Ranger Archive

You've found your way to the preference of many

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Does the abilities of /conceal and camoflage enable a rifleman to act as a sniper? How many shots can you get off before they aggro you? How oftenarethe better than average mobdead before they notice you?

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According to my friend the 4-3-2-2 Rifleman,the answers would be:

1. Absolutely


2. Enough to win.


3. Most often.

Incidentally, I am currently going BH Lightning Cannon 3 or 4. I just love the raw power, and our city has a great Weaponsmith and Smuggler to keep me supplied. We compare notes many times. He uses /conceal shot exclusively and wins every fight. I use /aim and overChargeShot (aim to counter the rather terrible chance-to-hit). I generally can take the mob down in one or two shots at 0-0-0-1 BH. He can take it down in two or three, with the third possibly being when the mob is approaching. I use Adhesive Mesh traps when the mob starts coming. Typically, if I'm lucky it's:

1. /aim


2. /overChargeShot2


3. /aim


4. /overChargeShot2


5. (throw Mesh)


6. /fireLightningCharge1 (since the range caps at 20m)

I very often get adds. Sometimes I'll switch to a much faster base-Marksman weapon and use /warningShot. Other times I'll just park the adds with meshes. Most times it doesn't matter anyway I am considering Commando Flamethrower someday. I just never got into rifles. I love the concept of sniping, but also enjoy kiting and the frenetics of realtime crowd control. I also have this desire to dish out beaucoup damage in single shots Finally, I'm hoping to have some effectiveness in PvP, even though the LLC damages different pools and some sort of random. Hope this helps.

First of all, rifleman is great. It's a lot of fun, most--but not all--of the special shots actually work, you getpretty gooddefense modifiers (important with the defense stacking nerf coming), and you are overall very powerful. A lot of that power only comes with master--it's not really a profession for the dabbler. You get /concealshot, which will allow you to solo many red cons at 0/1/0/0 in the tree, although you'll have to be patient since many kills will take several minutes.

The downsides? Specials suck HAM like a vacuum, especially mind--you will almost always need mind/focus buffs like muon, food or musician buffs. You lose a lot of power when your target gets within 20 meters. The HAM cost of the specials makes ithard to effectively use armor. You don't get a weapon that does kinetic damage. The devs are likely to nerf some aspects of rifleman because it is arguably unbalanced--though that won't be coming until at least patch 7.

Conceal and camoglage don't add much in terms of combat. In my experience, you canstill get only 3-4 shots off before your target, and maybe his friends, aggro you. As master, you should be able to solo most mobs up to CL 35-40 without much trouble. The only time you'll have difficulty is with MOBs that have a high resist to energy damage.

Kind of along the same lines-

I am a 1/0/0/0 Rifleman (Just started up the tree) and I was thinking about armor. I have some Master Rifleman friends who wear full suits of Composite, but their HAMs are rather lacking. My mind is maxed at 1000 unbuffed. Would a suit of Padded without a helmet provide enough protectionwhile keeping me generally uninhibited? Would wearing/not wearing a helmet make much of a difference to my mind/will/focus?

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Mavericus wrote:

Just my two cents but I've been a master rifleman for about a month now and I just got master ranger today. I solo almost exclusively and usually without any buffs unless I'm really after the big game. I have been, for some time now, wearing full composite suit with an ubese jacket and without a helmet. Very rarely do I use specials on critters due to the insanely high, unhealable mind drain and I don't have to worry about much except for the upperend Nightsisters and rancors. Rifleman now have an inate ability to pull a single creature out of a pack > 50 meters. Most of the time it works for me and I can take the critter down half before it even reaches me. Beyond that I just hold my ground and heal myself as necessary. On the harder critters I'll pop a P dart on them and slowly kite them to death. I save my mind for heals only.

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I agree. If you don't use specials, armor is fine. I almost always use specials, though,to deal out as much damage in the shortest amount of time. I almost always use food or spice buffs, too, ormusician/dancer buffs if there's an entertainerin my group or I happen to be in a cantina. For the way I hunt, armor is totally impractical.

And mind is healable. Just drop a muon or eat some fishak.

I started up the fencer tree and it just got to be to hard. Maybe it was because I didn't know any of the tricks, maybe because I advanced my character wrong I don't know I got to 1221. I then switched to rifles and have rarely looked back. Having the fencing skills was nice in the beginning as I knew what I could take as a fencer and consequently I could start the fight with a rifle and end it with a baton if neccesary.

Some things to remember about rifles.

You get some excelent mind damage shots 2 bleeds stackable for now but likely to change, and 3 headshots. When soloing this is great. In groups against big monsters its less useful as you will be hitting a pool that almost no one else hits. You will find that you will do lots of damage without helping to kill the monster.

Bleeds can be used to draw monsters away from buddies. Hit them with a bleed and peace. Then back off. When they take damage 20 secs later they will come after you by themselves.

Prone is your favorite posture.

Mask scent is truely a godsend.

You will go trough your mind pool like well fill in the blank.

This can be remidied by a hit of muon gold. Or food although I like the drugs myself.

Oh I almost forgot supposidly we riflemen are getting a new toy.

It has acid damage

It does good damage

It's cert is in the rifleman tree above novice

the schematics and some of the components are going to be loot items.

I am a TKM and my hunting partner is Master Rifleman (both of us are rangers) and as a team, we are absolutely deadly to anything that crosses our path.

we are much more effective now, than when i was a master pistoleer. Personally i really like melee and im gonna stay for a while to just have some fun.

however, there are 2 things that you need to consider, leveling solo in rifleman tends to be pretty hard since most things rush you but once you get to master, you are powerful. And 2 consider hanging out with a newb tka or melee person, you share the xp, do missions twice as fast and you end up with the same xp

have fun and good hunting mate

The spraystick was supposed to be acid. It's bugged. It is a very popular thread topic over on the rifleman forum.