The True Panic Attack - Analysis, overhaul, and ballance ideas!

This is such a wierd weapon, cause I don't think Vavle really knew what they wanted with it themselves. The last resort weapon theme is clear, but the Beggars Bazooka theme makes the Panic Attack very unwieldy.

Also they let every class with a shotgun have the weapon for some reason, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Every class uses the shotgun differently.

The concept really only fits the soldier, noone else!

Pyro got his flames, why bother with a last resort shotgun? Heavy got a feckin minigun, why bother with a last resort shotgun? Engie doen't really wanna go all out unless he got the Gun-Slinger, and even then I don't really see it.



THIS SHOULD BE A SOLDIER ONLY UNLOCK!

Only soldier got the HP and reason to use a weapon like this.

From now on I'm gonna pretend like no other class than the soldier is using the Panic Attack.



Let me continue with saying that this weapon should NOT try to be a beggars shotgun as originally intended. It's a horrible idea, it works fine for a Bazooka but not for a shotgun. Let me tell you why.



The Panic Attack got no damage on demand. i.e there's a huge delay between clicking and firing.

Instant damage is what makes the stock shotgun so great to begin with. Adding the delay ruins the whole concept of a side-arm shotgun.

Suggestion: Remove reload on firing, revert back to ordinary reload mechanic. Make it shoot on demand.

And no, I don't believe in loading > holding > unloading at will. What you wanna do with a shotgun is: pull it out > do damage.



Another thing that's iffy with the Panic Attack is that it does less damage faster. When low, you're shooting faster, but you're hitting fewer pellets. The spread is too much, it's hard to get any good shots off, despite shooting fast.

Suggestion: Make the spread less noticable, as of now the shots go everywhere.



Lastly, the Panic Attack functions in a way that makes it hard for the player to calculate the outcome. Firing speed and bullet spread changes all the time with the HP. Making it unpredictable.

Suggestion: Make the attributes change by a flat amount when reaching a certain HP.



Following the Panic theme they should ballance it this way: Make it worse than stock at full hp (it already is) but make it better than stock at half (?) hp (it isn't as of now).



...



Ok so I tried to think of something sensible but realized that this weapon have a really high risk of getting OP.

So this is basically what I came up with, I thought it sounded pretty interesting.

DISCLAIMER: Don't over-analyze my numbers, I don't fully know how they'll play out.



When the soldier is bellow half HP and pulls out the Panic Attack he goes total BEAST-MODE! He starts screaming in a never ending adrenaline induced panic, boosting his close range damage capabilities by a shit-ton!



Attack speed and reload speed is boosted significantly (by a FLAT amount)

Scrap the reload before shooting mechanic, this just makes it unwieldy!

Increase bullet spread (by a FLAT amount) by some.



He cannot switch back to his other weapons until he's healed by a health pack (NOT medics).

He cannot be healed by medics OR the soldier is treated as if his max health is half his HP until he has picked up a health pack. (150 HP overheal)



This would make the Panic Attack not only true to its name, but also a viable last resort alternative. However if you were to pull out the Panic Attack at the wrong moment, you should be left very vulnerable.

The reason I'm suggesting that you can change weapon again on HP pick up and NOT on kill, is that I think that this would make it far too powerful.

The screaming would act as a draw-back in sneaky situations, but also make up for a hilarious effect.





Possible tweaks:



Grants a small amount of movement speed when below half hp. Would go well with the theme.

Unlike the escape plan, make it a flat amount. Maybe 85%-90% movement speed (soldier is 80%, demoman 93%)



When over half HP weapon switch speed is decreased by 20%.

This would make it worse when used like a regular shotgun, either when you've emptied yourself or when you wanna do an air-pop.



4 bullet clip size might be fine. However, it is important that the overall DPS is increased when the Soldier enters beast mode (reload speed and attack speed tweaking included).



I dunno, I kinda like the overall idea I came up with here. Feel free to dissect it however you like.