Pistoleer Archive

nice work...

Yes, a master pistoleer gets better DPS with BS3. A bounty hunter with the pistol line would as well for the same reason. This doesn't change the fact that BS3 does pretty puny damage, especially considering how high up it is on the tactics line.

Glad to see others take an interest in demystifying things.

--------------------------------

BS2 has less DPS than BS3 in most cases. I've seen no indication that specials are affected by mobs in any way, con or otherwise, in terms of damage.

There should be, simply put, no gun or speed or rank combination that results in BS3 being fired for less DPS than BS2. Unless you like having to buy novice pistoler + 3 more skill boxes just to have a slightly more efficient HAM version of a marksman-level skill. Other targeted pool styles start better, and end better than the previous versions. Look at headshot 1-3, for example. Look at leg shot 1 and leg shot 2. Look at eyeshot/torso shot..wait, dont look at those, those are superior to anything we have..

Except for front loading, which we can ignore IMO as longs as PvP isn't a 2-5 shot game.

If you look at a graph, you can clearly see that all of the other specials track in terms of DPS (HS1-3, LS1-2), but body shot, which I think was nerfed in beta because everyone played a pistoleer and people they killed cried for a nerf...which is funny, since other specials do that much or more, and in 4 cases, to mind pool(!). Obviously it was nerfed as a knee-jerk reaction and should be restored to what was probably a 3.0 modifer.

BS3 DOES become better at mastery (+74 speed) only if you use around a 2.1 speed weapon. That's complete BS. Sorry, if they want to nerf all damage across the board (all professions), that's fine, but BS3 needs to be clearly a better special choice over BS2, just like the other professions. That way if all damage is reduced by say, 40%, it's still better, and still makes sense. It's not really difficult. But first they will need to fix their speed forumula if they want anything "balanced", otherwise it's IMO, too complex for them to balance anything.

BS3 was never nerfed in Beta. I remember these same discussions about BS2 vs. BS3 from back then as well. The nerf calls were for BS2, as I recall, since nearly anyone could get it since it's a Marksman skill.

Well, that's unfortunate. I suppose they got got it wrong the first time out :/

From someone such as myself who would have no idea how to even do the statistical testing for this such as myself, congrats on a well proven test, lets hope they actually fix this special the way is should be and not they way they (the Devs) think it should.

I did some more analysis, based on tougher creatures on Lok.

First I killed 4 snakes (26 matching pairs of shots), lvls 17-21, or 3-7 lvls higher than the lvl 14s I shot in the first study.Dps for BS2 was 201 (std dev 41), and for BS3 was 178(stddev 30). This is almost exactly the same as the previous results for the lvl 14 snakes, where BS2 was 202 dps (std dev 42) and BS3 was 179 dps (std dev 34).

I then killed 6 salt mynocks (101 matching pairs of shots), lvl 22-24, light armor. Dps for BS2 was 195 (std dev ~37), and dps for BS3 was 176 (std dev ~37).So there isnt much differencefor significantly tougher creatures with light armor.

The bottom line is that BS2outdamages BS3 on a dps basis by 7-13%. Level of creature doesnt seem to matter. However, armor *may* matter - the difference seems tobe slightly smalleras armor level of target increases, although i cant really test this properly since I am not able to solocreatures with armor >light.

On the other hand, BS2 uses about 21% more action than BS3 on a per second basis. If you have quickness and stamina in the 400ish range like I do, that can be pretty significant - to kill the salt mynocks i was using on the order of 1300 action points *just to fire the shots*. I use a lot of traps to root/snare, so the mynocks didnt hit me a lot, but even with only a few hits from the mynocks, I basically was going thru my entire action pool bar *twice* per battle (thank goodness for high quality stim Bs!! )

Camring - Intrepid