Rifleman Archive
Thread: Random thoughts from Rifleman/Swordsman
A few random thoughts from someone playing the Rifleman/Swordsman combo (just reached novice in both yesterday). Hope these prove useful, I'm not an expert and am still learning, but I thought I would share my impressions so far:
1) I really truly love the swordsman profession - it is so much fun to walk up to a nest of whites, smack it, wait for all the whites to charge me, then do spin attacks and kill them all. As you swordsman already know, I can easily kill 3-5 white con mobs with 2 spin moves, just as long as they don't stun me too much.
2) The animation for our moves is fantastic, I feel like I'm watching a Kurosawa film orreading a "Lone Wolf and Cub" manga.
3) The 2H curved sword is amazing. After I reached novice swordsman last night, I was noticing damage from 2 Hand Hit as high as 1640 on white con mobs. I can't remember the exact stats on my sword, but they are average - not the best, not the worst. I think I'd probably stay with the 2H curved sword even if they fixed the power hammer issues, I'm a swordsman and I want to use a sword! Plus my speed is 2.3 (sliced) and I really like having a chance to recover if an important style misses.
4) I am not bothered by our HAM usage. I think it is fair, and it should be high. I can safely use 2-3 special moves per fight. These special moves deal out enormous destruction, so it is fair that they cost a lot to use. Even my normal non-special attacks do a lot of damage, and it is generally easy for me to kill just about anything that is white/yellow con.
5) I don't wear armor, and probably never will for PvE. I don't want to waste money on buying and continually upgrading/repairing armor, would rather save the funds towards PA hall. I can survive most fights easily and really haven't missed armor since I got rid of it.
6) The rifleman/swordman combo is as great as advertised. I love being able to deal mind damage from both long range and short range. I also love having both ranged and melee defense. As a Rifleman, I love being able to switch to the curved sword when a mob cuts through masked scent and charges. As a Swordsman, I love being able to whip out the rifle to pull mobs or to cut down ones running away. I have not done any PvP yet but think (hope) similar principles apply.
7) Using the damage-over-time (DOT) technique allows me to divert XP to rifle or sword whenever I want. This has been mentioned several times on these boards, but let me recap because it is really important. When you do a DOT attack (like Mindshot), the XP is "unassigned". If you DOT something and it dies without you doing any other damage, you get no XP at all. The XP goes to whatever _other_ attacks you do.
So if you DOT something with the rifle Mindshot style, then switch to sword and do damage with the sword, all XP goes to the sword. Similarly, if you DOT something with the rifle Mindshot style, then do non-DOT rifle damage (through normal attacks, or other styles like Headshot) then all XP goes to the rifle.
Using this technique I can use the rifle to help me powerskill sword at any time.
8) I had been thinking that the most effective technique for sword XP would be to open with a rifle Mindshot to start a mind DOT, wait for the mob to charge, then hit it with Two Head Hit a few times to deplete its mind. However, I have found that this uses a lot of my own mind pool (which is pretty high and regens fast) and causes a lot of downtime for me. So believe it or not, I have found that it is more efficient for me to pull with Mindshot, then just do normal attack damage with the 2H sword, and throw in a 2 Handed Hit or Intimidate if I feel like it.
Using this technique, the opening mind DOT is my insurance policy - the mob will die from it given enough time. But with the unreal damage I do with the 2H curved sword, I can deplete the mob's health faster than the DOT mind effect takes to kill him. And by not using any styles other than the opening Mindshot, I can XP much faster with little to no downtime. I'm also a medic, see next point...
9) It is awesome to have a secondary medical profession. Nothing beats being able to heal yourself in a tough fight. I'm up to First Aid 2, and Org Chem 3, so I can stop DOTs on myself and I can make very nice stim packs that heal around 130 health/action per use. It is also great to be able to heal my own wound in a hospital while I wait for the doctor to make the rounds - or to heal these wounds in camp.
I strongly recommend that people consider picking up medical skills as they move their way up to their master profession - you may have to give these skills up later as you reach your final spec, but having medical abilities while you are gaining levels makes things go SO much faster.
