• Prereqs: Pistols IV from Marksman (29 skill points)
• Skills: Pistoleer tree (63 skill points)
• Total Skill Points: 92

List of Abilities:

Health Shot 2: A health bleed. Initial health damage, followed by a health DoT. Major complaint is that it uses the same damage multiplier as all other bleeds, which are based on the damage of the weapon. Since they all "tick" at the same speed, our supposed speed advantage isn't there, but our damage disadvantage is maintained. The DoT damage is currently negligible, to the point that players find it questionable whether it is worth the attack round spent on firing it (depending on the expected length of the battle). Most pistoleers spam the crap out of this just for the initial hit damage, as it outperforms Body Shot 3 in every way.

Pistol Melee Defense 1: A melee range (10m) knockdown. No major complaints. Pistoleers report that they get a kick out of "pistol whipping" targets. It's very badass.

Pistol Melee Defense 2: A melee range (10m) attack. The knockdown is broken. Request it be fixed, and given an additional state effect such as Stun.

Disarming Shot 1: Low damage random HAM attack that deals x2 damage vs Lairs and Vehicles. This is considered broken. Request the Intimidate state effect, and possibly making it health targeted.

Disarming Shot 2: Same as Disarming Shot 1, but deals more damage and has a cone effect. Request the Intimidate state effect, and possibly making it health targeted.

Double Tap: A very low DPS random HAM single target special. There is no reason to use this at any point in a Pistoleer's life, as Kip Up Shot from Marksman outperforms it even at low levels. Recommend increasing the damage and giving it a chance to attack 2 pools.

Stopping Shot: A high damage, high delay attack. The DPS is barely better than Marksman specials, and is not typically used by "pure" Pistoleers without additional speed from Bounty Hunter. Recommend giving it a Posture Change Down, so that it can actually stop a target.

Fan Shot: A random HAM cone effect special with high DPS. Pistoleers use this attack frequently.

Body Shot 3: A health targeted attack. Outperformed by Body Shot 2 until the Pistoleer is a Master with a 1.9 speed pistol. Recommend increasing the damage.

Point Blank Single 2: A point blank range, single target, random HAM special with ho-hum damage. Recommend increasing the damage and providing temporary defensive bonuses to justify the increased risk of firing in point blank range.

Point Blank Area 2: Same as Point Blank Single 2. Area effect broken. Recommend fixing the area effect, increasing the damage, and providing temporary defensive bonuses to justify the increased risk of firing in point blank range.

Multi Target Pistol Shot: Attacks all targets within a 32m radius. Problems are that it fails to funtion if there is a line of sight obstruction to one or more of the targets, clears the combat queue when this occurs or a target dies, and deals too little damage to be commonly used even in wide open spaces. Problems with this special are difficult to nail down, and may be unstable. To take advantage of it players have to get surrounded and stay that way, which is something Pistoleers try to avoid. For these reasons players seldom use it, instead opting to line up a good cone with Fan Shot. Recommend fixing the bugs, increasing the damage, and giving it a state effect or DoT.

Dodge: Pistoleers love dodge, especially now that it no longer stops us in our tracks when running. They would like a real running animation and an improved standing animation, as the first is nonexistent and the latter is, frankly, lackluster. In terms of dodging often enough, it seems to not kick in often enough when facing high level content, and should probably work a little more often across the board. Dodging is fun to do and watch, but only happens probably the minimum of what it should.

Melee/Ranged Defense: Simply too low. Both are dwarfed by professions that deal more damage, and the Ranged Defense is so close to zero that it may as well be.

State Defense: Not particularly helpful without stacking, as our opponent simply spams the special once or twice more. Recommend adding a 5-10 second immunity upon a sucessful save. With other professions slowing down in the CB, I would lean closer to the 10 second mark.

Accuracy: Most players agree that ideal range needs to become more prevalent in SWG play. Pistoleers have decent accuracy at 64m in PvE, but not great unless the Republic Blaster is used. In PvP testing however, Pistoleers found that they had only 67% accuracy when facing a moderately skilled defense stacker in Ideal Range (which we try to avoid because it is so easy to get beat up by melee characters). They feel that this isn't quite high enough to allow for a fair fight. Accuracy While Moving is of particular importance to Pistoleers, as they specialize in running and gunning.

