Pistoleer Archive
Thread: A reluctant retort to a part of the Pistoleer State of the Profession
Tanks, the brief amount of time I've been reading your posts I've been impressed. While this one was an easy one and you're stating the obvious it's still impressive.
Always, Always, ALWAYS check the resists on a creature! I carry 5 Pistols and use the best one for the situation.
The whole who's dabbling into who is a very grey area.Most pistoleers are going to claim it's the BH'ss dabbling pistoleer and most BH's are gonna claim the opposite
Even if the player is master pistoleer w/ some pistol it still isn't clear cut, after all a master pistoleer takes 92 SP, now to dabble into BH he has to spend another 146 SP just to get the novice BH title, that doesnt even count the points he must spend to actually get the BH pistol line.
On one hand you can claim the master pistoleer is dabbling into BH, but then when you look at it through terms of SP spent then one could argue that despite the master gunfighter tag, the toon is really a BH dabbling into Pistoleer since the toon has spent 150% more SP on getting the BH skills.Most BH's arguements come down to their SP spent, so in that respect master gunfighter/bh pistol being tagged as a BH dabbling into pistoleers is valid.
Myself i
Doh my post decided to post itself b4 i was finished for some reason 
To continue, myself i could really care less.Personally i don't dabble into any other pistol related proffesions, not because i hate dabblers or anything it just didnt fit into my template is all.
As for getting pistoleers to drop the BH tag I'm all for that, but can't help but wonder if your old correspondent may of have something to do with it with his campaign to have BH's with pistol skills wear the Pistoleer tag to discredit Pistoleers...
And yes I know Pikets have high Acid resist, I was using the scatter because in comparison to the FW5 i was holding (which I also used, same hunt) the damage I got was better.
DirthNader wrote:
I realize what you're saying here and I really don't want to come off as trollish, but I honestly feel this "Dabbler's Delight" scenario is the other way around. With novice medic and MBH I can get up to three boxes in any one line of pistoleer, and frankly there's nothing that be gotten with those few skill points that's worth having. I've had stopping shot - it was nice, but not that much better than torso shot / eye shot to justify spending my precious few skill points on. Smugglers, well to be any good with their specials they're going to need the speed and accuracy lines which, with as least half of the pistoleer tree full, knocks them out of the realm of the "dabbler".
DirthNader, I appreciate your reply and the fact that you put this in another thread. Let me try to answer your questions.
First of all, as a Master Bounty Hunter, you are best off getting Stances 2 of Pistoleer. That will increase your Pistol Speed from +80 to +97, which should increase your damage per second by a very significant amount. If you want me to do the math for you, I can ... you can do it yourself and you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you're using a superfast pistol the difference might be minor, but most likely you're using a prenerf Scatter so you'll love the speed boost from those boxes.
As to your more general point, I stand by my original characterization of Pistoleer as a "Dabblers Delight." You made a good point -- for Smugglers and some other professions, they often want to get ALL of Pistoleer so they can get more speed/accuracy bonuses. My point, however, was that Pistoleer is really ONLY good for those speed/accuracy bonuses at this point ... it's only useful as a way of boosting up Smuggler or Bounty Hunter, and doesn't work as a profession on its own.
Obviously Pistoleer (or any profession) won't workASWELLon its own as it does when combined with another profession. The problem, however, is that Pistoleer simply doesn't AT ALL on its own. When I say "work" I mean three things:
1) The skills/weapons provide some real, significant benefit to the person who has them
2) The skills/weapons are better than what you get at Marksman or earlier in the Pistoleer tree
3) #1 and #2 are true even if you have no other profession
Right now almost the entire Pistoleer tree fails #1 to #3 ... it's really only useful to people, like you or me, who rely on the pistol specials and pistol weapons from other professions so we can get nice speed/accuracy bonuses. As a MBH you can get Stances 2 to hit the speed cap or as a Smuggler you can get speed/accuracy so you can use the Dirty Fighting specials better.
That's what I mean by "Dabblers Delight", and I think I explained that in the text. The word "Dabblers Delight" is just a catchy phrase, but the content of what I'm saying in the Report is exactly what I said in this post ... and I think that holds true.
DirthNader wrote:
I realize what you're saying here and I really don't want to come off as trollish, but I honestly feel this "Dabbler's Delight" scenario is the other way around. With novice medic and MBH I can get up to three boxes in any one line of pistoleer, and frankly there's nothing that be gotten with those few skill points that's worth having. I've had stopping shot - it was nice, but not that much better than torso shot / eye shot to justify spending my precious few skill points on. Smugglers, well to be any good with their specials they're going to need the speed and accuracy lines which, with as least half of the pistoleer tree full, knocks them out of the realm of the "dabbler".
Is the pistoleer dabbling in BH, or is the BH dabbling in pistoleer? Is the smuggler dabbling in pistoleer, or is the pistoleer dabbling in smuggler? It is really hard to say, and it probably doesn't matter a whole lot.
If you are full out mastering pistoleer, then I'd say you are a pistoleer dabbling in other stuff. Same for other professions. Other than that, I think it depends on which profession you identify the most with. Some BHs say that you can't be considered a BH unless you hunt marks. I'd also say that the meat of a profession is the specials and weapons, not the skill mods.
