Rifleman Archive
Thread: Question on what skill to pick.
Hey guys. I just attained the necessary xp for advanced sniping accuracy (the very left collumn on rifleman). Right now my rifleman skill tree is a 1 0 0 0. Shoudl I go for advanced sniping (and get head shot 3), or go with something else...and why?
Also...what's so good about strafe shot? Everyone seems to like to use it...I have strafe shot 1, and it doesn't seem to do that great of a job.
HeadShot3 is nice... does more dmg than HeadShot2 but for higher HAM cost. Some people say that the HAM cost increase is too high relative to the damage increase and don't use HS3, but I'd rather waste the HAM and get my foe dead in two shots, than have to spend three or four shots of HS2 --- during which time I get blasted /mauled to piecesby my foe. With MaskScent and Take Cover you can get two, maybe, three shots before you're noticed (by creatures anyway --- humanoids seem to always head right for me as soon as my finger hovers over the attack key). With that in mind, I prefer to dish as much damage as I can, as quick as I can.
I would heartily recommend ConcealShot, however. It's the first skill box in the Concealment line and that is one -very- useful ability. You can basically kill ANY solo thing, given enough time and luck without taking a single hit or moving an inch. Well, you may have to move some to keep in range of a wandering target. But you wont' be attacked until you MISS two Concealshots. You can miss ONE and usually be okay... but that second miss will usually mean it's time to run.... conceal shot has a long timer, so when you miss, you won't have time to /warning shot before you're in melee range, so just get up and MOVE.
Also note that at present conceal shot only works against SINGLE foes, or non-social foes. If you fire a conceal shot into a bunch of Song Rasps, for example, the one you shot probably won't attack you but every other little flying bastid will charge you.
Flushing shot isn't that great in my experience, but flushing shot 2 is awesome.
To get to 2 you need 1.
I don't have conceal shot, working on it now. From what I hear though it does very little damage. I understand you can solo most anything with it in theory, but if it's so little damage why do I want to take 10 minutes or more to take down my target?
Can someone answer this for me?
Never heard anyone say strafing shot was good. Strafing shot 2 is what everyone loves.
StrafeShot2 is the great attack we get at master, it does 5x damage where as our best attacks before that do x4 damage. It is alsoan Area Effect attack, meaning it can hit more than one person at a time. If you hit a group of 5 people with it a few times they will all die.
Strafe Shot1: Damage x2.0,I never use it, no AE either.
The main advantage to conceal shot is that you have almost NO risk of getting attacked. If I fired MindShots and HeadShots, I doubt I could kill a Bull Tortor before he started stomping me into the dirt. With Conceal Shot, though, I can take him out in, oh, four to seven shots depending on damage. With a 411 max dmg T21, I sometimes hit for 600 - 800 or so in the combat spam window (increased because of Armor Piercing) but I've also gotten 1500pt -combat window- hits to random pools. After the Armor Piercing mod, that's a LOT of damage. I've taken out regular Tortons in two ConcealShots, and Bull Tortons in four (three if I'm exceedingly lucky with multiple 1400pt hits)....
I only have 4 - 1 - 0 - 1 right now, so I can't really comment on the others.
Bull torturs are easy with stacking your mind bleeds then doing headshot2/suppressionfire. I can usually take them out in 6-8 headshots with an E11.