Scout Archive

First of all kudos to this forums correspondent. Did some reading nice work. Plus its nice to see people proud of haveing scout.

I mastered scout within the first month of the game comeing out, and hardly gave it much thought since then. I am a master bh, and when we got our point fix. I just had to level up in another skill. Since I was getting like nothing from the master scout at all anyway. With free call I never had use for camps anymore, and since nobody footed or group expeditioned anymore. It seemed like a waste, and I never really used traps for anything other then a few giggles every now and then. So I chucked it. I still have the exploreing and harvesting lines though since I decided to dabble in both medic and ch.

Anyway my question is this what do you guys think of some of these things.

Do you think scout only loots such as special glands tissues and so on will give a needed interest in this profession?

Do you think in the weapons revamp whether the scout will actually get some decent weapons certs to go into it?

Do you think camps will get better to heal bonuses added on. Actual bf healing in camps. Actual state healing like disease and poison.

Do you think that the scouts will ever get the multiple harvest that was supposed to be a real perk for higher harvesting.

Do you think the maskscent will actually be made stronger. Right now alot of high level mobs can snap it with increadible ease. I had prowling gurreks snapping my maskscent the other day at thirty meters.

Rumored armor cert. Do you think scouts will get a armor cert.

Do you think that the forage foods will be fixed back to being competitive or atleast useful again?

Like I said at the top master for long time, and though it pained me I had to drop the title. So I could be more competitive in the game. Would gladly take up more scout skills or master it again. If there were some serious bonuses to be had. Just asking for your guys take on this.

Nobody nobody at all? These are like the most pertinent quesitons about the scout profession what impact will the combat balance have. Nobody has a single oppinion or thought on this.

Paks
Master Ranger/Master Creature Handler
-I support ATK play

I agree with Paks. I think the Scouting line enables people to see the game from a different viewpoint. I'm curious to see how the professions are handled once the devs are done with the Combat Upgrade. I imagine it will change how a lot of classes work and thus require some serious tuning. I'm patient and look forward to see how the Scout role evolves and develops from there.

-Kiros
Master Ranger / Rifleman
Starsider

I have a Ranger char on Lowca I've neglected, which should give me some weight in this post.

I too had mastered scout to gain Bounty Hunter all those long months ago, and I did enjoy it. Strangely...lol

I agree that most of scout is useless, now that grouping has been crapped on and combat skewed to god-mode and all.

But, the foundation is there to really expand on Scouting as an overall profession. Traps, resource harvesting, and camping have plenty of room to grow, among other aspects. I'd love to see increased trap effectiveness (maybe more damage dealing action...), increased resource gains, and more bonuses and effects of camps (like my JTL inspired idea of allowing ships to land and take off from camps...hmmm good huh?)

One day scout will get its fifteen minutes of fame...one day...

In no particular order -

Weapons certs - nope, starter profession. You can use any combat class with scout, so weapons certs would be silly. Face it, by itself, MS is not much good, you need to have a combat class.

Multiple Harvest - maybe, but... this is more a Master Ranger issue, not Scout. Again, it's a basic profession, the perks should be limited.

Special loot - Hope so, will push for this. Give scouts (the only people harvesting) a reason to stay scout. And give this perk to Masters so as to make master something to go for.

Healingin camps - Nope, it works as intended. Get novice medic if you want to heal faster. BF maybe, but that will be in the most advanced (read Ranger) camps.

Maskscent works ok, most of the time - except on kreetles and rasps. If you are getting nailed at 30 meters, stay at 35. Course, I do play Tag with rancors and not have mine broken. COnsider bio clothing.

Armor certification - who wears armor? The NDA is stopping me from saying more. Master Rangers can wear Mando. Big deal.

Forage - the major thorn in our side. We can only hope it will be fixed. Bait is the most useful stuff we get, that's sorry as I don't fish and don't have pets.

Now - why drop Scout to be more competitive? Unless you are a PvP moron, then I can understand. However, as a Master Scout/Master Ranger, I am making monkey hand over paw. Prices are rising as everyone (me included) is in space. I do find time to get some hides and put them away, and laff as the prices get higher and higher. Master Scout/master Ranger/Master (combat profession) and Novice medic is working just fine for me. No armor, rarely buff, 14million in the bank, house, guild, neat stuff, loot out the kazoo, 64 crystals.... competitive? Scout is the easiest, faster and most rewarding way to make fast monkey in the game. Rarely do I see poor Scouts... poor BHs are the norm.

