there is nothing wrong with range weapons. :)

[crames]

Thanks for the additional input and answers. I guess I may get Ranged Weapon Crafting 2, and start making level 20 pistols ...

But now I have another question. Why do you specialize in rifles? Is the payoff really that great? Your "plus side" section of your post was relatively short. Does the not-missing aspect, and fast exp gain make up for everything?

[loyats]

Thanks for the additional input and answers. I guess I may get Ranged Weapon Crafting 2, and start making level 20 pistols ...

But now I have another question. Why do you specialize in rifles? Is the payoff really that great? Your "plus side" section of your post was relatively short. Does the not-missing aspect, and fast exp gain make up for everything?

One: You domiss with rifles, and it is quite annoying when you're trying to level your ranged combat.

And Two: I've found that for the same number of resources you get more ammo per craft action with rifle vs. pistol (like 15 vs. 12), besides the fact that rifles have longer range, and I'm pretty sure do more or equal damage.

If you're not already a forager I would look into it. While I do disagree that ranged weapons are not nerfed, the Devs will od as the Devs will do. Before the patch i could do a round of hunting to pull in some dapper, and craft some ammo and go get 2 or 3 levels in ranged, but now after filling my bulk bag with loot and making ammo for my rifle I can't even make enough to gain one level. From what i experienced the damaged drop almost 30 dmg a shot.

I wouldn't try and disuade you on pursueing the ranged warrior path, but know that it is expensive and likely to change in the future.

[usinuk]

One: You domiss with rifles, and it is quite annoying when you're trying to level your ranged combat.

And Two: I've found that for the same number of resources you get more ammo per craft action with rifle vs. pistol (like 15 vs. 12), besides the fact that rifles have longer range, and I'm pretty sure do more or equal damage.

If you're not already a forager I would look into it. While I do disagree that ranged weapons are not nerfed, the Devs will od as the Devs will do. Before the patch i could do a round of hunting to pull in some dapper, and craft some ammo and go get 2 or 3 levels in ranged, but now after filling my bulk bag with loot and making ammo for my rifle I can't even make enough to gain one level. From what i experienced the damaged drop almost 30 dmg a shot.

I wouldn't try and disuade you on pursueing the ranged warrior path, but know that it is expensive and likely to change in the future.

I'm running only 12 per clip of rifle ammo, but maybe Matis are different.

Oh, one more thing. Was testing pistol ammo vs. pistol ql out tonight and turns out its not a bonus modifier after all. Instead...if you use ammo that is significantly below your gun it does less damage, and if you use ammo that is significantly above your gun it does singnificantly less damage.

Will try the same with rifles in a day or two after my initial flurry of orders for sap and focus jewelry slows down a bit...

[crames]

I'm not that concerned about whether rifles are better (do more damage, or have more range) than pistols. The big question is whether rifles do more damage than an axe, if the rifle, ammo, and axe are all of the same quality.

[loyats]

I'm not that concerned about whether rifles are better (do more damage, or have more range) than pistols. The big question is whether rifles do more damage than an axe, if the rifle, ammo, and axe are all of the same quality.

Using all same quality MATs the answer is no, melee will still do more damage, compared to ranged weapons of the smae quality.

[vanderpm]

Let me first respond to the OP, who it looks like hasn't played up the ranged tree much. They will find that a magic/ranged combo is more or less unplayable solo, incidentally...I tried. You'll simply get hit too much close using any sort of magic, the range on your weapons isn't good enough should you try to fear the mob, and exp division will be heavily weighted towards magic. As someone who has leveled up in everything more or less evenly, I can at least compare properly...and I am also one of the few who specialize in ranged crafting as well as combat.

There are several basic issues with ranged combat which I think a lot of people don't get.

1. Expensive. OP's post dealt with that, and in fairness, I think the expense factor is probably the least important and most whiny issue of them all, although in going from 21-45 in ranged combat cost me something in the realm of 1M dappers. (Granted, going from 51-61 in all my jewelry skills cost about 2M.) Compare that to melee/magic expenses and its way out of balance. An example - a 12 round q50 set of ammo costs about 6500 dappers for me (with 95 race fame)to make. If you can't craft, it costs about 1000 per round for q25 ammo at the store...uck. While you can get ammo bullets (3 mats/clip) and explosive (2 mats/clip) readily enough from mob drops resin seems to only drop in the form of a rare tooth or two...so your choice is to either harvest for glue (4 mats per round) or pay up at the store.

2. Damage. The first real issue. If the damage was significant from that q50 clip and could take out a lvl 50 mob, you can make an argument that we're just whining about paying up. But the problem is that the base damage on a q50 ammo set is somewhere around 50ish per shot for a pistol and 60ish for a rifle. (The recent fix seems to have at least counted choice mats towards damage - which were counted as 0 before - but also reduced damage in general to roughly what the q of the ammo was.)

