Rifleman Archive

Hello all!

Well, I finally made it to Novice Rifleman a few nights ago, and Im quite excited! I have been lurking on these boards, trying to gather what info I can so I don't ask TOO many redundant questions.

Here is basically what I'm doing: I play for the most part without armor. The HAM penalties (I have a suit of composite) seem a little crazy for the suppossed benefit, specially the helmet. Instead I wear camo and some big boots. You Masters out there all run without armor as well?

Weapons: I have only two rifles at the moment, my trusty, well-loved DLT20a which I had sliced for 25% damage, and a brand-spanking-new Laser Rifle. Laser Rifles are new to my server (I play on Starsider) so I am very excited! I had to wait in line (with over 16 people in line with me!) at Booth's Master Weaponshop in order to buy mine, but it was well worth the wait. I then tracked down a Master Slicer someone had recommended and got it sliced for 30% speed! Woot! I ended up with a 47-357 4.2 delay rifle, not so bad. Something I have noticed though, the HAM cost for my Laser Rifle is much more debilatating then my old DLT20a (which I could spam HS2 all day long with and not see my mindbar move much). Should I concentrate on getting a SprayStick next? I've read that they are essential for getting off quick special moves in the medium range of things. What are the stats on a semi-decent one?

Pets: Do us Snipers use em at all? I haven't played with any yet (no droids, no creatures, no faction soldiers... yet). I wanted to get your take on whether or not they were worth it. Role-playing wise, I was figuring I would be the solitary sniper who would slip behind enemy lines and take out the enemy from range. Having a small roving army with me seemed counter-intuitive... Yet, Ive read that creatures are THE way to go in PVP and so on. Comments? I will probably get a cool little kitten as a pet though, cause it seems like something I would have. Pad after me and nuzzle up to me when I have some down time from headshotting enemies. Purely for RPing. (Anyone on Starsider want to sell me one?)

Secondary Professions: Im torn in what to do with my secondary careers. I'm a part-time dancer at the moment, but that is mostly just for fun. When I have advanced a little further into the Rifleman line, I hope to pick up a secondary combat career to off-set some of the disadvantages we have as a profession. I have been toying around with the idea of Swordsman or Fencer, do the whole "Snipe em, then whack em" routine. Heard Swordsman can actually target the Mind Pool as well, is this true? Anyways, any good suggestions on what has worked for you as a secondary career to bolster Rifleman. I just need a few apprentice points to become a Master Marksman by the way, so Im definately going to do that.

Gaining Rifle XP: Has been slow for me. I have been busy grinding through the basic rebel missions, but they are almost a joke for me. The challenge is almost non-existant, outside of the occassional teleporting Imperial Cadet and so on (**edit** bug, er, feature). I live on Naboo, and have recently had a lot of luck with Kaduus and Peko-Pekos. I discovered the "Bleed-shot, SupressiveFire-SPAM" combo that seems to work fairly well. If it works, I dont take any damage (except for my poor, poor Mind bar). Any other good places to fight? Specific critters to kill? I can;t wait til I get the cool Dizzying shot we get to try our funky knock-down combo. That sounds really cool.

Stats: I havce evened out most of my stats now. All of the core stats are around 900 or so, and my secondary stats I boosted significantly. I dont remember exactly what they are, but in the 300 to 400s. I tried to get my Willpower up as far as I could with my remaining points, and got it to 450. What kinda stats do you guys run with? I understand that as High a WillPower as possible is suppossed to be a GOOD thing. How high is high? Oh, btw - I am a human female, started as a Marksman.

Ok, thats about it in my crazy list of things off the top oif my head. I am having a BLAST with this game so far! Much more than I thought I would. I have played em all (EQ, DAoC, AO, PS, etc) and SWG by far seems to have the most actual ROLE-PLAYING to offer than any of the others. I just hope they iron out the numerous bugs and add starships and vehicles SOON!

Look forward to reading you responses! Thanks in advance for any advice you may be able to give me!

Caylie Deathwalker
Rebel Master Sergeant
Novice Riflegirl

Looks like everyone was to busy arguing over how much BH's need fixed and why we suck to answer this post so I will field it with what I know (no offense to anyone I argue like the rest of you)

I, and everyone I have heard talking on the subject, go without armor as a rifleman. The penalties are high and if it gets to melee your dead anyways so its only helping you at a range.

