Pistoleer Archive
Thread: Preparation for the BIG ranting
Devs, Holo, anyone...
Out of all the correspondents that are on the boards Jaegen88 is one of the BEST,I meanour weaponsmith correspondent has been MIA for weeks now. He has kept his posts very cool headed, respectful, full of useful info, and data.He has always done everything he can to both inform you and us about issues with the pistoleer profession.
However... everyone has a breaking point
To see now that Jaegen88 is upset about pistoleer after his steadfast confidence and service to the community should tell you that something BIG is wrong. If you dont take my word for it, take his word. After all, he was selected as correspondent because you wanted someone to tell you what the problems were with this profession.
Please please, listen to what he has to say and take it to heart, becauseI know that I, and many people feel the same way.
Thank you
I'll throw my 2 credits into this post. I am a former Bounty Hunter (2-4-4-2) and a current pistoleer (4-0-4-4)
Becoming a bounty hunter during the first 6 weeks of release was easy, maybe that's an understatement, it was very easy. The only challenge was grinding the survival exp needed for the scout line. Providing you did the research and picked up either marksman or scout right off the transport you were set. Harvesting while leveling weapons, the masked scent exploit, insane novice creature handler tanks to soak damage while you killed reb mobs with a dlt20 etc etc ... Kiting kimas with glow juice traps and maxing traps IV in 6 hours ... bleeding a mob with healthshot and then hitting it with a non-certified grenade for 800 or more COMBAT xp ... there was NO real challenge to obtaining bounty hunter for me. All the above "bending of a weak AI, coded game" was well documented and posted in these forums. Call them cheap, call them exploits or call them what I do ... public information.
BH pistol and carbine were just a standard grind made very easy with the above mentioned creature handler weak coding. Combined with the sick specials it was a cakewalk. After carbine 1 i was getting upwards of 4000 xp for a giant baz nitch.
LLC was the same thing (if available on your sever) the difference was rather then getting 4k xp for a GBN i was getting 1500-2000 heavy weapon xp. Granted i was only getting 1 combat xp for the LLC. BH need combat xp for what ... nothing .. so its a mute point. The LLC has been fixed ... there is no longer a leveling issue.
Investigation was broke, or it still might be ... you could goto corella, pull a misson, turn 180 and get the waypoint from the novice informant. If the mark was too far, just abort and redo it. 10% of the time my mark would be within 500m of corella, if not within it. You could cap invesitgation with almost enough xp for investigation 2 doing this.
Most of the master bounty hunters or advanced BH did just that. A master BH can have novice medic, FA3 and pharm3. It was a skill point juggle of of gaining CH skills and releasing them as your progressed in BH investigation and LLC.
A Bounty hunter will throw the magic number of 217 in your face all day long ... BS ... there are few masters who can complain about the 217 skill points as most BH are usually 1-4-4-1.
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Advancing as a pistoleer is a real grind. Throw in the fact that i use 3 main skills healthshot2 (novice pistoleer) bodyshot2 (marksman) and pistol melee defense 1 (pistol special abilities 1). The other pistoleer specials hit random HAM pools making them **edit** near useless. Dont even make me laugh about the DX2.
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Our goto skills are barely above the marksman skill line. As we progress up the 17 pistoleer skills we gain titles but thats about it. Speed and acuracy are sub-par when taken head to head with the BH pistol line. Torso shot and eye shot just flat out own. Bleed shot is random pools but with a scatter a couple of shots will hit major health.
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Here is the problem that i have: The very few skills that make up our uniqueness are getting nerfed into nothing. We are barely better then our marksman pistol specialists brothers.
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The real balance issue isnt pistol envy, its we are not a well thought out class. Our class has no flesh and no real insentive to advance once area knockdown is gone. Pistol whip may be a lower HAM cost KD, but its nothing a dabble cant get easy enough for 11 skill points. The same 11 points that make our class deadly and overpowered lol.
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We need a purpose. Carbineers hit action pools, Rifleman hit the mind pool ... why do we hit RANDOM pools with most of our specials? Sure we fire faster, but the health pool is the highest pool in combat professions, why not let us go after the highest pool with the fastest weapon?
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I don't want to be a bounty hunter again, i want to be a pistoleer ... i don't want anything taken from the BHs ... i want a purpose ADDED to being a pistoleer.
The 30 second KD timer did not level the playing field. Although mobs and players are immune to KD for 30 seconds accross th board underhanded shot still does ALOT of damage without the KD effect.
Pistoleers have ZERO status effect shots from our pure line. We are required to pull our status shot from the marksman line. We have no dizzy, no stun, no fire, no blind ...
We have more skill points available ... but its not like BH, commandos or smugglers have wasted skill points. They didnt surrender 50 skill points into some void called ... worthless crap. They are master scouts and master marksmans. They can build camps, trap creatures and navagate terrian quickly. If they choose to not harvest, not camp or trap creatures then its their own **edit** fault.
The rant at hand is not what you did to get there but the sick amount of bonuses you get when you are there. I can master scout, master marksman and take pistoleer and guess what ... i get jack **edit** now that im here.
Another issue: making money. Under the current weapon + skill mods = misson difficulty level we get shafted. A novice BH can equip a LLC and pull 6+k missons from starting planets. 4 blocks from master pistoleer im pulling 3-4k missons if i search for a while.
