Carbineer Archive

Sithlordacid said: "If by shaft, you mean commandos get a weapon that delivers an ungodly amount of damage while at the same time delivering an incurable dot effect that takes down at-sts like they were baby gnorts and dominates, if not monopolizes, PvP'sall for the low price of one column of skill points, than yes, commandos got shafted."

You are entirely incorrect, sir. It takes at least three flame dots anda lot of time to take down an ST. The ST can still one shot to two shot you with no problem.

-ALL- commando special moves are on mandatory ten second timers during which othing else can be done save run around and die.

Commando accuracy with a flamethrower at Master Commando is still 65% while still and much lower while moving. It -looks- like Commando should be good... which is the way it was intended. Carbineers still take out Commandos with relative ease.

The reason I'm on this board is in order to make Master Commando worth it Ihave to utilize the one thing I have that a MAster BH doesn't. Skill points. So I'm looking at farming out Extra skill to get Charge Shot2 (Which doesnt work) and the riflemans Dizzy shot at Master Rifle Special Abilities so I can stand a chance of competing in PVP.

Dots are curable. Just jump in some water.

Dots, while annoying, are useless to the Commando as nine times out of ten the commando is dead and cloning while the dot does its damage. The deathblow has been dealt and faction points lost and our little commando buddy is just SOL.

*Shrug*

Currently Bounty Hunters and TKA's rule the playing field with the weight heavily on the BH's side (By the way Bounty Hunters can also Flame dot you with torsoe shot at a much longer distance (64meters) than a commando who's dotting special moves have a max range of 16 meters. Frankly if a Carbineer lets a commando get within 16 meters they need to learn to kite )

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Xeromancy wrote:

I came over here in order to show my support for you all. I responded to this post saying, yeah, your weapons do suck, and its unfair that pistols constantly outdamage you. And then I said, we, as commandos, feel shafted too, and so we can commiserate. I can understand it if you want to tell me Carbineer is worse than commando, every profession thinks theirs is nigh the worst, but if you say so, I will respectfully disagree.

So, anyhow. Sorry your carbines are having problems, sorry your specials are kinda borked...

but please don't fabricate what commandos can supposedly do..

and at least you all havent spent 169 skill points on a profession which only works in 25% of the capacity it was designed.

Athein

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I personally have no problem at all with commandos as they are.. Commandos help us take down atst's
But thanks for coming and giving support. Even though you hear a lot around here we have it worse than anyone else, it's simply not true. Our biggest problem is a lack of anything that makes us special. We don't stand out in any aspect.

But anyway.. I've actually taken out commando's before, so I know your not neccassarily more powerful than us in regard to duels.. but when it comes down to it, maybe your not supposed to be? Or maybe i'm wrong. Commando's have always seemed to be an assault class, which isn't intended for 1on1. But then again, so are we

Now that I think about it, our professions are very similar in what they are supposed to be, assaulters. Hopefully with this new attention we will get a little closer to that

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Xeromancy wrote:

...and then he would have to be using OCshot2, which drains FT condition likecrazy.And even then, he'd have to be attacking an unarmored target, or onewith full vuln to heat.

Third, the class you are has nothing to do with the amount of time you survive, unless you take multiplied damage from a combat type.... like commandos and 2.5x from melee.

A commando being eyeshot spammed will die exactly as fast as a carbineer.... the difference between you and Fyrr, apparently, is buffs, armor, or player skill.

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Quick point -- I could only wish that flamethrowers were heat damage. Then you'd have to use expensive expendable weapons on our expensive AT-STs. But no, alas, they remain blast. The second most commonly vulnerable PvE out there (I think stun edges it out, but stun doesn't have AR3 or whatever weapons), and pretty high up there on player armors, too (most of the ones with good blast are pretty useless for everything else).

Next point -- I guarantee we die faster -- when you drain 150+ HAM a shot, you die pretty quick. Maybe not to eyeshot spam, but random damage to our health/action pools will do more than enough to help us along. To add insult to injury, our best all-around weapon has a minimum damage such that we often see ourselves hit our enemy for less than we hurt ourselves to fire the shot -- especially in PvP. And as for the quoted reference to Fyrr, the guy was talking about a situation where neither of them are even targetted by their opponents -- he's saying he'd kill himself with HAM costs in 10 seconds, not that whatever he was fighting would kill him faster than Fyrr.