What do the numbers say? We don't know all the data, but we do know that 6% of players had novice pistoleer, making it the second most popular novice elite -by far-. Holocron said much the same thing inan earlier post, that there were -lots- of novice pistoleers. In that same thread, he also said that the number of master pistoleers was about average. To me, this indicates that people are dabbling in pistoleer, but without a survey it is hard to tell whether they consider themselves primarily pistoleer or primarily something else.
Either way, I think Philosopher's analysis was right on. Pistoleer is part of a large number of dabbler templates.The profession has useful skill mods but not a lot else.
DirthNader wrote:
Frankly, the master pistoleer has more to gain from raiding bounty pistol or dirty fighting than a master bounty hunter or master smuggler has to gain from raiding any one line of pistoleer. To everyone outside of this forum that makes the pistoleers the dabblers, not the other way around. Me, I don't care too much. "Dabbling" makes this game fun. For God's sake though, please turn off the "Expert Bounty Hunter" tag. I doubt most "Expert Bounty Hunters" in SWG could find an informant appropriate for their level of investigation, let alone track a mark past novice.
I forgot to address this point in my last post, so let me address it separately.
If you have the BH pistol line, there is no good reason to be a Master Pistoleer -- you really get nothing useful by climbing up the tree, as you've already noticed and mentioned in your post. You're best off getting Stances 2 to max your speed and that's it ... then maybe get the Dirty Fighting line from Smuggler if you want some additional specials. The people who are "dabbling" in Bounty Hunter aren't "Bounty Hunters" or "Pistoleers" -- they're dabblers who spend the vast majority of their points to get the BH pistol line and then pick up some Pistoleer skills as well. Whether you consider them "Pistoleers" or "Bounty Hunters" depends on your perspective.
You're right that these folks aren't heading up the Investigation tree ... but as we both know, 90% of the "Bounty Hunters" in the game right now didn't either, at least until Jedi Bounties came around. And they were smart not to -- Investigation was/is boring andfrustrating, and there isn't any practical benefit to that line. The MBH specials are probably not worth the extra skill point expenditure anyway. So I wouldn't use Investigation as the way of defining a Bounty Hunter, although it would be nice if the Devs could make it so it was ... which is something I know folks over in the BH forum really want.
Message Edited by Philosopher1976 on 11-25-2003 12:43 PM
Philosopher1976 wrote:
First of all, as a Master Bounty Hunter, you are best off getting Stances 2 of Pistoleer. That will increase your Pistol Speed from +80 to +97, which should increase your damage per second by a very significant amount. If you want me to do the math for you, I can ... you can do it yourself and you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you're using a superfast pistol the difference might be minor, but most likely you're using a prenerf Scatter so you'll love the speed boost from those boxes.
A MBH has no reason to go into the pistoleer line. We already hit the speed cap with our specials, unless you got a hold ofa really slow pistol. I have 3/3/0/0 medic along with MBH, and zero skill points remaining. Torso, Eyeshot, and Fastblast all fire once per second with any normal pistol.
Shadow2k wrote:
I take that back. Some of the MBH's do want the defenses or the specials. But your specials would be the only reason we would need more speed.
Right. Stopping shot did more dps for me than torso shot, even when adjusted for hitting random pools, but it's not that much better that it justifies spending 12 skill points over novice or 18 skill points overall.
As for defense, I'm hoping that the TC additions make up for some of the defenses we're currently lacking. Then again, I think the best bet for a MBH/novice medic looking for defenses + useful specials is carbineer 0/0/3/0. That's a lot of general defense and burst shot 2, which I've seen hit for some insane damage.
I'd just like to post here because I feel that I am 'The Dabbler'. My character has been built to what I enjoy doing. It's just a ragtag mix of things. Check it out:
Artisan 0-0-4-3 (Surveying for my resource business)
Medic 3-0-0-0 (Love those StimB's, BE-clothing gives me a FirstAid IV rating)
Marksman0-4-0-4(Warning Shot, gotta love it)
Entertainer 0-4-0-4
Scout 3-0-2-0 (Gotta climb mountains and see those resists!)
Merchant 0-0-0-0(NPC vendors rule. Even if you only have 2)
Musician 3-0-4-0 (Love Ballad and Waltz and the Bandfill!, Buff just takes too long!)
Pistoleer 0-0-4-2 (Fanshot is the best. Stop is just so slow with no speed bonuses)
That's my character template. It does everything I enjoy doing (running a resource business, jamming in cantinas with good music, and actually being able to help out in hunts).Dabbling is what makes this game fun for me. I would get so bored doing just two or three things. I hope they don't being reorganizing trees to make this game more 'dabbler unfriendly' as I hear some people advocating.
I wish they would give us some more interesting specials though. Fact is I use PMD1, Fanshot, and BodyShot2 and that's about it. DoubleTap, Disarming Shot, useless. Stopping Shot is pretty good damage but is SO slow...
Anyway, here's hoping we get SOME love from the next patch!
Wait until the 10-20 more professions slated to be added throughout the upcomingyear go into effect. You'll see less master-anythings and far less dipping into other professions simply for the benifits of one weapon type.
This game is becoming "Attack of the Clones". Starting to see the same 4 templetes for PvP and that's it. Dabbling is good. If everyone was just a Master BH or Pistoleer it'd be a pretty dull game.
I mastered my first template and enjoyed it, the Master Gunfighter/Master Combat Medic is a pretty decent hybrid. But eventually I got bored and itched to play something else. When I master my next template I may move on to something else. The joy is in the discover of the game.