Unlimited Balance Changes

Submachine Gun
• Magazine size increased from 28 to 30.
• Minor reduction in starting accuracy.
• Minor increase in ending accuracy.

Dev Note: We felt that the Submachine Gun was already in a good spot, being a formidable close-to-mid range weapon that wasn't performing beyond its intended range. However, the increasingly mounting complaints about its range and critical hit consistency have prompted us to investigate this weapon further. These changes seek to solidify its intended range while slightly reducing its critical hit consistency on the initially fired bullets.

Smash Rifle
• [Melee Attack] Major reduction in BLOW force.

Dev Note: We feel that the Smash Rifle should not have crowd control capabilities that outperform those of actual Melee weapons, so we've significantly dialed down the BLOW force of its Melee Attack. This is intended to make it easier to recover from, and to incentivize more frequent usage of Melee weapons for crowd control.

Semi-Rifle
• Magazine size increased from 28 to 30.
• Revised spray pattern, with all bullets being evenly distributed around the center-of-screen.

Dev Note: All Rifles, except for the Semi-Rifle, have received a treatment where their spray patterns are closely grouped around the center-of-screen. We are finally giving the same treatment to this weapon.

Plasma Rifle
• Extremely minor spray pattern adjustment. (Overall accuracy is unchanged).

Spark Rifle
• Extremely minor spray pattern adjustment. (Overall accuracy is unchanged).

Revolver
• Revised spray pattern, with all pellets being evenly distributed around the center-of-screen.
• Evenly distributed PUSH force across all pellets. (It is no longer weighted towards the middle pellet)
• Move speed reduced from 1.0 to 0.9. (Move speed while shooting is unchanged)

Burst Shotgun
• Revised spray pattern, with all pellets being evenly distributed around the center-of-screen.
• Evenly distributed PUSH force across all pellets. (It is no longer weighted towards the middle pellet)
• Extremely minor decrease in total PUSH force.

Hand Gun
• Revised spray pattern, with all bullets being evenly distributed around the center-of-screen.
• Base damage decreased from ~14.24 to ~13.56.

Dev Note: We felt that the off-center spray patterns of Guns have made them feel unintuitive to pick up and use. As such, their Y-shaped spray patterns have been transformed into perfect 3-point stars, with a perfectly centered middle pellet, and sizes closely resembling those of the old Y-shapes. In addition, their PUSH forces have been tuned. Each of the Revolver's pellets now have equivalent PUSH force, which results in the same PUSH as before when landing all 4 pellets, but moderately weaker PUSH otherwise. The Burst Shotgun has received the same PUSH changes as the Revolver.

Light Machine Gun
• Magazine size increased from 70 to 75.

Heavy Machine Gun
• Base damage reduced from ~14.92 to ~10.17.
• Spin-up time increased from 333ms to 667ms.
• Spin-down time reduced from 333ms to 0ms.
• Angular scaling of spray pattern reduced from 1.0 to 0.9. (This is a minor accuracy increase).
• Fire rate increased from 8 rounds/sec to 12 rounds/sec.
• Magazine size increased from 100 to 150. (Combined with the changes to fire rate and damage, this makes its total uptime and damage-per-magazine nearly identical to what it was before)
• Reduced the dry-fire animation time from 1000ms to 0ms.

Dev Note: The minigun feel of the Heavy Machine Gun is back! It will take a while to spin up, especially in desperate situations, but once it does, you can expect devestating volumes of fire and damage output at close-range. To push this weapon into being more skill-based, we have made changes to its damage and fire rate that reduce the reliance on landing lucky critical hits to score kills, and increase the requirement of preicse tracking. In addition, there are a few quality-of-life improvements that make this weapon feel less clunky and punishing to use, such as the ability to cancel your spin-up quickly, and do an instant reload after emptying your magazine.

Gauss Rifle
• Angular scaling of spray pattern reduced from 1.0 to 0.8. (This is a moderate accuracy increase).
• Decreased move speed from 1.0 to 0.9. (Move speed while shooting is unchanged).

Dev Note: The Gauss Rifle was among the least used guns in the game, and we have attributed this to how difficult it is to control its recoil for reasonable damage at range. These changes seek to make it more usable.

Turret
• [Mobile Mode] Reduced spin-up time from 750ms to 500ms.
• [Mobile Mode] Reduced spin-down time from 750ms to 0ms.
• [Mobile Mode] Reduced dry-fire animation time from 1000ms to 0ms.
• [Stationary Mode] Reduced spin-down time from 300ms to 250ms.
• [Stationary Mode] Reduced dry-fire animation time from 200ms to 0ms.

Dev Note: Turret was given similar quality-of-life improvements to the reworked Heavy Machine Gun, along with a minor spin-down time reduction that should make it feel more worthwhile to set down and burst-fire for high ranged damage.

Air Gun
• Moved the blast hitbox from the left-of-screen to the middle-of-screen.
• Blast hitbox no longer shrinks upon fully charging the gun.
• Uncharged blast damage increased from ~21.19 to ~25.42.
• Fully charged blast damage increased from ~52.97 to ~63.56.

Dev Note: Upon investigating the Air Gun, we discovered a severe hitbox misalignment issue on it. Although centering the hitbox still results in minor misalignment issues, it should now feel more consistent to use. In addition, it has received a damage buff to make it slightly more competitive with the damage and crowd control of Melee weapons.

Rail Gun
• Reduced move speed from 1.0 to 0.8. (Move speed while shooting is unchanged).

Cannonade
• Reduced move speed from 1.0 to 0.8.
• Increased move speed while shooting from 0.7 to 0.8.

