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f13.net General Forums => Hellgate: London => Topic started by: Hoax on November 02, 2007, 11:12:56 AM



Title: Marksman
Post by: Hoax on November 02, 2007, 11:12:56 AM
So ummm someone needed to start this thread.  Since I'm way late to the goddamn party I've got questions for what I'm guessing is the most played class atm.

Is/has anyone been using Sniper>Master Sniper Deadeye>Hollow Points?  I've got no idea what the base crit rate is, nor have I in 2 hours of playing ran into a gun with high damage and medium-slow RoF.  I was thinking of trying to make a character build that can basically one-hit everything with just insane single shot damage.

I figure going for spread damage is the smarter / more common route ala the bowazon's of Diablo-yore but I like the idea of going sniper mode and just plinking the demon fucks one by one.



Also discuss other Soldier stuff, is it just me or is Flash Crasher grenade the best sounding from the skill desc by a mile?  Beacon = good or waste of points?  How cool to airstrikes look?  etc. etc.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Aez on November 02, 2007, 11:19:12 AM
Beacon is amazing, max it.

You should find a Poseidon sniper rifle soon enough, it's great.

Sniper stance and Escape is a good combo.  Not the fastest way to clear a map but it's really safe.  Migh have problem with boss, especially if they regenerate.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: sam, an eggplant on November 02, 2007, 11:22:05 AM
It's viable, but HGL is a dungeon hack, that would take forever. Most people just ignore the sniping and play the marksman close range with grenades.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Aez on November 02, 2007, 11:25:48 AM
You can go pretty fast if you snipe the stongest mob of a pack then switch to an AOE gun.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Nonentity on November 02, 2007, 11:57:43 AM
Well, I'm level 24 now, and i'm onto act 5.

I've completely ignored Snipe and Tactical Stance, and I've gone for grenades and crit-activitied abilities.

It works pretty well - I'm using an Arclite Heavy Cluster Rifle, modded for fire damage/ignite and a crapload of stun, along with armor penetration. I can basically just run and gun everything.

Sniper rifles and any other big slow weapons just aren't worth it, from what I've seen.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Murgos on November 02, 2007, 12:12:29 PM
I have my retail copy but haven't played in a week but I had my MM up to 15 before the end of Beta.

A SNPR, Sniper stance and Beacon was able to one shot everything.  Certain areas I didn't mind going slow, using evade and feeling like a sniper.  Other areas I would just run around and blast everything with the lightning gun and grenades.  Mostly it came down to if there were blade fiends on the level or not.

I could see doing a tactical stance build with a machine gun type weapon and a bunch of +crit stuff, would be a faster play style than pure sniper but with escape could still feel pretty stealthy.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Tige on November 02, 2007, 12:17:21 PM
In beta I went sniper with escape and beacon.  Get an 8 slot rifle, mod it and off you go.  I used sniper mode to clear annoying mobs like flyers and tunnelers.  Also very helpful when tough mobs are bunched together like after going through a hellrift.  Snipe, escape, repeat, win!


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Hoax on November 02, 2007, 12:49:45 PM
I was hoping with full Master Sniper, Deadeye and Hollow points you might not need to escape hella much, perhaps using a medium RoF weapon.  I was imagining instead of spraying them down while walking backwards for more of a one shot one kill, the whole pack is dead before they get to melee range.  I guess it'll be fun build to try to force to work but sounds like it might not.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: LK on November 02, 2007, 02:21:17 PM
I have my setup like this:

1) Normal Use (Lightning Gun, Rapid Fire)
2) Sniper Use (Drops Massive Damage to Named and Demons)
3) Group Use (Rocket Launcher for Clusters of mobs)

If there's a large group of mobs, sniper is not a good way to go. You might pick off two or three before they get close.  The reason for this is that your sniper rifle takes twice as long to fire ... about 4 seconds with what I got right now.

When I start my Elite character, I plan to focus more on Rapid Fire + Crit-Activated Abilities and completely ignore Tactical Stance + Sniper Stance, for now.

