Streamlined Heisting Complements

Complementary skill, perk and weapon changes to go with Streamlined Heisting.

Skill changes

Mastermind

Medic

• Combat Medic
  • Ace
    • Changed revive health increase to be additive
    • Revive health increase 30% → 15%

Since this percentage was multiplied with the revive health percentage, the ace version of this skill was not doing much at high difficulties. Changing it to add to the revive health percentage and in turn reducing the amount will make it much more useful on higher difficulties.

• Inspire
  • Ace
    • Cooldown 20s → 40s

Inspire's cooldown is low enough to not really matter, the time it takes for someone to go into custody when downed is longer than the cooldown of the skill. Increasing the cooldown makes Inspire usage more strategic and less abusable.

Controller

• Forced Friendship
  • Ace
    • Damage absorption 0.5 → 1.5
    • Max stacks 8 → 4

Keeping that many hostages for a measly 4 damage absorption is not really practical and not even possible on heists without civilians or after civilians are gone. Reducing the stacks makes it possible to keep up the buff through police hostages and slightly increasing the total absorption should make it more useful.

• Confident
  • Basic
    • Removed intimidation duration upgrade

Confident increases intimidation duration which is something that Stockholm Syndrome claims to do. Swapping out the upgrades and moving the duration upgrade to Stockholm Syndrome makes more sense.

• Stockholm Syndrome
  • Basic
    • Added missing intimidation duration upgrade

See notes on Confident.

• Joker
  • Basic
    • Hidden damage reduction 45% → 80%
  • Ace
    • Damage increase is now accurate to the description instead of a 35% damage penalty without the skill

There's a hiden damage reduction for Jokers that applies on top of the ones in Partners In Crime. Increasing the hidden damage reduction makes basic Jokers a little more useful and compensates for the reductions in Partners In Crime.

• Partners In Crime
  • Basic
    • Damage reduction 45% → 75%
  • Ace
    • Damage reduction 54% → 15%

Partners In Crime is giving a bit too much survivability to Jokers on top of having badly distributed balance between Basic and Ace version. Shifting some of the power and reducing the total damage reduction in exchange for higher damage reduction at base will make the basic version more useful.

Sharpshooter

• Ammo Efficiency
  • Basic
    • Ammo return 1 → 2

This skill doesn't really feel impactful, shooting enemies at long range is usually still a net loss of ammo. Increasing the ammo return allows gaining all ammo spent back when played optimally which should make it feel more rewarding.

• Aggressive Reload
  • Ace
    • Reload speed increase 100% → 75%

The reload speed increase of Aggressive Reload seems a bit extreme for something as basic as hitting headshots.

Enforcer

Shotgunner

• Far Away
  • Basic and Ace skill swapped
  • Ace
    • Steelsight accuracy increase 40% → 75%

While one might want to increase the effective range of shotguns, increased accuracy might not always be desireable. Swapping basic and ace allows for increasing shotgun range without messing with accuracy and buffing the accuracy bonus makes it a more useful pick.

• Overkill
  • Basic
    • Duration 20s → 10s
  • Ace
    • Added 20s duration upgrade

Overkill's duration is way too long for the strong bonus damage it provides. Moving some of its power to the aced version will force players to engage with enemies more when only using it for shotguns.

Ammo Specialist

• Bullet Storm
  • Now only needs one gun to be fully empty to gain the maximum duration
  • Fixed increased duration when ammo bag was used up
  • Ace
    • Duration 15s → 10s

Bullet Storm had comically long durations when the bag was used up, outside of that, reaching the full duration was annoying due to needing both guns to be empty. Reducing the requirement to get the maximum duration and slightly reducing the full duration should make the skill feel better.

• Saw Massacre
  • Basic
    • Reduced wear 50% → 90%
  • Ace
    • Panic chance 50% → 75%

Saw Massacre is a useless skill and 50% reduced wear is not enough to make the saw a viable weapon against enemies. Decreasing the wear further and increasing the panic chance will make it more viable at least in some cases.

Technician

Engineer

• Eco Sentry
  • Basic
    • Reduced deploy cost 5% → 10%

The basic version does exactly the same as the basic version of Third Law, but costs 2 points instead of 1. Giving Eco Sentry a slight boost should allow placing an additional sentry from full ammo in most cases.

Breacher

• Hardware Expert
  • Drill upgrade duration 10s → 5s
  • Ace
    • Auto restart chance 10% → 30%

With the recent change that makes drill roll the chance to auto restart on each break it has become a bit more unpredictable. Upping the chance for the restart to happen should make it more useful.

• More Firepower
  • Basic
    • Shaped charges 1 → 2
  • Ace
    • Shaped charges 2 → 3

While the tripmine part of the skill is fine, the amount of shaped charges you get is not really great considering how little use they have on most heists. Increasing the amount from a maximum of 6 to 8 will give the skill more value on heists that have use for shaped charges.

