Ranger Archive
Thread: For the unbuffed, unarmored tank users
I hunt Endor all the time unbuffed and unarmored (I find the armor hurts more than helps when I am unbuffed). If you have brandy your health and action will go down much quicker than your mind (especially since you have super Mon Cal mind stats). Anything I cant headshot to death before it notices me I can conceal shot to death before it notices me - including grassland marauders and such.
Usually I will kill a wave, wait for my stats to regen, kill the next wave, etc. Works well. I die about once a night when I get tired and careless - thats when I know it is bedtime.
Keep an eye on what deathblows and what doesn't. If it notices you and it deathblows send a suicide non-CH pet against it and run for your life. If it doesn't deathblow just let it incap you and save the pet for later.One thing I noticed while being careless with mantigrue screechers is that if you send a pet against a screecher and it still manages to incap you, after you get up and run away from the battle it will still follow you, even if it is attacking the pet and not aggroing you personally. This is a pain because they do nasty area disease attacks which you will get even if it is only aggro'd on the pet.
Actually I think this is why they are my favorite thing to hunt - you have to be careful or you will end up trudging back to Mos Eisley to delight the newbie cantina folks with your totally black mind bars.
Adds some challenge and even if you fail you still get petted by sweet little cantina things. 
Well, wookiees get petted anyway. If you are a Mon Cal with a potential 1200 mind wounds they will probably worship at your feet for the healing xp. 
Endor is fun - I'd be interested to heal unbuffed/unarmored strategies for other planets too though.
Being a Rifleman of the "oldtimer" variaty I have no problems hunting unarmored and unbuffed. I learned fast the meaning of "tactics".Only problem is eventually, theHAM and stomach catches up with you and you have to stop, loosing time. So, to increase volume by an extra 100k cr I spend 10k to 25k cr to be more efficient. I don't always, however, it depends on if I need the specials or not (sometimes I don't). I can always choose to hunt this way for a 30 minute period of time on just about anything except the "big" stuff (GDK, Albatross, ect.).
NO ONE survives a Gorax stompin' unarmored, however...
Not many survive a stomping even armored
None of us, except the correspondents, know what is coming, but my advice would be to wait on any template changes until we get those Combat Docs. Things might be very different soon.
Until then, could I suggest instead of going totally unarmored, you consider making yourself a nice low-encumbrance ubese shirt? Get an encumbrance slice on it. If you want some practice for the upcoming balance limit the protection to 40% or so. Don't worry about a full suit as your body takes 50% of the hits.
Maybe look into getting a low-HAM version of your prefered weapon. The difference in HAM usage can be quite noticable. I can almost guarantee damage will be dropping with the Revamp so it is more practice as well.
Rooks wrote:
Rifles is Great IF you Master it.
Rifles is not a profession for Dabblers, that's why I gave it up.
I still cannot let my pets go and will probably switch back to Pistols 0-0-3-0 and use it with my pets.
I am about given up trying to Master some FOTM combat profession to hunt the Big stuff.
Until I give up my creatures, or they fix them, I am doomed to mediocre hunts.
Fred_Skinner wrote:
NO ONE survives a Gorax stompin' unarmored, however...
Fodder650 wrote:
When i was a master rifle before i never once used conceal shot. How do you know when you have done it to much? Is it the usual ? and ! or is it a case of an aggro coming after you.
If you tell your droid to go harvest this doesnt cause the target to find you. Which it should since your vocalizing something. Does anyone see this being fixed in the future? And if so /tellpet would keep it silent? Can your droid keep up with your harvests since your staying concealed and not moving?
I'm not a master of unbuffed combat by any means, but heres what I know:
generally, the creatures let you know when conceal shot has broken. I read somewhere that you get two misses, then it breaks.
I myself don't use takecover and conceal shot that much anymore. I just /maskscent and go prone and then use headshot3. Unless I have to take a lot of shots, I usually kill big creatures before they see me. By big I mean blurgs(not the easy blurg pups or hunters, but the normal, crimson, etc... blurgs). You pretty much still need brandy and canape, because this requires a lot of mind. Wouldn't recommend this without brandy and or canape though - without these you can only get two or three shots off max.
Headshot does more damage (and to a single pool) for about the same ham costs as conceal shot (which does damage to all pools). In either case, there'sa lot of waiting around for your ham to regenerate if you do a lot of headshots or a lot of conceal shots and you're not buffed.
Where conceal shot will get you, esp. when taking out really big things, is you'll run out of health and action points before the thing is dead. Conceal shot will then break and you'll be firing regular shops and soon after, dinner.
For medium and small creatures, I try not to use specials. I just maskscent and prone and let autofire do the rest. Generally they won't see me. If they do, I then use a headshot or two to take them down.
In both cases I stay at extreme range - ie., 63-65m. This way if the creature and his friends aggro, it gives me time to get away. I also have /stand;/burstrun ready if I'm hunting big things unbuffed and spice on the toolbar. One thing to be careful about is if a creature goes out of ranger and it takes you a while to catch up with it, then the creature will detect you right away. I think that going prone with maskscent gives you a set length of time before you are detected. There is no limit with concealshot and takecover though -- just don't miss and keep using concealshot -- if you miss or switch to another special, you'll be detected.
As for the droids, vocalizing the command or using tellpet doesn't make the creatures see you - at least they've never seen me. The other night I was taking down a mantigrue screecher lair (I was buffed), and sending the droid in to harvest. It was pretty funny to watch my little harvesting droid weave in under plaque-striking screechers. Don't group your droid though. But this is a good tactic to use for rifleman -- go prone somewhere where you can hit all the creatures, and take them out one by one, sending the droid over to harvest after each kill.
Master Ranger / Mediocre Rifleperson
Bloodfin