Is Blunderbuss useful?

[Hoo]

I've never used this weapon at all so far, and I'd like to hear your opinions about this weapon type.

 

Is it useful as much as the other weapons are?... I've felt that the Accuracy penalty, especially, seems too much heavy to pick this weapon instead of other ranged, though the short distance is also significant problem. What is the obvious merit by using the Blunderbuss?

 

 

[Prince of Lies]

Yeah. It's a great weapon!

 

You just have to be cognizant of the Accuracy penalty and plan accordingly. (Perception + Accuracy boosting items, food, etc).

 

They fire multiple projectiles, and the attack is rolled for each projectile. This means you can get a critical hit on each projectile. 

 

Furthermore, the modal (Powderburns) allows you to deal significant AOE damage at the expense of being Distracted. (-5 Perception, Flanked).

 

As a Streetfighter Rogue always using Powderburns, you always have -50% Recovery Time, and +50% Damage against flanked or afflicted targets. If you take Persistent Distraction, that's +50% damage all the time, AND -10 deflection on enemies, which essentially mitigates the -5 Perception if you use weapon attack abilities.

Edited October 20, 2018 by Prince of Lies

[Boeroer]

And don't forget that hand mortars (basically AoE blunderbusses with inly one projectile that explodes on the target's head and does splash dmg) are among the most powerful weapons in the game and can be obtained early. They are so powerful because you can do a lot of weird shenannigans with the AoE effect and certain attack abilites. Since I love my mortar rogue monk so much (playthrough is coming to an end right atm) I will post this gif again (like, for the tenth time or so ):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is without Empower or consumables (only one use of Power Surge from Stone of Power - which is basically per encounter since I have two of them and the uses reset if you stack them back in the stash). Plain old Whiper of the Winds with Resonant Touch.

 

Edit: had an error where I wrote rogue instead of monk. Fixed it...

Edited October 23, 2018 by Boeroer

[neotemplar]

My cipher used hand cannons and "Kitchen Stove" blunderbuss - they generated focus very well and did a lot of damage.

Standard average blunderbusses seemed very weak. But unique ones were like a wet dream of a shotgun surgeon.

[ThisIsMerlin]

I've never used this weapon at all so far, and I'd like to hear your opinions about this weapon type.

 

Is it useful as much as the other weapons are?... I've felt that the Accuracy penalty, especially, seems too much heavy to pick this weapon instead of other ranged, though the short distance is also significant problem. What is the obvious merit by using the Blunderbuss?

I love Blunderbusses (sp?) as a secondary weapon to use against pirates. They normally have low armor so the multiple hits stack for great damage. Naturally you do not want one for heavily armored encounters, but in Deadfire, it's actually relatively easy to predict enemy armor density based on faction. So while I wouldn't invest in them as a panacea, I certainly enjoy having them around

[Purudaya]

A Cipher/Streetfighter dual wielding hand mortars can often get to max focus with one use of arterial strike against a crowd of 4-6 enemies, not to mention the affliction splash. It's an even deadlier combo on a streetfighter/helwalker (better speed, turning wheel, and +10 intelligence for increased AoE), and deadlier still on a high level single class helwalker, which essentially  breaks the game once it gets whispers of the wind (even more overkill with Avenging Storm, see Boerer's gif).

I love how deceptive blunderbusses are stat-wise. At first glance they seem completely underwhelming, but with the right synergies they can melt the screen.

 

[XEternalXDreamsX]

I really enjoyed this information. I've never used any blunderbuss ever in any of my playthroughs of Poe or Poe2. I might give it a try now.

[Archaven]

i recently just tried handmortar, fire in the hole with serafen (pure barb).. gosh.. i wished to have melee that does similar. now that i think of it, obsidian so biased. promoting guns for piratey theme

[thelee]

objectively, blunderbusses suck. compared to pistols, they barely do more damage, but have less range, -1 PEN, and a whopping -10 acc penalty (~20% damage penalty). their modal is also a double-edged sword possibly boosting your total damage, but self-afflicting you (which can be gamed, but still) and has terrible PEN issues.

 

however, unique blunderbusses do not suck and can be metagamed very well.

 

So to the original question "Is blunderbuss useful?" the answer is really "yes, with an if" or "no, with a but"

[Boeroer]

You forget the fact that you have 4 hit rolls with a blunderbuss. This can be very useful in certain situations/setups.

 

Like Confounding Blind, Combusting Wounds, The Shield Cracks, applying afflictions, triggering special on-hit effects and so on.

[thelee]

You forget the fact that you have 4 hit rolls with a blunderbuss. This can be very useful in certain situations/setups.

 

Like Confounding Blind, Combusting Wounds, The Shield Cracks, applying afflictions, triggering special on-hit effects and so on.

 

that is true, and in fact i had not considered the specific confounding blind interaction before. i would still consider blunderbuss a niche choice compared to literally any other reloading weapon.

[Boeroer]

Yes, kind of niche. But you can build around a blunderbuss and turn the nicheness into a generally viable and useful concept using several class combos.

 

I consider the modal to be pretty awful except for a Streetfighter though. Mainly because Powder Burns has low dmg and more importantly friendly fire.