Rifleman Archive
Thread: Bayonets the rifleman's answer to up close and personal
Look: Riflemen are already ridiculously powerful. I'm not sure why you're having trouble taking out things higher than light blues. Personally I have one shot some reds, so don't expect me to cry a river for you. If we had a bayonet and could kick ass in melee, then we wouldn't have any weaknesses!
I also think the CDEF suggestion is insanely bad. The damage on a CDEF is total crap. What are you guys using, mob dropped tuskens or DLT20as??? That's the only thing I can think of to remotely explain believing that switching to a CDEF is ever an advantage. It doesn't matter if you can hit with it better, if you only hit for 100 points of damage!!!
Wow this will sound pretty rude. This sounds like alot of whining imho.
I'm teras kasi, and pretty much if something isn't directly in my face i can't do jack. I have ZERO RANGE.
If you guys get to do high-end melee when something gets close up, then I wanna beable to do melee on you from 65 meters.
Oh wait, you guys only wanna be uber, and don't understand game balance.
Additionally i'll let yo know i've trained rifle up, and i'm a creature handler, and i have NO PROBLEM using rifle alone. The problem is you have incomplete characters.
Here is a few positive suggestions:
#1 - Take sword and melee stuff at close range if you can't take it ranged w/ rifle till you get higher level.
#2 - When you get higher level use sneak, and you effectivily can shoot at creatures and players from a distance and they can't see you. TALK ABOUT UNFAIR
#3 - Take scout, and use traps. Set some traps, then pop your target, and between well placed traps and sniping you can take nearly anything.
#4 - Take creature handling. (this is what I do.) First i send my pet after my target, then i start popping it. Typically my pet is used as bait to keep it at the right range, and to stop it from approaching me. Typically I have the creature dead well before my pet is in any risk of being killed.
#5 - Group with other people If one sniper alone can't do it, then have two side by side, (incase you like being gimped, and don't train any skills to compliament your playstyle or aren't high level yet).
Goodluck and please stop whining.
You right with you said. We are incomplete characters, but there in lies the problem. Rifleman "absoultely" require another skill, unlike any of the other "gun" skills.
A pistoleer can still shot reasonable well while in combat and bascially the same range as us, and only take 1x damage, (correct me if in wrong on this)
A carbineer can still shot reasonable well in melle and basically has the same range again, and again only takes 1x damage. (again correct me if im wrong on this)
Where as the rifleman seems to suck at shooting in melle, i generally miss and im first level Rifleman, and on top of that we take 2 x damage.
Its not a case of being Uber, its a case of a having reasonable equal grounds. Basically if they where to give us greater range then i wouldnt have a problem with the extra damage, but we are bascially are no different to Carbineers and Pistoleer, yet we suffer penalties becuase we have chosen Rifle.
Myself, i speak from experience. I currently group with two Pistoleers, and while i am prone, they are hitting the same targets from the same distance at a quicker rate. Mind you I am hitting mind pool which works well. However, so the 3 of us are all firing at a creature, from the same distance, now if we are all engaged in mellee i recieve 2 x damage while they recieve normal and lets not forget the best firing postion. For pistollers it is Kneeling, which allows them to heal while they are hiring, where as a rifleman best position is prone, and while you are prone you are unable to heal yourself or anyone else.
Now with all that taken on board, i dont think we as rifleman, are asking to much by saying, okay leave all the penalites there, 2x damage, not being able to heal while prone, but give us something by increasing our range, which really should be the case seeing as we train "for sniper shots", i mean, really, have you ever heard of sniper actually being seen?
With that, i dont think it should be a case of okay, you are riflemanm, you canshoot x amount of distance, but as you progress through the rifle skills youability to fire longer distances and more accurate should be increased.I dont think it is to hard to concieve or implement is it?
Anyways, they are more of my thoughts on the profession that i have chosen to undertake, will i choose another profession? No i dont think so! 
