Rifleman Archive

Some people have said they want +20 melee to something else, and some have said I would rather not be ripper apart. Post here why you think it should be changed, and to what, or why you think it should not be changed.

Please avoid flaming each other, lets just have a mature debate here.

"Some people have said they want +20 melee to something else, and some have said I would rather not be ripper apart"

Fact 1. We take 300% more melee damage when using a rifle
Fact 2. By the time a rifleman hits +20 melee defence (actually by the time you get to +5) he/she will be hunting dangerous game. These monsters kill in 2-4 hits.
Fact 3. +20 melee defence provides relatively nill melee protection when this 300% damage increase is taken into consideration.
Fact 4. SOE will never reduce the 300% damage increase for riflemen, as it is a major game balancing feature.
Fact 5. In PvP (even with the coming 75% change) riflemen will be in the back shooting at the enemies from a range of 40-63 meters.

When you take all of these FACTS into consideration, it shoudnt be hard to follow the FACTS to several logical conclusions.

Logical Conclusion 1. +20 melee defence or not, we WILL be incapped by a relatively small number of PC melee attacks or advanced NPC attacks. Therefore it makes sence to change the protection to something that we can actually benifit from.

Logical Conclusion 2. Since we are always fighting at a distance (if your not, your doing something wrong) it makes sence that a +20 to ranged defence would prove very useful.

Logical Conclusion 3. With the upcoming changes to PvP combat, +20 ranged defence would provide an EXTREMELY useful advantage to riflemen. It would help lower the rate at which pistoleers, carbineer, and other rifleman can whittle away at our defences.

Logical Conclusion 4. Ranged defence > melee defence when all modifiers (300% melee increase) and situations (were usually at a distance) are taken into consideration.

I can see how the +20 melee defense might be useful to a PURE rifleman, but to someone like me, who also specced 2H sword, this melee defesne is AWESOME! I would trade it in for somehting else though - like a resistance to knockdown, which we currently do not have.

Its 250 percent, not 300.

I got to agree with Tekdragon, with the 300% or 250% what ever it is, the +20 Melee is pointless.

"...but to someone like me, who also specced 2H sword, this melee defesne is AWESOME!"

I have no disagreements with that, but since only maybe 5-10% of riflemen go with 2h sword as their other skill... its not important enough to mean having a WORTHLESS branch for the other 90% of riflemen.

If anything, aldeon should contact the 2h swordsman correspondent and both of them push for the +20 melee defence to get moved to 2h sword tree while we get something that actually does something useful.

As a Rifleman/TKA, that +20 melee defense is great... but looking just at Rifleman - I think TekDragon outlined it 100% correctly.

I like it the way it is. While the melee damage multiplier makes it pretty useless when you're carying a rifle I've found that just switching out my rifle (for my untrained fists if need be) when I'm going to get hit can save my life. I see far too many riflemen just stand there and keep shooting at a mob that's in melee range, they're obviously not going to win and if they'd only switch out their rifle they could buy enough time for the medic to get off a heal or for melee/ranger to land a taunt or even just another group member to land a good blow and draw the mob off. Also as mentioned above it's not just about how it effects riflemen, it also effects the other weapons you can use and I haven't yet met a person that's going Rifle only.

"Its 250 percent, not 300."

Doesnt change any of the facts or the logic used to get to the conclusions.

250% or 300%, melee PCs can still do 2-3k hits on us (i know, i PvP) and high level monsters (which is what youll be facing by the time your at tha level) are will still own you in 2-4 hits.

So yes, maybe it is 250% instead of 300%. Doesnt change the fact that it doesnt help us at all.

My final point: If your honestly in positions where you feel +20 melee defence will lower the damage you take.. you obviously suck at playing a rifleman. Have fun looking at the "choose your cloning facility" screen.

We are NOT meant to be in melee combat. Never, ever, not even for a second. If you find yourself in melee combat alot... well, again, have fun looking at that loading screen cause +20 melee dont mean **edit** when your taking 250% more damage.

"...but to someone like me, who also specced 2H sword, this melee defesne is AWESOME!"

and

"As a Rifleman/TKA, that +20 melee defense is great"

and

"While the melee damage multiplier makes it pretty useless when you're carying a rifle I've found that just switching out my rifle"

All of these are just proving my point. Melee defence is USELESS to a rifleman!!!! Granted, its NOT useless to a 2h swordsman, TKA, fencer, or polearmed user. Its probly not useless for a pistoleer eiher.

But NO one has said (and no one ever will say) "+20 melee defence helps me out as a RIFLEMAN".

Why the hell should we have +20 to something that helps OTHER skills when only 20% of us have those "other skills". Thats like making one entire branch dedicated to a bonus for droid engineers. Its USELESS.

I can see how the +20 melee defense might be useful to a PURE rifleman, but to someone like me, who also specced 2H sword, this melee defesne is AWESOME! I would trade it in for somehting else though - like a resistance to knockdown, which we currently do not have.

Something that I thought of was having the melee defense bonuses subtract from the damage multiplier that we suffer from while having a rifle equipped. Ie, it's at 250% at novice rifleman and gets reduced to something like 150-125% by the time we top off the tree. And honestly, I can't say for sure that this isn't what it does now... I don't really know what tangible effect "+1 melee defense" translates into. In any case, requiring you to have a rifle equipped to get the bonus and having it subtract from the rifle-equipped-melee-multipler (say that 10 times fast) would make it somewhat useful for us, athough I agree that in general we should be keeping ourselves out of melee situtations...
I don't really know that this would be better or more balanced for rifleman than changing it to ranged defense, but I figure it would be an option.

I like the +20 melee as well...