Ranger Archive

I have a Ranger that REALLY likes to solo. Enjoys the great outdoors...and not only because of the lag of the cities.

Question: Which range weapon Rifle, Pistol or Carbine would be the best for the solo Ranger?

Thx

Pistoleer is pretty good up close and Rifleman (I am a Rifleman so maybe bias) is pretty good from far away. Up to you to decide which is right for you.

Carbiner is some what in between - they are capable of doing huge amounts of damage over time but don't have the same oomph or aversion of the rifle, or the defense bonus granted by the pistol. So its a bit more difficult to solo as a Carbiner.

Bounty hunter has some neat Carbine tricks, however.

I think the majority over at the Rifleman boards will disagree. The key as a rifleman is to not find yourself in a melee situation.

I really like the rifle for the range it gives you and damage you can do to mobs. Most anything I can mindshot/headshot2 before they even turn in my direction. However, due to the extreme (and ludicrus) melee dmg you take I keep my pistol handy at all times. Even with not using it much I'm up to Exp Pistol. So, I guess I'd recommend Rifle with a pistol at the ready. You really dont want to see "Your trap has failed to affect the target" and get hammered for, at times, 400+ dmg because youre holding the wrong weapon.

Quick footnote in the wrong place:Is anyone else annoyed with the max range of the rifles? Every weapon is 64m, with things charging you in just a sec or two sometimes at that range it can get very annoying being a rifleman. Throw in the absurd melee dmg factor and it can be a recipe for disaster.

Babuluga - Novice Ranger/Rifleman
Dearic, Talus - Ahazi

It is VERY hard to solo as a Rifleman. Thats 2.5x Melle Damage makes every critter battle a match between life and death.

I play a Rifleman along with my Ranger skills. Unless something stupid happens, I never get touched, and my downtime only happens when I've used so many specials that I finally need to take a break (very rare)

Honestly.... Rifleman is where it's at for me. I have a DL20 and a Laser Rifle that I have on my hotbar. I use the laser to deal out 1000+ per hit, but it's really slow, and if it's getting bad, I swap to DL20 which is much faster and in my experience, does much better if you have to mix it up close range or kiting. Still waiting in vain for someone to start cranking out T-21's on Sunrunner. But even so, I very much enjoy my rifle. I'm a wrecking ball in PvP, and PvE, with good tactics, isn't even fair!

I use a pistol, FWG5 51-150 dmg, 3.4 dly. (sliced) I have no problems soloing. Throw a snare and debuff trap, health shot 2, body shot 2, body shot 2, warning shot, body shot 2 body shot 2rinse repeat til dead. I have basic medical skillsas well, so I throw a heal (stimpak B) in there if I need it.

Rifle you end up using a pistol anyway oncein melee rangeand rifle is the same range as pistol soI forgo the whole rifle thing. Bottom line right now is personal preference, use what you want.

I'm a 2 hand sword ranger, but my friend in game is a rifle ranger. I've seen him take out some pretty crazy stuff with a root trap and some mind damaging traps and just mind shots. It helps if you root, shoot some, throw in a snare so that when the root wears off its moving slow then root again. Makes it really easy assuming they even find you if you do a conceal shot or something.

Well,

I'll speak for the Carb.

I couldn't think of a better weapon, and, I don't see others soloing any better than I do.

I see Riflemen doing tremendous damage, to single critters,

I see Pistoleers standing up close and personal to some nasty beasts,

me?

well,

I like to take on hordes of MoBs. Often, mainly.

I don't see being able to do that with either the pistol or the rifle.

As one example, running back to the starport on Talus I got jumped by a group of swindlers (swindler somethings),

about five whites and a yellow. All range, maybe one or two melee, not sure, if there were melees they never got close enough to engage,

not the first wave anyway.

Action shot 2!

A Wonderful cone effect, even with ranged users,

gives you time to jump up, run back a bit, Heal to full, get down and wait for em.

when they come again, and they will, it's just time to bleed them again, and again, picking out the weak, finishing them off, one by one, spamming Action shot 2, Healing.

There is risk with ranged users.

There is almost no risk with those who melee.

As a Novice Bounty Hunter I also mix it up with Underhand shot.

This is something that works for me.

I am a Ranger,

I survey everywhere, in far off, very dangerous places

and,

I Love to solo

I think you can find something that fits your playstyle no matter what you choose.