DO NOT REWARD THE 11 point PISTOLEERS, but you need to make sure you take care of the upper level pistoleers. We are the fastest growing profession so you money hungy asstools should listen up. It is painfully obveous you dont care about the little man by the way youve treated bio engineers and SL, but were talking about alot of pistoleers.
You listened to the masses and nerfed MY class. Well guess what, the masses are now pistoleers. Get off your ass and work on pistoleers. If your fat wallets are keeping you glued to your seat then buy some remote software. Trade in your porche for a SUV so it can take your fat lazy asses to work. And while you are there ... fricken DO SOMETHING.
The pistoleer coorospondent has given all the tools to do your job and he isnt even a paid employee. He has broken down your flawed system and recommended solid changes. If you chose to ignore him then your are truly on your ass.
You listen to the masses and nerfed us ... now listen to the masses and fix your **edit** up.
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in case you flame boys missed it ...
I don't want to be a bounty hunter again, i want to be a pistoleer ... i don't want anything taken from the BHs ... i want a purpose ADDED to being a pistoleer.
Well said Mason. Copy that post and put it on the Dev boards, and title it somthing inflammatory enough to get one of the Devs to take a look.
Fastgun
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=484971
posted.
Oh let's see,
Pistoleer requires more combat experience than a Bounty Hunter.
Pistoleer requires more pistol experience than a Bounty Hunter.
If we are supposed to suck compared to them then why on earth do we need so much experience? Why not less?
I maxed pistol in marksman
I maxed ranged combat support in marksman
I didn't bother with carbine and rifle as i wanted to be a pistoleer, so i saved a negligable amount of point that a Bounty hunter has to pay, big whoop, i don't use those weapons and they do not relate to pistols. I have the necessary experience to be a master i marksman and scout too btw.
I am a master scout as well.
So why is it a novice bounty hunter with LESS combat experience than me with the same marksman and scout skills i have, get's to be an unstoppable kiling machine while i get to die in one or two shots and get the living hell beat out of me by mobs because i have no way anymore to keep them at a distance.
The first box in pistoleer that requires combat experience alone requires 60000 combat experience, the next is 80000 and it gets worse each one after that. And the skills gained for it do NOTHING anymore.
So, why don't Bounty hunters and Commandos have to have as much combat experience if they are the so called expert killing professions?
Anywway you slice it, either increase the points needed for pistoleer and adjust our strength accordingly or reduce the experience needed to advance. Because neither Bounty Hunter or commando have combat skills that require that amount of combat experience or pistol experience. We might pay less points but we have to earn MORE experience. Don't beleive me? count the number of master bounty hunters vs the number of master pistoleers.
Bounty hunters and commandos always use the cliche but we are a profession that kills people to defend themselves for their cheap and easy to get skills. Let me just say then what is it that a pistoleer does? Pick flowers? We are one with our chosen weapon, we have an intimate knowledge of it that NO other class should have, we shun all other weapon types, lack the versatility a Bounty hunter has with his wide selection of weaponry for any occasion or the Hard hitting weapons commandos have to kill enemy armor and installations. I wanted to make a character that would be one of the best gunfighters in the galaxy on par with the Legendary Gallandro. Sure a good bounty hunter could take on such a man but he'd need to use his brain and not try to outgun him but outwit him and use appropriate gear and tactics which a bounty hunter is very equipped in doing.
My template is going to be Master pistoleer, Master Scout, Smuggler pistols line, more points spent than what a Bounty Hunter or a commando has to spend and i'll still suck compared to them! So is this game gonna be a cookie cutter game? Didn't the devs say that a character with many skills would have the potential to be more powerful than one of their in shop designed Hybrids? If so where are the benefits? Cause you just made useless the vst majority of the specials in about every profession that has those types of specials including teras kasi artists and gave us nothing to make up for it, we as pistoleers are an EMPTY class now.
I told philosopher that I didn't want to spend more time than I already do on posting etc. But now its starting to affect my sanity:
Fan shot, stopping shot, double tap, disarming shot 1, disarming shot 2, multi target pistol shot, body shot3, point blank single, point blank area 2, pistol melee defense 2 -
Are all replaced by two marksman specials: Roll OR Kip up shot, and body shot 2.
um. Why is that so obviously F'd up? comments? Obviously pistol speed is the ONLY mod worth getting, and getting pistol speed from the pistoleer line takes COMBAT XP, which is far harder to get than pistol XP (like the OTHER master pistol profession gets...speed for pistol XP). I have a spreadsheet were I tried different speed and weapon speed combinations, to see if there was some magical way to make sense of the pistoleer special attacks...and there really isn't any. Speed is so SCREWED up that you simply CANNOT determine if a special is better or worse, unless you test it, or do calculations using the speed calculator. Yes, there are times when fan shot is actually better, but for the average player, it's generally NOT better, and who gives a flying F*** really, it should ALWAYS BE BETTER. The REAL sad part is dabblers. You know, these poor people that heeded our FAQ and raised the techniques line to get fan shot, and then realized that they already had roll/kip up shot that did the same damage? Without speed mods, they are sitting on 4 boxes of absolutely NOTHING. It looks like the most effective line is the stances line, good luck on that combat XP dabblers, but at least we saved you some skill points...
Someone wake me up..please.
And now heavy weapons 1 shot, and 3 ATSTs are considered balanced. Amazing, really, it's acircus.