Rifleman Archive

DPS omg i love to play with newbs and mention to "Newbs who think they are vets" that DPS doesnt WORK!!!!!!!!!!

But yes i can say my alt will prolly go MBH/CM/Smug xx4x Rifles though can do a lot of damageare just notfast enough

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AxilX wrote:

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MyraKat wrote:

Teh following is a big blob of stuff that probably doesnt make sense, read at your own risk.

If you don't think startle shot is useful, then you are doing something very wrong. With my bowcaster, i can normally drop people to 1/3 health or so before they notice it, depending on profession/armor... but if you get them low enough and pop a startle shot, that takes people to just low enough for one headshot to incap. Startle shot = you cant heal unless you stim or ruby bliel+stim (can take a while to figure out why you cant use bacta whatever), headshot, that persons incapped, and you win. I restarted my character about a 2-3 weeks ago and have been playing rifleman ever since (i was a rifleman WAAYY way back, as well as others..., and on my character when i came back to the game 2 months ago or so). It's virtually impossible for me to lose a 1v1 as it is... my template being Master Rifles, Master Pistols, and 4004 CM. Today i found myself in Cnet against 2 jedi and what seemed to be a commando/rifleman, i killed one of the jedi in about a minute (using exo-protein and deuterium pyro or however its spelled most of the time), and moved onto the rifleman. He got incapped in 4 quick shots (used startle shot after a body/headshot and he couldnt heal, 1 more headshot = incap), jedi healed him, 2 more shots incapped again. He had the heal bug where he healed+incapped at the same time, so i tripled him in a few more shots. Moved onto the 2nd jedi, and almost had him incapped alot of times. He ran and made it to the water (NPC blew my bike)

Basically all that means riflemen are far from underdogs if you know how to play them, no matter what you say, its the skill and timing that counts

and yeah, after those 2 weeks of pvp, more or less, im up to a 1760 pvp rating, mostly all of it gained from soloing

pick up lots of accuracy tapes and some speed to go along with it, exo-protein wafers, and youre set

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i wanted to point out a few things... a.) any jedi who can be killed in 4 shots has ground his template very poorly, force armor or master defender is enough to make sure it takes at least 6-8 connections to him, and you'll miss quite often if he has force aura 2, even with your pyro. Secondly anyone who doesn't take stims into PvP really doesn't know what he is doing, startle shot only shuts down innate heals, you can still bliel/stim all day. 3rdly, the fact that you were able to get off four shots without having somthing bad happen to you (startle/kd/statsis/etc) further proves that you were fighting two very inept PvP'ers. Startle is a nice special.. i'm not denying that, but it is our *only* decent state-attack, our damage attack isn't anything better than any other ranged profession will give you, and all of them offer better shots than startle as an accompanyment.

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Sorry but i dont understand half of that.... but,

A. I said the rifleman/commando or whatever his temp was went down in 4 shots. If you were a wookie with a bowcaster that was quite good like mine is, you would understand that its pretty easy to take people with 5k Kinetic Recon armor down in 4-5 hits.

as for:

Secondly anyone who doesn't take stims into PvP really doesn't know what he is doing, startle shot only shuts down innate heals, you can still bliel/stim all day.

I believe i said that it can sometimes take a few seconds to figure out that it's not a bug, and its startle shot thats keeping you from using stims. Therefore, with the ~1 second cycle time of my startle -> headshot, they most likely wont have looked at their state bar and then hit bliel and stim at the same time. Sorry, but only the really crazy asians have reflexes like that

1. Would that the ALR was a rifleman only weapon - yet the truth is that anyone can use it and with enough generic mods (smuggler/bh etc) you can have as much skill with it as a real rifleman.

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Yea OK ms Audri Fisher... because Valcyn is such an uber PvP server right? Transfer to bloodfin and test yourself out

Btw, i dont know what his temp was, but most people with that sort of template die FAST, so i guessed

one of my toons is a rifleman, why...because he can solo krayts all day long and is only a CL 65. Rifleman is pretty powerful, and on top of that you can still get rifles down to the 1.0 speed with tapes and stuff. I agree some fo the specials are broken but it is in no way as borked as Jedi or Melee proffs are. Go out and try some of these other profession for a while and see how they are. CM was way overpowered PRE CU, rifleman was pretty nice, but even now CM is stronger then it should be, oh and that aren't adding more costs to healing.

