Carbineer Archive
Thread: Thinking about Carbineer
Sorry man, this forum is not as active as some of the others due to the state of the profession. I'll offer what advice I can give.
Carbineers to my mind have the biggest advantages in the form of state effects, but also the biggest disadvantages in the form of HAM costs. there aer a few people trolling around who have aster Carb and BH, carb, and they swear by it. I believe it does require you to be on food 100% of the time though to not kill yourself.
Well, the problem is that you're asking a bunch of carbineers for information about being a pistoleer. 
I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what I can about being a carbineer and you can ask for the pros and cons of being a pistoleer in the pistoleer forum.
So, what's the point of carbineer? Well, carbineers are, more or less, the "crowd control" profession of the ranged combat world. Just about everything we do involved a status effect or a posture change. From long range, our accuracy isn't great, nor is it very good at point blank. We don't fire as fast as a pistoleer, but we can do more damage per shot, so it evens out.
Being a carbineer, your basic job is to keep enemies at bay. Make them kneel, knock them down, spit in their ear, whatever - just keep them away from you and the rest of the group. That's pretty much the point of being a carbineer.
So what's good about being a carbineer? Well, you can keep enemies away from you quite well and do a decent amount of damage so it's quite possible to solo rather tough beasties as a carbineer as long as you can take them on one or two at a time. You can target the action pool specifically (through normal damage and bleed damage) to concentrate your attacks.
What's not so good about being a carbineer? Well, quite a few of the skills are broken. Leg Shot 3 is the same as Leg Shot 2. Charge Shot 2 does nothing. The dizzy effect on the full auto attacks doesn't stick. Also, we attack the action pool. While that's great when you're alone, it's not so great when you're fighting with a group. No one else can target the action pool so, while you're widdling away that green bar, everyone else is working on red. So, when you're group fighting, you can throw the leg shots and your bleeds out the window. However, when you're with a group, your job is probably going to be crowd control, not damage dealing. Also, most of the carbineer specials are VERY costly to your HAMs. Get some medic skills.
So those are some of the ups and downs of being a carbineer. All of the posture change and status effect specials are great, but the high HAM costs of those specials and some of the broken specials make up for it.
It's not for everyone, but I really enjoy it.
I was a master gunfighter for 3 and a half months before I surrendered it to try carbines.
At the same time I was Rouge in Smuggler and Flame4 in commando and novice medic.
I'm now 2/4/2/4 in carbineer and I like it a lot. Pistols are lame because it's the same thing every time for the most part. (mouse) "click click click" (health) "tick tick tick". Carbineer has more variety in my opinion and for me that makes it a lot more fun. I like the states you can apply and how it helps others you play with a lot. Now that the non CH pets are worth nothing I find myself using attacks that tend to keep them away from me. I’m not sure - if you are solo you might like pistoleer better because of the close range fighting. It’s hard to tell a Torton bull to stay at ideal range of 30m or so while you can hit him.
If you want to be like everyone else then go MGF and dabble in some other pistol stuff, but it lacks good tactical options IMO.
I wish I hadn’t wasted the time with pistoleer, it’s only _badass_ if you can do smuggler and or BH stuff with it (and still lacks good tactical options). Again this is my opinion and my experience as a MGF
To each their own!
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KolTaggar wrote:
I have to say, the fact that Carbine targets the action pool is a huge advantage in PvP.
That's an excellent point. I never PvP so I easily overlooked this one. Most people's specials pull from their action pools the most. Therefore, if you can hit the same pool that they're pulling from, you've just made it so that your opponent is helping you kill him/her. 
give up lightning 2? give up over 5000 hit points in one shot? no way no way no way.
Well, when I was BH Avenger, yes you could do 5000 damage with LLC against creatures,but it sucks in PvP.
As a Master Carbineer (no BH carbine tree either), I own BH that try to PvP with the LLC. Chargeshot, Crippleshot. (Repeat once) then Burstshot till dead.
Easiest PvP for me.
Very seldom use llc in pvp, only if i got them kd and dizzy. But who only plays to pvp? If anything, id get rid of all investigation and pistols if i was going to work up carbineer. you can get the ranged mitigation in countersurgency. with bh confusion shot and carbineer charge shot, then follow with the llc single 2, its over.