Zill, but currently the buff hammer is a big selling point to not have gunners on a ship, so it is bound to come up.) Also, I would not call this idea a nerf, but a repurposing of the tool. Changing it from a tool to assist in kills to a tool to assist in defense.

Sorry, the buff engineer > gunner points being made here are completely non contextual. Yes, on the whirlwind for example, a buff engineer with greased rounds is a better option than a gunner in most scenarios. Well done. There are other guns and other ships and other builds.

Running a buff engineer does not replace the role of a gunner on a ship, a prime example of this would be a flak spire, 2 artemise and a mercury. If the engineers prioritize repairing over shooting the most likely result is a death that lasts slightly longer than if they did nothing, therefore it is perfectly viable to maximise the kill potential by running one engineer with buff kit and charged rounds to drop hull armour with the mercury, while allowing the flexibility of a gunner with 3 ammo types on the main gun to ensure a kill at any range and in any context. lesmok for the longer range, charged rounds for mid range arc finding and killing galleons (lochnagar won't one shot them, or wait, if the buff engineer drops the hull then jumps downstairs to finish a pre-buff it will.)  lochnagar for everything else and extreme short range. The pilot should also be shooting, alternatively bring a flare gun.

Fix it when they're dead.

I can also list several examples of ship builds where gunners are essential and better desired than buff engineers with buff engineers being a 'nice to have but not essential' should you so wish: I thought it pertinent to post the spire example to point out that gunners and buff engineers serve different purposes and should not be considered different approaches to the same end.

Oh, I also agree with everything Sammy B.T. said.

The lumberjack speaks for itself.

[RearAdmiralZill]

While you seemed to completely ignore that this isn't a gunner vs engie thread.....

It was never said that a buff hammer was the end all be all of gunning. The straight opinion is it gives too large a bonus on any gun on top of any ammo loaded, thus throwing off balance. The gatling was just an example.

[Spud Nick]

I think that ammo types should be the only thing that effects a guns damage.

[Sammy B. T.]

All buffs in the game can be multiplied by tools. Is it throwing off balance because I can both buff and kerosene my engines.

[Spud Nick]

All buffs in the game can be multiplied by tools. Is it throwing off balance because I can both buff and kerosene my engines.

I think that pilot tools should be the only tools effecting ship movement. But I am in the minority there so don't worry.

[GeoRmr]

While you seemed to completely ignore that this isn't a gunner vs engie thread.....

It was never said that a buff hammer was the end all be all of gunning. The straight opinion is it gives too large a bonus on any gun on top of any ammo loaded, thus throwing off balance. The gatling was just an example.

Nevertheless, that is what captain phill said, and yes he did say that buff engineering is causing the gunner class to be obsolete. Don't point the finger of derail at me! =P

[Captain Phil]

Looking at your ranks there GeoRrm, and I think your point of view may be a bit biased. Anyhow, yes I did forget about the few guns (essentially anything with an arming time) that require more then one ammo type. So lets looks at a Lumberfish with a buff engineer. Basic set up, of course, is a main engineer, a buff engineer, and a gunner for the main gun. If positioned correctly, the fish can stay out of combat and keep the front gun buffed 24/7, and with a good gunner, taking out balloons with only two shots instead of the normal 3. This makes it harder to not get sunk due to the fact the gunner only needs to land two shots instead three. With a good pilot and gunner, one fish can easily rotate shots between enemy ships, with lesmok rounds, and keep them both disabled for their ally to clean up. (Yes there are tactics to counter this, I know, this is just an example so don't bring them up). And not all players are tactical masters FYI, so keep in mind the battle between the people who know how to use that buff effectively and not. I can see a lot of captains getting frustrated because their guns are just not outputting damage like the enemy is because they don't have a buff engi that is skilled with keeping everything buffed.

Basically, buffed weapons make it harder for other teams to make a comeback after they get hit with a buffed gun. Are gunners useful, absolutely, especially with new ammo and reload systems coming in. However, the fact remains that 20% damage increase is basically the same as adding charged rounds with the current rounds you have on your gun with no drawbacks.

[Captain Phil]

All buffs in the game can be multiplied by tools. Is it throwing off balance because I can both buff and kerosene my engines.

My opinion, having more ways to increase ship mobility is more fun and adds a lot more skill to flying then simply increasing the killing power of a gun.

[Frogger]

A few points I would offer to this discussion:

1) When a pre-buffed or buffed gun is destroyed and rebuilt, the pre-buff or buff disappears. If I am taking sustained fire from multiple component disablers (as is the vogue these days) the probability that I am hitting the target with a buffed gun is very low. This in itself is a huge barrier to getting a fully pre-loaded, pre-buffed gun on target, especially the gatling, which must wait until a very short range is achieved in order to initiate effective fire. In the majority of my competitive matches, I would say my guns (and again, particularly close range guns like gatlings and mortars) are successfully buffed for less than half of my engagements, if even that. Attempting to get another pre-buff or buff on a gun after it is rebuilt in the middle of an engagement frequently comes with the disadvantage of losing armor pop/rebuild awareness, or having your attention drawn away from other components which need rebuilding or repairing.

2) Related to 1, an unbuffed greased gatling has a clip size of 98, the exact number of shots required to pop buffed Pyramidion armor + 1 mallet ((780+250) / 10.6) Therefore, with a good gatling gunner who is trained to focus fire on specified portions of the ship where the chance of component blocking is minimal, the probability of getting a one-clip gatling Pyra armor pop sans buff is still quite high, if damage from ancillary sources is taken into account (e.g. Artemis / Mercury fire on approach to gat-mortar range, or a teammate's focus fire). In this instance the only added benefit of having a buffed gun is a reduction in armor pop time of .96 seconds (4.656 - 3.696).

3) If I am able to close to effective (not maximum) gat-mortar distance (<300m) over the approach of a kilometer or more, while taking fire from multiple long range armor strippers, balloon poppers, disablers, and hull killers, I damn well better be wrecking my target pretty fast. It is the responsibility of the Artemis/Merc/Lumberjack/H. Flak/L. Flak/Hades-dependent team to insure that this doesn't happen. If it does, well, that team should shoot straighter and position better next time.

4) Despite claims to the contrary in several of the above posts, there are definite drawbacks to taking buff kits. In one of the two most common configurations, Wrench-Buff-Chem/Ext, one sacrifices the added rebuild and repair speed of Spanner-Mallet. In the other, Spanner-Mallet-Buff, one sets oneself up for potential vulnerability to fire damage. These are both substantial negatives considering the difficulty of maintaining buffed weapons and components in the current Artemis-heavy meta.

5) As has been noted before, despite its utility in higher level play, the buff hammer is practically worthless with untrained crewmembers in PUGs. In its current form it is a high-skill, high-reward tool that raises the skill ceiling of the game, which in my opinion is very desirable.