Joe

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jobothehobbit wrote:

one of my toons is a rifleman, why...because he can solo krayts all day long and is only a CL 65. Rifleman is pretty powerful, and on top of that you can still get rifles down to the 1.0 speed with tapes and stuff. I agree some fo the specials are broken but it is in no way as borked as Jedi or Melee proffs are. Go out and try some of these other profession for a while and see how they are. CM was way overpowered PRE CU, rifleman was pretty nice, but even now CM is stronger then it should be, oh and that aren't adding more costs to healing.

Joe

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have fun now ^_- probably later today you will discover what I mean. Krayts were on easy mode... now they are not.

Message Edited by Ackehece on 10-19-2005 01:07 PM

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ITOAO wrote:
Ackehece,
I agree with almost everything you have said in the original post. I feel that startle could be made a heck of a lot better. Aim should last longer or the windup should be shorter.Kneecap should have more of an effect.
I do also happen to find the post made earlier about Sniper doing wound damage Extremely interesting. I for one feel wounds are not used enough in the game. It feels like the concept is not being used to its fullest. The wound idea seems cool. I don't think it could be done exactly the way he suggests it but it sounds cool none the less. I have been a Rifleman since Day 1 and I read these boards quite a bit, just don't post often. Like another poster said. What can we do to help?

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Darth_Spike wrote:

On the wound damage idea, what about using the Wound % on the weapon itself decide how much damage is done as wounds...as in everyone's shots do wound damage. This makes regular trips to a doctor more important, and since wounds can be healed better/faster in Medical centers and camps, we might see them being used more.

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I like the idea.....though do it for all prof, not just rifles and then make the rifles do the most wound dammage. helps docs, helps us, gives purpose to other proffesions.........great idea!

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AdmiralSeer wrote:

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Darth_Spike wrote:

On the wound damage idea, what about using the Wound % on the weapon itself decide how much damage is done as wounds...as in everyone's shots do wound damage. This makes regular trips to a doctor more important, and since wounds can be healed better/faster in Medical centers and camps, we might see them being used more.

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I like the idea.....though do it for all prof, not just rifles and then make the rifles do the most wound dammage. helps docs, helps us, gives purpose to other proffesions.........great idea!

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I thouhgt I said that, but if it wasn't clear, I meant what you were saying. I believe every weapon has a wound % as a stat. The devs could easily allow that stat to be greater ranging, maybe to 100% for some weapons. Pistols might have a small percentage, while Rifles have a huge percentage. Someone may want a weapon with a lower max damage but high wound damage %

What did you think about the other stuff?

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Darth_Spike

On the wound damage idea, what about using the Wound % on the weapon itself decide how much damage is done as wounds...as in everyone's shots do wound damage. This makes regular trips to a doctor more important, and since wounds can be healed better/faster in Medical centers and camps, we might see them being used more.

Allready commented on in prev. post

Some more thoughts on improving Rifleman:

I had some other thoughts, but am not 100% how to word them, so forgive me if they sounds disorganized or disconnected.

Last night I was harkening back to the days when I played a Suppression Runemaster in DAoC. There were a lot of similarities to the Current Rifleman. I had a strong Nuke, that was interuptable but had a long range. DAoC had a similar Coler Con system - I was usually able to 1 shot kill a green, 2-3 shot kill a blue and many whites (depending on the MOB type) and needed to kite Yellow and above (and a few fast moving whites), but I could always solo up to a Red. I also had a snare that wasn't uber, but it helped me maintain range. I also had a self speed buff, so with that and the snare, I could generally keep out of getting damaged/interupted by most PvE opponents. PvE opponents with any ranged abilities I needed to avoid, becasue they could essentially stop me from attacking with any apreciable force. In PvP, I wasn't suited for solo, because players knew to rush towrds me and interupt and I was useless, but in a PvP group I thrived.

I think for the most part what you are stating is what we as a proffession should be.

In genreal, my tactics then were simple. I got to the fringe of max range and nuked, and was able to get 2 to 3 shots fired (depending on terrain) before the target could get in range to attack back. After the second shot I launched my snare, and ran back/kited. With my self speed buff I could cover a good distance. depending on how well I judged the distance running, I was then able to nuke 1-2 more shots before kiting again. I had to avoid social mobs, becasue they could eat my lunch.

