Pistoleer Archive

Something I've been giving a lot of thought to recently, is the 75% PvP reduction, the fixing of bugs with armor and AR, and pistols. I am surprised there aren't any other analysis like what I'm about to do.

As we know, there are a handful of pistols that are AR 1 and none that are AR 2. Of the AR 1 pistols, only one - the otherwise mediocre SR Combat Pistol - is useable by a Pistoleer. As we also know, all player armor is AR 1 rated. What this means is that in addition to the 75% damage reduction from PvP... the bulk of pistols will also be taking a 50% damage cut from armor. Although the FWG5 does heat damage, and the DX2 does acid damage - composite armor protects vs both.

The result of this? Say you get a 1500 point stopping shot. After the 75% reduction it will be a 375 point shot. Now if your target is wearing armor and you're using a scout or FWG5... it's cut further to a 188 point shot... before the effectiveness ratings are applied. 188 damage... from a special that says in its description that it can be a one-hit kill. 188 damage can almost be fully healed with a Stim A.

If you're using an SR Combat Pistol, you'll be lucky to get a 1000 point stopping shot (because its base damage seems to top out at 120 max), which will translate to 250 damage before effectiveness ratings are applied.

In comparison, an AR 2 laser rifle or laser carbine, that hits the same armored player for a 1500 point shot... will do 468 damage before effectiveness ratings. That's 2.5x as much damage.

As far as my understanding of armor and armor-piercing mechanics goes, these numbers are correct. It makes it look kind of bleak for pistoleers in pvp though.

I think Sony is trying to inject some realism here, not to say that is good or bad. But welcome to a more realistic gun situation...

Pistols - Mainly more convenient to carry, generally lower caliber and lower strength

Carbine - Usually pistol caliber rounds, but a vastly higher rate of fire. Less convenient to carry

Rifle - Usually far more powerful than pistol, slower rate of fire (not always but its sheer physics that a pistol can move to follow more rapidly than a rifle) pretty much impossible to carry conveniently.

You can also transpose the word convenient with concealed

realistic my arse, it's more realistic the way it is with major damage. go watch the star wars movies, i doubt you will find anyone that survived more than 1 or 2 blaster shots.

stupid whiny bastards are the reason this game is going the wrong direction. after they do the 75% nerf, the only people that will still be powerful in pvp are CHs, Riflemen, and anyone that uses BLEED.

rifleman is going to get to do 2.5x more damage than pistol to an unhealable pool.

Creatures arent affected by the nerf... bring on the gurrecks an rancors.

overall, stupid idea. it will make duels/pvp long and drawn out if someone is just novice medic... unless you are fighting a rifleman or ch, expect to be fighting for minutes at a time.

i didn't say I agreed with it, it was just a theory...sheesh.

The PvP damage nerf was definitly needed. With Disarm2 working the way it is now. If I stumbled across a few overts in a group. I just use that bad boy and kill like 6 of em in one shot. 75% pvp reduction is defintly needed.

"In comparison, an AR 2 laser rifle or laser carbine, that hits the same armored player for a 1500 point shot... will do 468 damage before effectiveness ratings. That's 2.5x as much damage."

Once again, whining misses the point. The fastest your going to get a laser carbine down to is around 3s sliced. Laser rifle? Even longer delay. That pistol will fire around 2.5x as often as a carbineer. 2.5 * 188 = 470 damage. Just about the same exact damage as a higher AR carbine will do. Yeah of course a carbine will hit HARDER, but a pistol hits FASTER, and if you get an AR1 pistol you will outdamage a ARR2 carbine over time.

Of course logic and hard numbers will fail here, since this is only a whine thread.

Phearing - testing is showing weapon speed skills to be a flat percentage. Cut our weapon speeds by 70% and we hit the 1 second minimum, often not much of an improvement vs a weapon that was already at a 2 second delay or faster. Cut a rifleman's 5 second delay rifle down by 70% and he's shooting with a 1.5 second delay. Now pistols are only 33% faster, not 250% faster.

OOPS - flat percentages are often bad for things like this. I think this is one of the reasons why skill enhancement items are currently disabled. Imagine that rifleman with 80, 90, or 100 rifle speed shooting once a second, no matter what rifle and what special attack he's using.

Phearing: Weapon speed is capped. So pistoleers don't get any faster after the early part of their profession.

