Rifleman Archive

Riflemen is just like the sorcerer in D&D, or the combat mage class in any other rpg type game.

Every new riflemen complains how weak the class is, and they are right. It's very weak, at first, just like magic-users. Unimpressive offense, pathetic defense. The first few boxes are a struggle, but just like the magic-user, real power comes at the top.

Flushing shot 2, the riflemens first high damage area of effect shot. This shot is the equivelant of all your blizzard, firestorm, icestorm, earthquake, etc.. type spells in D&D style rpgs. With a T21, a riflemen can now lay down 1-3k damage hits onto several targets at once. Thet just went from a single 1-3k dmg hit to several simultaneously.

Speed, by the time a riflemen reaches master special abilities, a flushing shot 2 can be fired about once every 3 seconds. When the riflemen hits master the shots are only about 2 seconds apart.

Strafe shot 2, just like flushing shot 2 but even more damage.

Flurry, dizzy target, combining with supression fire or startle shot gives the riflemen knockdown.

Riflemen, like mages, are the damage dealers.

I think most just don't realise this, and now we have a bunch of people playing riflemen that normally stay away from the mage type classes. I've never played anything but mages, so the riflemen struggle was normal.

This is absolutely correct. The big question in my mind, however, if this is intended.

you know. i never thought about rifle guys as being like that before, but now that you mention it. yeah, it does make sense.

i usually almost ALWAYS play a mage when i play rpg's anyways.=)

no wonder the fight seemed so normal =)

Agreed HawaiianToast, the difference here is I can pick up other skills to offset some of my weaknesses. Seeing as I always play mages in other MMOGs, I'm happy with the way master rifleman has turned out.

Yeah I think so. The game has the melee classes for tanks, just like the fighter classes in other rpgs. The ranged classes are fire support in the back, like mages and archers. Riflemen is higher attack and lower defense, pistoleer is the opposite and carbineer in the middle. Each is still about damage over defense, just to varying degrees. No ranged class can stand toe to toe as long as a melee guy.

We just have a buggy game here. The T21 makes a huge difference, and a lot of servers just don't have them yet. Laser rifles are for bounty hunters or commandos that need a rifle. A lot of stuff is still broken in the riflemen tree, and since lot of people don't know it they end up wasting their time climbing up a worthless branches. Armor for the melee guys is not strong enough and take away too much ham.

That's the real question: is this intended.

I don't think it is.

You can't have one class be superpowerful at the high end and then try to balance it by making them suck early on. In the end, you're going to end up with the game consisting of 90% riflemen and 10% newbies that didn't know that have to be riflemen. Anyone who isn't the most powerful class will eventually quit or switch.

I'd rather see them balance us to be more comparable to the other classes at all levels rather than be a class that can only level at a decent rate by soloing Snorbals and is rewarded by being almost as good as a BH in PvP...

Balance doesn't come from being hard early on. I was merely using that in support of my comparison to sorcerer type classes in other games. Difficulty early on is just inherit to that class type.

The balance is riflemen generally don't wear any armor, because as much mind stats are needed as possible, and they get a 2.5x melee damage multiplier. Riflemen are very vulnerable to organized attack. More so than brawlers at least. Marksmen, like mages, stay in the back. Every 2 sided battle in SWG and D&D is a sandwich, mages/marksmen are the bread and brawlers are the meat.

I'm not saying balance has been achieved in this game already, it clearly hasn't. What I'm saying is the guys who did SWG came from EQ, and I know when they first started putting this game to paper they used EQ as a guide. Why wouldn't they? Re-inventing the wheel is wasting money. D&D style classes are proven stuff. Clerics -> Medics, Warriors -> Brawlers, Mages -> Marksmen and Thiefs -> Scouts. It just makes sense that they would do it like that, EQ makes them a lot of money, it works.

Utimately my point is people that usually play warriors and barbarians are picking marksman in this game, and end up being surprised when they can't go toe-to-toe with everything like they used to. Because of this, everyone picks marksman, and no one picks brawler. SOE needs to figure out what to do to get way more people to pick brawler classes.

I had swordsman skills till I hit master rifleman. I had to heavily migrate towards mind leaving my action pretty weak. After that melee plainly doest really work now so i skilled out of all brawling. if you go high rifle and brawling, you always have a compromise.

Yeah, that's like multi-classing mage/warrior. You just end up as a mediocre mage, and mediocre warrior. It's a versatile combination, but doesn't take advantage of the fact that this is a massively multi-player game. You specialize and then group with others to cover the rest.