Am I bothered by commandos? I sure wouldn't be if they'd change flamethrowers off of blast damage and perhaps knock the AP down a notch (it's clearly meant to be the anti-personnel weapon, not anti-vehicle) and subject all DOTs (including BH and CM dots) to the 25% rule. If rocket launchers are truly broken (and not just expensive), fix 'em, and use those to come after those Imp's hard-earned AT-STs. Fight time invested with time invested (expendable weapons), rather than griefing them in the guise of just playing your class. (Note, I'm not saying that all commandos are actively looking to grief the AT-ST owners, but their role needs to be changed by Sony so it's not so easy/painless to do so)

And don't complain about the 16m + melee penalty "paradox." It's called a balance to your power -- you're a support firepower profession, not necessarily a soloing one. Let your friend take the hits and there isn't a problem.

Just a note regarding Flamethrowers (I'm a master Commando and Carbineer on another server so I have a foot in both camps).

I think you are perhaps getting confused with the Rocket Launcher kaffis, the FT has AP 0, not 3, it has NO armor piercing at all and I can assure you it is indeed heat damage. It is also largely ineffective against AT-STs, with the flame dot being the exception (and has already been pointed out it requires about 3 applications in order to kill one).

The RL on the other hand is AP 3 and blast damage, as it should be, and will take down a 'wild' (ie non player owned) AT-ST in about 7/8 rockets providing you live that long, which at 4.5 seconds or more per shot isnt very likely.

I would probably argue that Carbineers areworse offthan Commandos but to try and prove which is themore 'broken' of the 2 really is rather pointless don't you think?

Commandos have ALOT of issues yet to be resolved, because everyone else sees them toting Flamethrowers and actually killing things doesnt mean they are fixed, far from it.

P.S. Now that the melee damage modifier has been removed from heavy weapons its actually impossible to do 11k damage with the Flamethrower.

Auspeks you forgot to factor in weapon speed and speed modifiers. Those pistols listed are 1.3 and 1.1, which ismore than 2 timesfaster than the carbines. Also master pistoleers end up with a higher speed modifier, which makes the speed gap even higher. You should compare dps, not the damage you can do with a single shot, unless that single shot is the only thing needed to kill you.

Then you could also consider ham costs, which are definitely higher for carbines.

Anyway your point about armor piercing is a good one, and many people usually forget it when comparing different weapons.

Foxman, please do point out, also, when you quote rocket launcher statistics that it is a weapon with twenty charges that goes for 50k creds and is about 50% accurate at Master Commando.

So for the Carbineer to feel the 'suckage' that the rocket launcher is, their Laser Carbine with the Medium Armor piercing would only hit half the time, cost 30k credsand be able to shoot 50 times before it went away.

Furthermore... and I'll say this again, if you have gotten a flamedot and you can still see (IE graphics arent exploding around you) You've been hit by a Bounty Hunter and not a Commando. Fire dot does not mean Commando. Bounty Hunters do them helle lot more often in PVP than the commandos do.

Thank you.

"Ok, i found this pic of a scatter pistol (yes its krayt, sliced, and powered up) and am wondering if we have any chance to top this."

No. Pistols are broken. They cost no HAM. They can be sliced down to minimum speed. They can do up to 400 damage. They do just about every damage type. AND pistols can do every special move out there... dizzy, stun, multiple targets, knockdown... you name it, a pistol in the hands of a BH or pistoleer (Or more commonly in PVP a BH/Pistoleer combo) will take everyone out.

BH is designed to be a sneaky hunt down and kill from suprise class in the Star Wars Universe. It simply isn't. I've seen lone bounty hunters take out all comers as they run around just outside Anchorhead on Starsider. Get five people togehter? The Bounty Hunter kills all five. Including me, And I'm a Master Commando with some smuggler I'm getting rid of to get some Carbine and Rifle

Why dooes this occur? Not only do BHs have the widest range of special abilities and the HIGHEST speed of any class.... they also use pistols almost exclusively which is by far the most broken weapon in the game.

