Pistoleer Archive

Okay guys, the big new patch is on Test Center ... I had no advance notice that is was coming today. As soon as I found out (2:30 am PST), I headed over there and tested whatever I could. The server kept crashing but I did my best with the time I had.

I'm going to be out of town for Thanksgiving, so I won't be able to test any more for the next few days. If any of you are on TestCenter, test this stuff out as much as possible and post your thoughts on this thread. We need to make sure the Devs know about problems before this stuff hits the live servers.

Here is what I found:

PISTOLEER-SPECIFIC STUFF:

1) We now have three new abilities: Ranged Damage Mitigation 1 (Techniques 1), Ranged Damage Mitigation 2 (Techniques 3), Ranged Damage Mitigation 3 (Master Pistoleer). More on these abilities below.

2) None of our specials have been fixed. I checked DisarmingShot2, MultiTargetPistolShot, PistolMeleeDefense2, etc. No change.

3) No change on the Republic Blaster certification. I was able to use one without a problem, but the cert is not on any tree.

4) No other apparent changes to our tree -- defenses, certifications, etc.

5) The Dodge "sidestep" animation has not been fixed.

THERE ARE TWO VERY IMPORTANT GLOBAL COMBAT CHANGES ON TESTCENTER THAT HAVE BEEN IN THE WORKS FOR A WHILE BUT JUST HIT TESTCENTER:

1) DAMAGE MITIGATION: As I said above, we get three "damage mitigation" abilities. As far as I can tell, these are *passive* abilities and you do not need to use any sort of command to get them to work. EVERY combat profession has these bonuses. All melee professions get melee mitigation abilities, ranged professions get ranged mitigation abilities, Bounty Hunters get melee mitigation abilities, and Smugglers get melee mitigation abilities.

These "damage mitigation abilities" will limit the range of damage that can be done to you. Example:

If you are hit with a melee weapon that does 1-100 points of damage and you have melee damage mitigation 3, the damage range we actually use becomes 1-40. This is because melee damage mitigation 3 limits the operative damage range to 40% of the original value.

Level 1 damage mitigation limits damage to 80% of the range

Level 2 damage mitigation limits damage to 60% of the range

Level 3 damage mitigation limits damage to 40% of the range

This example was given to us by a Dev on the Correspondent Forum, who said we could post this info "AFTER they make it to test center," so I'm following his orders by posting this. I can't be sure that this the numbers he gave us are accurate -- other information he gave in that post has changed, so I'll try to test this myself to be sure.I did not have enough time to test this ability today on TestCenter at any great length. I participated in one duel but couldn't be sure whether the Level 3 ranged damage mitigation (Master Pistoleer) was working. I'll test this next week when I'm back from my Thanksgiving trip.

2) HAM SYSTEM CHANGE TO COMBAT SPECIALS: This is a MAJOR change, and is something you should all try to test if you have time to head over to TestCenter. The change is that all ham costs for combat moves are no longer damage. With the old system, you would spend 100 points and it would be identical to damage. With the new system, the HAM points are removed from maximum value, not the current value -- so your HAM bars will actually shrink as you use specials but you won't actually be DAMAGING yourself. The ham costs have a SIGNIFICANTLY accelerated regeneration rate -- it's much faster than healing.

I tested this a bunch and here's what I found: with 950 Health/Action/Mind (400 in all secondaries but Willpower) I was regenerating around 10-11 HAM per second, which is much faster than I ordinarily regenerate. It seemed like this rate was dynamic and would get even faster as my action bar got small, because my bars never got super low,but I'm not sure -- I was fighting at the time and kept getting booted every few minutes, which was annoying. As a practical matter I found that 1) it was much easier to spam specials WITHOUT having medic because the specials wouldn't actually cause damage to me and I recovered fully within a super short amount of time but 2) healing is less important because you no longer need it in order to spam specials.

Based on my quick observations in the past hour or two, that's all I can tell you guys. I did my best to test this quickly, but I have to wake up for work in about 90 minutes so I need to get to bed.

Intresting finds. I wonder if everyones damage mitigation is the same at the master level.-DP

I have read about this in the other forums and what Philsays ties in with their observations.

Perhaps this is the trade off we get against the big changes in the CH profession and also the lowering of creature stats.

They could be leaving us in the position to do more of the fighting ourselves whilst giving us all a little help to be able to do it without uber pets tanking.

Wow, those are some big changes...

I'd like to check this out - the HAM bar for combat specials is interesting. I'd like to see what happens if you've been incapped, and if it regenerates as "full" or not... IE does it remember how much HAM you'd have without using specials, or does using specials heal you as you gain back the HAM?

I think I'm being kind of confusing but hopefully you know what I mean. I can't wait to test this out, but I won't be able to until Monday...

That's 1 big cookie!

Potentially a huge bonus for going Master in a profession

I'm assuming that these mitigations wouldn't stack (ie if I have Master Pistoleer/Master Rifle)

master gunfighter / master smuggler

Possible downside -- a Pistoleer with enough Medic can currently spam specials for a very long time even unbuffed (assuming a reasonable stat migration), and indefinitely when buffed.

It sounds like this will cap our ability to spam, since we shall not be able to heal Action drawn down by spamming specials.

As a balance issue, this removes one of our few advantages over Riflemen -- now we too have a cap on our ability to spam, even with Medic, just as unhealable Mind caps their ability to spam.

If these cross stack, like Melee+Ranged midigation stack....Then it looks like the new leet template of the month will be Meelee+ranged (take your choice hehe)

If this new HAM effect is for all combat classes it seems good. Especialy with the regen rate increased it seems you could spam specials better than before even with good medic skills. this may bring an advantage in PVP as Rifleman have a much higher HAM cost than we do. I cant wait to see how this works myself.

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Taewyn wrote:

If these cross stack, like Melee+Ranged midigation stack....Then it looks like the new leet template of the month will be Meelee+ranged (take your choice hehe)

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This is a case where pistoleers will have a nice advantage. You can go pistoleer/smuggler, which is a common template anyway, and get the melee bonus.

Since we've got a ton of hybrids around, anyone know what level of Melee Mitigation that Smugglers get, and at what skills it gets bumped up? Is it Level 1 at Novice, Level 3 at Master, and Level 2 somewhere in between? Or is Smuggler a special case that gets less total Mitigation? Oh, and does it stack?

Thanks!

Not sure I've entirely got this new HAM system - are you saying that the pools you take from to actually do stuff (shoot, hit, hop on one leg) are now seperate from the pools that take damage when someone attacks you? If so, does that mean that you'll only be incapped because of damage done to you by your enemies rather than the specials you do with a little help from your enemy?

some guy on the smuggler forum just posted that on test centre there is no mention of damage mitigation mods on the smuggler tree, even though its on the skill tree's of other combat professions. if this is accurate information it would indicate that smugglers are not going to recieve any damage mitigation skill mod.

master gunfighter / master smuggler