I want to love this gun, but the Welrod sucks.
I'm just putting that out straight away since I'll be listing up all the reasons why it desperately needs a buff, and I'll put up a few ideas that I had which could do just that.
Before anyone goes "It's a 0 supply weapons it's supposed to be bad", know that the Makarov is also 0 supply and does better in just about all ways possible. The other pistols themselves are only going up to 3 supply max so why bother investing in this gun at all to begin with? Those that put the supply into the gun should get a decent weapon, but they won't in this current state.
Going off of that some more, you can see that the supply cost doesn't help when going against even the most expensive handgun which is the PF940. The Welrod doesn't even have a scope or grip selected in the above image. A fully supplied PF940 is cheaper than a fully supplied Welrod... the laser sight is even more expensive for this gun!
While initially a 0 supply gun, it's reaching into 11 supply territory by itself. The performance it has with such a steep cost? Not even worth it one bit. Notice the 3 supply AP rounds. That alone would make it cost as much as the the highest cost handgun, but it does nothing of value to the damage of the weapon. A center mass shot in close quarters does not kill. You need to hit a target at least twice or even thrice to snag a kill.
This is not mentioning the fact that it's a bolt action pistol. Follow up shots will often be impossible when the target fires back at you. Missing the first shot means you're very likely dead. Hitting the first shot... well you're still likely dead in the second it takes to rechamber your round. Even with greased bolt, which seems to have disappeared from even the security marksman class, the half second rechamber is more than enough time for a retaliation.
Finally, the magazine is six shots. You have an extremely low ammunition pool to work with because of this. With no carrier, you have a measly 12 shots. Each tier only providing 6 after the other. Meanwhile, the PF940 will, with the same cost, provide at least a base of 60 shots and 30 for each tier. For weapons that do just about the same damage, even with AP rounds for the Welrod, it's a tad ridiculous.
To summarize:
- It's expensive to invest into the gun
- Laser sight is more expensive than usual and the other attachments are pretty hefty
- It's way too slow for follow up shots
- Greased bolt, a rather necessary attachment, is not available for all classes (I can't even find the darn thing)
- Ammo count is incredibly low for a low-powered gun
- Compared to 1, 2, and 3 supply pistols, it's pathetic.
- The 0 cost Makarov is still better at killing a single enemy which is the role for a pistol in an emergency encounter
- Its damage is poor
- I've shot a bot in the back before smacking them immediately after. They turn around and dome me before I could do anything else.
The easiest and most straightforward buff would be damage. No AP rounds restricting it to a two-shot with AP enabling the one-shot. Or have it as a one-shot to unarmoured enemies by default but need the AP to penetrate light and/or heavy armour. I know this game's variant is the 9mm rather than the .32, but a little bit of realism can be put aside to make this weapon actually useful or just enjoyable in some way.
This would go hand-in-hand with the tiny ammo pool since each shot would actually be more valuable. The comparative amount of the ammo pool from that of a 9mm with spent ammo in a single magazine to then be like having half of your Mosin ammo left over. Four shots from a Mosin is much better than eight shots from a Tariq.
Reducing attachment costs may be helpful, but it wouldn't solve the issues that the gun has which is actual performance. Kinda goes against the loading screen tooltip saying how even unmodded guns are still deadly. The Welrod depends on being modded to make an impact (with no success there either).
Speaking of dependencies, this brings the greased bolt into question. Why don't all classes have access to this universal weapon's most important attachment? The fire rate is abysmal and easily gets anyone killed to misses or chargers (though hitting a person will still likely end up with you dead because of the poor damage). Should the damage proposition be used, the Greased Bolt attachment would still be balanced enough to offer afterwards considering the massive arsenal of weapons that excel in close quarters. It's to be a high risk; high reward weapon, but, right now it's a high risk; low reward type of weapon.
I tried Welrod-only runs and got nowhere. Did the same with literally any other pistol including the Makarov and got much further. It's just frustrating to use, and this is coming from someone who has done Mosin-only Checkpoint games for fun.
Overall, I wanted to really like this gun, and I love it in general, but this current iteration is quite useless.