Pistoleer Archive

As of now I am a master pistoleer and I have BH pistol 4. As I see it, the BH pistol tree only offers me torso shot, eye shot,a halfway decent mind bleed, and a bunch of modifiers that probably won't make much difference. Since PvP is all a bunch of 1-shotting anyway, stopping shot can replace any of those styles. Just to get up toBH pistol 4, it's 34 more points in marksman for rifle and carbine and mastery, then 77 points for all of scout, and 20 points to go up to BH pistol 4. That's 121 points--almost half of the total--to get 3 skills and 50 accuracy and 50 speed. I'm thinking about getting combat medic/doctor instead to get in touch with my cleric days in EQ/DAoC, and to be honest I don't think I'll be missing outontoo much firepower, especially if I can disease and such.

Discuss!

It's a very good point really, and something I've been thinking about from time to time as I work on my own Pistoleer + BH pistol line character.

Now, on the one hand, all those extra points aren't totally wasted. Being able to get good info off of mobs is nice - like what their resists are. And terrain navigation is very nice, but I could still save a lot of points from the scout tree if I dropped the BH, and could also drop master marksman, and rifle and carbine specialists, or even drop all pistol and go rifle...

But regardless - what then? There are certainly some interesting options. I've thought about making a much more diverse character, like a bit of smuggler, a bit of CH, a lot of one weapon skill, and some medic.

The biggest thing that sways my decision though is the type of game this is. There are no epic pve encounters. There are no epic quests I'd want to work on solo. In fact, the best items I ever see drop from mobs are meat and melons because I need them to fix my #$(&*# stats that get bugged all the time (oh, look, -94 focus again, time to eat a melon). But anyway, the entire end game (and with a lead-up to the end game that only takes a couple months at most, that means almost the entire game) is pvp focused, so things like soloing versatility adn convenience skills become useless. If it doesn't help you guarantee that that one first shot is either a knockdown or a kill shot, then it probably doesn't help your character (assuming you're not a crafter / healer). In fact, these lines of thinking make me wonder why I don't go rifleman or Carbine + BH Carbine.... But I'm hoping that disarm II (area knockdown) plus eye shot / mind bleed will be a great tactic.

And as a side note, at least we're in a fairly well implemented skill system where you can easily surrender skills at any point and go a different direction. Heck - it wouldn't even waste that much time to play around with some points by going a little into smuggler, surrender and go a little into CH, etc...

Good points all around. I take terrain negotiation and creature knowledge or whatever for granted, I suppose.

If you're not hung up with being the best "at all cost" with a pistol, then I'd agree. With only 1 character per server and with PvP being onlya portion of the game, it makes it hard to be that specialized, especially when as you say, it overlaps to some degree.

Some things to keep in mind though:

1. Defense doesn't seem to be working (or we all wildly misunderstand how they work). If it does, PvP might start lasting a little longer.

2. Composite isn't super common yet. As it is, even with some pretty good quality padded, etc., most weapons cut right through it. Same with deflectors, I swear I never see it absorb damage. But again, once top end level 3 deflectors are common, we can expect to take less damage (if they are indeed working correctly now)

3. Game balance is possibly something that gets tweaked overall, who knows.

Being able to re-train is nice, and IMO, it in a way gives us something to do after we cap-out on skill points. BH pistol 4 wont be hard to get back if you go combat medic for a while. While not even trying to get XP anymore, somehow I ended up with 500K pistol XP, which will probably hit 900K cap soon. That's just doing random missions and grouping....so I suspect it just wont be a big deal to change if you find you don't like it. And of course you could drop the easy scout lines like trapping/hunting, and keep camping and explore, and drop carbine/rifle for the skill points. Go up combat medic as far as you like, then make another decision at that point. Of course you know that...I'm just thinking out loud.

I tell ya, if combat does start to last longer, combat medics with AOE mind pool disease and poison..wicked. Ever gotten hit by a PvE disease? If CMedic disease is anything like that..ouch