Rifleman Archive
Thread: Eyeshot Post by a BH
Okay, the stuff under U) is from multiple people:
U)
I'm fairly sure high level elite class professions (for rebs) can get missions with AT-STs, too (this is something people seem to complain about, anyway). Even if that isn't the case, I don't see how that's applicable. Because I'm fighting weaker creatures my ability to heal has to be lessened? What about people who group?
So, which skill tree do I need to take as a master rifleman to make HS3 take action, again?
What combination of abilities can the rifleman take that makes them equivalent to a BH?
My input for this arguement comes from a statement made by the devs themselves. I'm told as a rifleman that I'm unique because I can do mind damage which is supposed to be unhealable. But when another combat class has an attack that does the same damage as I can do, as well as cause blindness, how am I unique? Then I see proposals to make mind damage healable? That's like saying, "we changed our mind, your class doesn't mean much to us now since there are several times more people who play other combat classes and they are complaining about what you can do, which means we have to cater to them."
M)
No, the riflemen shouldn't have a lessened ability to heal due to this, but on the same note they don't have to heal as much. On missions WITHOUT AT-STs, the enemies regularly hit me in the 250 to 400 range. If I buff action and health, they just start hitting mind, so those buffs don't help.
If you take more damage, you have to heal more. If you hinder a class' ability to heal when they take more damage, you might as well remove them from the game, because they will be that imbalanced.
And this is only faction missions. Don't get me started on bounty hunter missions, because the damage our marks do will give you nightmares for the rest of the weekend.
Alot of people are missing the point of BH, and this is what has many BHs frustrated.
As a BH, by the time I reach master, I am supposed to have the equivelent of mastering three second tier professions. Well, the math actually works out to equal two second tier.
Everyone can master three professions and dabble in a fourth. BHs have already mastered 2 professions with skills they will rarely use once they get into BH a bit, which only gives them one profession plus a little dabbling.
Now combination of rifleman skills alone will EVER stand up to a BH. Now, if you spend the same ammount of skill points as we do on combat professions alone, then you will be just as strong as us.
The issue here is not whether BH should be nerfed to the point of having the exact same abilities as someone who spends 1/4 the skill points. That would make the entire profession a total waste of time.
The issue of this thread is that a jack, even if near master, of all trades should lose to a master when it comes to tha particular skill. In other words, if a BH ONLY uses eyeshot against a rifleman using HS3, then the rifleman should win every time. There are multiple imbalances in this situation, making it difficult to work out.
I would like to add to that the fact that I, a BH, did what BHs generally don't do, and went to the board of the profession who has the imbalance issue to discuss it with you personally, so that I can fairly develope an opinion myself, and so that a solution can be reached by the two sides working TOGETHER. Most BHs do not bother due to the general bullshat class envy that nobody has time to deal with.
In short, if you flame this thread you're a jackass.
On to the third quote... Riflemen do not own mind damage. BHs do ALL THREE. This simply will not change. Seriously, if the BH profession is changed the way some people want, it might as well be removed form the game altogether.
There is NO ability in a second tier profession IN THE ENTIRE GAME that is unique soley to that profession in all ways, shape, and form. Either a parellel or lower profession has the same ability to a lesser or euqal percent, respectively in the entire game. Now tell me what makes riflemen different from the rest of the 270,000 strong population of this game.
Ummm I made a mistype here:
The issue of this thread is that a jack, even if near master, of all trades should lose to a master when it comes to tha particular skill. In other words, if a BH ONLY uses eyeshot against a rifleman using HS3, then the rifleman should win every time. There are multiple imbalances in this situation, making it difficult to work out.
I meant to say the BH should lose every time.
Okay, okay, it was a freudian slip due to class pride, which everyone has. Thing is, I'm trying to curb that for the sake of this thread alone at the very least, so I have to clear up that slip 8)
If a BH is using only eyeshot, and a rifleman is using HS3, the BH should lose.
If the BH recognizes he is up against headshot, and changes his (or her) tactics, the BH should still win.
If the rifleman at that point notices the changed strategy, the ONLy way they can hope to be equal to the BH is if they have a skill so that they may switch to counter the new strategy, and that skill must come from a profession outside BH.
You can get pist and flame if that's you, but here's the thing: I didn't design the game. Getting pist at me, or any other BH won't change that fact.
BHs represent all marksman second tier professions rolled up in one tight ball.
The only way to beat our mind damage should be to master the profession for mind damage.
The only way to beat our action damage should be to master the profession for action damage.
Ditto for health.
The problem being discussed in this thread is that those who have mastered mind damage are not trumping our mind damage, and THAT is the problem.
Now, since some folks don't read all the posts, and we're now on the same page again, go back and read what has been said thus far to get caught up on what ideas I, a BH, and several riflemen have come up with TOGETHER.
