Rifleman Archive

I originally posted this as a reply on the main board, but since the thread dropped off the face of the earth faster than you can say "**edit**" I'm posting it here. Anyway, like many of you, have concluded the laser rifle is superior to the post patch t21. With mind shot 3 in a pve situation my max damage is about 3000, I'm firing at what seems to be under every 2 seconds. My min damage is 60, my mind cost is 156. Excluding shots that I miss, 75% of the time, while fighting the same mob I can do 3k damage to, I will deal 1,000-1,600 damage per shot. The remaining 25% seems to be equally divided between shots that are above and below that average. With the 75% damage reduction in pvp, my damage range is 15-750, and my average damage would be 250-400. In pvp, I seem to be landing every 5 out of 6 shots, and my average apponent now seems to have about 700 mind. To one-shot this average apponent, I would need to do a shot that would have delt 2800 mind damage in a pve situation. Leaving me with a shot that would have dealt 2800-3000 mind damage in pve to work with. 2800-3000 covers 14.3% of the above average damage range, which occurs 12.5% of the time. So to calculate the percentage of 1 shot 1 kill I multiply my % of above average damage by the percent of that field that will do the job and then multiply that by my hit percentage. 0.125*0.143*0.833=1.48% That's not too great, but that's not my real problem.

In order to break even in pvp I need to deal atleast 156 mind damage to my opponent. That would be a shot dealing 624 damage in pve. 60-624 is 60% of the lower end damage that I deal 12.5% of the time I hit. To find out how often I am dealing more damage to myself than to my opponent, I multiply 0.125*0.60=7.5% I then add the percentage of miss to the percentage perviously stated, 16.6% + 7.5% = 24.1% This is my problem. How can one justify a MASTER RIFLEMAN dealing more damage to himself than to his opponent nearly 1/4th of the time?! What's worse, we're dealing this damage to both of us in an area that we can not heal.

And now for my proposition. Because riflemen can not simply use a stim to heal away their special costs, it would seem fair to me, that we are guaranteed atleast a 3:1 damage delt:damage received ratio for our shots in a pvp situation. To accomplish this, a combination of raising our minimum damage and lowering our special cost is in order. This is because if you simply make us do 3X our mind cost, I would run around doing 468-750 mind damage per hit to an unarmored player. This would not be good. It would also be unwise to make my mind cost 1/3 of my min damage. If this was the case, head shot 3 would cost me 5 mind, and I could spam this attack for minutes on end dealing 15-750 damage per hit in pvp. This is even worse. While it would be up to the devs who will never read this to decide, I would recommend a mind cost of about 50 (i.e. cut our mind costs in third) putting us at a damage range of 150-750 (ie, multiplying our minimum damage by 10).

Again, the numbers presented here on damage are based on my experience as a master rifleman. You can argue how damage is calculated all day long, but that is irrelevant because it is the end result that matters, and it is the end results that I have stated. Does anyone think my request to be unreasonable?

This analysis is flawed.

Consider a hypothetical rifle which had the same HAM costs, speed, etc. of the laser rifle, except the damage range was 150-150, i.e. it always did 150 points of base damage. Obviously, using HS3, you're going to be doing more damage on your opponent than you do on yourself, unless you miss. Does this mean the hypothetical rifle is better than the laser rifle, which has a better average damage?

What you're missing is that while you might have a greater chance to do more damage to yourself than your opponent, you're -also- doing more damage (on average) when you hit. The expected damage from a laser rifle hit is greater than the hypothetical rifle. Since you aren't generally 'wasting' any shots (for example, if you had a 1% chance to hit but you did 100x damage, that wouldn't be as good since you're wasting most of your damage potential, despite doing the same average damage) as you do not often one-shot, I don't see the issue.

The other thing is, you can buff your focus and reduce your costs. You can only reduce the damage by wearing armor, and wearing armor while getting hit by an AR2 weapon right now is pretty stupid.

which part of my math did you not understand? Does it not seem unreasonable that a master of a profession hurts himself more than his opponent nearly a quarter of the time? My math is not flawed, my numbers are based on experience. 7.5% of the shots that I connect with hurt me more than him. I am a master rifleman. No other class I have seen has special costs so high and potential damage output so low that they risk hurting themselves more than their opponent. I have been 1 shot by pistoleers, carbineers, and rifleman, concluding that every basic type of weapon has a weapon capable of dealing 1 shot kills. Our ability to do a 1 shot kill is a fraction of a percent higher than theirs, while we suffer an additional 7.5% chance of dealing more damage to ourselves. In pvp, best case scenario, I do 21% of the damage to myself that I dealt to my opponent. Multiply the special costs of the other professions by 5, look me in the eye, and tell me you've never seen them deal more damage than that to youin a given shot.