Carbineer Archive

Here's my take on Carbineer's again. In beta, I was almost a master pistoleer and I was one skill away from mastering the BH Pistol Tier. I know what's going on for Pistoleer's. I had a friend who was a Novice Carbineer. He was a few skills into Carbineer, but not much.. maybe 2 or 3 skills into it. I played my friend's Carbineer just to see what it was like. I felt bad from him because being a pistoleer was MUCH easier. I'll try to name some of the reasons.

First off, this one comes to mind first. Carbines. How many of them do you see out there? There was a very excellent comment made out there that the DH17 carbine (and snub) is basically all you're going to see. My friend used a VERY well made Dh17 carbine. It was the best, I suppose. I personally bought a E11 AND a EE3 and they were all no where near as good as the DH17. Also, maybe I just don't look hard enough, but.. I NEVER saw any other carbines (other than the DH17) being sold on the bazaar or out loud by weaponsmiths. I think there is a flaw in high level weapons and their experimentation. This could be the reason to why DH17 is the best.

Futhermore, have you ever counted the total weapons? I believe there is 8 total carbines, including the CDEF carbine. 10 or so rifles (including CDEF) and 14 or so Pistols (including CDEF). I bought the strategy guide that came along with SWG and when I opened up the weapons section I just thought, "Wow.. were are all the carbines?"

This is a couple of words that come up a lot. Bounty Hunters. Pistols get the Scatter Pistol. Rifles get the Lightning Rifle. What about the Carbine? It looked like the Lightning Rifle wasn't that good but I can tell you that the scatter gun was amazing. For all those that were in the Beta, what were the stats to your DH17 or whatever carbine you used?

My friend's DH17 carbine was: 66 - 139 damage, 3.8 speed, 20/30/-60 range modifiers, 15 health / 21 action.

This is the stats for my scatter gun: 76 - 109 damage, 2.9 speed, 0/39/0, 14 health / 44 action (ideal range: 0.0).

Only one person could make the scatter gun. Everyone else that I asked said the materials were no longer available. I can say that it was probably not the best crafted scatter pistol. I think it was pretty good.. but it could have been better, I'm sure. On the other hand, that DH17 was the best I could find on the bazaars my whole time playing SWG Beta in Bria.

I'd take the DH17, as a carbineer, because of our high specials cost. But let me tell you, as a pistoleer.. that 44 action special meant NOTHING. Sure, maybe after a few body shot 3's I might see my bar go down a little bit. Nothing big. My health or mind never went down at all.

I also had a FWG5. 39 - 139 damage, 2.6 speed. 20/30/-60. Forget the rest . Made by the same person who made the Dh17.

Almost forgot about that one. I think it's better than the DH17. Quicker, but has a little bit lower average damage. Lower average damage.. I'm sure makes up for speed.

I think that's a huge thing that is hurting carbineer's. Other than the ridiculous cost for specials (which needs to be lowered desperately) there are not many other carbines going around.. at all. The only carbine that will be seen throughout the galaxy is the Dh17. And even then, the DH17 is just holding it's own compared to the pistols that are doing around the same damage but quicker. There will be other carbines being made, but they won't stand a chance compared to the DH17. My EE3 I had was 61 - 121, 4.1 speed. Uh, yeah.. I'm definately going to pick that one over the DH17.

None of the other carbines are better. They're all just worse. Even in the strategy guide, where it shows how much min and max damage they can do potentially. They're just too slow. No one is going to want a weapon that does 10 more min and 20 more max damage if it's 2.0 seconds slower and have MUCH more insane specials cost. As a pistoleer I always had a choice. There are a lot of good pistols out there that can suit you every step of the way. For the carbine.. we only have one (good) choice.

Counter-Attack. I heard it sucks. I heard it's lame and doesn't work. Dodge never seemed to work for me as a pistoleer but if I did *atleast* it did something good. Counterattack seems to do nothing at all. There is nothing special about counterattack. Why is it even there?

Defenses for the carbineer. Pathetic. What is up with the defense bonuses for the carbineer... or should I say the lack there of. Yes, we shouldn't have super melee defenses like the Pistoleer does. But we should atleast have good ranged defense. Pistol should have excellent melee defense, carbine should have good ranged defense. That would be cool, there would be a reason to want to be a Carbineer.

The BH Carbine skills. I must say, it's the best thing about being a carbineer. I WOULD say that it's a reason to be a carbineer, if.... if... Pistoleer's couldn't pick them up to. Huh? Yeah.. I did it in Beta. I would take out carbineer's with their own BH carbine skills, as a pistoleer. All you had to do was purchase a 15 credit CDEF carbine off the bazaar, hotkey it. Hotkey Underhand shot. Fire at the enemy, switch over to your Hotkeyed Scatter pistol and finish them off while they're knocked down. The BH carbine skills are REALLY nice but it DOES NOT make a person want to be a carbineer. It just makes them want to be a pistoleer with carbine BH skills and a CDEF carbine.