I think you guys are not thinking of the damage we dish out. I am almost finished with the novice rifleman skill, and already do upwards of 600-800 points of damage with a headshot. Once I am noticed, I switch from my DL20a/Laser Rifle to my Spraystick and start dishing out mad damage while running away. In the first few seconds of combat I am dealing THOUSANDS of points of damage.
The rifleman has the advantage over the other ranged skills because of the raw power that goes into his shots. If you are equipping the right weapons at the right time, and using the right skills in the right order, you cant be touched.
This may not seem like an advantage to some of you, but I tell you, we have a serious advantage over alot of other professions, and I see this advantage come out particularly when I am hunting Kimogillas or the like on Lok.
Use your skills to your advantage. Thats why you have them. Bleed the enemy, then shut his fat hole.
Salomon Orange
Rifleman
Well this might sound off base, but i've got pistol/carbine/rifle all trained (besides my teras kasi).
Carbine by far is the most flexable weapon (for distance),.. as for your references to pistol, I can't do jack with pistol from a distance. Additionally pistol is not a melee weapon. (pistols pretty much suck if you are standing right infront of a creature that is in melee range, attacking you).
Is it possible to hit a target a few times with pistol from 60+ meters? yes. Is it possible to consistantly hit a target (and kill it) from 60+ meters with a pistol? no.
I think a key to your weakness problem your describing is PRONE vs. KNEELING. I think most of the penalties, and such come from being PRONE, not because you are holding a rifle in your hand. I can run around (with something chasing me) and finish it off with a tuskan rifle using point blank shot. (its messy but it can be done).
As for asking for more distance I don't think that would be even close to fair pvp wise, you have so much of an advantage as it is, plus I don't think you are putting much merit into TAKECOVER, SNEAK, or Suprise Shot. Effectivily you are a long range, hidden killer.
Lastly I think a number of people aren't taking pvp into account, and only taking limited low level experience. As far as I know RIFLEMAN ARE THE ONLY CLASS THAT GET A RANGED DEATHBLOW (snipershot).
Sorry for the caps but some people can't read lowercase.
As for being an "incomplete" class, I don't believe there are any complete classes.
* Pistol - sucks at long range, sucks at melee range, works effective running around like a sissy.
* Carbine - Same as pistol but larger range, really sucks closeup
* Rifle - sucks at melee, and close range, works best at long range
* Polearm/1h/2h/Unarmed - No Long Range, No Med. Range, No Short Range, must be melee range only.
If you want an effective combination, I would review some of the hybrid elite classes (Commando, Smuggler, Bounty Hunter).
You will notice something in common... ranged + melee skills, or ranged + trapping.
I would suggest the following combinations:
Unarmed or Polearm+ Pistol (health damage)
1H Melee + Carbine (action damage)
2H Melee + Rifle (mind damage) <----
Lastly if you are prone, shooting at something, and if it comes up on you, if you place a melee weapon in your hand (while you are prone), when they get in melee range, you will automatically standup and fight it melee. All you have to do is swap weapons.
Jade-Charming
While I agree it is unrealistic that something should hit you harder due to the type of weapon you carry, the real reason for it is balance, and without balance these games wouldn't be as good or varied as they currently are (well sometimes, most these games are having a difficult time as it is balancing classes). If you really want rifle to be so frickin over powered, then perhaps they should make it illegal to use in game in the first place, thus it is awesome but if you use it you get struck down by anyone seein ya use it. Pretty much like jedi currently are....
I do however think that it is more silly that rifles have no distance advantage to pistols but pistols get a melee advantage over rifles. That is odd to me, maybe in the future they will increase range and accuracy of a rifle over a pistol (my thought is probably whenever they decide to allow players to wield two pistols at once or when they give doctors the ability to buff and heal mind damage).
