Carbineer Archive

Not really. The key here is dependence on another living player to make you effective in combat. I have to heal myself in combat to use my HAM at a decent rate so i picked up novice medic for stim B's.

Even if a combat medic could buff, what difference would that make? I know plenty of doctors that come into the fiedl with us. If you have to rely on another living person to buff you then its not really the same thing.

Which I fully understand, but the GCW (which is whatmost PvP is supposed to be centered around) is meant to be fought by large groups of really smelly men and/or women. The dependence could be related.

nice write up indalamar. however, one important point to consider when facing humanoids with ranged weapons is that forcing them to a lower posture actually improves their ability to hit you. granted it works pretty nicely against creatures that don't have ranged attacks. (hmm, i wonder if bagerasets have improved ability to hit when they're kneeling and spitting at you?)

sehkmahbh, your statement about taking on creatures with 10k ham bars (and soloing them if i'm reading you correctly) makes me realize i must be one of the ones holocron is talking about when he says the vast majority of players are playing in a suboptimal fashion. maybe i'm just a wuss, but i wouldn't even dream of attacking something with a single pool higher than 3000ish. i have to admit, though, that i'd love to watch someone taking something that size out by themself.

maybe it's because i don't hunt the big game that i don't have as many complaints about the carbine as many others do (although i will admit that some special moves don't do what i expect them to do based on the description). and i will of course agree that special moves can really sap you, but a decent powerup that lowers special move costs can help a great deal. especially if it lowers costs for 2 pools, like action 25%/health 12%.

happy hunting everyone! and enjoy the galaxy!
nils

-when you see nm don't think nevermind, think nils makaby
kauri/corellia/tyrena

Ok Im going to explain why carbine is "in theory" the absolute best of the gun lines and why "in practice" its not. So you all don't think I'm coming out of left field with no experience or knowledge on the subject, I've been playing MMORPGs for the past 8 years now. If you played SB then you probably know who I am as I am the guild leader of Nurfed so you will appreciate that I know my stuff when it pertains to these things.

Moving on, when I was deciding which gun to go with I started reading many of the boards as well as reading up on what the special moves do for each. My original decision was to go with carbines but my room mate was telling me that pistols were "The best" weapons. So I went with the pistol idea for a day or two but kept reading on carbines. After a lot of reading I decided carbine (if sony ever fixes the bugs) will be the hands down most powerful gun line to use and here is why.

The reason that carbine is currently weak is not a development flaw, it's because of bugs. Anyone who has read over what the carbine specials are supposed to do knows that FA1&2 and FAA1&2 are both supposed to cause 3 status changes, blind, stun, and dizzy. As well anyone who has used any of these specials knows full well that the stun and blind portions work but the dizzy component is bugged. The dizzy effect will fire and wear off immediately. The dizzy component according to all the doccumented data on the game and including listed duration in the help guide say that the dizzy component should last about 30 seconds (the same duration as the other 2 components). Now some people who are less informed may say "Who cares how does that make our class weaker". For those who are unaware of what dizzy does, dizzy status makes the effected person fall down any time they change postures, it also prevents them from standing up once they have been knocked down until the dizzy effect wears off.

To summarize every real problem that exists with the carbineer class stems from this dizzy component not working. Carbine is designed to be a series of moves chained together ( as the devs stated specials were meant to be used , not just spamming 1 special infinately). If you look carefully at the carbine tree you will see that nearly half of thier special moves are designed to either knockdown the target or force a posture change on them. Some people complain that Charge shot is worthless because "even though it always knocks the person down it only lasts 1 second".I say that special is functioning exactly how it should be, unfortunately its counterpart, Full Auto, is not working and as anyone should know a combo is designed to work hand in hand with something else, if you only have half a combo then of course its worthless. Take that "crappy" 1 second KD which always works and imagine you just used it on someone who you just dizzied using FA, voila opponent down until they are A) dead B) dizzy wears off C) a doctor fixes thier dizzy.

To further illistrate the potential of the Carbineer (assuming the devs get the dizzy component fixed) I point out that Full Auto Area causes its status effects to everyone it hits. If you can dizzy a group of people or mobs and you then follow it up with say Action Shot 2 which is an AE with a posture change component on it then with 2 attacks you have just knocked down everyone within your AEs and they are down until dizzy wears off.

It is my beliefe that this is the exact reason that the entire carbine class seems completely out of whack right now and why even the HAM costs seem screwed. To me it would appear that the ham costs are Supposed to be through the roof for carbine specials since (in theory) 2 carbine specials chained should be able to take multiple targets out of a fight at once via dizzy/posture change combos. Of course the HAMs seem to suck when you are trying to spam 1 more infinately when its designed to basically be a 2 part combo that is equal to victory.

