Pistoleer Archive
Thread: A reasonable request from a pistoleer: fix our profession
PlayeroftheDay wrote:The bottom line is:
You fixed Carbine Specials, now fix Pistol Specials. Same difference.
Yes.
All of this "wait for the Combat Balance" stuff has gotten stale. How long do we have to wait for BodyShot3 to be a better special than BodyShot2? How long is long enough for you guys to make PointBlankArea2 an AREA attack? Why do we have MeleeDefense2, when the only thing it seems to do better than MeleeDefense1 is drain our HAMs? The fact that we are 9+ months after release and you haven't been able to fix these kinds of things yet makes me think you never intend to do so.
You say that if you "do it in pieces, it will seem like a series of nerfs" leads me to believe that when you do "fix" BodyShot3, you will do so by making BodyShot2 LESS powerful; you'll fix PointBlankArea2 by changing its name to PointBlankSingle2a; and you'll just remove MeleeDefense2 and put a holder skill titled "Really Cool Special That Will Come In Combat Balance 2010 Goes Here".
Since you used to use lines from Star Wars as the titles of your 'big discussion' posts, perhaps when you guys get around to letting us know exactly what your "Combat Balance" will be doing to the different combat professions, you can title your post:
"I'vegot a bad feeling about this..."
imppilot421 wrote:
Honestly, can you find another combat profession with 2 working specials? We are even slower than a rifleman now (when we use specials)
Yes, your specials are slower than a rifleman's regular shot. Your specials are not slower than a rifleman's specials. Many of the riflemen you encounter are not pure riflemen--they are using skill attachments for rifle speed or they have Master Marksman as well, allowing them to make their profession look like a faster special-shooter than it really is.
and FAR less accurate (unless we dabble in BH, but why should I waste all those skill points to get what a rifleman gets?).
I agree you shouldn't have to dabble in BH. I believe that a BH's pistol mods should stack with Marksman's, but not pistoleer's. Otherwise a BH/pistoleer will always be more powerful than a pistoleer alone. However I have little idea where you are getting this idea that a pistoleer is FAR less accurate than a rifleman. A master rifleman is accurate yes, but STILL misses a fair amount of time against distant targets, believe it or not. A NON-master pistoleer using an FWG5 pistol can hit a LOT of the time against atarget at 64m. I'm not a master pistoleer yet but I am surprised at how often I can hit a distant target with my pistol.
The only working part of pistoleer is our defense. I am hoping this thread gets as much attention as that one rifleman thread (that seemed to get them fixed). Our damage per second rate is far too low, in addition, our elite weapon (DX2) is very hadicapped compared to the T21.
The DX2 recently got a fix, didn't it? one that improved the accuracy mod at the ideal range. I agree that the old mod was really cruddy and needed a fix, and the DX2 could still use some work as far as speed and damage (I'm surprised an FWG5 can so easily outdamage the DX2).
But please do not compare the DX2 to the T21. That's comparing apples and oranges. Underlying your argument is the assumption that a pistol should do the same DPS as a rifle. Not necessarily true. Keep in mind that a pistoleer is a lot more viable than a rifleman if neither are masters. Non-master riflemen are gimped and because rifles experience a greater vulnerability to melee attacks, a slower rate of fire and a lower accuracy at close range, rifleman is hard to level (mobs tend to charge at you, not attack you from a distance).
Also, rifles have MUCH higher HAM costs (as they should--not saying they shouldn't, but you need to consider this). A typical T21 has a mind cost of about 75...or maybe that was before. Nowadays smiths are sacrificing mind cost control for more damage, so T21s now have mind costs of over 95. At that cost, a rifleman with 1000 mind and even 850 focus will STILL drain his/her mind in only a few shots without buffs or other enhancements. "just use the enhancements then" you say. True...but my point is that pistoleers need not RELY on enhancements. Riflemen are utterly dependent on them!
