Marksman’s Focus is hard to use, but I wouldn’t be posting here if that was the only drawback. It’s hard to use and mechanically deeply flawed. M’sF is entirely antithetical to the game’s combat mechanics. When FS removed the old camouflage I was hopeful it was the last we’d seen of feats that actively incentivized stationary behavior that distanced players from their teammates but here we are again.
Fortunately, it’s an easy fix. Instead of punishing players for moving and aggressively participating in combat by removing stacks for each step they take, put it instead on a short countdown. This will remove the disincentives that plague it and better yet encourage players to improve their gunmanship as it’ll reward them for well-aimed snapshots.
the stacks fall off really slowly and can be built super fast, you get 3 seconds of movement per weak spot kill and 1 per headshot. it is not difficult to continuously move and maintain the buff.
i find it to be one of the better keystones out there, for anyone , you have actually tried it in game?
its a max 75-112% finesse bonus for using a finesse weapon correctly. its a very impactful buff that is easy to generate and only mildly difficult to maintain. you might want to give it a bit more of a try maybe try a different weapon or two?
i have been using it for the past 3 days and its quite useful but the whole “ignore stack loss for X seconds for movement” has to be ignored completely, at least with hellbore…
i think the best solution to the problem would be to go all in as the “skill expressive” keystone, and instead tie stack loss to taking dmg,
haven’t tried the hellbore i dont get on well with those , would think they fire a bit too slowly? i did start of using a mk7 HH that was good, one shot one kill!
but it was when i tried it with a mk5 auto and a shorter engagement range, more like a point man right up with the melee focusing enemy shooters that it really sang.
played mk1 and it after one headshotkill and gaining 3 stacks it then feels really nice gaining the ability to HS oneshot everything except flamer, ragers, muties, maulers and ogryns, and of those only mauler and crusher take more than two headshots.
its not an easy playstyle as you have the slow draw time of the hellbore, and in addition your at your weakest at the first shot, but it ramps up quickly and the payoff is quite strong, can easily clear entire rooms regardless of enemy types as long as you place them headshots,
it also gets canabalised a bit by other classes with faster drawn special sniper weapons, at least it broke my concentration if more than one other person is fishing for roaming enemies with the charge up and drawtime you have to really be top focused or my performance would have plummeted
so there are quite a few limitations to that playstyle,
can’t speck into too many survival/melee nodes
its draw and charge results in a hard time reacting to specials when in melee
having to go for headshots at least for initial shots but preferably for every shot.
but nontheless i think its still viable and most important a fun and rewarding playstyle
that pushes you, and one that forces you to get better as you won’t compete if you don’t manage to hs consistently
marksman focus also seem to buff body shots in some instances, wich could be a bug
im using the scope mods and slapped the laspistol redot on and it feels waaaay better to use
well for the movement part sure, but the buildup not really as it already hits breakpoints for many enemies for oneshot HS kills, and as it has high dmg the pay off the the buff is quite substantial, but as i said i mostly ignored to try to maintain stacks and just build new stacks whenever a new encounter came, and as i said 3 stack, already are enough for many more breakpoints, wich results in very quick ramp up of stacks.
I abolutely hate it, and I repeatedly tried to use it.
My favourite weapons in game as Las, namely Kantrael and Lucius. This should be my keystone, but I would rather just do without it and throw a few points into other skills instead.
Don’t worry it works perfectly with Infantry Autoguns, especially the faster model. You know the “Marksmen” keystone, yeah it works incredibly with a hip-fire bullet-spitting weapon. What a joke.
yeah its dumb, especially considering the concept of swap dancing between melee and ranged seem to fit thematically way more with the high RPM guns but weapon specialist is kinda ass with them so bizarre to have it befit single shot powerhouses like plasma and revolver instead
In that case, it almost feels like design intent. The ammo load node, and ranged specialist giving crit for only the first shot (which might even be intended) only really work well with Revolver and Plasma anyway, and high-impact fast-drawn weapons come naturally for both the heavy melee playstyle and the kill requirement for melee specialist to trigger. Other is more clearly an oversight.
But that’s maybe just me not really understanding what could be fun in randomly switching around to automatic weapons mid-melee to shoot a bit and back constantly. I don’t know why they are pushing it, or why would they in the first place.
well if it was 5s of constant crits, it basically would have similar impact to chastise the wicked with full auto guns, so they would shred through armor, also its instantly hipfiring specials with brauto isn’t that outlandish
In my opinion it works well. You only loose 1 stack at a time and you gain more once you get to a good position and start shooting enemies, and after killing enemies with weakspot hits, you can adjust your position for 3 seconds, ignore the idea that you can only move for 3 seconds, move as much as needed and get to a better position, then start killing again, regain the stacks.
You simply have to accept that you loose those stacks while transitioning through the map. If you can pull of atleast 2-3 weakspot kills per combat encounter, you have the max 10 already, since you very likely have the Camouflage talent.
it does work perfectly fine with most weapons I’ve been using it with the mk7 hh as much as columnus the only advantage the bullet sprayers have is the high rof gives more 1 second free move procs, the stacks and 3 second free move is on kills not hits.
See, there’s the problem. You’ve gotta take the discussion of game balance as ‘nobody has mods’, and making the sniper weapon far easier to use does affect the viability of it here.
Yeah, using a modded hellbore with a sight or one of the scopes is actually pretty good but I’m not blind to the fact that I’m only really enjoying it because it’s modded. The hellbore kind of just has a garbage sight picture by default even though it’s tuned towards a precision play style.
I think it’s the weapon they had in mind when they designed the keystone as well as the recon las guns but the badly need to make the ability to atleast swap sights a default feature.
i wasnt advocating for its balance at all, i said its a fun build, and a viable build,
i’ve used it without scope, even after the rework as i initially forgot to reactivate the .bat
the way i play it is to flick up at heads every shot, i do that with a sight as well, as i find my accuracy way better that way. and while its far worse feel to it without a sight, its still was very much viable.
i understand that many don’t enjoy the hellbore for what it is, but i always liked it,
thats why it was my first choice to run a couple days with the talent. (i only recently started to use mods, since the class overhaul.
and that’s why i also advocated for a fun existing build with it, im not obsessed to make every disscussion about balance…
and just to be clear, for anyone who reads anything into what i say, the hellbore build isn’t near anything top meta, it has way too many drawbacks, but you can compete and even outdmg many meta builds, but the amount of work you’re going to put into accomplishing that is going to be tripple of that of meta builds, and the costs in feats you pay is in no way optimal,
but the fun part is, that the potential to outdo exists, thats already quite rare with many underwhelming weapons, and i find joy in weapons that rewards mastering them.
