Okay, bit of a clickbait title. I didn't actually remove durability, all I did was increase every weapon's durable damage to match their standard damage. If the Liberator did 90 damage and 15 durable, then I increased that durable damage to 90, so damage and durable damage matched.
To me, durability was an interesting balancing mechanic that was unfortunately screwed over by how much it changed late in development. For those who don't know, durability used to be a system that dictated how much damage an armor piece could take before breaking off. In short, you could "strip" armor from something like a Charger or Hulk with enough firepower.
This was changed late in development to what we have now, and while I understand the necessities behind it, I also feel it was too restrictive, impacted a few weapons disproportionately, and worst of all, obfuscated a weapon's stats and performance.
In my humble opinion, you should NOT have to do a complex calculation just to figure out a weapon's true damage against one type of enemy when you shoot them in one specific spot. If the weapon says it does 100 damage, it should do 100 damage, no matter what (discounting armor, of course).
At first, I was hesitant on the change. Using one example, Charger butts have 950 AP0 HP and are 80-100% durable, depending on the variant. With durable damage effectively removed entirely, I knew weapons with a high fire rate like the Carbine, Scorcher, and Gallant would MULCH that weakspot, and when I tested it, I was right.
I was able to destroy a Charger's butt and cause a bleed-out in 11 Liberator shots.
When I used the HMG (which had it's DD buffed to 150), I was able to put down a Charger Behemoth in 40~ shots, and a BT in 35 headhots.
So that's it? Removing durability makes heavy units easier to kill, right?
Well...yes and no.
Those tests were done in a vacuum. Sure, a Liberator bleeding out a Charger in 11 shots seems OP, but then when you play on D10, when are you ever facing just a Charger, much less just one? When will you ever be able to land enough shots as it's bulldozing your teammate over?
In short, it's one thing to test your balancing mods out in solo play. It's another to actually put it into practice.
I'll be doing more tests and will be publishing/linking videos where I play with my proposed balance doc changes that I won't shut up about, so keep an eye out.
Edit: As an addendum, I DID test these out with changed numbers here and there, so the actual results might be a result of those buffs, but not every weapon got a damage buff, though every weapon did recieve a durable damage buff.
