Pistoleer Archive

For the sake of argument, let's assume that the developers intended to make fanshot a cone attack, and that it will remain so. We can even assume that the problem of it drawing aggro without damaging on the first shot will get fixed eventually.

That still leaves Pistoleer with two area attacks, neither of which actually works. But if they did work, they would very likely be worthless compared to fanconeshot.

PBA2's problem: If it was fixed, it would be like a slower version of fanshot, that only works at close range. Thus it would remain fairly worthless, which is bad for a skill that's at the top of the tree, and theoretically "equal" to fanshot.

PBA2 suggestion: Make PBA2 a 360-degree attack, keeping the short range. Effectively a "sweep" move for pistoleers, although there wouldn't be any addtional state effects on targets, unlike more advanced melee sweeps. Thus, PBA2 would be more useful in swarm situations, and fanshot would remain useful against distant groups.

MTPS problem: Well, I never really figured out what this wsa supposed to do anyway. But if it did work, I guess it would be a moderately slow cone attack. This is also, in a world where fanshot is a cone attack, non-useful. (If it really is meant to cycle through targets one at a time... what's the point?)

MTPS suggestion 1 (my fave): Also make this a 360-degree attack, but full range. But more importantly, make it so it only attacks things that are either in combat, or in combat with you. Imagine a rapid fire target-shooting display of picking off beer cans all around you (while blindfolded, of course). This would make MTPS more useful useful when the player didn't want to get even more things ticked off at him (the safety of the move depending on exactly how narrow the targeting works). The shot would be less useful if the player is trying to mow down a group of opponents fighting somebody else. I have a hunch the HAM cost of this move would need to be notch or two higher than fanshot to compensate.

MTPS suggestion 2: Higher damage cone shot, higher delay. Higher HAM cost. Pretty boring.

Oh right, I forgot: What do you think?

I think it would be useful for us, as a profession to figure out what we want to do with these moves and send it on to the devs instead of letting them come up with a solution on their own.

My dream would be to have MulitTargetPistolShot be an AOE BodyShot3 + Bleed/DoT. That would be totally badass, and something that would actually make all those worthless Pistoleer boxes pay off, finally.

As for PointBlankArea, I'm not a huge fan of any of the PointBlank shots. Fundamentally they are of limited use because they have a supershort range (7m or so) and if the mob moves out of the range, you just get an "out of range" error spam and have to reload your queue. Moreover, none of the close-range attacks work in PvP, given server lag.

I guess I'd like the PointBlankArea and PointBlankSingle attacks to be either (1) very high damage, like a short-range LastDitch or (2) give you state effects, like dizzy, to use along with Pistolwhip at short range.

If MTPS were not targetted, it should get a state effect change (I suggest +Stun+ since it fits with our defensive niche and would compliment +Intimidate+ from DisarmingShot).

Also, I like the theory behind the cycling target shot. If it were fast enough, you could use it like FanShot without fear of ever hitting unintentional combatants in combat. Sadly its not very useful in practice.

Actually, the PB range is 12m, not 7m

Nice post, we kind of hoped the devs would listen to our changes before making this change...which we knew had a host of questions that resulted from it.

PBAOE2: What to do...we've discussed this before, it's one reason we didn't want fan shot changed. The solution the devs will probably come to is, reduce fan shot DPS so that PBAOE2 is higher DPS but range limited. Don't like that? Neither do I, it's one reason I wanted MTPS to be like the current fan shot, oh well. Anyway, I like your suggestion too, that's fine, not wildly useful but at least it's different, I'd like to see what others think about it. Another suggestion is to give it a state effect and boost it's damage to reflect "point blank" range. Recall, the text says something about "reduces ranged penalty" which for pistols at 12m, is already plenty good.

MTPS: We requested this to be an AOE targeted health pool.

Your suggestion for a second is possible, but recall the designer was thinking either acone attack (maybe if fan is nerfed this becomes the current fan shot), or a 32m AOE, which we said NO on. 64m radius on attacked persons would be interesting...again, like to hear what others think. I still think CONE health targeted is better, but we need to have back-up choices

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Philosopher1976 wrote:

My dream would be to have MulitTargetPistolShot be an AOE BodyShot3 + Bleed/DoT.

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Yikes, sounds overpowered. Bleeding a whole crowd at once? Personally, I'd rather we get fixed rather than become the next BH's or Commandos

I had forgotten about the option of MTPS targeting the health pool. That would be better than making it exactly like fan-cone-shot, is for sure. But I still like the idea of a narrowly-targeted-attack, and of course 360-degree too, since I'm still thinking of the Death Blossom from the Last Starfighter

I think MTPS with 64m cone targeted health with DOT would be the way to go. The radius would be just asking for trouble becuase it would not do enough damage to make itworth getting all the agro. For PBAOE2 radius attack is good with no more than15 to20 m range.Targeted health. With damage about x 2.5 or maybe 3.

PBA2 is an awesome attack on one target. If it was AOE it would be insane. I've gotten up to 1400 hits on unarmored PvE targets with it. Multi-target pistol shot is not bad if you are not facing a lair. Fanshot is ruling though and today I got 5 meatlumps to line up after me and then one shot destroyed all of them. It was su-weet!

-- YP

PBAOE2: I think adding a state effect to make it more interesting would work nicely. How about stun? I'm not even sure what stun does exactly, but it's better than nothing, and impedes my ability sit down. That's useful right?

MTPS:64m AOE DOT BS3! That would be great! We should aim higher that what'd we actually like. I'm not sure how to explain it well, but I think you might know what I mean. You know, ask for this, which they'd probably think is ridiculous, so they'd give us maybe 32m AoE BS3. Which we'd be perfectly happy with, cause that's what we're actually looking for. Catch my drift?

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Ypiana wrote:

PBA2 is an awesome attack on one target. If it was AOE it would be insane. I've gotten up to 1400 hits on unarmored PvE targets with it.

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