Edit: I am having a hard time figuring out how to specialize my character.  Putting multiple skill points into a single talent seems like such a waste when trying to get most abilities that are worthwhile and unlocking additional attacks seems better.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Morfiend on November 02, 2007, 03:25:26 PM

Edit: I am having a hard time figuring out how to specialize my character.  Putting multiple skill points into a single talent seems like such a waste when trying to get most abilities that are worthwhile and unlocking additional attacks seems better.

Its better now, but not at later levels. At those levels you need all the specialization to not become sort of mediocre in all areas.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Aez on November 02, 2007, 03:41:14 PM

When I start my Elite character, I plan to focus more on Rapid Fire + Crit-Activated Abilities and completely ignore Tactical Stance + Sniper Stance, for now.

Edit: I am having a hard time figuring out how to specialize my character.  Putting multiple skill points into a single talent seems like such a waste when trying to get most abilities that are worthwhile and unlocking additional attacks seems better.

Tactical stance synergise better with all the Crit-Activated Abilities.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: schild on November 02, 2007, 03:41:41 PM
Started my Marksman last night.

Fantastic character class. Particularly when you've got dual pistols, single machine gun (that's toxic or flame wave) and a sniper rifle. Just terribly versatile and VERY good at soloing.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: sam, an eggplant on November 02, 2007, 04:20:29 PM
Tactical stance synergise better with all the Crit-Activated Abilities.
You can't move in tactical stance. HGL is a fast paced dungeon hack. It's crap.

They should have added several toggleable stances to the game instead, all with no downsides. Something like:

tactical stance: +25% accuracy, -25% missile spread, -10% attribute drain on weapons (default)
sniper stance: +25% crit chance, +25% attack speed, +50% range, -100% AE radius (for bosses, high single target damage)
supressing stance: -25% damage, +25% chance to penetrate, +25% chance to ricochet, +1yd AE radius, +50% AE radius (for groups)





Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: LK on November 02, 2007, 05:23:40 PM
Stances only make sense to me if you're partied and someone is taking the aggro.  Otherwise you need to move your ass all the time.  I do lead off with sniping on singular mobs but it *feels so bad*.

I do want to get the Crit-Activated build, I just can't stand that part of standing still.  Such a major design flaw against "fun" that they just didn't see from the start? Shit.

There are skills that just seem good enough to put 1 point in (Escape, for one) that are a just-in-case versatility situation.

I also might have been raising my character's stats wrong.  I've been raising Accuracy and Stamina (3/2 ratio) and trying to put a point in Strength as necessary for armor.  But I've been ignoring Wisdom and I can see how fast my mana drops in a fight.  A higher wisdom might mean I can more effectively drop in and out of stances ... which might be part of what I'm missing about the Marksman.

Then again, the way I've put my stats, maybe I am building the right Run & Gun character.  I'd be dead way more often with my playstyle without Stamina.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Aez on November 02, 2007, 08:05:17 PM
Tactical stance synergise better with all the Crit-Activated Abilities.
You can't move in tactical stance. HGL is a fast paced dungeon hack. It's crap.

He was going for rapid fire, an other immobile skill...  You can still move around and kill stuff with out bothering with the stance, but you crouch for big stack of mobs.  The added shield makes up for the hits you'll take before they reach you. 


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Nonentity on November 02, 2007, 09:04:47 PM
Stances only make sense to me if you're partied and someone is taking the aggro.  Otherwise you need to move your ass all the time.  I do lead off with sniping on singular mobs but it *feels so bad*.

I do want to get the Crit-Activated build, I just can't stand that part of standing still.  Such a major design flaw against "fun" that they just didn't see from the start? Shit.

There are skills that just seem good enough to put 1 point in (Escape, for one) that are a just-in-case versatility situation.

I also might have been raising my character's stats wrong.  I've been raising Accuracy and Stamina (3/2 ratio) and trying to put a point in Strength as necessary for armor.  But I've been ignoring Wisdom and I can see how fast my mana drops in a fight.  A higher wisdom might mean I can more effectively drop in and out of stances ... which might be part of what I'm missing about the Marksman.

Then again, the way I've put my stats, maybe I am building the right Run & Gun character.  I'd be dead way more often with my playstyle without Stamina.

My stamina is my highest stat.

I'm maxing out the Ricochet (shots bounce off walls) ability, because that literally goes off all the time. For the other two, I've only put one point in each of them.