JB

Well I am a master bh, and down right refuse to give up a profession I spent six months mastering. Talking the real old days. Also If I were into serious creditude I would simply run solo groups, and with vehicles I can run 6k faction missions out of anchorhead in around six or seven minutes. On the other hand I am not into money grubbing. If I were I would just use my alt mws/ms to make oddles of cash selling weapons on the spot in coronet. Made 4 million credits in two and a half hours doing this.

Multiple harvest was a real ability that scouts were supposed to get with higher harvests. Sadly it never worked would love the devs to actually to try and fix it one more time. Not at all against them removeing the multiple person harvests either.

I dislike the thought of dumping specialized loots to master scout. Why because that is damn near punitive. Make it a higher skill, but not a mandatory master skill. Quite simply alot of people will decide not to because that is a real loss of skillpoints. No reason to force people to master camps and trapping. Both utterly worthless skills total waste fodder. This was a big bh issue.

Last time I checked the multiperson camps did provide a very modest BF heal. Talking 2 points over fourty minutes in a camp. Might have been a bug from wayback then. I see no redeeming reason why bf cannot be healed in the camps. Even if its at a modest level. The cantinas are utter lag centers. Plus all the dancers are afk anyway. So who exactly would be shafted by this? Hardly anyone has master scout or ranger. Just looking for any meaningful bonus at this point since droids can be called out anywhere now.

Maskscent is broken atleast to some creatures. When I get a constant aggro at thirty meters there is something wrong. I need to get atleast this close to just see if some mobs have a baby. I should be able to get close enough to just look. I will not go into the fact that some spawns automatically break maskscent.

Why are people adverse to giveing the scouts even one weapon cert. This is a borderline combat profession I will give you that, but its skills are primarily angled towards combat. Terrain negotiation, trapping, harvesting, maskcent. All are combat skills. So why not a single weapon cert. Not asking for an awesome weapon just a useful one. Marksman and brawler have dozens of weapon certs between them. Since the traps do not work on people its kind of logical that the scout gets one weapon that can work on people. Yes I am also for giveing the ranger a weapon cert too.

I chose to drop master scout, because it does not aid in my ability to attack higher level creatures. or participate in pvp. If I can use those extra skillpoints to increase my tanking or damage output somewhere else yes I will use it. Until a multiperson camp can save me from a woolamander or a arachne webmaster I will view it as wasted skillpoints.

I dropped the trapping and camping, and was able to do three rows in ch and have novice medic. Needless to say the ch is no good in pvp, but I like being able to attack some serious mobs sans buffs. I also like to pvp, but havent got into any serious pvp in a while since my template is not a melee stacker, or has the ability to poison/disease the hell out of people. I am pretty much screwed unless I get lucky and get a sprayshot to stick on a stacker, or I get two or three clean llc blasts on the poisoner.

Oh yeah some people actually wanted to participate in the GCW when they started this game. I have roughly 300 pvp kills under my belt. If it were not for the broken combat probabally would have more. From what I gathered of your post your only reason for playing is to grind money, and kill critters over and over. Thats not how I play the game. I play it for this thing called fun, and I like being able to do alot of cool things. Like base defenses pvp group hunts.

I also do not ascribe to the notion. That the bottom six professions should just be wasted space. They should have useful skills and certs throughout. So that people might dabble in them. That is the problem with scout its so utterly devoid of value that nobody dabbles in it and if they do. They never go up in it, because the only truely useful skill at the moment is harvests, and you get all of that in the novice. Please if you are really a sandboxer. Do not limit yourself to the frame of mind that scout should just be filler for rangers.ch. and bh.

Try and focus on makeing the whole of the profession meritful. The player that eats up half the box. Should get more bonus then the novice and less then the master. Do not place all the value in master or ranger. Your job should be to make the scout profession have value throughout, and ample reasons for people to even just dabble in it. Look for reasons for people to want, and or need camps. Look for reasons for people to want/need traps. Look for new fresh bonuses for a profession whos original bonuses were stolen, by free call, and vehicles.

Ok, you have one line in scouting, the one that BH requires. You had master scout only because you had to, and when they dropped the BH requirement, you dropped the MS like a hot spud so you could go PvP. Ok, cool. But to me, your attempt to get freebies through your one line of scout, that you had to keep, is just plain greedy.

The multiple harvest you speak of - means mutiple people can harvest from one animal, not one person harvesting multiple resources. And they can, and do, with a 40% reduction in harvest amounts.

Of course the best bennies need to go to Masters. Why else would anyone master? You want bennies you can get with the one line you have. You are correct, the camping and trap lines are worthless to BHs. And BHs whined and got the lines removed. So you got what you wanted, and now you want more?