Hopefully more of you now see what the REAL problem with the class is which we should be pushing to get fixed. Worry about everything else later, THIS is why the class is broken and THIS is what will make the class amazingly powerful. "Get our dizzy component working correctly on the entire Full Auto line" should be the new quotes to the devs.

p.s. I hate registering for boards so I never make posts , but I had yet to see anyone bring this up and it seems to be the most serious problem with the class.

As far as Dizzy is concerned for PVE humanoids, if it did work properly a dizzy followed with a bleed and posture change (AS 1 or 2) would allow you to move back to 65 M and force the mob to move to you. Also as a CH/Carbineer, I find that when MOBs are kneeling/prone, nothing like sending in a melee pet to force them to do a posture change. As for the AI of MOBs most of the time, I find that they try to move to their ideal range, so if you interrupt that, they would knock themselves down.

I have to agree with Indalamar that the majority of the problems with the class are bugs, and our abilities are far weaker than our conterparts due to these bugs. This makes Carbines far inferior to the other 2 ranged classes right now, in terms of the overall (PVE/PVP and Solo/group) aspects of the game.

Sehkmahbn is also right too, although fixing these will help improve the class, there are several flaws in the design that still will keep us on the bottom of the barrel.

1. I did not intend to pick up Medic and Entertainer when I first designed my character idea, although I have enjoyed some of the skills they have provided, they are a necessity for me to solo (even more so now with the changes to CH). This should not be the case, with the larger/tougher MOBs (Humbabas are a good example) I can take one out with taking zero or one hit and I will be below half HAM from using AS1/AS2 to stop it and Leg Shot 2 for damage. I would either need to be Medic and Entertainer, or spend way to much downtime compared to the other classes (this is strictly for soloing). Since this is a MMO we all know that either by choice or not, soloing will always be a part of these games. There is no justifyable reason to make soloing harder for Carbineers compared to Pistol and Rifle, this is plain and simple a design flaw.

2. Master Carbineer has no value compared to Rifle and Pistol Master, with them getting 1 and 2 new special attacks respectively, there is no real reason to strive for Master as a Carbineer, the plusses in skills like accuracy that we receive really do not compare. Honestly I do not know how well the Master special attacks for those to professions work or if they are useful, but they SHOULD be the most powerful (either through combination or straight up) of the professions repertoire, if that is not the case, then those profs have design flaws too.

The main problem and my main gripe is that the game is frankly still in Beta testing. Whether you refuse to beleive it or not, the problems that Carbineers (among many others) are facing is an example of an unfinished product being released too early. We are not just at the level of class balancing, which I could accept without complaint from a game I was paying for. The bugs and flaws that we are ironing out, are proof that either by deadlines or lack of attention to detail, this game was not complete when it was shipped. Various problems have occured because of it and many more will continue because of it. Two of myRL friends have already quit, and I see it getting worse before it gets better. This latest patch has taken a nice step forward in many areas, but also took two steps back in the rest. My question is how long will I (and everyone else for that matter) have to pay for a sub-par product, before SOE realizes that a MAJOR change is required (and that means severe downtime on all the servers)?

This is off topic sehk but just out of curiosity could you tell me how you spent your skill points?

Thanks.

I'm kind of in Nils camp, for the same reasons. I guess having the extreme razor's edge in quality equipment must make a big difference. I never get the damage I'm seeing professed in this forum. However, I didn't pay 40k for my laser, either.

atimes:

My character is finished and it stands as:

Master Marksman
Master Scout
Master carbineer
BH carbine 1-3
Novice Medic(for stim B's)

The key to soloing mobs of 10k ham or more isnt about how much ham, its about their difficulty. Take slower melee creatures. You can kit them, hit an actionshot every now and then and just let your default attack chew them through. Thats where picking a high damage laser carb comes into play.

Powerups can help things yes, but still, all things being equal, we are not balanced. We can lower our ham a bit with power ups, but so can pistoleers, so your just back at square one.

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Mule wrote:
I'm kind of in Nils camp, for the same reasons. I guess having the extreme razor's edge in quality equipment must make a big difference. I never get the damage I'm seeing professed in this forum. However, I didn't pay 40k for my laser, either.

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Mule, don't even waste the 40k, I payed 30k for an ACRID Carbine on Naritus, and the New DH 17 I bought from Borman (on Naritus) far exceeds it. Even though it is AR0 compared to AR1, the Damage output is Higher, both min and max, speed isA LOTfaster and HAM is considerably lower. Using it in combat the AR is cancelled out by the damage differences and my DPS is higher with lower HAM costs.

going with a DH17 is only going to be useful against lower AR mobs regardless of the damage. If you take a AR0 carbine against a AR2 mobs your damage is going to be cut drastically.