Carbineers and riflemen do. To the extent that a master rifleman can fire a well-made rifle almost as fast as a master pistoleer with a pistol - a 0.5 second variation at most. Because of the way weapon +speed works, if you can get +100 weapon speed you will fire the slowest weapon in the game at 1 second. I believe a master rifleman and master carbineer can get around +90 considering their mods from marksman add up.

Pistols are only faster than carbines or rifles when you're a newbie.

Not to get off topic here, but regarding attack speeds:

I'm a master pistoleer with no bh +74 pistol speed with no skill mods (if memory serves me)

I have a 2.0 speed fwg, a 1.4 speed scout and a 4.0 cdef

With the fwgI have a 2 second stopping shot and a 1 second disarm2 shot
With the scout I have a 1 second stopping shot and a 1 seconddisarm2 shot
With the cdef I have a horrible 2.5 second disarm2 shot.. havent tried stopping with it

(Before you start laughing too hard, i use the cdef for crowd control when I'm hepling my guildmates level.. no need hogging pistol xp when i dont need it heh)

Anyways my point: don't just assume because you're a master you can spam specials with "the slowest weapon in the game" 1 second apart

If i misunderstood the idea you were conveying, my apologies.

No... what I'm trying to describe is that -74% attack time (that's what +74 speed skill means, basically) with a 1 second cap, is a lot more helpful to slower weapons than to fast ones like pistols.

You can't fire any faster than 1 shot per second no matter what. With a 2.0 speed weapon (ie a pistol)and +74 speed skill, in theory you should fire once every 0.52 seconds. But speed is capped at 1 shot per second, so you fire at 1 shot per second. With a 3.0 speed weapon (ie a carbine) and +74 speed, in theory you should fire once ever 0.78 seconds. But... again... you cap at 1 shot per second. With a 5.0 speed weapon (ie a rifle) and +74 speed, you should fire once every 1.3 seconds.

So on regular attacks, because of the cap... a master rifleman is only going to fire 0.3 seconds slower than a master pistoleer; and a master carbineer and master pistoleer will be firing at the exact same speed. Special attacks have their own delay factors that is true, but unless the special delays are much higher on other weapons... the same percentage reduction will hold true.

Basically what I'm saying is that speed being percentage reduced favors slow, hard-hitting weapons; and that speed being capped mitigates against fast lighter hitting ones. Both in the same environment are a serious bummer for the people with the fast/light weapons.

Just about... if the speed formula's correct and I didn't screw up the algebra, anypistol that'sfaster than about 7.2 speed will fire at 1 second for you on basic shots.

It looks kind of ridiculous when you think about it, but many of the modifiers in this game have been expressed as percentages (defense mods, if they worked, would be a percentage; healing effectiveness mods are a percentage). So it "fits" with other systems and other mods. But I'm not averse to testing it more; in fact when I get home from work I'll see if I can't find something (or someone) to shoot at for a bit.

Wrong about the attack speed thing. Totally.

1) My 1.2 scout blaster fires a little faster than my 1.8 scout blaster which fires faster than my 2.4 FWG5 which fires faster than my 2.8 Scatter which fires faster than my 3.3 laser carbine. Get a target, sic pet or a friend on target to keep aggro, and then fire 20 or 30shots. I have Master marksman,BH pistol4, and2 pistoleer boxes.My pistol speed is+86. There is no 86% speed reduction. I think the +86 really means -.86 seconds, but that is just a rough observation.

2) Equip a rifle and test your theory. My 7.0s delay rifle (with my +25 rifle speed) should fire at 5.25s. It doesn't. :\ Not even close.

3) You Master Pistoleers go out and equip a normal looted CDEF pistol. It should be around 4.0 speed. You should have +74 Pistol Speed @ Master, so according to your theory you should fire under 2s/round, and be close to the cap. Go try it and come back with your results. Bethca you don't break 3s/shot.

Testing already done in our sticky thread by Jaegen indicates that it's a % reduction. He expressed the formula as follows: Attack speed = (weapon speed * special delay) - ((weapon speed * special delay) * (speed skill / 100)). Which is the same thing as saying it's a percent.

The special delay for a normal shot is 1. For specials, obviously, the delay is higher.

As an aside - if +86 speed were really -0.86 seconds, your 1.8 scout would fire at 1 shot per second, exactly the same as your 1.2 speed scout ^^