• Kickstarter
  • Basic
    • Auto restart chance 20% → 30%

See notes on Hardware Expert.

• Fire Trap
  • Fixed tripmines placed on walls spawning fire on the walls
  • Basic
    • Base burn duration 10s → 20s
  • Ace
    • Burn duration increase 10s → 20s

Fire Trap doesn't really feel useful as a top tier skill and you're basically getting a non-replenishable Molotov effect from it. Increasing the burn duration and allowing them to be placed on walls without making the fire useless should make the skill more useful for area denial.

Oppressor

• Heavy Impact
  • Basic
    • Stagger chance 5% → 10%
  • Ace
    • Stagger chance 20% → 30%

Heavy Impact is a niche skill that is not very useful with the current numbers. Increasing the stagger chance should give it some more use.

• Body Expertise
  • Basic
    • Damage 30% → 20%
  • Ace
    • Damage 90% → 60%

Body Expertise simply gives too much value for very low effort. Reducing the damage percentage should bring the skill more in line.

Ghost

Silent Killer

• Optical Illusions
  • Basic
    • Targeting chance decrease 35% → 20%

Optical Illusions is a niche skill but it provides slightly too much value when it's used with Jokers.

• Unseen Strike
  • Basic
    • Crit duration 6s → 4s
  • Ace
    • Crit duration 18s → 12s

The duration for crits seems a bit too long since you do not lose the bonus on getting hit.

Fugitive

Gunslinger

• Desperado
  • Basic
    • Now refreshes buff duration on hit
    • Stack boost is now additive
    • Duration 10s → 5s

Losing the accuracy bonus after a fixed amount of time despite consistently hitting shots didn't really feel good. Refreshing the buff duration on hit but reducing the base duration makes the skill feel better while still providing a good boost to accuracy.

• Trigger Happy
  • Now refreshes buff duration on hit
  • Stack boost is now additive
  • Basic
    • Damage increase 120% → 25%
    • Max stacks 1 → 4
  • Ace
    • Max stacks 1 → 6

The Ace version of Trigger happy wasn't really worth it, since all the important stuff was in the basic skill. Increasing the maximum stack size and moving some of the skill's power to the ace version should improve how this skill plays.

Revenant

• Nine Lives
  • Basic
    • Bleedout health increase 50% → 100%

The percentage value for this skill was still stuck in a time were enemies didn't even deal half as much damage and where the murder tactic was non-functional. Increasing the gained health value should make the basic skill more useful.

• Up You Go
  • Ace
    • Revive health increase 40% → 100%

Since this is a multiplier to the health you get on being revived, it did almost nothing on higher difficulties. Increasing it will give you double the revive health which should make it more useful.

Brawler

• Bloodthirst
  • Basic and Ace skill swapped
  • Basic
    • Reload speed duration 10s → 5s
  • Ace
    • Damage increase +100% up to 1600% → +50% up to 800%

Bloodthirst provides a way too strong bonus for a basic skill that involves no effort to gain as the requirement for it is something you do anyways. Swapping the basic and ace version and reducing the numbers should bring this skill more in line.

• Berserker
  • Swapped with Frenzy

Berserker provides a very strong benefit that is a bit too easy to reach in the skilltree. Swapping Berserker and Frenzy makes investing into it a bit more costly.

• Frenzy
  • Swapped with Berserker

See notes on Berserker.

Perk deck changes

Crook

• Expert Composure
  • Armor increase 25% → 30%

Crook could use a slight armor buff to make other ballistic vests more usable.

Burglar

• Dutch Courage
  • Pager answer speed 10% → 20%

Increasing the speed for answering pagers makes Burglar more useful as an alternative for Yakuza as a stealth deck.

Infiltrator

• Overdog
  • Melee damage boost duration 7s → 5s

Overdog's increased damage boost duration seems a bit too high when compared to other damage boosts. Reducing the duration brings it a bit more in line with other damage boosts.

Sociopath

• Overdog
  • Renamed back to "No Talk"
  • Added melee damage boost duration upgrade

When Infiltrator got the melee damage boost duration upgrade, Sociopath was left out and still has only 1s, which is not enough for slower melee weapons. Adding the same duration increase as in Infiltrator should make all melee weapons useful with Sociopath.

Gambler

• Medical Supplies

  • Cooldown 3s → 2s

• Ammo Give Out

  • Removed cooldown

As a team oriented deck, Gambler needs some tweaks to its cooldowns for health and ammo restore to make it more useful.

Anarchist

• Lust for Life
  • Armor gain 30 → 20

The final card description in Anarchist is incorrect and it actually gives 30 armor instead of the stated 10. Slightly reducing the armor gain should still allow decent gains while being a bit more risky.

