Rifleman Archive
Thread: Oh my i have to rethink my entire rifleman strategy
Sotaudi wrote:
doltec wrote:Ok , i read the patch notes and was no where even prepared for what i encountered last night when i went to hunt. I have been in the habit of group hunting and not bothering to buff. By the time a creature was close enough to actually damage me i was usually watching it slide to a halt at my feet dead. Well the power of the rifles hasn't gone away thank goodness, because the melee to hit bonus has made every piece of clothes my squad leader abilities absolutely worthless. with the rifleman tree we get +42 to melee defense, my clothes bring that up to 54 and stacked in group since i am a master squad leader up to +84 melee defense. Well if i had any defenses at all last night they were not appareant. Every creature that close enough to attack me hit me with their attack i didnt avoid, dodge, block anything all not every melee attack landed on me. I am used to having only 500 health and action but could count on at least one miss to enable me finish of the attacking creature. Well that strategy is gone. I have begun stat migration from my mind to health and action so i have more lee way and the possible ability to wear armor while unbuffed.Has anyone else run into this and what are your new stats going to be?As others stated, the fact that we were hard to hit with melee attacks at melee range was a bug. We have a +40 melee defense at Master Rifleman (by Rifle Special Abilities IV, actually). I believe this was intended to mitigate the 2.5x melee damage, then to offset some of the new to-hit bonus that replaced it. But they screwed something up, and removed the 2.5x melee modifier without getting the to-hit bonus working. This left us with a +40 melee defense, twice as high as the +20 I get as a Master Swordsman (even adding Master Brawler, I only get +27 melee defense from melee professions). So when the complaint from melee professions that we were able to tank better than they were was not much of an exaggeration, as is indicated from your observations.
However, in answer to your question, I am not changing anything myself. I leveled during the 2.5x melee modifier days, back when we had to level in the snow, and we did not have any shoes, and we had to use sticks for guns.... err...sorry... drifted there for a minute. Anyway, my strategy at that time was to switch to pistol as soon as something got within melee range. After I made Master Rifleman and realized that Pistols IV was never going to be enough and inefficient because I had to switch targeted pools, I decided to give up Ranger and Scout, and I started working on Master Swordsman then Master Brawler to round out my build.
Thus, I have rifle for long range, and Swordsman and Brawler skills for when they get within melee range. My health and action stats are slightly higher than many pure riflemen (700/500/400 for H & A, and 800/800/600 for Mind if I recall correctly). I do this so I do not kill myself with melee specials if I am not buffed.
Because I can go melee if they get in close, and because I usually do not do anything significant (espeically, PvP) unless I am buffed, I am personally not concerned about the change. But I leveled understanding that your chances of survival against melee drops dramatically if you are within melee range and you continue to hold onto your rifle. We had a reprieve from this principle for a time, and those who leveled between the time the melee damage modifier went away and now will need to adjust their thinking. But while those of us who experienced the 2.5x modifier may need to be a little less complacent, this is really nothing unfamiliar, and we are already used to dealing with it.
I like the part about leveling in the snow with out shoes with sticks for guns...
I would certainly hope that the average rifleman can fire more then 5 or 6 specials unbuffed lol.
I suppose you could count brandy and food as a buff, nonetheless, its not any big burden, the only food buff i know that last 43 mins and you can stack 2, if you have even attempted to migrate some stats to mind, you don't have a pool problem at all.
Yes I know other professions can use stims for this, but personally I think we are better off, then some.
I don't think alot of players adjust their armor needs to reasonable levels either, sure if you wear a 300 enc helm, its going to put more limits on your mind pool, did you ever think you dont always have to wear every piece of you can afford to buy, or maybe substitute lighter armor on some healable body areas. Wear armor appropriate to the encounter then you can save yourself alot of suffering.
If its PVP then **edit** you need every buff known to man anyway.
ElrohirSoR wrote:
my character counterattacks every now and then, umm dont ask me i dont have any counterattack bonus,
Zëënk R¤düxŠim a pikemen we get block
when i block it reads 'counter-attack in my combat spam - block in my opponents
block plain sucks
but yeah its just a case of mislabelling
kirstar wrote:i still dont get what exactly has changed
pre patch our penalty to melee was acting as a bonus and stacking with our defenses making us pretty tough customers in the melee/tank role. patch7 fixed that pretty much reduced our melee protection to nothing which it should have been in pub6. this mad us have pretty much no weaknesses at all.
Message Edited by Barb-Wire on 03-18-2004 10:18 AM
Staveeno wrote:
I want to know how rifleman have it way to easy when we are REQUIRED to be buffed or take a crap load of spice or food to even function.
I'm curious what your definition of 'function' is. Unbuffed, I can go prone and headshot 6k HAM-or-less mobs to death before they get close enough to kill me. Then I have to wait and rest a bit before doing the same thing for the next one, but overall a lair takes me no longer to do with my rifle than it does with my pistols (I am, for the record, a master pistoleer and just enough rifleman at the moment to use the geonoisian rifle).
When I first started SWG back in September I tried rifleman, complete with the x2.5 damage multiplier. I finally went back to it with the new rifle that came out, and was amazed at how easy it was compared to last year. This new change brings things more in line with how I remember them - namely, that rifles are great at long range and from concealment, but faster than a Death Stick for getting you killed in melee.
Hopefully, this 'fixing' of rifleman defenses (as well as the more generalcap put on defense stacking)will weed out the ubiquitous Teras Kasi/Rifleman grief..er, pvp'ers running around and put rifles back to long-range sniper roles, rather than running and gunning like a pistoleer.