One point in each of the grenades, to ensure you can meet any damage type requirement. Then just do tactical strikes up to Smackdown, and you've got all the bases covered on damage types.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Fabricated on November 02, 2007, 10:31:16 PM
I started one today and noticed right off that just about every gun that isn't a regular rifle is of questionable use. Duel Machine Pistols works nice for clusters of mobs but doesn't have enough oomph to finish them off fast, and the rifle does that better anyway...rocket launchers are kinda useless, bolters are kinda useless, and sniper rifles bore me. I can get where rocket launchers would be great for grouping but I kept finding myself switching back to a rifle to really get anything done.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Phunked on November 02, 2007, 10:44:26 PM
The way the targeting thing works, the assault rifle or any of the other continuous firing variations are by far the most versatile. Especially when you get a spawn of jumping/flying/swarming/low hp mobs. Combined with rapid fire rank 1 (why *not* get it?) you can easily clear a crowd that isn't resistant to whatever damage type you have very fast. I have the typical rifle/sniper/rocket launcher set up, but the more I keep playing, the less I use my rocket launcher or sniper. Rockets are mostly for zombies now, and the sniper is for sniping any of the slow flying eyes, ranged lightning bolt shooters, or opening up on named mobs.

Overall its fun, but marksman has to be the easiest class to play. So many passive skills + escape makes me wonder if the thing is balanced.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Aez on November 03, 2007, 07:22:18 AM
Nothing like a rocket launcher fully modded with +dmg% to necro.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: MrHat on November 03, 2007, 07:43:23 AM
Do all the on-crit passives (Ricochet, Reflected, Homing) stack?  I was thinking of a run-and-gun that just relys on crazy crit.

Something like this:  http://hellgate.ingame.de/skilltree/marksman/?l=50&s=030711070007030700070300110

Then just rely on a high-spread weapons w/ high crit mods.  Sounds badass imo.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Phunked on November 03, 2007, 07:43:48 AM
That would be some very pretty overkill.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Aez on November 03, 2007, 08:15:40 AM
Do all the on-crit passives (Ricochet, Reflected, Homing) stack?  I was thinking of a run-and-gun that just relys on crazy crit.

They don't. They are mutually exclusive.  They can't proc at the same time.  So if the 25% chance of the first skill happen at the same time than the 15% of the other, one of them will be wasted. 

Invest 1 point in every skills or concentrate on one.  Don't max more than one.

It's pretty retarded, should at least be explained in the skill's text.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: MrHat on November 03, 2007, 08:48:26 AM
Awesome, thanks for the advice.

Can you use Rapid Fire while remaining in Tactical Stance?


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Miasma on November 03, 2007, 10:06:46 AM
I started one today and noticed right off that just about every gun that isn't a regular rifle is of questionable use. Duel Machine Pistols works nice for clusters of mobs but doesn't have enough oomph to finish them off fast, and the rifle does that better anyway...rocket launchers are kinda useless, bolters are kinda useless, and sniper rifles bore me. I can get where rocket launchers would be great for grouping but I kept finding myself switching back to a rifle to really get anything done.
I pretty much agree but have one exception, the "field" weapons.  Getting a launcher that lays down a 10' field of fire is absolutely awesome.  When I went to the Museum level most of the enemies were those guys that spawn out of the ground in a large group, I was laughing my ass off as I just laid down one or two blasts on their hole and watched them all instantly die.

I haven't spent any skill points yet because I don't want to screw it up, I like the run and gun ideas which don't use much power because I don't want to put points into will


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Hoax on November 03, 2007, 10:57:54 AM
I've noticed every gun says crit chance = 0%, does this change later on or have I not seen the right gun types yet?


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Murgos on November 03, 2007, 11:31:55 AM
Can you use Rapid Fire while remaining in Tactical Stance?

Nope.  I had been thinking the same thing you were, level up tac stance tree and the rapid fire tree until rapid fire was your default attack and then combine with tac stance for ubar slaying powars.

Triggering rapid fire makes you stand up.    :oh_i_see:


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: caladein on November 03, 2007, 03:18:01 PM
I've noticed every gun says crit chance = 0%, does this change later on or have I not seen the right gun types yet?

