Rifleman Archive

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erli wrote:

Ranged Deathblow - If the stupid cyber arm can have it so can Riflemen. Even 40m is alot to cover before the incapped person gets up. Triple incapping is one of the least fun ways to die, not that any of them are terribly fun. I would at least push for longer incap timers if Ranged deathblow is an impossibility, force people into making another food choice (Cavellian creams) if they want to get up really quick. Incap Timer of 10-60 seconds decided randomly with damage taken at death playing a strong role in relation to duration of incap, if you eat cavellian creams it is a flat 1-10 seconds.

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QFE

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erli wrote:

Ranged Deathblow - If the stupid cyber arm can have it so can Riflemen. Even 40m is alot to cover before the incapped person gets up. Triple incapping is one of the least fun ways to die, not that any of them are terribly fun. I would at least push for longer incap timers if Ranged deathblow is an impossibility, force people into making another food choice (Cavellian creams) if they want to get up really quick. Incap Timer of 10-60 seconds decided randomly with damage taken at death playing a strong role in relation to duration of incap, if you eat cavellian creams it is a flat 1-10 seconds.

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have you heard this or actually USED it--last time i tested this it didn't work at all, and was no more than a myth. Which arm is it you think does this?

ok onto my thoughts:

Aim: needs to be increased in duration and power. I completely agree that this should be our way of overcoming aura and COB. If we're going to be the nukers in a group, we should be able to deal full damage whenever possible. there are TOO MANY times when i end up doing around 500 damage to my opponents, only to find that once any melee gets w/in range of me they can outdamage me by 100-200 pts. I've even found that other ranged opponents can do this, even when i have duelist stance (have MBH as well) and pikatta pie in use. A tier setup of aim (much like the 15 sec/250, 15 sec 500, and 30 sec 500) would be a good way to allow riflemen to overcome the defenses of others while keeping it in the profession and not just to 1-tree dabblers. possibly only have a 500 bonus and 30 sec timer at master?

Adv startle/posture changes: lets be honest, when was the last time you actually used adv startle for the posture change instead of the delay? anyone? me either. Without accuracy bonuses to postures, the only time you ever see people flat on the ground anymore is if they're either riflemen setting up for a sniper shot or going cover, or someone who's been knocked on their back by another player. I have yet to use this to get another player up off the ground, because most of the time in pvp (or even in pve) noone WANTS to be on the ground. The posture change has thus become worthless, and should really be made into a single-target posture change down attack. I know if someone was to start shooting at me and i didn't know where from, i'd hit the dirt pretty fast.

DPS: not talking about the thing on our weapons, but the actual damage we're able to do over time. from what i've seen as the dev's ideal world, rifleman should be the ranged damage dealer, carbineer should be the one that can distribute damage over multiple targets and affect posture and movement, whereas pistoleer is the one that applies the states, and while not a big damage dealer, is the one that's a real thorn in your side in close combat as far as ranged is concerned. If we're truly the damage specialists, we should be able to do more damageover time as well as at a single instant--snipershot is our high damage single-instant attack, so where's our damage in the long run? in my experience it's very possbile to outdamage me as a rifleman in the long run. Is this how it's supposed to happen? are we supposed to be the best damage dealers as a whole or just for a second of battle?

-Grozzer Agoutt

Kauri

Making the T21 better would be nice instead of having just for looks.

I'd say our running speed.

I'm a big, slow guy myself, and even with a 10 pound rifle I've got no problem running with the damn thing, you know. Then of course kneecap shot sucks and whatnot. But what I really don't like, and call me asking for imbalance, is that we cannot use our best special even while crouching. It completely removes the attack from general pvp because we cannot afford to get a root and not heal.

Message Edited by Ackehece on 09-03-2005 11:00 PM

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Ackehece wrote:

Just That. Please give me some idea what we should be pushing for changes in and where you would like rifleman to be in 3 months time?

My thoughts currently:

1) Damage output (vs healing in pvp) : Lower damage reduction?

2) Kneecap Shot (or other nearly useless attacks) : upgrades?

3) Master Weapon benefit? : Ideas? (no armor break will not fly T_T tried already)

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This is by far our biggest problem right now, there are many ways to fix this, and number 3 factors in to this greatly as well. It would be nice if our snare at least matched our self-snare from holding a rifle, but for me this is very much secondary, the first thing we should do as a nuker profession is.... Nuke.

I still think adding a good 30-50% armor break to the T-21 would be the best way to accomplish this. It would scale the damage, making us more effiecient against high armor targets, without making us rediculous against softer targets. However, if the dev team has refused to consider this (without even giving a reason?) there are some other, less elegant ways our problem can be addressed.

