Pistoleer Archive

Hello All:

Well since so many people have voiced their opinions about the pistoleer profession, a prof. very near and dear to me. I thought I'd put some more ideas on the table. The correspondents fixes due out after publish 10 give us the opportunity to ask for a little work on our profession.

This little post is a request for comment about the Pistol Techniques line of Pistoleer. I'm only taking a look at one line of pistoleer at the moment, if some good discussion is generated maybe we could look at the others later.

My thoughts on Pistol Techniques. If rifles are the swords of the blaster world I see pistols as the scalpels. And this, I believe should be reflected in our profession. We should never rival a power class in sheer damage but we should be able to cripple an opponent through other means. Pistol Techniques is the main tree for our special attacks. It also has our defenses. Neither is handled very well. I don't think I'm going to get a lot of disagreement on that. So here is my ideas on how to improve the Pistol Techniques line.

Staus Defences: Rather than give +40 to each state type one at a time. Stagger the state defences over the entire tree. A pistoleer should become gradually better at avoiding status attacks. Not all of a sudden maxing his defense to a type of status. This staggered approach is used in most other combat classes so I don't think it should be too hard to change the existing setup.

Special/Trick Shots: The Pistoleer profession has always been the gunfighter profession to me. The first starwars is essentially a old Roy Rogers style western in space. The good guy wore white the bad guy wore black, If luck wore a hat I'm sure it would never have fallen off. So here are my thoughs on the special attacks and what they might actaully do. Note: I'm not going to use raw numbers. I'm not all that aware of what speed/damage multipliers are used and don't care. I'll leave the assignment of these to the developement team because they will be better able to balance them against other professions.

Pistol Techniques I: Disarming Shot 1: Now that there is adelay, when equiping a weapon, disarming shot has an opportunity to shine a bit. Let Disarming Shot 1 unequip whatever weapon is currently equiped. This attack need not be very damaging, it's purpose is as a tactic. Like a knockdown there should be some sort of timer between successful attacks so a pistoleer can't perpetually disarm an opponent.

Double Tap: Idon't think I'm adding anything new here.I thinkDouble Tap should be a medium strength attack. I also think it should hit 2 HAM pools. My take on this is thatDouble Tap should hit either Healthor Action as one of the taps and then Mind as theother tap. There should also be a chance to blind the target. This wayDouble Tap would live up to it's name a bit more and we wouldhave a status attack which we don'thave right now.

Stopping Shot: I don't have any problem with this attack as it is.It is our high damage attack. Slowbut powerful. I've read the idea of adding a posture downstatus and this might be nice. I don't seeit as necessaryfor me to be happy with the attack.

Fan Shot: Fine as is. I understand from other posts that there is a problem with the cone not damaging hostiles that aren't attacking yet but still making the hostiles come at you. I've first hand experience with this. I understand that this is a problem to all cone type attacks. So fixing the cone issue would be required.

Feel free to respond to this post with your ideas. I'd like to get some opinions from more experienced pistoleers.

Thanks

Abby Normal

I've always agreed with thosewho feel that the dodge &accuracybonuses as well as shots should be spead all over the professions tree instead of grouped all together. It would really help distinguish those that devote themselves to the profession as opposed to those that dabble in it.

As far as your idea for shots go, they make sense.

Stopping shot should be faster though. I like the posture change idea because after all it is supposed to stop them.

Don't forget about pistolmelee2. That needs to actually kd too.

They need to fix our speed though for sure. At least up it to 90 like rifles are at master. That in itself would help out a pistoleer with what shots we do have. Technically it should be higher or all other ranged should be lower.

I hope though that we do get some actual fixes before this alleged CB is released in 2006. lol j/k.

Kylos - Your friendly neighborhood Mon Calamari

Forgot one thing. Move Ranged Mitigation to the Stances line. This post is only about the Techniqes line. The other 3 lines definitely need attention but I'mintentionally keeping my focus small. XwingRogue3 brought up an important thought though. Speed. One of our most defining traits, that we don't actually have. I didn't know that a rifleman gets a speed of 90 at master. This post is to help generate some postitive ideas about what can be done for the Pistoleer profession in the time between now and the mythical "Combat Balance/Revamp". Because that means keeping the current speed equation I don't think adding much speed is a good idea. A bit of speed needs to be added to be sure. +90 would be nice because it would bring us to the same speed bonus that a fencer has but I'd be happy with +85 total, more evenly distributed through the abililties line. Say +25 from marksman. + 5 from novice pistoleer. +10 for each level in Pistol Special Abilities and +15 at master.

The next thing to do to would to bring the Rifleman speed down to say +75 total, like the pikeman. These professions are supposed to be slow but very damaging.

Riflemen everywhere will hate me for the last bit. But I'm thinking about staying true to the character of the professions as I see them.

Thanks,

Abby Normal