Marksmen Guide

In the beginning God created the Marksman and no other class was needed. It is true although the Marksman has become very one dimensional as of late it still is by far the most powerful class in Hellgate: London. The ability to dish out large amounts of small damage packets in a period of seconds lets the marksman not only do as much damage as possible but lets him be allusive enough to not take any damage himself.

The purpose to this guide is to teach you something new and show you the true power of a marksman’s ability. This guide will go over all the skills at the Marksman’s disposal, the attribute points used for a number of Marksmen builds, the armor abilities and what to look for and strategies to keep yourself and your party members alive.


Theory:

Keep your friends close and your enemies as far away as your gun will let you. A marksman normally has an attack range of 15m to 40m where he can keep his enemy at bay. The closer ranges 15-25m allows the marksman to aggravate multiple enemies at once while showering them with 300 – 1200 shots per minute. The further range of 40m allows the marksman to be undetected and let off a number of devastating high powered shots at a single target. Both strategies are very effective and allows the marksman time to react to its enemies movement.



Attribute Points:

For attributes you are going to want to go by a normal 0/1/2/2 spread. So for every level you will put points into each feed with no armor on (so you don’t get the numbers messed up). You should always leave a number of attribute points on the side. Getting a base of 50 attribute points and then start spending them is a good idea. By the time you get to where you have a bank of 50 attributes you will be around Level 10. You want to do this because playing to level 10 is not hard at all, its further down the road where you will want to start spending your attribute points and you will definitely want a pool of extra points on the side when you reach levels 46-50


Starting Attribute Points (0 / 245)
Accuracy – 25
Strength – 15
Stamina – 15
Willpower – 20


Nightmare Attribute Points (147 / 245)
Accuracy –35
Strength –48
Stamina –80
Willpower –59


Ending Attribute Points (195 / 245)
Accuracy – 35
Strength – 50
Stamina – 115
Willpower – 70



Armor:
At the start of your character’s creation you want to be looking for mostly shields, plus to all attributes, and luck. You want to do this because you want to bump your Stamina, Accuracy and Willpower without having to invest too many points.

Remember, you will start seeing things that seem to be really great pieces of armor for what your level is… do not fall for this. You will start spending points in order to put those pieces on but later on you will regret it. Just keep putting on pieces of armor that you can equip and that seem to not mess with your overall attribute feed. Most of all don’t mess with your pool of 50 attribute points just to put on a piece of armor… this early in your characters creation its not so wise to be dipping into that pool. Keep in mind the feed is going to be around a 0/1/2/2 spread. You do not need to pump any more points into accuracy then what you are given. If you find you need a few that is fine but no more then 10 points should be put into accuracy as you will be able to satisfy this feed with + All Attribute gear.

Eventually when you get to Nightmare Mode you want to be on the look out for the following armor attributes:

10-15% Armor Increase
10-15% Health Increase
+10-15 To All Attributes
3%-4% Critical Chance (on certain unique armor)
100+ Resists to all special damage
+ Armor Bonus
+4-6% damage Bonus
7-12% Increase Use Rate of Marksman skills



Weapons and Mods


Weapons List
Hu’s Hypershot
Lee’s Lightlance
Voodoo Rifle
Dunbar’s Disrupter
Nikola’s Polyphase Rifle
6 Mod Slot Arclite Fusion Rifle
8 Mod Slot Electric Pulse Rifle
5 Mod Slot 25mm Rifle
8 Mod Slot Sniper Rifle
6 Mod Slot Nanodyne Ballistic Cannon

Abilities List(abilities tied to the guns you find)
+% Damage
5-10% to spray shrapnel on hit
5-10% rebounder bolts on hit
5-10% electric discharge on hit
5-10% nova on hit
1-3 Multi Shot
1-3 Escape (on one handed weapons)
1-3 Escape Artist (on one handed weapons)
1-3 Beacon
1-3 Rapid Fire
100+ elemental attacks (ignite, phase, stun)
3-6% Critical Chance
100%+ Critical Damage
45% + Shield Penetration

The weapon food chain
Hu’s Hypershot – Currently the top dog of all weapons. This baby packs 13-19 damage at 600 shots per minute (spm) in just one hand. Have a duo of these puppies and you have your self 13-19 damage at 1200spm. With the right build this will tear into any level 8+ monster and/or boss. Best idea is to load % on hit mods into this and watch your screen freeze up like testicals in Wisconsin.

