I just started a new MP toon so I could team up with my wife, who's just starting on the game.  (I've been playing on and off since nearly the beginning of AO).

After some dithering I decided to go with a rifle rather than a blunt weapon.  I realize this means I won't be able to use the concrete cushions later on, but I like the idea of being able to stand 30 meters away while directing my pets and keeping an eye on my wife's health bar.

I'm still on Noob Island, though, so I could always change my mind and reset the rifle and Aimed Shot skills later.  (I'm not planning to use Aimed Shot with Conceal, just at distance, if possible.)

I've played MP twice before, once with blunt weapons and once with pisotls.  I find that my pets do most of the fighting while I mostly just watch, but occasionally it's nice to help them out.

I realize that I'll get aggro when I land an Aimed Shot, but it'll go away as soon as my attack pet hits, especially since I've got AggDef at around 50% most of the time.

Anyway ... anybody ever see an MP with a rifle? If not, is there some reason why this would be a bad idea?  (Incidentally, I've chosen Opifex — not as good as nanomage for MP, I realize.)

I can't recall seeing a rifle MP but I'm sure they exist.  There is a good guide here:

http://www.gameguides.ws/

to quote on their section on rifles:

"Rifle is one of the few large gun skills that the MP can comfortably implant in all three slots and as such there is a certain affinity for rifle and the MP. There is no perk or symbiant support for the MP using Rifle skill, however there are some excellent external buffs available above the expertises and Wrangle that enable an easy and early equipping of high QL rifles and also there are several items that buff Aimed Shot skill very high both for equipping and to enable higher damage and faster recycling Aimed Shots.

Rifles tend to be fast weapons too which put less stress on the expensive and low maxing Ranged Init and also allow good integration to a Nuking MP playstyle. They also tend to have low minimum damage and a wide damage range, which means that for Shadowlands MPs they are in general not particularly well suited.

Rifles generally tend to be dependent upon the Aimed Shot special to deliver a good deal of their full damage potential which can be difficult to make the best of for an MP as the MP is weak in conceal skills and cannot really achieve the conceal skills to reliably use the AS special in PvM. However, in PvP where the Aimed Shot special is usable without concealing, the fast Aimed Shot rifle is at present one of the most powerful elements in the PvP game."

Thats as interesting as a MA soldier. Don't MP's usually use bows if they are ranged? If thats the case good luck finding one on noob island.

But yeah, a rifle MP sounds fun to start with.

edit* sry, I ment MP

Originally posted by ANDRIOD

Thats as interesting as a MA soldier. Don't MA's usually use bows if they are ranged? If thats the case good luck finding one on noob island.

But yeah, a rifle MA sounds fun to start with.

Wow, that would be unusual.  However, I was talking about a rifle-equipped Metaphysicist, not Martial Artist!

Thanks for that useful info, Burmese!  I'll check it out later.

I don't plan on using Aimed Shot much, though based on my experiments on Noob Island it seems that sometimes AS can be used without decently effective conceal, partcularly if the mob is facing away and is at maximum distance. The 30m range of the rifle works well with this.

My main purpose is to use the rifle for pulls.  I could, of course, use a long-range nano for that, but I like having the mobs aggro on me for a few seconds before my attack pet out-damages me and takes aggro.  The result is that the first couple of hits are directed at my toon rather than the pet, spreading damage around, and I don't use up nano to accomplish this.  (It's a drag to have all your pets snuff it and not have enough nano to bring them back!)

MPs tend to work better with bows for range than other range weapons and are considered the main bow prof, even if MAs have more perk support. Bows and rifles can also have comparable ranges. Another range weapon MPs can be good with are pistols then with those there's the Pepper Pistol line that has bonuses to MC, BM and MM nano skills.

IP cost wise those two will also be your cheapest range weapons at +2.4 (pistol) and +2.5 (bow) IP per point compared to +4 on rifle (each point you increase the skill the IP cost of the skill goes up that much). Also IP cost decides how many points you can put into the skill per lvl and title lvl, the lower the cost, the higher you can raise the skill. Then you can use bow special attack items with regular bows (not cross bows) which is the only weapon special MPs don't spend +4 IP per point increase on.

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When it comes to your nano pool all profs have at least some issues earlier on but later things become much easier. So you can be busy nuking like crazy without much worry of running out at higher lvls. This is especially true if you have expansions as for one thing you can use symbiants rather than implants. Ones MP can use have bonuses for nano cost reduction, nano pool, nano points and nano regeneration.

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You will run out of RK pets eventually. My one MP with expansions could self all of them and other than the higher creation nanos self all non-lvl locked nanos at lvl 75 (don't get SL/AI pets till lvl 165+). It'll take longer as a fr00b but the higher you go the more you may want/need to pitch in when fighting. One problem with regular MP RK pets is they suck at taunting so you will pull most of the agro. The Inner Sanctum ones can be nice in that regard but are lvl locked (lvl 135 & 185). The ToTW MP pet can taunt well too but it is also lvl locked and its damage sucks compare to the regular attack pets you can use by that lvl.

One thing you need to learn is when you should or shouldn't jump in with your pets. For much stronger stuff you can be better off letting your pets all do the work. You also need to work on pulling just one or two mobs from a group. Best way to do that is put your pets on follow then just move close enough to draw agro from a hostile mob then run off a ways before attacking. With social mobs if you attack one too close to the others they will all attack which could be overwhelming. With non-social mobs it won't matter and with non-hostile mobs you can't pull in that manner.

Then you should make use of all those hot key bars and use one attack macro for your attack pet, one for your mez pet and a specific heal one for your heal pet. This way if you pull two mobs you can send your attack pet after one and the mezz pet to keep the other out of the fight. To make that easier rename your pets with macros rather than using their default names. Once you run out of pets though then you may as well use their default names.

Good points, Phoenix, though it's a bit awkward for me to switch to bow just now.

As for naming the pets, I call mine Bashy, Healy and Mezzy (or some variant on that theme).  I do that so others in the team can figure out what I'm doing without asking.

One of AO's key features (in the early days) was the abilty to support players who thought "outside the box"

each Booster/expansion reduced that available diversity, ie SL/AI armour tied to specific attributes that buff certain skills only.

It is still possible to ignore convention, but you will suffer in terms of damage output, survivability and team options. AO has become an equipment biased game, but it's skillbase still allows you to make unconventional builds.

Enjoy making your build YOUR way.