Rifleman Archive

When we are prone anyone can run right up to us and shoot, while we are still in laying on the ground not hitting. Don't get me wrong I use prone all the time, and 70% of the time I am in a group hanging back in pvp. While the new patch looks as if it will greatly increase the incentive to use cover, and possibly make it a class defining ability, it still is very bugged, and really hard to successfully execute. After spending a few seconds to take cover, anyone can run up to melee range to shoot, or melee damage you to death without any threat of damage. Crawl speed doesn't work from what I have heard, I don't have one box in the concealment tree so I can't really test it. So right now cover is very broken, and that doesn't factor into the the here and now. Basically I feel the professions are too similiar, they just have different guns, and a small pool of different abilities that are copied from one profession to the next with a different status effect tagged onto it. You are right to feel the overall speed of a master rifleman is overlapping your turf, but without it we as riflemen have few strengths to compare with our many weaknesses.

I think one of the problems here that Pistleer and Rifleman are VERY different trips up the trees.

Pistoleer, I can honestly say, has a much easier time leveling than Rifleman. There is no doubt in my mind about that, and I have been pretty open-minded with the Pistoleers and their gripes. But believe me, they do have gripes. And for the record, I've played both, so I can talk whatever trash I want. Hah!

However, at Master, Rifleman suddenly gets an edge over Pistoleer. I have not reached Master in either of these Professions, but I don't think anyone is really out to dispute this fact. Here in the Rifleman forum we are often inspired only by the eventual promise of combat proficiency at Master Rifleman.

The trouble is that the VAST MAJORITY of Riflemen aren't at Master. Not even close, because the leveling process is by far the most gruesome and tragic of all the Elite Marksman trees. I've got friends leveling Melee faster than I can level Rifle. We don't get any of our "pop" until Master. Pistoleers get to much of their "pop" early on, but don't really get much more after that.

Riflemen and Pistoleers have two completely different problems. Riflemen don't scale, they go right from being losers to being hardcore, and their skills DON'T solve any of the problems that their class suffers. Pistoleers have more "class advantages" but they don't scale up nearly as much, so by the time they reach Master they don't see a significant improvement from, say, twelve skill boxes ago.

The truth is that if you took the speed away from Master Riflemen, they would be the same losers they were a few skill boxes ago, Strafe Shot 2 or not. So when we hear that our speed is going to be capped, we get enraged. The one thing we've been desperately looking forward to is going to be snatched away before we get there. And the Masters who are already there are looking back down the tree, remembering what it was like to be there, and raging against anything that tries to push them back.

We don't trust the Devs anymore because every experience with them has added a drawback to our class, not an advantage. We don't trust the Devs to ever give us the "damage increase" that our slower speed will need to stay competative. Part of that is because of how they dealt with the T-21 situation, and part of that is that it seems as though every minor bug in the game hammers Riflemen through some special circumstance.

- Teleporting MOBs do the extra 250% damage to us
- Armor Piercing Bug makes our AP weapon advantage lame
- Warping While Prone prevents us from attacking

Those bugs affect everone, I agree. But they hurt Riflemen especially. We feel particularly screwed over. So when we hear that the one thing that makes Master Rifleman competative is going away. . . we freak out. All things being equal Master Riflemen SHOULD have a slower speed. But all things are no equal. Not at all.

And that door swings both ways, I agree and understand that. Master Pistoleers are wondering where their "Glory Days" went. They are wondering why they don't feel that much stronger than Novice Pistoleers. On the other hand, Riflemen don't want to hear it, because most of them STILL ARE Novices.

But as I said, our problems are very different. Maybe the problem is that we're trying to apply "blanket fixes" to everyone. Then again, maybe the problem started because the classes weren't balanced all at once in the first place. Hey, I don't know. I'm not a Dev. I wish I was, believe me. I've likely logged more game hours than the whole Dev team at this point, which I think is part of the problem. But kicking each other in the *** isn't going to do any good. What we need is for ALL of the Elite Marksmen to come together and figure out ONE combat system that works well for ALL THREE BLASTER TYPES.