6 Mod Slot Nanodyne Ballistic Cannon- A very solid gun. Takes a bit of getting used to as you can pull off some mean tricks with the blades that come out. Over all the damage from this gun is pretty amazing and the fact it has splash damage is an added feature. It also has a great proc rate so adding % On Hit Mods to this gun would be a great idea. Try to find this with shield penetration and you will have yourself a great weapon swap for when you don’t feel like using Hu’s. For more about this gun Click Here)

Dunbar’s Disrupter- A very powerful arclite rifle at 2-3 spectral damage, 2-3 toxic damage, 2-3 fire damage, 2-3 physical damage, 2-3 lightning damage with 600spm. Given the abilities of on hit mods already in its features the fact that it does every single bit of damage allows you to focus on either bumping up your elemental attack in the gun or you can just go along with the abilities it already gives you by adding even more on hit mods.

Lee’s Lightlance- A devastating arclite with a built in shield penetration of 63+% , +% Fire damage, and Beacon this weapon will leave many enemies wondering ‘wtf happened to me, I’m dead’. Unsure of the damage it does at fully Nano’d but I do know it shoots 600spm and that’s enough for me to enjoy it at even at its non nano’d damage.

Nikola’s Polyphase Rifle- An electric pulse rifle with normally 7 – 8 Mod Slots. This weapon has spectral damage, lightning damage, built in 100+ elemental attacks for each, and have 17% toxic damage built in. Modding out this gun is probably the most fun out of all the rifles in the game because there are so many different ways to go with it. You can mod it to have 100% shield pent and +% damage to group (demons, zombies, beasts, spectrals) or just go for full out damage dealing with 8 slots to beef this gun up you will be packing a mean punch with its 400spm. You could mod it up for a rainbow type gun for mini games. You could designate it as your phasing rifle. The possibilities are endless with this one… enjoy!

Voodoo Sniper Rifle- I love this gun for the main reason it can stun, poison, phase and ignite all in one single shot at the same time as dealing an enormous single amount of damage. If you can get a % fire damage mod into this baby you can beef up its ignite and enjoy hitting things 40m away with its insane range. A useful tip with this rifle is to draw agro with it, by shooting ahead of yourself you will be able to aggravate all the mobs that you may have not been able to see otherwise (shard skimmers most off all).

6 Mod Slot Arclite Fusion Rifle- Like its unique brothers (Lee’s and Dunbar’s) this is a great rifle. If you are lucky enough to Augment this with some of the abilities listed above in the wish list you can punch out a lot of pain.

8 Mod Slot Electric Pulse Rifle- Again like its unique brother (Nikola’s) the possibilities for this rifle are endless. Also if you are able to buff it up with an assortment of the wish list abilities you will be rocking it big time.

5 Mod Slot 25mm Rifle- Not my favorite of the rifles due to its slow 300spm and the fact the damage isn’t scaled good enough to be used over the other weapons in the food chain. Unless you find a very beefed up version of this gun I’d just stay away all together.

8 Mod Slot Sniper Rifle- Listed at the bottom because honestly the 30spm and damage it deals is not so great. You are just better off finding a ‘voodoo rifle’ and letting that be your one and only sniper rifle. Again, unless you find a crazy beefed up version of this gun just stay away entirely.

Mods Wish List
22%+ Damage
5-10% to spray shrapnel on hit
5-10% rebounder bolts on hit
5-10% electric discharge on hit
5-10% nova on hit
100+ elemental attacks (ignite, phase, stun)
3-6% Critical Chance
100%+ Critical Damage
45% + Shield Penetration

Depending on how many shots per minute you have on your gun will determine what type of mods you should equip. Obviously you are not going to equip on hit mods to a sniper rifle with 30spm. But on a Hu’s the on hit mods will proc almost every half second. Also, depending on how much damage you do with your weapon consider having shield penetration in that weapon. I would have to say a lot of mods is just about preference and my favorite would have to be on hit shrapnel as it tears into mobs with an enormous range from your body.