Don't believe me? Go get a decent FWG and Novice BH. I have three people now in my guild who've done it. Every last one of them says "oooh my gooooood'

*shrug* I suppose I should quit kvetching about balance and just go play a bounty hunter.

Kaffis:

Quote:

"Quick point -- I could only wish that flamethrowers were heat damage. Then you'd have to use expensive expendable weapons on our expensive AT-STs. But no, alas, they remain blast. The second most commonly vulnerable PvE out there (I think stun edges it out, but stun doesn't have AR3 or whatever weapons), and pretty high up there on player armors, too (most of the ones with good blast are pretty useless for everything else)."

I can guarantee you Kaffis, that flamethrowers do heat damage, and are AR 0. Guarantee you.

The launcher pistol... kind of a little runty brother to the scatter, does blast. Again, ar 0.

The rocket launcher has an AR > 0, i think its 3, and it does a lot of blast damage. It also cost me 35K for a sub-par one on Tarquinas yesterday. 32 charges.

Flame DOTs can be applied to ATSTs, though I tihnk thats a bug, and I think they were supposed to fix that in the last patch. Thats how we can kill ATSTs with our FTs.... I've done it once, but it isn't sporting... and I'm a neutral now anyhow.

When it comes to you draining your own action pool, I agree, carbines are incredibly high in HAM costs. They were my least favorite weapon when I was getting master marksman. Like I've been saying, I came over here to agree with you all, not to argue.... though I do love a good debate.

However, get buffs for PvP..... they work wonders. And yes, if we COULD spam our specials, we would probably complain about THAT instead. But we can't. And also, just to "auto-fire" Special Heavies or Grenades, it takes about 150 Health and Action, too. ... Can you actually kill yourself with a carbine special? heh, if so, that amuses me(in an 'I'm very sorry' sort of way)... but the game supposedly won't allow that. I understand you could go real low... but then just heal yourself? Especially if you're not "even targetted by [your] opponents." A good stim b can give you back 600 HAM.

Quote:

"Am I bothered by commandos? I sure wouldn't be if they'd change flamethrowers off of blast damage and perhaps knock the AP down a notch (it's clearly meant to be the anti-personnel weapon, not anti-vehicle) and subject all DOTs (including BH and CM dots) to the 25% rule."

So, in other words, you have no problems with commandos? Great!

Since.... FT does heat damage, FT AP is 0... unless you want -1, but I don't think they can do that... and our flame DOTs are constrained by the 25% PvP rule.... but maybe not on pets, im not sure, but then, I dont know if the 25% rule applies to pets in any case.

Quote:

"And don't complain about the 16m + melee penalty "paradox." It's called a balance to your power -- you're a support firepower profession, not necessarily a soloing one. Let your friend take the hits and there isn't a problem."

First, who cares if we're support. (I disagree in any case.)16m is still new melee range... and often melee mobs will switch targets for ONE hit off of your tank of choice, and then you're incapped and you can watch your tank die too.

Second, since your post is mostly PvP related, do you think a TKA will decide to beat on another TKA or a tender, juicy commando, kneeling at 16m, missing with an FT special?

Third, with your logic, all classes in SWG should be support classes. No one should be able to solo anything, except a BH and a mark... which maybe is the design concept, but it is not in place in the game, and neither is that what the players of the game WANT.

Lastly, I WAS NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT THE 2.5xMELEEPENALTY. Read what you quoted me on. I provided an EXAMPLE, of a situation when one class would take more damage than another in an identical situation.

Don't put words in my mouth.

Athein

this garbage about a BH mowing down five people is amazing. not amazingly true, it's amazing to me that anyone would stretch the truth so far out of proportioin.

i *am* a BH--and i am *good* at PvP. i fight live (not duels) just about every day, and win most of the time. not because of a template that is automatically uber, but because of capitalizing on what i have.

a BH standing killing five people at once?