Maybe we can start some of that cross-profession cooperation right here and now.

I'm normally pretty open in the kind of replies I will answer on this board. You guys who know me know that. But if you are going to be a dink, if you have anything to say that needs all caps or lots of exclaimation points, if you want to write anything that will have more than ten censored words. . . save it. Or go make your own thread, and flame on over there.

Take cover is not a good strategy in PVP. I posted on this in its own thread

at

for those who dont want to open a new link below is what I wrote:

/quote

Take Cover is not particularly effective given it’s penalties. It immobilizes you (at lower levels) and doesn’t give adequate protection.

Solution #2:

I’m going to try to improve the protection values of take cover. I’d like to see these protection values scale from their current value to a much higher protection level at higher levels. Sure you lock yourself to crawling/prone, but I think it should give a much more significant level of protection.

This will also enhance the "anti-sniper" moves of riflemen. If cover is more useful, more players will use it. If more players use cover, the anti-cover moves become more useful. /quote

This is A Dev Fantasy Not reality. Cover will Hardly ever be used in combat. Here is why;

In PVE almost all creatures are Meleee and dont go prone. In PVP No one goes prone.

It takes 2 seconds for a creature or player to cross the 64 meters that is a legal range in SWG.

It takes 3 seconds between shots for rifleman (well it will when changes go in effect)

You cannot fire in cover at a target at point blank range.

Rifleman suffer 2.5 melee damage for holding a rifle.

Prone you suffer a 2.5 melee damage for being prone. These are cumulative.

Here is what will happen. A rifleman in cover will shoot. He will wound his target and his target or his buddy will run up to the rifleman before he can refire, whip out a melee weapon. He will then be too close to be fired at from cover. All rifleman advantages are now gone. Rifleman is now dead.

Or

Rifleman shoots. Ranged guy runs up to rifleman. Rifleman cant shoot cause hes too close. Rifleman stands up, all the while he is being shot to pieces by the other ranged guy, Rifleman is too close to be in efective range and cant hit the side of a barn if he is standing inside one at 15 meters or less, end result one dead rifleman.

No Rifleman in combat will ever use cover if he wants to stay alive. You would have to make the cover bonueses make the rifleman Nigh impregnable for it to be of any use, but then all a person has to do is run up next to the rifleman to be immune from his shots. Either way the whole concept of cover in this game with the limited ranges of weapons in this game make the skill utterly useless, And hence forth make the anti sniper tree mostly useless.

The Whole concept of cover and anti cover as it is concieved and executed in this game is a one way ticket to getting yourself killed over and over again. It has no practical features and needs to be entirely re-considered. Increasing the bonuses is not going to do us any favors if we cant hit anything at point blank range.

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I do think you guys have a great discussion going on here. I wouldn't want you to get sidetracked on a tactic that only gets a rifleman killed though. I post this here for all the pistoleers who may be mistaken about the usefulness of take cover

This is what Rifleman is for better or worse. We are Heavy damage dealing Street sweeping AOE. Our DPS aint a real problem since the HAM we consume at a higher rate than any otherprofession is mind.(Plus we consume it at a much higher rate if we hit the one second cap) The Dev's are not going to rework the rifleman profession to be snipers or anything else.

What pistoleer masters need is a reason to be master, well I have a way to double your damage without affecting speed for other professions. Deul weild, If a pistoleer can weild 2 FG's(forgot the exact name) that would put them on par with any rifleman master with our best weapon. With this abillity you would be able to use any special but it would be twice the cost ofcourse or maybe just 1.5 the cost whatever.

Getting rid of any of our speed just killsour profession, it takes away the reason to master rifleman.(BTW I think when you hit master it should be a huge jump from being 4/4/4/4)

I think thats an interesting idea.... How about if you duel wield your accuracy drops so in realaity they are forced tobeing limited to short range but with no hard cap that way when they are using one pistol they have the accuracy they have today with no nerf... This needs to be a master ability that doesnt stack with BH pistol imo...