To end this monstrosity, I would like to say something that has been said for AGES in the Combat/PVP forums in the beta. The RANGES for the weapons are completely ridiculous. I'll admit first hand as a pistoleer.. I could snipe better than any rifleman. I was so accurate at 64m, why on earth would you want to be a rifleman? Especially since Eye shot damages the mind. I'd take my Shotgun Pistol and fire from 64m with eye shot.

A master pistoleer should be accurate, in their own range zone. Why why why why can I hit more accurately with a pistol from 64m away than any other weapon? Why are the pistol skills so darn accurate and cost so darn cheap? I don't see any penalty for being a pistoleer right now. The penalty SHOULD be HORRIBLE accuracy from far away and somewhat bad accuracy at mid range and VERY good accuracy up close. That's not the way it is now. Pistol = good at ALL ranges, hell.. even while moving. I can run around in a circle at 64m and snipe with my shotgun pistol.

I find the carbine a POS at time. I stand at 35m (ideal range) and miss ALL the time. I should be doing very well from that range while the pistol should not be doing so well. I think one of the big reasons why PVP was so disappointing to many in the beta was because the range zones were ridiculous. Pistols Sniping all over the place. EVERYONE was a pistoleer in the beta. And why would they not be?

Counterattack does infact work, it just doesnt work often.... I hate to repeat myself but personally I had it work 5 times in Beta, and I was only lacking combat specialist xp in carbineer for master.

The only other thing to mention is that apparently legshot 1 vs legshot 1.... both on a cdef:

In the same period of time the pistol does double damage of the carbine, and the carbine uses up more action.

The only way to be a viable carbineer in the Beta was to have a medic dedicated to healing you action bar while you hammered out full auto 2, or full auto area 2 attacks.

Basically pistol is way too good compared to the carbine: near zero action cost, faster, about the same dps, more gun choices (that dont all suck).......

I love the idea of the carbine, but in game its really quite bad.

Carbineers definately need some more defensive bonuses. Also is it me or are carbineers the only combat class that recieves no additional special move for reaching master status? There needs to be a special move for getting master carbineer. Pistoleers get 2!

Whats the deal with crippling shot? What does it do? I saw some people using it in beta and it was doing less dmg than legshot 3. Really doesnt make any sense if its supposed to be an upgrade to legshot 3 since its way higher on the skill tree. I think it would be cool to add a snare effect to crippling shot. Like it makes your target limp or something and decreases movement speed. Right now there is no reason to choose carbine over pistol. Thats my 2 cents.

A LOT of the high level adv. class moves didnt' do anything until late in the Beta. Like Stopping Shot and Fan shot were a COMPLETE waste of space because Body Shot 2 was much more powerful. Then they changed it so Body Shot 2 around where it should be, not competing with Body Shot 3 (which also got nerfed). And around the same time they did this, higher level specials (Crippling Shot, Stopping shot to name a few) were actually useful.

Within the last couple weeks in the Beta I was seeing both Stopping Shot (Pistoleer) and Crippling Shot (Carbineer) hitting for 600+. I even had Crippling shot used on me quite a bit.. of course I mowed down the person with Body Shot 3 or Eye shot, but.. it did actually do good damage but no other modification that I could see on it. Just high damage output.

The special costs, the lack of variety in carbines (just the DH17 seems to be good), the lack of defense bonuses all seem to make the Carbine seem less than what it could be.

I have seen that some of the Carbines special moves costs are pretty high, sometimes as high as more elite rifles of similar class. I would say this is a balancing issue. Plus too I haven't seen to many good carbines out there other than DH17 and the laser carbine, unfortunately with the laser carbine i have to become an overt rebel or be on a battlefield to use it, and i do not want to go overt until i can master my skills.

From my understanding thier is a problem with crafing carbines. every thing higher than a CDEF requiers a stock, wich adds +27 to all HAM cost. if we could talk the devs into removing this, it would make carbines a bit more viable.

What I hate more than anything is when I'm out in a hunting party with some of my friends and after we get done killing a yellow or red enemy, I have to sit for 10 minutes while my action points come back up from 0. They all use pistols and rifles and are fully recharged in under a minute. But me, the carbineer, must wait all day while I recover from a seemingly small fight. I just think something is wrong with that. I agree with all the other carbineers: We need something done about high action point cost for special moves like Leg Shot and FullAuto. I will stick with the caribine as my primary weapon simply cause there aren't many of us; but where's my motivation? Hop on it Devs....