I'm running into that too with my Flamethrowers (Fire Field) and Bug Guns (Toxic Swarm), but some weapons do have Crit Chance:

(http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/8002/spartanf5poseidonsniperqx0.jpg)


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: eldaec on November 04, 2007, 02:20:49 AM
It's also fairly common to be able to add +crit-chance through mods and augmentations.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: LK on November 04, 2007, 02:56:51 AM
Tactical stance synergise better with all the Crit-Activated Abilities.
You can't move in tactical stance. HGL is a fast paced dungeon hack. It's crap.

He was going for rapid fire, an other immobile skill...  You can still move around and kill stuff with out bothering with the stance, but you crouch for big stack of mobs.  The added shield makes up for the hits you'll take before they reach you. 

Too bad that the extra shields on Tactical Stance don't work right...according to the skill I should have like 220 added but I only see like 22 or something.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: rk47 on November 05, 2007, 05:45:10 AM
....the boss fights are pretty bad as marksman early lvl...I'm lvl 7 now and it really sucks just spamming potions while running shooting backwards, spamming beacon, fire off sniper, repeat. Stances are hardly worth anything. And in the open I felt like a skeet shooter with sniping + beacon. Kinda felt like playing Deus Ex with slower levelling lol, that's my only beef with this game I guess. Pretty bored quick. The rocket launchers just scatter all over the place, not really useful, but in the Museum....geez...I'm glad I still have it with me as well as 20 healing packs.  :awesome_for_real:


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: schild on November 05, 2007, 05:50:39 AM
?

slow leveling?

What are you smoking and tell me where you get it so I can avoid it.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Aez on November 05, 2007, 06:09:49 AM
....the boss fights are pretty bad as marksman early lvl...I'm lvl 7 now and it really sucks just spamming potions while running shooting backwards, spamming beacon, fire off sniper, repeat. Stances are hardly worth anything. And in the open I felt like a skeet shooter with sniping + beacon. Kinda felt like playing Deus Ex with slower levelling lol, that's my only beef with this game I guess. Pretty bored quick. The rocket launchers just scatter all over the place, not really useful, but in the Museum....geez...I'm glad I still have it with me as well as 20 healing packs.  :awesome_for_real:

Stop moving with your rocket launcher, the cone of fire is much better.  You can almost snipe with the tactical stance and a rocket launcher.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: LK on November 05, 2007, 10:49:59 AM
....the boss fights are pretty bad as marksman early lvl...I'm lvl 7 now and it really sucks just spamming potions while running shooting backwards, spamming beacon, fire off sniper, repeat. Stances are hardly worth anything. And in the open I felt like a skeet shooter with sniping + beacon. Kinda felt like playing Deus Ex with slower levelling lol, that's my only beef with this game I guess. Pretty bored quick. The rocket launchers just scatter all over the place, not really useful, but in the Museum....geez...I'm glad I still have it with me as well as 20 healing packs.  :awesome_for_real:

The Emperor is a much harder fight than subsequent fights as a Marksman.  I got my ass kicked by Act 1's boss but Act 2 and 3 and 4 were cake-walks compared to him.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: sam, an eggplant on November 05, 2007, 10:53:30 AM
slow leveling?

What are you smoking and tell me where you get it so I can avoid it.
I don't think the issue is slow leveling so much as slow skill acquisition, delayed skill availability, and useless prerequisites. For example, you can't equip your engineer's drone with guns until level 15 and armor until level 20, you need to waste points in inhibitor bots to get haste bots, etc.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Murgos on November 05, 2007, 11:14:19 AM
If you are going the sniper route without escape then you are in for a very long, slow, boring, death filled game.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Furiously on November 05, 2007, 11:19:03 AM
Beacon is the most wonderful skill for boss fights. Escape is pure love too.

I loved both on my Engineer.  I really screwed them up on the robot pet though. I thought the heal and shield abilities would be awesome for grouping... They were not.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: rk47 on November 05, 2007, 04:17:35 PM
Uh, ok so I just Beacon+Snipe+Escape+Sprint loop on bosses? I personally just panicked on Emperor since I was running out of places to run.
The point with slow levelling is, there's hardly a variety of attacks to use from lvl 1-10...it just feels like a dull shooter. I admit the sniping from 40m with no zoom kinda gets to me, but catching those leaping shits in mid air gives off a little satisfaction, then it's back to picking up loot again, disassemble.

