Rifleman Archive

Can anyone describe the effect of surprise shot for me?

Its broken.

what about conceal shot ?

Conceal shot works really good. Mostly hits health, as lnog as you dont miss, the mob will never react. I kill Rebel NPCs doing this to get me easy FPs.

im rifleman 2/2/2/2 and cant decide which box to take next.

Issurprise shot worth a **edit**? or should i get sneak and ranged def. I like to solo and snipe with conceal shot.

Counter-Sniping III has Flushing 2 which is your first AoE attack. It's VERY nice when properly controlled. Or you can get Sniping III if you want to be more accurate. Concealment III has RangedMitigation II, but I dunno how that is since I got Master before all the 'mitigation stuff'. Best bet is probably CS III.

Oh yeah. Surprise shot is junk. Some say it's better than ConcealShot when used from Cover, but I always found ConcealShot to be faster, more powerful and more accurate.

Surpriseshot has a higher damage multiplier than Concealshot, but it does not prevent the target from aggroing on you the way that Concealshot prevents it. If you use Concealshot, as long as you do not miss twice or you are not detected by some other means (e.g., the target wanders too close to you, etc), the target will not respond to your shots. Surpriseshot does not do this. If you start shooting with Surpriseshot, you will get several shots off, but the target will eventually aggro on you if you do not kill it first. But this undetected period has nothing to do with Surpriseshot. If you are undetected and prone, you can fire any shot two or three times before the target will aggro on you. Heck, at Master, you can fire off 4 or 5 Headshot2s and kill a target with out it ever aggroing on you. It has to do with the detection and autoresponse rules. If I am prone, it takes longer to detect me than if I am standing, so I have a little bit of time to get off a few shots before the target responds. Surpriseshot follows these same rules.

Surpriseshot is supposed to work only from cover. The idea, I believe, is that you get to shoot a high damage shot (3.0x damage multiplier vs. 2.5x for Concealshot) from cover without breaking cover. So you get high damage and better defenses. Unfortunatly, the interaction with cover does not work right.

There have been many posts saying that Surpriseshot works when in cover or when out of cover even though the description says it "must" be used from cover. Cover is supposed to add defensive bonuses, but most people report that it is not significant, and I agree. So in all, Surpriseshot trades undetectable shooting for a little more damage (otherwise, they are identical in HAM costs and time delay).

I believe you will find that virtually no one uses it.

Thanks for all the info guys!

Could someone please give me an explanation as to what surprise shot is supposed to do in cover? It seems to me you can use it out of cover and I have noticed nothing special. I did notice though that the alertness skill mod mentions defense verses this attack. Any information will help.

Thanks

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BadDawGe wrote:
Could someone please give me an explanation as to what surprise shot is supposed to do in cover? It seems to me you can use it out of cover and I have noticed nothing special. I did notice though that the alertness skill mod mentions defense verses this attack. Any information will help.

Thanks

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It's a broken skill. What it is suppose to do is unknown. We haven't gotten an answer from the Devs on this.