Rifleman Archive
Thread: Ranged/Placed Shots vs. Adv Critical/Imp Head Shots Additional Test Results
Mythor wrote:
If you're just pumping out the damage, alternate with two high damage attacks. If you run out of action, let auto-fire Ranged Shot go. You'll keep doing damage and should regenerate your action enough that you can start tossing in the high damage shots again.
Uthyr - have you tried alternating Adv. Crit. with Torso Shot, rather than Head Shot? Multipliers seem similar, but Torso has the bleed.
I've given up on Head Shot. Doesn't seem worth the Action cost for the damage it does.
Uthyr wrote:
QuantumArtist wrote:
I find sitting between combat an absolute must for any speed hound! As soon as you finish combat, sit down and POOF! You're up and ready to fight in very short order! Especially if you have action regen foods.
Yeah, I love watching the action pool rocket up to 100% when sitting for just a few seconds.Unfortunately though, that doesn't do you any good when you're being attacked by several mobs simultatneously (sometimes I take on a whole lair at once just for fun!),or if you're running through the hunting trail on Kaskyyyk kiting 15 mobs, or if you're fighting a high-HAM mob. Yes, you could simplyinterperse lower-HAM specials or carefully time your rate of refire so that your action never fully drains, but with a SAC PUP and some blob candy, you don't have to worry about that--just spam away and hit them hard!
Dont tell anyone, but I save my action for when they're KD... then I hit them with all my heaviest stuff as fast and hard as I can before they get up. The additional 20% damage bonus at that moment is brutal!
SpunkyKuma wrote:
"Trouble is, your target also lasts forever."
Definately not true, I bet others can back me up on that.
Heh, try speed maxing your template... lol!!! Any fight lasting over a minute is seems like forever to me now.
Message Edited by QuantumArtist on 08-22-2005 11:33 PM
Mythor wrote:
If you're just pumping out the damage, alternate with two high damage attacks. If you run out of action, let auto-fire Ranged Shot go. You'll keep doing damage and should regenerate your action enough that you can start tossing in the high damage shots again.
Uthyr - have you tried alternating Adv. Crit. with Torso Shot, rather than Head Shot? Multipliers seem similar, but Torso has the bleed.
I've given up on Head Shot. Doesn't seem worth the Action cost for the damage it does.
Quantum Artist - nice story about getting all those attacks in after an Underhand Shot. I think you'll find that you're not actually getting anything like that many in before the target is counted as "up" and the damage bonus expires, though.
Unless you're talking about other players, of course. NPCs get up a lot faster than players can. :-|
Tell you what... Go get your modified speed down to .86 or more, and try it! Its no exageration! Some I get less hits on, others alot more.
Startleshot also I've heard,increases thier KD time, but I've not been able to figure this out or make it work. For some reason today, the Bols I was trying it on would instantly get up from my underhand shot... and when I say instant, I mean instant. Same with startle shot, I'd apply it and about a second later they would gain the "rage" immunity status. This is very abnormal, and completely unuseful for my experiments.
Guess I'll have to try it on a few guildmates to see if it effects them at all.
QuantumArtist wrote:
Its actually more efficiant to place ranged shot between the 2 powershots. In terms of action, in terms of damage, and sqeezing the most out of ever second.
Try it... /knockdown; /rangedshot; /criticalshot; /rangedshot; /headshot; /rangedshot; /criticalshot; /rangedshot; /headshot...
Its really the most efficiant way to shell out the damage in the shortest amount of time. The only thing better would be if you have 3 damage attacks to cycle through. Rememberthere are pause times after each shot,and the cycle time is also a consideration. I find that its efficientto cycle 3 damage attacks when I really want to hurt the target.While not efficient in terms of action, this is possibly the best in terms of damage in a short time. I usually find that by the time I fire the 3rd special, the 1st one is ready again.
By comparison, I loose about half a second cycling between only 2 specials. This is because I have to wait for a brief moment as the first special completes its cycle. I'd sooner fire off a special that is already ready!
Try it, you'll like the results!
QuantumArtist wrote:
Startleshot also I've heard,increases thier KD time, but I've not been able to figure this out or make it work.
Uthyr wrote:
QuantumArtist wrote:
Its actually more efficiant to place ranged shot between the 2 powershots. In terms of action, in terms of damage, and sqeezing the most out of ever second.
Try it... /knockdown; /rangedshot; /criticalshot; /rangedshot; /headshot; /rangedshot; /criticalshot; /rangedshot; /headshot...
Its really the most efficiant way to shell out the damage in the shortest amount of time. The only thing better would be if you have 3 damage attacks to cycle through. Rememberthere are pause times after each shot,and the cycle time is also a consideration. I find that its efficientto cycle 3 damage attacks when I really want to hurt the target.While not efficient in terms of action, this is possibly the best in terms of damage in a short time. I usually find that by the time I fire the 3rd special, the 1st one is ready again.
By comparison, I loose about half a second cycling between only 2 specials. This is because I have to wait for a brief moment as the first special completes its cycle. I'd sooner fire off a special that is already ready!
Try it, you'll like the results!
Thanks for the tip, QA, I will try that out today. When you say, "The only thing better would be if you have 3 damage attacks to cycle through," I assume you mean that I could do the following cycle, substituting Torso Shot for the Ranged Shot: /criticalshot; /torsoshot; /headshot, repeat (assuming the three timers are independent).
QuantumArtist wrote:
By the way, have you had a chance to try this?
