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It most certainly is not. It makes no sense for a veteran feat with high stat requirements to be objectively worse in every way when compared to a regular feat that can be grabbed at any level by any build. If BWT won't receive any buffs to address this, then the effects of Nimble and BWT should be swapped.Compared to most of the veteran feats, body weight training is quite good, since you can reach 10 str at character creation, and lots of characters have high strength. Bodybuilding requires 12 con and only gives an 80 health boost. Expert sprint requires 13 agi, and only gives a 10 ap boost when sprint is activated. Veteran feats are meant to be niche feats for specific builds. Nimble is better than body weight training because it is the feat that enables evasive builds, so it needs to be powerful and available early. The advantage of body weight training is that it stacks with nimble, which can let you wear heavier armor while retaining low armor penalty bonuses.
I’ll admit, the evasion boost is nice, although it’s difficult to use ambush at such close range. The specialized ammo on firearm pistols isn’t really a benefit 90% of the time when compared to energy pistols. Energy guns primarily deal energy or electric damage, which are the least resisted damage types in the game, with only expedition bots and coil spiders having any notable resistance to them. Pistols of all varieties are able to obtain massive crit chance through ambush, steadfast aim, infused rat leather armor, ect, so non-crit damage only matters pre-depot A. Most pistils only have 4-5% higher crit chance than energy pistols, and energy pistols have higher crit chance than firearm pistols if using steadfast aim. Laser sight is nice, but you can’t use it on special attacks unless you want to give up your smart module special damage bonus. RR ap refund is nice as well. The initiative boost on gunslinger is mostly redundant on a dex versatility build, since you already get such a massive initiative boost from dex. Firearm pistols requiring bullet strap belt is a downside, since it means they can’t use doctors belt or commando belt, and reloading with batteries only costs 10 ap, so a 6 ap difference compared to bullet strap belt. A crit special attack on an electroshock pistol will delete anything except a coil spider just as well as a rapid fire, and also has the benefit of chaining to 3 nearby enemies and deleting them as well. Bullet time is very good, but it requires specialization points to really shine, which means delaying it until late game or being stuck longer with low accuracy due to unspecced versatility. Stasis is easily the best psi ability in the game by a wide margin, and there isn’t a single build that doesn’t benefit from taking an extra turn, so it shouldn’t factor in to how good a build could be. At the end of the day, both firearm and energy pistols are very good builds, but I’d argue that energy pistols come out on top. As anecdotal evidence, my easiest clear with lunatic mall was with a energy pistol build at level 20, because I could kill 8-10 lunatics per turn by using special attack+ point shot with an electroshock pistol and stacking special attack damage. Before that I was annihilating arena bosses with flashbang+ aimed shot on a plasma pistol. Firearm pistols can have a slightly better turn 1 than energy guns, but in any encounter longer than that energy guns come out on top. As a wise man once said, “If your build needs Stasis and Contraction to function, then it’s a shit build.”Energy Pistols are also better than regular pistols overall, since they have much better crowd control with the electroshock pistol, up to a 40% damage increase with high technicalities, and overwhelmingly higher damage with the plasma pistol, which can be boosted further with stacking crit damage and aimed shot. The only advantages standard pistols have over energy pistols are lower ap cost with gunslinger, an extra special attack with rapid fire, and bullet time, which is admittedly very good. Energy gun versatility builds are less feat intensive than standard firearm pistols, while being superior or equal in firepower to them.Firearm pistols have much more benefits than that:
- ignore up to 40% evasion in close range
- specialized bullets that either pierce most of armor or boost damage to organic targets
- higher non-crit damage, even when compared to big brain High Technicalities
- higher crit chance
- higher hit chance thanks to laser sight
- bonus 15 AP on average thanks to rapid reloader
- extra 7 initiative thanks to Gunslinger
- lower reload cost thanks to bullet strap belt
- rapid fire consistently deletes strongest targets when paired with smart module
- bullet time is not just very good. It doubles your turn. Twice (thanks to Stasis)
I agree that pistols are feat intensive, but Versatility energy pistol builds take long to setup (as both crit and Versatility starts coming around mid-game and reaches full potential only on high-end).
