Short-ranged artifact steamguns?

[Zizzo]

Okay, I've got a dumb question: why is it that almost every artifact steamgun in the game has a range so short as to be basically useless? I think there are one or two that actually have the same range as an ordinary steamgun of the same tier, but the rest pretty much go straight to the ruined cave floor and collect dust. It just seems silly to have all these artifacts that are essentially pointless to use.

[Sheila]

PureQuestion made questionable design choices and was very adamant about them

[Steven Aus]

Is it possible to edit this with an addon?

[Sheila]

Is it possible to edit this with an addon?

definitely

[Coldbringer]

It's like the Path of Exile unique item design philosophy - if you have a powerful item mechanic above and beyond others, it should also have some sort of drawback for you to compensate against or simply deal with.

The short range steamguns I've encountered had some very nice stats/procs/extra abilities, typically +10 or even 20% damage plus bonuses to specific enemies like Brilliant Auto Loading Orc Expeller or the AOE machines Overburst and Payload. You should have a long range set of guns on swap to deal with long range threats such as dragons or the steamgun wielding giants. But situationally the short range guns are better, especially in the early game when it's the best/first thing you've found. If they had full range they'd be somewhat OP

However I can see how if you play on higher difficulties the extra range is essential to survival. Taking turns closing the distance as you're getting nailed from afar is no good.

[Sheila]

It's like the Path of Exile unique item design philosophy - if you have a powerful item mechanic above and beyond others, it should also have some sort of drawback for you to compensate against or simply deal with.

The short range steamguns I've encountered had some very nice stats/procs/extra abilities, typically +10 or even 20% damage plus bonuses to specific enemies like Brilliant Auto Loading Orc Expeller or the AOE machines Overburst and Payload. You should have a long range set of guns on swap to deal with long range threats such as dragons or the steamgun wielding giants. But situationally the short range guns are better, especially in the early game when it's the best/first thing you've found. If they had full range they'd be somewhat OP

However I can see how if you play on higher difficulties the extra range is essential to survival. Taking turns closing the distance as you're getting nailed from afar is no good.

The problem is that range's strength is just that, range, if you take that away it has nothing.
"Short range gun with a twist" was done too many times, and no matter how many bonuses you're doing, if you end up losing range 10 for range 5 or lower that's an extra 5 turns or more you could've spent attacking, doing damage, and debuffing anyways, so the tradeoff is really not worth it.
And yeah, keeping your distance is sometimes essential to surviving.

[bpat]

Some medium-range steamguns are great though, Glacia has 7 range iirc and it's amazing. Less than 5 or 6 is pretty sketch but as long as its past there most artifact steamguns are decent.

[Coldbringer]

It's like the Path of Exile unique item design philosophy - if you have a powerful item mechanic above and beyond others, it should also have some sort of drawback for you to compensate against or simply deal with.

The short range steamguns I've encountered had some very nice stats/procs/extra abilities, typically +10 or even 20% damage plus bonuses to specific enemies like Brilliant Auto Loading Orc Expeller or the AOE machines Overburst and Payload. You should have a long range set of guns on swap to deal with long range threats such as dragons or the steamgun wielding giants. But situationally the short range guns are better, especially in the early game when it's the best/first thing you've found. If they had full range they'd be somewhat OP

However I can see how if you play on higher difficulties the extra range is essential to survival. Taking turns closing the distance as you're getting nailed from afar is no good.

The problem is that range's strength is just that, range, if you take that away it has nothing.
"Short range gun with a twist" was done too many times, and no matter how many bonuses you're doing, if you end up losing range 10 for range 5 or lower that's an extra 5 turns or more you could've spent attacking, doing damage, and debuffing anyways, so the tradeoff is really not worth it.
And yeah, keeping your distance is sometimes essential to surviving.

If you use the terrain to your advantage then it's not as big a deal. A lot of dungeons or even open areas have corners and short hallways where extra range would be no benefit. Where it is, one turn to duck behind a corner and switch to the long range set isn't bad, or zero turns if you have the prodigy Swift Hands which is great for Gunslingers and Psyshots.

What would you do if you could change the short range weapons? Give them another point or two of range with a small nerf to other stats, or increase their bonuses and damage more?

[Zizzo]

Is it possible to edit this with an addon?

definitely

I'll take that as permission to release this, then.

[64legos]

Annoying, there's an unused "Railgun" tinker that would have increased range (and shot speed), which would have made many of these artifacts a lot more usable.