Rifleman Archive

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dalessit wrote:

Well I am finally moving up the ranks and just about to Master Rifleman, also have Master Marksman.

I am currently CL 51 just need a bit of combat xp for 4th boxand Master box to finish.

I was out hunting last night with a CL80 jedi (not sure what kind), a lvl 80 MBH/MC, a lvl 80 CH with Rancor and some other big pet, and a few 20's of various classes.

I was using a Jawa Ion rifle, with a max damage 800-900 somewhere in there.

We were fighting lvl 82 mobs on Rori.

Every fight, I would pull aggro from the rest of the group and have to root and run. DPS wise I am sure the lvl 80's were out DPSing me, but I was hitting for the most damage at one time. I even tried waiting to hit the mob until it was at half health and that didn't seem to work.

The only way I was able to stay alive was to stay under cover and fire conceal shot, or only use my lower level specials that did less damage.

Is this the way it is going to be for the rest of my life in SWG? In other games where I play a high damage dealer I go out with a tank and a healer. I wait for the tank to gain aggro, healer heals tank, and I pummel the mob. If I have a good tank I never get touched.

How do you handle this aggro in SWG?

Thanks again for helping a noob.

Omaplata

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Run.... Kiting is how most rifleman currently handle all the aggro, we are one of the most damaging professions so we always generate enough hate to pull aggro onto us. If you have a rifleman in the group the tank is more or less useless as they won't actually be able to tank anything since the rifleman will always pull aggro.

you can do two things:

A: you become the tank and the healers heal you!

B: disable auto attack and only shot once. You still get full xp and can still level. I know it sucks and you're not helping the group but you gt yours

I'm a MRM/MC/MM/Pistols 3440. I am the group target designator. I choose a target and pull it...everyone else pummels/blasts it. Most high end mobs die quick 5-7 secs and I take little damage. Teamwork helps with this. Aggro is screwy (not busted). Just try different stuff. I never kite esp if there are jedi in the group. thier heals (pre p19) can keep me around.

They really have to put a modifier for agro that reduces agro with range....

Another way to handle this is to wait until the mob has firmly aggroed the tank and roughly 1/4 it's health is gone, then you should be safe to unload on him. this kind of sucks because your missing out on helping with that first 1/4 damage, but it's really the only way to prevent "stealing" the aggro short of that you could simply use lower damaging shots and stop shooting for a second or two if you end up pulling aggro until the tank can catch up on you damagewise.

I find this to be very frustrating. Is this intended or some sort of side effect of the hate system? Battles in a group are a mix of the rifleman tanks shooting and kiting and the shorter range/melee players trying to catch up to the mobs chasing and running about the place wherever the rifleman runs. It only works well if the rifleman hold their ground. I'm not interested in work around unless this is intended and is not going to be fixed. I don't want to have to pick up the root abilities like everyone else, I don't want to be a doc/cm. If we're damage dealers make it so, if we're tanks make it so. Trying to do both does nothing but sending you on quick vacation to the nearest cloning center.

Another tactic (if this is an option) is get a group of either all rifleman, or several riflemen, and either:

a. All blast away at once (if you have enough rifleman spamming specials at the same time, whatever your shooting at goes down before it hurt anyone much)

b. Rotate fire. All agree on which special to use, and spread out an even distance from the target (prefrably on opposite sides of it) and alternate fire, the argo will switch back and forth, and if you're each on diffrent sides of it, it will run back and forth between you. Also works well if other riflemen are under cover slaming concel shot at it all the time while it's trying to figure out which of the two it can see it wants to bite.

... Not sure how well these tactis will work against NPC's, but they should be adaptible....

Riflemen have became the tanks of SWG.

Any mob will hate anyone doing 2200+ damage compared to the other 1500 damage dealers. Personally, that's why I got bounty hunter...duelist stance, defense, and added rifle speed. It's nice to be both the tank and the damage dealer in any group I got into.

Well as a MCM/MRiflemen I can honeslty say that I draw more agro then some fully templated Jedi i know lol. It usualy involves me hitting a target, drawing the agro, running towards the tank so he can hit the critter with a area attack then run away for another shot. Also if your in a good group that uses area attacks just go up xx2x Carbines get a crappy area attack and use that. I usually only hit animals for about 50 lol its so sad when I can do so much more but I draw 0 agro.