Pistoleer Archive
Thread: Preparation for the next issues report Profession improvements
We've submitted an issues report on 8/20, pre-disarming 2 nerf. We did send in an addition that details 4 suggestions for disarming shots, but we have not yet suggested any changes to our existing, working, yet vanilla special attacks. Sure, if disarm1 and disarm2 become super specials, we might think differently, but we can't yet know that.
So, please use this thread to list out suggestions. We will have to figure out which are the bestsubmit, or else we use a laundray list of suggestions...which is more risky IMO. As always, I'll be reading most of the posts and will transfer any I see in other posts, to here, so we have most of them in one place.
Here are a few that I've seen posted around and have issues with personally, to get it rolling:
1. Point Blank attacks: Between ranged, point blank shots, and melee attacks, there is no advantage in using point blank attacks over similar damaging ranged counterparts. Risking "out of range" on an attack is generally not worth it. Point blank attacks should either be replaced with some unique ranged attacks, or should be a significant improvement over the other attacks available to the profession (have state effects, higher damage, etc.) Pistols are already accurate at short range, we don't get any real advantage by having a point blank attack, that" has no ranged penalty". PB attacks should do much greater damage IMO, or have useful effects, if they carry the limitation of 12m range, and the limitation of almost always being fired by AR0, or at best, and AR1 weapon.
2. Melee attacks - Melee attacks offer no advantage to the profession. They output damage similar to, or less than ranged counterparts, and only the knockdown of melee defense 1 is worth using, and only for the knockdown component. Risking having specials not work due to 7m range is not worth it. If melee defense attacks are to remain, they should have significant advantages over the other ranged special attacks we have. State effects, targeted pool shots, or bonuses, should be added to these to make them worth the risk of getting in to such close range, and for opting to use them over the "sure thing" of ranged shots. We are an elite ranged profession, there are already 4 other elite melee professions, we'd prefer focus be placed on our ranged attributes. Our accuracy is already intended to be good at short range, any accuracy bonus to a melee attack does not seem to be enough to justify their use.
3. Stopping shot should have a stun state effect, or an indimidate state effect, to #1 better match it's description, and #2, because it actually does less damage over time (for non high speed dabblers) than double-tap.
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I would like to see:
Body shot 3 do the same damgae as fan shot and have the same speed. I actually kill faster usingt BS2 now than fan, even though it does less damage, my damage is all in one pool. BS3 needs some help.
Pistoleers have another bleeding attack. Carbineers and Rifleman have higher damage weapons, so thier bleeds hit for much greater initial hits so thier bleeding over time is SIGNIFICANTLY more than ours. Because we have a bunch of specials that are not special a 3rd bleeding attack (possibly in the box above bodyshot 3) would be something to balance us out. Right now carbineers have bleeds of over 2.4k when stacking both thier bleeding attacks. A 3rd bleeding attack would be usefull and not unbalancing.
Disarming shot either disarm the weapon or be removed and replaced with an attack that is "special".
Some type of close range special that has intimidate as a state effect. Cause a pistol blasting in your face sure can be intimidating. Currenly we have no "state" attacks.
Defenses to work. Dodge to work.
Carbineers are the masters of stun, hampering movement, and knockdown(area of effect knockdowns even).
Riflemen attack the mind pool (cant be healed very powerfull, bleeding in the mind pool is so hard to deal with)
Bounty Hunters just Rock.
Commando's have heavy weapons(when they work)
Pistoleers have nothing they are masters of (not as good with our weapon as BH and the smugglers specials are better than ours). We target the biggest and most easily healed pool. We have no "nitch". Maybe if we were masters of bleeding? or Masters of intimidate cause we fight at close range? Something !
Sorry such a jumbled mess
Dashai
BTW Jaegen you are doing a great job.....too bad you approached the dev's with honesty and fairness instead of screaming and whinning.
I posted in another thread earlier today... increase dmg multiplier and decrease speed delay on bodyshot3 and fix disarming2 so it actually works right - causing a delay in action, kind of like Panic Shot from the Smuggler pistol tree. I know theseshould beobvious changes, I don't think they're hard to code or anything, and I think they'll makethe biggest differencefor the Pistoleer profession so far (having a pool-targeted attack that's actually better than BS2, and making Master useful).
Pistol Melee Def. 2 should have a little longer knockdown duration than 1 (rather than none at all), and ofcourse cost more ham... some people would say that's over powered, but since they're increasing its cost to be in-line with 1, it'll be useless if it still acts the same way... or maybe add another effect (posture down)?
Or maybe, as weird as this sounds, make it so Pistol Whip1 does posture down and Pistol Whip2 does dizzy, whiledecreasing costs for both, so that they'd act asa KD when used one after another.... this way it would be more dmg and both would be useful. Have stopping shot do KD (with increased cost or something) since I think that fits it better, but I doubt the devs would wanna do it... it should have some type of effect though, just can't think of what.