Uthyr wrote:
QuantumArtist wrote:
By the way, have you had a chance to try this?
Yes, I tried the Adv Critical Shot --> Ranged Shot --> Imp Head Shot --> Ranged Shot --> repeat cycle yesterday on a few mobs. What I found is that the Ranged Shot and the next high-damage shot always seemed to be ready to fire at the exact same instant (I was paying close attention to the icon timer animations), so i didn't really see the point in using the ranged shots (it didn't appear to speed up my firing rate throwing in the ranged shots). I didn't actually record the damage output over time for the two methods though, so perhaps I will go back and do that. Or perhaps I need to use Torso Shot instead of Head Shot for this to work? I dunno.
Hmmm, whenever I do ranged shot, Adv. Critical is still halfway through its cycle, so I go to headshot instead. The reason you do ranged shot in the middle is because its like a free 400-900 points of damage. If you do the cycle, you'll see that ranged shot is nearly instant. You can apply an attack almost immediatly after you use ranged shot, where other attacks have a longer rest time before you can go to the next attack. It also uses very little action. Thats why you use it. In the time it would take you to shell out 2 critical shots and 2 headshots, you can also squeeze in 2 ranged shots.
QuantumArtist wrote:
Hmmm, whenever I do ranged shot, Adv. Critical is still halfway through its cycle, so I go to headshot instead. The reason you do ranged shot in the middle is because its like a free 400-900 points of damage. If you do the cycle, you'll see that ranged shot is nearly instant. You can apply an attack almost immediatly after you use ranged shot, where other attacks have a longer rest time before you can go to the next attack. It also uses very little action. Thats why you use it. In the time it would take you to shell out 2 critical shots and 2 headshots, you can also squeeze in 2 ranged shots.
Today I was fighting various monsters. One elite mob I killed, I did 9000 (yes, you read that right) points of damage before he could get back up from my underhand shot. Oh... he didnt get up... It was in the combat chat log that I did all that damage in 5 seconds.
Hmmm, now that I think of it... go back to doing what you were doing... lol, I'd hate to have this done to me!
Sure, you can do without interjecting ranged shot. Thats the high damage option I was talking about. It eats up your action pretty good but the damage is nice. What I want you to notice however is how that extra 900 points adds up when you squeeze in ranged shot over a longer time. I was testing this out last night again, and it was pretty consistant, I could do around 6000-9000 damage on krayts in 5-7 seconds using the underhand andcrit/ranged/head shot method.
Ranged shot is nearly instant and costs no action. Over the space of 5 seconds, you can get 2-3 ranged shotsas well as your damage attackswith a good speed rifle... thats roughly 1600-2100 damage from nowhere...that didnt cost you much in action. Over a protracted fight, like with a krayt for example, it allows your rifleman to squeeze in extra damage for a bit longer. Its VERY sparing on my action considering how many attacks I have to spam them with before they die.
Message Edited by QuantumArtist on 08-25-2005 09:07 PM
QuantumArtist wrote:
if you're seeing the same thing I am. When you start the first round, everything is ready to fire. But once fired, the timers are all different. The second round is where you will see the timing dispersal.
There is always a breif moment after headshot where I'm waiting for crtical shot to finish cycling. I've never seen it perfectly timed between headshot and critical shot. There is almost always a breif delay after headshot where I'm waiting for critical shot to finish. Its brief, but its there. I figure I might as well squeeze in another attack during that time. Thats another reason I use ranged shot in between. Of course I could probably use bodyshot, but thats an action eater and it has a longer delay time after you use it then the other damage attacks. Over time, I've found bodyshot is not really worth it.
Yeah, it sounds to me like I am not seeing the same thing that you are, for some reason. When you say...
There is almost always a breif delay after headshot where I'm waiting for critical shot to finish. Its brief, but its there. I figure I might as well squeeze in another attack during that time. Thats another reason I use ranged shot in between.
...I too see a brief delay when I'm waiting for critical shot to finish, but during this delay, Ranged Shot is not available to fire because of the general firing delay (for lack of a better way to describe it--it's the post-firing interval when the timer is sweeping rather fast on more than one timer simultaneously). By the time Ranged Shot is ready to fire, Head Shot is also ready to fire, so I don't see how it would add any more shots to fire a ranged shot at that point instead of a head shot. Or perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are saying? Anyway, I am simply going by what I am seeing in the timer animations. I should really go test your approach and collect some data and see if it makes a difference. I will try to make a point of doing that soon (though such tests tend to be complicated by the occasional random critical strikes and misses, which really affect the averages).
I'm still very interested in hearing anybody else's results with this. I appreciate the ongoing discussion, QA.
just to chime in briefly...
I have a DMG capped ALR with and 82SAC. Ive used a 33% DMG pup up until about 2 days ago. I tried a SAC pup (which brings me down to 58 SAC) and It seems better suited for higher HAM opponents (and Jedi) than the DMG for one simple reason: I NEVER run out of action. I mean sure when I use the dmg pup I am ripping through enemies with incredible damage alternating with imp. headshot/adv. critical, , but my action is gona after so many shots. Since battles with elite BH marks (35K HAM) and Jedi usually last quite a while, I was constantly running low on action, even with doctor buff and food. This puts you in a horrible position if you are even KD.
In short, 7-12K HAM: use dmg pup, anything more use SAC pup and NEVER have to worry about spamming imp headshot with adv critical.