Rifleman Archive
Thread: What I posted as our Top Issue
I agree with Makkil. Up the damage for us if we have a class specific dissadvantage with the 2.5 modifier. Up the damage forALL weapons, not just the T21.
Istill feel that Rifle ranges should start at 128 and go down from there. Then it would be logical that we would take a beating if someone got close enought. Not including warping issue of course. If they still won't budge then they need to implement major differences in accuracy between the different weapons. In this case then the pistol could fire at the same max range but would hit once in six shots, just like us when we have someone nose to nose with us.
HAM costs would be the last major issue for me.
AldeonAvardulin wrote:
I really felt this was our number one priority, as everyday there are 10 posts by 10 different people on this subject. I would have to say our number 2 priority would be HAM costs, but 3 is a littl fuzzy.
#3 Rifleman teleportation while prone?
"In case yoou couldn't tell I'm being sarcastic." "Well duh."
I think the 2.5 times melee damage is a big issue mainly, as everyone else has said, because we get no real proportional advantage for it. Maybe if we say it enough times something will be done. I don't find it much of a problem currently mainly because I'm working my way up swordsman aswell, I ALWAYS have a sword out and only pull out the rifle when I'm at the correct distance and am prepared to fire, still on some teleporting mobs this goes babdly. As soon as something comes for me (hopefully not teleporting) I whip out the power hammer or sword. I have had some experience using my rifle when I didn't have any melee skils, it is very tough, the only way to get exp was to find either something that only shoots back or a creature that doesn't BAF and goes down in 2 or 3 shots.
These are my thoughts, currently it seems to me that rifleman is only really effective when used in conjuction with other skills/players, I long for the day when it can useful by itself.
Thanks for the great job Aldeon Avardulin keep up the good fight.
Master Gunfighter, Master Marksman here, and I love using my laser rifle. I have a T21in mybackpack and over 125k rifle xp waiting for the day that:
TAKECOVER is fixed.
I lovelying there and one-shotting things. For me it's the coolest thing in combat. Granted with only Master Marksman the best damage I've ever done is 1300 in one shot. But I feel that if takecover were fixed and you didn't have to wait 4 seconds before going prone I'd be willing to take the 2.5 melee damage without complaint.
Takecover is supposed to be a huge part of sniping and it is nothing but a gigantic liabilty.
Even close-up Rifle is still pretty good. Contura on my server can attest to that, even though he shot me before I said 'go.' Bam, one-shot from 16 meters againsta Master Gunfighter with BHP 4.
**edit** YOU CONTURA! I WILL PWN YOU D00D!!! lol.
-- YP
Hi all,
read every thread on this post. I'm just starting up the rifleman tree and have seen these problems. I have to disagree that the 2.5 modifier is the biggest problem. Would you bring a rifle to a sword fight? The real issue is range in my opinion.
( if your having trouble with PVE then group up, get a pet, use a pistol or carbine as an alt ) I typically run with guys from my guild whether PVP or PVE. I rake in some nice XP using mindshot or mindshot2 followed up with some headshots. I couldn't do this well until i learned to buff and adjust my stats ( you know you can't buff alone so find someone to help you ).
An increase in range would give us the opprotunity to be um what do they call it oh ya rifleman. I tend to shoot my H&K at targets 15 feet away and bring my rifle for long range shooting. Again this goes back to what everyone else has said ( programmermakesalimitation of 64 max range for all weapons without thinking and now realizes that duh rifles shoot farther than pistols, doh boss i need to reworktons of code to resolve this and you need to pay me to do it, Boss naw just leave it, if we can milk another year outta this game we've made our quota )
With an increase in range i could be a much bigger asset to my guild. I don't however feel that they should modify much else on the rifleman occupation (besides fixing the above listed bugs related to our skills). We can't seriously expect to shoot 1 guy in the head from 128m and then expect his 19 buddies to stand around, we also can't expect to take down them enroute while we lay prone, its just not gonna happen. I would be happy to be able to do decent damage from ideal range helping to support the other members of my guild. Ideally taking out incapped characters that the others can't DB because they are busy in a fire fight, or making those just perfectly timed shots to take down that burst running fool that's almost dead.
In other words i never saw the rifleman profession as the rambo of all professions. Its meant to take out guys that didn't see ya coming 1 vs 1. Or meant to do some nasty damage in a group from long range.
AldeonAvardulin Keep up the great work man! I feel for you I really do!