Camps do not heal BF. Go check again. This is an issue we have brought up to the devs. Maybe you found a bug, cool. But camps alone do not heal BF. MInd wounds yes, BF no. If camps do heal BF, it will only be because an entertainer is there to dance/play music. And even then, the Dev's are loath to do that, as cantinas will be empty, hindering noobs getting their BF healed.

Maskscent. What is your modifier? Pretty low huh. That's why the big bads aggro you. Sorry you are not a Master, it gets better. With Ranger it gets lots better. Oh well. Maskscent is not some magic elixer, it's a combination of skill and luck. It breaks a lot, even for me, with over 125 in maskscent mods. Deal with it. Do all your shots hit the target, regardless of your modifiers?

What weapon will you have scouts get? Opps, why not that one, I don't use what you mentioned. Hell, some scouts don't use weapons at all (TK). Have you seen the folly of a weapon cert yet? If they do give a weapon cert, we have mentioned bows, for Masters/Novice Rangers. Oops, got left out again. Scouts can already use and all weapons, just go train in it. Again, I feel you are asking for a freebie. Like duh, you got more weapons than the average grunt squad at BH, and more specials than K-Mart, and you want more? Harvesting is not a combat skill. It's what you do after combat. And all scout skills, save TN, translate poorly into PvE. Combat support is what we are purported to be.

I have done the GCW. Yeah, the one where everyone is buffed and on spice and food and wearing armor. And unbuffed and unarmored have killed 3 BHs too freaking stupid to figure out how to use tactics. I quit doing PvP when I realized it was the buffs and armor, not the skills, that make people good. After the revamp, maybe I will do it again. The only scout skill I will be using is TN, to leave people in my wake as I shoot and scoot.

Ok, your arguments were in some cases wrong, and in most cases nothing more than wishful thinking. Sorry, rough crowd. Next time, do your homework. Or even better, drop BH and come back and fight really tough creatures unbuffed and unarmored, like I do. On a daily basis. That's fun, not the buff/armor -- I pnwed you crap you play around at. Comes a time when the armor and buffs may just plain suck, then what are you gonna do? Besides get pnwed by tactics?

JB

oh, 65 crystals, i miscounted. and almost 15mil again. monkeys falling from the trees it seems

One your a complete idiot. You make all these judgements on me, and yet you do not even know me. Okay pay attention I am not a melee stacker. I also do not participate in pvp much anymore, because of the retarded use of buffs and super 80 percent kinetic resist. So no I am not a pvp god not until the combat gets rebalanced, and I have a chance of putting melee stackers down.

Here is what you do not know about me. I am a MBH/CH/Medic. Okay I know you have obviously not done ch, but that skill requires both exploration 4 and hunting 4. So stick that in your hat and smoke it. The only skill out of the other two branches I could make any use of was /forage, but that gives you squat. Since you can buy foods for your pet in bulk and on the cheap. So here I am with two lines of a profession. That I feal should be better. Now its time to tear you down like a nice little monkey.

Scout original version 1.1. With higher scout you will be able to harvest more then one resource from a kill. Like I said it never worked, and was just removed. You would reticule the corpse harvest reticule again harvest reticule again harvest. Now here is the joke on you this was not a hunting skill. This was a survival skill. Box three. The group harvest was added into the game much later. Possibly to make up for the removal of the multiple harvest scouts were supposed to get.

The mask scent is broken in that its somehow getting attached to creature ferocity or some thing like that. Some creatures I can walk right up and pet others insta snap. From what the devs said early on maskscent would have a percentile chance of breaking. That means I should be able to get close to a creature sometimes other times not. I do not mind the maskscent breaking. I mind that it instabreaks for some mobs. If that were not bad enough its breaking way too far away now. Being detected outright at thirty meters is overkill. Like I said as a ch I have to be able to look at these mobs. I cannot afford to take much risks. So I maskscent at distance and slowly walk up until I can see them. I am not looking for a perfect maskscent. I am looking for a blind maskscent. One that randomly applies.

In camp BF heal. Please give me a break I spent days sitting in camps waiting for the npc bounty I was hunting to make his way to where I was. That being said I know what I saw. Sit in a multiperson camp long enough and you will get a couple ticks off. Have no clue if this was a bug, or that the camps were being read as passive heal modifiers. Like what you would get if you sat in a cantina for 30 minutes. Here is the thing I do not expect to see dancers grabbing up scout to go dance in the middle of a empty wasteland. Ninety five percent of the cantinas in the game are empty of entertainers. They just clutter up in certain cantinas. Forceing players to croud up in cities. Part of why cities like coronet, theed, eisley suffer so much lag. Just looking for reasons other players might actually dabble in the entertainer. This would not kill the cantinas, because camps are relatively rare.

