Carbineer Archive

Suppresion fire 1 and 2 are low damage, low HAM attacks with a posture down effect. The posture down would be useful except forfour reasons: First, it doesn't prevent an opponent with a ranged attack from firing back (which is the idea of supression fire, in real life), second, it actually grants them defensive and accuracy bonuses for being ina lower position, third, there are other, better specials (action shot 1 and2) which have the same effect, but with the added effect of a bleeder,and fourth, it's only useful purpose, pinning down an opponent, especially a melee opponent, got severely weakened with implimentation of the knockdown/posturechange timer. Further, suppresion fire 2 currently doesn't have the cone effect that it's supposed to have.

That's why when I noticed that my alt character on a different server, who is going up the brawler profession tree, actually gets an extremely usefuleffecton a specialshe got at novice brawler, one which most ranged professions have no special for, delay,I realized: this is exactly what supression fire SHOULD be doing instead of posture down. It's more in keeping with the concept of supression fire in real life, it's useful, and if they could manage to make supression fire 2 work propperly, it would be a huge boon to the carbineer profession, reinstate our raison d'etre (crowd control), and make supression fire 2 worthy of a fourth tier skillbox.

It's not enough to balance the carbineer class with everyone else in itself, but it's a start.

As a carbineer with the same bias as you I must say ... I like it.

When people speak sense, only the other sensible people hear it. Devs, please be sensible people. Listen to this man.

Good thought.

I'll toss in my idea for increasing suppression fire usefulness.

Posture changes are pretty worthless, even against melee. Why? Because any melee who's paying attention, can be back up and standing with a press of the key. No, what posture needs is to be less immediate. I can drop from standing to prone (and firing) instantly -- and then stand up instantly next shot. It's not very tactical nor does it require much foresight.

What if, instead, voluntary posture changes had timers, and furthermore, were incremental? Like it took 3 seconds (just a number for simplicity) to go from prone (or KD, once you're able to act) to kneeling, and then another timer from kneeling to standing? Forcing posture changes would then be much more tactically useful, and the roll to standing, etc. moves in the ranged support line would have meaning. If time isn't critical (ie, you're not being beaten on by a melee while prone), you stand up incrementally over time. But, if you need to be standing, and you need it NOW, spend 50 HAM or whatever it is to roll to standing.

I do like the suppression fire causes delay, though. Perhaps both could be implemented, by adding moves. We *are* missing a move at master, for instance...

It doesn't necessarily have to be as potent as the melee delay, either. Even a 5 second delay (warcry is a 10 second delay, I believe) would be nice.

I love the people who go around picking randomthreads and marking down all of the posts on them. It means they've managed to chase a greifer out of the game!

This is a great idea for recovering the utility of the suppression shots which are currently worse than redundant. The amount of delay could easily be tweaked for balance.