BH can not buff himself. sure, we can go buy spices--like anyone else, or have a doctor buff us--like anyone else. but we don't haveany way to substantially increase our HAM without outside assisstance. additionally, we have next to no defensive modifiers (the entire BH tree yields +7 ranged defense, and you get that +7 when you get Master...which means dealing with Investigation for an obscene number of hours). consequently, while we are very proficient at dealing damage, we are also VERY susceptible to it. We don't magically suffer damage any different way than any other profession.

for that BH to be killing five people at a time, he would have to be killing all five of them so fast that they couldn't do any damage to him. with the specials we have, i can assure you that this just is *not* happening. it is not possible. when i do raids, i have my brother (master doctor) buff me, and i slap on ADV Composite with 60% res, then stand shoulder to shoulder with my brother so i am in range of his heals. beyond doing something like that, no BH is going to stand alone and kill five people (with elite combat professions) before they bring him down.

right now, for PvP, i am using a 1.1, 115-271 Scatter, and a 3.1, 49-389 Laser Carbine, plus a fast LLC (i vastly prefer speed to dmg with the LLC) at 3.0, 399-728.

with five people running at me, here would be a rough example of what i'd try to do:

scan targets...if i see a commando or doctor title, that guy is priority number 1--if i'm fighting 5 ppl, the last thing i want is to either catch a flame DoT, or be blasting away at the one guy almost guaranteed to have triple my H & A, PLUS the ability to heal it *AND* recover it while fighting...

so...the strategy? use /knockdownfire on the first target...as i am turning to /runrunrun, i am going to hotswap to my scatter and stick a /torsoshot on the KD'd guy. if he's a medic, taht will force his hand...if not...well...have fun burning.

then, i am going to run and try to target the four people chasing me, and i am going to try to /torsoshot each one if possible while running for the cover of buildings...

so i can heal. why? at this point, i should have been getting the poop shot out of me by FOUR PEOPLE, and since the Action cost on a Scatter pistol avgs about 48 (a good one is 47, a typical master-made scatter is 49), /torsoshot + Scatter = Elite + pick one. additionally, with my stats so drastically reduced (i can put on ADV Comp helmet, chest plate, and pants--nothing else. i am a Zabrak...and my helmet and chest plate were enc-sliced), i am burning *more* HAM with specials and heals. by throwing 1 /knockdownfire, and five /torsoshots, i am doing most of the work for whoever is fighting me.

i am not going to bother continuing. i can assure you, though...BH is fine for 1v1 fights...but we take damage like anyone else--while doing damage to ourselves faster than any profession except Carbineer...so this BS about ripping up five people at a time...psh.

btw...i *did* neglect earlier to factor DPS in my pistol vs carbines commentary...as far as HAM costs go, though...my scatter has an action cost of 47 (most i've seen avg 49), and the multiplier for /torsoshot makes standing and spamming it the rough equivalent of intentionally setting yourself up to get dropped by any marksman with /legshot2. that cost is higher than the highest single-stat cost on any of my carbines.

Pardon then, I appear to have missed a correction on the flamethrowers.

AP0 and heat damage still begs the question of me, though, how are you getting any kind of damage to stick on the AT-ST's anyways? They're, what, 70% resistant and AR3, right? So non-blast damage applied to them shouldinflict .30*.50*.50*.50 (for AP0) damage -- or around 4%. Do the DOT's ignore armor and resistance types, then? That's the imbalance there, I suppose.

As for killing yourself -- sure, I can't actually incapacitate myself until something takes a swipe at me -- but I'm still relegated to doing normal shots on a type of weapon that was balanced to be doing specials -- standing next to a guy who can do his specials, for which his gun is balanced, all day long. The difference is enough that I might as well have incapacitated for all I'm contributing to the combat.

