Rifleman Archive

Looks like we have a TL that has his own agenda on what a rifleman should be and not the comunity. "You shouldnt be able to solo to master." huh?

Why the hell not?

And I would prefer a TL that is more in-line with sticking up for our class more than others. I really dont wanna roll a melee.

I guess you have never really played this game much. I have solo'd nightsisters, I have solo'd a kimogila. Using suprression fire, why? Becuase I keep them away from me. What my spec you ask? Rifleman/Doctor, no I dont have a knockdown.

Let me find Holos qoute, were he says, we dont want people soloing red con mobs, we want them grouping.

Soloing is fine, soloing red con mbos is not.

Im sure you want to be the greatest there is though, think about it for a second. What would happen if suppression fire was not put on a timer? Would melee ever have a chance? Would any mid level mob ever have a chance? Would half the high level mobs ever have a chance? I dont think so..

If you change positions while dizzy, you will fall down as if knocked down. Dizzy+posture change is roughly comparable to a knockdown - it takes more moves, and it's possible for the target to avoid it (by not fighting the posture change) but they remain down for the entire dizzy period.

Rifle hasn't been nerfed. Warning shot still works just fine. Suppression fire as it was was far too powerful in PvE.

One of the very first press reports, hell it was in the FAQ before the game was released, it says there, we want people to group.

Aldeon, did you solo to master?

Secondly, I understand the concept of not being able to solo to master, but nearly every other profession can, imo...or at least MOST can.

I've pistoleer friends who take on multiple enemies , camp after camp after camp. If it were me, I'd be running *away* but pistoleers just run around.

Also, dizzy only knocks the target down if they themselves try to change position. If a person gets dizzied and doesn't try to move, they will NEVER fall over. Castingflushing shot/suppresion, will not cause them to fall over even though it may seem that way. They will only fall over onlyif they try to get up and chase you or run away. For NPCs, before the nerf it wasn't so bad because they will usually always try to chase you, but now, it only lasts maybe 5 seconds..maybe a little longer. Not long enough for me to really do anything. In PVP..lol, a wookie friend of mine figured it out. Of course he was a melee and had to whip out a bowcaster but if he had been a pistoleer, going at me at full range, I'd have died very quick.

I also see someone say "are you a master rifleman?." I admit I'm not, but I shouldn't need to be a Master in a profession in order to be effective. Novice pistoleers can kill me in a duel, and I know how to use my weapons.

Riflemen aren't supposed to kite. When I think of riflemen I think of old westerns, or fairly new ones. Quigley down Under, Old clint eastwood movies, etc. Riflemen generally find a fixed position at long range and they are set.

Oh well that's all.

Here we go.

Yes I want to be god. Because I want my class balanced, not nerfed to hell. Please. Your like the guy who works at the corner store and feels the need to proof for cigarettes because he can.

And your just a better player than me if you can solo those mobs though I think you sir are entirely full of **edit**, or if your not you cannot do it on a consistent basis enough for it to matter a whole heck of a lot for it to be a viable way to exp. So your arguments against keeping supression nerfed are pointless ( still trying to figure out why you would be against something like this, oh yeah cause YOU are too uber or so you say with it).

I am so glad you are agreeing on decisions on how YOU feel.

Your month is up lets give it to the next pro-nerf rifleman tl Noules.

Hell maybe in another month we can just can the whole profession altogether.

And again I am waiting for your quote. since you so most succinctly STATED that soloing to master is not supposed to happen.

id like tosuggest eliminating the llc branch in bounty hunter as it has no place there to begin with, especially now that it does dmg on par with commando weapons, and replacing it with a bounty rifle branch. this would suppliment rifleman with another weapon specific combat class and it would make sense since you have to be a master marksman to be a bh yet there are no rifle skills in the bh profession at all.then switch eyeshot from bh pistol to bh rifle since mind dmg from apistol is unfairandgive bh pistol some other special.

i know theres gonna be a lot of people who hate this idea, so as everyone's fantastic 4 character says, "flame on"

Master rifleman here-

What about when we're running and engage in combat? We immediately stop, pull our gun down into combat position, and fire. This is incredibly silly, we can't pull our gun down while we're running?

