Pistoleer Archive
Thread: Preliminary Pistoleer Issues 8/13/2003 Discuss before we send this
Please discuss before we send this
Preliminary Pistoleer Issues 8/13/2003
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1. Disarming Shot 1 and Disarming Shot 2 - Change the names
2. Body Shot 3 - not effective as body shot 2(which is a marksman special)
3. Dodge not working?
4. General defensive modifiers working?
5. Pistoleer Knockdown (And possibly others) seems to be bugged
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1. Disarming Shot 1 and Disarming Shot 2 - Change the names
Both specials are currently unique and effective for pistoleers.
Disarming Shot 2 is an AOE knockdown, which goes well with Multi Target Pistol Shot, and is a master level skill
Disarming Shot 1 is a lowest tier special that according to my tests, does LESS than normal non-special attacks (!)
However, vs a LAIR, this special does double damage, making it the single best special to use vs lairs (slightly higher than fan blast, or very close in any case)
SUGGESTION:
Rename Disarming Shot 2 and Disarming Shot 1 to appropriate names, leaving the specials as is.
(Lair Shot, Power Blast, etc.,)
Folks seem comfortble with those specials as they are, have based their profession around the mastery level one, and regarding the propsect of doing damage to a weapon:
Most are giving feedback that they think it's a griefing special that they neither would like to use, or have used on them.
Being the profession that "destroys your equipment" doesn't seem to hold any appeal.
(If a change is made to disarming shot1 and disarming shot2 effects (to damage weapons), we suggest leaving the knockdown effect intact, we're clinging to it as one of our few useful/different specials.)
2. BODY SHOT 3 - not as effective as body shot 2 (Which is a marksman special)
Outperformed by the far less expensive, body shot2 that's achieved in the marksman line. It's the only targeted HAM pool special line that pistoleers get.
Multiple tests all showed the same results: (+74 pistol speed, 4.0 speed, 17-35 damage CDEF on unarmored, same opponent, using stop watch, 11 shots for delay test, over 50 for damage average:
Example:
BS2 = 80.4 avg dmg per shot. 1.8s avg delay = 43.8 dmg per second.
BS3 = 97.8 avg dmg per shot 2.5s avg delay = 39.0 dmg per second
SUGGESTION:
We suggest an increase in damage, keeping the delay the same, so that it outperforms the far easier to get body shot 2 that is not even part of the pistoleer line.
A special effect added to it would be nice, since we have no state effects, but the main concern is the damage increase.
3. DODGE does not seem to work at all vs average opponents
Tests with +30 dodge (master pistoleer) in a duel vs a player with a +40 acc/+20 speed (non-pistoleer using marksman pistol only). Over 200 attacks, 0 dodges. Also ran smaller test vs unarmed attack, with pistol out, with pistol firing and kneeling, using Body Shot 2 rather than normal attack, all of which had 0 dodges.
I have noticed a very, very few dodges vs mobs and vs completely untrained players. There is no need to "dodge" an untrained attack.
SUGGESTION:
Dodge shouldsimply be muchmore noticeable. It shouldbe equally effective vs any attack, and not dependant on opponent accuracy, since dodging could mean you dodge a miss, or a hit, no matter.
We assume the same goes for the other defense, although we have not tested those (block, counter attack)
Actually, any explanation on how defenses are supposed to work could help guide is in our testing and in making better suggestions.
4. Defense vs Knockdown (stun/posture change, etc.) seems to have little/no effect. Are these working as intended?
This could have been a help to knockdown being deemed too powerful.
5. Pistoleer Knockdown (And possibly others) seems to be bugged
Tested this vs another player:
I applied 1 knockdown to my opponent. Opponent immediately stood up and tried to self heal. It took about 15 seconds total before he could heal (includes prone time..rough testing).
I applied 6 knockdowns to my opponent. Opponent immediately stood up and tried to self heal. It took 94 seconds before he could self heal (OR ATTACK).
I applied 10 knockdowns to my opponent. It took 151 seconds before my opponent could self heal, initiate attack, etc....I'd say Knockdown is bugged.
SUGGESTION:
I suspect knockdown adds some sort of "Delay to Next Action". Possibly around 10 seconds in duration PER KNOCKDOWN.
Each subsequent knockdown seems to be ADDING to the Delay Next Action Counter, rather than RESETING it to the guess of 15 seconds, for instance.
It seems intuitive that after the last time your are knocked down, you should have a straight delay to action, not some additive delay.
This could have been one of the reasons KD seemed so powerful in PvE (PvE was 1-2 shot kills so it didnt matter much)
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General Issue:
Weapon Speed seems to be calculated oddly (I'll cut/paste the speed data and put it here)
As for Disarming Shot 1:
I don't want to destroy anybody's weapon, and I don't want to have mine destroyed, either. This opens the door to immeasureable griefing.
I would very much prefer to see a Disarming Shot that forcibly unequipped all weapons for something like 5 seconds, or perhaps which kicked the weapon about 5 meters from someone and made it into a pile of loot that had to be recovered and re-equipped before using again. Make this an actual disarming attack rather than an attack on someone's weapon. Also, itmight be a good idea tomake this special move useable once every 10-15 seconds to prevent annoying spam-based victories.