Weapons cert what a load of nonsense. Let me guess melee stacker. I am just looking at it logically if you think that scout should have a melee weapon too fine. Its not even like the scout would even get special shots with the weapon anyway. Give it scout pistol and machette. After all you cannot kill a creature with traps. Give players a nice backup weapon to use in the scout profession. Other then what novices get cdefs and survival knives. Just looking at how to get people to feal confortable noviceing in scout. Right now the profession is very vulnerable on its own.

Basically I think your elitist scum. While I too feal that master professions should come with serious bonuses for the points put in. I also feal that putting all the most fantastic stuff in that top box aint fair. If anything it should be just like any profession. You get half the good skills in the branches, and maybe half in the master. The problem is if you jam it all in master scout. You will just outrage players who scream outloud for nerfing. If you make it a reasonable requirement perhaps like medic then it would be good. Where a player with so much scout knowledge can have either a percentile chance of getting that loot, or it be the amount of loot they can draw. Then you could drag that to master ranger being near 100percent.

I am not an elitest myself so I do not understand where this compunction to horde the good stuff to master comes from. I am a master BH and I am saying that. You obviously have the intent to keep what should be a cool profession into your solo domain. Well guess what pal thats not how this game was designed. It was designed so players could dabble in other professions, and be rewarded for doing so. I am truely sorry you picked to master scout and to master ranger. I remember when rangers were cool to have around, and people actually used rangers to do stuff. Hey I think it stinks, and I hope the revamp helps you out to atleast be a respected profession again. Instead of being relegated to the local butcher for chefs, and armorsmiths.

I on the other hand am a MBH, and just like you am proud of the title. Not necassarily what shape the bh profession is in. Suddenly I got a choice to be able to try new things out. Maybe do something to make my template stronger. I actually chose a bh/pve template. Since I chose ch. Which I am glad to say is fun for hunting in the wild. My pets can tank for me. A big plus since I have like no evasions, but it also means I can hunt without super duper armor, or being buffed to the gills. As for pvp I always enjoyed pvp. It was one of the funner aspects of the game, and hopefully the combat rebalance will make it skill based again. Since my profession is filled with state attacks, and different ham targeting attacks. I would have to be a full not to hope it does.

I do not want freebies I want rewards in line with the skillpoints I used. By the way I will look for the post on the multi harvest for you. So I can show you the proof.

Ugh no luck I wish that I knew where I saw that earlier. I did find a thread with the multi food forage issue. I will keep an eye out, but am not going to weed through ten thousand posts looking for the right one. If anyone else knows where the thread to this is post it please. I will keep checking about, and hopefully I will find where it talks about the multiharvest.

LMAO, I am the complete idiot. Thanks, most don't call me complete as I never so much as dabbled in Booby Head. And thanks for telling me you're a CH as well as a master Booby Head. Two professions that are pretty much useless except in PvP. Uselss, spelled they waste points inskills that can be gotten inbetter ways and the skills gainedare not worth the points spent. And I did CH for a hot minute, until I realized droids do the same job, better, and I don't use skill points. Duh.

Ok, once again. Your arguments are based on old stuff that never worked, was never introduced, was removed a long time ago as non-functional, or completely made up stuff that only you have seen.

Multiple harvesting. If this is introduced, it has been pretty much decided that Master Scouts may get it, as an incentive to Master Scout. Why should some clown who can camp get it? It is a master level skill. More than likely, Novice Rangers (read that as super Master Scouts) will pick up this skill. It may have been what you said it was in Beta, not in Live. Hell, they had to fix it to stop ninja harvesting and let more than one person harvest. Don't even try and quote the manual to me, it was outdated when it was published. Proof of that, go read the Smuggler pre-reqs. Half that stuff never made it to live.

Maskscent is not broken. It just works funny. I can go up to Rancors and Kimos with impunity. Never breaks. Way better than camo. But go near a rasp, and it breaks. Your major whine is that you can't get close to the major creatures to try and tame babies. I said it before, try BE Modified clothing. Try crawling too. It actually works, crawling does. But as you are well under the 100% level, don't expect to creep up on big things. You do not have the skill. You want to play in the big leagues, best get the skills, or go sit on the bench.

BF in camps. Nope, despite what you claim; and I defy you to find someone that can back you up. Major bone of contention now with Scouts/Rangers/Entertainers and the Devs. Don't care how long you sat there (that musta been boring too). We actually want BF to be healed in camps, by Entertainers.Camps will not heal BF.