#1 is good.
#2 should definitely be the t21, i saw an acid rifle yesterday which i cant use because it's a commando weapon and the **edit** thing's base stats unsliced were dmg 335 to 776 spd 5.8. i bought the thing cuz it had rifle in its name(the key word being RIFLE)paid 30k for it and i cant use it. I'm **edit** near a master rifleman and i cant use it. Fine, so be it, some other profession gets to use a better rifle than a master rifleman.What really annoys me is the fact that commando's can use aRIFLE that has base dmg stats that are more than double almost triple those of the t21. What the F?ck!!! and its faster by almost 2 full seconds.
Gimme a F#ckin break.
equiping that Rifle and not being able to use it really bummed me out, mainly because my T21 looks like a childs toy next to it. Aldeon you're on the money man. If the dev's say anything about our rifle being powerfull enough just show them some of the things these other professions are rolling with.
Fred_Skinner wrote:
That would be a hack. I would report... in fact, I might
zanetheinsane wrote: ...snip...
And did anyone else notice the convenient black dot on her bank account balance? She has an 8-figure bank account balance.... GOOD LORD! ZTI
nah thats Macross, at one time (I think she's retired now) THE weaponsmith on Lowca - I'm sure she made that kind of money in the first month of the game, as between her, Buffy and Kammi they were churning out the top end guns of the time (amazing scout blasters for example)
It keeps fools out of our profession and makes it challengings as well as defines us.
Anyone who truly understands the Rifleman will understand that our ONLY advantage is the ability to dish out more dammage than anyone else in a short period of time. No one can match a properly geared master rifleman with a top end rifle in the DPS arena.
That being said:
#1 Issue - Speed Cap. If we get the 3 second speed cap, we will be truely worthless. Right now we are easily one of the best combat classes if used properly. We are also the hardest to play properly. I have always said this, and have NEVER complained about Riflemen, however if we get a 3 second speed cap, and retain all our downfalls, we really, truely will be worthless. Please see this speed cap nonsense does not go through. I love being a rifleman, and I am all about PvP, if this changes I would be forced to become a BH to compeet and I would realy despise having to do that, as I hate cookie cutter, bandwagon classes.
#2 The Heavy Weapon
The T21 is also a good rifle still. The best rifle in fact. Though it is only slightly better than the best Laser rifle. I think it should be like it was, especially in light of the LLC and Commando weapons. In short, they should have never touched it.
Exmaple (Best I could find on Starsider):
Kryat Laser Rifle 692 Max Dam
T21 585 Max Dam
So taking into consideration the 2AP vs 3AP the T21 Translates into a 731 max damage laser rifle with a better accuracy, and a better minimum damage.
In short for a dabbler the Laser Rifle is a better weapon because of the speed advantage of roughly 2 seconds and lighter HAM (In the non Kryat variant, Kryat actually has more ham costs than the standard T21).
The T21 by a fair margin is better for a Master Rifleman, as speed is reduced to the 1 second cap. Superior min and max dammage. Better wounding (Kryat laser has slightly better wounding). Better accuracy and range-of-accuracy. Much higher ham, but at Master I feel a compitant Rifleman is always on Muon and Useing food+drink so ham cost is not an issue to me.
#2 Simply the heavy weapon & BH LLC doing the 2.5x melee damage.
This is well known. It's a bug, yet it has not been fixed yet. I see this as a very serious bug that seemingly is easy to fix.
I still do well in PvP even with the bug, but it really needs to go.
Referring to Aldeon's post, I would sawp #1 and #2 around personally.
HAM costs I think are the biggest downfall to our profession. Actually, I think the whole thing about being able to hit an unheable pool while using an unhealable pool is more of a detriment than an advantage.
Yeah we can hit mind while using our mind pools but that constitutes only 5 of the attacks we have available to us (3 of which is available in the marksman rifle tree); Head shot1/2/3 and mindshot1/2
They also have low damage modifiers compared to our other attacks.
So what about our other attacks? Our highest damage attacks (to both a single target or to multiple targets) are our AE attacks like startle, flushing, and strafe shot2. However they hit random pools AND they STILL use mind.
So we can hit individual targets and run out of mind by trying to deplete theirs or we can hit random pools of multiple targets and run out of mind. Either way we can't be in sustained combat very long compared to any other combat class because the rest can heal themselves and keep going and one class can even hit mind without using mind.