On the other hand, it might be entertaining (and very much like you'd see in the movies) to spam Disarm over and over to continue shooting someone's guns further and further away from them as they struggled to pick them up. Perhaps make this a no-damage shot - in duelling, it wouldn't be a killer, victory-guaranteeingmove, becauseyou couldn't do any damage with it, and your HAM bar would be slowly dwindling while you basically just harassed your opponent for a bit. However, in a group situation, a Pistoleer could continue to Disarm enemies while group members moved in for the kill and attacked the disarmed enemy. It would place a whole new premium on Unarmed abilities.
On Dodge:
I don't thinkI even have Dodge skills (I only have Pistoleer Marksman 1 and Stances 2, in addition to Ranged Support 4 from Marksman), but I find my character doing Dodges every now and then. Especially when I'm prone, he occasionally rolls out of the way of incoming blaster shots. I don't know why he does this or how I have this ability. WhenI check the Combat Log, I see "XXX dodges out of the way" or something like that. So what exactly is the problem with Dodge? Inconsistency? I guess I haven't progressed enough to figure it out or even really test it.
Anyway, good list, and nice job getting some results out of the Devs this week!
1. Disarming Shot 1 and Disarming Shot 2 - Change the names
2. Body Shot 3 - not effective as body shot 2(which is a marksman special)
3. Dodge not working?
4. General defensive modifiers working?
5. Pistoleer Knockdown (And possibly others) seems to be bugged
Order should be 4 and 3, then a long way down the list 1, 4 and 5. Overall these are good issues to be looked at.
Jaegen88 wrote:
Disarming Shot 1 is a lowest tier special that according to my tests, does LESS than normal non-special attacks (!)
I'm not sure this is true. I have parses at home that I think showed that it does 2.0x normal damage per shot (dmg range in combat window would be 3.0x what is listed on your pistol) even to nonlairs. It diddouble that to lairs. I'll double check them when I get home, but unless this changed recently, it shouldn't be less according to my tests.
Unless you mean it does less DPS than just autoattacking. That could be true because of its delay.
Where is the stop in stopping shot.
Disarm1. if it did damage to weopon as intended would be the best griefing skill in game. Paid 10k for that weopon, Muhahaha now its worthless, and with the odds of getting a good repair.
Disarm2. hmm leave it as it is and rename.
The bonus you are seeing on lairs from Disarm1 i believe, are the damage mulitplier that should go onto the weopon. but no weopon is equiped on lairs. so it goes to the lair. Currently. in pvp, the damage is not being added. to the weopon so you just get normal damage and no damage to weopon.
In NO WAY the dev's should make disarm1 do damage only to weopon, unless, they do not apply the -75% rule. The Dev's Need to fix Disarm 1 to work like it is intended. you do 200 damage to person you and you do 200 damage to weopon. That is why you see the damage skewed on lairs. they do not have a weopon so it does it all to lair.
Disarm2 does not need any changes cept for a rename. its there, if the dev's tried to change it pistoleers will be mighty pissed.
Stopping shot. Needs to stop any target I shot with it that is chasing me. Currently it does not.
Bodyshot3. is a pistoleers only one pool attack, and is a cruddy one at that.
Dodge, Needs some major work. as of now, npc's dodge more then i do.
Have yet to see a knock down resist work. cept for npc's resisting me.
Remove the Stacking ability of knockdowns. and less people would be crying nerf.
Riage, aka A'ravan
Smuggler,
Unless you mean it does less DPS than just autoattacking. That could be true because of its delay.
Yes, normal attack/autoattack DPS. I'll clarify in the next draft so it's clarified 
I approve of this list. These are all good internal pistol matters that need to be addressed. Lets spend a few weeks getting our class and our abilities squared away, and then we can start looking at pvp balance. Good job.
Fastgun
After todays nerf err..patch we need to retest some of this information before we send it to insure it is currently accurate.
Other then that it looks good.
This list is pretty good. I think 3 and 4 (dodge and defnese mods) could be rolled into 1 item easily if you wanna cram another one in there. Also #5 doesn't really have to occupy one of our top 5 issue slots if we don't want it to. It affects several classes.
If we do collapse the issues and make room for 1 more I think it should be this:
#5) Pistoleers feel that Bounty Hunter and Commando issues are very important and should be fixed ASAP so they will stoptrashing ourforum with hateful drivel.
I do seriously wish them the best of luck.
or perhaps
#5) Pistols decay way too fast and often crumble to dust on the first or second attempt to repair them.
That's a current pet peave of mine. I'm losing 200 condition per pistol per day and am dusting them every other repair.
Is this what the poor Pistoleers are having trouble with? The names on their specials? ...
You're misunderstanding the request. The Disarm I and Disarm II attacks used to have different effects that were at least useful (but obviously the names didn't fit). The last patch changed them to instead be attacks that do damage to a targets weapon, which is for one thing pretty useless, and for another thing a grief type attack that most of us wouldn't want to use on others, or to be used on us. We're saying that we'd like the original effects back, and if the names not matching the effects is an issue (seemed to be since they changed them to match the names) then just change the names to make sense with what they originally did. Or just change the effects back and leave the names making no sense - we don't care about the names - the big point was we wanted something useful instead of grief attacks.