10) For all youbrawler/medics out there, I'm sure you have been doing what I've been doing: making medicines in camp as you need them. I found out recently that making medicines at a public crafting station (or one in your house, if you have one) allows you to experiment much more often, which will improve your medicines _significantly_.
I've been able to increase the effectiveness and the number of charges of all my medicines a lot just be spending an hour or two making them in front of the food/chemical crafting station in my new house. You really should consider doing this for a while to get the experimentation under your belt.
11) I come from Dark Age of Camelot, where XPing is very group-oriented. The ideal XP group there is 6-8, and groups under 4 are significantly less efficient. In SWG, from what I have seen so far, it seems like the most efficient way for me to get XP is solo. Do people agree with this, and does it remain true at the higher levels? If so, that's a shame - the best part about MMPORGs is the interactions you get with people, and making soloing the most efficient way to obtain XP degrades the community.
12) I decide in advance whether I'm trying to farm cash, or trying to get XP.
If I am doing cash, I pick a town that has mission terminals right at the edge of the town, and close missions. Right now my favorite is Bestine, but Anchorhead and the Imperial Fortress on Talus also qualify... and I'm sure there are many others. I like Bestine because nearly all the missions are under 1000m, most are 800m.
I pick only mob missions, not ones that kill slavemasters or smugglers or whatever. I pick missions that have blue/white con mobs only (right now, for me, this means avoiding the jundland eopie missions because they include yellow mobs). Obviously I pick missions in the same direction, and I do them in the direction that is closest to the mission terminal so I don't have to wander through town at all. (So if the mission terminal is on the S side of town, I pick missions to the S.)
With the 2H sword, I can safely walk up to any blue/white lair and start whacking on it without clearing the surrounding mobs first. When the mobs agro me and start attacking me, I unleash 1-2 spin mobs. This kills all the mobs around me plus the lair. Using this technique I can take down a lair in about 10 seconds. Using this technique, I can do two mission every ten minutes or so - the main time is running to/from town. I always use burst run on the way back to speed things up. At my level, this means I can earn about 18-20k credits per hour.
If I am doing XP, I just wander through the wilderness looking for nests of white mobs, and use the very patient approach of picking each mob off one at a time, then hitting the nest once, waiting for mobs to pop, killing them, etc. With this approach I figure I can make around 10k XP per hour.
I have not tried faction missions for XP, from a post in the Rifleman boards here, this seems promising.
13) Given the cash earning numbers in the above point, I really don't understand why people complain about weapon prices. I paid 30k credits for my 2H curved sword. That is a lot of cash, and I probably could have found a cheaper sword somewhere. But it only took me about 1-2 hours to earn, and I will be using that sword for weeks. I think anyone who complains about paying 1-2 hours time for something that you will be using constantly for weeks is silly. And anyone who complains about this should try crafting for a while and see what a huge pain in the rear it is to find and harvest resources, experiment, skill up, etc.
14) I'm really enjoying this game so far, bugs and all, and am looking forward to them enhancing and improving it over time. Remember, MMPORGs aren't static like other games - to keep their customer base happy and the monthly revenues flowing, these companies have an incentive to continually improve. DAOC improved dramatically over time, and I expect SWG to do so as well. From my perspective, SWG starts out better than DAOC in a number of ways, and will only get better.
Thought you guys might be interested in this thread that I just posted on the Swordsman boards.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=swordsman&message.id=1054
Just saw your post. Pray that SOE don't put a nerf on your swords. I have it on good athority (fanboi from Gen. Discussion) that you should NOT be able to do yellow cons...
glad you're loving it sir =)
hehehe. I'm a rifleman/swordsman +bits of medic +creature handler with 2 pets myself
and i've had similar experience with you (especially the ecstasy right after changing into the katana... really big difference from my old axe)..
I agree with most of your thoughts, but I just want to voice my opinions on the combo =).
For me, in ideal PvP, this combo works great (headshot/headhit)... but i've been fighting a lot and unless the guy i'm fighting is dumb enough to stand within 5m of me when the duel start, the sword is useless... kiting is way too effective and usually i just use my sword as bait to get the guy to run far before starting, and blast their head with my rifle.