So we are off to the sidelines trying to regen out mind pools while everyone else is still going fast and furious. Not to mention we present ourselves as juicy targets to BH's and other riflemen because we just did all the work killing ourselves for them. Again, every other class can just healup and present a smaller window of vulnerability. We have have a much bigger window where our minds our low and we can't instantly bring them back up so we either go somewhere and sit or we continue and hope no one shoots us in the head.
Another point which puts a double whammy on us for using mind pool for specials is armor. Once again, other classes can wear armor and use specials and not worry because they can heal... but us? Don't even think about it unless you don't plan on using your special attacks. Doing a couple specials will pretty much wipe you out and there's nothing you can do to bring it back up in time. Basically it just takes you out of the battle faster. So even without a damage multiplier built in, we tend to take more damage from the sheer fact that we can't use armor to our advantage.
All that said, I can temporarily lower the mind costs by using muon gold. But it's not really a practical option. I basically only use it when soloing and have a crateful with me, but it is a pain in any group situation because they all have to wait for you to recover from the downer. Also when you die, the timer is still in effect while the buffs go away. So say you took muon and 2 minutes in, someone or something manages to kill you. You respawn but you can't take any more spices until the remaining 8 minutes in addition to the timer for the downer is up. That's a lot of time to wait. Having to be so dependant on drugs to make one viable is just plain dumb.
Other non-spice buffs, here is another area where every other non-mind using class has an advantage. Doc buffs can bring up a person's health, action and all related secondary stats and they can last for over an hour. It also doesn't take very long to do it. Now they can spam specials even more without having to heal up for a long while. What do we get? We have to watch/listen to entertainer types to buff our minds and it doesn't last very long nor does it seem to buff our mind related stats very much. I recall some mention about improvements to entertainer mind buffs where we can have the buffs last for a couple hours, but it still required watching them for that same amount of time to get it (ie watch/listen for two hours to get two hours worth of buffs). I could be wrong about that.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is I wish they would at the very least move our non-mind damaging specials to the health/action bars. That way we can choose to be able to remain in the battle longer or keep people out commission longer while doing the same to ourselves.
As for the melee damage multiplier, it still is a problem but it is easier to work around. Most of those problems stem from mobs warping and from BH and commando weapons incorrectly doing melee damage. Once those are fixed, it shouldn't be as much of a problem. Some ways to avoid melee damage in PvE include using using warning shot, switching to a pistol and using warning shot, and using a pet (everyone can have a pet now and I've seen non-ch pets used to tank very well). Most mobs in pve can be warning shotted away, while npcs you can either keep busy with a pet or they shoot at range anyway. Knowing how to effectively keep mobs away from you pretty much keeps you from having to deal with melee damage in pve for the most part (again once warping and weapon damage types are fixed). In PvP, you can always kite meleers and even if you rarely hit them while kiting, they can't hit you at all. Hitting sometimes > hitting never. If they DO manage to get up on you somehow, I think they deserve the ability to take out a ranged combat person. Besides, I don't think we'd stand much of a chance in close combat with a tka or swordsman whether there was a multiplier or not. The time it takes for them to kill us is a mere technicality. I agree with others that the 2.5x melee multiplier should stay as it's one of our best bargaining chips to put on the table. At the most, I would say to reduce it but not get rid of it entirely.
Lastly, I did read about the devs wanting to implement some way to make mind healable, but it didn't seem like most of the suggestions were going to make them as effective as the heals for action and health and also nothing is concrete yet so we can't really make comment on it until it is.
I'm more than happy with 2.5x damage modifier because i want to get a good result at the end. Easier to EXP = moreMasters. So we'llbe nerfed, and our class will be even worse at the Master level. So almost all Novice Riflemans don't thinking about a Master Riflemans (I don't understand why? Don't they want to be a Master Riflemans and be powerful? Most of them don't undestand how things are working in balancing a game?). Look at the pistoleers - they are strong at the beginning, they are strong in PvE. Are Master Pistoleers as strong as a Master Riflemans? IMHO no. Why? Because it's much easier to level to a Master Pistoleer than to a Master Rifleman.
So i'm more than happy to not to be one of the pistoleer Zerg swarm. SnipersshouldbeELITE - like in real world. So i consider thinking twice before asking about removal of a 2.5x damage modifier or any other thing helping Riflemans in PvE. If you want an easy way, be a Pistoleer period.