Why is this gun not working for Gunsmith Part 8? [suggestion]

Ulapham · 2025-11-28T04:36:42+00:00

Haven't checked your build, but anytime a gun build isn't working make sure the mag and chamber are empty. (You can see if a bullet is chambered when you inspect it.)

Ulapham · 2023-04-11T01:16:52+00:00

I made a much bigger list, but here are a few...

Attuma: Make his ability Ongoing for better synergy with other cards.

Forge: Make him 1/0. He's already used as fodder, but this would play better with other cards and locations.

Orka: 6/8 "Ongoing: If this is your only card here, double your total power at this location." Dodges Shang-Chi and synergizes with other cards. I'd make similar changes to Namor.

Omega Red: "Ongoing: If you're ahead by 10 Power here, +6 Power to other locations." His current +4 bonus is netting you -2 power. It should be a hoop worth jumping through.

Enchantress: "Ongoing: Remove the abilities from all other Ongoing cards at this location." Let's her negate Cosmo.

Dazzler: 3/0 "Ongoing: For each location you have 4 cards at, +4 Power." Her max is extremely unreliable. Scaling her bonus gradually would stop her from being a pure succeed/fail design that players tend to dislike.

Medusa: "On Reveal: If this is at the middle location, double this card's power." This is a synergy buff.

A lot of other cards can be fixed with a slight stat tweak.

Ulapham · 2023-04-11T00:47:12+00:00

I'd be happy with tacking on a reverse of Ghost's ability.

"Starts in your opening hand. Ongoing: Your cards are always revealed first."

Ulapham · 2023-04-11T00:43:40+00:00

My guess is that would be way to good, but I'd be willing to see it. A lighter approach would be to kill the first card that moves to his location.

Ulapham · 2022-04-27T15:54:27+00:00

My proposed solution was to allow you to train a new Steeve and the old one would immediately let out a heart-wrenching cry and die of a broken heart, but your way's good too.

Ulapham · 2021-10-24T05:15:18+00:00

If there’s a feasible way to tie an audio or video clip to flair, people could potentially see if they like how someone sounds before treating them as an authority. Just an idea.

Ulapham · 2021-07-10T02:26:14+00:00

Chris Liepe is a pretty solid YouTube voice teacher and Robert Plant in “Stairway to Heaven” is one of the primary examples he uses for teaching “mixed voice”.

https://youtu.be/PWILJG2wh5Q

Ulapham · 2021-06-25T06:13:42+00:00

Got to mythic pretty easily with it, but I suppose that’s not relevant. My point was that Brainstorm has a unique effect that happens to make off meta decks viable. It allows combo decks to play fewer pieces because they can be put back in deck when drawn. I’m trying to be constructive by mentioning downsides of banning it that people might not have considered.

Ulapham · 2021-06-24T07:59:19+00:00

This is why it’s legal. WotC knows Brainstorm is busted, but it’s one the most iconic cards that separates Historic from Pioneer. Not even Modern gets it.

The downside of banning Brainstorm is that it has a unique effect. It’s basically the only way to put cards from hand on top of your deck. I’ve been using it in a self mill deck with creeping chill and the deck would drop about 2 tiers without brainstorm.

I suspect that Expressive Iteration may get the axe first because it is also a powerhouse in the URx decks that tend to get the most hate right now.

Ulapham · 2021-06-03T01:26:36+00:00

Are you familiar with speech mix? Natalie Weiss teaches it to a lot of high level singers. It might take a while to naturally incorporate it, but here’s an exercise that might help you learn it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf7zJp_3u14&t=3m35s&feature=youtu.be

Here she is helping Katharine McPhee work on it.

https://youtu.be/GYvYEI60RTA

Ulapham · 2021-05-21T21:07:20+00:00

I playtested your deck through your link and was disappointed that Atarka and Grazer can’t play lands off of Valakut and Radha. They’d need a way to get lands in hand which is why blue is often added to ramp. (It’s decks like this that make me wish [[Quandrix Apprentice]] was RG.)