Riflemen have used buffs, food, drink, spice to compensate for their main disadvantage, higher HAM costs. They are supposed to outdamage pistoleers at a greater cost to themselves, now they outdamage pistoleers at no greater cost to themselves. This is not the fault of their profession being too powerful--riflemen have not had a change made to the profession for MANY months and only a couple months ago have people started to complain about riflemen. Want to blame something? Blame the speed calculator, which at +90 allows riflemen to fire their specials about once every 2-2.5 seconds, but at a mere 6 points more allows them to fire once a second. Blame those skill attachments, which remain unaffordable for many people and allow riflemen to reach that +97 which gives them a doubling of speed due tothat irrational speed calculator. Don't blame the damage of the T21 (which was nerfed back around October!) or the accuracy mods of the rifleman (which still don't let them hit as often as a TKA) or the elimination of the 2.5x melee damage modifier (which should never have been put in anyway and made no sense).
Kudos to Keltorr for a well constructed post... Very truthful
Most of you Pistoleer's have me confused though... Seems that the original poster and many others in this thread are asking to *nerf* Rifleman. That would accomplish both Pistoleer and Rifleman being borked professions. If this is not the case why are most of you comparing Pistoleer to Rifleman anyways.
I used to be a Pistoleer and it was pretty fun hitting stuff at 64m withvirtually no ham costs, let alone not havinga brandy dependancy like you have with Rifleman.
Rifleman is not all it's cracked up to be, its a long journey to get to Strafe Shot 2. T-21s are up against the armor hole bug and you usually kill yourself with specials faster then your target.Yes, the main draw would be the Jawa (great weapon).
I will concur that Pistoleer profession needs work, but please let's not degenerate this thread into a nerf CM/Fencer/Rifleman or "waaa Carbineers got some fixes" whine and cheese post.
*KettemoorWay back at the end of last summer the BH profession proved to be more powerful than most, particularly pistoleers. The pistoleers cried 'nerf' and the Devs listend. On the BH boards we shouted don't nerf us fix the others, we we're ignored. Still not satisfied the pistoleers started to dabble in BH, killing anyone they could whilst wearing BH tags, so the devs 'nerfed' the BH again. Now all the pistoleers are crying 'fix us', i can't help but think you brought this on yourselves. I hope the devs 'FIX' pistoleer now heh....before you flame me i am a master pistoleer on one of my alts & although several pistol specials don't fit their description the pistoleer profession has some of the fastest and most effective moves in the game, not to mention the uber/easy to get defenses.
Yes pistoleer needs to be fixed but there are plenty of others that need attention far more urgently...learn to use what you have until then
Defenses like? do you mean ranged defense 7 perhaps?? or a melee defense that is 5 points higher than the riflemen melee defense? The stun, knockdown and other defenses are mainly used by fencers and others to stack their defenses, because at that low level, they are useless anyway. And please tell me what moves that would be, because i as a smuggler, usually only use smuggler specials in combat as long as i don't have to shoot several targets at the same time.
Techdevil wrote:
Way back at the end of last summer the BH profession proved to be more powerful than most, particularly pistoleers. The pistoleers cried 'nerf' and the Devs listend. On the BH boards we shouted don't nerf us fix the others, we we're ignored. Still not satisfied the pistoleers started to dabble in BH, killing anyone they could whilst wearing BH tags, so the devs 'nerfed' the BH again. Now all the pistoleers are crying 'fix us', i can't help but think you brought this on yourselves. I hope the devs 'FIX' pistoleer now heh....before you flame me i am a master pistoleer on one of my alts & although several pistol specials don't fit their description the pistoleer profession has some of the fastest and most effective moves in the game, not to mention the uber/easy to get defenses.
Yes pistoleer needs to be fixed but there are plenty of others that need attention far more urgently...learn to use what you have until then
Until the patches from test center get to the game, dodge still keeps us from running away, so yeah... best defense... sure.... and by the way, riflemen have almost the same amount in block we have in dodge, and like i already said, the defenses Vs are useless at that value, try it out yourself! 40 Vs Stun sounds much but isn't! Instead other professions use ours to stack their own defenses, like fencers for example.