If you don't think the BH community and rifleman community should work together on this, you should remember the nerf bat swings both ways. In other words, if you get us nerfed soley in your own interest, then it will cause a chain reaction that will com eback on you threefold, and we will have the same problem down the road.
totally aggree with pecos there.i just pissed off every bh in the bh forum bringing up the topic there. and you know what the majority of their argument was...yeah you guessed it. "but we spend bla bla bla skill points, we deserve to be the best." i think the bh profession comes with a little known certification at novice: arrogant @$$.
what makes bh's powerful is the fact that they get all of the ranged weapon types and a heavy weapon all in one profession, where as it wouldnt be possible to get all of that through individual professions. they've just gotten too used to being better than masters of other professions cause of brokenbalance issues. it is totally illogical for a melting pot class to be better than a specialization class at their weapon.
BHs should be able to beat anyone in combat if they initiate it on their own terms. They have all weapon types available and should use the one that their opponent cannot counter. So if I'm a rifleman, no matter how good I am, if you start up close and with a pistol, I should be dead. However, at the moment, if you start at 60m ( my preferred rifle range ) using something that is totally inappropriate for that range ( pistol ), I still end up dead. Thats not tactics, thats just "über". You should not be able to kill anyone on their own turf. If a BH is stupid and caught at perfect sniping range... how come he draws his pistol and snipes the rifleman ?
That's just bull.
There are two things that need to be addressed. One is a common markman concern. Pistol accuracy doesn't seem to drop at long ranges. I can shoot things with my Scout Blaster ( -90 at that range ) and still get more hits than I would get with my rifle. So if I meet a BH at 60m and he'd spam eyeshot and miss... well, no harm done. But how come he hits ?
Second concern: unhealable hit for healable costs. No other ranged profession can do this, why should BHs ? If you rely on eyeshot to bring your marks down, then either your marks have less mind then health, unlike any other NPC I've seen so far, or you don't use optimal tactics. A BH should not be stronger than anyone else. He should have a proper tactic for each specific weakness of any enemy he meets. And just keep hitting a hotkey, no matter what range, no matter what enemy is no tactic. It's cheap and boring.
Sidenote: That's probably why BHs aren't that well respected despite their high prerequisites. You are the first one I met who actually displays any sign of intelligence ( not true, you are probably #5 or #6, but compared to the number of BH, that's just sad ). I'm not saying all BHs are cheap and only want to be über. However, all that only want to be über flock to the BH community and that's not good.
And for a creative, bu totally different solution: Drop eyeshot from BH and put some traps vs humanoids in.
Noules000 wrote:
Marks being hard to kill is a red herring. If you disagree, please explain how doing unhealable damage is an advantage when mobs don't heal themselves.
Or do they?! Bum Bum Bummmmmmmm
they don't
Class balance isn't just damage, it's about methods.
Bounty Hunters are a quadruple class, basically: pistols, carbines, rifles (eyeshot) and heavy weapons (LLC).
The fact that they can do EVERYTHING means they should not be the best at any of it. Their method of winning fights shouldn't be to walk up and mash their Eyeshot hotkey over and over and over. Their method of winning should be to identify and exploit weaknesses.
In a toe to toe fight, a Master Pistoleer should beat a Master Bounty Hunter if they're both just going to stand there and shoot. Nobody should be better at pistols than someone who has devoted his whole profession to pistols.
BH love to say how many skill points they spent, but they fail to mention that when it comes to pistols, BH is 1 line in marksman and 1 line in BH. A pistoleer has 1 line in marksman and 4 lines + mastery in that one specific weapon type. Therefore pistoleer MUST be better at pistols than a rifleman. To have it work otherwise makes no sense.
To the original poster:
I appreciate the sentiment of your post, but there are a few things you need to understand. This is coming from a master rifleman:
When a BH first gets eyeshot, they have 3 times the DPS against mind than a rifleman has when they first get headshot3. Let that one sink in.
Now, along the way to master, the rifleman gets speed increases. At master, the DPS just about equals out. BUT, the rifleman still uses over 100 mind to fire a headshot3.Two shots = about 25% of our mind pool in HAM costs.
Meanwhile, the BH has the same DPS (with 2 blocks of BH) as a master rifleman, and can just hit a stim mid-fight and replenish their action.
The BH has no downtime after a fight, while the rifleman, even if he is never hit at all, is never at more that 1/2 mind after a fight.
All of that is just to show that there is a problem with eyeshot. That much is obvious. The ability to heal mind is NOT that answer though. Here's why:
A master rifleman with strafe shot 2 can hit several targets at once for between 1k and 4k damage to a random pool. The downside is that the shot costs over 160 mind (with 700 focus). Depending on your stats, you can do it 4-6 times before your mind is completely depleted, after which you are extremely vulnerable and must immediatly run, hide and rest.
That's enough shots, though, to have a good chance of killing an enemy AND all 3 of his 10k HAM faction pets, as long as we don't take any head hits during the fight.
