Rifleman Archive

I'm a master rifleman, and moving up the pistoleer tree also on an experimental char (am 4 boxes into novice pistoleer).. I can tell you that early on pistol is easy, but without an AE there's no way to get quick exp when you move up a bit and mobs start to kill you with two hits... A rifleman can go straight for flushing shot 2, get a pet,get some very fast AE exp. So pistoleer is MUCH easier at the VERY low challenge levels because of the lack of a 2.5x damage penalty and (I'd consider CL 15 or < VERY low... if I had to equate it to EQ I'd equate it to a characterlevel25 or less) but then begins to get considerably tougher with no means ofAE exp, but single target exp is still very good since you can run and gun but the lack of pop and a decent armor piercing weapon sucks ass. Admittedly pistoleer is not as easy as I once thought,I'm sureit was a cinch when you could chain knockdown with pistol whip, but that's been nerfed and now they really have no useful specials at all.. maybe if I went for panic shot in the smuggler tree... but then that requires the extremely painful unarmed exp. I've begun to understand why the pistoleers whine so much.. master pistoleer is pretty much a totalwaste since much of the pistoleerspower (I'm not talking about the pistoleer/bh or smuggler power, just pistoleers by themselves) is already gainedthe moment you hitnovice pistoleer.

problem witth that is the fact pistol are capable of stacking with other profresions unlike rifleman.

heya guys..

i'm pretty much a die hard rifleman and there has been a lot of complaining on issues and facts that paint the weapon classes in a different light. So i decided to delete my carbinier character on chilastra and restart a new character to test out the different weapons and their effectiveness.

Here's a brief summary of what i've discovered.

Pistols:

Wow, what aweapon. After pistols 2 (scout blaster)i was soloing red con MoB's with 3k+ HAM with easy and no armor and now med skills. I even got jumped by a desert quilland solo'd it with warning shot, body shot and heart shot. Wow what a rush.

1. first it was pretty obvious that the game structure is well suited for faster reloads and good close range accuracy.


2. I had to completely fight the urge to run. When in melee range i took next to no damage from creatures that would have encapped me with 2 shots.


3. Running destroy missions was so much fun and very easy.


4. I was spooning out 400ish average damage with my shout using roling shot and body shot with my scout every 2 seconds. No lie I was looking at the combat window and saw 250, 400, 530, 430, 380, etc. Dang i kick ass!!

Wow again I felt like a god at marksman 0,4,2,3.

Carbines:

Well what to say about these. Not nearly as good as pistols but with a bit more damage and an ok reload i was able to get to carbine 4 pretty easy.

1. not bad. Missed a lot at melee range, missed a lot at 60m and only had 1 or 2 seconds at ideal range to make a shot before I'd have so many accuracy penalties i'd be missing 40% of the time.


2. HAM costs where a lot higher for the damage that was done. I had to get my medic skills and buy some stims on the bazaar to stay alive.


3. At melee i was taking a lot of damage but not that i had to start running but mixed with higher HAM it was a bad combination.


4. Jobs are a lot harder and i had to go back to pistol to do my L10 jobs for money.

I managed to get through carbines all right. Wasn't too bad and with a few tactics i was able to get to carbine 4 pretty quick.

Rifles:

**edit** what was i thinking the first time around.

1. Slow reload


2. Insane melee damage


3. high HAM

Anyway, with slow reload and bad melee damage I quickly gave up on the rifle and stopped after a day when i finish rifles 2. I was getting killed too often.

3 of my friends also tried new characters on chilastra (ex combat/pistolier, BH, Commando) and it seems that they all dropped rifle or carbine use in favor or pistol.

So for survivability and easy of use I'd rank pistols a 10, Carbines a 6 and rifles a 3.5 over our 2 day test with new characters.

I think a lot of people should take a long hard look at what works vs what the numbers / status lead us to believe.

And by all means PLEASE conduct your own experiment on this. I'd say to even out the combat classes it would be wise to improve reloads all around Pistols .5 sec, Carbine1.5 sec, rifle 2.5 seconds for a high quality base and distribute damage and accuracy better. I think every weapon should have a better melee defense or equalize them.

With a pistol i didn't even care if i missed 5 out of 5 shots as 60m as soon as the Mob rushed i was able to rip it up. If a desert demon marksmen attacked at range i'd just run up to it and pound it into paste. Poor thing.

anyway, please provide feedback. I might be a little skewed on the results but i'd like to hear maybe another perspective on this.I honestly feel the pistol class is amazing and ideally suited for the combat environment setup within SWG. while rifles and carbines suffer from melee exposure and poor melee accuracy with seems to be 90% of my struggle with them.