Armor Piercing & Damage Types: Pistoleers have a disadvantage of being limited to AP0 & AP1 weapons. To make up for this, they were intended to have a wider variety of damage types. They presently have 5 (energy, heat, acid, stun, and kinetic). Unfortunately, it is a challenge to find a high damage stun pistols, and an impossibility to find even moderate damage kinetic pistols. What's more, Riflemen are presently equally diverse in damage types, and have access to heavy armor piercing. It is the belief of Pistoleers that our supposed damage type advantage is not adequately making up for our lack of armor piercing. They feel that they are being unfairly limited in participating in high end content.

Speed: Pistoleers are not comparatively fast enough in SWG. Most attacks in the game fire at 1.x seconds, and our speed advantage simply isn't there. Our damage disadvantage, however, is in full swing. The speed equation itself is chiefly responsible for the system falling apart, and Pistoleers are overjoyed to hear that it is getting revamped in the Combat Balance. This is important because the exponential nature of the equation makes it a nightmare to balance. Slight changes at the end game simply make too much of a difference.

Combat Role Summary: The combat role of the Pistoleer is supposed to be low damage, high speed, high defense, short range, "run 'n gunner." Most of these have been obscured by one thing or another, and we would like to see it become a reality (presently we are low damage, low speed, moderate defense, same range as everybody). There is a strong desire to have state effects and interesting attacks. That feeling stems from the fact that if all our specials do is damage, our only recourse is to pick the special that deals the most damage and spam it. In regards to Range, there is a great concern that our Ideal Range (<= 20 meters) is inside the range of Melee Lunge attacks. We aren't a melee profession, nor do we want to be. If this is the range where we will spend the majority of our time, we are worried that we will be dominated by real melee professions. When our ideal range was decided pre-launch, melee attacks were substantially shorter. When they were extended, our Ideal Range wasn't.

Grouping Summary: Pistoleers see themselves as a player who can get into the thick of things, or back out when it gets hairy. If the tank falls, he's next in line. If the tank is there, he is part supplemental damage and part situational control. While the Carbineer can provide mass crowd control, the Pistoleer is more specific and calculating. At least, they'd like to be. In the current state of the game, they aren't a damage dealer, a tank, or a crowd controller. They do all of those things a little bit, but pretty poorly.

Top 5 Recommendations: Our top 5 Issues are listed below. This is also our list of Top 5 Things we'd like to see in the CB:

1. 10 out of our 12 specials are redundant, inadequate, or broken.
2. We have no state effects or interesting attacks. All we do is damage, aside from 1 melee range knockdown and 1 bleed.
3. Our DPS is too low.
4. The speed system used by the game is completely screwed up.
5. Our defenses need help.

Top 5 GCW Recommendations:

1. Faction specific pistols, maybe even with a little decal of the faction. Readily available, so it isn't considered out of reach by players who haven't yet picked up a faction, but might be inclined to if they see this pistol around. Something desirable enough to be used, and usable only to the specific factions.
2. An animated deathblow. If there's anything in the mocap work that could be used or altered in some way, it would be great. I envision a Pistoleer standing over an incapacitated player, and putting a carefully aimed bolt between the eyes.
3. Faction specific weapon powerup schematics purchased from a recruiter, with a minor advantage over standard weapon powerups.
4. Factional clothing/armor schematics with skill mods.
5. Better factional equipment available based on rank. There is a substantial demand for rank to mean something in SWG, and this is one way for it to take shape.

Message Edited by Randonb on 06-12-2004 05:16 PM

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"...You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." biwan:
Former Pistoleer Correspondent (02/04/04 - 09/05/04)

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Randonb wrote:

 (What do you guys think of this being usable while covert, just to try to hook in newbies? I know it's usually a GCW no-no, but I wanted to put the option out there just in case it doesn't make you all gag...) 

Message Edited by Randonb on 06-08-2004 11:56 PM

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Randonb wrote:

 

Grouping Summary: Pistoleers see themselves as a player who can get into the thick of things, or back out when it gets hairy. If the tank falls, he's next in line. If the tank is there, he is part supplemental damage and part situational control. While the Carbineer can provide mass crowd control, the Pistoleer is more specific and calculating. At least, they'd like to be. In the current state of the game, they aren't a damage dealer, a tank, or a crowd controller. They do all of those things a little bit, but pretty poorly.