It makes it impossible to stop someone who is running away for me. Just as I get within range and hit my attack button it forces me to halt for a couple seconds, while my target continues to run away so that I can never catch up.

I'm not pro-nerf. I just have experience with how riflemen operate at high levels. It's quite easy for a master rifleman to engage a group of players that are occupied (mainly, so you don't draw too much autofire) and incap them all in a few seconds with strafe2. My average damage in PvP with strafe2 is 750 (after the damage reduction), not including the AR2 (using a laser) and in an AE area.

Riflemen aren't the best one-on-one players.

However, riflemen are the best AE support class. Whether or not you think this is how it should be, this is the fact of the class right now. Riflemen get the best AE damaging attacks of any class. Strafe2 does 7.5x the listed damage of the weapon in a cone, with a 64m range. Flushing2 does 6x the listed damage of the weapon in a cone, again with a 64m range, and adds in a stun effect which goes off 100% (minus resists), which reduces the damage capability of the target. Flurry2 is a low damage but 100% dizzy AE. NO OTHER CLASS COMPARES TO THOSE AEs. Our AEs make carbine look pathetic. Pistol HAS no AE that works. Melee AEs are extremely limited in range. The only ones that could even potentially compare in terms of damage are 16m range specials (LLC/flame).

If you cannot understand how AE stacks with multiple players and multiple targets, yes, you might think rifle is weak - because you cannot always take down other classes one on one. And yes, this also applies to PvE.

There are valid complaints about PvE for lower level riflemen being harder than for other weapons. I AGREE. However, this has always been the case. There's nothing NEW in the patch that makes it -specifically- harder for riflemen than any other class. Say it again: the changes that hurt us also hurt EVERY OTHER RANGED CLASS. Furthermore, anything that boost the lower level riflemen has a potential to OVERPOWER the master rifleman, and the -last- thing I'd like to see are class-specific nerfs being applied to this class.

Yeah, I'm a master. So I'm biased from the higher level perspective. But the bottom line is, given enough time, anyone can master any class. If the lower level rifle were just as easy as pistol, carbine or any other weapon, but master rifle was far superior, everyone would be playing rifle, and Holo would be coming to our forums asking, 'Hey, why are there so many Novice Riflemen?'

Is this the infamous "stutter step" that has been nagging us since time immemorial?

I'm only a gunner(master counter-sniper)and I solo everything just fine. I do have a non CH pet and am a Combat Medic as well. I can solo fine without my medical skills, but it's pretty difficult to solo without a pet.

All you need to do to solo are 2 things. Bleed and warningshot. Bleed it. Warning shot away and kite the thing until it dies. Switch to a fast weapon to warningshot. How about a speed sliced CDEF rifle with low HAM costs?

With a pet and medical skills, I can solo any single thing that cannot kill my pet in 1 hit. XP is just a function of time.

As I see it, all combat is broken because damage is not proportional to HAM.

I have 1000 HAM, I do 1000-4000 damage

Creature has 10000 HAM, he does 500-2500 damage.

The game as it is does not allow anyone to get hit by a high level creature, yet expects us to hit the high level creature for a lot of damage. It is broken for all classes. Do you think a 2.5x melee penalty matters when you are getting hit for 1000 damage?

The only reason non CH pets work so well is because they are creatures, therefore have too much HAM for their damage. A CL 15 pet has more HAM and defense then a Master Rifleman or any other master combat class. That is wrong, unless this is fixed the combat system will always be broken.

I think Aldeon understands the issues of rifleman and combat in general. He is also a Master RIfleman and works within the game to see if the issues are valid at the top end of the spectrum(in PvP this is all that matters). In PvE and for low end of the spectrum, it is pretty hard for rifleman to advance, but hey, everyone can get a CL 15 petand use a DLT20a that has a lot of damage.

I would rather see more defensive abilities and status effectsand less damage across the board.

Kurushya

The above post should read '750 in PvP, including AR2'. This is actually a bit over 500 'raw' PvP damage on average, with a large variance due to the laser.

Thank you for posting this. I'd posted a thread this morning asking where this month's report was...

