Pistoleer Archive

Philosopher1976,

During your tenure as the Pistoleer correspondent, pleasegive up your Bounty Hunter pistol's line.

You'll never be able to see how bad the Pistoleer profession is unless you're missing the Bounty Hunter Speed Mods, the Torso Shot, and Eye Shot.

At one time I was a Bounty Hunter with Pistoleer skills and I didn't realize how much Bounty Hunter skills improved the Pistoleer profession until I surrenderedBounty Hunter.

Since I've begun to play as a "pure" Pistoleer, I have come to realize that the Pistoleer's best shotStopping Shot and it's too easy to come by from Bounty Hunter dabblers.. And, I see that Master Pistoleer willbe too slow (from doing various calculations using +74 to speed). Anyhow, I still plan on mastering Pistoleer soon.

Please considergiving up your Bounty Hunter Pistol skill tree while you serve as the Pistoleer correspondent (so that you can accurately represent the profession and feel the Pistoleer's pain and joys).

I understand where you're coming from. You're obviously right that Pistoleer is extremely weak profession on its own, without the Bounty Hunter specials. I know this, you know this, and everyone on this forum knows this. That's because the Pistoleer specials are broken, the speed equation is screwed up, the Pistoleer weapon (DX2) is crap, the defenses don't work, etc.

I can understand why you're worried that I might not be a good advocate for our views, because our skills are really broken on their own but are a nice way to augment BH, Smuggler, or Commando. You have a right to be concerned about that. The reason most of the long-time forum regulars aren't concerned about me is because they've read my posts over the past several months and know that I've been a strong advocate for Pistoleer.

So take a lookfor yourself.Read myold posts (click on my name and search that way) and you'll see all the posts I've made about Pistoleer. I've done a lot behind the scenes that you can't even see in the posts, like help our last Correspondent (Jaegen) with his reports and tests. Ithink I got this position largely because Jaegen strongly recommended me to the Devs. The issues and concerns I present to the Devs will be the same ones that Jaegen has fought for, month after month, because we still haven't gotten a response from the Devs yet about broken specials we've reported since August.

By the way, in case you didn't realize it, Jaegen also had Bounty Hunter skills. He had BH Pistol 3 and Novice Medic to go along with Pistoleer. He didn't advertise that fact in his signature, as I do, but if you look back at his posts you'll see that he mentioned it a number of times. Most of the folks on this forum have either BH or Smuggler skills simply because the Pistoleer tree is such apiece of crapat this point. I know I went up the BH tree for that reason.

No one on this forum, in any profession, is a "pure" anything. We all have other skills. I think you're right to be concerned that the BH line will bias me towards Pistoleer, but I hope I can convince you that I understand (better than almost anyone, given all the tests I've run) how broken our profession is and that I'll fight hard to get it fixed. And, of course,I'll have a "pure" Master Pistoleer character on TestCenter that I'll be able to use as well. That character will allow me to surrender and gain skills for free in order to test how a special works at various speeds, etc.

I hope I've addressed your concerns. I don't think you have to worry about me having a distorted view of the Pistoleer profession, but feel free to keep your eye on me just in case.

P.S. In your post you said that StoppingShot is our best special. Our "best special" isn't saying much, given how crappy our specials are, but StoppingShot isn't our best special, in my opinion. It's only good for BH Pistol folks because they have very high speed. A Master Pistoleer is better off with BodyShot unless he is using a pistol with under 1.0 speed, because only 55% of a random HAM attack like StoppingShot hits the health pool.

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Philosopher1976 wrote:

P.S. In your post you said that StoppingShot is our best special. Our "best special" isn't saying much, given how crappy our specials are, but StoppingShot isn't our best special, in my opinion. It's only good for BH Pistol folks because they have very high speed. A Master Pistoleer is better off with BodyShot unless he is using a pistol with under 1.0 speed, because only 55% of a random HAM attack like StoppingShot hits the health pool.

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I know you are sticking to your guns on "BodyShot > Random pool shots" stance but --I do believe there is still tangible value in random HAM shots over BodyShots. For example, I rarely kill people in PvP via the health bar...

Finally, the random HAM shots do more raw damage per second despite being inferior to targetted pool shots in killing efficiency. This plays a role when you are working with other professions in a PvE group and all attacks are random HAM shots. You will most likely get less xp in the group when you stay with body shots... and you will probably run your green bar dry faster since the random shots are more ham effecient.

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Dinian wrote:

I know you are sticking to your guns on "BodyShot > Random pool shots" stance but --I do believe there is still tangible value in random HAM shots over BodyShots. For example, I rarely kill people in PvP via the health bar...

Finally, the random HAM shots do more raw damage per second despite being inferior to targetted pool shots in killing efficiency. This plays a role when you are working with other professions in a PvE group and all attacks are random HAM shots. You will most likely get less xp in the group when you stay with body shots... and you will probably run your green bar dry faster since the random shots are more ham effecient.

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I agree that higher damage random HAM shots are better in group PvE, where the issue isn't killing the enemy but getting the most XP. I just want to make sure that people realize that random HAM shots are just useful in that rare situation. When you care about killing the enemy, target a bar -- don't choose random -- unless the random HAM attack is superior even when considering that the damage doesn't concentrate on a single pool.

I understand that in PvP the health bar is the worst one to hit. Obviously we'd be better off targetting action or mind if we could. The problem is that random HAM shots also target the health bar, just not as well. So if I'm firing StoppingShot, I'm targetting health because 55% of my shots are hitting that pool. If you're going to target health, then do a good job targetting it and hit it 100% of the time.

If you're using a random HAM attack based on the fact that it will hit mind 15% of the time, you might as well give up because you're going to lose every time. You'll probably do as much damage to their mind by targetting health and forcing them to heal (which uses mind). We can't win if we're banking on only 15% of our attacks hitting a pool we care about. I think the best move is to target the pool we CAN target and hope that they can't heal fast enough. Now that mind can be buffed and mind healing is going to be part of the game, maybe this MAJOR disadvantage we have will be less of an issue for us.

I use Last Ditch on low action eyeshotters

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Dinian wrote:
I use Last Ditch on low action eyeshotters

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Yep. LastDitch is so good (6.0 modifier) that at your speed it's worth using over BodyShot even though it's random HAM, even if you wanted to target Health.

Sadly it's not a Pistoleer special.

Actually I'm not a Master Pistoleer yet so its not better than Body Shot for the same reasons Stopping Shot isn't... althought it is closer.

My most efficient shot in PvP by far is Fan Shot. Once I finish Grips and get the master box, it will probably become last ditch.

Thanks for the reply... appreciate it!

A few more things: Why do I use Last Ditch on eyeshotters? The spammers usually aren't watching their green bar go down while my 80% acid helm helps keep my blue bar up longer. I use Last Ditch to stun them and to roll the dice and hope for an action hit. If they are still up, I use fan shots.

I always use at least one Last Ditch to apply stun though... I can't stress how important it is for pistoleers to get a few state changes in our specials.

*beats on the +PostureDown+ stopping shot, +Stun+ DisarmingShot1, +Intimidate+ DisarmingShot2 wardrum*

Please also consider that Phil will be able to make a pistoleer only char on TC to have all the fun he wants to have. Hey Phil, mix it with Squad Leader! That'suberl33t to the max!