Rifleman Archive

Note: I've decided to post this in the combat profession forums to see what they'd like to add and what they think of the proposed changes. Any Comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Ok, Everyone's been suggesting ideas for the upcoming (we hope, can never really tell if SOE is going to keep its word)
Combat upgrade. I've got a few things to add which would fix a great many problems with combat as it currently is in the
game. the thing is, knowing SOE, the "combat upgrade" will only be a mass nerf and will ruin things even worse than they
are now. The solution isnt Nerfing, and i hope they eventually get that in their heads. They need to fix, not nerf.

Anyways, here's the long list of things i propose:

1. Currently mind is a big problem. Classes like rifleman that can attack mind are preferred in PvP because mind cannot
generally be healed. My proposal is a complete change in the way our three current stat bars work. First off, if you
read the definitions on the stat bars in the game, its nothing like how they currently work.
First we need to remove ALL pool-specific attacks from all combat professions.

- All damage should go directly to health. Health should be the only pool you can be incapped from. Health should never
be drained by special attacks or the like.
- Action should be your "special attacks" bar. Using special attacks should drain from action, as in the definition
action is your energy, your ability to perform physical acts. Your speed and attack damage should be
determined by the amount of action you have.
- Along with that, i think that poisons should effect action, not health. Poisons reduce your strenght and energy,
so if a poison drained your action stat, you wouldnt be able to use certain abilities or perform special attacks.
- Mind should be drained by healing, surveying, and performing other actions that arent covered by action. Your mind
should also be used to determine certain abilities' effectiveness. Your to-hit bonus, dodge, counterattack, block,
Defensive acuity, and Accuracy should be determined by mind.
- Health should have Regeneration and Resistance secondary stats. The regen stat determines how fast you recover from
physical damage, and the resistance secondary should add a modifier to a generic damage reduction that every player has.
-Action should have Regeneration and Usage secondary stats. The regeneration determines how fast your action recovers,
and the usage determines how much action you use for special attacks (combined with weapon special cost, armor encumbrance,
and the special attack's independent cost).
-Mind should have Regeneration and Awareness secondary stats. The regeneration determines how fast your mind recovers,
and the awareness stat determines how much of a bonus (for high mind) or penalty (for low mind) you recieve to your to-hit,
defense, and accuracy rolls.
-Remove Battle fatigue, and have it represented as mind wounds.

Now, to replace the pool specific attacks that would be removed from each profession, a variety of new attacks could be added
examples are:
- New state attacks. A "weaken" attack (weakened state) that reduces melee/ranged defense, A "surprise" attack (surprised state)
that reduces certain defenses, or a cripple attack (crippled state) that reduces attack power and may cause wounds over time.
- New Combo, area of effect, high damage, high speed, or high accuracy attacks.

2. Next major problem is our current armor/buff imbalance. With how powerful buffs currently are, combined with composite
armor that can have 80-90% resists to nearly every damage type, players are entirely too strong.
- The current armor needs to be changed, and new armor types need to be added.
- Give each type of armor a specific use. No type of armor should have HIGH resistances to more than 3 damage types. This
would be great for armorsmiths, as players would want to buy multiple armor types to change for certain situations.
- Give every armor type a color palette, or let armorsmiths make armor customization kits that 'paint' and/or 'texture' armor
for a certain number of days.
- Stun armor is currently a problem. I suggest that stun damage weapons deal no real combat damage, but automatically apply
the Stun, dizzy, and cripple states, while also giving wounds. Stun weapons are supposed to be non lethal, but giving them
the ability to apply states and wounds would give them benefits.
- Reduce Buff strength. Basically, a buff should double a player's primary and secondary stats, and add between 0-500 extra
points to states based on the doctor's skill and the experimentation power of the buff packs. Instead of buffing for 2500,
most docs would give buffs for around 2000 or less.

3. Next we have our beloved "Super weapons". Well, i dont care if people like being overpowered or not, but these things need
to be gotten rid of.
- Disease should not be a Dot on ANY weapon. Only CM's should be able to apply disease.
- Poison should have low strength, only effect the action pool, and be rare on weapons.
- Fire should not be available to ANYONE except commandos with their flame thrower, or perhaps bounty hunters with a new
"wrist flamethrower" item. I dont see how an axe or lance is able to set someone on fire, it doesnt make sense.

4. Now comes the few nerfs that need to be done.
- Certain classes have entirely too much power. Riflemen are a high damage class, with heavy AP weapons and high base damage, as well as high damage multipliers on attacks. They should NEVER be allowed to fire speed capped. No rifle should be able to fire faster than once every 2 seconds (twice the current cap) so add a hard speed cap at 2.0 for riflemen.
- With all attacks now hitting health, pool specific attacks will no longer set certain classes above the rest.
- Combat medic diseases and poisons need to be lowered in strength. Poisons will only effect health, and will not be able to
incap. Diseases should cause States, such as dizzy, blinded, weakened, or crippled, and should effect mind.