Im about to log for the night but before I log just wanted to say. I already adressed the comment about humanoids, you probably just missed that response. Dizzy + Charge shot = dead humanoid. To further demonstrate my statement about HOW powerful we can be with buffs. Fully buffed tonight I ran around on dathomir and with all my non mind stats around 1600+ and using only Action Shot 2 I soloed up to 9 Giant Baz Nitches at a time. Night gents.

I can agree with the fact that dizzy needs to be fixed. I've been hit by dizzy/kd in PVP and can personally attest to the fact that it sucks. After being dizzied and then knocked down by a bh, he could have molested me for 30 seconds while I tried to get up and proceeded only to fall on my ass repeatedly. Dizzy + posture change/kd is powerful and should cost alot of HAM to use. The only problem I have is the fact that there's a belief that I have to buff my character to be an effective combatant. How does that work?I play mostly from 8am-5pm EST. Considering the player population from 8am to roughly 1pm is non existant, what do you think the chances are that I'm going to find a dr who can buff worth a crap are? Not very high. The complaint that I have is that there's an inbalance between the three ranged weapon specializations. You can't really compare an EQ paladin/warrior relationship to one in Galaxies. A paladin would be a type of hybrid class, like a combat medic or bounty hunter, whereas if you're looking at warrior, they would be more like the distinction you see between carbineer, pistoleer, rifleman. What I'm really interested in, is keeping the balance between similar classes, IE pistoleer/rifleman/carbineer or fencer/swordsman/pikeman. Make it so that these classes are even, and then worry about nerfing the other classes.

Ok let me see how I can explain this a little better for you Sehk cuz you seem to just not grasp the whole thing about HAMs that Im saying. Yes Pistoleers havelower HAM costs and yes Pistoleers could get buffed just like we could. BUT carbine styles (if working correctly across the board) would be FAR more superior then pistoleer styles. Ok lets try rough numbers say Pistoleers have a special that costs them 50 ham total and does 100 dmg , basically they can spam thier attack non stop, then lets say that we have an attack that does 400 dmg but costs 200 ham, now we wouldnt be able to spam our attack Near as much as a pistoleer considering the ham costs. Then lets say both the pistoleer and the carbineer are fully buffed , when fully buffed by a master doctor HAM costs are almost 0 so lets just use 10 for now. ThePistoleer's attack goes from 50 HAM to 10 HAM and still hits for 100. The Carbineer's attack goes from 200 HAM to 10 HAM but still hits for 400. Is this starting to make more sense to you? This can be further compounded by looking at attack speeds between carbines and pistols, my room mate is a pistoleer and Im a carbineer. His weapon after being sliced and factoring in +speed is going to cap out basically regardless of which pistol he uses. Now with a Carbine you have a LOT more room to work because you can get a carbine down to cap speed but it takes more work "Which is a GOOD thing" because that means you dont have wasted +speed. If Pistol_01 has a dmg spread of 50-120 and a speed of 2.4 then that pistol when all is said and done is going to be at 50-120, spd 1.0. At the same time take a carbine with 75-175 dmg spd 3.0, after all is said and done that carbine is going to be at the same speed as the pistol so it will be a 75-175 spd 1.0. Now factor in how much bettr a carbine is potentialy then a pistol and factor in the example I was giving with HAM costs. Yes Carbine HAMs are through the roof BUT thats because if they werent then every person in the game with a carbine would be running around soloing 9 GBN at a time with no assistance. Even buffed and on a good day a Pistoleer couldnt accomplish anywhere NEAR the same things that a carbineer can. Carbines are potentially powerful and we pay for that power via HAM costs.

I'm sure someone will say "but I shouldnt need outside help to solo". Thats fine and dandy because you Dont, But you can't expect to walk up to the hardest mobs in the game and solo it wihtout help. As I said the Carbineers are the warriors of SWG. Without buffs yeah we can solo some stuff but we cant solo near as much as a CH (read necro) BUT at the same time if you give the CH buffs and the Carbineer Buffs , the CH wont really be able to do anything harder because he has peaked in power without buffs. But the carbineer with buffs just gained the power to go from killing 1 mob at a time to 10+ at a time simply from recieving a little outside help in the form of buffs. I really can't explain this any better it's a very simple concept to grasp and the people who understand it will be completely happy with thier carbineers once the devs fix all the bugs with our styles. The people who can't grasp what Im saying are the ones who even after all the bugs are fixed wont be happy because they can't go out and solo a Dark Jedi Master.