Against other melee-er (TKA since 90% of them are), i found out the hard way that my damage gets reduced by tons.. my regular 1500 damage headhit3 came out to only 565 against a TKA.... and trust me, you WON'T get more than one hit off against TKA.. in fact i could get one out cause he challenged me first (so i can click duel then headhit3)
later when i challenged him first, even when i keep pressing sweep (to get him to posture down), he easily KD me before i can start my animation.... they're just faster at KD.
Anyway, as it stands right now, the sword part of the sword/rifle is practically useless in PvP because against melee-er of a high lvl, they can knock you down faster, and against ranged we don't stand a chance. in KvK it might be different.. i haven't tried. and another thing, most ppl die from one/two hit from rifle, and most likely one hit from sword, so the combo is quite unnecessary (i can just pick up any weapon and do the same)
against mob, i'm gonna say the the HAM cost is uber ridiculous... sure it might seem okay to take 150 damage of your own to deal 1500 damage to the creature... but creatures we fight often has 11k HP (grouped), while we only have 900... 150/900 is more significant than 1500/11k... and i don't always hit 1500.. often its less than that.. or its a miss... and damnit, I"m the one doing the special attack...
Now, lets see some other class:
smuggler pistol can use panic shot/bodyshot for 31 action cost...panic prevents target from attacking (or at least very very very slow.. usually they just don't attack)... same with the ranged knockdown from smuggler, and i'm assuming BH.
When i see TKA deals their knockdown etc, i also see numbers around 50 at most...
rifleman is an exception because they deal great damage over long period of time... so it makes sense for their HAM to be higher (with max mind and headshot 2 i was taking 83 mind with my laser rifle). The thing is, rifle only has to worry about one pool, cause the other two are unaffected at all.. i'm pretty sure.
sword on the other hand... attack faster than rifle (and it better be.. we're melee... but our ham cost is actually higher, and the damage isn't necessarily better (rifle can reach 2000+ damage and they're ranged)... and combining headshot + headhit is definitely suicide for me against any monster with 6k+ hp...
i guess its unfair for me to want to solo 6k+ hp monsters... but TKA cansolo10k hp mobs regulary, coming outalmost unscratched, and so can smuggler, bounty hunters, pikeman, even pistoleer can KD with their wimpy pistol whip. But thats not the point.. i'm not asking for a cheap knockdown... i'm asking for lower ham cost so that i can deal good damage while not killing myself (5 headhit3 right now = 80% of my action).. how is that fair? are we supposed to just hack and slash regularly?
and soon berserk is nerfed, so probably the only special i'll use is sweep.
Fred_Skinner wrote:Pray that SOE don't put a nerf on your swords. I have it on good athority (fanboi from Gen. Discussion) that you should NOT be able to do yellow cons...
Well, the "official" Prima guide says something to the effect (would post actual quote, but don't have book at hand) that you might be able to solo yellow con mobs with ideal equipment, excellent tactics, and luck - and that's pretty much the case with my 2H sword. I have to use a LOT of stimpacks to survive, and do things just right, and get a little lucky...
Even my normal non-special attacks do a lot of damage, and it is generally easy for me to kill just about anything that is white/yellow con.
Someone on the rifleman boards noticed this, and I wanted to admit that it was an exaggeration - killing white mobs is easy, killing yellow ones is pretty hard. Things have to go just right and I have to use a lot of stim packs to kill yellows.
The combo of sword/rifle is a great one. It might be even better than most of us realize if we find out that your defensive skills are indeed stacking.
For those of you who complain that rifles aren't any good for soloers, you're probably right. But why do you only use a rifle? Pick up asecond set of skills that compliments your rifle. I'm a pistoleer and I don't expect to be able to wreak havoc with just my pistol, so I chose to become a combat medic at the same time.
You have 250 skill points. Use them. Master Rifleman doesn't even take half of them. If you keep getting killed by something that makes it to melee range with you, pick up something like the sword or TK. You'll be much better off for it.