At any rate, balance is a delicate thing. Melee'rs do so much dmg because they don't get the range that rifles and pistols get, that's why they hit us so frickin hard. And rightly so, if they didn't hit us hard in melee we'd be unstoppable. Just think, if you play right melee should never even get to melee and that's the point, but the point also is that if the melee does luck out and get to you, you are supposed to be dead. Rifles essentially are the Combat Mages of this game. We do big dmg at a distance (even bigger considering we do non-healable dmg) but we suck in melee. That's balance and it works. You shouldn't be living through 100% of your fights, you should be dieing a few times a night. That just keeps the game exciting. If you didn't die every night you'd get bored of the game sooner than later due to lack of excitement. (Need I mention that death in itself is a balancing act of its own kind and is needed for several other reasons including money sink/economy, keeping crafters useful, and slowing down player advancement.)
As for fighting strategy... I do Mind Shot, HS2, Warning Shot, HS2, HS2 and it's usually dead even if it's much bigger than I should be killing. I usually won't get even touched with this strategy as the warning shot sends them back to where they came, I assume Suppression Fire will work even better but I won't get that for awhile.
agree with ya on that. I was a wizard in EQ. Snare/Root/stun/knockback etc. and if things got ugly. gate out. Not that I ever had to do that.......=)
Oh and to the one that made a comment about point blank shot: that is not really usefull for a pure rifleman because all the damage we've done up until the mob was in melee range was mind and point blank isn't a mind pool shot.
I knwo i have been involved heavily about this debate, but i came to a conclusion last night.
Rifleman suck when taking on big game, but in PvP we are going to be near invincible as it is without any alterations in its current form, even though i still think they should increase our range.
And i had a real look at this last night. Most creautres you will fight will have a mind pool of between 5k - 15kwhich makes it pretty hard, where as the average player, will have no more than 1k becasue the generally rely on action et..more than mind.Now as you and i know, 1k in mind pool is only a Mind Shot and a Head Shot 3 - followed by a sniper. Ahh what better than waiting until 10 secs before they come back to life when you kill em.
So in the field of PvP i dont think we will have a revival.
You can't increase range, its been said by the dev's before that its technially impossible to increse the range because of game mechanics.
You also have to stop the argurment of "rifle VS pistol shot caliber" We arn't dealing with lead ballistic weapons, these are proton weapons, and unless you have a degree in physics or what the heck ever, not much applies. You can't think of this game as logical, its a fantasy game, not a realistic one. And if you look at it as realistic, you're just going to end up with the same argument over and over again, as in the case of EQ.
Now, pistols are better in melee in SWG for a couple of reasons. You get melee defense, and a skill which is basically a pistolwhip. I agree with most people right now that all the knockdowns are overpowered, because if i burst run up to the rifleman after he's shot me and ive used equillberium(sp, its a zabrak thing) and i pistolwhip him, the fight is over. In essance, who ever knockdowns first wins the fight. And this is another problem.
But what the problem would be with bayonetts is the fact that you cant simply give it to riflemen, not only would you get complaints from every meleee in the game, but why couldnt you put them on carbines? No one can be the uberest of all, as the BH's seem to think, because then it would become unbalanced, and you'd have millions of riflemen running around popping everyones heads off.
True, the more and more you look into it the more you come to realise how well the devs have done by doing what they have done so far.
Having said that i would still like a little more range for rifleman to make it more realistic, however i accept that as it stands we should really be hard to beat in PvP if we use our skills the way they are meant to be, which is what they devs have tried to emply.
A rifleman will be no good against a Brawler if they are in melle, and nor should he. But a Brawler shouldn be any good either against a Rifleman in long range combat.
As it stands, as i have posted on the bloodinf server forum, PvP has changed from what it was in UO and other various games, we now have options of ways to attack and we choose these paths and we accept our weaknesses as well as our strength, so the mroe i think about it the more the devs have got it right. PvP has evolved. (Im gonna post a new one on Bloodfin now becuase of this realisation)
My only gripe is as rifleman we should have more range, and i think they need to work on the "knockdown" hits. But i think everything else is fine the way it is.