Would I like it if we were all support -- or rather that we were all playing a role in a group? Yeah, I think it's more fun to fight with others. Am I naieve enough to think that any game after EQ is going to force grouping as much as it does? No, people think they want to solo, then complain because it getsboring fast. In any case, this skill system is designed such that you can line up multiple support professions and be supporting yourself -- medic/combatant, for instance. That doesn't make the medic any less of a support profession, just because a medic/pistoleer can solo. And, to me, carbineer isn't focused on raw damage, but on AE's and crowd control -- which makes it, to me, a support profession. Can one AE kite if you have some medicinal skills to patch yourself up on the fly? Yes, or at least we used to be able to. Does that mean that in a group role we're not support? No.

Similarly, I'm sure a commando/CH, for example, can apply flamethrower damage just as easily if his pet is tanking as if a fellow player were. Thus, that particular template is capable of soloing, yet the commando class is still more or less support since it's not suited to tank for itself. That's all I'm saying.

Ok, time to quote you so I get this right:

"Since.... FT does heat damage, FT AP is 0... unless you want -1, but I don't think they can do that... and our flame DOTs are constrained by the 25% PvP rule.... but maybe not on pets, im not sure, but then, I dont know if the 25% rule applies to pets in any case."

The 25% rule doesn't apply to pets, and I guess I just wasn't aware of how strong the DOT's were in the first place if the 25%applies in PvP -- the last time I fought a flamethrower, I recall my Doc buddy easily completely healed me 2 or 3 times over from the DOT alone (we were on Lok, and had to run a bit to find water). Good for that -- but does it ignore armor and resistances (like I mentioned it seems like they must)?

I'll be satisfied with flamethrowers when I'm sure that they, and their DOT, obey armor checks and resistances. And when that's true, even at full strength (since it's against a pet) 3 DOTs shouldn't be taking down an AT-ST -- that would be 25x10k (25 to take into account the 4% that I established should be applying to flamethrowers if they are indeed heat and AP0) in 3 hits, which judging by what the other commando posting in this thread said, is clearly impossible -- even if we were to assume that the heavy weapons counting as melee hits were still in, and thus 10k hits were possible, that 10k would be reduced to 400, which the AT-ST would laugh at. So I'm just saying something here's still messed up, and will remain messed up until commandos have to expend their (yes, expensive, I agree) weapons to take out the very time-intensive investments that are AT-STs. Fight play-time with play-time, I suppose you could say.

Finally, as I said in my original post -- if grenades and rocket launchers are really that broken that a small group of commandos (maybe 2-5) can't take out an AT-ST because they're all missing, or what have you, then that needs to be fixed, too. But this deal where AT-STs are vulnerable to and regularly being taken out by the one heavy weapon that's *not* a time-investment is what amounts to griefing.

Kaffis:

You're totally right. Many commandos think the fact that the DOT for the flamethrower is not calculated against armor is a bug. So, its not, and that was my point: the only reason we can take down ATSTs is because of a bug in the FT, which, if you read our forums, in general we want that fixed. To reiterate: DOTs do ignore armor... which if intended is probably not the best decision, or it is a bug. We want it fixed.

We agree... we like that RLs can smack ATSTs, but, again, in general, dislike that FT dots can.... mainly because it make nerfs cries very loud.

Reading your whole post, it seems like we're in almost total agreement.

The reason the DOTs maul so badly against ATSTs is that they are calculated on BASE damage, before resistancereductions... at least, we think thats how it works.

With my "support" comments, I think I was mainly going for the idea that you are talking about.... and that you can be a Master commando, or you could basically master 2 elite professions, for the same costs. And I don't see the skill point balance that should be there actually in the game.

This has nothing to do with my point, really, just responding to what you said because I tkink grenades are funny:

RLs have terrible cost and HAM cost, but they're f-ing impressive.

Grenades on the other hand... LOL. Terrible HAM costs.. and... example: Proton Grenade: 1500-4000 damage, about, 200 H+A, about, Blast Radius:10m....... ideal range:...... 10m. Someone wasn't fully sober when they though that up. We can use the nades to hurt mobs and insta-incap ourselves

Alas....

I'm tired, so if it sounds like I was disagreeing with you somewhere rather than just explaining, I'm sorry.... I wasn't. Stupid 150 minute Organic Reactions Lab 1 Exam.

Athein