Rifelman have a great Nuke - Sniper Shot. We have a Snare - Kneecap Shot. What I think we lack is range and/or timing and restrictions on our Sniper Shot. If we were able to get 2 Sniper shots fired from the max range (currently 64 meters without arms) to the time someone was able to fire back, we would be great nukers. Assuming our snare works now with the new changes we could attempt to kite - as long as we unequiped the rifle to get rid of the self-snare of our weapon. However, with everyone having access to the ALR and range arms, we dont really have a range advantage.

/agree The ALR is in my top three issues. It needs to be rifleman only.

So what if the T21, and any other Rifleman Cert weapon, had a 50% increase to max range...for the T21 that would be 96 meters - 32 meters beyond the ALR. With Range arms we could hit from what - 106 meters away. I would even say that only Sniper Shot got the extended range, and all other skills used the normal range of the weapon.

Depends on what the definition of Rifleman is. Is it NUKE...as we are told by the devs....or is it Sniper, which we seem to have to deal with as well......personally, i thinkthey need to make it one or another. Our problems lie in that they have done a half-ass job on both trying to make us "cool" (which we of course are), instead of effective

Timing for Sniper shot could be adjusted to have a mush shorter cooldown period, and a slightly longer Warmup, since the Warmup is interuptable. If the posture requirement was changed so that we suffered some form of penalty for kneeling or standing (like a 5% damage reduction for kneeling and 10% for standing), we would be able to act like Nukes. Inside of 64 meters, anyone with an ALR could interupt our shot, but the added 50% range gives a little room to fire away and hope Kneepcap lands when they fall in range. If we get hit by a DOT, then we wouldn't be able to Sniper while the effect lasts - having a doc heal the DOTs woudld be good. States could also be Interupters, so if we get stunned we ought to recover from it quick. While our shot would be a lot more useful, the things that can stop it from happening are enough to keep Rifleman ballanced.

Again, here is the issue of: are we nukes or snipers. Your idea is trained towards sniper and is an excellent idea, I however support the nuke role and this doesn't fit that at all.

This made me think about Cover and Concealment line. What if we droped it, and made Sniper Shot capable of being fired from Ranger stealth, or allow ANY Advanced special to be fired from stealth (opening up Ranger to a lot more profession combinations). Or just move Conceal Shot to Ranger, give them a Meele stealth attack, and we just focus on nuking and damage dealing. Replacing that line could be the return of Warning Shot, so we could keep MOBs off of us from Hate, and maybe a progressive Weapon Hinderance Reduction.

/agree 100%. same argument as above

Another thing I considdered is that if we were going to have this extended range and high damage, we would need to have a downside to maintain balance. I thought, what if during the cool-down period we had a defense penalty of NO DEFENSE. After using Sniper, we would be dangerously vulnerable for a short time.

I also considdered the Jedi scream that we would be too overpowered - but I realized that if ONLY Sniper Shot had the extended range, then the Jedi would have 32m worth of distance to start Force Run right on top of us...by the time we can shoot Kneecap, they might be in close enough range that a CDEF rifle or a Force Power could stop us from Snipering again.

your idea here is: give rifles BOTH extra RANGE and extra DAMAGE but take away DEFENSE. I prefer to get EITHER range or dammage and leave our defense alone

Also, if this were done, then balance would be assisted by not doing anything to our other damage shots - leaving them at their less-then-uber levels. Sniper would be our BIG TRICK, and without it we aren't big on damage, but still capable of doing damage.

I dissagree. We need to have more dammage. Our action costs suck on our weapons allready, even increase it a little, but make us NUKES we need to do dammage hard and fast but let us have to fight with action for those attacks. In other words, for the first 30 seconds of a battle, we rule....we out dammage everyone. but after words, b/c our action is shot, the pistols and carbines out dammage us while we use smaller action cost shots to conserve action. That's what a nuke does. Dammage hard over a short period of time.

I also thought that with the high damage output, we would become High Priority Targets in PvP (which should be the case for a Nuke). We would need to be defended by other group members in PvP so we could continue taking down our enemy one dude at a time.

I'm not sure what I think about this. If we are Nukes in pvp then yes, we'd be priority targets....if we were snipers.........i'm not so sure.

What do ya'll think of this stuff?

All in all you have GREAT ideas. I agree with much of what you said, but I think that we need to be defined more in one area or another. So that's what I think

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Darth_Spike wrote:

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AdmiralSeer wrote:

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Darth_Spike wrote:

On the wound damage idea, what about using the Wound % on the weapon itself decide how much damage is done as wounds...as in everyone's shots do wound damage. This makes regular trips to a doctor more important, and since wounds can be healed better/faster in Medical centers and camps, we might see them being used more.

