Change Means of Destruction so the ammo portion is triggered only by grenade damage and the grenade portion is triggered only by gun damage (meaning all grenade damage and all gun damage, not splash damage from grenades and guns)
Change Vampyr so it heals you by a percentage of your grenade damage
Boom. With these changes:
You can’t infinitely spam grenades without ever touching your weapon
Vampyr is no longer OP with beam grenades and worthless with non-beam grenades
Beam grenades remain a useful tool for ammo regen, if your weapon benefits from it (mainly heavy weapons and the Flakker) See the edit
Grenades in general remain a strong active sustain option and a key part of your loadout
You’re not limited to the small handful of guns that do splash damage (though you’ll still prefer them because of Fire in the Skag Den and Torgue Cross-Promotion)
The grenade build can be effectively balanced via hotfix
Demolition Woman becomes viable to use while leveling because it no longer has strict requirements on a beam/MIRV grenade and a splash weapon
Basically, this would solve all the problems Moze’s pre-patch grenade builds had from a balance perspective without negatively affecting the playstyle (which IMO is really enjoyable) or forcing people to farm new pieces of gear because the ones they were using are now useless.
Edit: Thinking about it more, I think Means of Destruction can actually be improved even further such that it’s also not partial to things that proc it very rapidly like high fire rate weapons and beam grenades. Instead of a percent chance on damage to return a round to the clip or regenerate a grenade, dealing gun and grenade damage should give you buffs that provide static regeneration.
For example:
After dealing gun damage, Moze regenerates grenades for a few seconds. After dealing grenade damage, she regenerates ammo for a few seconds.
The buffs would be short, maybe 2 seconds, wouldn’t stack, and would give you maybe 2 ammo per second and 1 grenade every second. Definitely a flat amount for ammo rather than a percent of magazine size so it’s primarily useful for slow-firing weapons. But gearbox could tune the numbers however they want.
After about 48 hours of testing, I think I could ultimately live with the “no beams” situation if they (1) reversed the damage nerfs to hex and (especially) firestorm, (2) increased the amount of health returned by Vampyr, or (3) made it so transfusion grenades worked properly.
I mean, I don’t really think we should have to “live with” a whole class of grenades being completely useless with Moze. I’d rather Moze’s skills worked equally well with all grenades, that way we can choose the one that works best with the rest of our loadout rather than being pigeonholed into the two or three that work with MoD and Vampyr.
Non-beam grenades can heal just fine with vampyr. People just aren’t paying attention to what makes a good vampyr grenade and elemental coils are just one possibility.
Your percentage solution would actually kill Non-beam grenades. I used a level 38 Atlas grenade (Homing/Divider/Mirv/Bouncy) through guardian rank 50, (i finally got a Stormfront) it did jack ■■■■ in damage but it would always keep my health/shields topped off even on mayhem 3.
IMO, Atlas bouncy grenades are the best for Vampyr lately. I was in your boat until I tested an Atlas I held onto whilst Hex 'nades were the best.
Since beam damage doesn’t heal anymore, my Atlas grenades goes - 2x split on flight, spawn 3 MIRVs, bounce/detonate 3 times. With all the splitting, bouncing, and no beams, I’m pretty sure each explosion counts towards Vampyr. I just tested it on SS Mayhem 3 and cleared through Round 3 with little to no trouble (stopped at round 4 for time’s sake). My biggest concern the entire encounter was making sure I was in a good spot to fight the adds - so I wouldn’t get swarmed on a moment’s notice, and I could effectively progress and eliminate adds from my position. I did go into FFYL a couple times, but the grenades help soften/kill the adds, but I honestly think Ogre is the new go-to weapon if you’re still interested in grenades. Ogre + incendiary talents + redistribution make that weapon an absolute monster, and can shred through hardened’s and goliaths like butter practically (unless they have armor, where a good shotgun and/or corrosive weapon can really help).
If you have/find a good multiplying/bouncy grenade, I’d recommend giving it a try. Unless my tooltips were messed up, my Atlas grenade had ~200 more base damage (maybe slightly less than 200) than my Hex’s, and I don’t know if Hex’s would actually do more overall damage from their beams - but the healing from splitting, bouncing, and Vampyr was much more noticeable in favor of the Atlas VS Hex after this recent patch.
P.S. - I was using Bloodletter COM and Deathless relic, so all my “health” and healing went directly towards my shields.
klg_chaos
(What a wonderful night to have a curse.)
#6
A well placed Epicenter grenade heals quite a bit as well. If you can land one on an enemy, multiple balls will hit them and heal you.