ranged needs to be fixed.

[plarfman]

he was told in the ATS thread that there is no way no how ever that autolaunchers would do 1200 damage at level 60, people posted the damage calculation formula for autolauncher ammo and I posted a screenshot of QL100 choice autolauncher of damage ammo. He came back here and started stomping his feet about how uber ranged is because someone told him something that simply can not exist ever while acting like it was true.

yes yes I know I just found the BOLD RED rather hateful.

[xenofur]

actually i have talked with a few people too, and the general concensus is that that kind of weapon is impossible, since you reach the max dmg modifier on the ammo with choice materials and that is 600 max and that damage modifiers on weapons do not work
and seriously, if something is useless for hunting, then it is broken, since pk doesn't give xp and without xp i cannot advance, to gain xp i have to hunt, but for hunting those weapons are utterly useless

[josephm]

Well yeah Xeno, I said PvE needs balancing. But if it could be used well as a pk item then there is some value. the pros just don't outweight the cons enough for people to level it.

Maybe that guy meant he could do 1200 damage over the time it took him to kill something at level 60? I have no idea since specifics weren't offered.

[tetra]

Well yeah Xeno, I said PvE needs balancing. But if it could be used well as a pk item then there is some value. the pros just don't outweight the cons enough for people to level it.

Maybe that guy meant he could do 1200 damage over the time it took him to kill something at level 60? I have no idea since specifics weren't offered.

no he said that autolaunchers did 1200 damage a pop at level 60 and could be fired while running. Autolaunchers don't even do 1200 damage a pop at level 100, you need to get them up to like level 200 or so to do that much. He was quite clear about it in the ATS thread and was pretty clear about it in this thread too. Tack onto that the fact that he was talking about PvP which would require the ammo to be doing 2400 damage a pop to hit for that much in pvp.

Ranged isn't useful as a PK item either, magic has a higher range than ranged and ranged does such low damage that it's pointless. Against a mage they just nuke you dead before a ranged fighter can kill them with the papercuts. Against a melee you have a situation where damage is cut in half from pvp, and then again in half by armor... it's such a low damage value that they can just sit down and ignore you.

[josephm]

Ok level 60 damage not applying...if someone did have a launcher that did 1200 damage, at a much higher level (thank god because a 180 caster dying to a 60 ranged would be pathetic), by the time I got my spell off, they would be well within range. They don't have to charge until after the first shot. I see it as a ranged melee stanza. Melee works the same way. Hit first charge after.

Limited launcher ammo in pvp currently makes sense since you wouldn't want one ranged guy going around and potshotting lone mages and harvesters everywhere. I think this is why it's taking so long for them to fixed ranged combat. Somethings work a certain way that is as intended...and a whole lot more doesn't. Maybe that's why they are so slow in coming with the vamp. Maybe they're stumped.

[tetra]

Ok level 60 damage not applying...if someone did have a launcher that did 1200 damage, at a much higher level (thank god because a 180 caster dying to a 60 ranged would be pathetic), by the time I got my spell off, they would be well within range. They don't have to charge until after the first shot. I see it as a ranged melee stanza. Melee works the same way. Hit first charge after.

Limited launcher ammo in pvp currently makes sense since you wouldn't want one ranged guy going around and potshotting lone mages and harvesters everywhere. I think this is why it's taking so long for them to fixed ranged combat. Somethings work a certain way that is as intended...and a whole lot more doesn't. Maybe that's why they are so slow in coming with the vamp. Maybe they're stumped.

uhhh... again
QL110 choice autolauncher of damage hits for 544 damage base. In PvP it will hit for half that, 272.

If i'm not mistaken, the nukes you get at level 30 elemental will hit for 293 or so with a 60% amp, making them dual nukes would do the same damage... this is not "useful" in the slightest. Ranged in pvp is generally similar to a gnat, at some point someone realizes that someone has been shooting them for the last 10 minutes of fighting. To hit for 1200 in pvp, you would need to be doing 2400 damage. It is not possible to make autolauncher ammo that does 2400 damage, it would need to be QL400 or so.

[josephm]

Right. what about a level 180 auto launcher?

[tetra]

Right. what about a level 180 auto launcher?

without bothering to do the math it should do around 1k of damage per shot at the amazingly cheap cheap cheap and inexpensive cost of 2 mats per shot. You could hold around 15 or 30 of those shots (not clips, shots), I forget exactly and don't particularly feel like blowing a bunch of mats to check. In PvP those shots would drop to half that before armor again knocks off a good sized chunk.

Don't forget that you would need to use a 150 or 200 credit +hitrate brick with that level autolauncher too if you want more than about one shot every 10-15 seconds. Be sure to throw in a high level +accuracy brick for another 100-200 or so credits on that attack.

Yea... that's pretty uber... ranged looks downright amazing when you wheel out those numbers . How anyone can defend it is beyond me.

[josephm]

well if they made the numbers higher for damage, don't you think that auto-launchers and launchers at least, would be over-powered?

That's assuming pistols and rifles are then on par with casting / melee.

[tetra]

you know... I'm tired of explaining this to people...

Ranged weapons are broken skilltrees. They may not cause you to crash or delete your character, but they are still broken and not usable. Ranged weapons have had the following "fixes" since beta.

*During beta the +hitrate brick was removed with the justification that it was too expensive and they were going to just speed up the base melee attack speed. Players said that Nevrax forgot to speed the base for ranged and were ignored or disregarded (x hits per minute in ranged is slower than x hpm in melee).
*At the end of beta, the range for ranged weapons was changed from 15,000-30,000+ meters, to the current 35 or so.
*At some point early in retail the hitrate for ranged weapons was lowered to near unusable levels (i.e. 50% hitrate with max accuracy on even con mobs), seemingly because someone at nevrax felt that they hit too often.
*Again there was a change for ranged weapons early on. Basic mats made the best ammo and supreme mats made 0 damage... this was corrected.
*At the same time they removed one mat from the craft cost for launcher and autolauncher ammo, and 2 mats per clip/craft for rifle/pistol. Players continued to say "uhh... have you been listening to us?"
*They fixed the dodge rates partially... it still has a worse hitrate than melee but it's possible to actually hit things again.
*They announced the "first round of fixes for ranged fight" and took the same +hitrate bricks that were removed during beta, and stuck them on ATS.
*English and German ATS forums both had threads by different people saying that this +hitrate brick was a bad thing for ranged. The cited how ranged already has issues with it's carrying capacity not being high enough and how burning ammo faster was not going to help them. Perhaps it's because there was no thread begging for them not to break range further in french in the french ATS forum, but nevrax reacted to these "stop stop before you break ranged further we need exponentially more shots and the ability to hold exponentially more ammo" threads by placing the +hitrate bricks in game and giving rifle/pistol and amazing +16 (yes sixteen) shots per craft.
*several patches went by after this "first round of fixes" and they had awsome and amazing changes to ranged fight. First we got a proper description to the +hitrate brick that players asked not to be added back into the game because it hurt ranged. This was an important thing... because after all, what good is it to have a brick that players asked nevrax not to add because it harmed the skill tree, when it has a block of code for a description. The second awsome and amazing fix was to correct the titles for the level 150 or 200 2 handed ranged weapons crafting skills.

So yes... I'm tired of giving reasons why ranged is broken and having the same discussion over and over and over again in these forums.