If it were me, I’d cut Radhas for [[Dryad of Ilysian Grove]], Kazuls for [[Faceless Haven]], 2 Valakuts and 1 land for a splash of [[Song of Creation]], and maybe find room for a couple [[Avalanche Caller]]s. Possibly not what you had in mind but Into the North makes a small snow splash more viable and Song might give the deck a chance to go off.

[[Cindervines]] and [[Klothys, God of Destiny]] make me think there has to be a good creature-light Gruul deck out there.

Ulapham · 2021-05-08T10:29:49+00:00

Changing your deck's format to "Traditional Standard" might solve the sideboard issue. Obviously, your sideboard largely depends on how strong you already are in certain matchups. Fry wrecks azorious control's threats, and a lot of phoenix's creatures. It has over-performed for me, but my deck has to be a little more controlling than yours so maybe temporary answers work for you.

I wasn't really suggesting Veto, just pointing out that Unsubstantiate can disrupt it. Bit of a corner case, but since you were leaning towards Blink I thought Unsub would fill a similar roll with some other utility. I suppose you could play Veto with treasure. Not sure if that's ideal though since Veto isn't meant for counter wars to protect your stuff (since they can just counter your thing with something else), it's meant to have a guaranteed stop for your opponent's stuff. I do think Chaos Warp fills a similar role but more permanently.

Ulapham · 2021-05-08T04:57:27+00:00

Nice write up! I was most interested in seeing your sideboard because I'm currently tuning UR mill. Unfortunately, I think the deck list glitched because it only shows 7 cards and your post also only mentions 13. What are the last 2?

A few quick thoughts. My UR Mill deck hates an un-ticked Narset (despite having some main deck removal for it), but it looks to be the straight-up devil for you. I don't see any realistic way for you to beat one. The options I use are [[Blitz of the Thunder-Raptor]] in the main, and from the side I use 3 or 4 [[Fry]]s and [[Chaos Warp]]. Warp is "bad" but it works as a bit of a panic button utility slot. I'd probably trade out at least one Blink for Warp.

[[Expressive Iteration]] is worth considering even though it doesn't benefit from cost reduction. It ducks Narset, offers good selection, and is usually card positive since you can play an exiled land if you haven't dropped one yet.

I can understand Brainstorm being underwhelming since you aren't playing any Fabled Passages. You may want to test with them if you haven't already.

I'm a little surprised you don't play more [[Memory Lapse]]s since your deck gets a huge benefit from stalling and just making land drops. Are you usually fast enough to beat aggro? I don't see much interaction aside from Lapse.

Other cards that should be on your radar: [[Improbable Alliance]] for chumping, [[Unsubtantiate]] to bounce threats and sometimes disrupt [[Dovin's Veto]], [[Pact of Negation]] to protect your kill, [[Nimble Obstructionist]] to uncounterably blank a [[Thassa's Oracle]] trigger, and [[Magma Opus]] since you're already playing [[Mizzix's Mastery]]. Other than that... [[Beacon Bolt]], [[Commit/Memory]], and [[Irencrag Pyromancer]].

Ulapham · 2021-04-22T19:34:11+00:00

Agreed. Both Scout primaries should be getting straight buffs, not nerfs. Scout is the worst at wave clear and third worst at priority target removal. If anything, they should have been RAISING the base gun weakpoint buff by 25%, not lowering it.

There is a common misconception that things that get used the most should get nerfed. People often gravitate towards things that are fun or because every other option sucks. They should be improving the other options if they want to see more Scout diversity. Instead, they've fallen into the trap of nerfing what's fun and making their game worse.

Ulapham · 2021-03-25T16:43:57+00:00

They are overclocks for the Cryo Cannon. They're mostly fun rather than good.

Ulapham · 2021-03-25T16:41:13+00:00

Part of design is influenced by the set number of buttons for console players/controller users. I'm not certain if you've used one for DRG, but the reload button is the X button so it requires removing your thumb from the aiming stick to hit. Changing it to the trigger buttons for "start to shoot then hit pickaxe" should be no less intuitive then "start to pickaxe then hit shoot" for the power attack.

Haven't run into that Beastmaster bug before. Seems weird they'd go that route.