Basically what I said there, with some minor tweaking:

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My suggested top five list of Rifleman issues for our corespondent to submit:

(1) Bounty Hunter Eye shot does not function in line with rifleman attacks, not sure if this is "how it should be". It is genearlly felt that eye shot should use the mind pool instead of the action pool, as in the current implementation the Bounty Hunter can spam eye shot with the use of stims to heal action, and is SIGNIFICANTLY more effective at hurting a target's mind pool than is a rifleman. I agree a bounty hunter should be an overall better class than rifleman as they have more pre-reqs, etc, especially in PvP. Suggested for balancing is to make Eye Shot use mind cost instead of action... just doesn't have to be very much. They can still spam it, but not forever as in current implementation. Or, combine this issue with #3 (headshot 3 not correctly functioning) and make our Headshot 3 use action cost instead of mind cost (or mostly action cost with some mind cost, to prevent unlimited spamming via stimpack cycle) with increased damage and/or effect above Headshot 2 as suggested in #3

(2) Rifle range and accuracy still an issue. With the 9/4 patch it seems the pistoleer run-and-gun accuracy is finally decreasing in my play testing, but accuracy still seems to be an issue. Rifles should be much more accurate from long ranges, pistols should be much less. I have novice pistoleer, versus novice + four boxes (sniping I and II, conceal I, special abilities I) in Rifleman, and I am much more accurate with my pistol in just about every situation at just about every range.

One suggested fix would be to give the novice rifleman even greater accuracy bonuses at distance. Say +5% at 40m, +10% at 50m, +25% at 60m. The Rifleman could have to be prone for these bonuses to take effect, or bonuses could be halved when kneeling/etc. A master level could get the range bonus regardless of pose, or could get an additional 5% across the board at those ranges. Rifleman are so weak up close, they really need to be deadly accurate at maximum distances - or else we need to be less weak up close to balance the fact that we don't have any effective range or accuracy difference from a pistol.

Best situation would be increasing rifle targeting ability to 80m, leaving all others capped at 64m. You could have to get within 64m most of the time to acquire the target, but could back off to 80m to do some semi-serious sniping. Accuracy increases wouldn't matter as much as we'd have an advantage over the 100%-accuracate-at-60m pistoleer class.

Alternatively, the 2.5x damage multiplier for having a rifle equipted in close combat could be elminated or reduced significantly - so we can't shoot you up close, but do we deserve a ridiculous amount of excess damage on top of the fact that we can't hit you up close (and the kicker that we're only equally accurate as a pistol at maximum distance in real life usage)

(3) Headshot 3 appears broken. It uses significantly more mind than Headshot 2 but does almost negligible different damage. Headshot 3 costs could stay the same and increase damage by another +25% or more... or an added bonus effect could be added such as knockdown, dizzy, stun, posture change, blind, whatever. This is in keeping with the role-playing aspect - you take the biggest possible shot in the head, it could have consequences...

(4) Cover shot and/or conceal shot seem broken in relation to mobs that Bring A Friend. The creature targeted cannot see you but the mob can - makes it very much useless for a lot of creatures. This was listed and responded as an issue last report but no fix yet, keeping on the list as still a top issue. If it cannot be easily fixed, suggested tweaks are lowing cost, increasing success rate against those non-BAF creatures, and/or having it provide a defensive bonus while in effect (thus somewhat reducing the BAF issue, not entirely but perhaps allowing you to live long enough to finish off your primary target before standing and running away. If this is behavior as intended, this attack has little value for a lot of situations and does not make "real world sense" (i can hide and shoot you, and you can't see me... but everyone else around you can see me?)

(5) the 9/4 patch reported that defensive bonuses now work. if this is in fact the case (haven't been able to do significant play testing on defensive bonus effectiveness) this is a huge bonus to riflemen everywhere based on all our defensive bonuses (to melee, etc), enough to have me suggest only four things instead of the allowed five as thanks to the devs This might even aliviate the "we take too much damage from melee" concern if bonuses are indeed working correctly....

If rifleman defensive / passive bonuses do not currently work correctly, "please make rifleman defensive / passive bonuses work correctly" becomes my suggestion #5

My $0.02

Borion, Sunrunner
Squad Leader, Rifleman, Creature Handler

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