Carbineer Archive

I have been a Carbineer from Day 1 and a Squad Leader as well. Yesterday, I pulled the plug and surrendered all my carbineer boxes and sold all my carbines. I could no longer justify being a carbineer and I want to explain why so that on some odd chance the Devs can fix the class...I doubt they can and you will see why.

1. First, I want to point out all of this refers to group play since that is what I enjoy and being a Squad Leader I spend alot of time in groups. This discussion is not relevant to solo or PvP.

2. The damage from a carbine, while massive, is not group friendly. The same can be said about Rifles. The truth of the game is that in the vast majority of targets killed by groups, the target drops from health. Thus, anything that doesn't hit for health is a waste. The Pistoleer Correspondant has done extensive experiments on this and the fastest way for a pistoleer to kill a target is with health targeted skills as opposed to other skills which hit random pool but do much bigger damage. Action bleeds pointless. Legshot pointless aside from the Stun debuff. Cripple/Burstshot? Half of those hits are hitting action or mind.

A side point of this is that carbines do quite a bit of damage. I always get more experience when I using my carbine than I do using a pistol which means I do more damage. However, the target always drops faster when I use a pistol because I target just the health. This fact brings me to an interesting thing I watch for when I group with people and take note of as it influences who I invite on future hunts.Who uses the skills that cause big damage and get them big experience and who uses the skills that do the most health damage thus killing the target faster. If you are wondering, the skill that does the most health damage in the carbineer tree is ScatterShot2.

I want to stress that its the same for every gun whether pistols, carbines, rifles, etc. The fastest way to kill a mob is to target 1 pool and in groups that pool is Health and therefore Bodyshot and Healthshot (health bleed) are the most group friendly combat skills in the game. This is a fundamental flaw in the HAM system and the way each of the 3 weapons can only specifically target 1 bar.

3. This being said, you are probably outraged at me for pointing out the above. However, aside from damage potential, carbines used to be awesome in groups for their crowd control. Even if they were doing all action damage, and the target dying by health, a carbineer was always needed in a group because of the posture change and knockdowns...particularily the AoE ones. They were invaluable and IME the only way to hunt big game without resorting to a creature tank. They were awesome at it and their damage-type was irrelevant.

The upcoming patch, which adds a 30 second timer to knockdown and posture change per mob changes this. And I want to clarify, thats per mob not per person. So you can't have 1 carbineer knockdown, then another, then another to chain knockdown a target (which IMO would be excellent use of tactics...but thats another discussion).One and only 1 from a group can knockdown/posture the target then the mob is immune from them for 30 seconds. Bye Bye any use for carbines in a group.

4. The AR argument is not as strong as everyone things. An AR2 gun doing energy damage, when most mobs are AR1 with energy resist is just as strong as using a Heat or Acid weapon on a vulnerable creature. Any carbineer worth his salt carries 3 carbines: Laser (AR2, energy), EE3(AR0 heat) and DXR6 (AR1 acid). Very often a mob is easier to kill with the EE3 or DXR6 than the Laser. Pistols have the exact options...FWG5 (AR0 heat) and DX2 (AR1 Acid). /examine the mob, note his vulnerability, use weapon that fires the vulnerability type.

That being said, the Laser Carbine is probably all around best weapon in the game but it is not the best in all situations and is not the be-all-end-all people make it out to be.

5. The HAM costs on carbines are rediculous and require you to keep secondary stats high to counter HAM drain. For classes requiring points in mind, the pistol is the best weapon since it uses the least about of HAM allowing you to boost Mind and it's secondary stats. This is very relevant to Squad Leaders and Medical professions. Thoughmany will argue you can just heal yourself. I will counter, when you are healing yourself, you are not 1. using a special to do extra damage to kill the target faster and 2. not healing the tank who needs it.

6. AoE skills are not as good as people believe. They rule the beginning planets. However, they have limited use on the hard planets where accidentally aggroing an extra creature means the death of the whole group. Further, they are suicidal to use in any of the dungeons. There, you end up firing through the walls and hitting mobs all over drawing aggro on things all over the place.

7. Carbines do have one very incredible use and that is to level Medic/Doctors/Combat Medics. The rediculous amout of HAM cost on carbines results in massvie "damage" to oneself resulting in an experience goldmine for someone wanting medic exp. Bring a medic along and spam fullautosingle2 - ~150 HAM each shot using a laser carbine.

So, Carbines offer little to the group in terms of damage since when you are in a group you want to hit health as much as possible. Any other skill is just a selfish skill to do as much random damage as possible and thus get as much exp as possible. Noting this, and playing a Squad Leader, I feel I cannot use a weapon that cannot target health specifically. Carbines did have their use in crowd control and that made me ignore the health damage issue and the HAM issue- until the Devs nerfed the ability of carbines to provide crowd control. I have been playing my Carbineer for the last week by not spamming any skill effected by the knockdown charges. What is left is a class that does, big damage, though randomly. I came to the conclusion the class was no longer group friendly and as such I am moving on, sadly.