Another way to make the T-21 function as part of the answer to our problem is by condensing to the min-max range. Give us raise the base minimum by 100-200 points, and lower the max by the same. A second fix that could be used in conjunction or instead of this is an adjustment to /aim as many people have already mentioned. However if this is done, i want to warn against leaving /aim as a single skill. Ranged has some really nice tricks in pistol and carbine, it would be very bad if you get our defining damage buff with only 0003 rifle. I relize that Swordsman has a simaler issue, but the fact that it has threehigh damage moves as opposed to just one in most melee (power attack, headshot, critical) and the fact that there is nothing aweinspiring in the other melee professions (no ability to AoE like commando has, Mezz for extreme periods of time like a smuggler, snare groups effeciently like a carbineer) means that it's far less of an issue.

For this reason i would be an advocate of bring back aim modifiers, and spreading them around the rifle tree. At master rifle, /aim should last at least 30-40 seconds to put it on par with moves like CoB and armor break, which are the two currently game-defining personal buffs/debuffs. and will need a boost to at least 500 accuracy to be a real fix for this problem. The warmup also needs to be brought in line with CoB.

these are three ways (though apparently one has been shot down) to address our current issue, none would take much coding, if used in conjunction with smaller changes, or alone with a massive one, all have the potential to make our profession viable as a ranged killer. All of these changes would have a lesser effect on PvE where we seem to be competive already, and a lesser effect on lightly defended/lightly armored targets which we already preform well-enough against.

Lastly i want to add that lowering the overall PVP reduction (not sure if that's what Ack was suggesting or not) is *not* a viable solution to this problem. Heals may or may not be an issue, but the disparity that is causing us to lag behind is that between melee and ranged damage output, not between overall damage output and heals. Indeed a good melee build can easily run a target out of mind, if not kill him outright, as he swings for 1000 PvP damage, with 3 unique attacks against even master jedi defenders. Rifles on the other hand do up to 350 if we take the time to buff our accuracy with /aim *and* drink, are lucky enough to hit, and don't get close enough to be chopped in half by 2-3 swings.

Also, if it's decided there is a problem with the overall damage to heal ratio after these changes go through, i would hope it would be heals that were lessened, rather than damage that was upped. At the moment you have a situation where a good jedi or melee unit can kill any opponent in PvP in at most 4 hits, making death even faster would lead most PvP to be a matter of lag rather than tactics, moreso than the CU has already done.

What i think is we need to make the t21 better in someone way. Why is it harder to make and our master weapond yet a cl 54 wep is better then it. Another thing there is a minor yet annoying bug that the min range on sniper shot is actually 21m you can't shoot at 20m.

1) Make kneecap shot a useful snare

2) Improve hate system for mobs so that riflemen don't end up functioning as tanks in group combat. As it is, I have to keep my damage output very low (by using weak rifles or sparing use of weak specials) if I don't want mobs rushing me, which negates the nuking function that riflemen are supposed to serve in groups. If I do draw the hate from a mob while in a group, I am usually 64m away from a lair, so when the creature attacks me, it draws them so far away from the lair that the melee tanks have to go running after them to be able to do any damage.

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Uthyr wrote:

1) Make kneecap shot a useful snare

2) Improve hate system for mobs so that riflemen don't end up functioning as tanks in group combat. As it is, I have to keep my damage output very low (by using weak rifles or sparing use of weak specials) if I don't want mobs rushing me, which negates the nuking function that riflemen are supposed to serve in groups. If I do draw the hate from a mob while in a group, I am usually 64m away from a lair, so when the creature attacks me, it draws them so far away from the lair that the melee tanks have to go running after them to be able to do any damage.

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Concure with this one. I end up using just ranged shot until the creature is almost dead. Then I will throw a head shot at it.

I agree with the other posts about using the sniper shot under cover.

There were lots of good things mentioned here, but I think the hate system has to win out as the most broken part of being a rifleman. I have decent survivability due to having MBH as well, but I'm a rifleman, I should not be a tank. But in nearly every group I am in, I end up tanking. Even in groups with 2 or 3 melee players I end up being the tank simply because I can't keep the aggro off of me and still fulfill my damage dealing role.

To be quite honest,I have no idea why this hate system was implemented. The only up side to it is that I can pull aggro off a lower level player in one or two shots if they're getting beat on. To that end, I don't even think the hate system needs to be fixed, it just needs to be scrapped altogether. Just go back to having the MOBs aggro whoever is closest to them. That way melee players will actually have a role to fulfill.

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Penguinzx wrote:

There were lots of good things mentioned here, but I think the hate system has to win out as the most broken part of being a rifleman. I have decent survivability due to having MBH as well, but I'm a rifleman, I should not be a tank. But in nearly every group I am in, I end up tanking. Even in groups with 2 or 3 melee players I end up being the tank simply because I can't keep the aggro off of me and still fulfill my damage dealing role.

To be quite honest,I have no idea why this hate system was implemented. The only up side to it is that I can pull aggro off a lower level player in one or two shots if they're getting beat on. To that end, I don't even think the hate system needs to be fixed, it just needs to be scrapped altogether. Just go back to having the MOBs aggro whoever is closest to them. That way melee players will actually have a role to fulfill.

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significant changes are happening to the aggro system with the SL update. SLs have the ability to modify the level of aggro vs various players. Some can have the aggro they create increased and others decreased. lets see how this affects the game for a bit.