Pistoleer Archive

Pistoleer may not have to be the best, but it should at least be competitive. What I mean by that is simple: it should have a fair 'chance' at beingviable in PvP. Due to ridiculous doctor buffs and armor, pistoleers are more or less worthless at the moment, even moreso against professions that are impossible to hit. (Long range rifleman, or melee range fencers---fewer hits means easy damage recovery.) Most of the problems that pistoleers have are due to general problems with PvP. Since we do 'vanilla' damage, it's no wonder that we're the most screwed when you consider the vast imbalances in the PvP system as awhole. Unlike the melee professions, we have no state modifiers to at least make us worhwhile at this point.

The only way the dev's can make pistoleer viable is buy increasing our damage output and reducing/nerfing all of the defense modifiers in the game. In my opinion, armor, buffs, and defense mod stackingALL need to be hit with the nerf bat repeatedly. I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of everyone in the damn game wearing full composite armorwith a full set of buffs. This alone makes the gamea pale reflection of theStar Wars universe. Moreover, it's just lame and creates a market vacuum for any armor/buffs/weaponry that are not master-made. For all their talk, SOE has no handle on the so-called in-game economy. It's the worst in-game MMOG economy in the history of MMOG's. Nerfing the effectiveness of advanced armor, weapons and buffs would help to 'bell curve' the economy--but then SOE would have to disappoint it's only audience at this point: the 'uber leet templat-stacking jerks' who spend every waking moment playing this game for no other reason than to be 'uber'. (*yawn*) That said, SOE will take the wrong approach (as usual) and just try to band-aid this mess we call SWG.

Whether or not they make pistoleer viable remains to be seen. Dual wielding ability might help, but let's face it: that won't be put into the game for a while. Until then, what do we get? I'll tell you what we get: NOTHING. Nothing but a two month wait for the so-called rebalance. And even then I bet pistoleer get's screwed. I just dont' see them overhauling the entire system---a system that is the fundamental root cause of all of the problems for the pistoleer profession (and any other vanilla damage combat profession out there). They've already taken two passes at 'fixing' defense template stacking, and have failed miserably. I don't have my hopes very high.

All these points are good but the best I dont know. I think we are just so bad now that once we are able to hold our own we wont be asking to be the best.

The bigest issue is that our speed and accurcy seems to effect nothing. If i fire my 1.1 speed fwg5 at master pistoleer there is no logical reasone a master rifleman should be shooting his or her 5.4 speed jawa rifle faster. Yet right now this is the case I will get hit sometimes 3-5 times in the time it takes to get off one shot with my pistol and that one shot will most likely miss.

Speed and damage would help our class if we had the same type of speed and damage bonuses that TKMS get. TKA is very close and easy to compare with pistoleer they only get an AP1 and now are limited to ken damage and they seem to do very well becasue of there + to speed and + to damage

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glorydragon wrote:

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Morath360 wrote:

Lol I didnt use my equilibrium either.

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noob question. what is equilibrium?

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Ya know, I was just as angry as you were.(Metharian) In fact so much so that I quit for 4 months. Packed my 2acctsand hey hit the highway. Why did I come back? After being away for 4 months, I started to think about some of the subtle things I liked. Like the atmosphere, the planets etc. I also had it in my head that if they don't fix my beloved professions and speciethe way that I wanted then screw them (Wookiee). That attitude will eat you up. You will not have any fun.

You can be mad at people for adapting their character to be good at PVP if you want, but I am not so sure you are on solid ground there. I am one of those people who have adapted. Kahless was major dabbler to give me a pvp advantage and what I found out when I came back was that I needed to change. I dumped commando for Rifle. For me it is actually fun playing different professions and adapting. It doesnt take that much time either after you have your character built up.

As for defense stacking composite etc, I do think that needs to be adjusted some, but I do not want to go back to the days of 10 seconds and your dead. Do you remember that? It is much better now. I like having long battles where you can actually commend the other player for having to think a bit on how he killed you and not just who ambushed who and got the first shot in. If I wanted to play a FPS I would go back to avp2 again. I hope the length of battles here never gets fast. Its no fun.

Pistoleer, does work in pve. Sure you dont kill quite as fast as some of the melee professions but I can kill rancors easily and most of the time I use the pistol if I want to kill them because I aggro 3 of them and with my pistol out I have great defenses. My rifle beats my mind up a bit and my ubese seems to take a beating conditionwise if I use the rifle at close range. Not worth the little bit of extra speed in killing them beasties... I say if I want to kill them because if Im making money runs I just feign out till they live and blast on.. That way my armor does not take much of a beating..

Anyway enough for now.. maybe you need a break man..

Message Edited by Morath360 on 05-19-2004 06:15 AM

My worthless 2 cents:

On speed: speed in this game is looney. makes little sence on how it works. basicaly any one can get attack speed down to close 1 sec with all the right mods. I think this is the flaw. I believe speed enhancments should ruduce the rate ofattack on specials only. Example: if you have a 1.3 speed pistol, the fastest you should be able to fire it is 1.3 (unless use speed powerup). This I beleive will bring a nice balance to the game. The high damage weapons tend to be slower and the lower end weapons are faster, that much makes sence. So if a Rifle has a speed of 5 and a damage range of 200-600 (approx), it should not be able to fire any faster than 5 seconds per shot. Yet while a pistol is not doing near as much damage, it is blasting out near 1 shot per second. I think the big pvp balance lies within the speed of weapons. HAM cost are becoming a thing of the past, and if all weapons hit at 1 shot per second (or close to) then it would be the benifit to use the most powerful, less mod-defended weapon which is currently carried by the rifleman.

As far as specials go, i beleive the pistoleer should be able to more effectivly target pools, after all: would not a master be able to put a bullet exsactly wear he wants it?

As far as pistoleers being one of the strongest? no. true that you don't really even see a brawler in the movies (other that ewoks swinging on vines) but everyproffesions overall "power and ability" should be mostly based on the amount of skill points invested into a combat profession. The order of Master "badness" should be 1. Jedi 2.BH 3.Commando4.CM (varies with combat profession choice) 5. Smuggler (withpistoleer); then the rest even. It will be the allocation of the remaining skill points and how you use your imagination to dabble in other proffesions that will add flexability and uniqueness to each character. But if your master pistoleer and a tailor, defenantly anyone with two combat classes or a hybrid class should win in an even cercumstance pvp. If all your skill points are invested in combat professions, then you should be great at combat...One thing i am sick of is the strongest being pure dabblers, masters of nothing. One thing i would like to see is a little more reward for mastering something, like moving the best specials to the master slot and greatest defences as well. The mitigation thing kinda works well but I think mastering could use something else, something truely unique for each combat class; something a dabbler can't have.