Get rid of Point Blank Single II and Point Blank Area II.
Move BS3 down to Pistol Tactics II (from III). Make BS3 more damage than BS2, plus have a (take your pick) bleed, stun, or dizzy effect.
At Pistol Tactics IV add Chest Shot (or BS4 - whatever you want to cal it) - slightly more damage than BS3, plus bleed, plus stun or dizzy.
Change Pistol Melee Defense I to "Pistol Defense I", and add stun to it (melee range KD + stun). Change Pistol Melee Defense II to "Pistol Defense II" and make it a ranged KD + dizzy.
Our Marksmanship line gives no special attacks. Add two to it. One should be a mind bleed + stun (at Marksmanship I or II). The second should be a mind pool targetted high damage shot + blind (at Marksmanship IV)
NERFS:
Change our (and everyone's) pistol speed skill so that at higher percentages it doesn't make any weapon fire at 1 shot per second. Recommended change: Skill caps at 100. Scale skill values of 0 to 100 to weapon speed reductions of 0 to 75%. So 50 skill would go from giving a 50% speed reduction to a 37.5% reduction, and 100 skill would change from a 100% reduction that always hits the 1 second cap to a 75% reduction.
Change our new, and any existing, Dizzy effects to have an effect similar to blind + stun - you shoot less accurately and more slowly for a short period of time - NOT like it is currently where you keep falling down and can't do anything for a while (might as well be KD then).
Make sure that our Suppression Fire posture down is getting nerfed along with Knock-down because it is overpowered in PvE. I can't remember whether the 30 second timer was for KD only, or for both, but it should be for both.
Balance our KD HAM costs to other classes. Currently our KDs take less HAM than most other profession's. This is because it is a flat multiplier tied to weapon HAM, and our weapons have lower HAMs. Either reduce the multiplier for other professions, or increase it for us, but the costs should be similar.
Some thoughts:
1) Disarming shot 1 & 2: Pointless as is right now. Make it give some sort of 5 or 10 second delay to the targets next action maybe. Sort of like a temporary "disarm" due to the delay or just change these attacks totally to something new.
3) BS3: Useless and less efficient the BS2. Needs damage/delay fixed or needs to be changed totally.
4) Melee Defence 1& 2: With the 30 sec timer on KD I don't why we are losing this. Either change it or give us some sort of reason to use it. HAM cost is high, damage low and if something got that close to me why would I stay and melee? Should be some sort of last resort to help me get some distance (maybe like Low Blow or Last Ditch from Smuggler line) . Also MD2 at this moment is just plain useless due to damage not being much better then MD1.
5) Point Blank Single (and Area): No reason to use this at the moment. Damage is nothing special, range sometimes makes it unavailable (7 meters). Also, how often will i go to this range to use this lol? Either give it high impact,damage or status effect or just change it. And, even if Point Blank Area worked, what would I possibly want to be that close to and shoot a bunch of lol? Can you say aggro? Anyways either make thesehigh damage last ditch efforts or just change them. (you'd figure anybody who got point blank with a pistol master would get their head blown off but oh well)
In general, our skill trees offer the least from the point of good specials. We have no status effects other then bleed. Need something to make us more versatile then spamming BS2. As far as mind attacks etc., I disagree. Carbine gets action pool attacks, rifleman gets mind pool attacks, pistoleer gets health attacks. Yes, our health pool attacksstink at the moment (or attack random HAM pools lol) but I don't think we should be asking for mind shots and different pool attacks etc. And, please don't compare BH's. They get different attacks because they are meant to be good with all weapons but master of none, and they need to be versatile with all weapons, as well as spending many more Skill Points then us. We do need something comparable though and should at least get the same if not better speed/accuracy.
Fan Shot and BS2,HS2and the occasional Stopping Shot is mostly all I use. Not the best attacks or the best delays and obviously other then bleed no status effect. Not good. Also fix our defensive mods.
Malenko
Gorath
**THE MAKING OF A BETTER PISTOLEER**
(1) Body Shot 3: 25-50% increase in damage of Body Shot 2, same speed, same ham costs. If any increases in Ham Costs occur then damage must be increased higher. If time between shots is increased then overall DPS must be considered to ensure that Body Shot 3 is actually better than Body Shot 2.
(2) Point Blank Shot, Single Target 1 and 2: The principle behind these shots should be a rapid close range battering series of shots, like emptying a magazine when its impossible to miss.With a stun effect. Somthing to temporarily slow target or give it pause.
(3) Point Blank Area: These shots should do less damage than point blank single but over a small radius and also include a temporary stun effect.
(4) Disarm 1 and 2: As this ability is written. It should do exactly what it says. This is in effect shooting a weapon out of someones hand. It should do exactly that. For game purposes it should remove the weapon from equip status,and the weapon should be unequipable for 5 seconds. Damage to the weapon should be slight to avoid griefing tactics but there should be some. Disarm 1 shoulddo medium damage, Disarm 2 should do higher damage. These shots like knock down can only be used once every 30 seconds.