Stoic

• Virtue
  • Damage over time duration 12s → 9s

Stoic is a very powerful deck as it gives you a lot of time to react to incoming damage, often without even the need to use the flask. Decreasing the time it takes to apply the damage over time will force the usage of the flask more often.

Hacker

• Botnet
  • Removed dodge chance bonus

Hacker has two instances of dodge chance bonuses of 15% each, which makes it a bit too strong. Removing one of those instances should make it more balanced.

Leech

• Momentum

  • Number of health segments 5 → 8
  • Teammate heal amount 5% → 3%

• Stalwart

  • Teammate heal amount 10% → 6%

• Symbiosis

  • Number of health segments 10 → 16

Leech depends heavily on vanilla values of grace period and enemy firing behaviour and as such falls off with lower grace period and enemies firing in full auto. Increasing the number of health segments should improve survivability, while lowering the healing amount keeps the total amount of healing similar to vanilla.

Copycat

• Tactical Reload
  • Changed instant swap back to increased swap speed
  • Swap speed duration 3s → 10s
• Head Games
  • No longer heals when Berserker is active
• Grace Period
  • No longer triggers from taking armor damage
• Thriving
  • Health increase 20% → 10%

The change made to the swapping mechanic leaves a little too short of a time window to swap weapons and looks jarring and buggy. Increasing the duration the bonus is available and changing it back to a swap speed increase makes it more accessible and less prone to bugs. Reducing the health increase brings it more in line with the armor cards and the Grace Period change makes it more reliable.

General changes

Weapons

• All weapons
  • Removed aim assist
  • Rebalanced ammo pickup
  • Made alert ranges consistent
  • Fixed ADS and crouching spread values

There is a form of aim assist that makes you more likely to hit a target the longer you shoot at it while missing. Removing this aim assist will make it harder to hit enemies at distance with low accuracy weapons. Ammo pickup has been rebalanced based on damage instead of total ammo. Fixed incorrect ADS spread values which lead to crouching having better accuracy than ADS.

• LMGs
  • Added 15% reduced movement speed penalty
  • Fixed bipods not using separate spread values

Even after the nerfs LMGs are still very powerful with very little drawbacks. Adding back the movement speed penalty gives a more unique drawback than nerfing stats.

• Miniguns
  • Added 15% reduced movement speed penalty
  • Added damage falloff
  • Increased damage by 20%

With the reduced movement speed and added damage falloff, miniguns could use a slight damage buff to justify using them over LMGs.

• Shotguns
  • Restored original base pellet amount of 12
  • Double Barrel Shotguns
    • Increased damage by 25%
    • Increased reload speed by 50%
  • Buckshot
    • Now reduces pellet amount by 3
  • Tombstone Slug
    • Now reduces pellet amount by 3
    • Stun chance 100% → 25%
    • DoT damage 120 → 40
    • DoT duration 5s → 10s
  • AP Slug
    • Accuracy bonus 8 → 24

Some shotgun ammo types are clearly superior with no downsides while others struggle to be useful. Adding downsides to the ones that are just free damage and buffing less used ones should make the choice of ammo more impactful.

• Snipers
  • Rebalanced total ammo

Snipers have varying ammo pools though vanilla balancing suggests they are all intended to have around the same pool. Rebalancing the values makes the choice of sniper rifle depend less on total ammo pool.

• Akimbo
  • Set reload speed to roughly 75% of their single variants
  • Set total ammo to their single variants plus one extra magazine

Certain akimbo weapon stats seem random and inconsistent when compared to their single weapon counterparts. Basing the inconsistent stats on their single variants results in a slight buff for most akimbo pistols and a nerf for most other akimbo weapons.

• Saws
  • Made damage against Bulldozers multiply base damage instead of a fixed number
  • Made ammo use consistent instead of random
  • Added innate armor piercing

Saws have a hidden damage increase against Bulldozers that's just a hardcoded damage value. Changing it to be a multiplier of the damage makes modding for damage actually matter.

• Bows
  • Reduced damage by 50%
  • Reduced charge time by 30%
  • Increased minimum projectile speed to 50%
  • Added innate armor piercing

Bows don't really feel good to use due to requiring long charge times before being able to fire a usable shot. Allowing bows to be quickly fired without charging and reducing the damage in exchange makes bows more fun to use.

• Crossbows
  • Added innate armor piercing

Similar to bows, crossbows are not that fun to use, adding armor piercing should make them feel better.

• Melee
  • Rebalanced all melee weapons based on speed, concealment and range
  • Reduced charge time by 50%

There are only a handful of relevant melee weapons and most of the others are arbitrarily balanced. Basing the damage and knockdown of melee weapons on their other stats with the Ice Pick as a reference should make the choice of melee weapon more interesting.

Equipment

• ECM Jammer
  • Feedback interval 1.5s → 1s

This is a small adjustment to make feedback between Pocket ECM and regular ECM more consistent.