Dev Note: We are aware of the frustrations around dealing with Snipers, especially on relatively open-space maps like Station-2, and we are investigating solutions that increase the counterplay to these weapons while allowing them to retain their power. Until then, you are free to use the room title r:nosnipe in order to avoid seeing these weapons in matches. For now, these changes seek to normalize the move speed and move speed while shooting for these weapons.

Mine Gun
• Projectile radius reduced from 75 to 60.

Dev Note: Upon investigating the Mine Gun, we not only found that its projectile hitbox was significantly larger than the actual projectile model, but that same hitbox was resulting in hits being too frequent. As we intend to keep this weapon feeling difficult-yet-rewarding for landing hits, we are doing a moderate reduction in its projectile hitbox size, and we are closely monitoring its ease-of-use from here.

Plasma Sword (UNLIMITED ONLY)
• [Light Attack] Base damage reduced from ~19.33 to 18.
• [Light Attack] Critical damage increased from ~33.84 to 36.
• [Heavy Attack] Base damage reduced from ~38.66 to 36.
• [Heavy Attack] Critical damage increased from ~67.68 to 72.
• [Heavy Attack After Dash/Stun] Base damage reduced from ~38.66 to 36.
• [Heavy Attack After Dash/Stun] Critical hit restored, which deals 72 damage.
• [Dash] Base damage increased from ((~7.27 x 3) + (~3.66 x 3)) to (6 x 6).
• [Stun] Base damage increased from ~10.89 to 18.
• [Stun] Critical damage reduced from ~37.50 to 36.

Counter Sword (UNLIMITED ONLY)
• [Light Attack Hit #1] Base damage increased from ~19.69 to 20.
• [Light Attack Hit #2] Base damage increased from ~15.15 to 20.
• [Light Attack Hit #2] Removed critical hit.
• [Light Attack Hit #3] Base damage increased from ~24.24 to 25.
• [Light Attack Hit #3] Critical damage increased from ~42.42 to 50.
• [Light Attack Hit #4] Base damage increased from ~24.24 to 25.
• [Light Attack Hit #4] Critical damage increased from ~42.42 to 50.
• [Light Attack Hit #5] Base damage increased from ~19.69 to 30.
• [Light Attack Hit #6] Base damage increased from ~27.27 to 30.
• [Light Attack Hit #6] Critical damage increased from ~54.53 to 60.
• [Jump Attack] Base damage reduced from ~40.93 to 40.
• [Jump Attack] Removed critical hit.
• [Uppercut] Base damage reduced from ~40.93 to 40.
• [Uppercut] Critical damage increased from ~68.22 to 80.

Storm Bat (UNLIMITED ONLY)
• [Swing] Base damage increased from ~31.61 to 36.
• [Swing] Critical damage increased from ~56.19 to 72.
• [Swing After Jump Attack] Base damage increased from ~35.12 to 36.
• [Swing After Jump Attack] Critical damage increased from ~70.24 to 72.
• [Swing After Jump Attack] Revised critical hitbox to remove random factors that prevent critical hits from connecting.
• [Swing After Jump Attack] Major reduction in critical hitbox length.
• [Jump Attack] Base damage increased from ~52.68 to 54.
• [Jump Attack] Critical damage increased from ~105.36 to 108.
• [Jump Attack] Revised critical hitbox to remove random factors that prevent critical hits from connecting.
• [Jump Attack] Major reduction in critical hitbox length.
• [Spin Attack Hit #1-2] Base damage reduced from ~7.02 to 6.
• [Spin Attack Hit #3-4] Base damage reduced from ~12.29 to 12.
• [Spin Attack Hit #3-4] Critical damage reduced from ~24.58 to 24.
• [Spin Attack Hit #5-6] Base damage increased from ~17.56 to 18.
• [Spin Attack Hit #5-6] Critical damage increased from ~35.12 to 36.
• [Spin Attack] Move speed multiplier increased from 1.5 to 1.6.

Spy Dagger (UNLIMITED ONLY)
• [Cut] Base damage decreased from ~22.67 to 22.
• [Stab Hit #1] Base damage reduced from ~45.35 to 44.
• [Stab Hit #2] Base damage reduced from ~11.95 to 11.
• [Stab Hit #3] Base damage increased from ~51.32 to 55.

Dev Note: Xero was always meant to be a game that fostered a healthy mix of gun and melee combat for your team to succeed in matches. Since the current metagame (without player-made weapon limits) clearly leans too heavily on guns, it's high time to take action.

Previous balance updates to Melee weapons were primarily targeted towards the Melee channel, but their effects bled into the Unlimited channel with negative consequences. Now, thanks to all of the talent on the Xero team, it is now possible to modify whole Melee weapon movesets separately between channels, and due to this, we are reverting Melee weapons back to something close to their old balance tuning in Unlimited, where they had truly complete kits of high burst damage, mobility, and crowd control. However, these changes come with the following caveats:

• The 6-hit Dash attack on the Plasma Sword has been preserved to reduce the likelihood of the enemy recovering from it.
• The Counter Sword has had a few of its critical hitboxes removed to reduce the power of the classic "CS spam", and make "one-hit" scenarios more conditional (i.e. it will now require a Jump Attack, a critical hit with the Uppercut, and a Wall Slam to kill an enemy from 130 HP).
• The Storm Bat has received a minor mobility upgrade in its Spin Attack to make it minimally viable for rushing, as well as chasing enemies down to finish them. In addition, its critical hitboxes have been modified to make "one-hit" scenarios more conditional (i.e. the physical Bat model now has to be striking the enemy for a critical hit).

All of these changes set a precedent for how long-neglected weapons like the Katana and Sigma Blade will be tuned in the future (with improved counterplay against "spammy" attacks added on top). For now, we hope that you enjoy this long-needed Melee tuning in the Unlimited channel, and we will continue to monitor their state, as well as the feedback around them.