Rifleman Archive
Thread: Some Riflemen Love and a Bleed Nerf from TC patch notes
Here are some relevant notes from the 11/3/03 TC patch notes. Some good, some bad.
Removed "double movement speed" for creatures in Frenzy mode: this will reduce many instances of creature warping.
NPCs and creatures will not Immediately resume standing when knocked down. If dizzy, they may fall down again when they do try to stand.
Rifleman improvements; Increased rifle accuracy, rifle Aim, melee defence, ranged defence, blocking modifiers and ranged defense modifiers.
Reworked the dot mechanics so that dots no longer incapacitate the target. If a given dot pulse would reduce the target to less than one, the pool is instead taken down to 1. Because of this change, the dot grace period for being incapacitated has been removed.
Social creatures will not respond to attacks on their friends which they see, but which their friends do not respond to. For an example of the bug: If you throw a trap and it fails to effect the target, the target will not attack you but all of its friends WILL. For another example: If you /taunt a creature and it is out of range of the taunt, it will not attack you but all of its friends will. With this change the social friends should only respond to the attack if it really does push the defender (their friend) into combat-mode.
So there is the main factors for riflemen. Bleeding is getting nerfed so it's going to be a bit harder for the novice to level. On the other hand with the social changes conceal shot will now become the novice riflemens best friend along with aim. Flurry shot will also become a bit more useful. Especially on creatures which seemed to have no problems shrugging off the dizzy effect.
I'm reserving judgement on the creature warping possible fix. Will have to see if it actually does solve the problem and how often it works.
I do not really see the Dot changes as a nerf. In fact, I see it as a blessing, especially for the lower levels. Take this all too common situation. You hit a target with Mindshot1 then Mindshot2. It starts bleeding. It comes after you. In your attempts to kite it, you get about 82 meters from where you hit the beast, and it incaps you before you can kill it. It lazily wanders back to its original location.
So you lay there pondering life and cursing the creature and its descendents, watching the bleed timer tick down. Then finally, it dies. But wait, you got no credit for the kill even though you hit it with normal damage. Then you look at the distance and you realize, you got incapped 82m from where it died. That is two meters beyond the zone for which you will get credit for the kill.
That is now, but with the change, everything is the same, except that the creature will not die. It will have at least 1 point of damage left on the targeted HAM pool. So now, you simply wait for the incap timer to run down, get up. Heal yourself, then casually wander back into range and hit him witha Headshot (heck for one point of damage, even Headshot1 would do), and he drops like a stone. In fact, any shot except a bleed should work because random pool damage is supposed to take the majority of the damage against a random pool and a little damage from each of the others. So theoretically, any shot that does real damage, including just a normal attack, should be enough. You could even do a bleed if you were certain that you had hit it for some kind of regular damage in the first go around.
So this is not a nerf. It just means that you cannot hit something with bleeds and move out of range and expect it to die. It will always stop short of death. However, simply move back in and finish it off with 1 shot. No big deal; however, it will go a long way in keeping us from loosing XP because the ungrateful creature wandered more than 80m from us before it died.
The other scenario is that the target bleeds out and dies on the way to DB you or just walking around. I've had this happen a number of times. Especially on the togher MOB's.
Though there is the upside on non-killer types as you mentioned.
It will be interesting to see though if the creature disappearing issue that often happened to wounded MOB's will also be fixed. Laying there incapped and watching the target you've been working on for awhile walk away then just disappear was annoying. That effect may have been related to the bleeding, maybe not. Have to wait an see.
Waste93 wrote:
The other scenario is that the target bleeds out and dies on the way to DB you or just walking around. I've had this happen a number of times. Especially on the togher MOB's.
Though there is the upside on non-killer types as you mentioned.
It will be interesting to see though if the creature disappearing issue that often happened to wounded MOB's will also be fixed. Laying there incapped and watching the target you've been working on for awhile walk away then just disappear was annoying. That effect may have been related to the bleeding, maybe not. Have to wait an see.
Yea I hate that..work for five minutes chasing this thing.. takign shots over your shoulder.. then he incapps you and you get back up and he's gone..you find him back at the spawn point all healed an happy.. &#$@#@$!!!.
So I can already imagine that screenshot when you bleed a Krayt Dragon down to 1, then whip out the CDEF PISTOL, pop him one, and press 'PrintScreen'.... 
WayneInAustin wrote:
So I can already imagine that screenshot when you bleed a Krayt Dragon down to 1, then whip out the CDEF PISTOL, pop him one, and press 'PrintScreen'....
Another Priceless advert maybe?
I'm not sure if the loss of these is made up for by always getting some xp off a mob, since you actually need to use a "regular" shot to kill it.
Waste93,
The scenario you mention is definitely a problem with this change. There have been many times where I have hit an NPC or other MOBwith a bleed and gotten incapped by him or one of his friends. Then watched the race between him walking up to me and the bleed timer ticking down. If he wins the race, I get DBed. If the bleed timer ticks down, I get to get up. So the fact that the bleed cannot, now, kill him means that he will always DB me. And that is a bad thing.
On the other hand, unless he is the only one there, there is always the chance that his friends will DB me anyway. And either way,whenhe beats the bleed timer, the best I can hope for is to lay there, dead, so that I can watch him bleed to death and at least get the faction points, because I will not, being dead, get the XP. And, as in my previous comment, there is a good chance that they will wander out of range before that happens. Sometimes they just warp out of range.
And as I think back, I can think of a lot more times where that happened than times where he dropped dead before getting to me. So, as a whole, I still think that this is a good change. I think the times I will be able to reclone and come back to take personal revenge will outweigh the times I would have survived a DB anyway. Besides, it is far more satisfying to walk up and finish him off than to lay there, dead, watching him gloat while I wait for him to die.
I agree Sotaudi...
There were a LOT more times where targets wandered out of range than when they died walking over to me. In fact, I can only remember two times where an enemy bled to death walking over to me.
I think I might have been the benefit of a bleed out before db twice in 4 months. I have had them get away from me 20x that.
There is far more pleasure in waiting until their mind is almost totally gone and then delivering the final shot.