DLT20a was a great gun, and I believe the rifleman correspondant still uses one. I wish I had kept mine, its HAM costs make mind shots and Headshots easy and affordable. Truly a blessed weapon because of that for longer fights. Laser rifle is a good weapon, although some people like the E11 over it, The e11 has a lower dps but is much more consistent, where as for ever shot the laser rifle gets at 2000 you'll get one at 98 A weapon to look at grabbing might be a cheap low damage but very fast spray stick, this is useful for spraying specials warning shot suppresion fire etc. etc. where the effect it will cause is more important then the damage and your life depends on getting it off fast. look around 2 second firing rate. As far as slicing goes either one will do, but Damage is definently preferable because then you get more damage per mind point spent, and since you can't heal mind that is very important, but my laser rifle cost me 13k and then 5k to get it sliced and it came out speed, so I kept it, I don't think its worth another 18k when I can't afford travel tickets

Creatures are pretty powerful for pvp and it won't hurt you to have them. I know many of us prefer going the solo lone gunmen sniper approach which is perfectly viable, but so is picking up some creature handler skills or getting faction pets, its up to you really.

If your going melee and you want to go up really high and sink a lot of points TKA artists get a mind attack at/near master (not sure which) if your not going to sink as many points 2h swordsman are ideal, they get a mind pool attack at their first skill box and they get their best weapon a box or two later (two handed curved sword, 2.6 speed 50-250 damage) Doctors also make another good side proffession because you can buff up your phsycial stats to compinsate for your need of very high mind stats (if you haven't maxed all three of your mind pools yet the laser rifle will soon demonstrate why you need to) Combat medic is also popular with the ability to ranged poison the mind pool just adds to our lethality. I went chef because I was hoping for good long lasting buffs that would help my character and my friends out. unfortunently chef is a little wacko right now so that ones on the back burner. Some people choose ranger as they hope to have a stealth line implemented in there to better complement their sniper role. Think I covered most of them there.

Well the tried and true approach, (also very boring but fairly safe) is either banthas on tatooine or snorbals on LOK Snorbals are the better of the two choices. The run at the same speed as you and don't BAF (Watch out for adult snorbal MALES they are the only ones that BAF so just don't shoot one of them. Well actually they make great hunting too, ms the first one, warning shot the others that aggro you then just kite the original one the other ones lose interest) the calves are very easy at novice giving 1.5k each and the adults are doable for 2.5-3.5k each. Once you get sniping accuracy and mindshot two (I reccomend this box first) you can do the adults easily with no problems. just get good bleeds with MS2 and MS1 then just run backwards while mindshotting two. (do be careful LOK is a hard planet with a lot of difficult AGRO mobs on it.) if you pick up a destroy mission for them (recommended to do until you get an idea of where they normaly are) you can net 11k for their nest and hours of good solid exp.

As far as stats, max all three of your mind pool stats, now if you have easy access to good buffs for Health and Action then keep them lower and boost their sub stats, however if you don't then just drop their sub stats to base and raise them up with whatever you have left over after cranking mind.

Best of luck to you and thank you for joining this excellent proffession, if you have more questions, just ask.

Thank you so much for your awesome reply Rcuhljr !

Theres a lot of good stuff here, and Im sure Ill have to read through the response more than once to get the most of it. Sounds like I will be moving my hunting to Tatooine pretty soon to track down some larger prey... Or maybe Lok if Im feeling adventerous!

Ill also look into picking up a decently fast SprayStick as well... Guess Ill hang my armor up as a display in house for now... maybe bust it out later if I go into the melee line of things for a while (still not sure what to do with the side professions, but Rifleman will keep me plenty busy for a while I think).

Thanks again for making me feel welcome into the profession, you can feel free to go back to arguing about how unfair it is BH get our special abilities better than us now!

Caylie Deathwalker
Rebel Master Sergeant
Novice Riflegirl

Currently, the best class to pair with master rifle is master marksman. This effectively doubles your rate of fire with special moves (your regular shots will most likely be capped with just master rifle, unless you happen to have a rifle with greater than 10s delay).

I am master marksman and am also working on rifleman. I am a couple of boxes ahead of you. Rcuhljr summed it up pretty good - sounds like we do very similar things. Let me try and sum it up a little more compactly and ADD some things:

-- Get Novice Medic if you dont have it and carry some Stimpack B's to heal yourself
-- Get theMindShot2 skill as soon as possible (left tree I think... I'm at work)
-- Get a Spraystick like R recommended... 2second fire rate... damage is secondary
-- Get Master Marksman if possible (rifle speed advantages + Suppression fire!)