5. Now for some profession specific changes to fix things up:

Teras kasi:
- TKA is a great profession right now because its not overly powerful, but not too weak either. The reason so many people think
TKA is overpowered is because other professions have been nerfed to dust, or because of our infamous dizzy/kd combo. Currently
TKA is preferred by many players because it is a jack of all trades, master of none. we cant dish out damage in high end PvE, but
we can tank forever.
- The only thing i can think of for this is that the new state attacks should be added in place of our mind/body/leg hits.
- Also, i think that the Vibroknuckler should be removed from the game. Make it require a little less experience to get to teras
kasi novice, and at novice give us an innate ability that makes our true unarmed attacks AP1 and a little more powerful. It would
be as if we were using a VK without actually using one, but would make all TK players do the same damage.

Fencer:
- Fencer has great defenses, but deserves a tad bit more toughness.
- Remove the gaderiffi baton and replace it with a sword, its stupid that fencers are forced to use batons.
- Give fencer a 'unique' weapon like the scythe, energy lance, berserker rifle, or de-10. This weapon needs
to have decent damage and at least AP1 to be useful..

Swordsman:
- The only problem with swordsman currently is that their damage types are nearly invalidated by the 80% armor everyone wears.
With that problem fixed, swordsmen would be much more viable in pvp for fairly high damage weapons. As it is, they're great in
pve with their medium armor peircing and high damage attacks - which are balanced by their low defenses.
- Make counterattack completely stop incoming damage, and retaliate in an unblockable attack as it is meant to.

Pikeman:
- First, fix block. It never works properly. Block should stop all incoming damage when it works.
- Give pikeman weapons higher base accuracy. The majority of pikeman weapons are -20 to -35 on their range modifiers. Without
Dots, they dont need such a low accuracy, so give them more.
- Make the master pikeman special (polearm hit 3) deal more damage, and remove the 'pick up from knockdown' effect it has.

Rifleman:
- Dont let rifleman fire faster than once per 2 seconds (i.e. make them hard cap speed at 2.0)
- Strafe shot 2 deals too much damage for it to be fired like a machine gun. change the speed modifier.

Pistoleer:
- FIX THE SPECIALS. Seriously, almost every pistoleer special completely sucks.
- Raise pistoleer speed. A master pistoleer fires entirely too slow. They should be able to speed cap at master.
- Change pistoleer's melee defense to a mixture of ranged and melee defense. I know they fight up close, but they
should be able to get a little defense at range too.

Carbineer:
- please, raise the accuracy and speed. Without Bounty hunter carbineer sucks, plain and simple.

Commando:
- Increase the accuracy. A flamethrower at point blank just shouldnt miss. To compensate for the high power of commando weapons you've already made them very slow. In addition you could lower the damage slightly, and make the burn not quite so bad. As it is, if a commando with a good flamethrower hits their target in pvp, they can deal up to 2000+ damage, and stick a burn that ticks for 1000 damage or more per 10 seconds. Its a very powerful class, the accuracy just kills them.
- Fix the acid rifle. As it is most commandos never lay their hands on an acid rifle. make it useful, perhaps give it the ability
to "burn" through armor? Or give it AP1 or 2.
- Grenades should give heavy weapons xp. Im tired of seeing people use commando to become jedi. Since when did jedi use grenades?

Bounty Hunter:
- Make the LLC a bit better, with more accuracy, dont put the range limit on it's specials.
- Give a "checkbox" to players in their options window to allow them to add themselves to the player bounty system. This would let
a lot of pvp lovers allow themselves to be hunted by bh's, while letting the rest not be forced into pvp.
- Allow Ranged Bh's a chance, just a chance, at killing a jedi. The amount a saber blocks is ridiculous. Accuracy bonuses should
work against saber block, as they do against dodge, block, and counterattack.
- Remove the group TEF. When a bounty hunter goes after a jedi or another target, it should be one on one, no gank squads involved. Simply disallowing group members to participate in the fight would fix a lot of problems with griefing.
- Give Bounty Hunter certifications for specialized equipment such as: Grappling hooks, Wrist Flame Throwers, Jetpacks, etc.

Jedi:
- Fix the visibility system. Jedi should be able to hunt with their friends in groups without getting visibility. First you try to
force us into groups by making everything too powerful, then you give low level jedi a crappy weapon and force them to solo. what the heck were the devs thinking? Also, if an NPC sees a jedi with his saber or force powers in use, the jedi should be able to attack and kill that NPC to prevent himself from gaining visibility.
- Fix the few bugs there are with force powers. Force choke should be a bit better.

Creature Handler:
- First off, pets should recieve the 75% pvp damage reduction bonus when being used against players. Our pets dont last 2 seconds in pvp because of this.
- Make Tame-able pets from the wild have better stats than bio engineered ones. Bio engineers should be focusing on enhancements and making non creature handler pets.
- Fix the pet warping and disappearing bugs. Its hard enough grinding CH without having your pet run away or disappear every few minutes.
- Add more mountable pets for CH's only. Non ch players should be restricted to more 'docile' pets, while creature handlers should be able to mount various Cats and larger aggressive animals.