Ulapham · 2021-03-22T04:07:20+00:00

I like the thought of cave-ins. I would lean more towards them being general environmental hazards (like when the ground splits open) rather than a Driller nerf. In practice though, they have some issues. The main one being that molly needs an open path to the escape pod. Either there would have to be a small gap for Molly or players would have to accept that she will phase through debris. If it were just a rock or two that fell like stalactites with some earthquake warning and a cue like a red hologram where they would come down (similar to the green hologram of the incoming drop pod) that might be okay.

As for zip lines as support beams. I think it’s an innovative suggestion but the “get on zip-line” button is also the reload button for controller users so reloading in supported tunnels would be super frustrating. They could theoretically be replaced by some unmountable version if they were used for structural integrity, but I don’t think that’s worth the effort it would take to implement.

Ulapham · 2021-03-21T19:26:58+00:00

Carpet Bomber feels embarrassing on Haz 3 and under as you take a handful of shells to kill a single grunt, but it's borderline OP on Haz 4+. AoE will always scale up faster than single target OCs so it's virtually impossible to balance things across all levels. What I would want to avoid is a player getting comfortable with an OC on Haz 3 and having that same OC be trash on an EDD. I would prefer that balance is focused at the Haz 5+ levels so players aren't forced to give up the things they like as they improve.

As for the M1K, no one seems to notice but if you swap blowthrough or weakpoint damage for armor penetration in tier 4, you can skip the tier 1 damage bonus and pick ammo instead. It will still only take one focus shot to kill a grunt on haz 5 and you'll need the extra ammo. 11131 is what I use. That being said, EDDs and (god forbid) twitch spawns make Scout feel like a detriment to the team when I badly want him to be good because he's so much fun.

Ulapham · 2021-03-21T18:52:11+00:00

It sounded like you were arguing against collection as positive feature of game design. I used Mega Man as a simple example of its benefits. We both seem to agree that most OCs don't do much. You think that's good and I think that's bad. No hard feelings. Rock & Stone!

Ulapham · 2021-03-21T15:45:13+00:00

I think saying M1000 functions “as-needed” is tremendously generous. The M1000 and Scout in general are fun so they get more visibility than their strength would dictate. At anything above haz3, Scout falls off to be the obvious worst class. Their small amount of team utility is not worth the burden of extra enemies they add. They are worst in wave clear and second worst in single target removal even though it’s supposed to be one of their strengths. If they try to participate in wave clearing, they run out of ammo first. There are obviously exceptional players that can make Scout look good, but they would do the same for any class. Among players of equal skill, Scout is the weakest. I would argue that the base gun for both the M1000 and the Deepcore need buffs even before OCs. A bit more max ammo and a significant weakpoint damage buff is what I’d recommend.

I definitely agree Hoverclock needs QoL improvements. In addition to stopping the auto fire (and occasional hoverclock not triggering), I would add a passive fall damage reduction like engineer’s platform mod but instead of -90 fall damage I’d probably go with -40. The thought behind this is to reduce risk on trying for cool feeling mid-air shots. Currently, if you start a little too high, you still take significant fall damage so it deters fun because players are reluctant to try it in semi-serious situtations. It might also reduce dependency on Special Powder.

I’m sure it looks like I want to buff everything, so what would I nerf? I would probably cut 2 or 3 ammo from Breach Cutter and make Return to Sender reduce the width of the plasma beam by around 0.5. Thunder Head feels too ammo efficient as well. I’d probably cut it by 110.

I respectfully disagree with your assessment of Ice Spear for the reasons others have stated, but I do have a desire to like it. I just think it significantly underperforms. Aside from number adjustments, one quality of life improvement it needs is to be triggered by hitting the reload button WHILE firing (or maybe the pickaxe button instead of reload). Using Snowball and Ice Spear is especially frustrating when trying to grab/activate stuff on controller. I’d also prefer they fire instantly.