(5) Multitarget Shot: High Health Damage Shot over a small radius.
(6) Pistol Melee Defense2: This pistol whip should have higher damage and include the knockdown effect of Pistol Melee Defense 1.
Fastgun
Every combat class seems to have a knockdown type, I think we should also have one of these, and it really shouldn't be in the form of a melee attack.
There are many calling for pistoleers to be nerfed; many say we're all about speed and not damage. This argument is stupid, as with a 1.0 minimum cap on speed, everything lower gets translated into damage anyway. So, they either need to remove that cap for pistoleers and maybe reduce some of our shot damage, or come up with a different game plan for pistoleers all together.
We're fast, dodging, weaving on the edge of a knife kind of fighters. We walk that edge though and we win hands down, we fall off, we get sliced and diced. What the hell am I rambling about? well, it would seem that out of all the ranged professions (although not sure about commando), possibley the melee too, pistoleer requires the most tactics and skill to implement well in the game.
I'd just like for a Master Pistoleer to have something over a Novice (aside from speed/accuracy). Everyone knows what I'm talking about. One of my biggest issues is our inability to target the Health pool.
By the way, I never PvP, so I would like any changes to be applicable to PvE.
Simply because the bounty hunters want us nerfed doesn't mean we shouldn't be fixed.
I do not think PBA1 needs any changes at all. At Master level I can fire this once per second (same speed as a regular shot) and dish out 1.5 times damage to multiple targets. At 3 targets I have clocked over 600dps, and that's not theoretical, that's straight from the combat window. It's situational, but it has its power in that situation.
Once PBA2 is fixed to damage multiple targets it will be even more powerful. In fact, since PBA2does 3 times the damage per shot, than PBA1, it will be devastating to multiple targets once fixed. So neither Area attack needs a state change to be worth it right now.
I get to use the area attacks frequently because I have pets tanking and holding aggro. I can see how they wouldn't be very useful to a plain Pistoleer trying to solo. But in groups or withpets they rule. Not every special should benefit a solo player. The whole beauty of having 12 specials is that some should work better in certain situations than others. These ones do.
Point Blank Single attacks do need work. As Jaegan says there is no advantage to using them.
Melee Defense 2 definitely needs work, for the reasons Jaegan states. There is no advantage to it. PMD1 has knockdown, which is ok. One way to fix these would be to give PMD2 both a knockdown and a state effect and leave PMD1 alone. Then PMD2 is a clear upgrade to PMD1 and effectively replaces it on your hotbar when you achieve it (much like many other skill lines work).
BS3 needs its damage upped, otherwise it's unused.
Defenses and Dodge need to work and be notieceable
On speed: I like Yeti's idea of lessening the effect of 100+ speeds. Flooring all attacks at 1 shot per second is going to cause no end of grief in balancing.
But also, why are all weapons capped at 1 shot per second? Why aren't hvy weapons capped at 4, rifles capped at 3 shots, carbine at 2, and pistols at 1 or some such? All weapons/professions would then need to be balanced so that DPS levels remain the same. I'm not asking for any more power with this suggestion, I would like the DPS levels to remain the same between professions. But this way the weapons would each retain a unique feel even at 90-100 speed skill levels. Pistols shoot quick from the hip but for low damage, Carbines burst for 2 seconds and do more damage, Rifles aim and fire at a 3 second rate but slam you for even higher damage. It seems like this is the way the weapons were designed to begin with, but it all goes out the window at 90+ speeds. Just a thought.
Disarm shots need to do something useful in both PvE and PvP. Adding a state that reduces firing rate for some time would make it useful and non spammable, but slightly unrealistic. Forcing the target to use hand 2 hand combat for some duration would make more sense, but would need to be balanced with a timer similar to knockdown's to prevent spamming. Just unequipping the weapon is not enough because computer AI will reequip it instantly and so will skilled PvPers.
Also any of these suggestions don't warrant having 2 versions of the move, unless the 2nd is really AE. I'm not sure we need an AE disarm, though. And it sounds rather unrealistic to shoot the guns out of 5 people hands in 1 shot. My first idea of a state that reduces firing rate would support 2 versions with the 2nd one having a greater reduction.
Yes Priority:
1) Defense Mods
2) Fix Disarm 1/2
3)fix Body Shot 3 does next to nothing for a lvl3 shot
pistol speeds should be comparable to real life I mean attack speads of 1.5secs is a joke cmon pistols speed is more like .5 sec. This might balance us a bit more too. The sugestions of giving us more bleed attacks is a good one. Because we are a melee ranged profession mabe there should be a disguise skill so we could sneak up to carbineers and BH's? we are completely useless against BH unless we sneak up on them when they are not looking. I think more of the problem is their knockdown skills. I think if they had to get as close as we do to kd then it would be more balanced too.
Just a thought
McBuntah