Combat medic:
- as stated above, reduce the effectiveness and strength of poisons/diseases.
- Give combat medics a little bit of defense. Not much, just maybe +5-10 state defenses and 10-20 melee/ranged defense.
- Give combat medics the ability to heal certain states, as well as Ressurection/Revival kits. Docs are not a common sight on the
battlefield, so they're never around when you need to be ressurected, and by the time they show up its too late.

Droid Engineer:
Kind of seems strange to add to the list, lol
- Give us some more combat droids. Droidekas, SBD's, and new combat droid types. These should be use-able by anyone, and give an advantage
in combat, similar to a creature handler's pets.

Smuggler:
- Fix feign death so that people arent always exploiting it. Feign should have either a time limit or be cancelled by certain attacks.

I've probably missed something... if i think of it i'll add it in.

Most of this i've gathered from other players, profession forums, and from personal experience. People just havent put it all together into one document to present to the devs so things can get fixed. Some of these suggestions may not be good, but can be worked out. Maybe if we can press these issues enough SOE will give in and change the things they've been putting off since, oh, launch?

Any suggestions or comments are appreciated.

I always hear people saying that teras kasi is overpowered, and i really dont think it is.

True, i do use teras kasi, but im not a stacker or anything, I'm a TKM/creature handler, and that makes half my template (ch) useless in pvp.

Teras kasi is really only good in pvp because of knockdown. Have you ever tried to use TKA against someone with 80-90% armor and buffs? it takesforever to kill them.

The reason i say TKA is balanced is because though we do have a very powerfull dizzy/kd combo, without master brawler any ranged class can kite us. Even in minimal lag we're always out of range for lunge to work. Melee classes generally have high defense vs knockdown and dizzy. Fencer has +40 to those, swordsman does have almost none, and pikeman has more than TKA does.

We can attack all three pools to adjust for situations, but none of those attacks is very powerful. In PvE when im using something like head hit or body hit, i may be doing 200 damage per attack. With unarmed hit 3 i do maybe 500 per attack, but it gets split up among all three pools. We only get an Ap1 weapon, and only kinetic damage, so most high end mobs we cant even hurt. Teras kasi are tanks, other than that we cant dish out much damage.

We have high toughness, pretty good melee/ranged defense, but very low state defenses. Most people dont consider this because the "overpowered" teras kasi that they fight against are stackers. With Defense stacking removed, TKA wouldnt be nearly as powerful as people believe it to be now.

I dont think any real nerfing should take place. The other professions should be fixed, and brought up to the level of the currently balanced (or mostly balanced) professions that people all claim to be overpowered. A lot of swordsmen i know think that TKA and Rifleman are overpowered in pvp, why? because swordsman doesnt do well in pvp, because they got nerfed inadvertently by this insane armor and the buffs everyone has. If a TKM doesnt knockdown his opponent, he does very low damage. A swordsman can dish out fouror five times more damage, against players, i've seen them do it. A rifleman can kill most players, even those with mind buffs, in a matter of seconds, because their AP3 weapon deals More than 50% extra damage to AP1 armored players.

The problem with the game right now is that soe has screwed so many things up, and at the same time left other things alone, that those things have become better than everything else. They've nerfed pikeman, swordsman, carbineer, pistoleer, creature handler, etc. While leaving Rifleman, Teras kasi, Fencer, and others at the level they were at originally, so now everyone thinks those professions are overpowered.

-White- Jedi
Mastur' Bater Noob Medic
'Black' Slain by the NGE
"Now, I am become death, destroyer of worlds" - J. Robert Oppenheimer
F#CK YOU MOM!!! I WANT MY CHOCOLATE MILK!!!

First off, i would like to say AWESOME POST BUDDY!!... u really put some time into thinking this stuff through, and decided to share your view, great job!

Though i actually agree on most of it, there is ofcourse some stuff i dont agree on (nobody completely agress on everything )

Yousay that TK isnt too powerful and should get some more state attacks?... i disagree on that... Dizzy KD need to go... they should ofcourse have a dizzy ability and a KD ability, but not combined in one attack. Also the meditate tree is way too conveinient... shouldnt have the ability to heal wounds (maybe desiese and poison, but not wounds aswell). As the game is now i think they actually do just a tad too much damage compared to many other professions (a hand should never do as much damage as a gun... doesnt make sence)... I agree with moving the weapon from TK though, TK should be entirely unarmed.

Even being a rifleman myself, i actually agree with you on the fact that the speed is too high combined with the damage... a speed cap at 2, or perhaps 1.5 would make sense. Also we should notbe able to hit as accurately when running or up close, as it is now... Our damage should be higher cus of this though!

Also i very much agree on the smuggler feign death ability... its should only work against NPC's and creatures, pure and simple.... just like jedi mind trick does.

I dont agree with u on the jedi lightsaber block being too high though... i think its just perfect. If u look in the movies jedi almost always block every single laser bolt fired at them!... any master ranged profession should ofcourse have some chance of hitting, but not much.

And i totally agree with you on the CH change... agreed

Once again, great post

Attis Alrissian, Elder Jedi - Eclipse