I think this makes the single player largely dull, and the only way to have fun is probably team-play online which is why my friends told me I'm crazy not to buy it for online play alone. (They bought original, I had an hour worth of seating in one of their PCs). Still thinking of it, I'm happy with The Witcher at the moment (great RPG) and worry how much lag would affect my sniping online.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Trouble on November 05, 2007, 04:41:47 PM
Here's the build you want as Marksman:

http://hellgate.ingame.de/skilltree/marksman/?l=50&s=0a002007000235000000030a700

Rapid Fire is just amazing. That's your large group and boss killing skill. Beacon is also amazing. Multi-beacon is where the party is at though later game.

Anyway, with this build you can do a little long range sniping. You don't use a sniper rifle though. You can use an automatic rifle or dual pistols or whatever. Rapid Fire pumps out an incredible amount of damage. Late game you'll have multi-shot which combined with other abilities is just plain ridiculous.

As far as crits...you don't really crit all that often until maybe late game with an assload of gear. The best way to get a feel for your crit rate is when the mini-game has crits as one of the requirements. I was only critting once every 10-20 seconds of full out firing. Therefore I haven't pumped too many points into the crit abilities.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Phunked on November 06, 2007, 12:38:43 PM
If you're using rapid fire, get the crit skills. Rapid fire = 600 shots in 3 seconds = at least one crit. They fixed them to all 3 skills can activate on the same crit now. This this doesn't make it wise to max them, but 1 ricochet, 3 reflected shot and 1 homing shot will increase your damage by at least 250%, assuming you can aim a cluster rifle/rapid fire. Multibeacon is nice, but as a one pointer. Most packs of things die extremely fast with multibeacon 1 and rapid fire 6 or higher, so adding more % is overkill. Especially with ricochet up (and it almost always is).

Similarly, multishot is a 1 point wonder. Pop mutlishot, press rapid fire and watch the carnage. Multishot provides too little return for subsequent investment: with the rapid fire build, you'll already be killing most packs within 3-5 seconds, so adding additional seconds of double shots is wasted, since you aren't shooting at anything. For single targets (bosses) odds are, you'll be firing in bursts while you run around kiting them. Multishot  is again only being used for the 3 seconds of rapid fire you're putting out in between kites.

Max beacon though. It's great utility, good for groups (if you ever do that) and is the largest damage gain per point invested.

Also, every single marksman should have Escape 1. No questions about this.

As a whole, I'm advocating  a build that looks something like this:

http://hellgate.ingame.de/skilltree/marksman/?l=50&s=0a01a1070003370100010301100


A small note about the passive on crit skills:

Ricochet, Homing and Reflecting shots can now proc from the same critical hit, and they will all stack.


By putting 5 points in, you get a 40% ricochet chance, 35% reflecting and 25% homing. This does not come out to a 100% chance to trigger, however it does equate to a good chance to trigger at least one effect on a critical. The exact math is difficult, because we are not yet certain what order the chances are applied and in what fashion. The current theory is that they are multiplicative in the fashion that ricochet will trigger on 40 out of 100 crits, reflecting on 35 out of 100 and homing on 25 out of 100. The previous formula allowed for only one effect to trigger at one time, leading to ricochet triggering 40/100, then homing triggering 21/60 shots and reflecting triggering on 9.75/39 shots. This led to ricochet decreasing the uptime of the other 2 by a substantial margin. Using the current theory, each one is rolled simultaneously, leading to a (0.4*0.35*0.25 = 3.5% that all will trigger on one crit) and a 71% chance that at least one will trigger on a hit. Using a machine pistol with a 600 round/minute, or a 10round/sec rate of fire, with one in each hand and a base crit  of 10% (on each, easily available with maxed dead eye) rapid fire will cause you to fire 10*3*2*2.35 = 141 rounds over 3 seconds (282 with multishot up). Of these, 14.1 (28.2) will crit, which will almost guarantee that at least one passive will trigger (2.9e-8 chance of none being up, or about 3 in 10 million). In addition, you have a 40% chance of all 3 going up.