I hunt almost exclusively on Tatooine, so the following are my biased preferences:
Find good spawning spots of the following (my favorites, IN ORDER)
-- Mountain Squill (3300+ XP each)
-- Greater Mountain Womp Rats (1800-2000+ XP each) but they have ranged attack
-- Banthas (range in value) ...slow animals, see R's note

Method: (You may not have all these shots yet):
-- Equip your highest damage rifle (Laser or T21 usually)
-- Go prone at 65m and crawl to 60m
-- Mindshot2 (if you have it) ...then Mindshot1 (you probably know by now they"stack")
If you dont have Mindshot2 yet, then fire Mindshot1 twice to double your chances of getting a high bleed
-- Switch to Spraystick (for speed)and stand up
-- By this time, target normally has spotted you (or is about to)
-- Suppression fire ... makes the target stop in their tracks... may want to fire it twice
-- Save your mind by only firing Suppression fire every 5 or 6 seconds... watch the targets to learn timing.
-- You can let your Spraystick keep shooting between suppression fires, or you can even hit peace to keep from using your mind fast.

Notes:
-- Now sometimes the target manages to get to you anyway. If there is a good possibility of incap, run TOWARD the target. Because if he incaps you and runs out of range and then dies, you dont get any XP. Running toward him will more likely keep you in "his area".
-- Incap is not all bad on the high XP mobs... You dont use up any stats (read: Mind) if you are lying on your back while he bleeds to death a little ways away.
-- If you didn't get a good bleed with your mindshot(s) you can fire them again between suppression shots with the following action sequence:
suppression + switch to Laser + clear combat window + MS + switch back to Spray + suppression

Here is a really handy macro that i learned about last night: (Need a Stimpack in your main inventory):

/clear; /peace; /healdamage self; ...then follow it up with suppression fire again (or whatever)

Some very good ideas so far. I will not repeat them, and use most myself.

For weapons, also look fora GOOD Jawa Ion Rifle. They do stun damage, and have an AR 1. It is a very good secondary weapon, and I usually use it instead of a spratstik in many combats. Also look for good powerups. I buy good ones by the crate and use them alot. The best can give a -16 to -32 to the mind cost or speedor a + to damg .

As secondary skills, I recommend creature handler for the solo help. You do not need alot, just enough to have a tank that can keep you out of melee. The hunting prereq skills are not that useful, but harvesting meat and hide does generate some cash. The Terrain negotiation is also very useful. I may or may not keep the profession once I reach master rifle. To use a pet effectively, use the methods above, but once the MS shots are home, try to hit the target with suppression fire within 50 meters. Send the pet in as soon as the target reaches this distance. Let the pet tank, the bleed will kill the target (add a HS or 2 if needed) and you can fire normal shots and save mind. If you go this way you will diffeinatly need medic skills to keep the pet healed.

Armor is useful, but only in certain cases. Against any melee it does not help. Against ranged attacks it can make a tremendious difference. (except the helmet, the disadvantages are too great)

Food and spice can bee your friend. K-18 rations boost willpower and focus, and are great for reducing down time. Moun Gold makes you a god for 10 minutes and then helpless for 5. Use it if you have the right targets. You can spam HS3 and not lose mind for 10 min.

Targets: I have done snorbals, but to me the down time and time to kill offset the additional Exp. I normally hunt deep in the dune sea on Tat, and prefer bantha and ronto. They are worth 1-2K each (depends on your skill levels) and can be killed fairly quickly and are usually common.You have to be careful with matriarchs and bull rontos, (they come as a baf if you dont take them first).

The standard fast-xping method for any ranged class is to multikite using bleeds and some form of CC (usually warning shot, more recently, also suppression shot). Bleeds aren't affected by armor or resists, so there's no real reason to look for a high AR or special damage type. The reason snorbals are so good is because you can use a DLT20a and bleed them for the full amount, and they have enough health that you will get the full use out of your bleed. They're also slow enough that they cannot catch upto you, and the female snorbals do not BAF. Note you can apply the strategy to BAFing mobs, but it's a bit more tricky as you will have to throw out the warning shots before the bleeds on most of the mobs. The technique for snorbals is, then, to bleed-stack one, warning shot it, then bleed-stack a second, warning shot it, etc. until you have however many you think you can juggle at one time (practically speaking, this is usually around 4, although I have juggled over 10 at a time before). You then stop firing (except to fire warning shots as required) and let the bleeds do their job, reapplying bleed whenever necessary. You want to make sure you do get a non-bleed hit in with whatever weapon you're skilling so you receive credit for the kill (for me, typically, this was a few HS2 shots since I was killing them through mind pool anyway). Other mobs can work with this strategy, but snorbals are one of the best targets for the reasons outlined above.

near what place or town on tatt has the banthas. i have looked all over and couldnt find any. (found boat loads of everything elese tho)

Banthas are not near the towns, except for Wayfar. They are most common in the wastelands, and the dune sea.

Banthas also show up around mos taike