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I like the idea.....though do it for all prof, not just rifles and then make the rifles do the most wound dammage. helps docs, helps us, gives purpose to other proffesions.........great idea!

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I thouhgt I said that, but if it wasn't clear, I meant what you were saying. I believe every weapon has a wound % as a stat. The devs could easily allow that stat to be greater ranging, maybe to 100% for some weapons. Pistols might have a small percentage, while Rifles have a huge percentage. Someone may want a weapon with a lower max damage but high wound damage %

What did you think about the other stuff?

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AdmiralSeer wrote:

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Darth_Spike

I think for the most part what you are stating is what we as a proffession should be.

/agree The ALR is in my top three issues. It needs to be rifleman only.

Depends on what the definition of Rifleman is. Is it NUKE...as we are told by the devs....or is it Sniper, which we seem to have to deal with as well......personally, i thinkthey need to make it one or another. Our problems lie in that they have done a half-ass job on both trying to make us "cool" (which we of course are), instead of effective

Again, here is the issue of: are we nukes or snipers. Your idea is trained towards sniper and is an excellent idea, I however support the nuke role and this doesn't fit that at all.

/agree 100%. same argument as above

I think you hit the nail right on the head with the above statements as far as the Devs 50/50 approach to us. I kinda thought that thru the course of my post I was laying the groundwork for us becoming Nukes more and Snipers less. Rangers will be spending a lot more XP and SP to get what we have in a Tier 1 box - let them be the sniper and since they are CL54 they can use the ALR. I think we would be a better profession if we stopped trying to sraddle between Sniper and Nuke..and with Ranger becoming the better Stealth, let them have Conceal Shot and be done with it. That gives us 4 more skill blocks to adjust/fix our shortcomings.

I also think that our T-21 (and the new Master Rifleman weapon we are abut to get in ToO) should be tailord specifically for our role. The role we are discussing here as Nukes, not the current wishy-washy role

your idea here is: give rifles BOTH extra RANGE and extra DAMAGE but take away DEFENSE. I prefer to get EITHER range or dammage and leave our defense alone

Well I thought about that at first, and figured we could get more by sacrifcing. Half of the reason anyone can use the ALR is becasue we got 64 meters and carbines got 54 or something...people complained about that, so the Devs made most weapons CL certed. For us to get Range and Damage, which I think are essential for being a successful Nuke, we need to take a hit somewhere. I didn't say we lost all Defenses permanently, at least I wasnt trying to sound like I was. I meant that the Zero Defense state would be a short term temporary situation. Like I thought I said, by adjusting the timing so the Sniper Shot had a much shorter cool-down and a slightly longer warm-up, the entire period of the cool-down (when we cant shoot again anyway) we are defenseless. That gives us a bonafide weakness that another player can use against us. With that weakness, no-one could complain that we were too uber or overpowered. The added range and damage we receve could be countered by a player knowing the proper tactics to use against us...either run away crying or run towards us with guns blazing and hope to interupt our Nuke.

I dissagree. We need to have more dammage. Our action costs suck on our weapons allready, even increase it a little, but make us NUKES we need to do dammage hard and fast but let us have to fight with action for those attacks. In other words, for the first 30 seconds of a battle, we rule....we out dammage everyone. but after words, b/c our action is shot, the pistols and carbines out dammage us while we use smaller action cost shots to conserve action. That's what a nuke does. Dammage hard over a short period of time.

Actually, I do agree with this, and once again I thought I had said that. English is my first language, really it is. We should have a powerful nuke shot that is our primary tool, the snare we already have, a PvE shot like Warning Shot to reduce agro/hate, some average damage shots that we can use when Sniper is unavaialble, and expect to have friends along for GCW/PvP to keep us clear so we can do our job.

I'm not sure what I think about this. If we are Nukes in pvp then yes, we'd be priority targets....if we were snipers.........i'm not so sure.

Totally agree here. Devs need to pick one and run with it. I am hoping that the Ranger changes might make this a reality, but they have said nothing to Ack about anything.

All in all you have GREAT ideas. I agree with much of what you said, but I think that we need to be defined more in one area or another. So that's what I think

Hopefully this thread, which has been remarkably positive and constructive from every poster (I am a BH, and a thread like thisis never Flame resistant for long) will show the Devs that we Riflesentients (well some of us are at least) are willing to give up the Sniper Role to be Nukes - becasue we realize that Rifleman/Ranger is the Sniper Combo.

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