I just wished to correct a poster who stated that it was difficult to solo with a Carb,

it's not.

Not for me.

Ssonashe Tearer

I switched from rifle to pistol. There were several reasons:

1. Logistics of making traps- Yes traps + rifle takes down big stuff, but with a trap per mob, after a while the logistics becomes just overwhelming- all of the surveying and trap making, and reloading traps from inventory to the bar gets to you after a while.It is something to pass time with while generating camp xp though. Trap damage goes towards trapping xp, and if you are working up rifle, you will siphon off xp to trapping by using traps. Also toss range on traps is 45m, less than around the 60m ideal range of most rifles.

2. I picked a race skewed towards brawling- trandoshan. Had I gone zabrak or wookie and had a gazillion points to play around with or just a huge mind pool, then the mind cost of using rifle might be tolerable. Encumberance from armor cripples my already weak mind levels, and my laser rifle was firing for 110 mind per headshot2 in armor.

3. Add code is broken- if you snipe a social mob and dont kill it outright, its buddies beeline for you. Apparently the devs forgot to apply the cammo and cover checks to adds. The net effect is that you wound the one you targeted, then are hung up in long rifle delay while the adds bear down on you, and so its off to the races kiting them until you can get warning shot. It is really amusing thinking that here you are, pumping energy into one creature who is oblivious to you, while its buddies who are not being shot at have zero problem finding you. When you go with pistol, since the speed is so fast you can tab over quickly to the adds and send them packing without kiting.

4. I like harvesting the corpses in a nice neat pile at my feet, rather than combing the hillside for a corpse that fell inside a rock. With pistol, they usually wind up in melee range and its pretty easy to set down your beer and harvest that hide.

5. Rifles pause while you are on the run, pistols do not. When you kite with a rifle, each time you shoot you stop and go through an animation, which lets them catch up and smack you with the 3x bonus of melee v. rifle. Pistols are smooth as silk, firing without impeding movement.

6. I am surprised at how good I am at 64 meters standing up with a pistol. I am only expert pistol under marksman, and I hit alot outside of ideal range with body shots- perhaps the +50 hit bonus for pistolbonuses offsets range penalties (rifle specials hit at +5).

7. Everything rides on that shot landing for rifle- because the HAM is huge, and the delay is big, a miss matters far more for a rifle. As a result you want to do stuff like aim and go prone. THe former adds even more time to an already slow attack. The latter frequently results in 'prone warping' where you go prone at say 60m, and the game warps you back to a previous position 85 meters back. Often the only way to avoid prone warping is to crawl that 20m or so to the position.

8. The small stuff gets cleared fast with pistol- you can, with runlock on, do a body shot, harvest, tab to the next, body shot, harvest and rapidly clear the critters around a nest. This run and gun style is very appealing to me aesthetically, and I can't do that with rifle owing to the slow speed and pauses when you fire.

9. Warning shot is nice, but it means I have to go hunt that creature over the next hill. Typically you fire off your shot, and if for some reason it is headed your way you fire the warning shot to drive it off. Great. So say it lands. Then you got to go chase that thing down which is now 120m over the hill. That isn't a nice neat corpse at my feet.

10. Minimum range of headshot is too far- if it charges, odds are pretty good it will get within minimum range for headshot and spoil your shot. So you must kite early with rifle.

11. I went TKA for up close and personal, and the body damage from pistol goes very well with random hit locations off of zerk damage from TKA. Seems to me like your chance of landing an autoattack to any postion is roughly equal to the number of slots of that damage type to the total number of hit locations, IE 1 in7 for mind damage (only the head), 2 in7 for action damage (legs and boots), 4 in 7 for body (2 arms, torso, gloves). Am I wrong with the number of slots here? So something like 50% of your autos hit health, and maybe 15% hit the head. So you start with health damage from a pistol and can finish off with health from TKA.

The main thing I miss from rifle is the big hit. It is fun seeing it land for a big number. The T21 would be an even bigger number, but the tech level of my planet isn't there yet, but the planet can pump out a tun of well engineered scout blasters. Certainly rifle feels more like stalking and goes well with ranger, but the numerous bugs in the game are much more annoying to me as a rifle user than as a pistol user, so I went pistol.