Rifleman Archive
Thread: Master Sharpshooter: Queries, suggestions, and complaints.
To the dev team: Upon Obtaining master rifleman the speed bonuses seem to accumulate pretty significantly. Where as my normal attack rate was pretty much where I expected it to be (at 65 bonus, to gaining master special attacks and master..gaining 30..to boost it to 95) the bonus was nearly a 50% bonus numerically, and it seemed to reflect this is my standard attacks, satisfactory. What I found odd, was the significant improvement of my special attacks, any and all of them. Now, a master rifleman should be able to rip off special attacks, headshots, or startle shots quickly: My question is, was this special attack recycle rate intended? A lot of people find it 'overpowered' what people don't understand is that: faster special attacks don't mean more damage..they mean a faster drained mind pool. It is my assumption this speed bonus was intentional, simply because it really doesn't make the class any more powerful, insteadit makes you a bit more careful when and how you use your specials, as spamming out many of them at a time, will give you no time for regen, and simply destroy your HAM bars (mind mostly).
On to my suggestion: PVP. Please, I implore you, give all rifles more maximum range than all other weapons, or decrease all other weapons maximum range. I realize the 'Master Sharpshooter" has the power to drop a single target (player) in a single hit, so distance issues needed to be balanced out. But the fact that carbine knockdowns and such work at the same max range, simply makes them equally as deadly: 1 hit, duel over. If you don't want to alter weapon ranged, please make ranged defense, and or postures, and or 'Take Cover' worth a grain of salt. As it stands currently a sniper, a pistoleer, a carbineer...all just 'run and gun' on their feet, because the accuracy bonuses from professions EXCEEDINGLY outweigh the ranged defense bonuses, negating any chance for high ranged defense or dodges, or 'blocks' to factor in at all. It simply doesn't make any sense to me, that a professional sniper/rifle wielder is equaled in his accuracy, and maximum weapon range by basically an automatic weapon with knock down capabilities.
My Complaint: Not many really. I'm actually HAPPY with most of the Rifleman class as it stands now: provided nothing gets seriously decremented in power. It is my assumption that with the high Mind costs associated with using any decent rifle special attack, and the horribly painful melee damage penalty we suffer: That we are intended to rip out high amounts of damage, as we do now, and I am happy tosuffer the damage penalties, and lack of utility attacks like knockdowns for this damage dealing potential.The T21 needs an overhaul in it's armor piercing capability,surprise shot is broken, but you knew that. Please alter the descriptions of Strafe Shot 2, and Startle Shot 2, to reflect their "area of effect' properties: if these AoE properties were indeed intentional.
-Eightball CornerPocket: Lowca: Master Rifleman, Master Marksman, Master Creature Handler.
Wep mana/hp/action drain will be fixed next patch. So yes itll help, we still arent overpowered because remember we dont have any knockdowns/other attacks of that type.
I think the speed should work like this.
Hard speed cap of 1.0 (How it is now) - you can hit this using the speed modifiers you get
Hard Special Speed cap of 1/2 weapons base speed.. A minimum of 1.0... Making it 3.0 for a 6.0 weapon.. 1.0 for a 2.0 or under.. ya know?
I think that'd balance it out. Then 6 speed weapons won't be choice cause of the delay. Every gun IRL has a reload timer.. IE with the old bolt actions.. sure the best sniper could pop off head shots.. but he's also doing hte bolt between EVERY shot.. Specials should go down faster, as should firing, as you get better..but NOT to a rediculous amount
You're right about rifles not doing that much damage yet even with the speed thing, but dont think for a second its intended, or a good idea.. Carbines are currently probably the profession benefitting from it the most, due to being able to get nice speed mods from both the carbineer and bounty hunter trees.
Basically how the whole thing works. From somewhere around +50 to +70 speed mod you being a VERY dramatic speed increase, not sure if it happens instantly or over 20-40 speed or so, but the difference between +50 and +90speed mods for carbines for example, is SEVEN times faster fire rate. This one was tested with cripple shot, shooting at 7 second delay or so at first, then comparing to the higher speed mod, down to 1.0. The increase might be actually bigger, but all fire rates seem hard capped at 1.0. That's also the reason pistols arent benefitting from this as much as carbines, because the pistols generally are very high speed already, so they cant gain that much more.
Rifles I'd imagine can get to just about to the point where the speed increase starts happening, so you're not seeing the full effect of it.
And now to how it looks like in practice. I've posted this on the bounty hunter forums already, but I think they're perfectly happy with it over there.
The following log is a fight from start to end vs a red con to me, challenge level 42 mob on Dantooine. These things have 10% energy resistance, AR1 and HAMs ranging from about 10000 to somewhere around 11500 (this particular one had a bit over 11k health which is the pool that actually killed it). I'm sure the results vary with different creatures alot, I chose this type because it was the first appropriate level mob with decently low energy resistances that walked in front of me where I was. I did it on several, but the logs all look pretty much the same on them. So..
[Combat] 19:38:13 You kneel.
[Combat] 19:38:14 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 747 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:15 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 1208 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:16 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 970 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:17 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 352 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:18 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 785 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:19 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 718 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:20 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 212 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:21 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 928 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:22 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 161 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:23 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 239 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:24 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 356 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:25 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 747 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:26 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 1373 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:27 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 1200 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:28 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 745 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:29 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 969 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:30 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 221 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:31 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 439 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:32 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 227 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:33 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 1235 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:34 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 438 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:35 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 902 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:36 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 491 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:37 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 443 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:38 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 395 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:38 You receive 4606 points of Carbine Weapons experience.
[Combat] 19:38:38 You receive 460 points of Combat experience.
[Combat] 19:38:39 You use Underhand Shot on a fierce piket protector for 1243 points of damage!
[Combat] 19:38:43 You sit down.
And a note: This is NOT my highest damage attack, but it's one that knocks the target down as well, andthe post on the BH forumswas meant asanti-knockdown propaganda,so thought this fight would display why I dont think its agood skill pretty well
No thinking or actual work required, no risk involved.
The higher damage one hits for about 600 more max or something, average damage scaling up along with it. The ham costs become an issue with this like said (12k HAM is approximately the point that I can do with a random pool attack just spamming it before I run out of ham, but even after that I can do a few thousand more hitpoints to the mob with other attacks), but it's not quite enough to keep from doing crazy amounts of damage in short periods of time. And besides, if they ham costs aregoing to get fixed like the rumors are at least among the carbineers.. This'll be even worse.
If someone still thinks the damage per second (Around 1000dps currently with the highest damage special) is ok, the other thing this is totally destroying is the meaning of weapon speed. With pistols and carbines both when they get that high enough speed mod, the speed on the weapon becomes totally irrelevant. So there's no point choosing the 2.0 speed 100 damage weapon over the 5.0 speed 150 damage weapon, which I think is pretty screwed up. I've personally tested this with weapons up to 4.7 speed, hard to find anything higher, but if a 4.7 speed shoots their highest delay specials the same speed as a 1.8 shoots regular autoattack fire, there's something wrong.