Pistoleer Archive

I've been thinking for a week or two where I'd like the profession to go, and I think I've come up with some fairly good ideas. I'd like to share them with the rest of the community.

I posted a fairly...unpopular...view a week or two back that pistols should not be the fastest weapons in the game. I still think that should be true. I still think in order of speed it should be Carbineer, Pistoleer, Riflemen. I don't think there should be a hard cap on speed. Rifles can fire as fast as a carbine, in fact they're often the same weapon really but I think a higher rate of fire should reduce accuracy. This would account for the muzzle climb in fully automatic firing.

I was met by a larger number of silly arguments then decent ones, mainly that this is a game and should not be compared to real life. I still think that is untrue, and that this game has to have its basis in real physics and mechanics.

To add to that I don't think we should be the most damaging class either. There's no justification for a shot from a pistol doing as much damage as a burst shot from a carbine. Seriously, what will do more damage - 1 blast from a pistol or 10 from a burst of a carbine?

So already I'm hearing the counters form. I know that some people will have already stopped reading by now and are already posting "So we're supposed to be slow and do less damage then?"

No I think we should be the masters of close ranged combat yet reasonable at medium ranges. I don't hold with this idea that pistols should be useless anything above 40 meters.

Firstly I'll start with the marksman line since all pistoleers have these skills. I'd like to see roll shot, dive shot and kip up shot give defence to both ranged and melee as tumbling does from the RWS line. You can't tell me that I shouldn't be harder to hit. I could be persuaded that there should be a short delay of a few seconds afterwards but I don't think we should have the tumble problems, such as the inability to use a special for 10 seconds.

I'd like SoE to rethink their stance on bleeds. Whilst it's clear that people were exploiting it there were better ways then to nerf them beyond utility. Remove the exp from it, and make it so that any mob killed where 50%+ of the damage was caused by a bleed gave no loot. Don't make it totally useless. This should be the same for all elite lines.

So how do you make pistols the master of close ranged combat? ( pay attention, not close range combat which is melee but ranged combat within 20 meters )

Disarm 1 should target the weapon. It should be a combination of a 3 second delay and a suppress to kneeling. The logic behind this is that when you disarm a target it drops it's weapon and has to kneel to retrieve it. Disarm 2 should be a 5 second delay. There should be little or no damage to the target. Disarm should have no effect against a target without a weapon and disarm shot would have less effect against 2 handed weapons.

Stopping shot should do exactly what it says on the tin. So if we cant have one shot incaps or even anything close, how about a 2 step supress? The target is hit by a large damage shot that drops the target from standing to prone instantly. Incidentally the second suppress granted in carbine should also drop a target 2 stages.

Lets go back to damage again since I'm not advocating an automatic increase across the board. Point blanks 1 and 2 need revising. For a pistoleer this should be a massively high damage attack. The justification for this is that a point blank shot should be the equivalent of thrusting the barrel into the gaps between armour pieces which cannot be done with a larger weapon. For that reason I'd like to see point blank shots have a chance of completely bypassing all armour saves. This would make it a useful skill in PvP also.

Pistol melee defence 1 is fine as it is but pistol melee defence 2 should be a kick, which does more damage and stuns a mob.

This would mean that at ranges below 20 meters we would have a wide array of moves at our disposal and do a large amount of damage whilst at higher ranges we'd not have as much use as the bigger weapons. The role of a pistoleer would be to get up close and personal. This is why we have dodge. It's so we can avoid being shot so we can close the gap.

There are two more moves I'd add to the pistol line. One is a dizzying shot, although I'd like to see the duration of dizzies reduced ( dizzy + knockdown is far too powerful at the moment ) the second is a target leg shot which reduces the target to walking speed.

Finally I'd like to see MTPS removed with a "style" added in its place called Multi Target Shooting. Effectively you would hit MTS and every attack you used within the next 10 seconds should hit multiple targets in the front arc. This might mean you hit MTS and then hit stopping shot immediately after. This stopping shot would then affect multiple targets at a slight loss of accuracy.

I think that this combination of moves will give the pistoleer class a very distinct role in combat that is more then doing damage quickly. It will become about tactics and skill rather then spamming as some people currently do and more importantly I think it will make the profession one that is fun to play, where smuggler or bounty hunter skills are not required to make the pistol a valid weapon.

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RylanStorm wrote:

Disarm 1 should target the weapon. It should be a combination of a 3 second delay and a suppress to kneeling. The logic behind this is that when you disarm a target it drops it's weapon and has to kneel to retrieve it. Disarm 2 should be a 5 second delay. There should be little or no damage to the target. Disarm should have no effect against a target without a weapon and disarm shot would have less effect against 2 handed weapons.

Point blanks 1 and 2 need revising. For a pistoleer this should be a massively high damage attack. The justification for this is that a point blank shot should be the equivalent of thrusting the barrel into the gaps between armour pieces which cannot be done with a larger weapon. For that reason I'd like to see point blank shots have a chance of completely bypassing all armour saves. This would make it a useful skill in PvP also.

the second is a target leg shot which reduces the target to walking speed.

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I dont agree with all the ideas - but you have some very good thought out suggestions here. The 3 I quoted above I think are great ideas. I wish they were ingame now

i understand the logic behind "carbineers are faster", but the way things are now, each shot of carbineer fires multiple shots. thus they have an almost continuous stream of 'bullets'. thats what carbines do.

pistols should be fasterbecause they are small(concealed), easy to hold and don't have a high kickback. those other ideas you had are good, for the most part, though...

*disclaimer* the following is about a REAL LIFE master pistoleer and does not represent jsut the average joe "with a gun".

I am a fan of shooting sports and watch a tv show that has (or had as i dont knwo if it still airs) a guy who is simply amazing with pistols(and anyting else for that matter) he may be the best in the world. This is in relation to the carbines are faster response. This guy can shoot three shots out ofa revolver(accurately fanning with one hand where the first shotis acivate by the thumb and fingers subsequently fire the other 2 or 3 rounds in one motion of the hand) faster than a colt 1911 style pistol can even cycle. I forget the actual numbers but is it below one tenth a second if i remember right(as proved with a high speed video). He can also draw fire and replace that same revolver faster than i could see the motion.

This is what i see from master pistoleers. You can argue that that is only one man and may be the only man who can do that but that is what a MASTER means.

I just felt i had to inlighten the masses about this take it as you will( btw i actualy agree with most of you post and ideas)

One thing i dont see in this game that needs to be there is speed while equiped with a gun. Lets face it if RL were like the game noone woudl own pistol. Pistols are used because the incumber the user very little. With a pistol you get fast target accusition and easy repeat of fire with controlable recoil and repeated fire, a rifle doesnt have this. If a RL man with a pistol stand andtries to exchange shotsat a RL man with a rifle he diserves to die for being dumb. Now with a pistol you have the advantage when moving you can shoot on the run where as a rifleman has at the very least to drop his rifle to the hip to shoot otherwise he will find himself facedown in the dirt. I think that at the very least the being equiped with a pistol should allow you to run full speed where a rifle should make you slow while moving.

Awesome Ideas!!

The only thing I would like to add is that if Carbineers are to be faster then they should maintain higher HAM costs to all or most of their powerful specials. It isn't very easy to control a carbine's accuracywhile shooting it continuously, and the high HAM costs will reflect that struggle.Just my two cents....