A good q50ish pistol or rifle seems to add maybe 8-10 points or so to damage per shot; I need to test out differences between 3 different q sets of pistols and rifles I have sitting around now to confirm this with the new patch. My weaps are not maxxed for damage typically (see below for range comments) but the couple of times I've built out a ranged weap maxxed for damage the mod is maybe, maybe +25% for the white line all the way over on damage.

So you're talking maybe 70 per shot if you're lucky with a good weapon and good ammo. At that rate against a lvl 50 gingo it takes me - if I were to use ranged solely, which I don't - something like 6 clips of ammo to kill it. 40000 dappers on ammo aside for a mob that would drop maybe 4000 dappers if I'm lucky, the other real issue is if I stand there long enough for me to go through the 72 rounds of ammo, the gingo will have done something like 2000 points of damage to me even through good choice heavy armor. 2000 damage versus me at level 50 ranged = 700 hps and self-heal 600 every 2 minutes = dead player.

There is no way to increase damage, stun the mob, or get the mob to bolt using skills on the ranged tree. Nor do specific ammo types have significant differences that I've seen on mobs. (Caveat...I don't have smashing, only slashing and piercing...but, piercing ammo doesn't pierce armor...duh!) Once the mob is on you, its just you and your peashooter damage. I have enchanted my pistol and rifle with fear as a substitute, but that's not something I should need to do.

Oh, and if the ATS patch holds true per Silv's review, mob damage goes up making this problem even worse.

3. Range. Ranged is a bit of a misnomer. Max range on ANY ranged weapon is 50m. There are no skills to increase this on any tree.

And...one problem with crafting ranged weaps, btw, is that I have yet to run across a choice wood/armor shell/barrel mat that maxxes range out...and have been looking for one for a month. Ones that I've seen have maybe 50% range at best. Best drop I've seen so far is ragus hide, with the caveat that if you put a mat high in damage or parry elsewhere you end up nuking your range again (have to be very careful with triggers as they often do this despite having no range component on them).

So...you can either get a weapon that goes 25-30m (That 30 is in the case of a rifle, which has about 5m more range base than a pistol, partially cause it takes 3 barrels that can hold range increases on them) or one that goes 20-25m with maybe 20% damage increase on pipsqueak numbers. Given that the multiple increase is so low on damage anyway, I'm not sure why anyone would trade the opportunity to not get into aggro range to add a whopping 10 more per shot...so my weaps are ranged maxed. Even then, its still 20m less than my poor acid 1 (or good acid 4) for pulling stuff.

4. Plus side: Because ammo is so expensive (4/3/2) you can level up in ammo crafting very quickly with it. Ranged weapons also do not miss thus making stamina use irrelevant.

Solutions:

1. Increase base damage of ammo and increase damage modifier of weapons. Slightly decrease cost, but that's the least important part of the equation.

2. Dramatically increase range somehow...weapon, modifier, skill, etc. There's no reason a ranged weap shouldn't be the weap of choice for sniping something at 200m.

3. Increase base speed.

4. Make ammo do what it should against mobs. Piercing ammo should have option/chance to negate armor, slashing bleeding, etc...

5. Add ranged specific skills. I can do 280 damage with a q50 pike using increase acc/damage 3. No reason I shouldn't be able to spend stam on things to get my ranged up there for a little while.

Caveats: I have the launcher/autolauncher plans but haven't spend craft points on ammo for them yet, as I don't plan on taking my mektoubs with me hunting...but will have more to say after I experiment with them.

To answer the second question - use pistol and pistol ammo up until you hit 50. No reason to add the other skills until then; you'll be killing stuff with a pistol/melee combo anyway.

Actually you can miss with a ranged weapon, and the stanzas of Berserker, Accuracy and Aim work for ranged weapons, but it by far does not equal things out. Also, I would be content if you could use the "Ignore armor", "Bleeding", "stun" etc. stanzas with the appropriate ammo, but you cant.

[jesder]

From what i experienced the damaged drop almost 30 dmg a shot.

This might be true for you since you are not using anything higher than fine. Go get some decent choice or higher mats for your ammo and you should be much better damage.

I made some lvl 37 pistol ammo that did 64 DMG. This was using all choice mats (resin was prime roots). Still .. this amount of damage is extremely low compared to magic or melee.

[aether4u]

This might be true for you since you are not using anything higher than fine. Go get some decent choice or higher mats for your ammo and you should be much better damage.

I made some lvl 37 pistol ammo that did 64 DMG. This was using all choice mats (resin was prime roots). Still .. this amount of damage is extremely low compared to magic or melee.

Even if they did a good deal of damage, you'd still only get 1 or 2 hits in since mobs move at the speed of light.