How the passives work:

Ricochet allows your bullets to bounce off any hard surface up to 3 times. Hard surfaces include the ground, non-destructible environment objects, and monsters. This means that if you get a perfect ricochet, you did 4 times the amount of damage of the bullet. This requires that you're facing at least 2 mobs. If you're facing just one mob (like a boss), a well placed ricochet on the groun can lead to a 2x increase in damage (hit mob, bounce 1 off mob, bounce 2 off ground, +hit mob , bounce 3 off mob)

Reflected shot allows your bullets to reflect and re target additional targets, up to 2 times. Currently, it seems that they can reflect off the initial target and hit it again. This leads to a flat 200% damage increase. This is by far the best passive skill, since it has a much tighter damage range than ricochet. However if both are up, preliminary testing indicates that reflecting will now trigger from each ricochet bounce, leading to a 600% damage increase (NOT YET CONFIRMED).

Homing shots do exactly what you'd think they do. They allow your bullets to follow targets, bypassing the physics engine. On its own, this passive sucks. Combined with the two above, however, it can drastically tighten the damage range, by increasing the percentage of bullets that keep hitting the targets instead of flying off into the distance.

A small note: only bullets that do not explode are affected by these. This means that any rocket launcher, mine layer, beam weapon, fire/lightning based rifle will not work with these. However, cluster rifles, assault rifles, and machine pistols do.

A note about cluster rifles: the rifle has it's own inherent ricochet effect. I have no idea how this stacks with the passives, but testing reveals that it does. And by testing, I mean that if I fire it into a crowd and ricochet comes up, that crowd dies. Very, very, very fast. Cluster rifles are ideal against groups and in areas with lots of geometry to bounce things off. Machine pistols/assault rifles are typically better against single targets. For aiming a cluster rifle, aim a little in front of the enemy. This causes the cluster shot to explode and release shrapnel. This increases the chance that several shrapnel will hit your desired target/targets. This does more damage than a dead on single hit.



Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: MrHat on November 06, 2007, 12:46:29 PM
My God.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Trouble on November 06, 2007, 01:01:03 PM
I like that build a lot.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Miasma on November 06, 2007, 01:26:36 PM
Words
Okay... so assume I use your build, just to simplify things it would help to know how you play as you go through a level.  Like do you use beacon every time it is up or only faced with a group of mobs?  Imagine you are running a dungeon, what buttons do you mash as you face the following situations:

1) Standard clearing of a few enemies here and there.
2) A large group of mobs.
3) A boss fight.

I like the build because it seems mostly passive with low energy use but I don't want to screw it up by never using the correct combination of skiills.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: MrHat on November 06, 2007, 01:27:54 PM
Words
Okay... so assume I use your build, just to simplify things it would help to know how you play as you go through a level.  Like do you use beacon every time it is up or only faced with a group of mobs?  Imagine you are running a dungeon, what buttons do you mash as you face the following situations:

1) Standard clearing of a few enemies here and there.
2) A large group of mobs.
3) A boss fight.

I like the build because it seems mostly passive with low energy use but I don't want to screw it up by never using the correct combination of skiills.

1. Rapid Fire
2. Rapid Fire
3. Rapid Fire + HP Injectors


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Trouble on November 06, 2007, 01:33:29 PM
Use beacon on any monsters that take more than 3 seconds to kill.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Murgos on November 06, 2007, 01:43:26 PM
Beacon is up every 2 seconds.  Use it as often as you like.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Phunked on November 06, 2007, 01:55:18 PM
Sorry for the wall of text.

I'm used to doing this shit from all my hardcore WoW raiding days. Don't do anything without the numbers. (ie catass2victory).

In reply

1. Depends what enemies. If they're the high hp, no shield types, I beacon and burn with an assault rifle (modded for phase, and ignite). Phase and ignite will eat anything in seconds, and when combined with beacon, it's extremely effective at picking off any of the HP high things (carnagors, etc).

For anything that's shielded, I use beacon with another assault rifle modded for shield penetration. These things are usually orbiles, furies, etc. Any of the annoying flying spectrals.

