Pistoleer Archive

Fanshot vs. Stopping Shot:

Problems:

Fanshot is a 4x damage ability.

StoppingShot is a 5x Damage Ability.

Fanshot is gained after stoppingShot.

Solution:

Fanshot has been changed to be a cone attack. So it does less damage, but will hit multiple targets.

Stopping shot still has a low DPS unless you cap your speed. Maybe that's the goal here? Having a good ranged cone attack is good, but losing our best DPS special is bad. So we just use roll shot instead and be happy we get a working cone ranged cone attack (cone attacks are cool IMO, DA2 was nice when it worked)

MultiTargetPistolShot:

Problem:

It was broken, and kinda confusing.

Solution:

It has been fixed.

Questions:

This move can either target all enemies within 32 meters (truncated to 10 targets), or attack all enemies who are currently attacking/targeting you. The first option is a more effective and useful attack, but can potentially pull enemies that you do not wish to fight. Which is preferable?

Good question, I "assume" we want the 32 meter attack, that sounds like a super pistoleer move (short range, yet effective). It's also not "dependant" which can be hard to utilize (the mobs arent attack you? well then it's a solo only shot...)

Disarming Shot:

Problems:

Broken.

Solution:
I will track down the problem with weapon damage not working properly. I will also investigate potential replacement moves/effects. If the weapon damage is not particularly useful, I am not averse to using one of Jaegen’s suggestions. The intimidate, or panicshot variant are both appealing.

I'd like intimidate over panic, and have gotten 3 PMs on intimidate requests...any other thoughts on this?

Defensive moves:

Problems:
These do not scale properly from marksman to master pistoleer. They seem to "turn off" as you fight more difficult creatures.

Solution:

This is a global problems with our defensive rolls (passive post-hit moves). The mods for controlling this do not scale at the same rate as the toHit rolls of your enemies. We are gradually increasing these bonuses to make them more useful. However, we are adding to these rolls slowly to avoid major disruption if we mess up our calculations.

Understood.

Pistoleer Speed Issues:

So I read the thread, but I also looked at the backend data. I see a potential issue with the way that our mods are handled.

Currently, a master pistoleer (assuming they just got the pistol/marksman skills), has a pistol speed bonus of 79. That equates to a 79% speed savings, capped to a minimum speed of 1 second.

The last 20% of those speed bonuses happen at the master box.

I don’t think I like this. Pistols are supposed to be very very fast. My proposal is to move down the mods, and raise them. The end result is that pistoleers will hit the speed cap earlier, allowing them to use the slower/more powerful pistols with the higher level moves.

This will give me a better platform to differentiate the special moves, especially at higher levels.

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Well, that's a good fix for non-masters (which is good), but at mastery, all professions "can" fire at 1.0 seconds, making pistols not "very fast". I do like that it's being geared more towards pistols being "faster" and towards using that to balance things, but not sure about the "very fast" part since everyone is "very fast". Thoughts?

I agree with you completely Jaegen. The speed thing is not really that helpful.

It doesn't change the balance issues at all ... I'm still outgunned by rifles, carbines, flamethrowers, whatever because my pistols don't fire any faster than those weapons. All it does is make it less worthwhile to hit Master.

I think it's great that they'll up the speed within Pistoleer and distribute it more evenly, but this doesn't solve the real problem at all.

Think we could get Stopping, Fan, or MultiTarget to be a targeted Health Shot while we're at it. I think adding targeted HAM to any of those would be a great help.

You know my thoughts on Stopping Shot, large damage for large delay- so I dont mind it being so slow, the other shots can be our "spam" shots.

Itimidate is good, or any sort of action that causes the opponent to have a delayed reaction.

From another post i just made:
"But the only thing I would like is that ONE more attack besides BodyShot be targeted to health.
Lets consider the options: Fanshot would do medium-high health damage to multiple targets, OR stopping shot does massive health damage to a single target with more delay?"

It appears to me (my assumption at least) that we will get the +100 speed cap at master. That was how I read Holos post. If that's the case then I like the stopping shot/fanshot change. Stopping shot becomes the superior DPS attack to fanshot so fanshot needs its own niche. Done.

MTPS, quickly here, get the 32 M cone, capped at number of enemies, but get it as a Health targeted attack. Think Philosopher alluded to that initially. This makes it a progression off of the new fanshot and BS3. This would then be a superior attack. If they do something with disarm shot (AE intimidate) then we have two master specials with their own uses. Start with DS2 and hit with MTPS, or switch over to Stopping shot for single target randomham attack, or BS3 for targeted health attack. Or use Fanshot for random ham (i group with carbines and riflemen from time to time.) but this is all depenedant on us getting a speed increase, not simply a speed redistribution. If we hit the +100 as master Pistoleer then all the DPS info goes out the window (until they rework that system.)

I agree with you Samra. The increased speed mods prior to master is nice but a temporary perk. It doesn't address the larger issue of higher damage weapons still firing as fast as pistols. I think an AoE fanshot would be cool. Depending on how much speed mods they will shuffle down to the lower boxes, Stopping shot might become a viable high damage option. I'm at work and haven't had a chance to read all the posts. Did they address BS 3 at all?

Grendel-Flurry server

Random pool AE=fix? Am I reading this wrong?-DP

No they don't address BS3 ... Holo says that it is "better" by giving us the damage modifier, then when we respond to explain why it isn't, they don't include that in the list of improvements.

By the way, I'm glad Jaegen is around to deal with this. I was worried that he was asleep or went home for the night.

We're in good hands.

No, I'm just catching heavy wife aggro , so my time is short hehe.

Better put our dodge mods to good use, J. Seriously though, how did you read the dev post concerning our speed mods? Samra thinks it's just a redistribution of our current speed mods while DiLune and myself think/hope they're giving us more speed as well as redistributing it.

Grendel-Flurry server

This is the key phrase: I don’t think I like this. Pistols are supposed to be very very fast. My proposal is to move down the mods, and raise them.

Move them down and raise them. Guys, I think he is talking about upping our speed mods.

Ya, but even if he does that, it doesn't effect the real issue for us ... which is that ANYONE with +100 speed can fire ANY weapon (T21 rifle, whatever) with ANY special at the rate of once per second. The speed "increase" is fine because it makes it less necessary to get the BH line, but it's at best a minor improvement.

Yes, in the end the universal speed problem still doesn't help us, but generally(from Novice to Master) we should be faster than the other ranged professions.

Do you really expect them to solve their entire FUBAR'ed speed system just from a post from us? As it was layed out, they are fixing or improving 3-4 things for us - not too bad.

They can't fix ALL of the problems, and once we test out these new 'improvements' we can keep commenting through future reports(or Discussion petitions like this )


I think the universal speed problem will be in the game for at least a few more months until (A) they actually understand what we're saying and (B) come up with a solution. So for now we should forget about that and take what we can get.
Look at how defences were responded to- the whole defensive roll system is screwed up. It's not that the mods aren't working, their whole backend is screwy. Something like universal weapon speed I see taking them much longer(actually a patch fix would just be max pistol=1.0 sec, max carb=2.0sec, max rifle=3.0, max heavy=3.5).
So I think we should back off from "the speed wont help issue", we dont want to throw too much at them all at once- you see how easily they are confused