Now, if we were like BHs, and could immediately heal away our HAM costs. You can see that we would become incredibly, incredibly powerful. Nobody wants this.
The answer is and always has been obvious. Eyeshot needs to cost mind instead of action.
how bout a rifleman only mind heal stimpack? a rifleman meditation kinda thing or sumthin?
once everyone is able to heal mind, then our favorite attacks become useless.
heres the new scenario: rifleman vs BH.
BH: syeshot
RM: mindshot
BH: heals mind bleed and damage
RM: dies
i do not think that a mind heal is the answer, i think its lower HAM costs on our attacks, or maybe a natural high regen. add a +50 mind regen bonus to master rifleman?
Rather than fight to get BH eyeshot nerfed to use the mindpool we should be fighting to get HS3 fixed.. it should do about 40-50% more damage than it's doing now at significantly less cost.. the reason there's any argument about eyeshot is because what is supposed to be our best head shot is a completely useless waste of an ability because head shot 2 is simply better.If they fix armor piercing bonuses in PvP and finally fix HS3 then the damage done by eyeshot will be miniscule in comparison anyways. Right now BH have the highest level working shot meant to damage mind pool in the game.. HS3 is badly broken and that's the issue. I really think they should fix our shot.. rather than make another class's shot useless also.
You can see that we would become incredibly, incredibly powerful. Nobody wants this
I want it
Gazkan don't you realize that a BH can basically kill us in 5 or so shots? Now in that time we can get off 1 potentially 2 shots. If they make it so that we are powerful enough to kill a BH in that 1 shot everyone is going to be completely allied against us and we will take another hit making us that much closer to unusable. The fight is to not nerf bounty hunters until the skill is useless, it is to make them use more then 1 skillfor every situation in every battle. They should win most fights because they can focus on any HAM bar. I am a rifleman meaning I am focused on mind regen and size...so logically my health and action should be low. If they focus on my health or action bar then I should probably die before they do unless they have no mind which is their own fault. Now lets see what is actually happening. I get attacked in my strongest pool (maxed out for a Bothan) and yet I am getting killed by them shooting it. I should have longevity vs eyeshot and they should be killing themselves with our powerul attacks against mind not the opposite.
I hate to dig up an aging thread, but I haven't had the chance to post in a couple of days.
I want to thank Meyree for his continued, civilized discussion, you've held out a lot longer than most people I've seen 
I do have one question for you, and this is directed to all Bounty Hunters:
When you have a mark that is red, what approaches do you normally take to killing it? Do you run in there guns-a-blazin'? All I want is a comment on the typical style of a BH attempting to take out his "mark", I will post comments after that.
Now I left this thread alone over the weekend just to see what kind of stuff is come up with.
One thing that every combat profession has a problem with is that BH are the best at combat. Period. We don't only outdo riflemen in mind damage, but we're faster with a pistol than pistoleers could ever be. We have a carbine move that creates wounds instead of damage. We have a heavy weapon which hits in ranges comparable to commandos.
The devs didn't give BH rifle certs or a rifle column because then we would be too powerful. Rifles are supposed to do alot of damage each shot, but have a slower firing rate.
I did some comparison studying with a rifleman friend of mine over the weekend. I wanted to see solid numbers, not just what is seen in the heat of a PvP fight, and not just what is said.
In PvE, riflemen have a MUCH higher DPS than bounty hunters when hitting the mind. Matter of fact, it is double what we can do. Why? Well, generally from what I saw, eyeshot hits for a max of 500 damage under perfect conditions. Headshot 3, on the other hand, hit for between 1800 and 2500 damage consistantly. The ratio is that I would get off 2 shots for every one shot my buddy would get off.
In PvP, it's another story, though. The damage modifiers for PvP lower the rifleman's DPS so much that the speed of a pistol makes eyeshot put out double the DPS as headshot 3.
This revelation, to me, makes it a fair tradeoff. Riflemen will always out damage bounty hunters when it comes to mind in PvE while bounty hunters will always outdamage riflemen.
Now, while I originally saw the problem, I don't see a problem at all now. None.
Bounty hunters hunt down people and kill them. That's what we do. Perhaps saying we're the best combat class is a bit over broad. Perhaps we're the best PvP class, but we are not the all around best combat class.
A bounty hunter will not be as desirable in a group as, say, a rifleman, if the goal of the group is to run missions, hunt big animal game, or clear a dungeon. On the other hand, if the goal of the group is to attack an oposing faction's city, and engage in large scale PvP, the bounty hunter is very desirable in a group.
Seems like a fair tradeoff. You're better at PvE. We're better at PvP. Seems like more than an even trade, considering PvE is where experience and money comes from while PvP yields nothing more than faction points, and at a slower rate than running faction missions.
So, considering these facts, what exactly is the problem?