Rifleman Archive

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GrogScylla wrote:

Alternating Ranged/Place Shot with a SPEED PuP

or

Alternating Headshot/CriticalShot with a DAMAGE PuP

Thanks

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I'd say the first one, unless you are shooting a target that you can kill quickly in a few shots. Otherwise you are going to be out of action after a few shots (usingthe damage PUP shooting those high-SAC specials), and will at that point be doing zero damage.

Just curious, but why not placed and ranged shot with a dmg power up or critical and hs with a speed power up?

When messing around I really only rotate headshot and ranged shot. I don't have many shots as a Rifleman/Squad Leader, though. I'd love for some more shots I can do that are effective. Any suggestions of something I should add in?

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Geddeo wrote:
Just curious, but why not placed and ranged shot with a dmg power up or critical and hs with a speed power up?

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Placed and Ranged Shots with a damage PUP does work nicely. In my own personal tests though, I seem to do a more damage over time with a speed PUP than with a damage PUP, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that one is necessarily better than the other in all situations. The problem with a damage PUP is that you get a big speed penalty with it, so it cancels out (to some degree) the increase you get from the extra damage. The counter-argument would be that you have an accuracy penalty using a speed PUP, but my field test results seem to suggest to me that you get better damage over time with the speed PUP. Again, your results may vary.

As for Critical and Heat Shots with a speed PUP, that works great for low-HAM targets, but it drains your action pool very quickly, so it's not a viable sustainable attack against high-HAM targets. You'll be out of action after a few shots, and once that happens you are no longer doing any damage at all.

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ShadowCM wrote:

Damage pups are always better than speed pups...speed runs you out if you want to switch to damaging shots

I prefer head/advcrit (im mbh mrm) for the damage on anything less than 15k health or with a group anything with 30k+health or in pvp

I would only do ranged/placed on long run battles, such as against krayts or kimo's.

In pvp ranged/placed will get you nowhere, sniper, kd, startle, sniper, crit, deathblow is my fav combo in pvp

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I completely disagree that damage PUPs are always better than speed PUPs. Lately I've been using speed PUPs quite often, spamming high-SAC specials, and against many of the mobs that I fight, they are dead before I run out of action. If I do run low on action, I just switch to ranged/placed shots to finish them off, and am able to fire them very quickly, without running completely out of action. I did a lot of testing with the various PUP types and found that my damage output over time was higher with a speed PUP than with a damage PUP(at least for medium-HAM, CL 80-82 targets), but a SAC PUP blows away either if you want to spam high-level specials in a prolonged battle (e.g. against a krayt).

To each his own though--there is no one best way to use PUPs and specials for every situation. As ShadowCM mentioned, PvP requires a very different strategy than PvE, and high-HAM mob battlesrequire (or at least benefit from) a very different strategy than low-HAM mobs.