 (What do you guys think of this being usable while covert, just to try to hook in newbies? I know it's usually a GCW no-no, but I wanted to put the option out there just in case it doesn't make you all gag...) 

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that vision of pistoleers is EXACTLY how i see us as we should be
direct support for whoever is tanking and the ability to get in and out of things very quickly
also i think another thing we have is due to our low damage, AOE attacks (multi-target pistol shot, pointblankarea2, fanshot) gives us a chance to deal our low damage to several targets at once so when we're surrounded we can deal with things fairly effectively

and about the covert-wielding...... if you are deathblowed and clone at a non-alliagned cloning facility, you will become covert, but still wear your factioned clothing/armor
if this is not considered a bug, then something similar for the factioned weapons would be fine by me

Message Edited by Javac on 06-09-2004 07:09 AM

Sounds good, but there are a few issues I'd like to address.

AP:

I've said this before, but in order to tackle the high-level dungeons where our special weapons are found, we need medium armor piercing.  I would suggest, instead of giving Pistoleers a med AP pistol, they instead be given an ability I like to call "Precision Strike".  This would work like Center of Being in that it would last for a predetermined length of time and would cost HAM to use.  During this time, the pistoleer would focus fire on the chinks in the target's armor, effectively increasing the AP level of the weapon by one step (NONE to LIGHT, LIGHT to MEDIUM).

Multi-Target:

Sounds good, but do pistoleers really need two very similar area attacks (Fan Shot and Multi-Target) when they don't have a powerful single-target attack?  Area attacks can be deadly when fighting things such as Force Crystal Hunters and the like, causing more to aggro on you than originally intended.  Personally, I would replace Multi-Target, which is available to only master pistoleers, with a single-target attack that does increased damage and has a status effect. I would name this attack "Rapid Fire" and have it disorient the target due to the sheer quantity of incoming fire, effectively dizzying the target.

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Randonb wrote:

 

.Pistol Melee Defense 2: A melee range (10m) attack. The knockdown is broken. Request it be fixed, and given an additional state effect such as Stun.

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Javac wrote:
Pretty good, I'll look over it again but I'd like to add one thing. Being the most versatile profession in terms of damage type is something else the devs mentioned at one point. With all the changes, it's not really the case now unless we get a couple more damage options. Strikers are so low damage the don't really count, and there is still Cold, Blast, and Electric (taser? hehe).

Message Edited by Javac on 06-09-2004 07:09 AM

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Capt. Xadius
Ancient Smuggler | Inquisition Ace

Vender: Rielig Steppes Mall, Dantooine

/sign

Pistoleer seems to be the most versatile of the 3 ranged professions, since Smuggler, BH, and Commando have use of pistols.

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Faction specific pistols, maybe even with a little decal of the faction. Readily available, so it isn't considered out of reach by players who haven't yet picked up a faction, but might be inclined to if they see this pistol around. Something desirable enough to be used, and usable only to the specific factions. (What do you guys think of this being usable while covert, just to try to hook in newbies? I know it's usually a GCW no-no, but I wanted to put the option out there just in case it doesn't make you all gag...) 

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I also like the idea of faction based pistols, much like the other faction based weapons, etc.  I also believe it should not be equippable unless overt.  There was a mention that higher rank should allow for better equipment.  Again, I agree.  Rank should have it's privileges.  As a new player last year I mistakenly thought I needed to attain rank to have faction pets at my command and that it would somehow be affected by rank - i.e. number of pets, quality, etc.  Too bad it was not.  Off topic but I would have enjoyed it more if the rank was affected if you lost your pets too often.  Show poor ability to command or something.  Anyway, as it stands the weapons should be craftable to allow for improved stats.

As for specials, like everyone else (I have been a pistoleer since last year - won't change because I am stubborn) I really just want them fixed.  To be specific I would like disarm to disarm, and some kind of state effect from one Master level shot.  I know PMD2 will be fixed - read it on board yesterday.

Thanks for all the hard work you have done Randomb!

Kind regards,

Xak