Ultimately, the HAM issue is complex and is not easily resolved and the knockdowns had to be nerfed because they were too powerful in PvP. There is no way to balance PvP and PvE (I am not aware of a game that has ever pulled this off) so i believe the crowd control ability of the carbineer is gone forever.

Nova, that was indeed well written. I also noticed this when hunting in a 20 group last night on Dantooine. Health is almost always first to go. But, pistoleers should't always have the right of way, doing H damage. They should use their random specials when there are more carbines in the group, OR when the A bar is shorter than the H. When I want the animal dead quick, I use full auto one and overcharge shot. More often than not, they hit H. When I want a huge amt of xp, I use Actionshot 1 (sorry, not even carbineer yet), and LS1+2. With another carbineer in the group doing the same thing, we could actually kill with Action hits before the pistols could kill (usually because Action was the shortest). I would average around 1600 xp.

That being said, I think all professions should have at least one special that can attack H, A, and M. That way, before each animal is taken out, the leader can decide which bar is shortest (or which people he wants to get xp this round), then the animal can be taken out effectively. Pistoleers should still have huge H specials, same for carbine and rifle, but we should have the one saving grace move that allows us to target any pool.

And I'd say put this at Novice, so it can be used by all.

So basically your argument was "HAM costs are too high and AOE isn't that good." Okay, now go try being a Rifleman and have fun crawling back to Carbines.

I agree entirely, and well-said. Without crowd control there isn't much reason to be a carbineer in PvE, and in PvP we're far outclassed by Riflemen in the later stages of the skill trees. Posture down and knockdown made up for the HAM costs and actionpool target.

While the bulk of the Pistoleer specials are of dubious benefit themselves, bodyshot2 (available to Marksman pistol users)isby farthe best teamPvE damage-dealing special in the game.

Nova,

I hate to hear you are withdrawing from your profession. I have gathered a great deal of knowledge from you about the weapons and gameplay over the course of time and amount of posts you have vested in the game... Good luck and let us know what happens out there.

Raydyn Medlock

Carbineer/Medic/CH

Okay, so given the state of SWG and known, upcoming changes, what would you choose for a character template? Seriously, I thought I knew what I wanted to be when I "grew up" in-game, but I can't keep track of all the endless, mindless, chaotic, untested nerfing and other changes that keep happening, and now I'm just dazed and confused.

Bulloney.

I charge shot is an excellent skill addition to the action shot line and the 30 second timer servers no detriment to te class. I don't think i've ever needed to use knockdown twice anyhow.

I'm surrendering my pistol skills tonight to advance more into carbineer. Carbines are extremely good at crowd control even without the knockdown thanks to action shots and the cripple shot skill serves as an excellent disabling shot in pvp (it butchers your action secondaries with wounds as do the bleed shots).

Very very high damage specials even though they're random pool or all pool they still kick major arse. Note to user, a 33% chance of 1500 damage to any pool is just as fast at damaging health as 100% chance of 300-500 damage only to health pool....

I call the thread starting post...bulloney.

note to self, proofread posts when you can't edit

I meant to say 33% chance of 1500 to health is just as fast as 100% chance of 300-500.

And another thing i just realized, why are you always letting pistol dictate the damage pool?

Grab some other carbine users, you'll decimate monsters like crazy and leave hte pistol wimps out in the cold unable to control the crowd.

For a while, a 30-second timer was going to be added to posture changes as well as knockdowns, for all PvP and PvE combat. I don't know for certain that this has changed, but I've seen rumors that knockdown/posture change timers will only apply to PvP.

Regardless, I use ActionShot1/2 often, and frequently more than once every 30s, to keep a mob from getting to me. Especially AS2, when I'm being swarmed, is the only way to survive many encounters.

Remember, the original sanity check was for a 30 second timer on ALL knockdowns and posture changes.

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HeDrums wrote:

For a while, a 30-second timer was going to be added to posture changes as well as knockdowns, for all PvP and PvE combat. I don't know for certain that this has changed, but I've seen rumors that knockdown/posture change timers will only apply to PvP.

Remember, the original sanity check was for a 30 second timer on ALL knockdowns and posture changes.

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Where are you guys getting the "posture change" timer?

I have read *all* of the DEV posts and none of them say "posture" change ... they are specifically targeting (the posts) the KD timer.

I would love to see where anybody sees a "posture change" timer being put in ... cause I guess I am just blind.

KD is one thing ... I think it's not right that you can be spammed KD's and not be able to do something cause you are sitting on your arse ... but a posture change only means that you can not advance ... I hope they are not nerfing that as that is not a major problem.

Hero out

Here's the original post that started this whole debate:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=383515&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

But the main point is:

Added 30 second timer to knockdown/posture changes

Anyway, they did specifically mention both knockdown and posture changes, which is why I got my panties all in a bunch. I don't know if they've backed off this lately, but I doubt it.