Weapons cert. Dude, catch a clue. No weapons because Scout is combat support. We can get whatever certs we need from whichever combat profession we decide to master. You are semi-correct, the profession is vulnerable on its' own...it is designed to be. If anyone is dumb enough to take scout and no combat class, they deserve to die - they are called dumbasses. Oh boy, a special pistol or knife, what if I want a carbine or rifle? You have this idea, misguided and inane, that scouts have special weapons skills. We don't. We can get any weapons skills we want - that is the beauty of scout. Everything fits - melee, ranged - I have seen scouts with these skills do well, switch combat professions and still do well. COMBAT SUPPORT - our skills support combat - in and of itself Scout is not a combat profession.

You have one line - "you cannot kill a creature with traps". True. But it is a lot easier to kill many creatures with traps. Too bad you dropped traps, they make hunting a lot easier. Oh wait, can't use them on marks - oh well - not going into that can of worm crap.

Elistist Scum. Damn skippy booby head and proud of it. I solo rancors, unbuffed and unarmored. You need pets and armor and buffs to take down retarded lil marks - and yes, I can solo your marks too. Been there, done that, a bug caused one to aggro me so I dropped his sorry butt, got the T shirt. Master Scouts/Master Rangers are one of the most rare professions in the game, more rare then Jedi. Way more rare than booby heads, BH is like the eternal FOTM for 12 yr olds. Yes, you are not an elitist, you are a dabbler who wants free stuff, very representative of the Booby head profession.

After reading your denigration of Rangers, and your misguided representation of the short bus riders - aka BHs - thanks for the laffs. What planet do you live on? BHs are a dime a dozen, useless except in combat, although they have a lot of firepower. Most no nothing of tactics, refuse to venture outside of cities except for missions where the mark is wandering, and then they want a Ranger along to find the mark as they have trouble working droids. Not a new opinion, fact is I was overjoyed when master scout was removed from BH so that the morons in the BH line could stop whining in here about having to master. The CU is gonna take a lot of the wind out of the sailes of the BHs, and I for one will be leading the laughter.

Maybe your arguments would work in the BH forum, average IQ about the same as the average age - 12, Not in here. Now run along, go get your big bad LLC and go kill some durni or something to feel better. Your chosen profession Master is good for - uh..... - oh yeah, combat involving stuff vulnerable to electricity. Stick to marks and to what you know. Leave the big game to the Masters.

JB

I never should go into battles of wits with the unarmed

PS - BTW, let us talk grammar. "Your a complete idiot" no no no - You're, contraction of you are. Your is possesive, as in "your mind is addled thinking BH is honorable and that BHs have brains" You have a nice day.

Okay you two, cool it.

Dodece, the majority of what you've brought up have been our issues for quite a while now. Some of the issues you've brought up are being addressed in the Combat Upgrade, and others I will continue to push for with the Devs for the profession revamps that will come after the CU.

The multiple harvest thing that you're talking about was never mentioned by a Dev. The rangers have been wanting this forquite a while now, but I don't think it's a good idea, and the Scouts (for the most part) agree with that assessment. We were able to change the way harvesting works so that everyone in a group could do it, as JB mentioned.

B

Well I am glad the devs can answer the question on the multiple harvest thing, but you will have to forgive me if I do not take what they said as fact. These guys still swear up and down the tusken rifle was not kinetic.

Asfor the crack that BH/CH is a pvp profession it aint. Pets are totally gimped in pvp. The bh has a lot of issues which I will not go into, but the ch has not been good in pvp for near a year now. Plus I refuse to be become one of the eighty percent melee ranks either. The fact non creature pets are of such high quality in game is an issue with chs, but also the bioengineered 10k ham level 10 pets get us steamed too.

Yes I also know about the maskscent bio clothes, and beleive me I have looked all over for some. Unfortunately I just cannot find any on my server. Personally never expect to be totally successful with my maskscent. I also do not mind that campable creatures would get a better detection. Yet somehow I am able to maskscent and walk right up to rancors, and kimos. Then I go near kreetles, and gurreks. Those both snap it with ease? Something is wrong in the codeing here.

Its really a shame you traded up ch for something else. Yes the profession is terribly gimped, but I find its fun to do, and it gives me a purpose. Trying to put together my perfect pack. If I wanted some pvp/pve god mode. I would just drop the bh entirely and be a melee stacker like everyone else.

Asfor the BF thing I know what I saw, and yes I sat in camps for a long time. You might not know this through invest three the marks go in straight lines from nowhere to a city. Get to the city they are headed to then go out and camp wait for them to come to you. So say what you will about it. I was always and always will be fully cognisant of my stats.

Never used traps on a npc, and would dare not use traps on a jedi. On the npcs I would just walk up and lightning single two them. That usually put them down before they could even aggro on me.