Great posts all:

I agree that the carbine needs help badly. The HAM special action costs are ridiculously high. That is the main complaint I have about the carbine. Fix this, and you will have a viable combat profession. Fix it not, and you will have a lot of ticked off carbine users who will simply quit because of all the time they have put into it HOPING for a fix.

or just switch to pistol and hope they fix it before you run out of skill points to spend and have to start dropping carbine skills like ive done . its a pity i wanted to be a carbiner.

jojo (intrepid)

Well, I just rerolled my character last night. I was a Trandoshan with expert carbine skill, trying to reach carbineer. I had realized early on that i was getting incapped from the action pool but decided to trudge on and see if things got better. Well they didn't and seeing the stats on the higher"more advanced guns"I knew it wasn't goint to get anybetter. I had maxed out the Trandoshan Action pool:

Action: 1100

Quickness: 450

Stamina: 400

I was waiting around forever for my pools to come up and most of the timeI had a half empty pool as I just could not recharge fast enough for the pace of combat. IfI went up against a whiteNPC or a MOB doing random damage to the HAM barsand they hit my action pool I was in even deeper trouble. Just randomly hitting my action pool made me not able fight back with my strong attacks.RUN AWAY?NEVER, as soonasI move while standing my accuracy goes to -50. When I rerolled my new character, a Female Human going by the nameOssyra Stryker, I started out with the standard pistol. While running to my friends house on tatooine to pick up the stuff I gave him to hold for me while I rerolled (my bone armor was lost into trading limbo btw),I was attacked, I decided to see if I couldBURSTRUN byit but the creature kept up with me. As I fired over my shoulder I noticed that I was actually doing damage to the creature. This was so odd. I had been incapped so many times running away with my carbine I thought for sure I was a dead person after respawing and havingonly novice marksmanskills. I could take a creature down eaier with burst run, a pistol, and noob skillsthan I could kneeling with my carbine and Expert skills. Why would I ever go back to a carbine?

1) The weapon takes too much out of you that you can't be a Trandoshan Carbineer, unless you like to sit around a lot.

2) Hope thatyou encounter only one enemyat atime. Also, hopethat he doesn't have friends or the other MOBS don't go aggro. You may take one MOB down but the second one is going to get you as your Action bar is now low and you can't perform any special attacks.

3) The damage of your special hits to an enemy's action poolis equal to the damgae you do to yourself, not giving you an advantage in combat, PvE or PvP. Basically you reduce both of your action pools and a pistol will fire fastergiving itan advantage and a better chance of winning.

I AM NEVER GOING BACK TO CARBINE. Unless they fix it.

All I know is that I sucked @$% last night during our Rebel raid on Bestine. Nothing seemed to be hitting and I was drained out to the point of incap quite a few times.

I was nice to see myself incapped the final time by a Point Blank (mindshot?) rifle shot with the Imp. rifleman practically sitting on me.... He then DB'd me. I felt helpless the whole time- but like a good Rebel Artisan Carbineer,I tried my best...

See I feel a little cheated. I picked Carbines because they look mucho cool. I liked the effects but I just am finding it real annoying that the only way I can hunt is to wear a full suit of bone armor and a high end CDEF carbine with a yummy powerup and then prone and leg 2 until one of us is incapped. If he gets help from fellow thugs I am dead.

My first try at a DH17 left me angry and frustrated. I was lucky that the rest of my group was using pistols and rifles because I just about incapped myself. A stray Tusken rifle shot and I layed there fofr the count of 50ish and twiddled my thumbs hoping that the raisers forget about me or are wiped out. I looked around and the brawlers are kicking unarmed butt, the pistoleers and rifleers are blasting away happily I am laying there looking up at the [retty night sky. My first clue should have been when the leader says "Ok everyone body shots and head shots only focus fire on oneraider at a time." Hmmm I felt like raising my hand and in a small voice saying "I have leg shot 2". Of course they might have laughed at me. I can't tell you how embarassing it is to carry a carbine in some cases.

Not sure what the complaints are about, but I love being a Carbineer. I am about 30k from Novice, so I don't have much of the specials, but here is how I solo creatures for 2000xp. I kneel from about 65m away, ActionShot1, LegShot2, ActionShot1, LegShot2, HealDamage (I am a Maser Medic/Doctor), later rinse repeat. The creature never has a chance and won't ever get up. If I happen to miss, I am far away enough to just run away a bit and hope my next ActionShot1 hits. This, of course, is against non-ranged characters only, though my TKA friend and I have been very successful killing Tusken Raiders/Leaderse/Captains/Kings by ourselves and our knockdown strategies.

DiMarzio, Bloodfin