2. For a large group of monsters, I beacon one (to put multibeacon on everything), switch to a cluster rifle (modded for stun and phase), use multishot then run to 20m and use rapid fire. After that, I spend like a minute picking up the loot that I got from killing everything. If there's a support type (diabolist, summoners, etc) in the crowd, I escape to be right behind him, and then beacon+multi+ rapid fire. Ensures that he dies first.

3. Boss fight. Most bosses hit marksmen REALLY REALLY HARD. So you end up kiting them. I use the phase+ignite gun for these. The way I do it is this: before I engage, i throw up beacon, pop multishot run up and rapid fire. When rapid fire is over, hit escape and run behind the boss. Turn fire a couple shots while rapid fire cools down, then use rapid fire. Now sprint away since escape is still on cooldown. Run around till escape and multishot come up, then repeat from the start. An assault rifle with phase and ignite is incredibly good for single targets, since the phase and ignite chances are calculated each time a bullet hits; meaning that faster firing weapons tend to phase and ignite much more consistently.

The biggest threat to this build, and any marksman in general, is getting either chain stunned (so that you can't move/escape/whatever) by a swarm of enemies in melee, or getting shocked (electrical damage) which prevents skill use and then getting swarmed. You can avoid this by playing smart. Watch where the enemies are, and use rapid fire at the right time. Use it when things are 15-20m away. This is the ideal range at which they'll eat most of your bullets and at the same time won't be in your face beating on you.

This build is effective because, as you say, it is largely passive and works on your basic FPS skills instead of constant button mashing. You don't need to beacon/rapid fire everything. Very often you can kill extremely fast just by aiming a cluster rifle properly and letting the passives do the work. Beacon and rapid fire will let you be extremely effective against harder enemies, which is what you really want. Anyone can kill trash with damn near any gun, but some of the bosses and stuff are harder.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Aez on November 06, 2007, 03:14:05 PM
Letting those passives stack is insane.  Good build, thx for the math.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: squirrel on November 06, 2007, 11:44:24 PM
Info

I've put off my marksman until elite, and i love this build. TY.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: rk47 on November 07, 2007, 12:00:10 AM
will test on single player. Thanks  :heart: if this works out, I might just buy the box  :awesome_for_real:

Question: How are dual pistols?  I like the cooler looking stuff, but it seems like autorifle are best  :|


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Phunked on November 07, 2007, 05:01:31 AM
Dual pistols work fine. The autorifle is just easier, because you only need to find one weapon with nice mods and slots instead of two. In theory two perfect pistols > 1 perfect autorifle.

Just remember to get the dual automatic pistols (machine pistols/perforators/ shotgun pistols even), and not the flame thrower ones. The beam weapons cannot ricochet/reflect/home, which makes them largely useless with the passive stacking. Also the damage degradation on them really sucks with rapid fire. In general, you want the fastest weapons you can get until a crit % of around 16, then you can start downgrading weapon speed for damage/shot.



Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Phunked on November 07, 2007, 06:50:48 PM
Oh and if you're still interested for any theorycraft on this issue, check out the

http://forums.hellgatelondon.com/showthread.php?t=33282&page=6 thread. I'm Challenge. More math numbarz!


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Dren on November 16, 2007, 07:43:02 AM
I've been taking my time trying out the different classes and finally got one of these running.

Nice.

There is just something that feels soooo good about clicking just a few shots off on an automatic and taking out a demon immediately.  Or even better, straffing across a room and taking out 20 of them.

Damn that feels good.  I mean in a way that seems more satisfying than an Evoker for some reason.  It just FEELS more powerful.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Ratman_tf on November 16, 2007, 08:04:51 AM
Marksman is my first class, and I'm just tinkering with the skills. Hardly min-maxing but I am putting more points into the passive crit abilities.

I use an assault rifle in my #1 slot, and twin machine pistols in my #3 slot, for long and short range work respectivley.

I use my #2 slot for fucking around with whatever gun tickles my fancy at the time, but I keep coming back to the twin rocket pistols.

Tactical stance+beacon and see if I can snipe a bunch of the mobs, as they get in close, I switch to rockets or machine pistols depending on how many and how tough they are.

I don't find myself using rapid fire since it makes you immobile for longer than switching out of tac stance, and it's a good way to get overwhelmed by grunts until you're boxed in.

