Pistoleer Archive

Its the cooldown timers.

Doctor buffs are reducing the cooldown timers while weapon speed is not.

Not sure which way its intended, but if I had a guess i'd say that the cooldowns are never supposed to be reduced.

Your +36 tapes will help your speed, but only if your alternating 2 (or maybe even 3) attacks.

I dunno what to say, I have 133 pistol speed (+9 in SEAs) and I was shooting awfully fast last night even without doctor buffs, sometimes once a second using a 1.22 mod speed scatter.

Exactly. I had heard that once you get a good gun and your natural speed is about +100 then you're probably reaching the practical cap. That's exactly why I was willing to have my natural speed be +65 and get as many skill tapes as I could.

DOCTOR BUFFS DO NOT GIVE PLUS40 SPEED

They give plus 40 PERCENT, which means that you fire 40% faster.

put that armor on someone who has no ranged or pistol mods on them, and then do the test, I garantee you will see a difference.

EDIT: Post Publish 23, I've found that if you re-equip your weapon after putting on your SEAs then they seem to work. See my new post on the second page.

Hi all,

After extensive testing, I've determined that pistol and general speed tapes are broken. I encourage everyone to test this themselves and I encourage spreading the word so this gets fixed. I would assume the best link to the devs is through the correspondents. I have little faith in bug reports actually being read by anyone.

Here's how I tested this. I have a macro that alternates attacks. The macro runs something like:
/criticalshot;
/quickdraw;
/pause 3;
/ui action toolbarSlot07;

Now, with my +19 pistol speed skill tapes and +17 general speed tapes in my good armor, I find that /pause 3 is the right amount. If I make it /pause 2.8 then the macro breaks and some attacks get skipped (i.e. instead of my combat spam reading adv. crit, quickdraw, adv. crit, quickdraw, etc. I get adv. crit, quickdraw, quickdraw, adv. crit, adv. crit, etc.).

Now, I was testing how long I'd have to make the pause without my good armor and skill tapes. I found it was exactly the same!! /pause 3 works great and /pause 2.8 breaks! I tested this extensively, and put my good and bad armor off and on to see if re-equiping helped. It did not.

My total speed reported on my character sheet is +101 with skill tapes and +65 without.

Furthermore, about a week ago (just before publish 20 if I remember correctly) I got a doctor speed buff. This adds +40 speed. I found that I could decrease the pause to at least 2.4. I was still testing to see how low I could go. I'll see if I can find a doctor buff to test this in publish 20.

So in conclusion, speed skill tapes don't work. Doctor speed buffs probably do.

Again, please test this yourselves and spread the word. I spent a lot of money and time on those skill tapes and I'd like to have them work.

Message Edited by Barafu on 09-14-2005 02:13 PM

It's even clearer now.

I just got the doctor improved adrenal buff to make sure that they still worked in publish 20. I found that I could lower my pause significantly (by almost a second) with the doctor buff. With just my +36 in skill tapes (which should be almost the same as the doctor buffs regards whether it's percentage or absolute) I found that the macro completely broke at that speed. I found just as before that I had to have the pause be the same for both me in speed armor and just me with my natural speed.

QED Speed skill tapes don't work at the moment but doctor speed buffs do.

Please someone else test this.

Its the cooldown timers.

Doctor buffs are reducing the cooldown timers while weapon speed is not.

Not sure which way its intended, but if I had a guess i'd say that the cooldowns are never supposed to be reduced.

Your +36 tapes will help your speed, but only if your alternating 2 (or maybe even 3) attacks.

---

Zariell wrote:

Its the cooldown timers.

Doctor buffs are reducing the cooldown timers while weapon speed is not.

Not sure which way its intended, but if I had a guess i'd say that the cooldowns are never supposed to be reduced.

Your +36 tapes will help your speed, but only if your alternating 2 (or maybe even 3) attacks.

---

I am alternating attacks. In fact, my macro uses 3 alternating attacks (I didn't include my actual macro here in this post). The +36 don't help with alternating attacks.

Ok,

So I just got some data from using solely ranged attack. I set it on auto-attack and just let it do its thing. There were no states, no stops to do other actions, etc. I just auto-attacked until the creature was dead. The creature put no states on me. I used the timestamp of the chat window and counted the number of attacks. We know in advance that there will be rounding errors since the timestamp is only to the second whereas we know the game keeps at least 1/10th of seconds (from the fact that macros use this fine of time scale).

Data:
Me with natural speed of +65 (+40 general +25 pistol):

44 seconds for 19 attacks = 2.32 seconds/attack
33 seconds for 14 attacks = 2.36 seconds/attack
57 seconds for 24 attacks = 2.38 seconds/attack

Me with +34 skill tapes for total of +99 speed (I didn't bother with my bandolier):

53 seconds for 22 attacks = 2.41 seconds/attack
57 seconds for 24 attacks = 2.38 seconds/attack
56 seconds for 23 attacks = 2.43 seconds/attack


Conclusion:

+34 speed tapes have no practical effect for a character with relatively low natural speed (+65) on either the general cool down time nor on the specific cool down time for particular moves. I think therefore (as originally posted) that speed tapes are broken in general.

Please test this yourselves.

I was pretty sure that the adrenal buff gave +40 combat speed not +40% but I'm willing concede you might be right on that one.

OK, assume then that it's +40%. Then for my template with a natural speed of +65 then I'll get a +26 increase in speed. As I noted, when I get such a buff, my attack speed goes up noticeably. However when I put on +36 worth of skill tapes, I get no effect.

QED Pistol and general speed tapes are broken.

Please, by all means, be skeptical of my claims and test them yourselves. I'm humble enough to accept that there may be things I don't see. Nonetheless, it's very clear in my mind that the tapes are broken.

Anyone else done any testing? If we can get multiple people saying this is broken then I think that we could get this fixed since so many people spend so much money on skill tapes.

Here's how to test:

1. Test one -- effect on an attack's cooldown timer

- Put your speed tapes on and set auto-attack on (on any attack you want).
- Set the timestamp incoming messages on (under control-o it's a checkbox under misc or chat).
- Attack something with auto-attack on and don't do anything else until it's dead.
- Count the number of times you shoot in the fight and the total number of seconds that elapsed between your first and last shots.
- Find your shots/second.
- Repeat without your speed tapes.
- There should be an improvement.
- My testing shows that there is not.

2. Test 2 -- effect on the global cooldown timer via alternating attacks

- Make a macro to test alternating attacks. Here's an example (it's not the macro I used but it should work for testing purposes).
/criticalshot;
/rangedshot;
/pause 4;
/ui action toolbarSlot00;
Where of course, the slot number is where you've put the macro.

- Attack something with the macro running and don't have your speed tapes on.
- Let the macro run until the opponent is dead then /dump it.
- Now check your combat spam. If you fired every shot as you should have (crit followed by ranged followed by crit, etc.) then the pause is working. Keep your eye out for misses which won't show up as green.
- Bump the pause lower (3.8, 3.6, etc.) until it breaks -- i.e. you don't get alternating attacks but rather some attacks get skipped.
- This is the breaking speed of the macro without the skill tapes.
- Restore your pause to its value just before it broke.
- Put your speed tapes on.
- Repeat the test. You should find that you can lower the pause with your skill tapes on. My tests show that you cannot.


Again, repeating myself, this problem doesn't have to do with "diminishing returns". My natural speed is +65. If I don't see an improvement with +36 speed tapes then the system is broken. Furthermore, the doctor buffs do show a marked improvement in attack speed.

Good luck testing and thanks for your time confirming or contradicting my results.