Techdevil wrote:
before you flame me i am a master pistoleer on one of my alts & although several pistol specials don't fit their description the pistoleer profession has some of the fastest and most effective moves in the game, not to mention the uber/easy to get defenses.
DPS aside, and yes, our DPS is a joke, Pistoleer faces several challenges.
1) The majority of the pistoleer shots do not work. Period.
2) The best weaps we have are AP1. This means we can do very little if any damage to an Medium or Heavy Armored target.
3) The best specials we have are not even in the Pistoleer Template. If Riflemen or 2H swordsmen attacks were broken and/or the best attacks available for these weapons came from another profession, Riflemen and 2H swordsmen would be screaming too. A pistoleer without either the BH Expert Row or Smuggler Dirty Fighting Row, is useless.
4) We have no state attacks, no posture changes, nothing.
5) Bleeds are useless.
When I read a post by a rifleman defending the fact that their weapons, for ex T21, are not overpowered I laugh. I good T21 without Kryat Tissue is mid to high 500's. It is Heavy AP, and they can target the mind Pool. If we look at the Ion Jawa, they get an AP1 Stun Weapon which can easily get into the 300+ category. The Ion Jawa is so far superior to a Geno Pistol it is not worth comparing. Rifles are much more accurate than Pistols, and with just a +5 Rifle Speed Tape, they can spam at 1/second. All I can say to a rifleman is play a pistoleer for 2 months and come back here and tell me how the professions are not out of whack.
So Pistoleers need help. We cant hunt Kryats, NS, the corvette, and barely get by in the Geno Cave. Last night I took my Pistoleer to Corvette and watched 2H swordsmen do 2-3K hits to the medium and heavy armored MOBs while I did (with an Uber Pistol) 50-75 damage. That about says it all.
Techdevil wrote:
Ok it stops us from running away BUT it is being fixed and even without that it's so effective that more potential hits actualy miss us.....as for the block argument there is none, Block only stops 50% of the damage if succesful, Dodge stops 100% of the damage when succesful. As for the defenses Vssupposedly not being useful at that value, if you compare them with ANY other ranged proffession and MOST melee's you'll find that COMPARATIVELY they are pretty good values. In fact if you consider the skill points needed to gain said defenses against any other proffession you'll likely be quite surprised. Thats one of the reasons so many people dabble in pistoleer.
Message Edited by Techdevil on 04-21-2004 01:55 PM
I'm beginning to think you don't read carefully, when i speak of a pistoleer, i mean someone who intends to master this profession, this person will get these defenses no matter when in the skill boxes they are, but as they are now, it's easy for others to stack their defenses. Now here is a like to a char-builder, the names of the boxes are the ones right now, but the numbers are right:
http://swgcb.yogn.net/swg-cb.php?PHPSESSID=78e755cac2bf85a8d63899301bdc351d
Someone who masters fencer can get all our non master defenses(including ranged migration 2) and dodge cap and still have 100 skill points left. If you try the same as Master Pistoleer, you'll have 81 skill points left, and their specials work! Having all our defenses Vs in one line is good for other professions cause it's easier for them to us ours, for us it doesn't matter cause we master it anyway!!
Shazeen wrote:
Night_Mayor wrote:
PlayeroftheDay wrote:
The bottom line is:
You fixed Carbine Specials, now fix Pistol Specials. Same difference.
fixed?
Fire Knockdown does not set you on fire and never lands
and the Ham cost for carbine is insane.
He is referring to the carbineer profession, which had a number of its specials upgraded in publish 7. Bounty hunter issues are completely off topic, and have no real place in this discussion. Same thing with HAM costs, we're talking about the effectiveness of specials, not how much HAM they drain.
I agree forgive me for trolling I was using the DEV tracker, they refuse to post or read my forum so I have to come here sorry.