Weapon Set Up, the best set up I’ve seen so far is listed below.
1st Slot) primary gun with the most amount of damage
Dual Hu’s, w/ On Hit Mods
2nd Slot) Shield penetration with the most amount of damage
Nikola’s Polyphase with +% Damage to Demon/Spectral & 100%shield pent
3rd Slot) Escape, Escape Artist, Sniper… Off hands
One hand Escape +3, Escape Artist +3, Second hand Escape +3, Sniper +1
4th Slot) I keep a voodoo’s on my personal storage at all time

Skills





This post was edited by PanicAttack on Mar 4 2008 12:13am

Strategy:

Kiting
Eluding your enemy and giving distance to the fight. You want to always keep your enemy as far away as possible but you want to also be able to attack him at the same time. The technique is to damage your enemy while falling back, you obviously can not do this with certain builds but as long as you do not need to be stationary you should always be moving. Avoiding damage as much as possible is as easy as turning around, sprinting and then turning back around to shoot continuing to move backwards from your enemy. Be conscious of what is around you and always be looking at your radar to see where your team mates are. Normally if you are in the front line of your team its a bad thing unless you are quite a few levels higher then the mobs you are fighting.

Escape
Knowing when to use this skill is very important to your survival on the battlefield. If you are surrounded or have multiple enemies attacking at you from aerial or a distance best choice is to use Escape and gain the advantage. You can gain this advantage by either healing or just by giving yourself a little more ground to shoot that pesky monster. Another great reason why Escape is nice is, depending on how high your escape level is, you can get a good portion of your shields back while you’re in the protection of Escape. Tie this skill to a trigger button (reaction key) and be ready to use it!

Targeting
There are plenty of ways to target monsters but some of those monsters are just harder to hit then others. First example would be the mini monsters that get to close. If you play in 3rd person you will not be able to hit the ones closest to your body but you can solve this by easily scrolling into 1st person.

Second example, are those annoying Orbiles that seem to have no hit box at all. You can solve this a few ways, first way is if you have ricochet proc’d you simply shoot at the ground and the bullets will bounce up and hit him ignoring any hit box that monster has. Second way you can do this is by changing your height advantage, if there are open buildings around use them and get above the monster, if you can’t seem to hit the target drop down into a stance and that lower elevation may be able to hit the monster.

Third example the new dragon-like flying creatures. They have a very small hit box which is located in the very middle of there body. I have found that if you are targeted straight ahead of them or behind them it is easiest to hit that target.

Fourth example is the most fun, when you have Ricochet proc’d and there are no bad guys in site…. Well that doesn’t matter keep firing in front of you anyways. When Ricochet is up it gives you about 3 times the range due to a nice little bug. Firing ahead of you will clear the path of monsters you haven’t even seen including enemies around corners or behind objects.

Fifth example, When using a sniper rifle you have to lead your target like you would in hunting. The bullet does take a while to hit the target so make sure you keep an eye on the enemy and his movements and shoot a little in front of where he is moving and you will have your money shot.

Leveling
This used to be a much easier task with solo leveling groups but since the 1.0 patch it has become just a tiny bit slower. The best part about the marksman is that they can beat up the big bad boys at 8 levels higher then themselves and not feel any pain. I have found that even though kicking the crap out of level 8+ mobs is fun, it doesn't do the job for leveling. You want to pick those level 3-4+ mobs and farm the crap out of them, any hell rift you find and any bosses you find just keep kicking their ass because it will reward you with the most XP. Try not to stay in the same level range as your current level. It's much easier to kill things but far less XP then you are looking for.

Another thing to be doing is completing all of the side quests you get. Although these quests seem very lame they are usually on your way through an area you already need to be going for your main quest, so why not take a few extra steps and earn some XP and maybe even a couple Attribute Points (you'll have to do those quests anyways so why not get it done now). Quests are going to help you out a lot with XP and not only that will give you certain armor that you would not have found otherwise. Its a drag to do the same quests all over again with a new 'toon' but believe me it is very much worth it.

Disclaimer, this guide was made by a guild member who does not use d2jsp. All I did was edit parts and make it easier to understand.