I also circle strafe at med/short range because I'm a spaz.


Now about armor, I notice the "rifleman" armor is mostly shields. I've been shy about going all shields and no armor. What's the concensus on that?


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Dren on November 16, 2007, 09:37:35 AM
My guess is that if you go all shields you better get your fear and other CC pumped up.  The shields will allow you to take more incedental damage while running around like crazy, but not for long.  It should hold out long enough to get a CC power off though and that is all you need.

My thought is that armor is really only good for those characters that will be planning to be overwhelmed a lot, which really is only the Guardian.  As a Marksman, I do not really plan to ever be whacked on long enough to get past my shields.  If they do, I'm toast regardless anyway.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Murgos on November 16, 2007, 10:43:15 AM
No MM build should be without 1 point in evade.

Shields drop?  Hit evade, run away, try again.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: caladein on November 16, 2007, 11:39:35 AM
If you do that though, be on the look-out for some legendaries with +Armor on them. Pound-for-pound they seem to offer a lot of mitigation you may be lacking elsewhere (especially in comparison to +Shields).


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: LK on November 16, 2007, 01:17:04 PM
I found a belt that gave me +68 armor, turning my shield-less mitigation from 4% to 33% at that level.  So I kept that shit.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Jimbo on November 17, 2007, 12:53:15 PM
Hey thanks for the ideas, I've been thinking of how to apply some of it to my engineer.

I keep going back to my 20mm rifle, it was a white item @ lvl 3, got lucky with 3 legendary enchants (+ 3% critical chance, +102% ? critical damage, & + 105% critical damage) and has 4 slots.  I slotted it first, then enchanted, then used the nano forge to level it up 5 times.  That is a lot cheaper than blues or greens or highers being upgraded.

Has anyone found a 20mm rifle with more than 4 slots?

Or for that matter, has anyone started a weapons guide, sort of like diablo II had, where it shows what the progression of weapons are, how many slots, and what mods are available?  http://www.diabloii.net/  has a cornucopia of information, and so did the Arreat Summit on blizzard home page, hopefully someone will start up a web site for this game.



Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Dren on November 20, 2007, 09:32:08 AM
No MM build should be without 1 point in evade.

Shields drop?  Hit evade, run away, try again.

Yeah, I actually skipped the fear ability and went with evade.  Fear type abilities usually just prolong the death since everything runs out to pull even more agro.  Dropping to invis in the middle of getting whomped on?  Perfect.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Merusk on November 20, 2007, 10:34:47 AM
Has anyone found a 20mm rifle with more than 4 slots?

I found a 5-slot white item yesterday and was all excited since my 4-slot "vanquisher" is getting kind of old.  Of course, second enchant on it fucked the thing.. "+1 to Medpack" Wtf? I was willing to suffer through with 'only' -10% to tactical skill usage rate but bah. 

It would seem my Legendary +61 luck belt doesn't apply to enchants.  :awesome_for_real:


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: taolurker on November 20, 2007, 12:32:53 PM
Has anyone found a 20mm rifle with more than 4 slots?

(http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f27/taolurker/Hellgate1.jpg)
(http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f27/taolurker/mmmSniper.jpg)


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: geldonyetich2 on November 20, 2007, 01:19:35 PM
I think he means 20mm rifle that actually says 20mm rifle on it.

Although, actually, a Volt Rifle is about the same.  Just shoots electricity instead of bullets.  Combustion rifle too, with fire.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: rattran on November 20, 2007, 06:52:21 PM
The electric and fire automatics don't seem to change at all when the crit passives go off, as has been mentioned higher up in the thread.

Even with that, I've got 6 slot fire and 7 slot electric on slots 2&3 for special situations and minigame use. 95% of the time I use the ancient 4slot 20mm I've had for ages. That said, I'll be finishing elite soon, maybe there'll be better in elite nightmare.


Title: Re: Marksman
Post by: Dren on November 26, 2007, 12:54:04 PM
MM with invis is really quite powerful.  I have been trying other builds and this one is just the most fun and powerful.  As long as I can get setup on a shelf or corner of a dungeon, I can pick off anything they've thrown at me so far.

I now have a loaded up sniper rifle that literally rips monsters apart with one shot in sniper stance.  Much love.