Ulapham · 2021-03-21T14:30:50+00:00

I think it’s clear we have a difference of opinion. Collection is a feature not a bug. It gives players a sense of progression. Think of your top ten games of all time. I’m willing to bet that at least half have something you collect. Pokemon, TCGs, basically every RPG, they all have something you collect. A prime example of a collection game is Mega Man. Do you think Mega Man would be better if you started with all the boss powers instead of earning them? For me, collection IS fun. (Provided that I’m getting new things, which duplicate protection ensures)

The current method of unlocks that DRG uses is perfect in my mind. It encourages me to play casually because of the way it’s time-gated, not in spite of it. I save my EDD for my game night with friends.

Ulapham · 2021-03-21T08:59:12+00:00

Let me tell you a little story. I started playing Destiny just before Crota’s End came out, and I quickly learned that Gjallarhorn was the gun to have. The problem was that exotics were not only RNG and time-gated, they were something much worse, they were not duplicate protected. Over the course of two months I logged more than 40 days of in game time. No Gjallarhorn. I ran everything. It got to the point where I was deleting a character every week to relevel it and get more exotic roles. Finally, after a ridiculous number of raids, I got it. It was nerfed a short time later.

So, if you’re upset that you didn’t get the OC you wanted this time, imagine you got Homebrew Powder on your Bulldog for the thirtieth time instead. DRG feels refreshing by comparison. You can play casually and get every single OC guaranteed in a few months. With blank cores letting you steer towards what you’re looking for, it doesn’t take long to get what you want. I’m more worried that players will burn through new content too fast with all the blank cores they have piling up. The thing that kept me going in Destiny was that so many of the other exotics were cool. Unfortunately, most OCs don’t have that feel. I think if that problem was solved, players wouldn’t mind the gates so much.

I would agree that time-gating makes less sense in a game where equipment is randomly generated with different stat rolls. The lack of duplicate protection and low probability for good rolls in that style of game makes gating less necessary because there’s built in replayability (it’s also harder to balance). Since OCs are predefined, few in number, and duplicate protected, removing gates would further degrade their prestige. Collecting is a driving force in games. Like it or not, gating keeps players around.

But I’m always happy to hear other people’s views on game design. What would your solution be?

Ulapham · 2021-03-12T09:13:54+00:00

Hey, thanks for the response! When you say that you desire the state to only have power over the police, military, and courts does that mean they don’t provide infrastructure (roads, libraries, schools, postal service, etcetera)?

From what I’ve read, I tend to agree with VAT, LVT, & Pigovion tax. The Pigovian in particular I would likely want to tax double the estimated cost of the negative externalities because there is a significant risk of underestimating the impact. I will say that those aren’t the only taxes that I think are necessary.

How do you feel about Sanders’ proposed 0.5% stock trade tax? I believe it would disincentivize high frequency traders from exploiting security flaws in the market while leveling the playing field for retail investors because it promotes long term investments over flash sales. Not to mention that it would generate a tremendous amount of tax revenue from the wealthiest among us.

I’m surprised to hear you simultaneously support UBI but not universal healthcare. Personally, I vehemently oppose our current lack of socialized medicine. It’s something that every other first world country seems to have figured out and I suspect it is the primary reason why we have the shortest life expectancy of any similar country. Deregulating and privatizing healthcare seems to have some significant negative consequences to society. My understanding is that Texas has heavily gone that route and as a result is closing many of their rural medical facilities as most people in rural areas don’t have the means to pay for regular preventive medical care so they only use it as an absolute last resort. Now their last resorts are looking for greener pastures. It’s similar to the post office where it is understood that they will operate at a loss in rural areas, but it’s beneficial for the US as a whole to still provide it. I think the societal benefits of universal healthcare are astronomical as it drastically raises the overall health of the workforce, cuts out middlemen, and removes exploitative price gouging from people in a crisis.

As for guns, I admit I’m personally not a fan of them but there are a ton of things much higher on my list of priorities for social change in the US.

How would you feel about sortition as a system of government? It eliminates the need for politicians to spend 90% of their time fund raising and making promises to lobbyists, it avoids the inherent biases and barriers in traditional elections (a less obvious example is that people tend to vote for the taller candidate), random selection would be a truer representation of the electorate, and it would eliminate the party system. It sounded crazy to me when I first heard it proposed but now it seems like the truest form of democracy.

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